001foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign good evening it is Thursday March 23 2023 at 6 PM we are at the district service center in Cottage Grove Minnesota we would like to acknowledge that the land on which We Gather is a land of the milwaukeean Dakota people manawatan means dwellers of the Spirit Lake our first item on the agenda is our roll call Dana will you call the roll Eric tessmer here Sharon Van Lear here Helen maboo Amelia reckinger here next please rise for the our Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all next is 3.0 the the approval of our agenda can I get a motion to approve the agenda move by Louise and seconded by Melinda are those
002who approve aye aye all opposed motion carried the next item on our agenda is 4.0 and that is this evening our student District ambassadors and they will be presented this evening by our superintendent Julie Nielsen thank you it is always a great day when we have kids at district office it was about uh eight hours ago we had the whole Space filled with our students they left cookie crumbs and some pizza crumbs when they were done but nonetheless we had um very engaging morning this evening we have with us Helen Boo and Amelia reckinger and I told the two it's always nerve-wracking to be up in front and then you kind of look up and you see your picture up there and wow what's happening you can settle in a little bit um and so
003I shared with Helen that I would ask some questions and she would be able to answer and then when it's Amelia's turn she would just go off on her own as a high school student so Helen just to start with do you want to share with the group what grade you're in and what school you go to I'm in fifth grade and I go to Great Cloud Elementary School and um today uh or excuse me uh can you share with the group what you enjoy most about being a student ambassador well like sometimes when we do like the student ambassador stuff we um well we talk about like some stuff that we might like change in the in like the words that we do and we also like um talk about the stuff that like
004should be better for our school and like the district and Helen do you have opportunities when we come together to interact with the middle school students and high school students yes I do and what how did we start out our meeting today I'm an inclusion activity do you remember what our welcome and inclusion activity was we were in groups and we talked about like some stuff that we can't like live about we can't like one thing from like our childhood and like kind of stuff about like fun facts about us you didn't share the most important part about how you got to the questions and Miss Emilia was one of the leaders how did you get to which question you were going to ask what did you have a bag of what a bag of
005M M's so they were given a small Big M M's and of course that opened their eyes and then in their teams they picked out one m m and the m m led to sharing something with their group and then when we got done they all tried to summarize things that they had learned about each other um today Helen we talked about our strategic plan and what was one piece of feedback that you heard in your group that was discussed that you would share with the board members because you remember I said that this is the group that will actually be approving the Mission Vision and core values what was one thing you would share so you said that like can't live without the Hershey collection oh okay that was about our welcome inclusion I
006couldn't live without a shoe collection we're moving on to the Strategic plan so remember we talked about the Strategic plan um what would you tell the board in terms of feedback I feel like some words like kids can't understand them like I can but like most kids can't really can you think of one of the words that we talked about today that was part of um either the Mission Vision or core values that kids were like especially elementary kids weren't sure about can you think of a word oh Emilia has your sheet there what was the word Equitable yeah Equitable Equitable so in our students eyes when they looked at and read the Mission Vision and core values um some of the words were from their perspective not in kid language um even the word
007integrity came up and you know one of the students said well why wouldn't we just say care like caring for each other so we have a lot of feedback that our students gathered today and wrote down with team leaders that we will be bringing back and sharing with the board um next we took a tour of District office learn about district office there's like lots of people behind all this stuff that like happens at our school or in the district and like I found that like how much money they put into like the whole school like the whole District yeah they have like lots of candy yeah that was all set up um but they got to go through the print center and we took a look at how many copies were printed every month
008you know 0.015 cents what does that equate to we talked about nine hundred thousand dollars being spent on snow plow snow blowing and snow removal and so lots of great information and the last question before we turn it over to Amelia is um what do you enjoy most about being a student at grade cloud being a student in gray cloud is kind of like what we work for is like what something we get is good so like today we this whole month we've been like reading a lot and now we got to like pie Miss lushik in the face so it's the wrap up to I love to read month and they got to pie their principal in the face and so they worked hard to get reading minutes and then they had a celebration
