School Board Workshop Meeting - October 5, 2023

001[Music] good evening it is Thursday October 5th 2023 at 6:00 p.m. we are at the district service center in Cottage Grove Minnesota we would like to acknowledge that the land on which We Gather is the land of the mawakan Dakota people minowak means dwellers of the Spirit Lake our first item on the agenda is our road call Dana Eric chesner is absent Louise Heiden is absent Patroll here Melinda does here Katie Schwarz is absent simy patan here Sharon vanir present next is um our Pledge of Allegiance will you please rise congratulations the United States of America and to the for it stands one nation God indivisible liy and justice for all oh we have another member all right next we have 3.0 and that is the approval of our agenda can I get a motion

002to approve the agenda so moved second move moved by Melinda seconded by simy all those in favor all those opposed motion is carried next is 4.0 and that is our Workshop items 4.1 is an update from Park and East Ridge high schools and they will be introduced this evening by our assistant superintendent Christine schaer there you are I'd like to introduce can you hear me so tonight I'd like to introduce Todd Herbert principal of Park High School and Jim smokovich principal of Eastridge high school and they have some highlights to share with us tonight from both of their schools and as you can see they have guests that they will also introduce welcome Jim and Todd good evening board chair nson and school board members uh seated with me this evening is dararius W Park

003High School senior Avid scholar football player and a future community and J say national leader it is my pleasure this evening to share with you some of our community collaborations that directly impact our students uh to enhance their experiences at Park High School in the academics or in athletics and its collaborations within our community first I would like to broadly acknowledge the tremendous support from our community organizations our athletic booster organizations and Park High School families and their commitment to fundraising and support of our Guardian caps as you see um uh Garden caps you see uh on all of our football players helmets we all know that the game of football brings with it inherent risks due to the contact nature of the sport our community and families came together with leadership from the football

004coaching staff uh coach brickland to raise funds for this equipment our football team is being studied by the manufacturer to see if our students have fewer and less severe concussion type injuries our football uh program is the only one in the state and quite possibly the nation where this this equipment is being used in liveaction games this was featured a few weeks ago on k 11 news as reported by Randy shaver and no doubt other athletic programs from around the state will be interested to learn more about this equipment and to the extent it mitigates and reduces the severity of concussion injuries the second collaboration I would like to highlight this evening uh is our collaboration between Park High School and the St Paul Park American Legion uh in developing future Community leaders the American

005Legion and Park High School have had a long relationship around the American legion's Girls State program each year several young women apply to be selected to represent the St Paul Park American Legion at girls State and more recently the past three to four years we have expanded that collaboration with them to include boy State this year four boys from Park including dararius uh attended boy state I'm going to read to you a couple of excerpts about what boy state is and what devarus is here this evening American Legion boy state is among the most respected and selective educational programs of government instruction for us high school students a participatory program in which students become part of the operation of local County and state government at boy State participants learn the rights Privileges and responsibilities of

006franchise citizens the training is objective and centers on the structure of city county and state governments operated by students elected to various offices boy State activities include legislative Sessions Court proceedings law enforcement presentations assemblies band and courses and recreational programs now of all the boys that attended the boys state event this summer held at St John's University dararius was praised for being the top allaround participant and as a result and as a result was one of two Representatives students selected to attend and represent Minnesota at boys nation in Washington DC I'm ready to excerpt on what that is two representatives from each of the 49 boys States Sans Hawaii um attend boys nation in Washington where the young leaders receive an education on the structure and function of the federal government at the event each

007delegate acts as a senator from their state the young lawmakers caucus at the beginning of the session and organize into committees and conduct hearings on bills submitted by program delegates senators learn the proper method of handling bills according to US Senate rules the week of government training also includes lectures forums and visits to federal agencies National shrines institutions memorials and historical sites on Capitol Hill boys Nation Senators meet with elected officials from their home States now I'm going to hold the microphone for you so you can just talk and focus devarus is going to sh some of the really fascinating things he got to experience uh just a few things I wanted to point out was what they call boys nation is a weak that shap your lifetime and I just want that to push

008out that to you guys because if I were to tell you everything that I did or if I were to tell you everything that impacted me when I was in DC we would be here all night if I were to tell you like how it went you guys would be mind blown cuz I'm still mindblown at what I did but the things I would like to also point out is while we were there we were respected as more than what we are and what we can be and that's that's all it is it's taking who you think can lead the country into a better place and putting them all in the same room um to this day we're still in group chats we still talk to each other and these are kids that like when

009you just look at what they're doing around their Community you're absolutely um while I was there I like he talked about the capital H day I got to meet with Tina Smith and Amy kashar I got to meet with Tina Smith on Capitol Hill in the um Senate like they have Senate offices I don't know if any you have been there but they have Senate offices that are across the few that are all connected but when I got to meet even CL got to meet her in the capital in one of the rooms that she got to me while I was with them we talked just and it almost made me feel like part of them or part of what they do you know they talk to me like face to face when you talk

010to somebody with that much power you usually feel like they're talking over you talking above you where I really felt like it was a friendly conversation and when I was talking with Tina it was more of a coffee thing she did it with a bunch of other people but what she did do in the room was she did point out us and she asked us about what we were doing just to push that to all the other um another thing I would like to talk about is the selection and Minnesota was different because Minnesota had they selected a few um kids from each like group from each section and those kids got interviewed I was one of the interviewed and before my interview I was told to take out my nose ring I was told

011that because one of the interviewers was very conservative said that he had older ideologies and when my counselor told me that I looked at him I said can I not just be myself and still get it I'm obviously here for a reason I'm also receiving this interview for a reason and after that I thought about it I didn't take it out and I had one of the most amazing interview opportunities ever I got in there I just could feel the tension and then when I talk to them I could feel it be lifted the same thing what happened when I was with the Senators I can just feel everything be left um there's just not much like that I can absolutely talk about to to capture what had happened um one of the cool things

012I got to do was to meet the ambassador of Pakistan to the US um I met him in an elevator actually you have powerful people all around you when you're in DC you got to keep your eyes up because I have my phone I had my eyes in my phone and Ted crew was rocked right past me but I got to meet the ambass of Pakistan in an elevator and he just talks to us seen the shirts and he knew what the shirts were and while we were talking to him he just called this amazing young man and we didn't know who he was until um Jacob Jacob is the other Minnesota senator he said that he had the Diplomatic and I was like well then why don't you go ask him what he does

013he got scared so I so we kind of unnecessarily followed him off the building and um we actually got to talk to him on the stairs and tell him what we were doing um in DC and he also talked about potentially meeting us in Minnesota and that never happened but I still have his business card I have multiple other senat business cards um before you're selected for or when you're selected for poison na you have to submit a bill and that is required for it everybody's bill was so different and it shows how many problems that we have in this country but it shows how many different solutions that we also it shows that we have a generation that will be coming in that knows exactly what is happening and knows exactly how to fix

014it and our Senate doesn't represent that right now but it just felt amazing to know that I'm I'm part of a group of individuals that would be helping change that future whether I follow through and do that myself I'm just can't say that I was there there's not much more for me to talk about um any questions that will help but it's just a great experience I got to be the first person from The District first person from my school to go there is just been an amazing honor honestly incidentally what was your bill about so my bill was about giving people an an opportunity for Equitable education talk to us more to give it more to give it a different title it was a u Grant Bill that would give that would create a

015program so that uh Grassroots and like protesting organizations can push out the ideology of critical race Theory and other ethnic studies um I've always wanted to be I've wanted to be a history teacher for the last few years but I've always wanted to educate people on something and history has always it's just been easy to me I can I can talk your ears off when it comes to history I can always give you a different perspective when it comes to history as just like this is something that represents me and this is something that I want to push out and now usually when people talk about critical race it's a oneid of Defense you know you're either for it or you're against it but the way that I presented it to the group and to

016the committee there was nobody that was against it they couldn't argue with the research that I had they couldn't arue anything that I had all they had to do was except the fact that it time is changing and it's something that we need um also the I can't remember exactly what his title was but he worked with all the bills and he passed them I called him I called him up because I was kind of late on my bill I didn't couldn't finish it and I then I didn't know how to submit it so I called him and then when I submitted it on the phone he told me that this is one of the greatest bills that he's ever just ever read and and for me that just like it felt amazing you know

