0017 o'clock, I will call the meeting to order. Seeking a motion to approve the agenda. So moved. Second. All in favor? Aye. All against? Okay. And we are moving forward with the agenda. We note that Chair Ammitt is out today. He is at a conference. But otherwise, all other members are present. Let us rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Under announcements, we have the upcoming meetings are listed in the agenda, so you can see them there. then we would like to do introductions for the new student board representatives. So our new, and then we will do the ceremonial oath of office. Would either of
002you like to say something about yourself, where you're at in school, interests, that sort of thing? Yeah, my name is Colette. I'm a junior. I'm involved in multiple activities. I do soccer and track. I love participating in my clubs, such as Letters of Love and, like, NHS, so I like to volunteer. And, yeah. I'm Sydney. I'm going to be a... Oh, I am a senior. I'm involved in club swimming, and I do some work with different parts of the community, like conservation clubs is one thing I do. And I can't think of anything else right now. Welcome. Can you each please raise your right hand? Do you, Sidney Sable and Colette Newman, affirm that you will support the Constitution of the United States and the state of Minnesota and that you will faithfully discharge the
003duties of the Office of Student Representative on the School Board of Independent School District Number 110 to the best of your ability? If so, say, I will. Round of applause. Thank you for joining us. Okay. Is there any public comment? None tonight? Okay. Moving on to the minutes from the previous meeting. I seek a motion to approve the minutes from the previous meeting. So moved. Second. All in favor? Aye. All against? Passes. On to the consent agenda. Although board action is required, it is generally unnecessary to hold discussion on these items. In the event a board member wishes to discuss an item, that item will be moved for separate consideration. Would anyone like an item pulled for separate consideration from the consent agenda? Okay. Then I would seek a motion to approve the consent agenda.
004So moved. Second. All in favor? Aye. All against? And the consent agenda moves. Or is passed. We are on to reports. That's you. Yep. I will, at this point, call up Pam and Nick and Peter as a part of the presentation. We'll just take a second here to get the slides set up. So just by way of introduction, while we're waiting for the slides to pop up here, joining Pam and myself tonight are Peter Brown and Nick Hansberry, both members of the WEA teachers in our district, quality teachers in our district, I might add, who were an integral part of kind of the process we're going to talk about tonight, both from the group work that was done, but these three did extensive work kind of beyond our group to generate some data, and they're
005going to explain some of that to you this evening as well. I might just... provide kind of a high level of the why, and then I'll kind of catch up with some things once we get the slides kind of rolling through here. But when you think about, you know, we've called this about talking about, can we find a new way? And when we talk about a new way, we're talking about some negotiations. I don't think I'm saying anything out of turn to say that when we talk about what we did as a district a couple years ago as part of the negotiation process, it wasn't a positive experience within our community. And we have a fantastic community. We have very supportive community partners. And I think it was a matter of saying, can we do
006this different? Is there a way we can do this in a collaborative way so we're not creating an environment of winners and losers, but where we're a singular community working together and not some of the maybe self-inflicted wounds and negativity that we had over the course of that year? Totally acknowledging that it's not about fault. I think there's always about, we can all look reflectively at ourselves and say, even myself as a superintendent, are there things I would like to have seen myself do differently? Of course. But it's really about what can we do to plan for the future? knowing that one of the positives, I think, that I think we agree that came from the previous round was settling two consecutive contracts to give ourselves some time to separate from this, but then using
007that time not just to wait for the next opportunity, but to say, how can we use this time to come together and at least plan a little bit differently? And we'll see, certainly in the course of the future, how has that worked out. I think we're set. So as we jump through the slides as far as what's happened in the process thus far over the course of last spring we had a number of meetings you'll see up there March April and May between half days and full days and some meetings after school and then we had a lot of different partners Kelly joined us on behalf of the school board we had seven members the WEA and five district leaders as a part of and I was there as kind of a facilitator of this
008process. I look at those and that's the number of times that our full group met This team met a number of times beyond that to actually look at the data like I said that they're gonna go through I don't how many several hours Another day and a half worth of time. So again additional investment beyond this and I just appreciate You know Pam our district leaders Kelly's the superintendent all of the w-a members who invested in this time to come together and have this conversation I've already started to talk up a little bit about the why so just talking a little bit about the process This is something that we talked about at the start of all of our meetings, which is to say, you know It's a process of trying to create some trust,
