WCA School Board Meeting 7/21/21

001all right good morning it is wednesday july 21st and 7 a.m here in the secondary school and we're going to go ahead and call the meeting to order and we'll start with the pledge of allegiance america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under just indivisible with liberty and justice for all i need just a little more caffeine all right um so while the board is not required to hear comments but uh we do choose to allow the public a chance to address the board only during the public comment segment of this meeting individual speakers are asked to limit their comments to not more than two minutes the remainder of the meeting is designated for the board to conduct the business before them without interruption or unsolicited feedback the board asks that

002all comments be civil courteous and respectful individuals that are viewing this live stream or recording of this meeting may direct comments to questions at isd2342.org our mission statement is to challenge and support our students staff and families in each person's growth as an engaged learner and successful citizen of our community we'll move into roll calls starting with christiansen here gross here nessman is here symbolic is not with us this morning sandstad here strunk here and ulrich okay we do have a few visitors with us this morning did you have anything for the board okay and mr swanson i understand you'd like to speak to the board turn this on [Applause] right so the the hates you give is another book that's required reading for the multicultural literature class the main storyline is centered on the

003killing of a young black man at the hands of the police true to black lives matter form is the narrative of a systemic racism of the police as is typical of marxist writings it focuses on emotional appeals while ignoring facts and logic the book is infused with marxist rhetoric referring to the more well-off students in a neighboring district as bougie short for bourgeoisie the enemy and marxist theory the book also references huey newton in a positive manner kiwi newton was the violent founder of the black panther party he encouraged violence in the pursuit of goals many than marxist the book references malcolm x in a positive manner malcolm x was a black supremacist and referred to white as devils he also advocated the use of violence to achieve political goals hugh newton and malcolm x

004were the exact opposite of martin luther king jr when it came to the method to achieve racial equality harmlessly king advocated non-violence newton malcolm x advocated violent means martin luther king jr advocated for equality that people be judged by the content of their character rather than their skin the new critical race theorists advocate the exact opposite that people first be uh identified by the color of their skin regardless of their character critical race theory aims to open society and create division between the races to further the destruction of society and make it easier to implement marxism the marxist goal is always the revolution for whatever means necessary i'm not advocating that the book be pulled from the curriculum but rather the balance a balanced respect to be provided once again how can a scholarly debate

005occur when only one side's provided do they discuss the origin of the word bougie do they study the racist and violent writings and speeches of newton and malcolm x apparently they don't investigate the fbi statistics and studies that show police aren't systemically racist i suggest that the hate u give be balanced by a book from heather mcdonald called our cops racist it concerns me that neither the principal nor the teacher thought it was necessary to provide a balanced perspective in the class hopefully they're just unaware of the controversial nature of the material they're providing rather than something more nefarious if you were gonna if you were gonna in three to four sentences tell me what your your main concerns are what would they be about this book in general or about you've been here four

006times now and i think right yeah that's cool and spoke to the board yep so of those four times this whole synopsis if in three to four sentences what would your concerns be thank you for your question um i've been consistently mapping out that there's an unbalanced curriculum in the english program particularly a marxist leaning curriculum and i'm not aggravating you take it out but balance it so people can see both sides they can make an informed decision thank you thank you all right we'll move into our agenda we do have a few modifications today if you would turn over to page two under the consent agenda we're gonna add number five which is to approve austin hansen as the head cross country coach and number six to approve the transfer of sarah peterson from

007north elementary to south elementary we're also going to add letter h um old business which would be consider and approve a summary statement of the july 7th closed meeting which we'll discuss later today and and then uh what used to be h will change to i i will change to j j will turn to k and k will turn to l any other modifications for today's agenda and to approve the motion is there a second second one favor say aye okay pose the same sign motion passes moving on to the minutes that were supplied in the board packet questions or comments from 6 16 or 7 7 meeting i think everything will be moved to approve motion is there a second second one favor say aye oppose the same sign motion passes moving on to

008d approval of the payment of claims uh payment of claims for this month is 703.66 questions or comments regarding bills this month that'll ask for a motion to approve one more second second don't bear say aye what was the same sign motion passes moving on to uh committee curriculum and activity reports i understand that we'll be getting an update on the washington dc trip this morning [Laughter] we won't tell you who the others were that didn't come i'm gonna sit and just kind of be uh all right okay okay so typically the dc trip happens um in march and uh because of covid it got delayed so we didn't get to go till june um but it was still an amazing experience the hard thing was that we had a bunch of kids were already

009graduates um but they they were amazing we had no problem it was a wonder wonderful trip which um according to mr hoagy those kind of trips never go well when you have graduates with you you know to say how great our kids are here because we had a bunch of 18 year old graduates that were they were so amazing and mostly behaved right mostly yeah um anyway so um we're just gonna kind of we won't go through every single thing we did we did so many things why won't it go forward i should oh okay so we can tell tell them about our how it all started um well we got here excuse me mrs kenosha before you go any further um we have two well-known students here before audience that might be watching or

010viewing streaming would you please introduce your representatives this morning absolutely you want to introduce yourselves sure uh i'm kennedy ulrich i'll be a senior here this year i'm lexi bright i'll also be a senior this year thank you thank you okay okay so we arrived here at like 10 30 and we got greeted by our two um just our tour guides that were amazing like it was so great experience the whole time um we left here around like 11 45 and we got to the airport around 1 30 um we were all running on zero sleep so if you can't sleep on a bus well sorry um but it was so fun and we got on a plane around 5 30 in the morning and we landed around eight and it was from the second

011we stepped on the plane it was just like crazy to see like everything and it was just an amazing trip all around so right when i got off the plane we started we went from the plane we loaded our stuff on a um a big coach bus that includes our bags we did not check into the hotel yet um as you can see there it says with zero hours of sleep um yeah it was chill um we the first day was seriously incredible like even on zero i was asleep um it was just so crazy to see like from ebola lake in barrett minnesota to go somewhere where all those like crazy things are and like amazing it was very like in kindergarten i always think like you see those in books and pictures but

