001and we have no retirements i know i mean i don't know how to answer the question i mean i get a different bucket but i've gotten so used to talking with it that for one of them right so you just get used to it with the microphones again tonight okay that hopefully the next time i'm on the board meeting give me some space some space yeah all right wayne go ahead please good evening the october 26 2021 regular school board meeting of the board of isd63 roseville area schools is hereby called to order clerk johnson could you please call the roll uh yes director anderson here treasurer goggins here chair bogoszewski here treasurer goggins oh i'm sorry i must have answered for a different one i apologize here i was getting ready i'm sorry for
002gifts director chew and clerk johnson is here thank you uh madam superintendent do we have any agenda adjustments systems no agenda just thank you are there any announcements tonight yes i'd like to let our community know that we do have a much monthly financial report later in the meeting and that will include a levy presentation we also have additional levy information on our website thank you thank you and with that we'll move into community comments it looks like we do have several people signed up this evening and first up will be coffee manska and who's a parent guardian within the district and i just remind all the speakers that we are no longer asking speakers to state their home address as they begin their presentation so oh right the mic over there and the timer
003is way over there is that the timer yep i know but i'll start my own just to make sure i'm timely thank you my name is coffee monska and i'm here to ask that everyone who hears this vote no on the levy roseville schools are failing all kids but especially kids of color when it comes to the very basics of reading writing and math for example the 2019 mcas for reading for white kids they were 75 proficient but black kids were only 36 percent proficient for whites for math um it was 68.9 proficient for blacks it was 27.2 percent proficient roseville schools are within the bottom 50 percent of all schools in minnesota i'm sick of all the signs platitudes and pleasantries talking about black lives matter yet there's absolutely no outrage about this none
004at all no marches no protests nobody talks about it and it's absolutely terrible we will never have equal opportunity as a people until we can read write and do math and do the basics number two do better with the funds you have with the state budget that was passed in july of you were given a minnesota schools were given a record amount of money the most in 15 years a six percent increase two point five percent per student for this year and for every year after two percent for the next number of years use your covid funds letter better you received almost 21 million dollars in clovis funds this is just for roseville schools two thousand seven hundred and twenty eight dollars per students use that money use all this money that you spend on
005equity hundreds and thousands of dollars on the equity alliance equity professionals equity training yet we have no results if you look at the numbers that i saw above no results show me how that has benefited our students especially our students of color besides trying to make the school look good you might say oh but i need more money to teach those kids the reading right you don't need money to teach kids to read and write everybody knows that we've been giving you levy money we've been giving you money you get money in the budget increases and the numbers stay the same oh we need this money for class sizes you might say i've never seen the class sizes decrease after a living my kids are now in high school they've been in these schools since
006kindergarten never seen the class sizes decrease only increase plus for roseville schools if you want smaller class sizes stop open enrollment like mound view schools have done for many years we have twenty twenty percent of our kids come from outside of our school district when the state average is nine percent and those are that's fine those are 2017 numbers so it's probably even higher now if we want smaller class sizes stop letting all these kids into our schools and you might get more money per student that comes in but then you come and ask us for more money in the end so in conclusion instead of threatening to stop basic education that you're required to provide by law for our students and that we taxpayers have already paid for show us how you spend the
007money you already have show us what you did with the last levy money explain why class sizes haven't gotten smaller as parents this vote is our only voice we sit here it's like talking to thin air we get these email responses back that are just these form letters and um you just feel like you're not listened to and so you have to vote thank you thank you thank you very much appreciate your comments next up is rhonda and is it rhonda holasick the last name isn't identified here thank you and you're you yourself are a community member a parent a parent and a community member thank you both um and i am reading this on behalf of alan who can't be here tonight but i also have interest in this as well it's our understanding
008that the roseville school district has a plan or a policy which allows students to use the restroom of their gender identity and does not require students to use the bathroom that corresponds to their biological sex if that's incorrect please let us know i would like to share with the board two stories that are heartbreaking within the last two weeks and first in loudoun county virginia i'm sure many people have heard this a 14 year old girl was assaulted in the girls restroom by a male student who was wearing a skirt and identified as female and secondly in rhode island a man was arrested for possession of child pornography after he dressed as a woman and entered the woman's restroom these are just two of the most recent examples of what happens when you allow males
009to use the girls restroom and there are of course many many more examples across the u.s at this time right now this school board has the ability to prevent anything like that from happening and we would urge you to think of and implement a plan that requires our students to use the bathroom that corresponds to their biological sex this is a common sense measure and it will ensure the safety of all of our girls when they use the restroom please don't wait for someone to be harmed and we ask you to act on that now thank you for your time thank you very much next is angie vern who also is a parent and guardian in the school district angie good evening angela byrne harambe parent um my child is trans and she is currently
010using the bathroom that corresponds with her gender identity uh and there was two cases nationwide where maybe we had men trying to be predators in bathrooms men try to be predators everywhere how about we teach our cis boys to not be predators my child is far more likely to be harmed out in public then girls are by by some boy or man imposing as a woman please follow state policy an mdh policy that allows children to use the restroom of their that matches their gender identity it is gender affirming and it is proven to lower depression and other mental illnesses in our lgbtq youth thank you and that's all the speakers we had signed up this evening so thank you everybody with that we'll move to the consent and generator container motion server well can