009and it starts with some basic assumptions that we all want the same thing, including competitive compensation packages that value our team. A new way forward that's respectful, fair, open mind from another, an agreement that we can avoid some of the negativity and do this better if we're working together as a team. We talked about last spring, yes, we have a break, but we want to start now both so that we can try to develop. something that's fair, build some trust and consistency, get us on the same page. And again, take a look at that as part of our long-term budgeting projections. If we're looking down the road and we say, we need to correct the market, we need to start planning today for those decisions that we're going to make down the road. And certainly
010that was a part of the conversation that we had, even as we were talking in the spring about the possibility of going for a referendum or what do we need. That analysis was included in some of those long-term projections of what do we need to get to those competitive compensation packages. So how can we do this? Can we spend some time talking about who we should compare with and how we should compare? And once we determine that, can we do a benefit by benefit, complete contract analysis, create a common vision, and then start a path to achieve that collaboratively? Coming back to the fact that if we have our employees, in this case the WEA, our school board and our administrators all on the same side of this, we can accomplish a lot if we
011have a common goal and a vision. We can go get that together. as one team, one community, you know, one district. Another thing we really wanted to make sure is clear, both to the board members who weren't a part of it, as well as the WEA members who weren't a part of it. This was not a decision-making group, and this wasn't a negotiation. We fully understand that to ratify a contract, the WEA has bylaws that have to be followed. And the people sitting at this table, when another contract comes forward for potential ratification, might not be the same mix of board members on this side of the table as well. So I think it was a matter of saying I think we trusted that we all are looking for the same things and had the
012support from our different representative groups to be here, but wanted to acknowledge there's a formal process for how everybody needs to actually do the process of negotiating. This was a collaborative process to look at how can that work. Another thing we talked about was just... And I think we've gotten used to talking about this at the board table when it comes down to our budgeting and long-term projections. We've got to take a look at the fact and just understand that school districts are not funded equally. And there is some unfairness to that. And we have to make sure that we understand when we're starting from the bottom 5% and our current reality brings us to the top of the lowest quartile, it doesn't necessarily impact the process, but it means there are districts out there
013that we just won't be able to compare to when it comes down to revenue. Whoops, I didn't mean for this to come up in all different slides and the one that I you know I put out there and actually when I first put this Slide kind of as a part of our group up in that little white spot in the top right it just said fake and I thought that would just be like Confusing to the public if somebody just looked at her sides when I say fake what that means what I meant was there isn't anybody since I've been here who's ever said We should compare to the Bloomington School District, which is why I picked it because nobody really ever said that But just noting that that's a district, when you go back
014and you dig out their financials from 2024, because we can compare everybody's financials because they're on the Department of Ed website, and you look at what they spent versus what we spent, if we had the same access to money, we'd be spending $25 million more in that year. We're never going to have that. And so if there's an opportunity to say we should be comparing with Bloomington for programs, contracts, class sizes, opportunities, it's never going to compare. And so it's a matter of saying it's very difficult to say any of us are going to achieve anything if that would have been a comp that we would pull out. It was just, again, an example that, you know, schools aren't funded fairly. And so unless there's going to be some changes in that one, we've got
015to be mindful of the fact that we've only got so much access to resources. So again, it came down to if we can determine who we should compare with and how we should compare, can we create that common target and try to chase that as a singular team? And when we set out to do that, we talked about the fact that there's a lot of ways we could try to select districts to compare to. You know, these are just examples. Student demographics, the size of the district, the location, et cetera. And we set out as a team in mixed groups to talk about who should we compare, and let's just talk a little bit about the pros and cons of those. So within our first meeting, we had those conversations. And ultimately, at the conclusion
