001Good evening and welcome to the ISD 110 school board regular meeting Seeking a motion to adopt the agenda as posted so moved second all in favor Any opposed? All right Noting that all members are present. We will proceed and have 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. Moving to item two, announcements, acknowledgements, and correspondence. Upcoming meetings are shown on the agenda. We have in item 2B, we have a ISD 110 kindergarten promotional video. And Matt? Was he going to show that? I'll assume he needs a minute to come in from the back room and the control room there. While Matt's getting set up, we'll do item 2B,
002subsection 2, which is wishing Heather a happy birthday. Yes. Happy birthday. All right. Matt, whenever you're ready. Okay. All right. Well, thank you for just a quick opportunity to give you a quick update on some marketing initiatives that we've been taking on this year. I won't spend too much of your time tonight because I will be back in a couple months with a full department presentation. So this is just kind of an update and a chance to show this video to you today. When Brian and I talked about my department's goals for the year, we really decided we wanted to focus on some external marketing efforts. We thought over the last two years we had gotten a lot of things in order as far as social media and the website and internal communications and e-newsletters
003and things like that. And so this was the year to invest some time and resources into marketing. As we all know, school choice has become a big thing, right? Marketing is just kind of the new norm in K-12 as far as securing that enrollment, which we obviously know is important to our budget. Real quick, that marketing plan was kind of a three-prong effort that involved some direct mail options, some digital options, and then a video option. And that's kind of what I'm here to talk to you about today. I forged a partnership with a company called Captivate Media, who works with a lot of public school districts around the metro area especially, but really all around the state. It was started by a guy named Jake Sturgis who started out his career as a videographer
004at Minnetonka Public Schools and then kind of started his own shop. And so they're really good at what they do. The first video, we've kind of contracted to do a series of shorter videos. And the first one that we decided to take on was specifically involving kindergarten and why you should send your kids to kindergarten here in Waconia. A couple of the other videos that we have planned in the series is one about our great fine arts opportunities that we have throughout the district. So showcasing our band and choir and marching band and show choir and speech, theater, all those great opportunities that our students have. A second one that has to do more with academic opportunities and pathways at our high school, whether that's advanced placement, college in the schools, career and technical classes.
005So just describing all those different options that our high school students have. And then a third one, which will come out just in time for Teacher Appreciation Week, is more of kind of a teacher appreciation video. So we're excited about that series. So without further ado, and if we all cross our fingers that the sound is going to work, I will play this short video for you. Find the one. Nice and loud. High five. Way to go. Nice job. Can we get a yahoo? Yahoo! I love kindergarten because I love spending the day with five and six year olds. They are excited to come to school and I get to inspire them. Every day they're curious, they're asking questions, and they want to learn. My favorite part of kindergarten is learning new things. Some of
006the things I learned this year are math, reading, and writing. The curriculum that the kindergarten uses is so strong. They prepare them. They teach them all the expectations and the routines of school. They help and teach them behavioral and emotional strategies, how to calm down when frustrated or upset. It prepares them as an entire person, not just academically, but emotionally and socially as well. When it comes to communication, we have felt so validated and heard. You know, when you send your kid to school, there are so many concerns and, you know, fears that you may have as a parent. But I have seen my child grow both academically and his confidence has been thriving. Waconia Public Schools really is a community of learners where every child matters and every moment counts. Why Waconia Public Schools?
007It's easy. It's the community. the involvement and the support that you receive on a daily basis from the teachers, the support staff, and peers as a whole. They have the ability to look at each child as an individual, meet them at their needs, and just bring them to places parents could never have imagined. So as you can tell from this video, we really wanted to get that parent perspective for moms and dads that are out there shopping for a school district, want to hear from other parents about why they've chosen Waconia Public Schools. And so that was the main thing we wanted to get out of this, obviously, with some cute kids and a little bit of teacher perspective as well. If anybody has any questions, I'd feel free to answer those for you, just
008about this video in particular or our general marketing efforts that we have going on right now. So how will you share it with people? Yeah, so this will be shared on social media and also be embedded on our website. And then obviously any chance we can get it in other communications, in school-to-home newsletters too, even though those parents are already our customers, right? If they can share it with people that they know in their neighborhood, as many bodies that we can get it in front of, we will. All right, thank you very much. Alright, moving on. Item 3, public comment. And I've been made aware there is no public comment, so we'll move to item 4, minutes of the previous meetings, seeking a motion to approve. So moved. Second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed?
009Moving to item 5, consent agenda, seeking a motion to approve the agenda. So moved. Second. 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 can be moved for separate consideration. Is there an item? Would anyone care to move to separate consideration? All right. Superintendent, any items to note? Yep, like to make note of the generous community and our donations that were received since our last meeting. We've got $5,277.01 donated by the Waconia Blue Line Club for the boys' high school hockey team. $460 donated by American Online Giving Foundation for Southview Student Activities. $510 donated by the Southview PTO for Volunteer Friendship Day Supplies. $23 donated by the Southview PTO for some background checks for their treasurer.