011you we need your information and why did you not get a chance were you not here in time i'm or uh okay then we'll need i'll ask you information go ahead and take the microphone so could you let us know your name and our uh the administrative executive assistant will just record as you let us know so what's your name please full name bruce owner bruce oh my god how do you spell your last name i'm sorry o-n-a thank you oh mr owner you've been here before yeah okay and you are reminding me a community member a parent in the district what is your role my my child has grown up now so you're a community raised a daughter excellent you're a community member and parent of an ex student okay thank you yeah okay
012go ahead and start timer thank you i'm sorry bruce i didn't recognize you with the mask okay yeah sorry i was a minute late or whatever and thank you for allowing me to speak um yeah i'm really concerned about the schools that we seem to have political left-wing indoctrination going on in our schools today that we did not have decades ago and parents are being marginalized like we're not being listened to and respected we don't feel respected as parents we don't feel like we're equal equally listened to as your left-wing special interest groups you have um coming into the schools lgbt would be one of those groups that i heard you know you speaking to um a leader in that social studies teacher and again he marginalized parents he said all parents have to be
013taught about um you know basically the healthiness of homosexuality and that of gender identity were the enlightened ones and you parents you don't know anything you don't know how to raise kids there are kids now that's a communist type of approach that the the kids belong to the state to the school board and we know better than the parents in the old days the parents had equal say in what was taught and the fact is most parents don't want boys going in girls bathrooms and boys playing on girls sports teams which takes away from equality for girls sports and they don't want homosexuality being taught being encouraged to the kids which it is behind our back my friend his 13 year old son last week was told to read a book about homosexuality to encourage
014him to embrace the lifestyle well if you believe the centers for disease control which i don't know if you believe in them or not but they say um one to two percent of males are homosexual in the us and they contract over 50 percent of the aids in the u.s so why aren't you guarding our kids health and concerned about our kids health and so we think that like these mandates are less than sincere when we see you don't even care about our kids health in the sexual area and the disease spread from it um you know back in a previous president we would respect parents and we would um all commonly acknowledge what our healthy lifestyles and what are not thank you thank you mr evan thank you very much appreciate your coming and
015sharing your thoughts with us with that we will move on to the consent agenda to entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda so thank you have a second second thank you kitty any discussion hearing none all in favor say aye aye opposed consent agenda passes we did also have gifts again to share this evening and director goggins is going to share those with us kitty i would like to thank our community we are very fortunate to have such a generous community central park elementary received from donorschoice.org books about social emotional learning for classroom use falcon heights elementary received from berkel company funds for the art department fairview community center received remark anderson funds for classroom use the roseville area high school received from dave and schrader on behalf of carmen and seth florence funds
016for principal's discretion roseville area high school received from bruce cyber funds for avid program high school also received from the roz girls soccer boosters funds for coaching staff and equipment and the roseville area middle school received from frank shaw a three-quarter sized cello for the orchestra program thank you so much for the for the donations to help continue to offer the kind of programs that we're able to thank you kitty i know it is it's a broken record every time but we're just so thankful for our community support and those who who choose to give to our to our students and our and our learners uh with that move on to the reports and non-action items and i think first up this evening is our enrollment and demographic report and we have the team arriving
017to share that with us this evening good evening so i don't know who's leading you off i'll let you all introduce yourselves all right jake thank you make sure that i'm talking into the mic tonight yes please do pull your microphones closer to you if you can we have had some difficulty with people understanding yeah we will make sure to do that so thank you for having us this evening this report our enrollment and demographic report provides you with an overview of our current enrollment trends for this school year as well as the demographic trends we used to do these as two reports two separate reports but because of their similarity a number of years ago we decided to put them together into one report that provides information about our current students we try to
018use data that is this from the same sources each year so our numbers in the enrollment section may look different from our numbers in the demographics section and there is a number of us providing the information tonight so i think we'll start off with introductions and i'll start i'm jake von delindy the director of student achievement and i'll go to the list melissa sonic assistant superintendent christina robertson english learner program administrator and delon smith director of equity and innovation thank you very much our first slide shows our strategic plan areas and the report covers multiple areas of our strategic plan especially two main areas which are improved learning for our students of color american indian students english learners students receiving special education service and pre-kindergarten learners and to improve communication and genuine engagement with families
019and communities especially with our underrepresented communities the information tonight will support why we continue to work on these areas that i just highlighted in our strategic plan and we do have a couple areas that i bolded to really make sure that these particular ones that i i wanted to point out to you to just continue to provide a curriculum that reflects the diverse cultures of our families and students to continue professional development for our culturally competent teaching and strengthen relationships between staff and students of color and american indian students as well as retain and recruit more staff of color and american indian staff and to increase access to district and school information by providing interpreters and translations in multiple languages including karen hmong somali spanish and nepali and you'll see the reasons why as we
020go through this report for highlighting those areas in our strategic plan and the work that we do so the first part is our enrollment report and i'm going to hand that off to our assistant superintendent melissa sonic all right thanks jake good evening uh so for the next several slides i'll be sharing information regarding our enrollment uh this data comes from our enrollment office and so it's important to note that it can be different than the data that we give to mde as this data is updated more frequently yeah i'm running out of space here but thank you look at that my friends always come down a little bit thank you so what you see on this slide is our enrollment trend over time this data has been taken from the same source meaning we