016of that, had determined we should really be looking at our neighboring districts, the district we share borders with, because that's kind of our geographic region, and then also find a couple of districts that are very similar in size and revenue, so that if they are about 4,000 students and have about the same access to revenue as we, that would be a fair comparison. The second meeting, we did go through and try to do a process to find out who would be those other... Similar size, similar resources district. So again, that's where we kind of netted out Matamidi, Monticello, and Orono. Acknowledging on the front end that Orono is similar to us when it comes down to how much they get from the state, but they're like capped out max when it comes down to their
017operating because it's a similar kind of a thing where the value of the dollar is a little bit different. it takes to get there, but still brought that in, at least on the front end as a comparable throughout the process. So that's where we ended up with these districts. There was one initial omission when it came down to districts that border us or neighbors. That is Lester Prairie. And part of it, I think, was just the consensus that a district for around 400 students makes for a difficult comparison. And I don't know that there's a whole lot, nothing against Lester Prairie. I'm sure they'll do a nice job. But there just aren't a whole lot of ways that we compete or compare and thought that saves us a little time when I don't think anybody
018believed that that was a fair one to throw into the market. And that's where I'm going to turn it over. So, I mean, that's part of the process of, so how did we get to some of those comparisons? That's where this team took over and did some incredible analysis that I think they're going to talk through at this point. So thank you. So this is where we actually really started to dig into some of the numbers. I've done this work before, but I've never done this work at Waconia Public Schools before. And so as we started to talk through part of this process, one of the things that I think is really, really important is as we start to dig into the data, we actually need to look at all of the contracts. And so
019we pulled all the contracts together and we can't really do this in a large group with all of the WEA. So what we discussed is getting two WEA members to sit down with me and we sat down for a day and a half and we really started to dig into the numbers and started to really look at all of the contracts, starting to set benchmarks, what it is that we're going to compare. And that's the data that Nick and Peter will really get into when we get into that part of the presentation. So I think that what they'll do as they go through this they're going to kind of review the process I'm going to just do some additional framing that I did for the group And then we're actually we were looking at 2425
020data for all of this And so we're looking at both salary information, benefit information, and then we also started to start looking at what's the day in the life of a teacher? What does it look like? What are some of those maybe intangibles as you start to think about the day of a teacher in terms of contact days, in terms of prep time? You know, what does that all look like? And so one of the things that we actually got into, this is kind of like the process, and I don't know if Nick and Peter, if you want to talk a little bit about some of this. Go ahead. Absolutely. So what kind of Pam is mentioning about really digging into those contracts is we literally went cell by cell for each one of those
021contracts to see just, A, like what were they being paid, where are those different spots in those salary schedules, and making sure that it was accurate from when we put it over to a Google Sheet. One of the biggest assumptions that we made was what would it be like for a teacher leaving Waconia to these districts? So where would they fall in the salary schedule? How would the benefits compare by making that jump? And we made that assumption because a lot of teachers in the past few years have been leaving. for greener pastures. So we wanted to include that aspect when we're doing the comparisons. In addition to not only the number side of things, not every salary schedule is the same in terms of when lanes happen or how many lanes there are, even
022how many steps there are. So the next process we'll get into is kind of how do we make that conversion? How do we make, you know, the apples and oranges kind of start to work and talk together? So that kind of brings our next point. And then we also, we... did dig in to the financial side of the benefits packages, especially in the health care and dental, just because there are financial parts of that in the contract. But this will not include those specific numbers today, just because it's a lot of data and it's very... It's very nuanced with that, so we just kind of left that out from this first initial kind of foray into this. And then we also took note throughout the different contract parts of the day and the life of
023the teacher, those intangibles that Pam had mentioned, contact days, what does the duty schedule look like, number of students per classroom and those sorts of things, even like day length. It's really crazy how variable it can be, even from district to district. There's a lot of interesting things that came up. Reading through all the other contracts, I was like, well, this is nice, but how do you put a number on that? So we left those things out for now. Yep. And then, yeah, Pam. Yeah, and so one of the things I just wanted, because I've done this work before, is I wanted to make sure that as a group, when we start to look at this, we really understand that sometimes when you do this work, you come away with more questions than answers. And
