001what's up [Music] simultaneously did that with me lifting the cover of my computer i'd like to call to order the september 12th school board work session meeting to orders tiffany could you please do the role daca peterson here aldridge here muhammad please join me in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united and to the states for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all item three on our agenda this evening is our saber pride portion of our meeting and tonight we are going to recognize the district employees years of service during the staff back to school week at the end of august before nearly 8 000 students walked through our doors and started with the saber online program our district was honored to
002recognize staff members that were voted as best of the best by their peers at the end of the 21-22 school year tonight as part of the saber prize section of the agenda we will take a moment to recognize the dedication of these incredibly valuable team members listed in the following video let's give a round of applause it's a lot of fun to see the names up there and the years of service to our districts especially the names of uh teachers that your child has had in the district and the difference you know the difference that they do make in children's lives so it's always fun to see to see that yeah it's not all the teachers they reflect everything every category in our staff some of them they work in the kitchen and they are
003wonderful and some of them they do the economic evaluation test for special education and i have a privilege working with them i know most of them so they are good people item four on our agenda this evening is the consideration of the agenda as presented take a motion to approve this presented any further discussion see none all those in favor say aye aye aye opposed motion carries item five on our agenda this evening is our public comment portion of our meeting and this is a time where members of the public can participate in the meeting without being part of the meeting agenda a member of the public may address the board on an agenda topic or on another topic we allocate a total of 15 minutes for public comment at this meeting each individual speaker
004may speak for up to two and a half minutes the sign up for public comment has been conducted online or in person prior to this evening's meeting we do have one person this evening that has signed up for public comment requests are not processed on an overall first-come first-served basis there's an element of first-come person representing a specific viewpoint on a particular topic more than six speakers sign up for public comment topics and speakers will be prioritized topics on this evening's agenda take priority for those topics not on the agenda speakers living within the school district take priority over those from outside the district when speakers plan to share different perspectives on the same topic an effort is made to balance the quantity of speakers on each side of the topic public comment is conducted
005in accordance with the school board policy 206 which can be found on the school district website persons who wish to address the school board during public comment must sign up prior to the start of the school board meeting and should provide their name and the subject to which comments pertain only those persons who have been recognized by the board chair will be allowed to speak during public comment or at any time during the school board meeting for that matter no personal attacks will be allowed on any district employee including school board members as a reminder school board members will typically only listen and not interact in any way with a public comment speaker the board may at its discretion ask questions for clarification of an issue tonight we have one public comment and that is
006susan mcpheeson could you come forward please welcome yes i'm susan mcpherson i live in chapel i am a 34-year teacher from prior lake i have one granddaughter who's still in prime liver and chocolatey schools i have three who have graduated from here the reason i'm here is i didn't know i couldn't ask any questions but i'm real concerned about crt i thought that was only craziness out east and in california and then i found out there was a prior leg survey for fifth graders what sex do you identify with and how often do you have sex and this is for 10 and 11 year olds and i think back to the kids that i had at 11 10 years old who would probably say am i supposed to be having sex what is this i've
007looked online for different things and of course you don't know what online is true and what isn't true but you've seen where parents have come to school board meetings and they read out of books that their kids were assigned and the school board stops them because they don't want to hear about anal sex and oral sex and masturbation and all these things that are approved and required reading for kids and i i just um i'm just appalled at some of the stuff that's going on and i just can't believe that chuck if he's gonna do that i don't know what's required or forced of you and so i don't know where to find out the information what you do but this nice lady said that i can go on and find that school curriculum but
008they they do things like going i saw a drag queen teaching kindergarten i i read where a teacher refused to use different names for a girl and she just used her legal name she was suspended for three days but then she was able to sue the school board or the school district and you see things like this all the time you talk about or they go into preschool and ask them if they want to be a girl or a boy and my grandson wanted to be a clown when he graduated from sunpath in kindergarten now he's enrolled in mechanical engineering he did not want to be a crowd when he grew up and so all of those things are real concerns and the other night at my bible study i was talking to the other