021pull the data from the same data source year to year in other words comparing apples to apples you'll notice a drop in students in 2019-20 this was most likely because of the continued pandemic and families looking for an in-person option this would also be consistent with state data meaning this was not unique to just roseville from 2000 2021 we are below where we expect it to be as some families we're looking for a full distance learning option as vaccines are rolled out for children ages 5 to 11 we are hoping and cautiously optimistic that will increase some enrollment it's also important to note that we we had very predictable trends with some growth in enrollment each year pre-covered those predictions are now more difficult we anticipate that we'll continue to experience some difficulty our instability
022in our predictions as we navigate covet 19. so this next slide shows the enrollment by grade level we are seeing a higher enrollment in secondary than elementary and we are closed in open enrollment in grades 9 10 and 11. this next slide here shows our k-6 enrollment over time a reminder that the jump from 2000 2012 was from when harambe joined our school district we also had a bigger drop in 2019-20 due to the pandemic and a smaller drop between 2021 it was roughly 34 students where the year before was roughly about 140. there's also been some decreases in our secondary enrollment more so this year than last year you know jake and i talked about this and it was difficult to speculate why there was a decrease it could be related to distance learning
023options but it's also really tough to say this next slide is a look at each elementary school's enrollment most schools trended down slightly but it's interesting to note that little canada trended up i think it's fair to attribute some of that growth at little canada to the dual language immersion program that is offered and flourishing it's also important to note that vaccines are not yet available for most elementary age students and once vaccines are offered we could see an increase in enrollment we'll transition now to talking a little bit about class sizes this is a look at our average class size the far right shows two numbers the first number is the average class size for 2122 the second number is the average class size for 2021. the numbers at the bottom are the district
024average for that grade level currently all of our class sizes are within the ratios but it's important to note that our class size size ratios do fall on the higher side so just for reference our ratios are 20 to 22 students in kindergarten 28 to 30 for first through third grade and 33 to 34 in fourth through sixth grade this slide illustrates the average class size for grades seven and eight um the average from 2020 and the average from 2021 is pretty similar this next slide is the average class sizes for grades 9 through 10 or 12 i'm sorry again the average from 2020 to 2021 is pretty similar this slide here typically shows roosevelt class size um compared to metro exu but their data is always a year behind and they did not do
025a survey last year this is due to the differences that so many districts had due to the pandemic and the variations in class size between in-person learning and distance learning that said we should have more data to compare this to next year the same applies to middle school and the same applies to high school as well so at this point i'll turn it over to jake to talk more about grammar demographics but before i do i'd like to take a moment to thank someone who worked hard behind the scenes to make this report possible gathering data and the information for the enrollment and demographics report is not an easy lift so i'd like to thank michelle tessum for her time on some of the data collections yes i think we can clap for that as
026well as her diligence and organization so thank you michelle for all you did to help make this report possible this evening all right and as melissa said we will transition into our demographic report and this section offers a glimpse of who our students are in our roseville area schools the demographic report is broken into three sections which are race and ethnicity english learners and educational benefits participation which is which was formerly referred to as free and reduced price meals um delon smith will be taking the first section christina robertson the second section on el and i'll be taking the last section so i'll pass it over to oh actually not yet i have one more slide before i do that so just a reminder that most of our information that we present in the demographic
027report comes from data in the minnesota automated reporting student system or mars however we do have to pull some of the data from our compensatory revenue report and some from the minnesota department of education report cards so now i will pass it off to delon smith our director of equity and innovation all right thank you jake um as jake explained i'll be taking us through the ethnicity section so this slide gives us our our breakdown by ethnicity um in the different percentages of each race that we have in our district um one thing i'll point out about this is that 60 of our student population are indigenous or students of color uh currently in in our district the next slide gives us our enrollment by ethnicity over time you can see from 2007 2008 to
0282020 122. um [Music] some of the things i'll point out in here are that that decline that melissa talked about as you see with our white students you see that happening but you'll also notice that every other uh race that we have has kind of been steady over the last three years as far as enrollment goes and um you'll also see from 17 18 to 18 19. there was a dip in uh the rate of the other races actually all of the races that i reported there and that had to do with a big chunk of that had to do with the new category of multi-racial which drew from all other categories next slide now this is our 20-year picture of our enrolling bioethnicity a couple of things i'll point out about that is that
029back in 2011 and 2012 which is that middle yellow line that you see there that about 43 of our students were indigenous or students of color and now if you drop to that bottom yellow line you'll see that in this current school year we're now at 60 percent of our students of color and indigenous students so about about a 17 increase over the last 10 years then you'll also actually know let's go to the next slide so on this slide we have our ethnicity by building and what i'll point out about that is if we look at like our top five um buildings as far as indigenous and students of color you're going to see that that's faz harambe edgerton central park and little canada in that order um for that and then our highest
030population of students of color are um if you look at that chart are our asian and our black students both at about 18 percent next slide all right so here's a look at our students of color by building that we currently have okay yeah that's a good one all right so it's just a little different than what i'm looking at but we'll roll with it okay so if you if you look at this we've increased our student of color enrollment to our bypass student by five percent in the district over the last five years um and every school for the most part has increased during that time as far as the number of students of color we actually if you look at that central park had a slight decrease in those numbers over that last