009at the end so thank you Helen Amelia you get to follow that act Amelia do you want to go ahead and start out by introducing yourself and then just talking a little bit about school our district ambassadors and any other information you want to share yes um my name is Amelia reckinger I go to Park High School and I'm part of the Park youth ambassadors and what we discussed there is what we've been discussing lately is a lot of the roles and responsibilities of the staff parents teachers admin and the community that doesn't attend the school but still is involved we have been working to understand what each group should be doing so that our school is the best that it can be and we also have been making our own vision and mission statement
010outside of just the using the districts one and we worked with the staff to create that for our vision our vision is that Park will park Scholars will graduate with the Knowledge and Skills necessary to thrive in an increasingly Global and diverse community and with our mission statement our mission is to create a culturally Rich Community where we will all learn and grow together through diverse opportunities that Foster culturally competent communication collaboration and critical thinking that enhance post-secondary Readiness and contributions to the local and Global communities and um we've been working on that for a few months now but at our meeting today with the with the district we we all brought our views to what we've been working on to the district and we also worked to make the district's strategic plan as Helen
011said more approachable and um carry more value because once it's understandable it helps it helps bring more value sorry it creates more value when it's you can understand what it's saying so with the mission statement providing an equitable and inclusive learning environment that empowers each student we switched around words like Equitable empower [Music] and we also thought of things we could add like safety and um safety and instead of the word empower we use support and then instead of Equitable we used fare so we change it to providing a fair safe and inclusive learning environment that supports each student and with our vision with the district's Vision to be a school district where students staffs families and communities partnered to build quality relationships and promote Student Success our group worked and created to be a
012school district where students staff families and Community work together to build relationships and support Student Success we also talked what it meant the difference between equity and equality we also and address the different groups that are involved in the district because we weren't quite sure what community meant until um we thought about it and so we thought not everyone's going to think that as hard as we did about what it actually meant they're just going to read it so that's a little bit of what we worked on there and then some other things we worked on were the core values and definitions of those core values of relationships Integrity Equity excellence and educational innovation um one value that really stood out to a lot of people was the educational innovation which is educating students through
013new ideas and methods that increase student engagement and encourage creativity critical thinking and collaboration um I when I read that I don't really know what educational Innovation means I'm sure other people do but I had no idea and many of our many of the people I worked with felt like there should be another name for it and we just thought of teamwork um we felt it was more approachable and understandable because educational Innovation is a little intimidating to me um and we also talked about other groups brought up really good points about educate or teamwork educational Innovation it's always changing as students are always changing and our world is always changing and so that's something that would have to be redefined a lot and also we felt like things what could we do to innovate
014educationally I guess we could we all remember when we were in elementary schools middle school and we had the older kids come down and I'm sure Helen felt the same way when the high schoolers are at the district meetings everybody kind of just looks up to older kids and we felt like part of the educational Innovation could be including older kids in um and younger kids lives as they look up to them and they're they're a little bit more approachable than the big teacher that tells them what to do every day uh so we we want to bring students more into leadership positions and also that also teaches the older kids to be more independent and realize that they have they have purpose and what they do can actually matter in somebody's life Amelia I
015know you had a quote from Felipe today was was that quote connected to that what felipation yes okay pretty much I've tried to summarize as best as I could but Felipe said it was really good did you want to share what that was I think he said something like there's power in kids teaching kids but something along those lines of a little bit of adults maybe say out of the way and if we had kids similar to some of the things that we do in Avid when we have the tutorials and kids are working with kids and teaching it forces whoever's being the teacher to know the information and then to share it with others Amelia I know that you are a student leader at Park do you want to just share with the board
016other things that you're engaged with at Park High School clubs activities Athletics yeah so I am the publicist for National Honor Society I've been in National Honor Society this is my second year I've been in student council yearbook link crew and then I play tennis in the fall and then I manage hockey and baseball for the rest of the year my favorite part of being in park is the fact that I know all my teachers I mean I think that's a little easier for me than some other people with um my grandpa but but maybe they know her because of Grandpa right yeah but I also it's been a really great place to just make really good relationships with teachers and staffs and I feel like everyone kind of knows each other and it's really