024I think that Peter and Nick found that because there is so many different nuances and different contracts. And so I just wanted people to make sure, as we were looking at this, they go with a very open mind, that they're curious, and that we really start to ask more questions and then start to dig more into the data. So this was just kind of that. framing as we started to look at some of the information. Anything else you want to add? Dig in? Yep. All right. So the first thing we did was essentially looking at the original schedule, discussed what types of credits and when they're worth and how much they're worth, because sometimes graduate credits are not worth as much and from a financial bump. when you move across those lanes. So we're just
025kind of figuring what that looks like and then aligning and essentially putting it over top the Waconia schedule over these other districts. So we could kind of see where those comparison happens, which made us needing to decide, okay, you know, that plus 45 that we have, how does that relate? Is it more similar to the plus 60 or is it more similar to the plus 40? And it kind of going off of there. So we kind of had to make some choices and we tried to stay as consistent as possible. I would say we did stay consistent throughout each one of those. each one of those contracts if you look really close at the tables as we pull them up you might see where a salary converts like the same in two different lanes versus
026having it jump for everyone because we have the 15 well they might only have 30. so they only have two lanes we have three so we're moving over Towards the end will be the same, but we have more steps But if you're at 15 and you need 30 to move over you wouldn't move over so that cell would be the exact same as a cell to the left in the comparison Yeah, and then the other cool thing was the heat map which we'll get to when we give the first one so The first one is the 2024-25 salary schedule at Waconia one that we are familiar with I'll call attention just to the bottom there the career incentive also known as longevity pay career I mean, it's got a bunch of different names and it's
027different in every contract. But just to say, like, that will factor in a little bit later. So something to call attention to. Taking note of our lanes as well. This is just kind of a summary of, like, highlights of our contract and what it looks like, how long it taps out, or how long it takes to tap out from a step standpoint. Yeah. Anything to add on those? Yeah, well, so this little bullet point will be made for every district. So you can see, like, first step, first lane. So you can make a quick comparison of that. And then eventually, this will make more sense. This is just like a repeat. So this is how we decide to align each one of our contracts that we laid over on top of. So this is essentially
028the same because it's ours, right? And you can see that we made the BA-60 and the MA two different columns so that it overlays with our other district's contracts a little bit better and cleaner. And just a point of note, I said it's the same, but you can see like 45 and 30 are different numbers, of course. The 45 is the quarter credit hours and the 30 is the semester credit hours. That's the difference there. And even that is different from contract to contract. So there's a conversion, but just to understand for clarity purposes. Cool. We can keep on moving. The first one that was kind of our outlier, so not necessarily one of our neighbors, was Monticello, just from a tax base and kind of money from the state. As you can see in
029their salary schedule, they top out at 13 steps, which is like almost half of what we have. Similar in terms of lanes, but the value of each one of those credits is maybe just a little bit different, or when they move is slightly different. Another point kind of we talked about was the longevity pay. We'll find in the next slide kind of where we decided to not include, but we did include the annual amount. which I'll let you read the language there, but essentially it's if you reach the bottom, there's a certain financial package for each year that you stay at the district and could be more if you serve a certain number of years. So you can already see in one district it kind of becomes convoluted based on your individual situation going into
030that contract as a teacher leaving or even being existing in that contract. So just something to note on the longevity pay. Want to do the bullet points? I guess. Lane tops at MA plus 20. It starts at first lane, first step is 44,000. Years to move through the schedule is 12. And then this is kind of our first map or chart that's overlaid. So you'll see the Waconia is in the purple on the outskirts. And then our... And that's our conversion then in the gray, kind of taking how theirs would relate to ours. And any vertical column that is shaded means that the salary moved over from the previous column. So it's just copy and pasted, and that's just to overlay with our contract better. Because we don't necessarily, like in the BA lane, our
031numbers stop after X number of steps, but other contracts have them all the way down. So we needed a way to compare to that, which we'll see in the next slide, which is the heat map. This is the kind of really fascinating to see kind of where those discrepancies are within each of one of the contracts and how we relate. So kind of hard to see, like, on there, but, like, you can see the red. more of a change and more of a difference and then if it's less red it's or no did I say that right Pam? If it's green it's better. Green is better. Red is not as good. Right. Right. Compared to what we'll call you. Right. Thank you. So if you left and went to that the green is the incremental.