017to not only be praised to go to boy State not only to be praised enough to get selected for boys Nation for them to be praised for what I was doing in boys na before I got there it's like I said it's just not something I can talk about because it's not enough just Star truck honestly any other questions well I know your parents have to be ecstatic and we are elated we're over the top and come on back and teach history what you were talking about is what we need thank you so much thank you uh we are on our way out to the park football game at East F okay Park let's go okay Jim front and center good evening good evening superintendent neelson chair van leer and members of the board um

018I'm Jim smoker the principal of Easter idge and uh I have three guests with me tonight Taylor shampoo Andrew nagahashi Jessica Frisco uh our three art instructors at Easter idge high school and Avery Bednar one of our students who uh helped and participated in our what we're presenting tonight which we call our Unity mural um before I turn it over to uh our experts here uh I wanted to First say that you know when you think about Easter idge um and the design of structure and um the communities that we serve um I'm sure within the planning stages there was talk of unity um being that we were going to be a school that was serving students from Woodbury Cottage Grove Newport um not just students from Woodbury or Cottage Grove or any one individual

019Community but bringing communities together in the new school what 14 years ago um and I you have to check my math on that I don't know whether that's um and so the piece when it was brought to my attention um was something that we have been talking about uh for years our our uh our theme or our slogan is one Easter meaning bringing together our school Community um taking care of ourselves and taking care of our outside community and so this just really fit with where we've been heading um and trying to bring our school together and our vision being that uh Utopia of of one Easter ID where everyone feels supported um and uh we're supporting our communi so with that um I also want to say that there is also a tale to

020be told about principles and art teachers when you see art teachers coming down the hall and uh and they're all coming you're going oh gosh they're going to present something to me that could get me in trouble um they're going to want to paint a pillar or do something on a wall that I'm going to have to answer to with Bill buildings and grounds and Etc um so when when they came to me um obviously I'm I joke but uh I can't tell you the number of times that that our artistic people have helped bring together thoughts and ideas and to portray them in a way that they do and you're going to hear about that um and when Jessica I think first approached me I said will it come off the wall we have

021an idea that will work and it will come off the wall if it ever needed to um so with that I'm so happy with our product I'm I'm most happy with uh the leadership our student body had and U with that I'll will turn it over to our to our team hello I my name is Jessica Frisco um I have been at East Ridge for I think nine years um the mural came about um we do have some slides if you are interested in looking but um this was the original design on the left here um that the students brainstormed first um it was the AP Art and Design class as well as Miss shampoo's painting classes that took part in this um this started two years ago so it was in the spring of

0222022 is that correct yes um so initially we had a couple students who had participated in the compass awards ceremony Compass is an Arts organization that's a nonprofit in the Twin Cities area here and they hold contests and that just so happened to be one of the ones that we entered our students in um they won some awards and Compass reached out to us and offered us a sort of gift for our participation and as we had students who had won the awards um so they offered us to work with uh to partner with a guest artist from compass and send us out an artist to have a certain time commitment with our students to be a guest in the building and and so this is when the art team came together and saidwell what

023could we use our services for and we had been brainstorming like Jim said many years to try to get a mural that would be representative of our community um and so we invited a mural artist in and when the students first generated the idea we had a span of time where we switched artist through compass and um then the students came back together and said actually we don't like that so they changed their minds and um within I think maybe 15 minutes Avery we had come up with a totally different idea the ideation that went into that was just incredible it was 100% student voice at that point and we had the students as you can tell the arms in the picture on the right our students got up and they embraced each other and

024they said we're going to go with this unity and we want our arms in there and they wanted the w chap as assigned for Eastridge they decided on gold and black ribbons for our school colors and then they also um really had an underlying Um passion to represent the Minnesota nature so we went with also some Minnesota um Native flowers um the Minnesota native flowers were taken by one of the current AP students delay lean and we enlarged these onto very large poly tab t uh panels which is otherwise known as parachute cloth it's what they use for parachutes and so we um discovered that we could paint actually on some table surfaces and with the poly Tab and here are our students mixing colors to begin the mural we chose they chose the color

025palettes um what we wanted to have to unify the entire mural um on the next slide you can see them St starting to work and block in the individual panels off of the wall um this took some time and a lot of rethinking we discovered that it was a little bit difficult to get a unified sort of artistic style when the students were working on individual panels so we had to keep going back and reworking students had to jump to another panel to get their style into that and so we went through a little bit and I'll have um Taylor take over with that that um yeah you want to talk about that process yeah yeah so what we found would work really well um on the panels is kind of guiding the line art

026it was partially transferred using uh putting it up on the smartboards and tracing based on that small sketch that you saw previously and then kind of refining from there and essentially it becomes like a paint by number and when you have all of the paint mixed out in advance it's very easy for students of all skill levels to come together together and participate in the creation process um and I think I saw a lot of students as they worked on it realizing how much of an impact that their small brush individual brush Strokes were contributing to this great Community thing that would be on the wall um so we had is it 16 20 20 panels total that reach about four by five feet and so once they were completely painted we had to put

027them all together on the floor took up almost an entire classroom and make sure that everything connected properly across the different panels before putting it on the wall um and here's a picture of it in progress I think this was still from the spring or no it was early fall early fall okay um and so the the pink was the background color and it was eventually completely covered up by everything else and it's actually going on the wall behind where this photo is taken so this was a picture of the installation process um we had to slowly put each panel up on the wall using clear gel medium to adhere it and then squeegeeing it into all of the different bricks and of course borrowing the lift from the theater Department um so we could

028get all the way to the top of the ceiling and this is a picture of the finished design so it it was a lot of work many many hours on the part of students and teachers but ultimately we feel like it just adds something really special to our cafeteria and school space sure hi I'm Avery and I obviously attend Easter high school and I was a part of AP Art and Design at Easter um like last year which is when the majority I feel of the mural was made um I am doing AP art and again AP Art and Design again this year as well and art is something that for me personally I'm very passionate about as well as many other students at Easter idge and I mean a lot of what I was

029going to talk about has like already been said but um a big thing for me was just like seeing how different people Express themselves while they're painting because like a big challenge was like a lot of people's different styles and techniques and levels like they didn't match up so I mean it made the piece very interesting but it kind of went almost against the unity because it's just like you look somewhere and it's completely different than another area so we like solved this problem by kind of going towards a more like color blocking approach to it and it like has a really cool effect like the hard like lines and edges between colors and with that like everyone was able to participate and there was there was a lot of students that worked on it

030so there was my entire AP art class which at the beginning of the year it had like 40 people like it was a big class when we were working on this and there's also multiple different art classes like painting classes in Miss shampoo's room like some of the kids would help too and I am like I'm honored to be able to say that I was a part of making this because I know that I have personally put many hours into the process of making this mural and so have many of the other students at Easter so it's like it's something that when I look at it's very important to me and obviously the mural has it has a lot of symbolism the ribbons the Raptor the unity and I actually like I personally know some

031of the students that have their arms in the like Circle so yeah if you guys have any questions let me know it was definitely it was definitely a unique experience because I'm used to working on much much smaller pieces I'm scared to go big when it comes to painting and I usually stick to more realism so it's definitely something that was different for me as an artist and it's definitely the largest scale thing that I've ever done so if there's any questions for me or any of the art teachers let us know okay this is like a super logistic question when you say students whose arms are in there right like that looks bigger yeah than an actual arm so how does that like what did you how does that work what does that mean

032so what did you do or yeah just like walk me through what you did okay so I wasn't actually there when they made like the whole like planning of everything but I know a big thing was like making everything accurate to scale because the original sketch fits on like a regular size piece of paper so we had to kind of map out to scale like how big it would be compared to like the 4et by 5T panels and a lot of that did we end up using like the grid method for that yeah so there's this thing called a grid method where it's like it could be like an inch worth of paper is equivalent to like one foot of the parachute panel and by using those measurements we were able to transfer over our

033sketch onto these larger pieces that we then cut up and it's like these pieces they would take up an entire table for just one so yeah and then it's obviously it wasn't perfect because when we were lining things up like there like it's hard to get it exact but then I mean we just painted over it and it solve the problem yeah I just want to say it's really beautiful and I love how you brought Unity together and all work together um I'm looking forward to really looking at it with different eyes now when I see it Monday morning at the indigenous people's ceremony so it's really beautiful good job thank you so um I am like full of questions I am a really terrible artist like if you asked me to draw a straight