012then like when you actually see it in person it's so incredible so yeah lexi um just when we first got off the bus we were at the air force memorial right away and it was just it was what kennedy said just crazy for me that i was like actually there because i've seen pictures of all this stuff but being there is so much different it's just such a different experience to learn like hands-on more instead of out of a book yeah so okay go ahead when we were at the washington monument our tour guides they were super fun they were the best i love them they suggested that we put our feet up onto the washington monument to just look up at the view that it gave and it was it was an incredible view

013it was crazy to see it was it made it look like you're like it was tipping on top of you definitely want if you ever experienced that do it it's worth it yeah that was just our group picture that we took of all of our students that got to go on this incredible trip do you want to talk about the vet in the picture at all oh yeah our little speaker that is the speaker that spoke to us at the world war ii memorial he just talked about like different experiences that they had during that time he was i think he was like an impersonator right we all listened to him and our our tour guide don also talked to us when we were right there and just taught us more about the monument before

014we actually saw it and then we went and experienced it for ourselves so we could all get kind of like our own our own experience of it and then we came back together and talked about it some more this is all still in day one yes so we're still we're still running on zero hours of sleep um a couple less change on the bus because we're all wearing our plain clothes still um then we just uh definitely bring walking shoes recommended because we walked a lot but um once again for like me even being not a history person like this was in triple of a lifetime um seriously incredible just to see everything in person um yeah like that's the martin luther king jr about like the feet how the feet weren't even carved out

015we there's a lot of like different things but um one of the things that i was told while we were there is um it's not fully done because the story wasn't quite finished yet the time he left and so it was pretty incredible to see that too another thing they mentioned about the feet not being done is that with his mo his movement his movement still had a lot more to be finished by the time of his death he started it but there's still way more to be done and tell them about the fourth seater in the back oh yeah everyone in the alley yeah we went to ford theater and then we actually got to go to the back where we're um both right where booth was running out after he assassinated so i

016thought that was pretty cool to just see like the door that he came out of we were actually standing i don't know in the water behind the building it was a little sketchy but it was really cool and then the holocaust museum we were unfortunately not be able to go inside but just even outside and seeing all like the writing on the ground and like the all like the upside down house and everything that was pretty cool just to visualize kind of dates two we got a whole night's sleep um day two started um at like 7 30 i think our wake up call was and from that we got back on our bus with no starbucks because it was two week blocks away [Laughter] coffee battle before it was coffee but we still had

017so much fun this um we went to mount vernon that day um it was we got on the bus it was wasn't this the two-hour bus ride no that was getting oh guys okay so we got on this bus and then we gotta go see like um george washington's like house and everything and that was really cool i'm going to tell them about the slave memorial a little bit yeah while we were there we saw the part of where they think that the slaves were buried when the slaves that were working i thought that was really cool to just like that they created a more memorial like years later to to like pay their respects to these slaves and like give them something that they did work here and they were here along with george

018washington it wasn't just all about george washington the white house was crazy it was so cool um there was like um as you can imagine lots of protesters but it was central represented and it was seriously just an amazing experience to see like all the pictures like in books of the white house and like you're standing like in the front of the white house it's like so different and it's amazing um the world war one memorial had that amazing waterfall actually let's move that picture in the waterfall and that was pretty cool oh maybe like that is a great way to cool off too yeah i thought the coolest part about the white house well obviously seeing the white house was super cool but also seeing the protesters were it was pretty amazing actually they

019said that they've been there since the 80s no one's allowed to like stay overnight in the park anymore but since they never left the park from the time that rule was made they're allowed to stay unless they ever leave so they have had someone there in their tent 24 7 since the 80s i thought that was pretty amazing yeah and it's like when they first really smell there was a bathroom bucket in the back that was pretty disgusting but when they said ten i was expecting like you know like a pop-up candy no it's a tarp on top of a tarp on top of a cart on top of another tarp and it's pretty crazy this thing's like they were allowed to move at one time during like a severe storm but ever since like

020the day the storm like was manageable for them to sit outside they were back and so that was pretty cool and they just like people just started to get this close again to the white house because they were fenced out for so long so we were kind of fortunate that we got to get that close sorry um vietnam memoir was also one of my that was my favorite part of the trip i think before we saw it our tour guide don she told us this story about the girl that designed it and it was about it it was how it was like her college professor assigned all his students to create a design for it and her design she didn't get a great desire a great grade on the project but then she ended up

021getting picked to win and get her design as the vietnam memorial but then there was some people so her design it's how it is right now but it's like it's a wound like if you looked at it from a top view it looks like there's a wound in the vietnam memorial with all the people that died names on the wall so they when they first did it they were trying to get that design changed because a lot of people didn't want there to be a wound in the middle of dc but she stuck to what she said and she said if you want to pick someone else's design that's fine but don't change my work but she's stood strong to herself and she got her design as the vietnam memorial it was probably one of

022the like best things i think i saw the whole trip um and then it was actually a ptsd awareness day and it's like all the green candles on the bottom um are actually school was um handed a candle we got to put it on the thing just to remember all the um what everyone's went through that was pretty cool and then i don't remember what this one was about understood like the yeah was the hope faith and courage yeah so like those three um ladies on the side it's like one's hope one's faith and one's courage and then like no one knows exactly who's who but like you kind of can have your own personal opinion on what it is so it's pretty cool like that represents those three things then check this out sure

023we said jefferson memorial is one of the places we went to the his statue is pretty cool in there i don't know just walking out we went there at night yeah yeah we went there do you remember what mrs um what senora said about his hands i don't know so um this is an l in sign language and this is an a in sign language and those were grandchildren yeah okay great this was the bus ride this was a two-hour bus ride that a lot of us slept on because we were still sleep-deprived no um we went to gettysburg and that was also a crazy experience like um the first trip that actually went didn't get to experience gettysburg and so it was pretty cool to see like all that kind of stuff yeah um

024yeah while we were at gettysburg we had this tour guide that came on our bus with us and he brought us around the battlefield so he like talked about things while we were seeing it which that was cooler than like being in the building just learning about it through pictures and stuff actually being on the battlefield with stuff happened and he in that bottom right picture he showed us how he showed us how that they would not shoot one of those in battle like during the time we went through all the steps that they did it was as you can see we have some students surrounded they were picked to like help demonstrate and yes that's mark adams pulling the the well-known so it was really funny do you remember what this was about the