010$4,247.87 donated by Waconia Lake Ets Boosters for some coaches. $1,217 donated by Midway USA Foundation for the high school trap team. $300 the middle school PTO for student activities. $500 donated by the American Legion. for school patrol equipment at Bayview, Lake Town and Southview. $2,000 donated by the West Hunk of Jaycees for the high school student scholarship. $250 donated by River Bridge Partners for Southview student activities. And then a number of prom donations coming in for the Waconia High School 2025 prom. $750 donated by the Waconia American Legion. $15 by Richard and Joanne Carlson. $500 by the Waconia West Rotary, and $100 by Lakeview Clinic. And again, thank you to all of our generous donors. All right. All in favor of approving the consent agenda? Aye. Any opposed? All right. Thank you. Moving on to
011our reports, and we'll start with the student representative report. Hi, thank you. I hope everyone's doing well and had an amazing spring break. I'm going to mention a couple of upcoming events. First off, my peer, Brooklyn Schramm, is starting an aluminum recycling can program where she's placed bins in each classroom for recycling. They are strictly for aluminum cans, and there's a label on each one of them to prevent cross-contamination. She partnered with our school's conservation club to do so. And I think it's an amazing idea given how many high schoolers and even staff enjoy energy drinks every day, and it's a great idea to recycle all of them. Next, I'd like to mention my presentation for the City Council and how that went. The Monday before break, I created a presentation about student life for
012the City Council to watch. It included examples of my day and other students as well as goals and achievements the district has made. I truly believe it helped create a connection between the city and our school, and I look forward to creating an advocacy board with the help of the mayor to continue that connection. We are currently in a transition period for sports and have many new ones starting this week. This includes track, boys tennis, girls golf, baseball, lacrosse, and many other activities. Be sure to check the calendar soon to see which matches and games are first starting off. And last but not least, testing season is here, and this week will be MCAs for some students as well as pre-ACTs and ACTs for high schoolers in about two weeks. Everyone is having a great
013start to the new trimester, and have a great evening. Thank you much. You need to leave early so you can be excused. Can I just real quick? So I want to thank Ryden because I did get a chance to watch your presentation. We weren't able to attend because we had a work session that night because that was earlier this month, but I did watch that and I thought you did a great job. And Ryden has also stepped up right away as our new mayor had asked for some student voice, had stepped up to help facilitate the process of using her voice, but also finding others. And so, you know, appreciate the city of Waconia, but appreciate Ryden because as a student who goes to... Classes full-time and your student school board rep and now you're
014doing stuff for the city. I really appreciate that So thanks for representing Wakoni a high school. Well, thank you so much. Thank you All right moving on item 6b administrative presentation for the Wakoni Ernie early childhood programs and we welcome up Renee sorghum free sorghum fry First time I'm sitting in front of each of you. My name is Renee Sorgenfree. I'm the early childhood manager. It is wonderful to meet you all. I'm representing the early childhood programs. So that's early childhood family education, early childhood screening, preschool. We're talking about our youngest littles in the community and their parents and caregivers as well. And you'll see grandparents as well. we've got a lot of people that we influence i wanted to start off first with the ecfe program which is early childhood family education early childhood
015family education looks to connect the adults and parents and caregivers to resources and the community while also allowing a great place for their kids to have first start at peer interactions. As you can see, there's babies up here, tiny littles, all the way to our toddlers. We often don't realize that our classrooms are filled with these little tiny bodies, and I'm telling you, it's a joy. It's an absolute joy. We've got lots and lots of programs that are available, Poppin' and Plays, ECFE at Night, Little Wonders, Movers and Shakers, Bridge to Preschool, Discovery Time. It goes a whole age range that goes throughout. And we also have quite a few special events that's also run by ECFE, which really connects families together. One of my favorite moments this year is during one of those special
016events, the Valentine Dance, which is quite... The thing, it was pretty cute because all the moms were out with their toddlers and walkers, right, the threes and four-year-olds, while the dads were lined up five to a piece, one, two, three, four, five, with tiny little infant babies talking. I've got a couple pictures that I just keep close by because that was an amazing production of community gathering together. and supporting one another. At this point, we have 213 families who have come and enjoyed our programs for ECFE. That is a very large range. Let's move on to early childhood screening. Early childhood screening is actually required by the state of Minnesota. It happens before kindergarten entry. It is not a kindergarten entry. screening it is actually requested to be done at about three and a half
017years of age to four years of age it really is to help identify any concerns get those results in earlier because as we know the sooner that we can qualify any resources for families who might need them the better off those outcomes are later on this year we have actually screened 178 students 15% of those students have been connected to some sort of referral process, whether that be referral towards preschool programming, referral towards hearing and vision, and as well as cognitive. Wildcat preschool, this is what we're really well known for. We've got a great program here. These are all the teachers that are in the picture, as well as a great, the upper right-hand picture is actually one of our teachers had done an egg drop. It was really fun to be a part of
018and watch that. It was a science discovery. I really wanted to pull in our goals and the strategic plan. They really cross each other in so many ways that makes our program so strong to ensure that kids are ready for kindergarten as well as ready for their lives at that moment too. So I really wanted to pull those pieces together especially. major things about preschool is that we meet families where they are we have a variety of programs that are available for parents if you are a working parent we have something available for you if you are a parent who's looking for half-day programming because you're not sure your kiddos quite ready for a full day of classrooms we have something ready for you if you're looking for just a couple days a week we