034line with a ruler you would all probably flunk me so so um how did this work like in terms of your class structure then because if this is not obviously or presumably I maybe it is I don't know part of the AP art curriculum right like in terms of what the college board says to do so how did this how did you fit that in and how did um how did the students like how did that influence the students other work that they were doing thanks for asking Simi um so as a as an art team um we are extremely flexible and we believe in student voice and so anytime that we can get an opportunity to have the students use their voice we'll find a way to fit it in um as far as

035AP curriculum um normally what I do at the beginning of the year is we take uh approximately a month for them to just really explore technique and skill to make sure that they can build their confidence at the beginning of the year before we dive into the actual curriculum and so what we did is we divided up into groups and some of the groups were um assigned to do this technique and skill Builder some of them were on the mural for four days and so we just took rotations for doing that um and this actually was part of that technique and skill building because I often encourage my students to work bigger and so this was a an authentic way that I could encourage them to work big because they could see the results of

036what was happening and and build their confidence I mean this is honestly astonishing this is so cool I'm thank you we're really proud I can't even speak and you guys it is super hard for me any other questions magnificent work yeah okay moving right along is 4.2 and that is the board governance plan and that will be introduced this evening by our super intendent Julie Milson thank you I need a [Applause] microphone it's nice when you have a microphone and there's no little white microphony dot on it maybe I could just talk um all right it is a work workshop session so this evening we are going to circle back with board members to take a look at our board governance plan um it's it's been a couple of months Christine will remind me I'm

037sure it's been a couple of months it feels like it's been maybe even longer than a couple of months um to finish the work on the board governance plan with the assistance of Christine roleski who has been our support person as we've worked through our strategic planning um and this document um that will be owned by the school board and works in alignment with our overall strategic plan and so this evening we would like the board members to come to some agreement on what they would like to see in their finalized board governance plan and So Christine will I know she did some pre-work with board members and so she will pick up and guide us through areas that we still need answers to so that we can clean up the document and hopefully turn

038it into a uh final draft um because we know that there are always opportunities to go back and do revisions so thank you Christine for joining us thank you for having me good evening board members and members of the executive leadership team so what I'm going to take you through for my time as part of your session tonight this okay is uh we'll do a a quick overview on what that three-year board governance plan is we're going to review the survey results from that I uh sent to all the board members so that we could get all your individual input before you came back together and discuss the items that uh tended to create some confusion or that you didn't have consensus about when we were having our discussions uh finalize that draft as the

039superintendent was saying uh and then uh I'm going to move on because we're not going to do shared messages it's your it's your meeting you have more agenda items to get to so uh quickly some reminders and observations from the plan if you want to skip forward one um the three-year plan is really a way to guide your board agendas for the board work uh for the next three years but also you can do it annually you take the three-year plan you look at it and over the course of the the year you say which agenda items do we handle for professional development for these these kinds of work sessions and for your regular board meetings it also can inform uh your committee work uh so maybe you send some of these items off to

040committee and they come back with some recommendations for you um or you ask the uh the administrative team to come up with a draft that you can then consider at this table um there were a lot of items especially in the first year of your board governance plan and a lot of new items um and so we've said this to you before from Teamworks and just want to remind you again do you have the capacity to complete all of these new items that you have on your list if not and if uh if they're not urgent then maybe move them to the the next year or the following year that's why we have the administrative team work on a three-year operational plan as well you can't do everything sometimes given the existing capacity especially when

041new things keep coming at you um so um what we'll do is we'll work through the items that had the most questions when we had our dialogue together uh and if we move forward to the the next three slides I'm going to show you are what you already have at your table it's the revised version of the draft three-year plan based on our last discussion so there are three pages what I really want you to concentrate on in our time here tonight is on the next slide there are two sections one is under self-governance and you can see all of those items in red the red items are items that are new in any given year the items in Black are reoccurring items and then you have some items on in blue that um in

042the electronic version have links to other information from your administrative team so as you look at self-governance and as you look on the next slide at public engagement there are some items that I surveyed you about and you're going to see those results short shortly um and that I have some questions for you about to finalize so that we can move this forward what I'll do um based on your conversation tonight is revise the draft get it back to you so you can declare it final um and it then we'll guide you and then I would recommend that you update it at least twice a year probably around January and maybe in the summertime does that work for all of you okay so um we're going to move on then to the results of the

043survey which hope will then inform some final decision-making around this plan so uh we asked some questions uh around listening sessions and public comment uh because you were uh again not in full agreement when we were having some discussions so the the first question around listening sessions um had to do with should you replace public comment at board meetings with scheduled listening sessions and as you can see here what's listed in kind of that fuchsia pink color are the NOS you had five of you that replied you did not want to replace public comment at board meetings and two of you who said yes you can see the comments at right the individual comments uh that were added by board members um that you've tried it before uh sometimes only one board member was present

044uh with the superintendent I think that means when you had separate listening sessions um the suggestion not to replace uh perhaps add it in three times a year or four times a year as a supplement um perhaps comments to the board uh or staying with comments to the board uh and not adding listening sessions on on a regular basis so again five who do not want your uh your school board to replace public comment at board meetings with listening sessions so the next slide we get into a little bit more about listening sessions uh and do you recommend that the school board holds scheduled listening sessions outside of board meeting meetings uh there was a bit of a difference there there were three options uh yes no or uh other uh so one of you

045uh agreed that yes you should hold the listening sessions outside of the board meetings three of you said no and uh three of you had some other comments there was a maybe um not sure uh if anyone would show up uh perhaps quarterly or every other month instead uh or one of the board members said you did not feel strongly either way about the question um fine to take part in them um if their schedule would allow it so again these are just to inform you if you as you have your discussion um the next item that I asked you about had to do with uh listening sessions um and staff support So if you are going to conduct listening sessions outside of regular board meetings to what degree would you um request expect staff

046support um and what level would that be uh and so it went from a high level of Staff support where uh staff would be expected to schedule participate in some way um as well as follow up with communication after the fact very little support or a moderate level so maybe some scheduling some communicating about it um but maybe not having to be present um and participating as much you can see the results there um three of the board members uh set a moderate level a couple expect a high level of support and one of you said very little um and you can see the comments on the side there that perhaps if you do have listening sessions outside of board meetings that perhaps having them after or before your scheduled board meetings um and there

047are some school boards who do that um on a regular basis um and uh the comment there that for listening sessions the role of facilitation is a board duty but perhaps having some administrative support would be helpful so there's that bit of information um we asked an open-ended question if uh if you would like to suggest engagement with the community other than in some kind of listening sessions um and these were the comments that you provided um perhaps having more Community visibility uh being more proactive about announcing where you'll be at events and uh having people understand how better to interact with you um my question whichever board member had that is uh interact with you as a full board or individually that's my question back to you um and then a suggestion that board

048members continue to attend lots of community and school events as you're able to and uh another suggestion going back to having assigned schools uh like School ambassadors their or Liaisons as I've seen with other school boards and being present at PTA PTO other um school events um as often as you can for your assigned role those are your suggestions uh moving on then uh when we uh you had some discussion around perhaps having staff listening sessions a third a third a third over the next three years generated a lot of dialogue in our last conversation with you about your threee plan um and I mentioned to you that in some cases if the superintendent and assistant superintendant are out visiting schools they can allow the school board to know when that's happening and maybe a

049school board member can um follow along with the superintendent that generated this question to you which of the following options do you prefer regarding having a presence at schools uh and with staff um and uh there was a lot of support for individual board members invited to join the superintendent I asked for other options uh from you and there were no other options um so that was the uh the comment from six of you that you would support doing that so that I think moves us on to discussion that I'd like you to have oh no I forgot I have one more for you I had a multi-question uh uh item for you as well under your self-governance items there were a number of new items um and you can see here I was asking

050the question should you keep them as is for example in the current year should you remove them or should you move them to another year on your on your three-year board agenda you can see that for most of the items the recommendation from uh from the board was to keep them as is so that included the board mentoring program work sessions versus is business meeting presentations the process for appointing and electing board members if an existing board member can no longer serve having board professional development uh twice a year and then uh the presentations of work sessions versus business meetings um I think that's on there twice so you have commonality on those items there was a desire from uh just under half of you three of you uh to have the the new version

051of the Schoolboard handbook and the informational night for Schoolboard candidates to move to another year um so that would give you uh a little bit added capacity this year and push that new item to next year so you have these copies um at your site at your uh seat in front of you what I'm going to ask you to do is to look at the items under self-governance again as well as the the items under public engagement look at the survey results that we just went through and I am going to suggest if you're in agreement that we have a couple of uh convers separate conversations before I bring you back and have a conversation item by item under each of those two categories um so if you were to move ahead Sean to the