025statue the maryland one um yeah isn't that the one that like two different two different sides that were helping each other yeah they came together because they were both injured and they are always there to help each other out like and it was like the war of brothers and so they look pretty much identical other than their belt buckles um identify which side they're on this one right here okay uh this is one of my favorite days um we went down to um the like the ferris wheel and kind of just got a night off but it was so pretty it was so pretty um and then we gotta go find minnesota on um yeah we're still at gettysburg but we gotta go find like minnesota and it was pretty cool to see like i

026don't know everything that was added in like um on the end like the flagging race um what was that that was eugene yeah let's go back real quick to the minnesota one that's super cool at gettysburg because there was a minnesota regiment that basically won the battle of gettysburg for the north and it's not really common knowledge but they talked about how there is the the i think it's 101st regiment for minnesota and the um confederacy is within probably 20 feet and you can see like where they stand and the minnesota unit charge it was the highest rate of casualties for any surviving unit in american history and they held the line and long enough for reinforcements to get there which basically won the battle and you know looking back at it so it's kind

027of cool to think of you know as people relatives of people now that were serving them and they said 206 the minnesota regiment only had 262 men and they said you got to go you just got to hold the line and they came out with men oh my gosh yeah but the other thing that i thought was so cool about gettysburg is when you think about war now and war happens at such a distance because our weapons are are so advanced and when you go to gettysburg and you look at the battlefield and it's like yeah they were coming through these trees and and the other side was over here and it was just it's so when they talk about it that you know the war against brothers and face to face and it's really

028quite chilling to kind of see what you know hard almost so abstract because it's like a field that you'd see in minnesota so it's really hard some almost wrap your head around 40 000 troops fighting in that area that space yeah on our last day that we actually flew out this day but before we flew out we got to go to a national arlington national cemetery which was my second favorite part of the trip probably while we were there well first when we got there you could just see like you can see in the picture just like all the stones and it was it was like incredible not incredible but like it was just crazy to see all the people that have died and being honored by being buried here while we were there they

029there was a funeral for a general and just the way that they the way that they did everything for him it was cool to see like the horses and then they shot off three shots to honor him and it was super loud and it was just cool to see how they honored him his funeral yeah um in the bottom there's the jfk and the jackie memorial and then like you can kind of see there's like a thing in the back it's like a flame and that's like the never ending like everlasting flame and so like that flame will never go out and so that's pretty cool like because what was it like jackie before she died she put that in for um john and then it's just never gone out since he died and so

030that's pretty cool and then and our tour guides had said that they've never been that close to an actual funeral at arlington before so we got really lucky we just happened to be walking by and it was a block away and they got to see the horse come out with the boots backwards which indicates they send the horse out and indicate that indicates that a general has gone down when they send it back and so there's so many cool yeah it was amazing one thing that always gets me about where jfk is varied is the spot is kind of in front of like where robert e lee's house is and jfk had been there he had visited and he had sat on the hill and you can look out and see dc and he says

031it's so beautiful i could stay here forever and so then when after the assassination that was how they decided where to beat him so that one always gets me the unknown soldier is actually guarded 24 7 for the rain and anything it's always guarded and so like this guy walks back and forth back and forth and then every 30 minutes in the summer um they said um because of heat and everything they'd switch out soldiers so we actually had the opportunity of watching that happen and it's like so crazy like all those certain steps and everything that needs to be checked and um like it's pretty unreal like to know what they have to go through just to start um guarding this thing and so that's pretty cool do you remember how many steps it

032was that he took 21 21. 21 steps and then yeah they also taught us about how they picked like who the unknown soldier was which i thought that was pretty that was interesting to me because i i've known about the two of them and shoulder but i've never known like why or how so there was these three unknown soldiers that were all they were just like together and they just picked one but they don't know which one was picked because they were moved around so no they don't know which unknown soldier it was where they came from or any of that and then the point of it was so that all the people that had lost someone but that they were never found they could all go to this one tomb to pay their respects

033and they just had someone to be and somewhere to go and that's it and then we went home yeah then we flew home and we had 16 pizzas in 15 minutes it was pretty cool pretty impressive they they thought that was gonna be way too much yeah so 15 minutes they were all gone except for the two we saved for the bus two pieces so yeah it was definitely incredible and recommend all younger students my sister went on it the two years ago and it was seriously i do recommend march is kind of a better time for heat wise but it was still an incredible trip um and bring aloe yeah yeah and where world classrooms mr um wood did an amazing job uh world classrooms is a i mean they're just first-class uh tour

034company they are here from the minute the kids get here and stay with us until the kids are all gone they're a small local company out of aberdeen south dakota which is kind of cool too so instead of one of these giant corporations they're a local business the food was so good yeah thank you thank you thanks guys i went on both the last two trips and in this trip i thought was just as good as the last one we didn't go inside any buildings hardly you know they much everything was you know still closed and covered and you couldn't go inside but we still i mean these kids still got an amazing trip and we didn't even go inside a building hardly except for like a you know visitor center or like the gift

035shop at the you know open memorials or whatever but i mean we didn't go into the you know to the capitol building obviously we didn't go into the library congress we didn't go into the archive we didn't go into any of the smithsonians and they still got a really great trip out of it and we didn't go inside hardly so and we bought we didn't wait in line either so we got to do a bunch of things that we didn't do the other time yes we never wait in the line to get inside anywhere so we just you know it was so that was kind of a neat piece too that even even in this era we got a really nice trip and didn't you know didn't wait many lines and we start planning for

036the next one in september so a good word for kids that are thinking about it good well we'll move on to administrative reports mr mcnamara do you want to join us at the board table all right um good morning to everyone technology's going along really well so far this summer we have a ton of things going on there's lots of moving parts um having gabe olsen working with us this summer has been tremendously helpful he's able to take on a lot of specific time-consuming jobs getting things set up especially with switching out our new lab computers for the elementaries there's going to be new lab computers here that will be along this wall in the library once everything's done now this wall finally painted yesterday so we're moving right along um so far no real