019have that available for you as well. If your kid likes to nap in the morning and isn't that their greatest, we have stuff in the afternoon for your child to be at their best as well. These variety of options, I really feel, meet the needs of so many variety of learners that we meet them where they are and we're able to have those conversations with parents about what do you feel is the most successful path for your child at this time. At this time, we have 181 preschoolers who are in our program. So those are three and four year olds. We have 181 of them. Next year, I just enrolled my 186th child before we came here. So we are growing. So what's new in 24-25? In early childhood family education, tomorrow night we have
020an ECFE at night class. This is something that hasn't been done for a little while because there hasn't been the interest, but we're now finding that parents are actually really wanting to come. So those working parents or people who have things happening during the day or they want to come with both family members together along with their child, we started an evening class. It started with eight students, which is quite big. Now we are full. So very exciting. We plan to do it next year as well. I think that this is a great opportunity to really outreach to families who may not have been available during the daytime hours or morning hours. We also have grandparent ECFE classes, as you can see that picture right below it. We have a lot of grandparents in our
021community who do a lot of care for their young grandchildren and want to know how best they can be of support to their. children as well as their grandchildren. So we started a grandparent ECFE class. We also have a partnership with Waconia Library. We're going to start classes at the library once a week. Then we also have a summer out and about. So they're going to go out into the community, gather people together, and find ways that parents can get together during the summertime, which gets long, right? And we also need to have something for our kids to do. Preschool, we have the voluntary pre-K scholarship. We have 54 fully funded four year olds who are in our classes right now, spread out throughout our class options. We are also looking, we expanded our elementary
022based bell to bell pre-K. So we have Southview now as an additional location to Lake Town. And Kids Co. has been added on to our Pathway 2 funding for wraparound care, which really allows working parents to have that care beyond the preschool hours to go extend it so that they can attend to anything that they have going on for their family as well. And we have summer 2025 preschool summer camps that are coming up as well. So those are our new things. You might be wondering what voluntary pre-K is. Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten is funded from the state of Minnesota. It's an award that comes because of our proven commitment for strong preschool programs. We put in an application and because of our dedication and high quality programming, we were able to secure 54 seats. So that's
02354 seats where children are fully funded for their preschool program. As we know, preschool and childcare and things for young students is expensive. and it doesn't always make it feasible for parents to be able to tap into that. And we wanted to make sure that we have no barriers that are between us and what we can give to students. It's tuition free. Children need to be just four years old on September 1st of 2024. Classes need to have a minimum of 350 instructional hours in the school year. Students earn... A .680M, which is average daily membership, it covers up to 496 instructional hours with the VPK scholarship. Families are not to be charged any amount whatsoever for these seats. Things that are changing with our new legislation, we still hope to have 54 more seats.
024Children need to be four years old again on September 1st of 2025. Students need to qualify now for voluntary pre-K under indicators set by the legislation. I have added our flyer on here that gives you a list of what those indicators are to qualify families. It isn't just income-based. It isn't just economic. It also goes into where... screening results. So if your child was flagged for any referrals, if there is anything that's a barrier to the child being able to attend preschool. And we also have one quite good thing too on top of it is that These options now will include our full-day programming. We can actually decrease the cost for parents and charge them a much smaller fee on a month-by-month basis for tuition that will allow us to put that funding in towards
025the full-day program. So the bell-to-bell. Here's some contacts as well. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me or to Steven Jensen. He's a community education director who would be happy to answer any questions you have as well. Do you guys have any other questions? I just had one that was because you talked about the, what is it, the wraparound? Yeah. The pathway to... Is that like additional funding for people who maybe like need the extra help to have the all-day daycare type thing? Yes, it's economic-based. Okay. So that one where VPK can go beyond the economics. Pathway 2 is qualified by a family, what their size is of family members in the household as well as what their income is. or if they receive any state qualifiers. So if they
026receive CCAP funding or free and reduced meals. So it's income-based. Okay, cool. How many kids are in the bell-to-bell program? Like, does that 186 include everybody? Yeah, it does include everybody. Each one of the classrooms has 20 students. We actually only have, I believe, 18 at Lake Town and 17, oh no, 18 over at Southview. Sorry, we just got a new one last week. 18 over at Southview as well. We are also, for next year, keep on the lookout. We're hoping to open up at Bayview. Awesome. Thank you. And our numbers are leading in that direction. So we would really like to open that up in that third location, that elementary building. Any other questions? Thanks, Renee. Thank you. Thank you, Renee. All right, moving to item 6C, the proposed budget adjustments for school year
02725-26. Turn the time over to Superintendent Gersuch. Thank you. So last year we kind of similar presentation, albeit in a work session, just from the timing of our meetings. This is when it kind of fit. But as you'll note, the purpose here is not to give you everything all inclusive of what would be changing, but really kind of those high level. budgetary improvements we would look at and then what I tried to do also here is kind of you know help you understand how we would expect to pay for that and ensuring that anything that would have an ongoing cost has an ongoing revenue stream to go with it in part because of you know the obvious financial situation that we continue to find ourselves in and we're continuing to work forward on. As noted