052next slide so under public engagement you can see there the public comment and listening sessions was one of the items the staff listening sessions um and I think the communicating the role of the board is something you felt you could ask staff to provide a recommendation on and bring back to you so as you think through those items I'd like you to join with your elbow Partners since we're in a slightly different setup so simy Melinda and Eric if you three would have some conversations and then Sharon and Pat and uh Julie will you three have some conversations I know we're missing a couple of board members tonight but this way the three and three groups can have these conversations will come together and hopefully we can reach some agreement so let's take say six

053minutes and I'll check in with you and see where where you are I don't know if you want to do Christine just to clarify there's no um expectations of changes underneath the areas of District policy operational oversight correct there are items in red because they're new but there was no disagreement or confusion with the board under those items thank you no authority to change anything so therefore that should really be taken out and and it should this is what I think so if we're not successful and we ask question a board member and the superintend to every single site and then we bring back feedback but we can't and or we don't do anything we don't have authority that gives us two years to get it done before the story so which one was where

054did that I feel like that's really aggressive we want to look at self SE jary so preparing to public com session and we actually have that on the okay where's that other one talking about everybody okay so let's move on Mentor just go through that self based on what you saw that keep it this year yeah that's mentoring program yeah that's different hope we never have the same we did when I was first in personal development professional development I started that didn't have that when I came in go dky bam you sit down process for appointing electing a board member if an existing board member can no longer serve there is a process for that yeah but wouldn't we just do it why does that have to be on here think so why I don't

055know why this would be on here it's like we're asking for it yeah it out that's fine process board asking resignation policy take it out I am on got it and then board professional development two times annual hey I thought she was I think that's good there's two of us list session training I think that's the question do you want to do board listing sessions no that's the one no okay so remove yes um so this next one is work session versus business meeting presentation budget as the example we have said budget is going to be part of the workshop and it's not going to be part of the business unless Dan is taking action C engag no live stream of worksh business meeting we have preparing to public comment to board lising sessions that's

056right and they said that a lot of I think that's too like I don't like the way that you know blah blah blah blah um sta a third focus on the role of the board this is the one you're saying no staff that was the one the next one right so that's a no that's a no yeah communication sequence that's on theb that's all right I believe all right we're done one of I don't think absolutely do you want to be the reporter backer Council Dana Dana did you put the communication sequence on the board page about who to call who to call like if there's a problem at the school like did we not put that in the board page they also did not have a 30 minute limit huh I don't think so

057right I think and get Kati about it but I do think that I feel like I remember them saying half early no one would come it's like I mean so that could be they charge you don't been to one no like I need to talk right okay okay Christine um I think we're ready let's move this along okay are our board members ready you can leave it right here ready okay ready let's do it we're ready and uh I was having a conversation with Dana about one or two of the items as well so as you look under the self-governance category part the items in red um that were in question uh why don't we have each group kind of walk me through first the self-governance category and then we can work through the public

058engagement category does that work okay how about we start with the simy Melinda and Eric team I would love to I love talking so um we we should be that should be like on the unity mural East Ridge Sim talking um the mentoring program for new board members we agreed to this year um but one of the things we talked about the Schoolboard handbook was moving it to next year um just to give ourselves a little bit of breathing room there will be one at least one maybe three new people on the board next year this will be an opportunity for them to provide input especially as new members and I'm going to chime in because um I actually created a handbook over the summer that is just now been sitting since July when it

059was created so it is a um rather robust draft I will say that none of you have seen and so I do it is up to you but I think it would be relatively easy to do it this year if you wanted to because it is complete or one of the things that we talked about and it's also in here is um our communication sequence and uh that is included right now in the Schoolboard handbook about if you have a problem at the elementary level talk to Dr bren's Middle School level so it's basically who do you who should you call so that right now is waiting in the Schoolboard handbook and so it would be easy enough to move some of that information right to the website along with the video that talked about

060governance so it's not like we would be starting that from scratch it's already been drafted some of that was done because we had done some of this work so Dana was already working on that and we can hold push whatever we need to do but I think for the board to know that there's already a draft copy out there that even should new board members come on we can always revisit that so what kind of timing then would so because I'm not going to Li I thought part part of what we I feel like we're tasked with doing was like pushing out some of this that we don't have such a busy first year and that just seemed like a very easy thing to push out but um so what kind of time commitment do

061you think if we did if we were to get this robust binder or document like what is this like a one meeting sort of thing or two meeting sort of thing definit depend on how far you are with it I mean that you've up you're pretty much done um so I think um you're trying to figure out a timeline I am happy to send it out to everyone obviously can't have communication about it but for you all to review um I can pull it up quick because I'm curious how many pages it is it's 20 some odd pages and it and it's a good thing to have for new board members when they come on board when they come on board because I mean if we have I mean if it's done because I mean

062I think what we were envisioning is that it would have to be created and so why not create it like that future future board that's a future board issue not a current board issue but if it's already done and it could be voted on or approved or whatever the process is by January the first board meeting in January when at least one maybe three new people come on board that would be if I can suggest because we've gone through this process with other school boards and we start with the same basic handbook and then a school a school district will say we like most of it but we'd like to change these few things and have them be specific to our district or our needs so I have talked with Dana about that and the

063way that I've done this with other boards and I would suggest you do it is get the draft out to you uh put it on a work session uh calendar where you work through the draft Dana makes changes comes back one more time so I would say it would be two work sessions probably of reviewing the draft and the revised draft um and you probably could get it done by January if you are so because we have a work session it's October correct yep so we only have one more work session only one more work session this this calendar year calar year meeting okay but if we're talking fiscal year when you're talking about the year yeah I think it's important for us to keep it then on this year and start working on it

064because I think it's really important for us to get that uh that um CH chain of command stuff on the website all right so it sounds like you're making a decision ision since you already have a a pretty good working draft and it's just a matter of working out the timing but that was a good effort to try and I think if we push it back we'll push it back knowing that we only have one more Workshop meeting and I don't know what exactly we had planned so we may need to push our work around the Schoolboard handbook out into March or April but that the completion date would be by the end of the year and then we could put updates on the website I mean if it's relatively easy to do you know

065sure let's get it over with but you're not starting from scratch well and couldn't we send the draft out for people to look at absolutely it's it's uh 32 pages long okay how about if we keep moving uh other items under the self-governance category what are some other items that you wanted to discuss uh the informational night for new board members we thought about pushing to two years from now since it's too late for this year elction have it in have it during an election so actually now that I have just said that because of when because we have to sign up to run in August right or Late July so it actually does have to be done next year so that it's finished before candidates sign up to run next next fiscal year so

066it has to be done by whatever of 25 July of June of 25 so push that out I'll put that note but so again I believe that the executive cabinet was really excited when we saw this document and so our administrative team already welcomed in all candidates for an information session and we tried to talk about it from the perspective of a board member um not actual board member to board member uh but we did have an informational session and that was the first time I believe that we've ever done that as a district inviting all 11 candidates in to learn about the school district okay terrific would you like to to keep going yeah I mean I don't think I don't think we moved anything else did we I only have two arrows John

067on my thing so maybe maybe they have other ideas all right how about Sharon Pat and Julie thank you we talked about um taking a couple of things out the first one is the process for appointing an electing board member if an existing board member can no longer serve um we we said we should take that out because we have polic on that okay the second one was a process for sanctions for a board member also policy for that and then um remove the board listening session training that's on the next category okay so and then work session versus business meeting um we're okay with that keeping that one yeah yeah okay and on the next page then um okay preparing to move public comment or change that to comments to the board change public

068comment or change board listening change public comment to comments to the board and revise policy 206 are you guys you in favor of I think what I heard from Pat and uh Sharon is that there would not be board listing sessions uh the option would be to have that bullet point be um currently what's no known as public comment that we would call it comments to the board oh okay but don't we already call it comments to the board I think we've interchangeably use that word um and I think we just want to make sure that we are consistent if that's what the board agrees to too so you're so what we want to do is take out staff listening sessions um not doing those that's the one where we would go to the schools