009women and i said please pray for me i'm going to the school board i don't know what's going to happen but they said well what is crt so there's a lot of people that don't even know what it is and so i i will go home and i will try to research and find out the curriculum that my granddaughter is going to be using and i would like to see if there's any place i can find out what your crt inclusion is or what you've what jacoby is doing with that thank you thank you for coming tonight we appreciate it item six on our agenda this evening is our consent agenda we've got a retirement some resignations as well as some hires in different areas throughout our school district make the motion to approve second
010we have a motion by broking in a second by aldrich any further discussion on the consent item seven on the agenda is an informational presentation on a solar project and i will turn that over to dr redmond for the presentation thank you very much this is meant to be a very brief update this is a topic that we've kind of talked about a little bit over i don't know the last four or five months and we've kind of uh we've zigged and we've zagged and now we're on what i think is a really really uh positive course moving ahead we you know we were approached and we were moving down the path with what i referred to as the previous plan and that you know was working with a private entity to plan coordinate and
011finance the project the estimated cost for executing the plan that way uh was 174 640 those costs would be what event would have been because it's our old plan we're not going that route uh would have been that we receive a 100 and two thousand dollar state grant per school uh that we're doing this and we're looking at you know two schools right now uh and then the school district would pay for it with electric bill savings you know over 20 years with the company that we had been engaged in conversations with you know they did all the financing for the project that's how that's how you would pay that off over time during some of that learning we reached out to shock p public utilities greg brent and others over there who uh you
012know said hey we'd be happy to answer all your questions we have now had i bet i've been in their building ten times in the last five months and it's been great uh because what we've done is uh you know we've been working with them uh and now we're working with a local contractor and uh we now have a different type of a plan and the current plan would have a cost of approximately 120 000 we would pay for that still get to use the one and this is per school and right now we've been accepted for two of these grants so two schools um and you know a lot more on this to come on september 26 but at each school the estimated cost would be 120 000 102 000 of that would be
013paid for by the state grant shakopee public utilities has agreed to provide an additional two to four thousand dollar grant uh so we'd be looking at the district paying that difference you know kind of worst case here sixteen thousand dollars you know out of pocket and then obviously uh over you know a much shorter time period we would be recouping uh the benefit of this system this system is expected to last you know for 30 years but even if you do a very conservative calculation the second model uh it kind of looks like the the repay was is in within the first five or six years uh for sure uh and so it's a benefit and instead of you know we would actually uh have a cost savings in terms of the money that we're
014spending uh on electricity and these are you know they're 40 kilowatt systems so they're you know pretty modest in size but very very appreciative of number one what i've learned i know a heck of a lot more about shock me public utilities and how different utility systems work and uh the system and they've they've just been great to work with in terms of cost calculations and how uh you know how they do it as compared to you know a lot of school districts are in excel territory um you know and they've got kind of different sort of different things happening there different kind of costing and so the final slide i think just says uh you know the expectation uh we've got some uh details to work out we're still you know finishing up kind
015of that changeover of grant but i'm now very excited with this this is you know it's turned into something i think is a real nice positive for the community and boy we've you know rekindled our relationship with shocking public utilities they're getting involved a little bit over at the environmental learning center at the high school as well too and so be happy to answer any quick questions but just know that a lot more information right now where the goal is to get that on the the september 26 board agenda and seek approval just for clarification i think the answer is yes but this is the system's the same size yeah previous plan in the current time yeah yep um no i didn't know little difference uh working with a local contractor who does a lot
016of our electrical work too we just reached out and said all right what you know how do we do this is this something you do and the answer was yes and how would that look and what's the costing like and so it's even you know but it is the system's 40 kilowatts you know the life expectancy all that is identical and it's nice to work with a local contractor also just a couple of things um one the schools that were selected for this project recently had their roofs replaced and so there's a lot of positivity that those roasts will not have to be repaired at any time during the life of that system i know we talked initially about that that was extremely important because those arrays off and put them back on again so
017making sure that that was the case and then absolutely the other thing is just to emphasize the community partnership this is just another example of the strong partnerships that we have with different businesses in our community and like you said rekindling that relationship with shakopee public utilities for this as well as the environmental center i think just speaks volume to the working relationship that we have with our community on things like this so keeping it local as joe said local contractor um there's just a lot of goodness in keeping things right here in our own community well both entities shakby public schools shock p utilities we serve the same community so there's there's a lot of positives so yeah and your first part yeah the two roofs that had been were sweeney and east because