031five years and the schools that saw the the most increase over the last five years would be parkview with a ten percent increase as you see there edw seven percent falcon heights and fawzi at about six and located in edgerton at about five percent increase in their bypoc student population the next slide um this compares roseville to the surrounding districts um and as you see here if you look at the yellow line that's us and that that puts us at about the third highest not about but at the third highest uh as far as population of indigenous and students of color behind saint paul north st paul maplewood oakdale all right and so i will pass it on to christina yeah hi okay so english learners you can just the english learner program has been
032in roseville for many many years and uh i'm going to tell you a little bit about our enrollment now there we go so the el enrollment uh this is by school and it is holding steady overall overall at the district level we're at 15 which is um what we've been at for almost i think the last five years and the numbers have not changed a lot at each of the school buildings they've pretty much stayed the same and in fact in since august 15th we've had approximately 115 new students enroll that qualified for the english learner program so we are continuing to see incoming students the district trend you can see here that um we've kind of stayed steady between you know 13 to 17 percent but really about 15 percent right now we have
033uh 1 identified english learner students at this time and i expect that we will be getting more throughout the year there is conversation about afghan refugee families coming to the area and a lot of that depends on housing but i have let people know that our program is very ready and able to support any students who come in as refugees or newcomers we have fewer level one and two students than we have had in the past and i attribute that to the immigration kind of changes and also the pandemic here's just another view of the el school trend and um actually i think that let's see here central park has gone down a little bit and i think that might be partly due to the immigration situation a lot of our newcomer families tended to
034be in that attendance area it could also be related to housing concerns but i i talked to an el teacher today and eight new students are enrolling this week that are home language other than english so they probably will qualify for for services so we continue to get them through the year so this is just a chart that shows uh of all of the 7545 el students in our district we have 81 languages other than english spoken at home so about 2467 students so i want to make it clear that we're talking about students who may not be in el services but have a home language other than english so when i think of this population i think of students who may be very proficient in more than one language and very proficient in english
035but their parents may not have had that same opportunity so it's it's about 36 to 37 percent of our families have a home language other than english so when i think about the data that dilon presented about 60 percent indigenous and students of color a lot of those also have a home language other than english and then out of that subset there's 1119 yale students who actually qualify for language services and then top 10 languages that are spoken other than english at home the biggest one is spanish and that continues to grow much more quickly than the other languages among somali nepali saga and karen are actually the same those two could go together so those are kind of our top five and then within our english learner programming the students home languages are spanish
036among somali karen and nepali really so those are those are languages we've been really actively connecting with families uh during the pandemic finding different ways to inform them in their home languages especially if they have not had the opportunity to learn to read and write in their own native language our culture liaison team is fabulous and does a lot of outreach through facebook cultural pages and things like that and then the last page is just the home languages spoken and you can see over time kind of how they've changed but you can see that the spanish is the one that is the highest continuing cross and continues to increase uh the other ones are probably a little bit more dependent on what does it mean with the language it's noted in red excuse me the
037language is in red what does that mean oh those are new languages oh i see it's there if i learn to read better i can do a better job thank you very much that's okay i didn't i didn't actually look at that just this year okay yeah yeah so we do get um we get a lot of new languages and we have a very good interpreter service that connects us in just about any language you'd want so got it yeah and that's the el so hand it off thank you i will take it from there so the final part of our report tonight is on educational benefits participation this is also known as students who qualify for free or reduced-priced meals however we want to acknowledge that it transfers into more areas than just meals
038it provides students with support for transportation activities athletics and offer fees that may be very or help with the fees that may be barriers to students participation in some of our educational programs the benefits also help to provide a more equal playing field for all students and their families so our first slide is the overall percentage of students who qualify for educational benefits notable in this slide is that we can say a large upward we saw a large upward trend between 2009 and 2019 and this occurred from the great recession that hit our community and communities across the nation very hard its impacts have lasted quite some time and we do see some recovery in the most recent years but have yet to see the impact that the kova 19 pandemic may have on our
039community in the roseville area schools so this slide next one shows our percentage of students by building that qualify for educational benefits it provides a three-year trend and to note on this slide is the downward trend in most of our schools except for rams in parkview we hope that this is a positive trend for our district and not because we have less families applying for benefits we have really made an effort in this year in our schools to have every family complete an application as this has a significant impact on our school funding and program for students so this slide shows our longer longitudinal trend for each of our schools over the over the last few years and to note you can see our district has a steady climb and incline over the pa over
040these years from 2007 all the way up to 21 22. from 33 up to 42 percent so that steady increase over time one thing to note that i um thought was interesting was really part for you almost tripling over that same time span and that is the end of our presentation and we are available for questions and comments from the school board thank you if i may just add thank you all for the presentation i'd like to point out that it's now under the category of educational benefits and you had reference formally called previously free and reduced price launch and know that this year the federal government is paying lunch and snacks and breakfast for all students regardless of qualifications and we can make an assumption that our numbers actually are higher because the family