069once every three years okay yes and when we did that it was unsuccessful we had maybe three or four am I correct yeah three or four people would show up and and that would be it it'd be 15 20 minutes and that's it and most of it was complaints yeah and we' have no authority to deal with that right we can't change anything so just to clarify then are you um suggesting them not having separate listening sessions as well don't want them either okay how about uh the Eric Melinda Simi group yeah we didn't we we do not want to replace comments to the board as it exists right now okay yeah we never really discussed the part where are you talking about the listing sessions where you go into the schools too with the

070superintendent as well either going to the schools or having uh listening sessions outside of a board meeting yeah so we didn't get that far in our discussion because we well what is your thought now I mean go ahead you all have three three independent uh thoughts yeah how frequently one or two people show up one or two board members show up is what you're saying no one or two staff members only no no no I think we're talking about when they do the regular the regular walkthroughs of the building right where like where the superintendent goes to the building like as part of her regular like regular job and then invites along a board member to accompany with is that what we're no it's that I don't know what you're what what you're talking about

071but what what what the previous thing was is that the superintend yeah no no I already wrote an X through that that's fine okay but I think Melinda and I were talking about the one where they somebody said where we talked about the it was in the survey with the super following the superintendent as she walks around I think that's a separate thing yeah okay that's that's Community engagement stuff I believe so it sounds if I'm hearing correctly then we're clarifying the the bullet item uh so that you are preparing to move comments to the board to board listening sessions that's revising policy 206 so yes uh you are going to keep that line item as is other than the change uh in wording public comment to comments to the board is that correct yes

072okay didn't we already change it officially at that one meeting that we had we changed it to comments to the board on 206 Chang Dana is checking well I thought we did too I know it was changed in the procedure we also made it the 30 the 3 minutes and it could only be 30 minutes total of one topic and all that at that meeting procedure it was part of a procedure comments to the board so then if that is not a new thing and that's something that we have in place does that need to remain on the the plan if we already have as a as a board if you already have the procedure and the procedure is comments to the board I don't know that that needs to be on there yeah I

073agree so let's take it out and it sounds like I'm hearing from you that it remains comment to the board it does not become something else okay and we can review uh policy 206 to ensure that's the correct language that we have in there if it's not already in there okay just so I understand this right the the listing sessions in are out yeah from what I understand from this conversation you are not replacing comments to the board with listening sessions and at this point you don't have uh plans for listening sessions outside of board meetings and what I would say that means regularly scheduled listening sessions if there's something big that we're going through long range facility planning I think the board always has the opportunity to say we're going to be on site

074for the a session where individuals residents and parents and family members can come and provide input our feedback it doesn't stop us from never doing a listening session but I think it's more focused and it's not just regularly scheduled right you will do them as needed we'll take we'll remove that item we'll clarify okay so I think you have uh lightened up your first year of your board threeyear plan um I will work with the superintendent and board chair to maybe outline some suggested dates for the annual calendar and uh when you might be able to update these items on a regular basis okay thank you thank you very much all right moving right along we are at 5.0 information items and 5.1 is Bond information campaign update by our superintendent Julie nson thank you

075it feels funny talking into microphone that doesn't have the little fuzzy fuzzy little piece on but it you can hear me that's great no I'm good Pat thank you um well I would say Dan and I for sure and other people have done the Pres presentation but Dan and I have the presentation most memorized um we can do it in the dark we can do it on our head we can do it when we sleep it's it's uh all over we have been out and about doing a number of presentations for the referendum um if we want to go ahead and move to the next slide um what I'd like to do is very quickly highlight for the board um what our uh we call it our short presentation when we go out and share

076information and it's important for everyone sitting around the table and I think we've said this enough times and for people in the audience it is not our job to sell the referendum we are not going out saying yes we're not going out saying no when we talk about these sessions that we're outdoing this is informational we want to make sure that every resident parents families anybody that is a voting age has the opportunity and has the information and so um I think the board realizes question one was our highest priorities we could memorize that slide what I want to just bring up here a question that we have gotten asked throughout the campaign um is around our high schools someone asked the question talk with us about how the investment of dollars is going to

077eidge to park and to Woodbury and again I think it's in an effort to want to make sure who where are the dollars being invested in in what school so when we look at question one and we think about um that first chunk that's 25 million which includes Park in Woodburry and then of course the second area for 105 million and that includes all three high schools if we were to break that down so this may be a question you get the investment for question one total Eastridge high school would be 35.8 million that's the lowest Park High School would be 33 plus 5.6 for the secured entryway or 38.6 that's Sean hogendorf math and then third up we have Woodbury High School with 36 million plus 6.7 for the secured entryway or $ 42.7

078million so when we get asked that question what does the investment look like is it equal across our three high schools please know that that is the breakdown by millions of the investment into our schools and really not surprisingly when you look at the um square footage in the space that's being remodeled at Eastridge and Woodbury High School you would know that if it is going to be extremely costly to redo the space that we have especially when I think about Woodbury High School people not even knowing where the front of the school is how do we redefine that so that is a frequently question that we have been getting asked if we go to the next slide um what if Bond question one fails we continue to hear out in the community the conversations

079around High School attendance boundaries and every time we go out and do a presentation we say that if question one fails we are not at a point of changing High School attendance boundaries that would take us at least a year to go through that process to develop what those High School boundaries would be and then to go back to our voters and if not then we would have a plan in place similar to what we're doing Elementary right now that individuals would know that when they go to the polls they're either voting for an attendance boundary change or they're voting to keep their children at the high school that they're at so please if you hear that there are no High School attendance boundary changes is planned um also uh there has been some questions

080around why would you make question to contingent and um our response back is because what we heard consistently throughout our community is that our highest priorities were the items in question one and we need those items to pass in front of those items in question two so if we can go to the next slide um that really just looks at the contingency piece so that is the most commonly asked question that we're getting um on that one uh next slide a reminder um we talk about the Elementary attendance boundary changes and I know the board is aware of that but those would be implemented next year the fall of 2024 2025 so that is why we're out there um on the next slide you will see and board members this is what you asked for

081from Administration you ask that we um are clear about where those boundaries are and so as we go out and share the information as Communications does their part on the website there is a boundary change tool in there families can put their address and it will populate and tell them their Elementary their middle and their high school and so that has all been set up behind the scenes keeping in mind when you saw the chart that had the 427 students I believe those were current students so just know that as the enrollment rolls forward it would be different groups of students but the neighborhoods are all programed for now on the boundary um change tool um on the next slide it is that reminder of $5 for question one $1 for question two and so

082that's $6 on a median valued home I did see uh still wat's presentation we followed them at the City of Woodbury and I want to say their median valued home is 3 and maybe 20 um so even within our communities it's quite different all right next slide uh gets into our technology project Levy and surprisingly there aren't a lot of questions around the tech Levy people really do understand and some of it is because they've seen in the media uh the Cyber or the uh cyber security attacks um we've talked about the pianos we've had for sale in the district every day multiple times um you know if we just look this week and if you could have followed around our Tech director and a number of other technology staff I know everyone's like yes

083our families were made aware that our phones went down right that's a piece of technology now that had nothing to do with our setup it had everything to do with the phone company and cables were cut but it is a constant battle and sometimes a firefighting to keep your hands on everything that's happening with technology and with our systems so for the most part as we've gone out people really have um an understanding of our technology project Levy as we look at the next slide um just a question because this slide was created earlier and of course once we get on the campaign Trail and sharing information we don't like to adjust our slides because then people think well why did you change it what were you trying to communicate so we've held consistent but

084what the board should know when we look at this Slide the state average for school districts that utilize a capital projects Levy is $493 per pupil so of the school districts that use a capital projects Levy the average is $493 it's important to know that still water that I want to say is about a third of our side size excuse me they currently Levy for $5.2 million and remember we're asking for $5 million Rochester Public Schools which we've talked about Rochester Rochester will have on the ballot $10 million and then um duth will also be out on the ballot um for 4.93 million I believe um Dan is it 4.9 five somewhere somewhere around there so just sizewise you can see where South Washington County Schools is so that is a question um that does

085come up uh Still Water would be at I believe it's 571 when you look at their $5.2 million spread across their students the next slide just so the board gets to see it is our tax calculator uh and in there as we've shared the estimated market value and then on the bottom what will pop out very instantaneously will be the cost for question one the cost for question two and the cost for question three on an annual basis as well as on a monthly basis um and then finally getting the word out uh we have had an article in the Pioneer Press and the Star Tribune we were interviewed so we're working as hard as we can with newspapers to get the information out even though we don't have a local one there was a