018they had most recent roof repairs which again you alluded to yeah the best time to put something on the roof and again these are solar that sit on the roof i believe it's a 12 degree angle so you're not you're not cutting you know intrusions or extrusions depending which way you're looking at going into the rope or out of the rope into that roof and yet they're they're a heck of a lot easier if you do need to move them to do some repairs but there's still a cost in doing that so really trying to be cognizant of that timing uh it appears there'll be additional grant opportunities in the years that follow similar to what we're looking at now and so the thought would be that we could do this you know multiple times
019on other buildings but trying to get this first one you know everything in order and again we you know we keep you know you're trying to bring things to the board and do whatever and we continue to do that due diligence and we've got people in our organization asking questions and i think that other big part is when you've got people with expertise in the community like shakopee public utilities and you bring this to them we've developed that level of trust where they're like hey that doesn't yeah that cost that can you know that kind of cost calculation that seems a little too aggressive to us let us run some numbers we'll get back to you and so they've been just just terrific to work with um i think you guys did okay um and
020this is the best time uh to be replaced on all the houses some of the houses in my neighborhood they are going to the solar system and that is the best way to save energy and i remember you know in the islamic center we had an old like this one above and then we were getting like 700 dollars for just utility and then and then i talked to the uh public utility and then they said you know you need to change that's why and then we changed different light because the building was built in 1951 when we built where we changed and guess what now we have like 250 bills every month so we saved a lot of money thank you for what you guys did thank you any other questions so is it 120
021000 apart from the cost paid or is that like a like after subtraction the total cost is 120 000 so we use 102 from the grant and let's say 2000 from shakopee public utilities that would leave a remainder for us to pay of 16 000. was that the question thank you for asking that it shouldn't take too long no the five six years is a conservative estimate now we'll we'll have that more dialed in on the 26th great yeah i was here and you've heard of the 40 kilowatt system expected if i trust the experts uh you know understand how to right-size these things but just also looking at an opportunity to expand the program should additional variants be available is that maximizing the efficiency of people say a 40 watt system a system versus
022a 60 i again outside of my relative expertise but i have an answer though the answer is no it's not but it's the maximum allowable under this particular graph program okay and it's a 40 kilowatt grand program which yeah that's the reality and again we don't create that grant program you know people can have different opinions on it but if we can take and you know we can access that it's going to go to some school district in the state uh you know i'd prefer if it's going to save you know save us money in terms of our operations over the next 20 30 years even if it's you know a few thousand dollars a year there's really no risk in doing that in this in this the way it's now set up that uh
023we'll take advantage of it but no that you know when you look on the high school roof and there might be a way to do two there because we've got two different main connections but when you lay that grid out on a big roof like that it looks pretty small but that's that's all that's the the largest with this grant and there's some things which we're already doing you know within the curriculum that we want to make sure to continue where they're going to talk about generation and now you actually have you know solar panels on a roof and you can talk about how it works and you know and then even you know i know even when i was a high school teacher i think you might even get into the you know the
024economics short term long term you know there's some ways to do some of those calculations and you know how does that work it speaks like maximizing the benefit of the partnerships eight on the agenda is an action item and this is just a routine uh resolution for the iowa yeah that iowa that individual with authority and you might go did we do this at the organization in january and the answer is yes um the minnesota department of education has continued to kind of refine what what's expected in the process it used to be hey your your your authorization is up send us your board minutes send us you know the copy of the resolution at the board meeting but we did that in january uh between january and now they have added this form which
025needs to be signed by the the uh the board clerk and so we're really passing this again we did it in january to do it again and get it signed and uh and then i believe my year of authority ends like in two days so we gotta get that sent to the parliament tomorrow but it's really just operating our you know that uh what we call it ed i am uh and it's really all the the permissions within the minnesota department of education for all the different folks and i actually allison johnson in our learning teaching and equity department she is the iowa proxy and does a lot of the actual you know making sure we've got the right people with the right access to the right you know parts of the minnesota department of