041does need to apply for educational benefits so we work hard to identify and complete those applications because again compensatory revenue flows through those applications thank you and the the payment of that for every every student is really the pandemic obviously have any has any of us heard whether or not the federal government is going to continue that practice thank you thank you superintendent for the clarification thank you all with that i'll open it up to my board colleagues for questions or comments todd thanks um thanks again for the report you know when students or families leave the district does so so kind of an enrollment question does central enrollment are they keeping track of data of as to why students you know are leaving i understand why we had um some students leave during the
042pandemic but for other reasons like um charter schools they want to be home schooled just the central enrollment keep track of some of that i'm curious or like like what's the process when family um of fact our enrollment looked much higher um going even into late august and we saw that change especially again at the elementary school coming into those early days leading up to the school year and early into the school year um thank you thank you sherry sherry's broad responsibilities include overseeing central enrollment in roseville schools i'd also like to note that last year we ran an initiative get our students back and so we did lots of qualitative research around why families were leaving and there there was to the the narrative that was described but i think this is a nod
043to do that again now following first trimester and especially as we continue to open up our schools with elementary vaccinations around the corner yeah i'll add on to that too jenny that was a strategic outreach and and the intent of the design behind it was that each student or family that that left um during the pandemic that they received a call from someone at the school and it was meant to be an act of care and also a connection in the sense of is there anything that we can do are any barriers that we could remove or any way that we could assist you in returning to the rosewood area schools so and if nothing else came of it it was at least a positive interaction between our schools our staff and community members thank
044you thanks jake other questions i i have a question hi thank you for the report um about the el numbers um just just to remind us kind of like somebody doesn't become an el forever right so so yeah say more about that in terms of how it's counted and then when it's not counted sure so um when we talked about like the complications in like getting our numbers one thing with english learners is that they're always changing because we're getting new students in and um just because somebody comes with a home language other than english doesn't mean they automatically go into the el program so we have a whole series of steps which every family that comes to enroll their child in the school district must denote if they have a home language other than
045english so you know every single parent fills that out once a home language other than english is identified there is a series of steps to evaluate language need and then if a child qualifies for the el services then they are entered into service and they get that that status in their system and they get the services if they um have a a really successful supportive system and and and do very well they're most likely to exit out of the el program according to the state criteria uh within five or six years probably so we have a very good exit rate from our el program so that is one of the things about when we look at data for our el students is that um the the pool is always changing yeah right it's a good
046thing that they're they're they're they're growing and leaving the pool but um whenever we look at their academic success or what's happening um it's it's students who are um being evaluated in a language they are still learning um and but we do see good success with students who exit the program and that sort of thing too so thank you for the clarification because you know because you talk about how you still were receiving students and yet the numbers are the same right so i wanted to kind of reconcile that and that's exactly the explanation i needed so thank you thank you other questions comments looks like we're good to go thank you very much thank you so much presentation thank you next up another report non-action items will be sherry thompson our director of business
047services with the monthly financial report this evening welcome sherry and that was your official time to share it that was my official time and thankfully i grew up in a family of six and i was the youngest so i don't need a mic well but i will take advantage of it yeah please do i think i'm sure the viewers at home will appreciate that so um again uh thank you um we just wanted to give an update this month obviously we do a finance update every month the board and administration have been preparing for the operating levy for over a year much work has gone into that dr lake an assistant superintendent uh melissa sonic and i have presented all kinds all kinds of places uh several places some things have been on our website
048so we thought we'd just take this opportunity to share it i don't believe we've actually shared it at a board meeting uh so just kind of a summary of where things are at so um for our presentation first of all research shows that the quality of our schools impacts the quality of our community it's our job as district leaders to do all we can to ensure our students get the kind of education they deserve and our community expects while we do our best to live within our means sometimes we need additional support from our community after more than a year of planning and review the board took action in june or july to unanimously approve placing two school funding questions on the ballot for november 2nd so we want to share with the community so
049that they can understand these requests and make an informed decision come next week so first a reminder of who we are as a school district we have a long and proud history of providing strong educational programs a talented caring staff and a shared vision of excellence we are also very fortunate to have decades of generous and reliable financial support from the community which has enabled us to meet the educational needs of our students and their families we work hard to be good stewards of our taxpayer dollars and to be financially transparent and credible and now um the best voice is the ball um we have a video with some of our students in in a summary of some of our funding facts [Applause] in roseville area schools we have a long and proud history of
050providing strong educational programs a talented caring staff and a shared vision of excellence our parents give us high marks on the return on their investment in our schools to maintain the education our community expects and our students deserve our school board unanimously approved placing two school funding requests on the november 2nd ballot question 1 would renew our existing operating levy before it expires with no tax increase to residents this renewal would lessen but not eliminate major cuts in the future and it would not allow us to address key areas identified by our community that impact our students after a year of planning and review the school board determined that renewing the levy alone was not enough question 2 would increase our levy for the first time in 15 years with a net tax increase of