017it's fun to be involved once you're there and thank you so we are really fortunate to have such incredible older leaders from our high schools come in and I know Helen would agree but they watch our six or eight high school students wherever they go and so we use every opportunity to have mixed opportunities for those conversations and so the board will get a summary of the feedback from all of our groups today this was just a little bit of a snippet um but I would say overall the resounding feedback was kid words and not adult words and so we just as we move that information forward to the board we want to make sure that our mission vision and core values may not look like other districts it's not a professional polish rather these
018are words and statements that our students can relate to and they know what it means so thank you I don't know if there are any questions from the board for our two students but thank you to Amelia and Helen any questions from the board well thank you it was a pleasure and you know you are our future so you get ready to take over so we're preparing you to be those leaders that you're going to be you probably take over now your parents are out there so thank you all right next item on our agenda is 5.0 comments to the board at this time individual thank you foreign you're welcome thank you thank you for everyone for um speaking tonight we're going to move along to um excuse me uh 6.0 our consent agenda items
019be presented this evening by Timmy bye uh next is 6.0 consent items all consent items are considered excuse me considered routine and non-controversial by the school board and will be approved by a single motion prior to this meeting board members have had the opportunity to review each of these items and could have requested that any item be moved to the action items for individual consideration can I have a motion to approve the consent agenda items second moved by Eric second by Katie um all in favor aye all right all opposed any abstentions abstain I'm staying thank you very much uh next is uh 7.0 information items these items were moved uh have been moved tonight to the next meeting uh moving on to 8.0 and these are our action items 8.1 is the Native American
020advisory presentation that will be given this evening by Kelly Jensen our assistant superintendent and James McGee director of diversity equity and inclusion yeah all right uh good evening board chair Van Lear board members student ambassadors and superintendent Nielsen I'm here this evening to introduce James James McGee our director of diversity equity and inclusion I told him every time I say Miss McGee I think of Mr Magoo the purpose of our report is to acknowledge the concurrent vote by our Native American parent advisory committee this vote requires no action other than acknowledgment from the board because the committee voted in concurrence meaning they believe we are in compliance with state law in meeting the needs of our Native American students there would have been necessary board action if they would have had a non-concurrent vote this
021process is required so that we can continue to receive state funding that is specifically meant to support the academic achievement of Native American students we are eligible for this funding because we have more than 20 students who self-identify as Native American and at this time I'll turn over Mr McGee to talk about the programs and activities that support that concurrence vote all right so by Statute we are any District in the state of Minnesota with more than 10 students who would self-identify as Native American is required to have a Native American parent advisory committee that parent advisory committee is also one of the Committees that over um gives input and must give input by statute on the achievement and integration plan so we've been in constant communication that's one of the parent advisories that Dei
022oversees as a whole and they are the ones that gave us the concurrent vote based on our activities and progress toward goals for our Native American students our student or I'm sorry our staff representative for the school district is Brittany amitrano she is also a cultural liaison she works with students at Park High School and she also is our liaison when there are situations that require a Native American uh presence or representation to represent both families and students in schools that could be in the form of IEP meetings or in cultural events Brittany is the one who organizes our events for Native American programming um I I put these out of order a little bit I apologize for that so uh uh Ms Jansen said because we have more than 20 students who identify self-identifies
023Native American in our district we are eligible for State funding that is meant to provide additional programming and support for the academic and cultural achievement and learning of our Native American students as well as the rest of our families uh in the district that can participate in these cultural learning activities um the vote by the Native American parent advisory was concurrent they agreed that we are meeting the goals and um using the money wisely that we've been entrusted with the Native American parent advisory committee is chaired by Bob Tweedy he is a parent in the district and also includes members Gina Carlson who's appearance in the district Mika Hunter who is our student representative our Elder on the committee is great grandmother Mary and we also have Lacosta redbear Awad Brittany amitrano is like as