026that computer system she does a great job and there's a few things that i need to do and so that's kind of the person with that that authority and i would recommend approval how to make a motion to approve we have a motion by brophy i'm doing quarterly user reviews as a system steward for elevated access so i actually got a good chuckle out of this all right see no further questions tiffany could you please do the role about those tom zick brophy yes smith yes peterson yes aldridge yes muhammad yes thank you item nine on the agenda is a district update from dr weather thank you again and jump into the district update um you just really like this photo was uh that was day one of the school year sun rising in the
027east at east middle school if you follow me on twitter i happen to be kind of out west i was down on bond but the sun was setting in the west later that evening but uh what it what a just an outstanding first week of school if we go to that next slide you know this this was part of our theme for that welcome back for all staff we could go thursday uh shakopee school's proud you know we knew saber pride at the beginning a lot of great things it was it was fantastic to welcome people back we got another taste of honoring folks for the years of service we did a you know kind of another round of recognition for our award winners that we celebrated last may in all of our departments across
028all of our buildings in the district we have peers vote for you know like clerical person of the year and custodian of the year uh and we celebrated them in may not everybody was at that event so we you know appreciate the video that was created by tiffany and amber and we're able to show that video again and celebrate that group again and uh just just a lot uh just a lot to be proud of and the next slide i you know oh this is that this opens up i almost got to do this again but joe likes this but summarizing you know it's kind of funny the state of the district and you know the state of the district you know what it's pretty darn good and i should have done that a little
029slower it was nowhere near as good as it was at the welcome back but it's true you know i've uh this this is now the uh the fourth time that i've stood in front of that group uh honored to be the superintendent and uh you know but it's been an interesting four years and you know just kind of the the challenges that we had and the positive things that are happening in our district and then you talk about a you know worldwide pandemic and some of those disruptions and you talk about you know the year before this we're talking about you know an operating levy and uh and so there have been a lot of challenges so it it's really genuine and i really do think that that statement sums up uh you know where
030we're at as a district we certainly you know we've got lots of work to do uh there's things that we you know we want to be better tomorrow than we are today but uh you know what there's a lot of a lot of pretty darn good things happening across the district and so i think it's important to celebrate those too uh if ever a picture is worth a thousand words uh this is it i mean i just i love you know that just the different pieces of this and i get to i get to watch the you know this operation you know go go into you know full speed if you will and and it takes a lot of people you know we do some pretty amazing things every day if you just break it
031down to logistics you know we have 8 000 kids that make it from home to school and back every day they all eat you know our food service turns tables over faster than any restaurant i know and then if you talk about you know all the other the incredible learning experiences and opportunities and things that go on it is it is quite amazing to watch and really uh at the end you know if you break it all down it's about relationships it's about caring for people it's about helping each individual a student who walks through our doors to to to work to support them and do everything we can to help them uh become the best version of themselves to chase their dreams their individual greatest potential uh this is just exciting i know i
032shared this data but uh working with tiffany and amber they they make it look a heck of a lot better than uh at the last board meeting i think i have numbers on a grid and we shared this with the welcome back and i thought you know what i want to share this again because when we talk about that positive direction as a school board i think you guys deserve a ton of credit we've you know part of that vision was sustainability it was you know we recognize that we have not met that policy 714 fund balance target uh in a while reported at the the last board meeting we have every expectation we are going to end this school year at eight percent unassigned fund balance and then that will go up the following
033year uh and we will be you know inside that target of eight to twelve percent and uh i think that's worth sharing again and they created a much much better graphic than what i had done at the last board meeting so that is a great graphic isn't it that's awesome all those numbers yeah well they break the little boxes apart with the is and it's well done so they take my silly stuff and make it look really good uh activities report this is just something that we you know we said we had andy brown um and he'll be at uh chatting with us at our board development a little bit about student fees we haven't forgotten about that but want to get some you know want to begin that conversation but he's presented a number
034of times and you know there's some things in place this year that haven't been in place before and it's exactly it's another example of pests at operating levy there was money allocated to activities and some things laid out as expectations he has continued to work on those and so i asked him to share the information for this year and this is that activities report for this school year we have increased student offerings we got nine brand new fully funded activities we have 12 previously unfunded activities that are now funded in other words there were things that we weren't even providing a small stipend for the leader we weren't necessarily paying for some incidental expenses and in some cases they had some you know transportation costs just built into what they were doing that weren't being