028in my conclusion my goal here is to present this and then if there is broad consensus and support we would build this into our budget so I wouldn't necessarily be looking for formalized action. Again, that's consistent with what we did last year. However, if there is a lack of consensus, then certainly what I would recommend we do is postpone that, think about it, and potentially then actually set it up for action at the work session, and I would actually put it on as an action item. either way i'll just kind of walk through but i want to remind you know the board and then also public who might tune in as well that the first document is what i plan to go through and all the others are supplemental materials that would help guide through
029some of the past information presentations with the exception of the community education proposal which would be the first time that people have actually seen that but the others are past presentations and supporting documents So the first item we're proposing, again, you'll see the amounts in there. That's related to our instructional technology. Probably not a surprise. And as we talked through and we did our priorities process, the top priority piece of feedback we received from our team was the need to replace the instructional. technology that isn't working. So certainly this is an investment in that direction using the learning and development budget, which we have built up over time. That is one of our restricted funds. This is an allowable use for those restricted funds that we'll continue to bring in and replenish, meaning that there's
030other areas within that space to potentially look at some future considerations or needs to code some things within learning and development. I do note in there that we are expecting additional potential. technology needs. This is just the interactive whiteboards. So we certainly would expect to have some. We are trying to carve some of that out of the previous technology budgets. It is going to get a little complicated with the switches that we're talking about, and we talked about that as part of the E-rate. So we may anticipate having to look at some other areas to make sure that we are still getting some of those instructional pieces of technology beyond this. So kind of to be determined, but there are some complexities with the... large purchase necessary with the switches, which again is part of
031that technology infrastructure. The next section actually gets into the staffing changes. So that first section and cluster is our special education as we're looking to add basically expand a position point six board certified behavior analyst and again coming back to some of the district feedback that we had it's a part of our priorities process. It is about supporting behavioral needs and sometimes it's behavioral needs that we could use some support with that helps make class sizes feel like they're larger because we're taking that. disproportionate attention. Adding the 1.0 birth to five program as well as the additional point four occupational therapy, that's just a response to increased need in both of those areas respectively. As you'll look within the budgetary detail, another restricted area again with income that should support all of those changes in
032positions. is within our medical assistance. I thought that's probably the first time we've heard of that, and it's maybe not, like when you hear that, the context clues aren't necessarily there, that I'd have Paul Tordoff just talk briefly about what is medical assistance and how these are acceptable uses of medical assistance funds. Sure. Thanks, everyone. I think this is my first official time in front of the new board, too, so welcome, everyone. I'm Paul Tordoff. I'm the director of special ed. and try and keep this at a high level because you can get pretty quickly in the weeds on medical assistance. So what it means is districts are required to bill. medical assistance for medically necessary things for students with disabilities. So it's occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech, nursing services, sometimes transportation. And then our
033people do those things. We submit it in our system to the state. They do their crunching in this and we get reimbursement for some of those activities. We don't get a dollar for dollar back, but we get a portion of it back. And then, like Brian was saying with the restricted piece, the money that comes back to us has to be spent to benefit special education students specifically. And so that's why these would have a direct impact on our students. Thank you. Yeah. Yep. I'll keep going through and certainly if there's questions I can we can call people back up and thanks to everyone for being here It's a part of that The next one educational services. We talked about this before. This is the literacy lead position Again requirement as part of the read
034act and as you'll note down there. We do have literacy incentive aid We have some carryover and we have enough that we would generate to sustain that that position Throughout this so again that was referring back to kind of Erica's presentation when she was talking about some things related to The REED Act. What I want to just point out real quick as I just take a brief pause, everything so far that I have named comes from a restricted fund and therefore would not have any anticipated impact on our general unassigned fund balance. This next area, and that's why I kind of make that break real quick, jumps into an area that would. These are the deans of students. Again, I think in essence what we would look at is we talked about the presentation from
035Shane and Paul Sparby who are here. talking about that program. I'm thinking that both the data and what we've been able to see from the impact of the deans of students, how the data supports kind of similar like-sized school districts, and as I name in that document there too, kind of the inception of them, as well as the, where was I just gonna? Oh, yeah, again, student behavior continuing to become one of the areas that our staff is looking to support. We would recommend continuing forward with that. The net budgetary impact is year over year. In the current year, we did have a grant that was able to support $50,000 total of the two positions. So from a net impact perspective, there's not really an increase in expense, but there's that loss of revenue that