032Correct. On the positive. And then the darker green the bigger the difference. And that's why in most of these the bottom left is going to be a darker shade of green because our steps stop. I've always noticed that and wondered why it stopped. I think Waconia really values more education, so I think that's been promoting and encouraging teachers to continue. I think in that regard, if you were to look at the majority of that dark green on this particular slide, about how many people in our district are in that area? I don't have the FTE off the top of my head, but it's... It's very few. Very few. So to Peter's point, I think the incentive is there to move across with education, and it appears most people do that. Or at least the people
033that stay. Correct. That would be, yeah. That's a great clarification, yes. And has that always been the case? Like, Bocconi has always been that way? Like, they want people to have, like, the extra education? Is that a WA thing? Is that a district thing? As far as I know, it has been like that. And I know that, I want to say 20-ish years ago, Mark, they, like, shortened the schedule a little bit. 15. Happy medium. It's a team effort. It's good. It's good. And that's a good question. And as a community, when we came together, like our little comparable meeting, that was something that we decided was a good thing, like to have that further education to make sure we're providing that to our students. Because, you know, you get something, you learn something out
034of that, too. But does that correlate to better outcomes for students if more teachers have that? I mean, I'm just thinking about from a teacher perspective. I would think so, yes. Every class you take you go and learn something new and then you apply it to your classes and sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't but yeah in my experience most of the time when I learn something new and bring it in the class it goes well I would also I would also say for myself. I would agree with that and I'll I also think that what you're asking kind of is outside the scope of what we were doing. So I guess to talk about outcomes right now, I think is maybe a little bit premature not to say that we shouldn't be talking about
035or thinking about that. But that's definitely outside of the scope of kind of what this first initial process was. So good questions and definitely something to keep in mind as we start to build this out. For sure. For sure. Cool. And then our neighboring district was the Eastern Carver County. This one that we decided to. to include here tonight as well. So their salary schedule looks very, very different. Talk louder. This first, this schedule is very different. Fewer lanes. They move every three years based on... performance reviews from their administrators. So this is just to demonstrate and to kind of show on the next slide then we had to build out their schedule a little bit more fully so that it aligned more closely to what our schedule had to look like. Because they don't
036go down a step until three years you can see that the number is the same for three years and the same for three years and so on. Similar career incentives that kick in after 20 years or so. We included that and you can kind of see that in our created table as well. Similar deal from just kind of a quick shot glance of that. And then this is one that looks a little wacky just based on, you know, we had to create lanes essentially. We'll see kind of it seems static, but it's just that's what ours would look like overlaid on top of that. And if you look closely at this one, those bold lines, the horizontal lines, that's when they cap out, correct? That is correct. Without career incentives, but yes. Yep. All right.