035covered either uh there's still some money reserved for new middle school offerings those are to be determined there's still you know it's always a work in progress uh there's still a bit of money for student-run activities we continue to have students take the initiative we want to continue to grow that model of hey we think it'd be great to get together around this topic this you know activity whatever it is um and you know and andy's doing a really nice job with the budget uh that he had 117 000 set aside for this you know for the budget and there's 96 000 left keeping there's another 40 000 that's kind of for a major musical activity offering that uh continue to do that study so that's the overview if we go to the next ones
036i won't read everything on these but you know this is the detail uh for funding adjustments for existing offerings um you know there were some things where you just want we should be doing this better to serve students you know increase staffing that's second bullet for theater and robotics in the high school yearbook covering some of the baseline student fees for deca and hosa you know and they they would pay an activity fee and then an extra fee for the events kind of double fee payers so you're not in your head yeah i'm so happy about that yeah well just you know we want we want people to participate we want to support that yeah we think there's we're going to talk more about activity fees but having one activity have a double fee and
037others have a single fee or some might not even have a fee trying to trying to have a rhyme and a wreath into this so if we go to the next slide brand new fully funded offerings lots of things there coming online driven by student you know student motivation student interest uh so pretty excited about those um you know i've seen that that but that fishing club fascinating um it we one was started when i was in good view uh i've seen them started all across the state and it's pretty neat and it crosses you know uh cultural boundaries and things like that and brings a lot of kids together and it's it's really it's pretty cool and so are the other things on the list uh we've got some these are the activities where
038they were unfunded and you know the small stipends for the leaders and some of those things that i mentioned uh i think are you know was the right thing to do and it makes sense in terms of supporting those those activities and if we uh and then you know there's still some some funding reserved for future offerings 10 000 at the middle level 8 500 reserve at the high school for student run things and i you know i'm sharing a lot of great information that all comes from andy brown director so i'm simply the conduit i asked him to give me an update he gave me a great update and i told him i would do my best to share that and again i love i've stolen his saying um you know an activity for
039every kid and every kid in an activity and i there is so much research that shows when students are involved in their school in an you know extracurricular co-curricular activity uh academic you know academic performance increases belongingness increases when we talk about you know we we want uh everybody to feel welcome welcoming you know when they walk through our doors and feel a part of our school communities part of that is getting involved and getting involved in a lot of different things a lot of different ways and so again i just i applaud the efforts of specifically talking activities andy brown and a whole lot of other folks have been working hard to do exactly you know what the school board laid out that big picture they're filling in all the details and this is
040around the fees and we just don't have a sort of packet here the question actually came up uh at the drama meeting there is there's a cap on how much families have to pay if they've got obviously more than one student and participating activities do we know what that cap is yet or is that still being kind of fleshed out i'm gonna defer on that we're gonna you know we're gonna bring andy's you know right now tentatively scheduled to be at october 10th for development just kind of hey here's where we're at here's what we're doing you know we can continue to do things the same way um you know and he's there there's a couple things that they've just changed because they're really out of whack and it didn't make sense and kind of
041aligned it with the old way of doing that but that's a i'm not trying to duck the question i just don't know the answer but i know that this even it goes from activities across athletics as well and it's a conversation that we really want to begin on october 10th so that i can provide some direction to both you know andy brown our activities director matt hansen our athletics director you know do we want them to spend some time doing research what do other communities do what are what are we doing how is it working um and they'll have you know they've got some idea to just you know they've been looking at it and we want things to be equitable and fair you know i uh you know when danielle spoke up you know
042you know yeah it was unfair to pay the double fee you know a lot of activities weren't doing that and so we've got work to do there i understood i know the question that came off this yeah and it certainly happens for scholarships and things but at the end of the day it's about creating an equitable environments who want to participate and find it 100 and we want you know and there's also some things where you know you want to charge something for these and you want people to you know that improves buying in some of those and there's some research there but but really you know andy's been pouring a lot of you know blood sweat and tears into all the things we saw on those slides and making sure that that was put