036was used to support the positions. So we are recommending carrying those forward at this time. But I think... Both of our principals as well as our team would acknowledge that if we get into tighter budgetary situations and we start to look at FY27, FY28, these are positions that are vulnerable as things that were added more recently. But in the current context, we'd be recommending to carry those forward. And then the last piece, Ted comes back out of general fund consideration. This is our community education coordinator. Again, there's a separate proposal for that that basically just points out that this is to try to increase programming within the community education. When you increase programming, you increase fees that are paid and therefore revenue for it. This is a fund for a separate fund from the general
037fund that has been healthy. I think it's notable that not the current finance committee, but a previous finance committee had asked when we looked at how community education was well-funded and actually generating year-over-year revenues over expenditures, is there a time when we would be looking at investing back into additional programming for the community as a result of that? And this is kind of a, well, have I got a deal for you? This is part of that proposal. And Stephen knows full well, and he sends his regrets. He would have liked to have been here tonight. but realizes that he has to continue to balance that budget, or if this did not see an increase in revenues by increasing programming, this would be a position that would be vulnerable to a cut, and that would be
038happening not just kind of on a cyclical nature, but if he started to make reductions, we would do that potentially with a one-month, two-month notice kind of a situation. So, again, coming out of Fund 4 that has been healthy and that we would anticipate expanding to be able to offer additional programming would expand the revenue stream to support that. So again, I guess those are kind of my proposals and I would certainly yield to the chair here if there are questions, comments, concerns or otherwise and eventually what I'd be looking for is again that consensus that we would continue to move forward and you would approve all of this stuff as a part of the approval of the budget that we get to in the next couple of months. Any questions? So for the community
039ed position, do we have any kind of estimates on what the payback? So obviously we're anticipating that we'll more than cover the cost of a new position. Do we know what time period that would be? I don't know that we would necessarily know a time period. I mean, once that position starts, they would start to delineate out the existing programming across different areas and allow people to try to expand from there. So, no, I don't think we've discussed a timeline other than I would see that happening over the course of the fiscal year. Within a year. That's what I would. I would think that would be a logical thing to at least see that moving in the right direction and analyze. Again, they could be theoretically leaning into some of their. year-over-year revenues of our
040expenditures, but it wouldn't take long if we're deficit spending that we'd have to make some adjustments. It's a good question that that's speculation and just the... I understand, but I just want to, you know, make sure that the plan is then to be running at a deficit for three years before we're generating revenue on that position. I think if we started to run at a deficit, you would see that within our reports, and we would have some explaining to do to say why would we continue to recommend we take this chance or otherwise. Any other questions? Go ahead. Just on some of the other positions, like there's fund balances and things to cover them, like in the short term, but then do we project that there's going to be continued revenue to cover them longer
041term, past 26? Every one of the positions I believe that we presented is actually expected to generate. enough revenue that there would be no spend down proposed right now in each of their current carryover fund balances. So yes, everything generates revenue. So like the medical assistance, we generate enough in medical assistance each year to pay for these positions and not yet spend down the existing medical assistance fund balance. Similar to all of the areas. Am I misspeaking on that one, Pam? No, the only one would be the instructional technology. We are spending down some of the restricted for employment development, but everything else. Anything with an ongoing cost, which would be those positions, has an ongoing revenue to cover and make it so far budget neutral, if that makes sense, even within the restricted areas.
042There's not that spend down with the exception of the learning development. Even there, I think we're still generating enough to cover those. It's just theoretically we've looked at that as a one-time spending and a spend down. So even with the REIT Act, right, that's going to be continuous funding each year? That's probably the tightest of them, but that does generate enough to pay for the position. And if we get into a position where we deficit spend, believe me, conscious of the fact that if we go negative in any of our restricted areas, the general fund has to cover it, and we're not looking to do that. So we would come with a proposal before we would have all those depleted at this point. But I would just, as a quick aside, within, if you go
043back and look at the fiscal year 25 budget that was adopted in June, there was a column that our previous, that Todd Netsky from SMS had talked about transfers, which was looking to potentially code some of those restricted funds to do some potential deficit spending, aside from this proposal, to capture some of that back into the general fund. And so there is still the ability to look at some of that. And again, the shift would be to... have more allocations of the restricted funds, which would build up the general fund, the unassigned. So again, I don't want to step aside from the fact that there was a plan within there to start to lean into some of the restricted funds in other ways. Again, coming back to the fact that we've built up the cupboards,
044we can make sure that we continue to build back our unassigned general fund, which is the most discretionary resources we have. But that was built in the FY25 budget. So just mentioning that wouldn't be a surprise if all of a sudden, why is it not 1.2 in learning and development? There was a... budget that was adopted this so we try to find some ways to also lean into that in current areas that are within the general fund. Am I being clear? Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay. Chester, you sound like you had a question. It was more of a comment. I wanted to thank you guys for the memorandum was unbelievably clear. I thought it was really great. I don't know that I've gone through anything where I was like, wait a second, I'm not