05122 dollars per month for the average homeowner the additional revenue would fund key areas such as lowering class sizes investing in student mental health maintaining academic programs expanding career pathways to better prepare students for various careers after graduation and helping maintain our overall financial stability operating levies are an important source of local revenue for schools the vast majority of minnesota school districts have voter approved levies to help pay for important school operating costs including academic programs classroom materials and staff but our current levy is among the lowest of comparable and neighboring school districts why are these requests coming to voters now there are multiple reasons state funding has not kept pace with inflation for nearly 20 years critical special education programs cost us nearly 10 million dollars more each year than we receive from the
052state and federal governments and we've already cut more than eight million dollars from our budget in the past eight years if these levy requests fail there would be significant cuts across the district staff would be cut at all levels academic and support programs would be cut and fees would increase the district's financial health would also take a big hit leaving it exposed in case of any emergency our job is to provide the best education possible to prepare our students for life after high school because we believe our students are vital to our community and our collective future please learn all you can about these important votes and be sure to vote on or before november 2nd so i would also just like to reiterate a couple of facts that were shared in here the fact
053that we do have an annual 4 million dollar a year gap just in this year alone between the inflationary inflationary costs and the funding that we have that we received from the state we had a generous increase in in june however it does not bring us up to speed the gap remains actually it's widened um over the last 10 years also our special ed programs they're required and they're a vital part of our student programming it costs the district nearly 10 million dollars more each year than we receive in reimbursement so that adds to the pressure on our budget due to the pandemic the federal government has provided additional funds to our schools which for which we are grateful however as a group they are one-time funds they are not sustainable and they are focused
054on pandemic relief so they will not help with our long-term budget sustainability it's important to understand how schools are funded in minnesota our revenue comes from three main sources the largest portion is from the state the second largest comes from local community in the form of property taxes and most of the remainder is from the federal government state law allows other local governments such as cities and counties to increase their levies without going to the voters for approval school district levies are either set by the state or they must be voter approved the board does not have that authority on its own so in minnesota as with most states school districts have the ability to ask voters to support increased local funding the vast majority as was stated in the video of school districts in
055minnesota have voter approved levees the last time we asked our community to increase our operating levy was 15 years ago so that's what's resulted in some of the budget cuts over times are increased class sizes because we have not increased that so we really have done our best to live within our means and we only go to voters when necessary many people aren't aware there is a legal distinction between different pots of money that the schools receive in particular the difference between levies and bonds we had a bond request back in 2017 144 million dollars for construction on our remodeling our facilities and the community supported that request and we are so grateful for that it enabled us to make building improvements uh all across the district and i'm pleased to report that our bond
056projects were not only on time they were were within budget but bond funds can only be spent on construction for building related expenses operating levees are for learning so that helps the support the levy helps to support classroom instruction teachers and other school operating costs so a couple of uh more points here our current levy our current voter approved levy uh is a critical source of funding it's eight million dollars annually uh that will expire on june 30th of 2022 the end of this school year if it's not approved on november 2nd we also know that if we only renew the levy but don't get more revenue we will continue the cycle of cuts and our class sizes will continue to increase we are on the larger size of our neighboring districts as far as
057class sizes go so based on um everything i that i just shared with you obviously the board did take action this summer unanimously approved two ballot questions question one would increase our existing levy in question two would increase that so question one is renewal question two is an increase question two is contingent on question one which means question one must pass before question two can be approved it's important to note that the levy amount per student which is actually listed on the ballot is not the amount each homeowner homeowner would be taxed that's spread across the entire tax base the tax the amount listed on the ballot is the amount per student the increase and that's 905 dollars per student the impact of that 905 dollar increase is a net monthly cost or impact of
058about on a median value home in our district which is about 281 thousand dollars so question one if it passes or fails uh it's important to understand the consequences of success or failure of both questions as shown here passage of question one would help lessen major cuts but we would not be able to address any of our critical needs and in fact the ongoing cuts cycle of cuts would still be needed if question one fails we would take significant cuts in the 2223 school year and it would take quite a hit on our financial stability as well question two um question two if it passes uh if question two also passes we would have funds available to address some critical needs such as our class sizes our various student supports and academic programs these are
059areas our community has identified in surveys done earlier this year and what we're hearing from our our families it would also strengthen our financial stability question two if it fails this slide outlines what will take place if question two fails and no additional revenue is provided there would be staff and program cuts in a range of areas we would have to increase fees and our financial health would suffer as we would continue to make budget cuts so in summary we have two ballot requests one to renew the existing levy and the second to increase that levy question two again is contingent on question one so can only pass if voters first approve question one if both questions are approved we would be able to support and enhance students classroom experiences and provide more financial stability
060for our school district again the items listed here were all identified as priorities by our community and if either both requests fail we will have continued cuts and not be able to address these priorities this would not go away we would be back at this um immediate uh immediately following um so we'll open it up for questions here is the web our website www dot org slash levy2021 there's more information out on that website and again this is on the ballot for november 2nd thank you sherry superintendent like anything to add or clarify thank you sure sharing your expertise what's the impact of open enrollment students in our district the percentage in the additional revenue that flows with those students so um our open enrollment is about about 24 of our total enrollment um so