043together and in good shape for the start of the school year and now one of those goals you know moving in the future is let's let's go deeper and have that discussion about fees i think this has been answered before but if a group of uh students want to form a club what is i'm assuming there's a process and how long does it approximately take maybe because if somebody want to start like uh excel club we don't have that one how long do you think it would take to get one up and running it's a good question i think depends situationally what is the interest what are you know and you need somebody to kind of uh monitor that group an adult available and so i know they have a process and i'm and it's
044kind of brand new that's what they've been working on i'm going to make sure that i get that because i really don't know that turnaround i think sometimes you know sometimes you got a group and it's like hey let's get this going you know as quick as possible sometimes it takes a little while to get the word out so let me let me add that to a list of questions how many what approximately uh the percentage of students that are actually in activities going back i mean you know band and sports and everything could you you mentioned you know an activity for every student um it's great because as you said the more people can get the more they feel part of the school without a doubt and you might though well just count them
045up which and we're working on an answer to that because that is part of when we that i want to share with you uh i'm actually working with ford rolls root on that and he and i have had a couple discussions we meet again either tomorrow or it might be wednesday and you might go well just count all the activities up well some are entered in infinite campus and we track and some we don't track because they don't go in there and i go whoa we've got to track them all right and so he's he's been working and i saw i didn't had about five minutes i kind of looked at kind of a couple preliminary draft models that he had for doing that and then you know trying to break it down by you
046know grade levels of students and who's participating but that that to me is part of that um you know we talk about uh you know as a board the vision and priority that talks about inclusion and equity that's a big part of it if we you know we like that phrase hey an activity for every student and a student in every activity well how are we doing that and so that is actually we've we've been working on that now the last i don't know a month and a half going all right how do we devise a way to track that and see how that's working is there a minimum amount of students that have to be interested in the activity or to maintain that activity we're working on those because there is a flip side
047to this too of you know you when does an activity go away it is a question we don't ask ever and we probably should but we're really it's again you know where are you at that budget i mean there's a finite amount of resources you saw the the details and these you know kept some there i think that's part of you know when we look at district-wide budgets that's even that comes into that it's a little bit like class sizes and you know if you've got two students and you used to have 32 in some activity you might consider you know phasing that out especially if you've got other things waiting to come online that have 40 students wanting to do it could these activities self fundraise well i think they do to some degree
048but we want them to not not so much self-fundraise for the total cost but for the things that will make the experience go from basic to enhanced was the word i was going with um you know and how we define enhanced is you know probably has a pretty good range but that's that's really it you know are we gonna you know you fundraise to get cool sweatshirts or something or when my kid was on camera i think it was the debate team uh the sweater vests that they knew were a little bit uh whatever but they thought that was gonna be their uniform and it was and so i believe he still has his and he's 27 and he wears it on occasion so that's great but again you have great questions and those are
049you know there is so much good work going on that it's exciting i know there's great conversations again connecting the different parts of our district you know we're talking athletics we're talking community ed we're talking even targeted services k.a we're talking activities connecting the levels you know the middle level the high school how does all that come together and so yeah we'll continue to give updates but um uh if i had to guess 2013-14 that's what i was going to say and then also i just wanted to talk about the activities like i said it's i think it's a very good thing that some of the fees are getting paid because i know that i'm part of hosa and i know some of the officers and i'm friends with them and i know it was
050like a huge issue with like people dropping out after because they don't want to pay for activities and some activities and events are more than others um just a comment not on activities but we were talking about the welcome back first week of school everything's going great and i just want to provide some feedback that i've received from three different groups of people what it's what the school year feels like one i've heard from several teachers that they feel that there's just this huge burden just this weight lifted off their shoulders now that the class sizes are smaller they feel like they can concentrate more on the students and that there's just so much more energy in the schools with their colleagues because of it i had a parent reach out to me that said