037And then here's their heat map as well. And so, again, you can see in the lower left that it's a very dark green. And is that similar, that there would only be like 10 teachers and that kind of? The data is the same. So I pulled the staffing data for 24, 25. I don't remember for sure exactly the number of FTEs, but I think it was right in that 10 to 15 range. And a lot of teachers that exist in there are kind of your newer teachers too, right? Because you start in the top left just based on experience. All right. And then this map, this one is hard for me, so I'm going to step away on this next one. So this is a ranking map, and it's where each one of the, or
038where our cell ranks among the nine schools that we compared to. So if you look at it, like, let's just say BA60 in step B, we're number four in that lane. And then as you go further down to the right, You can see, I think those are sixes and fives. And then obviously our common theme is we're number nine in the lower left, and that's apparent on all of the heat maps. But you can see where we kind of fit into those districts. And then the other thing to consider, again, we kind of touched on this, is things that were not included in this initial foray into this for you all. We do have some of these numbers, but the medical, insurance, dental, vision, life, all that kind of stuff, tax shelter annuity, contributions. And
039then here are other things that just kind of came up in digging into these contracts, which was really fascinating just to kind of see. The one that was always weird to me is there's like if you write 10 letters of recommendation, you get $100, or like 20. It's crazy what they write into these contracts. Not crazy. It's just very interesting to see what is valued across different districts. So these are things that we didn't feel we could quantify in this, the scope of this investigation, for lack of a better term. Pam is a super wizard with Google Sheets, but I don't know how she's going to get all that in. So then next steps. So as far as the data goes with next steps, so after we kind of went through and presented all of
040this information for all nine districts to the entire committee, and that was the full day meeting. And I think one of the things we want to look at is which... which day in the life's do we want to expand on, which ones are important. So I think that's a piece we also need to bring in some of the benefit information. And then I think there was a lot of discussion talking about the nine districts. Do we really want to continue to track nine districts? Do we want to make a short list of nine districts? If we do make a short list of nine districts, then how do we compare? Do we want to use a rank? Do we want to use an average? Do we want to use a median? And I felt like it
041was a really healthy discussion and maybe the two of you can speak on it. We did come to a consensus in that group that we would do Westonka, Eastern Carver, and the M&Ms. And we kind of, as a group, felt like we should fall in the middle of those. And so that's kind of what we're ironing out here as part of the next steps. It's kind of one of those things where, yeah, that was definitely the consensus of tracking, but also realizing when you look at that heat or the, what do you call the number, the ranking sheet, You may have to hold on to the, you know, sixes and sevens to draw your attention until you've kind of left them off the map and then continue to move forward with your goals. But, I
042mean, when you're sitting there with a nine, you know that that's an area that you have to have a discussion about because you're dead last comparatively to, you know, a four where you're starting point kind of a thing. So to their point, I think there's more discussion to be had, but some amazing progress both in this as well as just, you know, there's obviously more data that can be. gone through in a short stint, you know, they have a really nice spreadsheet that looks at rankings and things that are related to total package that brings into some of those additional quantifiable things like, you know, health benefits, TSA matching or otherwise, so that you really have an idea of not just, you know, salaries and how those rank, but the decisions that certain contracts make
043when it comes down to how much you're getting those other areas too. So, um, and did that ranking have Not this one. No. This one's just salary schedule, yes. I do have one that I've started. I'm actually close to finishing, but I have to review it and sit down with Peter and Nick again and just kind of go through it and make sure I didn't miss anything. And then ultimately we'll have to bring it back to the group. And the other part of this that's kind of interesting is like because we've created, and I think Pam was probably going to say this next, but the whole idea is that we've created now a system and a way to look at these different districts because as they start to settle new contracts, which we don't necessarily
044have to do, we have a system, we have a model, we even have some drop-down menus that we can really start to look at and see, okay, in this new cycle that they've just settled, what does that look like? And we have a way to look at that very quantifiably. So I think it's cool. Yeah, I mean I think that's an important thing just to I think it was said somewhere on the line that this was in the previous two-year contracts and we're settled for the next two but most of those districts I don't know that any of them are right now settled so that's where to your point the vehicles there to be able to now update those and say now where did the where did the needle move in any direction? Before the