024I said she's our Native American Cultural liaison she also oversees the activities of the parent advisory group we continue to work very closely where they are a kind of an accountability measure this was no uh uh easy vote we have to we have to prove that we're going out of our um that we're not just continuing with typical practice that we are doing extra work to uh ensure that the money that we're receiving from the state is going toward extra activities it's a supplement to what students are already receiving in schools one of the purposes of this funding by the state is to increase academic achievement for our Native American students to decrease Dropout rates and to improve the overall climate for Native American students and their families in the school district we also take
025advantage of federal funding um that is we're actually in process of completing that application that's due in the springtime and as we go through that process we'll report any necessary action items to the board as well so some of the things that we do with this funding we have some pictures I'm really excited for the first time we were able to have a three-night moccasin Workshop this was open to anybody in our community and was attended uh primarily by our Native American families and students some of the other things that we do we provide student support in terms of ACT prep and tutoring um and professional development that's available to our staff and is also then made available to students so we can have authentic cultural learning about Native American students and the cultural experience
026that they've had in the United States We are continuing to build a lending library with culturally culturally authentic texts that is not just representative of the experience of Native American students and families but also authored by Native American authors who two two few have been um published to an extent that they're read widely across school districts and so we're excited that we have a growing Library I'm also proud uh one of our accomplishments this year was our school East Ridge High School put our land acknowledgment that was helped developed by our elders and by our Native American parent advisory on the wall of East Ridge High School accompanied by flags that represent some of the tribes that are represented in our school district like I said we have the ACT tutoring and prep sessions for
027juniors is also we also participate in the wooden Dakota horse project what we currently have running uh just got up running this spring for the third year in a row as our Native American one-to-one reading connection program this is a one-on-one tutoring for Native American elementary students over the last two years that we've had this program reading level I'm sorry reading levels for those students that participated uh grew at least two levels um as we are implementing a new literacy curriculum in most of our elementary schools we'll have to adjust those measures to see if we're still making progress toward literacy goals but the program over the last few years has been productive and successful and we're excited to see it continue might there be any questions any questions for the board a couple questions
028there Mr McGee appreciate your information um how long have we been enrolled in this or involved in this program I believe seven years our district has participated in uh this funding opportunity through the state do you know how much money we get every year I actually have that on me I will get that back and then I can report that out to the board appreciate that you just mentioned one other question you just mentioned um one of the goals is to increase or decrease the dropout rate do you have any statistics on that have we been able to do that or um I guess within the district um because this was an acknowledgment item I didn't bring all of those okay that I can definitely go grab that and report it to the board okay
029appreciate that thank you I grabbed my shirt um funding I think this year we were approved for I'm sorry 75 000 this year and so we'll probably be in that 75 to 80 000 uh for next year thank you and we're required to have this the state requires us to have this program no the state requires us to have a Native American parent advisory committee because we have 20 or more students who self-identify as Native American we are eligible to take advantage of this programming okay one of the things on the slide it says that to get Federal funding students have to prove their tribal connection right but I know that's also kind of fraught right and so how do you how do we manage that yep so um over the past couple years uh
030in I want to be very clear what we're there's a difference between what the state and feds require for um self-identification for Native American students this presentation was specifically about the state funding however for the federal funding piece of this in the past year we have uh undergone an initiative to ensure that all of our students at the beginning of the school year have the necessary form rather than having students have to and their families go seek it out we have it available at our enrollment nights at our open houses to make sure that all students who or their families identify as Native American have the opportunity to self-identify as such yeah thanks yeah I believe they enroll in their tribe and then they have the documentation of which tribe that they are affiliated with
031they're sort of that there was uh for a time that was the only way um in past years we've uh realized that some of those reporting mechanisms were um not giving us an accurate depiction and so we most districts in the state actually under accounted a number of students who actually do identify as Native American because there are different tribal laws that maybe did not necessarily correspond with what the federal and then the state were saying so this attempt over the last year has been to make it more inclusive of students and families who do identify as Native American great great job anyone else thank you thank you oh do we need emotion here here okay okay the vote to not take action or you can vote to approve let's let's take it and since