051when the budget cuts happen their child wasn't able to have participate in high potential classes because we cut some of those resources and they were not available at the elementary level and when they went to their connect and assess day at the elementary school found out that now their child is eligible and will be participating in those programs and so they were so happy because they felt that their child's especially it was math was the big area where they were able to allow their child to grow and reach new levels with their math skills and then the third group is students just teams sport activities the the vibe the feel the energy that they have for the school year is just so different than what some of the coaches have seen in the past few
052years so i share that only because i think that it's really important to hear that because we haven't heard that for a while in our district and it's just extremely positive that we have that positive vibe in our school district and we had said the future is bright in our district i think this is just one example of why the future is brightening our district we have a lot of energy we have a lot of positive momentum and i know that all of us on the school board are committed to making sure that that continues the future whether we're here or not so i just wanted to share that for the entire board to hear and for those watching at home i love hearing those stories having people reach out to me with those instead
053of me reaching out to them to say you know how are things going and hearing the horror stories of things that are happening thank you my chair for sharing with us you know and i like how how you you how you were doing the narration you know this is good you know that's very nice it's fun to hear yes absolutely yes maybe i've said it a couple times might have even said it here yeah because i go back and i check the notes and kind of the what if and had the voters not approve the operating levy we would be starting or already in the midst of planning five million dollars in budget cuts for next school year meaning the 23 school year and we had we wouldn't have reduced the class sizes and we
054would be cutting another 5 million dollars and so i can't think of any other way to kind of encapsulate you know kind of where we would have been in terms of budget trajectory without that support and then we've been sharing a lot of these things and we we continue to come back and go you know all the stuff we're talking about with activities and all those great things that you know that those improvements are a they're directly tied to that question too uh that was approved by the voters on the operating levy and i would even say a lot of the things that you alluded to uh we're moving our work groups you know the goal is to move them towards the middle of their comparable districts um it feels a lot better than being
05511 out of 11 or 12 out of 12 or whatever you know when you're you're competitive with your peers doing the exact same thing that you're doing in neighboring districts and and then just you know it's uh the field this school year is it it you know we hope that we're uh we hope that we're uh absolutely on the way that the you know the conclusion of kind of the things that were negatively impacting us the last couple years and i think you can feel it when you're you're around people people are enjoying being together uh building great relationships and i i would echo your sentiments and i also think too that just to wrap this up well there's a lot of positive momentum moving forward that we still have challenges and there's still a
056lot of things that i mean we kind of turned the corner with our school district but there's still a lot of work to be done so um a lot of the great things happening in our school district um so not only meeting the board meeting to talk about that we have to find you know another venue that we can share with the positive things and also if there is some community members that have questions or concerns and we have to sit down with that man and then when people communicate then things you know would be [Music] clear more transparent so i would suggest that i think that maybe that's a good topic for the community engagement committee to take all right thanks for the update item 10 on our agenda is committee reports and other
057information and i will start with caroline today um yeah you got the meeting before the meeting tonight yeah exactly tim uh we've got a policy meeting coming up and then the district advisory council experience has started with some dates on the calendar i'm going to defer anything having to do with multiple in fact i'm going to suggest that my colleague mr smith because we had somebody who got to uh to witness that other feedback oh thank you so we had the the personnel meeting before the meeting tonight um and all of us have gotten to participate in the uh you know the welcome back uh events for the for the school year um i got to welcome the new teachers to the district and that was uh that was a real fun exciting day i
058was great to participate in that yeah we had the first mountain bike race of the year here at uh xl park at quarry lake right here in shakopee uh kicked off the whole mountain bike season for the whole state so we have people here from from all over the state of minnesota and uh so it's a great event and we have lots of compliments uh well run well attended um and uh yeah it was just uh really neat to have that here in shopkeep and uh our uh chair was uh was there most of the weekend i think she was there even longer than me more hours more [Music] meeting tomorrow night um the welcome back uh at the school i was at both red oak and eagle creek last week for the elementary students
059and the students and the parents were all smiling the teachers looked ready and it was it's and i mentioned before the meeting to a couple people that were here it's amazing how the teachers remember every student's names my dad who taught for 27 years in the austin district uh you know 15 years after he was done he'd still remember student name and i barely remember people's names two minutes after i meet them so it's it's an amazing thing for teachers and they all looked ready and uh happy and ready ready to go and uh it was just it was just fun to see everybody smiling well most most of the uh finally all the parents work yes my my youngest son is attending eastern middle school he adjusted very well on his special needs teachers