045contracts were signed, we had quite a few teachers that left the district for greener pastures. Do we know where on that multicolored chart, were they mostly in the nine range? Was that the kind of where we lost a lot of teachers? I don't know the answer to that, but I have all the data. I could find the answer to that. I don't believe so. What, you haven't done it already? I'm just kidding. Yeah, we actually went back. I pulled 23 to 25 and 23 to 25, 21 to 23, and 25 to 27. So I can hopefully, when we look at it, we can really see what's transpired over the three years because three contract cycles because I think that that will be important. So that's a great question. I do think it would be very
046interesting to lay out the teachers that we currently have in that. in that grid as well, like the numbers. Because, yeah, nine's bad, but if I have zero people there... I'm not sure I care about fighting. I mean, from your standpoint, I'd be like, I'm not fighting for that because it doesn't make any difference, right? And I think if we're going to encourage people to get further education, like you're saying, I mean, I don't think it's a terrible thing to have the nines down there. Right. That's a good place to have nines. The sixes and the fives and the sevens over where most people are living, that's what needs to be addressed. Yep. My only concern for you guys is that education is incredibly expensive. are you recouping your costs by doing all that? Like,
047for some people, you know what I mean? It takes years. If you're a busy family, like you have a young family, like, you know, you may not be able to get a master's for a long time. Like, that's just not... So should those teachers be penalized? Like, are we losing people because that are excellent teachers because it's not in their... capability to go get a master's so that's my concern and I think that's a there you could look at that because of the steps like it can be a philosophical discussion about you know okay maybe it's not as early maybe it I mean it's all there now That's a fair point and well taken. Absolutely. Yeah. And that's where it's interesting what Eastern Harbor has done, where they have, you know, some kind of performance
048thing, right? So it's tied to not just how long you've been there. So then maybe you can, you know, there's probably ways to be creative. Like, okay, you didn't go get a master's, but if you're an excellent teacher, like, you know, you want to be retained regardless of whether you have a master's or not. I'm catching off guard so you don't have the answer to this, but I understand that that is definitely valid for getting a master's. You can't get a master's degree without going through an accredited university to get that. But you can in our contract, I think, move across to the left with professional development and learning within the district or professional development credits. So there is a cost-effective way to continue to move yourself to the left. Am I accurate here? So
049you can make a lane change. by using six credits of professional development along with, I believe it's nine other credits. So you could take three classes and then do professional development and move over. And yeah, like our BA 60 is the same as the MA, like that lane is the same thing. So you don't necessarily have to attain that master's, but you can, and it gets you dropped a lot farther, like to R, whatever number that is in the alphabet. the 20s probably. 60 credits times, you know, $300 a credit is a lot of money to invest. Absolutely. No, and I wish they were only $300. So, yes. Point well taken. I think the other thing to note is that this was kind of the first step of the process. The analysis, the data was
050necessary because if we're going to do long-term budget projections and make decisions now, we needed that. But this is kind of a second tier, and I've appreciated conversations with Roxanne, who is the president of the WA, and Drew, who's with us as the vice president, to also say that at some point we have to talk about not just the product but the process and how we negotiate. We talked about how, you know, potentially as we get through the course of this school year, we start. having that conversation, whether that's sending teams together to go to interest-based bargaining trainings or other kinds of ways to look at this to also say, how can we ensure that we have a respectful process that at times is going to have disagreement, but it doesn't maybe turn into, you
051know, the kind of environment that we talked about on the front end. So there is another phase to this beyond just the analysis, which is truly the, you know, the process of how we negotiate. And that's still kind of, you know, again, what we have time to do, but that we're not wasting our time waiting. We're going to continue to have those discussions. I think that's it for the end of the slides. This is very impressive. Thank you guys. Thank you for your work. I just want to thank Peter and Nick. I mean, it was a lot of work. I think it was fun. And I can't find a better way to spend a day and a half. And done during, I mean, truly springtime. When there's closing up projects and concerts and a lot
052going on. So I appreciate that you did take time. We were at Lake Town. It was beautiful. Beautiful outside. It was. I still owe somebody a blizzard because of that. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Pam is next on the agenda with the finance report. Okay, so I thought it might be helpful before I get into the finance report specifically because this is a weird time to be looking at finance reports. And so I thought what might be helpful is to maybe instead give you a perspective of the audit timeline because in the finance department right now, it is very busy. July and August are not slow by any means. And so I just thought I'll just take a little bit of time and just maybe just run through all the different things