037big surprises the summer is still early as far as surprises go but as of right now we're on schedule um as always stacy is a true super human so she is awesome and when you see her please make sure that you take time to thank her for all the work she's doing she's got getting all of the new teacher devices set up making sure they have all their files making sure that everything's working in the classroom so that when not just teachers come back in september everything's working but also when we have our summer school and getting those kids a head start on the school year she's making sure that everything's ready for them to come in as well kind of general not super specific because there's so many different things going on and i

038don't want to bore you all morning is there any questions that you guys have it's the the last comment i'll make is we've with the help of the business office we have been able to leverage a lot of the esser funding for increasing the opportunities we're able to create with technology and i just want all of you to know that we're putting in a ton of time and effort into making sure that that money is used wisely that it's going to have a major impact on our instruction our education the experiences that our students are having we're not going to throw money at something just because it's bright and shiny i'm a huge believer in technology is just a tool if it doesn't support and enhance what our students are doing what our teachers are

039capable of doing efficiencies all of those pieces it's worthless i'm not going to throw more technology on because when you add things to the plate eventually it gets so full that you stop using everything that's available to you so we're we're adding quite a bit but we are really vetting through all these pieces to make sure that they are going to be impactful to our students and to our teachers thank you thank you miss morky so i sent out my board report yesterday so you guys if you have any questions at the end feel free to ask me i'm just going to touch on a couple of things um we do have aarp back and ready to go we've got it scheduled we call both hoffman and elbow lake they're ready to go hopefully nothing

040gets goofy in the meantime so they start in september so um people can hop online or call their insurance agencies and they can help get them registered for that you guys can see all the summer stuff that we had going on there's still a couple more things that are going to happen and then we'll be wrapped up at the end of the first week of august registration numbers have been really really good um kids are active they're in the gyms they are on the fields they are wanting to do stuff so it's been really fun to be back into a quote-unquote semi-normal summer so it's been really really fun i think all the opportunities have been offered have been really really good opportunities and people are taking advantage of it so um in the bottom

041of my report it said i wanted to send out a survey um and i want to do that i just want to see where the public stands as far as what they would like to see offered because i feel like you kind of get into a wreck of what we're doing and so yep everything's great and we're offering really good things but are there things that i haven't thought of or that somebody's like this would be a class that i think a lot of people do i want to know those things and so i'm just looking to kind of expand and see where the public is sitting as far as what classes they would like to see coming up in the next year um vpk we were denied a slot this year however however um

042typically this is that's the portion that they say nope you didn't qualify and then come like march and april they say oh wait why don't you fill up the survey and then sometimes we get money sometimes we don't typically we do pathways we were approved for the next two years or fifteen thousand for the next two years um so that's a good opportunity for us um next month i'll be bringing forward um some recommendations for some cost for the school child care for wrap around again um last year we just wasn't a normal year um and we need to get something back in place summer care was a little bit different cost and so we'll just have to readjust and look at what we're going to be so that we're at an appropriate setting for

043the cost of child care this year um you guys read about the firearm safety piece it was kind of a disappointment um i was someone sent me an email sending all this information we corresponded several times so then i pushed the information out and not but the day and a half later they retracted that and said no we don't have the space to do that so that was kind of a bummer i'm still looking for an opportunity because there's clearly a need i had 22 people register within 24 hours for it um i was emailed again about another opportunity yeah i'm a little bit hesitant to jump on board because it's the same situation but i will be in contact with them and um if i can staple something down with a firm plan then

044maybe we'll move forward but right now i'm a little bit on the fence about it but it's definitely a need so if anybody in the public wants to get certified for gun safety i can hook them up with a person that is able to help with that so if anybody out there wants to do that that would be a great opportunity for our kids in our district because there is a huge need for it um cary craft is working currently on what was change makers last year she's putting together some more things now she was working on it last month i haven't spoke to her this month yet so we'll see where she's at with that but she does such a great job um getting together activities she's gathering information about what the early childhood

045people would like to see happen and like to offer something for early childhood learners at least once a month again this school year so um starting in i think september because we kind of wanted to let august kind of simmer and then we'll get going in september any questions on any of the other things i had in my report today perfect thank you thank you thank you mr fasleen good morning everyone good morning i also sent my report out yesterday not sure if you had a chance um start with some facility updates the gym floor is done if you have if you do have a chance to go stop in and see it um i i did show darren's wife and daughter that last night so they we uh we joked that they got a

046sneak peek before darren did so yeah i heard about it so yeah stop in take a look at that it will be usable for students here in august we just want to make sure it cures right and everything is is all set football field lights musco has been here and replaced all the bulbs they did find an issue in one of the poles the northeast pole so they'll be coming back to do kind of a major fix on that pole we have some wiring issues that they have to take care of and some lens issues they have to take care of so they pretty much guaranteed me it would be ready for our first football game on september 3rd so the batting cage that is scheduled to come in november at some point we do

047have a two-week window where right now there's nothing scheduled in that gym in november so we're hoping the company that we're working with right now they're down in florida they can get here in november i did warn them weather could be interesting so we'll see hopefully that happens fall practices they're all set to start august 16th some of the junior high practices are to be determined because their game dates aren't until after school starts so we're gonna set those dates here in a couple weeks when they start so all the schedules have been updated and posted on our school there is some spring ones that aren't done yet there's some uh glitches with our school right now i'm working with the state high school league because they those two websites now communicate with each other

048which is a good thing but now you involve more entities we all know what that looks like so we do have some upcoming meetings i'm meeting with all the coaches here uh 7 through 12 on monday august 2nd and then we have our 7 12 player parent meeting in the auditorium on monday august 9th and then practices start monday august 16th as i said earlier fall coaches i forgot to attach that to my report but i had chrissy hand each of you the list of fall coaches currently have two openings one may have just been filled for the football position we're still looking for a football cheerleading advisor so coach's handbook that was attached also to my report there are no changes from last year we did a significant revision last year so there are