060there she is amazing she's getting more things he can get done activity at home he still misses the red hawk and he hasn't done syndrome condition and he says i wanted the wrong school you know he doesn't remember the you know red oak problems where you are here and still he's thinking about his you know what's the teacher's name and he says mr stop that's what he's saying and i said no we are practicing and so um other than that you know the principle is wonderful uh every day is ready and he's outside you know greeting everyone very nice guy good stuff is my favorite gym with him but you know good stuff and they are well-rounded and they know what to do and tomorrow i have a community after council we took a break
061this summer and then wednesday another meeting so this is the first time i'm doing yeah three three nights in a row you know one week night here to the community i can close and then the other night i bought the committee so it's gonna be fun all right um again i participate in some of the back to school events um last thursday the welcome back from all the teachers it was that was awesome not a great speaker um so just a lot of energy and it was awesome to see our guest mr orlowski who came back very quickly that was awesome we had a personnel meeting tonight before this meeting last friday i attended a scale meeting which is scott county leadership elected officials from all over the county come together and i know next
062month there's going to be discussion a presentation i think dr redmond you're involved in teacher shortages in scott county and impact concerns that sort of thing so i'm actually out of town that day oh okay so somebody else will be presented but superintendents from all over the county are there and it's just great discussion to learn about other services so and then i also have a southwest metro board meeting next tuesday night as well uh danielle anything to share tonight from a student i started my perspective week of senior year last year and that was interesting um i do psgo and i missed my bus stay for an extra hour so that was fun very special but i was like calling my mom and she was that was fun and then obviously i also went
063to some of the welcome back um activities and that was a lot of fun and it was nice to you know see the different uc students and just again like um i think i believe i was at west and um i saw my cousin was there and she was one of the people welcoming people and it was just really fun to see that students are really getting engaged in every aspect of helping you know welcome back the other students that was a very nice thing that the uh quest was doing and i'm sure other schools do that as well and so yeah i just really enjoyed that and it was a lot of fun yeah last year last week i started my first day of junior year and while it was a very fun experience
064getting to see my classmates getting dc's friends i haven't seen you all in a long time it was overall a really fun it was a really fun time and it was good that i could finally be back in school for it's a good feeling to have the other i would just reiterate it especially when you said christy that being in all the buildings last week the positivity among students and staff you can feel you know a huge difference from 12 months ago and you know the levee's a huge part of it cove is a huge part of it and it's just it's a it was a very positive and upbeat first week and what's crazy is we're talking about back to school and here it's next week we're in the homecoming already which is always
065a big event in shakopee the whole community comes together and so it's first week of school and now we're moving out of that huge event which i know we're all looking forward to tiffany i had a couple things that i shared on on friday in the rap but there's a back to school newsletter they'll be hitting mailboxes for our community and then tax base here in about a week and has some good stuff a lot of things that you're already aware of that we've talked about but just trying to make sure we can get that to everybody and then we also launched a community education website just to give more exposure to that great part of the district and the hard work that lisa and her team are doing and the classes and other items
066that we have so a lot of good progress and it's been really fun to see all the kids back to school and all the fun photos and videos we can make out of the high fives and the smiling faces and cute little kids and older kids and all the above so it's been a fun time cool thank you dr redmond any final words i've spoken enough during the earlier parts of the meeting all right so um item 11 on our agenda's upcoming meetings and important dates so our next board meeting is um that will be the 26th of september where we also have a finance and facilities committee meeting before that we have 14 the policy committee meeting which we've already talked about and then just to make sure you've got marked on your calendars
067for october 10th at five o'clock right here we will have a leadership development meeting for our school board so that's more discussion for your topics so i encourage you to make sure that you have five o'clock on your calendar instead of six with that as jim said we have homecoming next week already if you haven't done so i encourage you all to get out and cheer for our student athletes as they start the seasons and the football teams had two two games already one really awesome win and one so close on the goal line unfortunately didn't quite get across but it was a it was a great game the volleyball had their tournament this past weekend so anytime you can get out and encourage cheer on our students that would be great anything else they
068just reminded me i've got a brand new pair of shoes for homecoming fired up already about those [Music] so we have a motion by brophy in a second by aldridge any further discussion seeing none all those in favor say aye