032it's under action let's take the vote May I get a motion to approve uh okay all those in favor aye all opposed motion carry thank you thank you thank you all right um 8.2 proposed policy changes that will be presented this evening by superintendent Julie Benson uh thank you this evening I come back forth uh with seven uh the seven policies that we had the opportunity last meeting to go through and discuss um as well as these policies being reviewed by our policy committee we have two policies in the 300 series 302 superintendent and 303 superintendent selection those two policies if you look back in your notes both had minor changes one of those changes were per msba Minnesota School Board Association in the 400 series we are asking for approval of four policies policy
033400 policies that are Incorporated by reference those for that particular policy we removed one policy and added in two as per msba 401 equal employment opportunity there was a minor grammatical and legal change 402 non-discrimination disability there was a legal reference update and 402.2 the non-discrimination Section 504 there was one minor change on who to contact in that policy and then finally there's one 700 series policy coming forward 704 the development and maintenance of an inventory of fixed assets and a fixes asset asset accounting system and that particular policy had legal and grammatical updates and so this evening I am asking for approval on those seven policies I can't get a motion too so move second okay move by Pat second by Simi is there any discussion okay seeing none of all those in favor
034aye aye all opposed motion carried thank you 8.3 is our revised budget for 22 20 that will be presented by our Executive Director of Finance and operations Dan Pine good evening chair Van Lear members of the school board student ambassadors and super tan Nielsen last board meeting we went over a revised budget the school districts will revise their budgets annually after student counts state and federal allocations and labor expenses are better known than what the preliminary budget had which was compiled in June of last year we presented this budget to your last board meeting highlighted the variances this general fund budget has revenues of about 279 million 691 458 dollars and expenses of 279 million 102 598 dollars it leaves a surplus of about 588 thousand dollars which is a reduction in the surplus of
035about a million dollars from the original budget in your packets you do have a summary of all the budgets so tonight we'll be asking you to approve all the budgets including General funds Food Service fund Community Education construction fund Debt Service fund internal service fund um uh summaries of all those budgets are in your packet and um tonight we asked for you to promotion to approve the 2022-23 revised budget thank you Dan can I get a motion to approve the provides 22-23 budget all moved second moved by Melinda second by Pat okay uh is there any discussion or comments um so the state legislature just made lunches free for all students or has are they're going to fund lunches for all students um is that going to have any effect on our food service fund
036or any of our other funds it would strictly be the Food Service fund that would be affected which is uh Enterprise fund that should balance itself but does lose money then it would have to come out of the general fund it really depends on what the reimbursement rate is um if we use the current reimbursement rate so really what's going to happen is free lunches are reimbursed at the federal rate about four dollars and 80 cents um our reduced lunches have always been supplemented by the state so anyone on reduced lunch um it's a free lunch because we get the reduced amount from the feds and the federal government and the um the rest from the state now the state will pay all the meals so the additional Revenue will just come from those that
037normally pay or those you know that may bring their lunch and now they're going to take a lunch and we'll get paid full for those whether we'll make money or not oh it depends on what the reimbursement rate is which we do not know yet that will be determined by the federal government of the USDA and we generally find that out in the summer we think you know we should be okay it kind of depends on the cost of food cost of supplies inflation things like that but um it shouldn't affect a general fund and um it um it really it won't increase our revenues it won't increase our fund balance but I don't think it will decrease it it's that reminder seeming I know at cfac this week There's still questions about the flowing
038in of dollars from nutrition services they are completely separate funds similar to Community Education and so I think that's important just to keep that in mind when we think about that because we do have a lot of community members asking about that and how that might impact our budget any other questions okay all those in favor aye aye all opposed motion carried next is 8.4 and that is our guiding change document for long range of facility planning and that will be presented by Dan Pine I'm back last week we also our last board meeting we also discussed our guiding document guiding change document for our long-range facility planning process um just as a reminder after the election last August um August of 2022 our bond referendum failed that we asked for 463 million dollars to