049no new changes for this year the fee schedule again i forgot to attach that and i have a theme going on here but that is what it used to be in 1920 when we were academic we didn't make any fee changes for this year as well if you're inquiring about homecoming that is scheduled the week of september 27th the homecoming game being october 1st state high school league protocols i have no protocols to report at this time and let's hope that stays that way so we'll see but right now we are planning that we are everything is back to normal so let's cross our fingers and hope it's that way uh corporate partner program i'll be getting letter these letters out here in the near future last year we granted all the corporate partners a

050a year with no monetary donation we wanted that donation to be sent back to the communities this year we'll go back to how we had in the past so and then my final part of my report i did attach a letter to my report uh regarding what i felt is the importance of the facility question on the bond if you could look at that letter and if you have any questions please let me know i'd be happy to answer any questions regarding that letter any other questions on my report all right thank you very much thanks jake newton would you like to join us back at the board table again okay so not a lot um [Applause] um uh the greenhouse project is um you know ready to move forward so it's really exciting and

051hopefully we'll get the footage set this year and um early in the spring eric was hoping um but weather will what winter looks like will just kind of depend uh or really dictate that um we're going ahead with august summer school three days a week the same as the elementaries it'll be a tuesday wednesday thursday program for three weeks in august um from like eight to noon we don't have that many kids enrolled here we're leaving enrollment open and calling and asking questions so we'll continue to accept students um i submitted handbooks we didn't put a lot of new things in the handbooks this year um one thing at the end of the year when i met with the leadership team they said please don't change anything let's just start and be normal for a

052year and figure things out so i wanted to really respect that so um it did include in the handbooks i just highlighted in yellow if wording was kind of cleared up or anything like that but otherwise there was no really major changes so um any questions or anything for me right now okay would you not have diane with us today right not everybody else here other than me mr hokey okay thank you um a few meeting updates um we had made a request to present to the city council of hofmann and kensington and just bring them up to speed on what we're doing and talking about our our cell site elementary selection and then the hoffman economic development committee had asked if we could meet with them also so on july 7th michelle darren and

053i attended in kensington on july 12th it was michelle and darren attended off and i had a conflict and couldn't make it and then on the 19th it was michelle and terry and i who attended with the economic development committee all three of those civic organizations are very excited about the two-sided um school placement for an elementary very open to wanting to work with the district each is interested in having the cell site located within their community and and um you know i expressed an interest of of welcoming the the school location into their community um uh you know very candid conversation um you know kensington was was very adamant that they would like to have the the school located in their community hoffman took a somewhat different approach indicating that they'd like to have

054it but they just don't necessarily want to be in in competition and try to pull it away through negotiations or or to try to entice the the board to to place something there but but said that they would certainly support a school at their site yesterday morning i had a contact was made by jennifer kangas from kensington and she asked if she could meet me and and she and two of the council members came to my office yesterday afternoon at one o'clock and they've been doing a lot of work to try to secure a site that may be workable in the city of kensington so one of the sites we've talked about was the softball field area and you have a document that's been set before you and i have a bit of an explanation

055but but option one was the software field site they would donate that field to the school district for use it's about eight acres and that could be used for a school site district would retain the current elementary site across the road uh less the building of course for another part of that that district location so that was one option that they had provided for the district the second option that they had proposed yesterday was a our site number one which sits north of the douglas county shed and and they would be in a position to purchase 12 to 18 acres donate that land to the district run water and sewer to that location and in turn for that the district would demolish the current elementary site haul the debris away leave the tennis court leave

056the the playground equipment and then that would become um owned by the city of kensington so so two steps that they've taken to put them in a in a position to make an attractive site available for the district so those are a couple of civic meetings that i had that have to do with the site for a south elementary the next item i had my report is a last meeting on july 7th we looked at the diagram plan for our the the north elementary site the south elementary site how the books play out uh talked about some things that may be changed and meeting yesterday with uh miss morky and um in that conversation we identified some of the things that might work also so yesterday afternoon i talked with tony wolf from zurberg and

057i explained all of these things that we had identified and and he had worked with them some some of those previously because i talked to him shortly after our july 7th meeting so we ran through a number of these things we run through some costs we want to get things confirmed and locked in so i'm meeting with him tomorrow afternoon at 3 30 again to move closer to a final four spaces and then also to confirm costs so we have our bond amount accurate so so that's what i have as far as a report unless you have any questions for me if not we'll move into our consent agenda there are six items up for board approval this morning number one is approve the transfer of heidi whittle from south elementary kindergarten excuse me what

058wetterling how do you water i do wetterling from south elementary to a kindergarten position at north and number two is approved morgan sanstead is elementary counselor at step one number three is approved melanie belsheim as daycare coordinator at north for semester one of the 2021-2022 school year number four is approve advertising of dairy bids for the 2021-2022 school year number five approve austin hansen as head cross-country coach and number six approved the transfer of sarah peterson from a north elementary teacher to south elementary first grade teacher mrs peterson requested this transfer and mrs crash approves the changes questions or comments if not i'll ask for a motion to approve the consent agenda so moved and a second second second all in favor say aye was the same sign motion passes moving on to old business

059number one consider and approve a summary statement of the july 7th closed meeting the meeting was closed to discuss potential sites for south elementary values of properties and strategy for securing a conditional purchase agreement questions or comments not i'll ask for a motion to approve as read second all in favor say aye oppose the same sign moving on to new business number one consider an approved long-term facilities and maintenance budget for fy 22. mr hoagie did you have anything you wanted to well um i i certainly could um you know walk through the documents of revenue and the expense uh the the big thing for us is with the long term facilities maintenance we we have um thirty five thousand dollars available for ltfm expenditures and we diana place i apply those in the budget

060um the the thing that that consumes most of that allotment of revenue is our our bonded amounts so that that spreadsheet if you'd like me to to walk through the calculations i'll do that with you if you're fine with recognizing that um we have about 325 000 of revenue um we have 289 thousand dollars that's dedicated to the bonds which leaves us 35 000 for expenses and the way that we've allocated those amounts we have a contract with lakes country service cooperative for um health and safety measures that's about eleven thousand dollars so that's where we put that portion of money and then we also have a contract with protection systems for our our fire service which is about an eight thousand dollar amount so the majority of that 35 goes to those two things