086video posted online um we had statements shared at our large events so the large football games I think eidge and Woodbury had about 4,000 somewhere up there we made a statement just reminding our residents and individuals attending the game please be informed please go to the polls and vote we've had informational meetings you'll see the list up there of uh groups that we've been to we continue to travel to anyone who will listen to us and anyone who wants to hear the information our schools and school leaders have been responsible for the school groups as well as their PTO and ptas and making sure that information is shared with them of course our Communications team has been busy with staff and family news in the next weeks where I think five weeks out we'll be

087ramping that up even more because what we do know is that by the end of the campaign while some people have heard a lot of the information there are some people that are still surprised that South Washington County Schools is on the ballot and so please if you're an individual who are who's overwhelmed and tired of getting the messages please hit delete the goal is to make sure people are informed um you'll see on the next one some upcoming informational sessions that we'll be doing there will be a District mailing um on or close to October 13th in that first mailing it will include the voting information and polling locations we have uh been told that sometimes our residents come to a polling place it's not correct they move to the next one it's not

088correct and by that time people then give up and go home and so we want to make sure that upfront the district has communicated those polling locations shortly after that the district will do their second quarterly mailing for the year remember in August we had our welcome back to school edition this one will feature on the insert um our bond questions and capital project Levy so all of the information that our residents um need to have will be in paper and it will be out the week of October 19th and then in addition we have uh two Community meetings coming up where we have asked individuals to please copy the information pass it on to your neighbors pass it on to your friends pass it on to people who don't have kids in the school

089district those two evenings are October 11th that will be a virtual session at 5:30 and then October 12th in person at the district service center from 6:00 to 7 so again we're working as hard as we can to figure out H you know how best can we bring our community in and make sure that they have the information as well um Sean I believe is going to go in the back or there he is I'm here Sean is back there just so that um board members can take a look at the web page yeah I just wanted to show a little bit of the website um for the people viewing at home and then also for you all as well um one thing that I would add to for the communications is that we we

090also our our schools are sending this out to all of their Community as well so we also have social media and newsletter posts that we are helping prepare our schools to also be sharing the information um part of that is is that we both all know that people listen to the information from their schools a little closer than they do from the district and so we're trying to get that information in both spots um so what um as I sort of switch over to the website it here um you know there's two sort of spots for this information that are out there um we're sort of interchanging the two um places where people can go because vote 2023 just seems to be a little more of um a way that we're trying to get out

091the vote right and so if if you were to click on the vote 2023 tab this is more than about just our bond and our referendum or our referendum and our Levy this also has all of the voting information as you sort of scroll down here this is the the where do I vote how do I vote early register to vote you know the tax impact calculator is there um and you know we've got our little uh 32 days uh so it's not quite five we or just about five weeks um and then our um and so we just kind of come through here and we also do lay out all of um our general voting questions um as well as our bond questions um here you can also find the virt the information for

092our virtual and our inperson meeting so if you sort of scroll this down um and if you were to click on that link there that will be the zoom meeting that will pop up for that um this stuff will be updated on a constant basis as we keep going um and then our iners meeting here as Julie had mentioned will be Thursday at 6 pm here so we're updating that um we also have just information on our ballot questions here we also have the sample ballots um you know kind hanging out here so so a lot of just the general election information is found here but what people can do is either go to the facility planning tab or then they can also um get there through that tab there too that takes you to

093the facility planning um tab so something that we had just um launched last week um is our um voting our referendum um uh video so it's about a f minute video um featuring superintendent neelson um talking all about this um and so that's really just a nice thing to share for people to have information about what they need um you know the nice thing about our website is it's also translated um so I just want to be able to point that out we also have the information sessions there and as you sort of scroll down this patch you're going to find this information that that Julie was mentioning about here so as we have gotten information about you know how much does this cost for our you know for each school I mean this this

094too again Sean hogendorf math um is uh 35.8 million doll there and you know so we're trying to update this as people give us questions and I'll get to that in a in a second here as people give us questions we try to update this website we also try to put the answers to these questions on our website so um because we know that if one person has a question there's probably others who do as well um another suggestion from a Community member was that they found that the contingent part of this question or about this was just they didn't find it they it took them a minute to find it so we tried to not only is it under the details of bond question 2 but we also broke it out into a larger

095space there so that people certainly know um what that's about um the capital project Levy then has its own little section here um and then we start to get into some of the resources and things like that are out there so um you know people when they want to get to those boundary changes um that tool really is something where you don't have to try to guess on a map am I on the north side of a street or the east side of a street they can plug in their address and so um you can go to the site where that is lives um that way or if people click this here and you kind of come through of course it's not gonna thinking that's going to be thinking probably however that will pop up

096right away when I'm not on a network like this and people are able to address that again the other reason is if you check your check my address that's going to go right to um that that widget that's just acting a little strangely right now we also with those Maps though you can see if you if you are somebody who likes to see the maps and likes to see the areas likes to see the neighborhoods we have um each of the schools that are impacted here by that um all listed out um the property tax um Impact Tool this one does take you off to another website um here and then as we said you could type in an estimated market value I will do something a little less than our the number we have

097been seeing all the time and and you'll see that how that just pops up immediately again we're trying to take the math out of it for people and help them understand what this tax impact actually is on them uh let me go back um and then and then the biggest thing that we're trying to push out right now both with my communications team and through our staff meetings as we're going is this submit a question part um and so we want people to be able to submit questions that they here have submit questions at they're hearing um so I do have principles who are reaching out to me all the time say hey when I presented this at our staff meeting here are a few of the questions that we're getting so that's the way

098that we can update this website it's also a way that we can start to answer those questions we are certainly going to reply to the email that people send but again if one person has that question we want to be able to provide it out to the community as well um and and be able to post that in our frequently asked questions section of this website that's right below that so I just wanted to give a little rundown of this website um as we go there and as I round out uh as we've been out uh on the information campaign Trail um we've had a lot of questions about previous things that we've discussed around enrollments around capacities um around how we got to where we're at uh and so we know that all of

099that information is on the website so people are asking really good questions um before I close though I do want to address um and clarify two questions that we've received related to the campaign um we've received reports of individuals door- knocking and stating that the district has kitty litter boxes in school bathrooms any statement that there are kitty litter boxes in our schools is false and utterly ridiculous um and so we need to make that clear for whoever is sharing those false statements and should we be able to um determine who is making and spreading those false statements we will absolutely follow up uh but that is absolutely false and ridiculous the next question that we have heard um and we received questions about our bathrooms and that the reason the school district is asking

100for new bathrooms is to accommodate students who are transgender first board members by law we must allow students to use the restroom of the sex they identify with we do not keep track we do not monitor it is something by law that we need to provide as for the bathrooms requested as part of our Renovations both as part of our high schools and our elementary schools we are not at a point of Designing what they will look like or exactly where they will be as we've discussed when the price estimates and the cost estimates are done for purposes of the bond it was all based on square footage and so right now what we have is the square footage and the area that are needed to gather the cost estimates the design process for our

101bathrooms um will not begin until there is an approved Bond and we actually have designers on site to work with our leaders and to work um with our district administrators and so I really wanted to take the time to call those two questions out because they are both very concerning to us as District leaders and so we would hope board members anybody listening in the audience if you are hearing that information um if someone has evidence or believes they have evidence we would welcome um pictures and a conversation but otherwise we would ask that those false statements stop um stop being spread throughout our school district um with that uh Dan and I we are continuing I think we have a session tomorrow but most mornings and most nights we are out on the campaign

102Trail sharing information um our other executive cabinet members are busy monitoring our schools because they all to have a plan for making sure that their school communities get the information that they need out to their families and residents in their area thank you okay thank you all right we are at 5.2 Financial update and that will be presented this evening by Dan Pine Executive Director of Finance and operations Shara we going have questions first and all yes okay excuse what one second then you can tell okay okay I just have a question about the um breakdown of Investments for the middle school projects do we have a breakdown of that like we did for the three high schools uh we can absolutely get one we were not asked that question yet but we can absolutely

103do a breakdown for that question and I can uh I will send that out to the board so you have the breakdown for middle schools it has is on that handy dandy website byman and Woodbury yep I will I will find it and share with board members in case you get asked that question so you have it right at your fingertips okay all right Dan good evening everybody um tonight we'll be giving our financial update I um certainly excited about the the twins of course um first time in a long time that they want to a playoff game and then a playoff series it I used to play baseball and follow baseball very very closely and I did a lot of reading and about the old time baseball players and one of them um Yogi