045going to write down this question yet. because he might have the answer and you immediately, like this was really well put together. Great. And thank you very much for doing that because it really did limit my questions. Great. Glad and thanks to the whole team for helping pull this together. Any other comments or questions? Thank you much. So I'm just going to take that as broad consensus that I'm not hearing concerns and that we continue to move forward with this planning because it does mean some of this is tied to staffing as well as orders and things that need to be placed so we can get out in front of timelines and things. Okay. This is not news and it's been well laid out. Thank you. All right. Moving on to Item 60, Finance Report,
046and we'll welcome up Pam. Sorry, it disconnected me, so I've got to connect to the Wi-Fi. Just give me a minute. Okay, this is the first couple pages of the general fund. There's not a lot of changes from the information we looked at that I'm going to probably point anything out. So I'll go through maybe just a couple things and then please ask questions. I do want to just make sure while we did present a fiscal year. preliminary revised budget for 25. This is still the original budget. So I haven't actually brought those numbers in yet. I'll bring those numbers in based on our preliminary revised budget. After you look at the preliminary revised, I'm sorry, after you look at the fiscal year 24 revised and start to look at a preliminary fiscal year 26,
047then I'll start to bring those revised numbers in here so you can see them side by side. So again, just looking at the general fund, some of the things I'll point out is those local, which has to do that interest earnings we continue to you know creeping that up at $1.2 million, and that will get allocated to the other funds at the end of the year. So I just want to point that out. On the expenses, I really don't have anything to point out except that I am very closely watching our insurance, property and casualty, and our work comp. I'm getting some more final numbers as we start to finalize fiscal year 26, so I'm keeping an eye on that for the budget as we head into fiscal year 26 as well. Looking at the
048other funds, I really don't have anything to point out with any of the other funds. And so I guess with that, I'll just open up and see if you have any questions or anything you would like me to address. I had a quick question. Yeah. It looks like we are trending for expenditures at least a couple of... percentage points below the last couple years. Do we expect that to continue? Like, are we saving money right now? Do we expect that to continue, or is there going to be something that's going to hit us that we just haven't? No, so just remember when this original budget for fiscal year 25 was set, we didn't have... any of the settlements. So some of that stuff is rolling through as, and that's why I made the point in
049the beginning that this is still that original fiscal year 25 budget. Some of that we're truing up in the revised budget. Okay. So we do expect it actually to come a little lower. Okay. Perfect. Great question. Any other questions? Thanks, Pam. All right. Moving on to item seven on the agenda, action items. And the first item up tonight is the bond sale, and we welcome back Pam and Mike. This is Michael Hart from PMA. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. Michael Hart. Pam's going to pull up my presentation here. Happy to be here with you tonight. I acknowledge some new board members, so I'm going to start back at the beginning a little bit because we're well into this process in terms of the finance plan. This is really the last board action on a finance
050plan that was originally approved in December of 2023. So, you know almost a year and a half ago at this point to finance an indoor air quality project primarily at the high school facility and at that time The there was a design phase that was going on and we had decided to split the bond issue or the financing of that project into two parts The first part of that was completed about a year ago and we borrowed five million dollars to fund the initial design for this project Knowing that the bids would be taken last fall in the December of 2024, and we would resize the bond issue appropriately to make sure we're borrowing the right amount of money based upon actual bids that have come in hand. We received those bids back in the
051fall, and I was at the school board meeting in December, and ultimately we were able to reduce the borrowing amount for the project by $1.9 million from the original estimates. And so this is the second part of that financing. And we also, in addition to the financing of that indoor air quality project, we also are doing what we call refunding bonds, which is another word for refinancing. And the purpose of that is to lower the interest rate. And this is a bond issue that dates back to the last time that the school district had the voters approve a bond. It was $75 million about 10 years ago. And that bond issue is eligible to be refinanced at this point in time. And so we reduce the interest rate on this bond issue. So this current
052financing started or was initiated by a board action in December of 2024 to proceed forward with the refunding bonds and the remainder of this new bond for the indoor air quality project. So, and the indoor air quality project is funded under the long-term facility maintenance program of the school district, and so it did not require voter approval in order to go through this project. The state of Minnesota allows school boards to do certain types of projects without voter approval, but those things are really mostly limited toward maintenance type of items, and that's what you're doing here. So the next slide on here shows a comparison of the numbers that were finalized about two weeks ago. when we actually went to sell the bonds versus what was presented to the board in December of 2024. So
053we were able to have a lower interest rate than we had presented at that time at a final interest rate of 3.86%. And compared to a 4% interest rate, the savings on the refinancing portion of this bond issue is that $995,000. So it's about $150,000 more than what was presented to the board at that time. And that's in gross dollars. That's the pure number of dollars saved. In finance, we talk about present value dollar a lot because a dollar tomorrow is not worth as much as a dollar today. And so that's what that $685,000 is. In terms of the total principal and interest on the combined package of both parts of this, you know, we're about almost $400,000 less in terms of total principal and interest. And we're providing you an additional $9,140,000. to fund