061so i could walk through the calculations but if you're comfortable with that as an explanation you could approve the ltfm revenue and expense budget for fy22 questions or comments from the board motion to approve motion is there a second very good all in favor say aye okay post the same sign motion passes moving on to number two consider an approved elementary school student handbook it looked like from natalie's board report they're very minimal changes um in fact just a carry over of requirement for the 48-hour fever-free um expectation that we saw last year with kovid any questions comments from the board that'll ask for a motion to approve the elementary school student handbook so moved and a second second all in favor say aye okay pose the same sign motion passes uh we'll actually move

062on to number four number three is a duplicate consider and approve the secondary school student handbook um there were markups in there they're different between the facility handbook and the student oh faculty handbook there is sorry yep let's back up consider an approved elementary school faculty handbook thank you maya any questions or comments there it doesn't sound like there were any changes to that so moved okay all in favor say aye okay oppose the same sign motion passes all right moving on to number four consider and approve the secondary school student handbook questions or comments no is there a motion it's a move and a second second all in favor say aye okay same sign motion passes moving on to consider and approve the secondary school faculty handbook questions comments if not i'll ask for

063a motion and a second second all in favor say aye opposed the same sign motion passes moving on to number six consider and approve the coaching handbook like there were much changes there either motion second second all in favor say aye aye always the same sign motion passes moving on to discussion uh up for discussion this morning number one draft resolution and ballot questions mr hogey would you like to release the discussion here certainly so with our development of ballot questions what we need to do first of all is is to lock in on the dollar amount of of those projects and discuss what might not so the majority of the information the large ticket items come from zerberg but then i had some assistance from jake fosley and chad norenberg and gathering some other

064information for some pieces that aren't included within that that zebra proposal those mostly happened in those questions two and three rather than question one so with question one it shows that the dollar amount projected by um zetterberg and that's a document that you received at a prior meeting for 35 million 158 the demolition cost was not in there and last prior to our november 2020 election the cost was projected to be four dollars and fifty cents or five dollars to per square foot for demolition so i'm using that again so a demolition figure of five hundred thousand dollars there's no item in there yet for property acquisition so that gives a subtotal of 35 million dollars and then through the bonding process i went back to last year's bond document determination of what were the

065additional costs that were added then for the various projects and five hundred thousand dollars is about that amount so that question for our elementary sites would be in the name of thirty six thousand dollars plus any cost for um uh property acquisition if that should be a cost that the district incurs so that gives you an idea of where that question dollar amount would be um and it comes down to clarify for people at home 36 million correct 36 million did i say 36 000 that's okay i'm always trying to knock this i know that's a good deal they want us to build 10 schools so 36 million thank you very much michelle um maya was listing when you were going through the other portion and i'm glad you're paying attention this morning thank you

066um so question number two this is the the one with the academic enhancements and the thing that's been added into this one uh was the fitness center and the item that's been taken out from the zareberg figure was the greenhouse match because we've already made that contribution so so with that bowag auto career and steam and tech the figures provided by zerberg is 2.5 million uh the greenhouse match is removed from that uh the fitness center's been added back in gives a subtotal of of three million three hundred thousand dollars and then the additional uh hundred and sixty thousand dollars for the the um bonding costs um about three and a half million dollars now if you remember if you remember right when we look at these these questions but if you reflect back to

067baker tilly's proposal their their figures show that on a 5 million project it would cost 100 000 home 18 so when we look at this question if you divide the eighteen dollars by five you get about three point six so when you look at the cost of hundred thousand dollar home this would be in the in the neighborhood of um about twelve dollars on a hundred thousand dollar home per year would be that cost and i think that's important for you to know because as we lump things together and we go to our community for support we have to give them a very clear indication of what is the cost to them when you look at three and a half million dollars that's a that's a staggering amount for all of us but when we

068break that down by cost per taxpayer it begins to be something that's somewhat more affordable and and then when you look at the value of those things for that cost annually or per month it becomes much more reasonable to expect that that our community members would support that so any question on on the number two structure okay number three is the one where where mr fosley and mr norenberg gathered a lot of information for us because when when we look at the softball baseball field complex in the track and field we get a pretty basic number from zerberg and remember when they gave us a figure they said it it it includes this but it excludes bleachers and exclusive dugouts and a number of things were excluded from that so their basic figure for the

069baseball club complex was 1.5 million dollars but it didn't include features so so jake with the research that he's done in the past 10 rows 27 feet wide or about about 10 yards um one at each of those ball fields would run us to a hundred and ten thousand dollars dugouts we we used cost for slab and cost for materials because it's our expectation that mr krefs it does an industrial trades class would be our construction people are to build some of these structures so uh douglas would be at before four scoreboards to have for them ninety eight thousand dollars um electrical and lighting this might be a bit high chad got this from a local vendor contractor for a light projection and i talked with tony yesterday he said he said that really seems

070to be high of 675 000 so that would be lights for that for two of the fields and then all the other electrical so tony wolf and and i will discuss that and probably get a more clear projection but that seems to be a high figure on that based on his uh professional experience water and sewer to get to that location for restrooms and concession area 320 uh pa system for each field 6000 field prep to to get the the diamond laid properly and to build the the pitchers known to the appropriate heights on the two baseball fields um eleven thousand dollars site acquisition is not included in there again so the total baseball and softball figures is um 2.8 million and then the track and field zerberg had the basic uh dollar proposal of

071of 1281 through some some um calls and some research that mr foslien did we're looking at track equipment the pole vault pit uh and the math uh the hija mat the hurdles uh starting blocks um timing mechanisms all those things to to facilitate a track and field operation we're looking at about a hundred thousand dollars that might come down a bit also because uh zara berg did put in an ffa furniture fixtures and equipment of i think is either four or six percent which was about forty nine thousand dollars so this potentially could drop by about fifty thousand dollars uh a storage building for the equipment that would be placed down there again slab of materials only concession and restroom for the football field area this is these are old figures in which we're gonna