039make improvements to almost every school after that we decided we sought input from the community and we held eight Community listening sessions we also commissioned a new demographic study we also had a community survey done and with that to guide our way through the next process with that information we have we also developed a new guiding change document it's in your packet I will not go over in detail mainly because we did that at the last board meeting um but if you had a chance to review it you had any other questions we'll certainly take those questions once we get a motion to approve it and the motion gets sick of it can I get a motion to approve the guiding change document s okay a motioned by Eric seconded by Katie are there any
040questions or concerns comments um the only question I had was in the results section we don't have any timeline listed and so do we want to put in something like this will be done by this will be complete to put on the election is November Ballot or do we want to just say this should take this should just take the time that it takes and then we'll cross the that bridge when we get there or does anyone care and I mean I I was just thinking about it I don't know if we want to just say we should have this done by November so that everyone you know so there's kind of some certainty out there for the community or whether we just say this is going to take what this is going to take
041and we'll we'll list a date later I think when we did our first community meeting uh some some community members asked like what when is this going when is this happening and so I think um kind of the plan was always November um just in terms of the work but I think just so the board because that really is a board decision about going out for a referendum and then the conversation about how many questions might we ask one what what does that look like that'll be a board decision of course Administration will bring forth a recommendation um and I don't know if it's something that you want in the results I think board members and community members know the timeline of the work in terms of community meetings what we hope to accomplish someone
042did ask us um well it feels like it's going to be rushed I think what we have to remember is that so much of the work in terms of taking a look at the needs in the district taking a look at what was on the last plan now it becomes prioritizing what was on there based on the information that we've received we don't have to go back to square one and have conversations with schools and with departments because we really have the needs laid out I think the demographic study showed the schools that are going to be overcrowded in five years so I think that we have a pretty good idea around priorities and we'll be able to move through that next phase much quicker and again there may be things that slow us down
043but I think we got some good feedback after our community meeting as well as the other input meetings we've gotten for this first round prove the referendum or approve the long-range facility plan the plan sorry yeah yeah the main thing would be to submit um approval to submit to mde missile Department of Education the review and comment and we're looking at either last me in June or the meeting in July to do that the ballot question would have to be and I don't have it exactly but I think it's about the meeting in August would be the approval of the ballot question um yes any other questions Oh no just the question of does anyone else does anyone care about sorry putting time a time in there I'm not sure I care but I I
044just I don't know if putting putting something out there makes it more clear for the community or when I take a look at this as guiding change I hate to be I hate to have time be one of our guiding this is really a community it's a board document this isn't this wasn't even shared in the presentation on no uh what we the community meeting included demographics and Survey information and then asking for input around that okay yeah so this is a document basically if we recall a guiding change document serves as the guard rails for administration as we go do the work and bring a plan back right are you okay with that yeah no I'm fine all right okay all those in favor aye aye any opposed motion carried next thank you Dan
045are you back again oh you still here don't go 8.5 public park easement agreement with the city of Cottage Grove that again will be presented by Executive Director of Finance and Facilities Dan Pine thank you again born um good evening so when open Middle School was designed and built the school district school district land was set aside to be used by the city of Cottage Grove for athletic fields as outlined in the development agreement Thea Cottage Grove is now pursuing grants to help fund the cost of developing the property near open Middle School in your packet there should be a map of the land we're talking about it's a kitty corner to the school near the pond I just want to say kitty corner um but it's um back in December of 2020 we had
046um the city of casual came to us with a new design on the plan originally it was going to be soccer fields I believe and that they changed it to LaCrosse fields and the board heard that uh update and approve that update now that they're getting near to developing that they're pursuing grants both from the state from the DNR and national funding and these grants require a permanent easement to be in place between the school district and the City of Cottage Grove so with that we negotiated the attached permit easement the reason be up front to have a permanent easement in place is so these grants can be applied for and a better chance of them getting them if it's assured that the property will remain a park doing a permanent easement will still leave