061uh that is probably about um two point uh it's actually about uh 25 uh 25 million dollars when we look at that so that really offers a lot um a lot of our programs again it's it's 25 so um it's it's a large number it doesn't limit our programs um our facilities are what limits our class sizes right our capacity our physical capacity and our in our facilities is what limits it the additional revenue of students um coming in actually provides a more benefit to um to our fa or to our existing students because we we benefit from the from the additional revenue so we're able to offer for instance at the high school it allows us to offer more class offerings so it is something that is beneficial and that's because in case people
062don't realize that that's what some term backpack money right like that's the yeah that's what i always have referred to because it's the backpack it follows those students with them when they open and roll into our district we receive the same per funding on a non-resident student per pupil funding as we do a resident student we don't receive less we don't receive more got it thank you any other questions kitty could i add a clarification there if i understand correctly open enrollment we only accept students if there are spaces in the classes available so what it allows us to do is then fully fund that that that building to be able to provide all the resources um and uh programs that we'd like to be able to offer in that program so we don't have
063to accept the students if we don't have space that is correct that is that is correct and that's typically um there are rules around that as a matter of fact that the state has as far as limiting open enrollment and it needs to be exactly based on that as not having space thank you any other questions or yeah about oprah yeah thank you about open enrollment i was just wondering have we done any or do we know who who what is the demographics of those who are coming into roseville is there a difference or they integrate pretty well with our own uh student population just just curious right kind of like just curious who they are so i could report i mean we have the data by district i don't know off the top of
064my head um but currently we have looking at our resident students we have a combined total of about twelve hundred students um that opt out of our program out of our district that opt for either a another um school district through open enrollment they may go to another district or they may go to a charter school again it's about 1200 total we bring in over 1700 students through open enrollment that choose roseville and they come from uh at travel different uh miles also i mean of course we're contiguous with saint paul and minneapolis but we're not limited to saint paul and minneapolis they come from all over the metro i'll add in terms of student demographic of open enrollment this spring we ran that report and it matches our residence students thank you same demographic
065yeah thank you kitty i just like to wake one additional comment to what we've got up here and that is uh today we do have uh in-person voting it's open at the ramsey county public library so anybody can vote in the next week at the library or of course on tuesday in their regular polling place right because at the library they have ballots for every precinct no matter where you live right that is the promote of the roseville library even if that's not your normal polling place and i can attest that it's very quick they have quite a few people set up there and voting election judges and so it's a fairly efficient process thank you kitty other questions curtis uh lots of questions and more of a statement i guess uh just uh thank
066you for your your explanation about how our district is funded um as a school board member we you know we have that information and and you've explained this to us a number of times but it's it's easy to forget that that everyone understands that um and frankly i think you did a really good job of uh you know just laying out where our funding comes from so so thank you for doing that thank you thanks other questions or comments yeah maybe i could ask the final one you know because i asked it is that what was the tax uh the property tax implication from the last ask as compared to this ask so back in 2017 when we passed uh when the board passed the 144 million bond referendum and at the same time adopted
067the long-term facility maintenance program that invests about 12 million dollars a year for deferred maintenance at that time the monthly impact was about 39 a month uh and at that time the median value home was about 250 000 so now it's like 281 000 but okay um yes that was the net impact was about 39 a month thank you you're welcome anything else sherry once again thank you very much for your diligence and your your detailed information for us tonight thank you thanks with that we'll move into our action items and i believe we only have one it's the second reading and potential approval of our amendments to our policy 209 with our operating procedures so i know that as part of the board packet we got the red lines i don't know if you
068want it we'll prepare to share it so i don't know if we if anybody has a question or we need to go through this if if there are no further edits or comments and they're covered then you know i could just entertain a motion in a second to approve i move approval of the policy 209 board operating procedures and meeting process as updated thank you second thank you any discussion or questions hearing none all in favor please say aye aye opposed it passes thank you next item is the study session report and i must admit i've i've forgotten who's going to be sharing that with us this evening curtis that would be me thank you yes we we had a uh a record length um study session um in that it was really quite short
069um so uh the director of student achievement uh jake fonda um presented to us a new course um uh ap advanced placement spanish language um and culture um this is the idea was that this was going to replace an existing uh course that uh we could no longer offer so um really that's about it so thank you yes it was a single topic study session single topic it was it all made sense so you know thanks jake thank you uh with that we'll move into our our board reports if any of us have things that they'd like to share and you want to jump in first if you have anything todd good kitty go ahead um i think just about everybody was at the local elected officials meeting last week that is always a wonderful
070opportunity we get to hear what other divisions of government are doing that are relevant to what we're doing as and they get to hear what we're doing so it's a marvelous exchange of information was really valuable as always we got to get through a betutecha is where we held the mail meeting and had a tour afterwards and that is just such an impressive facility it's always a joy to get another opportunity to see it i would like to thank jamie becker finn and curtis johnson for organizing a lovely vigil which we as community members could attend last monday night for the passing of our beloved principal um brian colend that was a lovely event to allow the community to express feelings and stop the healing process the roadmap to return committee which is our district-wide