072we talked about last year we talked about transitions room or earlier this year so um if we're if we're doing this work at the the track and if we're if we'll host meets we we probably need to have more facilities and we definitely need to have an expanded concession area so you know adding that portion there also and then water and sewer for restrooms and concessions we'd have a shorter run so that's projected at at 80 000 that came from gerds construction services in march of this year so the total track and field 1.5 million so the total for the two projects comes to 4.3 and then the baker tilley and dorsey whitney cost projection that's an estimate again 180 000 so we're looking at at 4.5 million and uh so any questions on those

073cost amounts and then other site improvements that we we've talked about at various times um replace existing softball field fence um sixty thousand dollars per field so that's the fields out here if we would if we would have um a successful um support for the softball baseball field complex the two current supple fields would be converted to a junior high field and the other one would be converted to a baseball field uh some of the fencing is in tough shape you know looked at can it be stretched and repaired and mr fosley did have an individual into analyze and um it was strongly suggested that the the fence at least from um from dugout to dugout or on the back be replaced um the alpha field fence seems to be in better condition um replace

074the retaining wall block on the softball field area that's projected at thirty nine thousand dollars that's a quote that chad norenberg had got and replace the retaining wall at the main entrance you know eighty thousand six ten uh parking lot quote for the west this would be between the school building and then the hill there's an area that's already asphalt it's really broken up uh proposal to fix that was uh 68 000 um then the area that that sits above the baseball field the long narrow strip that's projected at 39 000. those are both quotes that chad norenberg received we've talked about those dollar months before but expressed concern is is that a parking lot that's done well is it is is the sub grade um is it is the soil removed and a good

075base but um so i'll be talking about uh projection on the square footage with tony wolf about that as well and then we also talked about parking lot um in a tennis court area we our parking lot has a lot of spaces that are way to the north makes it a long walk to our our gymnasium for events so we looked at that based upon square footage and the amounts that were quoted to chad norbert that dollar might be 185 thousand dollars and again that's an estimate the green metal siding around the building chad norenberg was getting the square footage of the total amount to be replaced and um and he will get a quote for that from zareberg and then the green panel inserts that are by the lower level around the building uh

076there are 15 of those and the projected cost is 350 per panel and the multiple door entries but there are 26 access points to the building so when we look at all those these site improvements that we've discussed we're looking at 538 000 you know we talked about rolling those into other questions and and i don't know if if you're intent on doing that uh some of these would fall in on their future ltfm expenditures because they're they're all things that are deteriorating and are expecting to be replaced in time so any any thoughts right now about looking to roll these in specifically or leave them stand alone and look to address in the future i think some of them have to be at least some of them if not all of them have to

077be rolled in what do we have for ltfm money over the next four years yeah what did you say thirty five thousand five thousand absolutely have half of that so all of this work would be into the future but we only have half of that 35 000 because half of that's already dedicated right to those other services we we were we will not have any ltfm dollars legitimately available in the next four years for these projects these three projects would happen in or later well i think if the you know if if the um programming question passes i think you're gonna basically tear up every bit of the parking you know the parking lot piece there i think should go in there just because that's where all that construction traffic is going to happen those

078are those are those things that are not in good shape now are going to be in worse shape when you're done with that construction and that just would finish that project off when you're done you're going to put that new parking lot down and it's going to be set versus i mean obviously we don't want to do that before you would do that because it'll just get destroyed but i would at least the parking lot portion of it should be wrapped in there because basically that's your whole entire construction traffic you're going to add on to your shops if you're going to add a steam building if you're going to do the fitness center that's that's basically where all of that traffic happens just my thoughts on that and that that's a very good thought

079and by by doing that that takes care of more than half right the dollar amount because you're looking at uh 185 you're looking at 285 almost three hundred thousand dollars of that as parking lot you see all the parking lot yeah yeah right yeah because i think that's i mean you're going to basically just left what's right there with all that construction traffic so that could be rolled into um the the academic piece question number two because we'd be looking at the the area that is uh the the fitness center we've looked at the career technical shop area so that work happens back there so that's the area that directly you're talking about being impacted so to roll those dollar figures into number question two that's where that legitimately fits i think that makes sense

080[Applause] the district does have within its general fund balance it has a capital projects reserve fund and you as board members and private board members board them right now that fund sits at 000 to spend that it takes board action to take money out of there to spend so it was it was an insightful or wise decision to start putting money away anticipating some some project or needs if you don't have a good venue you had a good venue with ltfm to do is bonding over a period of five years five years very low interest rate to do a couple of different projects so that's a good option to to go to use that so there could be some of that money that could be used to do other projects i think that makes sense

081to us you know see where we get with the bond and then knowing where that goes then we can talk about maybe using some of these those funds for these projects okay i i think i think now with that discussion i think that's a good lead-in for us to go to the the questions as they were prepared the broad questions have a paper handout and what i did with this i took the 2020 referendum bond questions that were provided by dorsey whitney and i made some changes so in the bold print you'll see changes that were made in that so the the 33 million 825 that was a dollar amount for the elementary projects with the project's payment to start in 2022 so we delayed the payment that added some additional funds for cost because

082you had to bond for that interest for that first year before you're making any payments so the change in cost goes from 33 to 36 million and new language that i added in was to go demolition and abatement at current sites it was insinuated that that would be included within the projects last time but not specifically stated so this conversation took place with with um dorsey whitney representative you know right at the late stages of our election because we're talking about can we can we demolish um with one site can we demolish north elementary and then redo or rebuild a portion of that so this has been added in there to replace that and rather than elementary school at barrett that's south elementary school in and then we'd identify the location or or the site

083of that in improvements at north elementary school that include renovation demolition and new construction so it just updates question number one and this is my draft language not the language drafted by dorsey whitney so maybe some revisions in here but you you get the idea of how this question would be stated so any questions about number one okay question number two um was the academic area so the dollar amount changes we add fitness center in there and if you look at the the the area the the section that follows media center and this was in the question last time and other general updates to facility and grounds pursuant to minnesota statutes chapter 475 so now if we move that parking lot into that question that's covered as part of part of the question we're saying