054the remainder of the project that will be paired with the $5 million that was borrowed a year ago. This next slide, there's a lot of detail on here. This is mostly in an effort to be transparent about the cost of issuance and the parts of the process. And you can see there's a column there for the LTFM. That column is the new money component of it, the refunding bond. The second column is the refinancing component, so that's about $12 million. And then the combined two together and the related costs. The following slide provides some detail on the savings with the refinancing bond. So we're not paying off all of the $75 million that is still outstanding or the component of that is still outstanding. We selected the... the parts of it that had the highest
055interest rate. There was a large part of it that did not make sense to refinance at this point in time. And so you can see where we are paying off all of the bonds that are maturing in calendar year 2034 and 2037. And so you see that there's about $500,000 of savings in those future years. And that right column shows you the savings. And all added up together is that $995,000 that I presented on the summary slide. The following page here is just the overall debt service payment schedule on the new bonds combined together. But the slide 7, the next one, is more, I think, interesting, instructive. This is a chart that the board has seen throughout this process. The different colors on here represent the different types of bonds, but each one of these
056columns is the overall bond payment, debt service payment for the school district for each individual fiscal year. The red component of that is this new bond issue layered on top of what you already have. And so this was designed from the beginning when this project was originally approved to not increase taxes. And this will not increase taxes. It will maintain taxes at the current level. If you had not done this project, taxes would have declined some for taxes payable in 2025. And as a part of planning process that the board engaged in in 2023, you can see that that red bar kind of fills in the gap in terms of that decline. And then we have built in, in terms of the schedule, a decline to happen. after fiscal 2031 so that this school board
057can engage in this process again or there'll be a new discussion at that time about whether or not this is the right strategy to pursue with the next set of funding. That was intentionally done with the understanding that SiteLogic put together a 10-year facilities plan for you at the outset of this process and there are more projects that need to be accomplished according to their assessment of the school district's facilities. And so the other thing I'll notice that you'll notice on this is that the two years where we had those refinancing bonds, you can see the red bar is a little bit bigger. We kind of filled in the gap that we created by paying those off. The ultimate result of that is that you kind of, you not only saved that million dollars on
058the refinancing, we also saved money on the new issue by filling those in because we were able to pay them off sooner. This next slide shows the calendar for this current bond issue process, starting with the board action that happened back in December. We went through a competitive RFP process to select an underwriter in the month of January. That's the firm that actually is selling the bonds into the market. And we worked with Piper Sandler through that process. We also received a bond rating from the school district. I'll talk a little bit more detail about what we learned there. And we sold these bonds on March 12th. Tonight is the last action for the school board to take, and the funds will be received. on April 8th at the school district to continue to fund
059this project as you get into the summer where the bulk of the work is going to happen. Those old bonds will be paid off on June 26th with this current plan. The next slide shows or takes an excerpt from the rating report. So when we go to the bond market, we go through a process of hiring a third-party agency, in this case Moody's Investor Services, that third-party agency, to write a report that discusses the credit quality of the school district or your ability to pay back the bonds as it compares to other school districts, cities, counties, other municipal entities. It's analogous to receiving a credit score when you go through a mortgage process or a car loan process if you're doing that as an individual. Moody's, as a part of their report, improved your overall
060rating. So it's not a number score like a credit rating is. They use this letter mechanism. So they upgraded you from BAA3 to BAA2 as a school district. It's notable BAA3 is kind of the lowest grade that we would consider, that the bond market considers to be investment grade. So you're kind of on that tier, and that's, you know. caused by some of the past financial history here. I think this excerpt, and I'm not going to read it to you, but you certainly can read it, that they're certainly recognizing that you have done a lot of hard work as a school board administration to climb out of financial struggles. And we would expect to see that to climb over time if you continued on the path that you're down. The folks at Moody's will even
061tell you when you do these rating scores like this, they say that you ride the elevator down, but you climb the stairs back up. And so you're kind of on that process. They want to see a long history in terms of you being able to prove the track record that you have established over the last couple years as a school district. So finally, once the funds are received on April 8th, they'll be deposited into a segregated account. So these funds can only be used for construction, and the interest that's earned on them has to be within the construction account. And we'll work with your partners at SiteLogic and the School District Administration to understand how quickly you expect to spend the money, if it makes sense to do any fixed-rate investments. And we're talking about
062very safe investments like CDs or U.S. Treasuries, that kind of thing, to increase your interest earnings. We'll help you go through that process. There's also, when we talk about bond issues for school districts, we're talking about bonds that have IRS advantages of tax exemption, which means the holder of those bonds doesn't pay tax. For you as a school district, it means you get a lower interest rate, but it also comes with a lot of rules. And there's a lot of rules about how you spend the money, when you spend the money, and we'll be a partner along the way to make sure you are monitoring those rules and complying with the regulations tied to that. So you have tonight a resolution in front of you for board action that would ratify the sale that took