104Bara was a catcher for New York Yankees long time ago and he any baseball player not the brightest bulb on the tree um he had gone out to uh dinner with Mickey manle and his teammates and they just went to a pizza place and they sat down and you ordered a pizza and the waitress asked do you want to cut into this true story eight slices or four and he said you better make it four I don't think I can eat eight true story anyway so tonight we'll talk about how we do our forecast for our budgets um we're kind of in AOW right now waiting for our final audit numbers to get done and um we're always kind of monitoring what's going to happen in the future it's very important also during contract negotiations

105to kind of see where we end up um so I'll just explain a bit how we forecast our budgets um why do we forecast our budgets well we want to estimate our future um fund balances as you know the fund balances are District's checkbook it's monitored the amount by the Department of Education uh there's a calculation that would say that your districts in your operating debt if you have a negative fund balance um but as you know our fund balance has been going up a little bit and as you know our board policy is to have a fund balance of 16.6% of our operating expenditures about two months worth of expenditures we also forecast to see if we need to make adjustments and um we also have to base on a lot of assumptions um

106it's always based on the information that we know today so some of the assumptions we use in our forecast enrollment is a big one um we're always very conservative or at least I am when we when we look at our enrollment um because if you have more students than you budgeted then you have extra money but if you have less then you're going to you're going to have less money that you've already spent um so our for my forecast for the for the enrollment shows a very slight increase on overall enrollment about 1.5% over five years um that's about 55 students per year uh the biggest factors are kindergarten which is based on the birth rates it's pretty much based on history because it's a total guess on what's going to be in the kindergarten

107class um some other factors things like PSO which we have students in the buildings but we don't get paid for them because they go to um to college and the state pays their college tuition and of course how many drops we have and um keeping an eye on you know when it goes up and down so with that the budget enrollment over the years um those are actual numbers up until um 2022 is an actual number and then 2023 is what we think we'll end up at we're still waiting to get our final numbers from the state on that and and and that will allow us to finish up our audit then as we look to the Future um and this is based on a cohort survival method and then is we kind of use

108that number the kindergarten number if you look at the next slide I think it's the next one and that's everybody's favorite subject um birth rates INF fertility rates um I simply just go out to the to uh Minnesota Health tables and they published the the birth of every county in the state so we use Washington County burst to project our kindergarten and as we've been told um in the last demographic study that you know 2020 was the lowest birth rate since 1979 and you can see by this chart that yes indeed in Washington County it's our lowest birth rate at least since 2012 um the birth rates number of births um in the county will translate to our kindergarten year about six years later so then what we do is we take um what we

109had for kindergarten and see what percent of those of the bursts went to our kindergartens and you can see the percentages in the side it's not always going to be exactly the same but pretty much we average about 46.3% of the burst in Washington County attend our Public Schools that's actually a pretty a pretty amazing stack considering that our population of our district is about 110,000 our district is wholly in Washington County we don't go to any other counties and the population of the count is about 260,000 so we capture more into our schools than we have as a percentage of the population so we have about 42% of the people live in our district of 42% of the people in Washington County live in our district but we actually capture more into our schools

110there's different factors for that but a lot of it has to do with where the non District people go to school so then we take those numbers and we put them into a chart we won't make you read this chart but uh CAC is used to this we talk about this a lot um and what we what we like to do is look at where what was the survival between grades so we always look down to the right so if we figure that over the last years the difference between what the kids in second grade went into the next third grade how much of those did we capture or do we get more we put all those numbers together to come up with our forecast for the future and then we also want to monitor

111how doing against budgets so for for forecasting 18827 in our budget is 18,500 we know that we're we're in pretty good shape other Revenue assumptions that we that we have to use we have to look at the basic formula because most of our revenues derived by multiplying the basic formula by the number of students uh we know that in 2024 $713 per pupil unit um that's an increase of 4% that came from from the state legislature um State legisl also um Step by law that it would go up by 2% in 2025 and then after that it's tied to inflation up to 3% so it can't go higher than 3% but it could go up to 3% generally before this last session we generally get 2% a year on the formula um it's determined by

112state legislature whoops that's okay and we for our assumptions after um 2025 we're assuming 2% other Revenue assumptions our federal title and spe Federal special education are remaining essentially flat like they're not going to increase much uh other fees will stay Flat state special education Aid will increase by the number of of by higher expenditures because it's basically a percentage of what we spend in special education and as our expenditures go higher as we have to staff more for more child count then our age should go up and then we also know that our operating referendum passed by the voters increases with inflation each year on the expenditure side the big one is weight just and benefit um most all of them are negotiated we have 11 unions eight of them in the general fund

113um Abby and the HR team is constantly negotiating with these different groups generally we talk about increases as a percent of salaries and wages essentially known as a cost of living adjustment but also many many groups have steps which are the same as longevity basically if you stay another year then you go another step you have some type of increase and then on top of that you'd have a cola increase in the teacher contracts they have steps and L Lanes so they can get an increase for staying another year it's a step unless they're at the very end of their steps but they can go across if have to get more education then that's called a lane and we have to take all those things in consideration when we look at our expenditures generally all

114the labor Agreements are two years and we also can't forget to increase all the payroll taxes as we increase the salaries and wages the other cost that we have to deal with utility ities Professional Services Sub teers sub Paras snow removal last year was a bad year waste removal textbooks instructional supplies and just just repair supplies alone for our models we assume about a two and a half% increase which I know right now is less than inflation but generally these things even out and then we do a little miscellaneous figuring um we kind of get guess like how many retirements we have and you're saying why do you guess that because generally there could be up to a $50,000 difference between what a new teacher comes in at and what a new teacher retires from

115so we're still filling the spot but we're filling at a much lower and not just straight salary that includes taxes and benefits and stuff um so we'll still fill the slot but it'll be filled at a much lesser cost um we also know that if enrollment goes up we need to increase our staffing so we kind of I kind of just use a general formula for that and then we have to look at our building needs and if we need more rentals and things like that as rentals um as opposed to construction would be an operating expense with all that and the latest projections we've done um as we look to the Future really the next three years out we're seeing that our expenditures are slowly creeping above our revenues and mainly because we just

116don't have the biggest part of our Revenue the state aid doesn't increase at the rate of inflation or at the rate of what people need to settle their contracts at with that then we can project our fund balances we're looking you know that our fund balance at the end of 22 23 is not totally calculated yet but we we know it's it is going creeping up to about 12% but then as we put in expenditures and revenues for the next four years um we did budget a surplus budget in 24 so we know it'll go up slightly but then as we look to the Future and we look at expenses um unless the state increases the formula by a lot more we're going to see eventually it's going to eroll the fund balance and that's

117our update for tonight any questions any questions that I'm G to take this personally um obviously so my question really is around um do we think that as the inflation if our expenses are going to rise or sorry if our revenue is going to rise in lock step with inflation like would we expect that the gap between our expenses and our Revenue in the out years to shrink eventually it should catch up it really depends on you know if you're just going to use peer inflation you know the you know what the CPI is and what you know those are select expenses they use to calculate those um if you're going to use those straight numbers you know those are all projections to what it's going to be uh we we pretty much know you

118know what salaries we pay and we have guess on what we can negotiate contracts at um I think it's really you know probably the biggest thing the taxpayers did um was to approve the referendum with inflation on it so that's going to be exact inflation if it goes up your operating referendum will go up the form your amount will by that amount if it goes down obviously it'll go down too um the formula is based on legislative determination although they are stuck at at least 3% if inflation goes up that high but if it doesn't go up that high then it's not going to so it could in some worlds not even go up 2% if it's going to be pure inflation so do we know what the legislature uses as its inflationary measure or

119is that is that something to be determined by a future leg well if they use the same one they'd use for the referendum and um it's uh I have to look it up I think it's a government price deflator they call it um so it's not like it's not like the legislature takes some um I'd have to look in the statute I think they they might have it listed what they're using I don't know off the top of my head but they don't like create their own met no no I I'm sure they'll take a standard because they've always they put a standard in for the referendums because the inflation on the referendum has been in place for many years I mean not for us but for right so they have a formula for that

120I'd have to look at this chart I don't remember what they used I think it's CPI okay and then would this require and I mean I know one of the other reasons why in addition to the to the voters approving that Levy I mean we also did some pretty substantial Cuts I mean I guess I'm looking at the gap between what we have now and 16% and thinking that I don't know how we get from here to there without investigating more Cuts correct or is that like a that's too too early to discuss that um yeah I would say yes to your second question um but to your to the basic question I would say that we don't we don't live in absolutes when it comes to the budget so we're always making decisions every