047it in our in the school district's hands but they have total use of that property and they're required to maintain it also so with that Administration recommends approval of the public park permit easement agreement as attached can I get a motion to approve the agreement so moved second moved by semi second by Pat is there any comments discussion so with this does the school district isn't doesn't get to use any of it first or I'm sorry yes we have first right to use okay and that was you know I checked back with the people that worked on this developers developers agreement and the idea was that we were short of of Lacrosse fields and such at Park and that we would give first chance to use it it's similar to um to our agreement when
048we purchased East Ridge and develop the land out we have agreement with the City of Woodbury for those fields they maintain them we get first choice to use them yeah because these are soccer football lacrosse correct or is it just lacrosse and I think it's going to be multi-use but it's designed that it can handle um lacrosse which apparently is I should say apparently is the fastest growing sport yeah that and soccer don't have they don't have space at part so that's why I'm scared this won't cost the just this doesn't cost the district anything correct no anyone else okay are those in favor aye aye all opposed motion carried thank you thank you Dan next is 9.0 and that is our superintendent's report Julie Nielsen thank you just a couple of updates for the
049community as well as the board you heard Simi reference the new free School Meal law that will take effect next school year Minnesota Governor Tim Waltz signed the free School Meal legislation on Friday March 17th the new law will take effect September of 2023. so for all of our summer programming kids club any classes and offerings those groups will not be eligible until the start of the school year um our nutrition services staff is working out the details of how lunch accounts with the remaining balance at the end of the current school year will be paid out we know there's always a balance left so we'll have to figure out for those that have remaining dollars how that might be paid back for those families of course that were currently paying for lunches um we
050will begin serving these meals and keep in mind it's breakfast and lunch so students have the opportunity for breakfast and lunch that very first day of the 23-24 school year and we may not have all of the answers yet but we wait uh further information around that legislation next Transportation opt-in maybe just to share as we talk about transportation we have conversations daily about busing and transportation we have a great group of Transportation our bus drivers our transportation staff work so hard to put all the pieces together and some days we still end up short bus drivers we are implementing a transportation opt-in as of noon yesterday March 22nd we had more than 6 700 families complete the transportation opt-in form remember it went out to families in a link so it was as simple
051as clicking on the link and filling out the information that number of families equaled almost 1200 students that have already been accounted for of our little bit over 18 18 000 students and so about 7 000 students left I think for the community and for board members to know that moving forward our Communications team will be targeting the communication or Target targeting the messaging so that parents don't think did I fill it out did they get my answers and so now we will just go with people who haven't completed it they will be receiving messages moving forward um and then if need be we will have individuals follow up with phone calls so we're prepared to make sure that we get as accurate accounts we share that information with our parent ambassadors uh this last
052week and you know there were some questions about why is the district doing this and I think the board is aware that when we talk about the efficiency in our transportation department and we have load counts that are set at 80 to 90 students riding a high school bus and the high school bus gets to one of our high schools and there are three or four students that get off we need to do a better job of being more efficient with the extreme shortage in bus drivers we have to figure out a way to route for students who really need bus transportation so we will continue that and we will continue to provide updates um this week the week has gone quickly this week we held our first community meeting around long-range facilities the focus
053of that meeting was on sharing survey and demographic information along with that um people in attendance we had 55 individuals attend first of all I think anybody who is engaging with us that really is the goal we want our community to engage with us everybody in the community should have received a postcard with those dates on so they know when to come get updates provide feedback the feedback that we receive will be posted online on our long-range facility page along with a number of FAQs as we walked out on Tuesday we had a parking lot area with Post-it notes and individuals who attended were able to put questions up there and after the meeting we sorted through the questions listed them all and decided who was going to provide the answer and so we will
054get those online as quickly as possible following those meetings and then I know someone mentioned but our next community meeting is April 25th and so we look forward to continuing the process sharing information please watch our website and again as we continue to say please engage with us this is a community decision because obviously whatever is decided in the way of questions will go out to our voters thank you Julie and next is uh 10.0 and that is our future meeting date we have a school board Workshop meeting on April 6 2023 at 6 pm and a business meeting on April 20th 2023 all these meetings will be held here at the district service center and finally 11.0 we are adjourned [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music]