063place a couple of weeks ago, but I'm certainly happy to answer any questions from the board about the process or the results of the sale. All right. Thank you for your presentation. Seeking a motion to approve the bond sale. So moved. Second. Are there any questions? All right. This will be a roll call vote. Amat? Aye. Arnita? Aye. Bergstrom? Aye. Hagen? Aye. Kelser-Breeden? Aye. Rosen? Aye. Wilson? All right, thank you. Moving to item 7B, the E-rate award. Pam? Think the last one so I just wanted to circle back and get in front of you with the e-rate and I did notice I think I missed adding the the sourcing summary so I do have that here We ended up also getting favorable bids for the e-rate. This is not us Deciding if we're gonna fund
064for this yet. This is strictly allowing us to submit to see it the amount and making sure we get the approval for the 50% reimbursement. So I can show you really quickly here. So we ended up getting two companies that bid on this. It was ESX and TechCheck. We did not look at option two with ESX because what they chose to do, because the all in of this is everything we want quoted was. more than what we had available for funding. They also provided us with a scaled down version and we wanted the whole quote to be all in. And so you can see here, Tech Check came in with $399,767 and we actually, our amount with E-Rate is like $458,000. So now again, we get 50% reimbursement for that. So once we get through
065all the paperwork, we would know exactly what we're gonna get for reimbursement and what our... costs would be the expense we would pay would not hit until fiscal year 26. So there's time on the funding, but right now we're just looking for the approval so that we can go ahead and submit everything on the 26th to get the approval for the reimbursement based on the quotes that we have and we want to award the vendor. So I'll see if there's any questions or pass it back to you. All right. Seeking a motion to approve E-rate award submission for approval. So moved. Second. Any questions for Pam? So can you just reiterate, so this is just another step in the process. What would the next step or steps look like? Yeah, so when one of the
066original board presentations on February 24th, we kind of basically walked through kind of this timeline. So this is the bid award date of March 24th, and then this would be the E-rate funding request that we would send out based on this. quote that we received. And then if you look back at kind of something we submitted to the Finance Committee meeting, this is when we would actually look at the procurement and deployment timeline. So this is when we would be the earliest possible time we would purchase it would have to be July 1 of 2025 because we would need to order and receive the goods in fiscal year 26. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. Alright moving on to action item 7 C second roll second read board policies anything of note Mostly
067these are just red lines MSBA red lines One thing we had to note was in 503 student attendance, the policy committee did talk to Paul Sparby about the clauses that discuss not allowing students to complete work if they miss. And that in general, that leads to worse outcomes for the students. And so it's very rarely used in our school system. But it was just a note of concern that was brought up because there is a section in there that talks about that. For unexcused? Unexcused, yeah, yeah. And repeated unexcused absence that... You can do that and it's again. It's not you it's not particularly used in the system because those students It's not really helping those students, but it's in the policy that they can it is that they can it is that it's optional
068like it gives the school the ability to not allow them to Correct. Yes makeup work. Okay. Do we want that to still be in there if they're not using it anyways, and if it's not All right. Seeking a motion to approve the second read board policies. So moved. Second. All right. Heather, your question. Oh. So do we want to keep that in there if it's not seen to be actually helpful? Principal Sparby did describe to the committee how he does use that. If you have a situation where an ongoing student purposely avoids an exam on a regular basis, knowing that's an exam, wants the ability to say. This is done. This is now a deliberate effort. It is rare, but leaving it in policy still gives them the ability to use that when necessary. But
069as he described to the group, that's after there's been. conversations with the parent, there's been conversations with the student. We've done everything and to continue to create that additional work that does happen for the instructor to give makeup exams, alternate versions, et cetera. At some point you need to just say enough is enough. And again, it's rare, but it is principal Sparby who generally makes that decision to allow that. But he wants it in there in case he needs it. Correct. Yes. Okay. Yep. The only other one that I had a note out about was 524. There's just a note in there about the upcoming 524.5, which is in first reads, which is the personal electronic communication devices, which is new. 24 says that we need it. So it's coming next. We will be approving
070that next in the next meeting. But I think, yeah, that was pretty much all we had. We didn't have a lot of other things. Anybody else on policy have anything? No. Any other questions or comments? All right. All in favor of approving the second board? Second. I cannot say that. Second read board policies. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. Thank you much. Please. So I forgot. Just wasn't here. Can I get who was the first and the second on that one? It was Kim. I don't remember. Yeah, I think Kim was the first. And then somebody else was the second. So before we get too far away from it, then, I've got the first one. What about 7B, which was the E-rate? We can watch the tape, too. I think Jesse and I did it
071at the same time, so I'll just say Jesse did it. Jesse got the first. Yeah, I heard you. All right. We'll watch it back, too, if we need to. Thanks. All right, thank you. Okay, moving on to item eight on the agenda, discussion items. First, read board policies. Anything to note? No, sorry, I already said everything. All right. All right. Then we have, I cannot read. I forgot my cheaters. Actually, I think that's the only thing we got on the discussion items. Okay, so yeah, moving on to item nine. Board committee reports. Anything to report from the committees? I will say we met again in Southwest Metro. We have been going up there with strategic goals and it's starting to coalesce and you'll be again happy to know that all of the representatives from the
072member districts just keep stressing the need to recognize and be attentive to the needs of each of the districts when it comes to whatever finances or other demands are being made. So in that case, item 10 moved to adjourn. So moved. Second. All in favor? Aye.