121day that either add to the fund balance or sometimes decrease the fund balance so we're very thoughtful in our process and when there's a chance to save money without going through you know a huge process you know we'll do those things um I mean just an example is you know through our the great work of the human resources department and you know we able to keep our work comped down and they gave us a refund of a million dollars so those are all little things that we do to keep that fund Bal any other questions I just have a general question so just for curiosity sake um where do the other three unions where does the funding for that come from if they're not in the general fund uh screw nutrition is self- sustaining so

122their money comes from reimbursements and and lunch sales um Community ad um that comes from their various sources between state aid Levy um fees um those are the the two main ones that are Community has a few different unions in their in their fund between um kids club supervisors and peras and then scho nutrition has their own Union so those are all self- sustained funds didn't you say that as far as the special ed staff support don't doesn't that come from the special ed fund instead of the general fund as well the special ed funding um is part of general fund are you thinking about the dollar yeah yeah so the dollar is just break down of General any other additional questions okay thanks thank you you are so cute 5.3 is the first reading

123of proposed uh policy changes and remember board members that this is your time to ask questions because when we get to our business meeting it will be no discussion we'll just be taking action so this evening our reading of the our policy changes will be given by our superintendent Julie nson thank you uh the following policies have been reviewed and revised to reflect updates in Minnesota statute the definitions legal references and cross references this evening I am bringing forth six policies for uh review by the full board to start with 526 hazing prohibition uh in that particular policy there are no recommended changes the next one 527 student use and parking of Motor Vehicles patrols inspection and searches and for that policy as well from the committee there were no proposed policy changes next up

124606 textbooks and instructional materials policy was reviewed and for that particular policy there are just a couple couple of minor grammatical changes as well as if you may have printed it a couple of spelling errors but we we caught those now um so basically just to make note when we're talking about instruction that they it's standards aligned instruction uh policy 67.1 early entrance to kindergarten or as we call it eek um and for that particular policy there's no proposed changes 611 homeschooling uh 611 homeschooling policy talks about how we work with individuals who are homeschooled and so for that particular policy there are no suggested changes and then finally the one that has the most markups for the evening 615 is testing accommodations modifications and exemptions fors Section 504 plans and English learn learner identified

125students um in there what you're going to see is that the general statement of policy has all been struck through and what has been added in are the different tests that students may take so there's a Min Minnesota test of academic skills we call that the mtas um alternative access for El students or English learner students and then C um is what type of testing is done for our English Learners who are new to the United States and so in there now that purpose of policy has been revised and then as we look at definition of terms it really is um to note that there is a procedural man manual for the Minnesota assessments and so as a reference to that one in terms of terms the reference is back to that manual that is

126provided by our testing company uh Pearson and then finally uh Roman numeral number four granting and documenting accommodations modifications or exemptions for testing again you'll see uh that we are referring back to that procedures manual that is put together um and available from Minnesota Pearson access and then finally um Roman numeral five just takes a look at how our district assessment coordinator and our department of special services work together um in gathering that information and then with that uh with those adjustments the legal references have also been updated for that particular policy so with that on any one of the six policies are there any questions for the policy review Comm uh Comm Review Committee members or executive cabinet members okay anybody okay uh at this time we have we had anyone sign up this

127evening all right seeing none we'll move along we're at 6.0 and that is our reports and comments and we'll start with our superintendent Julie nson thank you I will make this quick um it has been a week of celebrating our high school students We Have Had Each of our high schools has had their award ceremony Woodbury I Woodbury High School and easd High School earlier Monday or excuse me Monday evening that they had their Awards awards night and then today Park High School students and families came together to celebrate our Park High high school students um we also executive cabinet members have been out at events um I would say that our most fun events are football games when it's lightning and it's going to rain um I'll just tell you the quick story um

128I happened to be by Carrie Lopez and if you don't know Carrie has a boot on because she had surgery on her leg and so one of the assistant principls came over to Carrie and I was right by her and they said it was the end of third quarter beginning of fourth and they said you can go home now and I said thank you I'm going home and it was just at the point where the sky was lighting up and it was about to rain and so thank you to Executive cabinet members around the table for uh being there we had a crew at Park High School and Woodbury High School uh we had fun back and forth saying are you brain delay um but it really did come into question um some questions from

129parents and families about how do we handle rain delays in light of not having officials does our team have to travel um is it unreasonable for kids to be out at 12 or 12:30 in the night playing football and so uh just know that Christine uh with our athletic directors and activity directors has worked through some of those and then finally for the board uh just a quick update um our 2425 calendar will be coming forward for a first reading uh the second meeting in November to be approved prior to winter break at the meeting in December um and I so I know that was the board's goal that can we get the calendar out early um I will just share with the board one challenge that we're working through is finding enough days so

130that we can implement the legislation around literacy and the read act and so just expect uh when you see it it's in draft form we're still going back and forth working with our Union and um taking a look at days um but just expect that our calendar May look slightly different and we right now are making a commitment to get all of our teachers all of our teachers are teachers of literacy to get all of our teachers trained in one year and so um there's a little bit uh in the legislation that we could extend our secondary into the second year but if we're going to disrupt a calendar we really believe that it's best to do it all in one year and so just know that uh final approval for the board as well

131as anyone listening will come in December thank you okay thank you um Melinda we had uh last week we had a board retreat and where we got to do an escape room and that was really fun so and then last night we had our 916 board meeting and what we talked about the most was the um multi-tiered system of support the mtss um and our current um MTS Implement to it appears that it's going to be quite effective um there's um really um some great things that are happening so as far as in math there um the math achievement proficiency rates are stronger than any other Intermediate School um and the graduation rates are on an upward Trend and the behavioral referrals have um um decreased in the recent years so those are all good

132things okay Pat okay I just wanted to update everyone on bright Works bright works is the former um what was it called before okay anyway metro metro exu yes so um they their fall calendar is out for professional development and there's quite a bit that um I just clicked on the button to see how expensive these classes are they're like $500 online so I don't know if that's possible for teachers to do but they're all CEUs that are um they're already confirmed as ceu eligible so um there lots of them in all the different things mtss is one of them and um coaching for principles is another so there's lots of there's restorative justice you know um all kinds of things so just remind teachers and um professionals that that is available and uh we're

133going on a retreat in October to madens I'll miss a board meeting I think yeah oops okay as sure uh like Melinda said the policy committee met uh I also attended CAC we talked a lot about the upcoming audit I'm very excited for it um Blackburn and I are going to like giggle about it because it sounds like a trip I know you all think I'm joking I am not um and also for anybody who's out there seac is the best committee everyone should join it um I also was able to attend the Dei parent advisory uh committee where we talked through the Ani plan we talked about um some new native education um curriculum and we talked about some procedures around um um harm that students are receiving in school particularly around racial harm

134okay Eric yeah just a quick report on the Amy board meeting in September uh the most of it was comprised of a uh just a presentation by Morris letherman on a survey that they had done uh over 2023 just with um parents and and generally um the population of Minnesota just kind of where we're at uh some what politically but more so where we're at in regards to school um I guess issues you could call it uh funding tax tolerance curriculum that kind of thing uh pretty interesting stuff uh you know you can always debate the accuracy of those things but I mean there is some interesting points I think that that kind of give us an indication of where um people's mindset is and um kind of what they want to see out of

135their their public school system so uh if you go on the website it's pretty easy to find and I would kind of encourage everyone to take a look at it was it simar to uh no it was more there was more specific questions I mean there was maybe some overlap but different but also a series of different kind of questions in regards to people's opinions on um you know do you feel that for example sorry for example um do you feel that the public school system in Minnesota is in going the right direction or the wrong direction or doing the thing in regards to curriculum in general that would be an example so okay thank you Eric y um I attended the presentation that uh Dan and Julie gave to the city of w Woodbury

136it was another opportunity to show how smart you were I mean you how you knew your stuff you were really good so I couldn't have done it so just want you to know so that's about all I attended um next we're at 7.0 our future meeting dates um we have a school board meeting business meeting on Tuesday Tuesday oh because of mea October 17th at 2023 and a workshop board meeting November 2nd both meetings will be held here at the district service center at 6 o'clock uh next is 8.0 and that is we are adjourned