053we're doing as we prepare for the audit. So July and August is usually when we do our preliminary audit work. And so what I mean by preliminary audit work, this is when we actually start to pull all of our reports and do our audit. and Clifton Larson Allen has a portal and there's about 82 items on that portal that we're actually starting to run reports and provide them for. And so it's things like the trial balances, the payroll reports, our interest allocations, our bank confirmation statements, reconciliations, board policies, minutes, yeah, all those. Things we put on consent calendar with the quotes, all that gets pulled, making sure we're following board policy. That gets looked at. Our debt schedules, our CLICS report, those are our school nutrition reports showing what our sales are and converting that
054over to revenue. And then the tax reports based on the county taxes, our settlement reports, as well as our appropriation reports. Then we also begin CEDRA. CEDRA is our special education data reporting system where we actually have to go in and we have to make sure that all of our staffing with all of our licensure aligns with all of our UFARS coding. And that work begins also in July and August. So that's all happening in the finance office. Then we also are working on closing out anything to do with our federal dollars. The federal fiscal year end is September 30th. So all of that work we're doing in July and August. And then we're actually also pulling information with regard to transportation. That's due to MDE on August 15th. And then we also make sure
055that all of our food services sales gets turned over to revenue. So that's just July and August. Then we get into September. And September is when we do our phase one audit field work. So that's when all of those things we submitted in July and August, now the auditor comes in and starts pulling random samples and starts to actually look at more. of that information and wants us to pull the whole paper trail, the whole invoice. What was everything that happened from A to B? What are our internal controls? Are we following all those sign-offs the way we're supposed to be? So that is a lot of what happens in September. And then in October, the other thing we actually do is we do things with GASB with HILDE. So GASB 75, that's looking at
056our other post-employment benefits. So that gets pulled. GASB 96, that's related to our subscription-based instructional technology arrangements. So all of those instructional technologies, we have to report those. And then we also do things with GASB 101. That has to do with our absences. So any absent that is actually earned, we have to record as a liability on our book. So all of that reporting gets pulled. done. Then we get into October. That's phase two of the field work. That's where they actually come on site for about a week and they start looking at everything. And that is when we start to finally begin to really get a good feel for what our financials are going to look like as of June 30th. And then in November, we actually do our draft financials and we do
057our audit wrap-up. And then usually end of November and December, they do the presentation to the board. So I just wanted you to have kind of that context so you understand of all of the moving pieces, ins and outs, that are happening as you're looking at these finance reports. And so at the same time, though, I want you to be able to see these finance reports because you can start to get an idea of where we are at from a fiscal perspective if you start looking at things year over year because these things don't change. None of this process really changes unless there's a new GASB or a new test that they have to run. So as you start to look year over year, you can kind of figure things out and where we're landing.
058So I just wanted to give you that context as you're looking at these reports and looking at kind of where we're at from a fiscal perspective. So with that, if there's anything you want me to specifically go over in June or July, I'm happy to. I will tell you the state aid receivable, which is the biggest receivable that really impacts our financials the most for that 10% holdback, last year that receivable was a $4.5 million adjustment. So as you're looking at these numbers, kind of keep that number in the back of your mind. So any questions? I mean, if there's anything you want me to go through specifically or answer, I will. I just feel like they're so preliminary that I don't want to get into it too much until we're a little bit further
059down the road. Any questions? Okay. Thank you. That was me. Okay. We are moving on to the action items. 7A is the second read board policies. And I will just give the report since I do the policy stuff or on the policy committee. These are all pretty standard stuff. There was no big changes. The only one that the policy group really had questions about or that we talked about was 305. And you'll notice that there are some changes to 305 because as written it said that the board annually reviews literally every procedure, guideline, and directive for the whole school district. And we thought that was a little onerous. And so it was changed to the wording that's in there. So, again, we do review stuff and other policy states which things we review at different
060times as well, but we always have the option to review any policy or guideline. So, the Fairfax, I think, was the only interesting one in the list. I would entertain a motion to approve the second read board policies. So moved. Second. Is there any discussion? Okay. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Against? The motion carries. We have no discussion items. Any Board Committee reports? Okay. Then I seek a motion for adjournment. Second. All in favor? Aye. That was very quick lately.