071coveted committee that has various staff board members parents others unfortunately some of the parents are actually medical doctors so we have a wonderful perspective there as well we had a meeting this week we're meeting roughly every two weeks now not every week like last year because things aren't developing they're changing quite as as quickly but it was very encouraging to hear that the numbers in the county are going slightly downward and also in the district although the district or the zip codes of the district which is how it's reported are still somewhat higher than the county overall i got an opportunity to meet with my student i'm an avid mentor this year i've never been an avid mentor before so it's quite a treat and in terms of meeting we're going to be meeting weekly
072and that connection and getting over to the middle school on a regular basis is going to be a real treat for me that's it thank you thank you rose or curtis anything from you okay sure um let's see okay we'll start with um had an opportunity to um the attend our first american indian parent group meeting of the year that was awesome um along with delon smith gavila gabriella who's our american indian coordinator lupe is our american indian cultural liaison and it was really well attended i was just so happy and it was a great opportunity to just reconnect with everyone in person after you know two years so i'm looking forward to more of those meetings and finding ways that we can help our american indian students see kitty um i already addressed the
073local elected officials meeting always a pleasure um you know i'll just take the opportunity to thank dr lake for continuing those it really helps to understand what everyone else is doing and and how we can work together so you know love those um got to attend and and volunteer the fire bears hosted their first in-person minnesota invitational in two years so if you don't know who the firefighters are the fibers are roseville area high school's first robotics league and they're really very good they're really talented and they are led by a very passionate teacher so um just an insane amount of fun and so first time i actually got to volunteer for for about uh was supposed to be two hours and i kind of got into closer to four but um just just just
074just insane amount of fun watching roblox trying to shoot basketballs into a really tiny hole so um and then uh got to attend a couple football games in particular senior night at uh rosevary high school um the football team has had their last game um of the year and so um they they have at least one more game this week um so um they they have fought a hard all year and so my hat's off to them um uh that leads me to um the last certainly not least um attended the vigil for for brian colen and i'd like to to personally thank the community team that helped home that was just invaluable and and helping me put this thing together in a very short period of time um i'd also like to take the
075opportunity to to thank some of our volunteers from roseville area school foundation some of our speakers from survival resources nami northeast youth and family services and then lexington floral and boutique for the flowers so and i think that's all i have thank you rose anything to share um i think i will um echo how moving that virtue was so thank you so much it was really nice to see so many people out um and just sea of people i see of people out there and so really honoring a life that impacted so many in our community so thank you thank you so much for organizing that uh i would say um i also for the first time today met my avid mentee because last year was all like phone calls that first time today i
076met him and so i'm hoping to also use the raider time he's in high school and i have to say he's loving the raider time because it gives him a lot of choices and we are trying to coordinate kind of when i can go see him more so it's a great program um just it's so great to see him blossom because the pandemic was really hard on him he is one of those students where distant learning just did not work for him and now in person he sounds different he just it's just a different person so there is something about the in-person learning that works for many of our students so and i also attended um it was a very interesting workshop by minnesota school board association on evaluation of superintendents and it was really
077interesting because it's to really think about you know how do we do that in a way that is about growth it's about collaboration and making sure that we are not kind of saying that um you know asking the superintendent especially during the pandemic to meet every of the goals but be realistic so i thought that was a very good discussion about that and really take it to heart about the role of our as a board right to work with our superintendent and we have a great one here to think about what does that mean to evaluate our superintendent uh ultimately it's about our students in our community so yeah that was very interesting so that's why thank you i don't really have anything to add again i echo the sentiments around the vigil for brian
078colen maybe one thing avid for those who don't know avid stands for achievement via individual determination i believe and it's a program that is really in line for those who don't know with our equity vision in particular but it's really geared towards helping kids whose parents themselves don't have a history of college attendance so it's for kids who may be the first in their generation to to qualifying to attend for college and so uh it's not just about learning it's about all that so i really applaud both of you for serving as mentors to avid students um because it is a commitment and is a uh you know something very very important that you do there doing that so thank you with that i think we'll move to our superintendent's report superintendent blake thank you
079chair i'd like to start this evening's report by congratulating this year's roseville area schools raider athletics hall of fame inductees i'm choosing to highlight this group as they are so much more than past athletes who have climbed to the top of their respective sports the following individuals represent prestigious student athletes first class coaches community members and active parents currently in our district i'd also like to thank this group for continuing to be incredible role models in and around roseville area schools please join me in congratulating amy beggin winnie mark divine marty cerdich bo smith and mark soda beer quite a class this year next i'd like to once again thank our community for voting to pass our school bond referendum in 2007 these monies were allowed us to make improve allowed for us to improve
080our existing facilities and those improvements were felt at sites across the district as we've previously shared bonds are for buildings and levees are for learning come november 2nd we are seeking a critical renewal and increase to our existing levy we're asking our community to come together in support of this referendum in order to lower k-12 class size provide additional mental health supports and expand career and college readiness programs our students and families deserve the very best experience that roseville area schools can provide finally as we continue our daily commitment in returning to better this school year as superintendent i welcome all community feedback in regard to all programming and services that our district offers we will only meet our excellence in equity and all we do vision through significant and collaborative relationship with our community
081and parents please don't hesitate to contact me at all times with all of your feedback thank you and as kitty said don't forget to vote on or before november 2nd thank you thank you jenny without having concluded our business this evening we are adjourned thank you thank you [Music] uh [Music] you