084other improvements in improving the parking lot certainly fits under that definition so so that's where that would fit but we'd include that dollar amount then in that academic piece we'd add another 500 000 into that so so we have a placeholder for keep in mind that that the dollar amounts proposed by um by zerberg the phrase that they use are um opinion of probable cost you know if there's an election in november or february and they'd go through months of design and go out to bed so they're projecting what the cost would be eight to nine months down the road at a minimum so from today okay question c would be eliminated because that was the fitness center that was rolled into question number two and then the last question question three as we've previously

085discussed now would be um 4.5 million for softball baseball field and i i added in there for construction and equipping when we talked about track and field before we didn't identify that we're looking at including uh the equipment for track and field and then also at the construction of a softbone baseball field complex back in number two should we specify that at this point we're looking at it being a student fitness center there were several questions or there have been some comments as long as we're educating in that do we need to actually have a listed student fitness center in the bond question if we're educating on what it is uh i'm just i think i think it's helpful because i think there are some people that that that message will get to and others

086that still will be looking for clarity as they read through the question to understand what it is they're voting on um but i'm not sure i and i guess the other to me to that point the other question that i had is steam seems to be a you know when you just put steam in there there's a there's a large percentage of people that have asked a lot of questions about it because they don't know what it is should it specify that it's science technology engineering arts and math programming curriculum whatever so it explains what steam is i don't want the questions to get too wordy i think which is maybe where you were going sarah yeah i just i'm thinking of fitness center i mean we're talking about you know betterment of the school

087facility the school so i don't as long as we're educating that it's the fitness center we didn't change it we weren't changing anything about it it was just that the messaging wasn't we were talking about opening it up to the public and that seemed to be kind of a sticking point when we met right with the community group that came in that they said we don't we're not even a fan of maybe having it open to the public i think that got mentioned once and then it kind of got blown off like that was never the the real intent of it you know the idea that maybe the public could use it at some point it's just one of our ideas but it really is for the the students for the phi ed classes for

088the sports you know for for the kids to to get better health and you know lifelong health learning and not so that moms can come in and go to the gym when they're waiting for that that was just an idea at one point but it was not i mean i don't think that was ever the the intent of the the facility is for our students and for the those education purposes but you know it was an idea so actually agree with you i think especially for the steam part and then the other part is just one word you know student fitness center that's one word it the steampunk adding you know you may be making it wordy but i think it is appropriate i think when people you know not many people know what steam

089is but when you list everything i think it will resonate with them okay much better well i've made the notes for to include science technology engineering arts and math and then still include the acronym steam so people kind of you should put like an apprenticeship or whatever and then i'd add student fitness center and we provide some clarity there so thank you for those two suggestions anything else on question two or even back to question one yet and then question three um any question there i have i guess i have some concerns about the softball complex that's a lot of money it's going to be over 3 million something we you know we currently have we need it i mean we need a track we need a track track facilities without adult and softball complex

090would be nice but we have those facilities right now and for even a third of that price we can make the facilities that we currently have unbelievable when you say a third of the price darren what what are you basing that off of like what definitely it was i think the last meeting it was at 1.5 million without those with those things excluded and i think i i said i thought it was going to be 2 million right now it's 2.8 million and we haven't bought property for the softball field complex and we're putting in you know to put new fencing new scoreboards new i mean for probably a third of that price i i'm just thinking what we can do to the current fields that we have already aren't we still short fields though

091well i guess that would be a i guess that's that'd be up for debate i did look at like monovideo and london spicer and and where else minnewaska i mean i looked at you know tried to look from an aerial photo of what some of the other school our sides have and we'd definitely be with the complex i'm not saying it's a bad thing but it's an awful lot of money when and to risk a possibility of losing something that we absolutely need scares me so are you suggesting we separate it out or you're saying that we should adjust what we're what we're discussing doing i don't i i don't know i mean i think down in the park with what we without even purchasing we could build softball fields down there maybe the city

092of barrett wants to build a softball complex that we can use if it would if it's going to benefit them as well i don't know i don't know what i don't know what the answer is if i if i think back to that kind of the beginning of the whole story for me knowing that we've got so many kiddos now that we're going up in competition levels to what yeah i get this all confused so jake's gonna laugh at me in the regions whatever they call them they're but knowing that we're we're stepping into another caliber of competition with schools that we considered bigger than us because of the number of kids that we have no matter what we have now that would lead me to feel like what we have is insufficient because it

093was built for less kids than what we have today i i guess i disagree with that i don't think facilities make it competitive necessarily i think they help i think which is it's the drive of the kids i think it's the coaches i look at some of some of the athletic programs that we have i you know we have teams coming up right now that spent their time and most of their time practicing in facilities that most people here would say inefficient and they're hecking heck of good teams they had good coaching they got drive they got heart they put the time in it's efficient i mean we were we had less kids on the field that we had we don't have enough fields even to begin i think what she's discussing is the fact

094that we're going to have more sea squad games and we're going to have more jv games and those things that we didn't have before we're going to have more of now where it's already you know that's going to change and i guess i also look at it as we as a board we made a commitment to creating a facility solution that attracted families right that's why we've been discussing do you do one site do you do three sites what have you can we do good enough and i think that's what i gathered from a lot of jake's message in the letter that he wrote to the board yep we can make something good enough but is that us really taking an opportunity right now when we said let's look at the next 30 years if

095we just do what's good enough i think to your point darren is it a big sticker price yeah but can you educate around why we need to improve the the current structure of what we have i think you could see i think you're going down a path of thinking that i don't support the facilities and i think that good good enough is good enough i don't i don't agree with that we need facilities but so why don't we build eight softball fields why don't we build another six basketball courts if this is our opportunity why don't we build a a facility right next over the tennis courts that has four more basketball fields or four more basketball courts instead that all the kids would use then i mean i don't want to go down the

096road that that you think i don't support the softball program or any other program because i do i support it as much if not more than most people and what three million dollars for is a lot if we could build two softball fields down below the below the football field like we were talking about before when we were going to take out the softball field we were only going to build two up there and now it's changed to four automatically so just less than a year ago it wasn't that important that we built ford now it is and that was when we were taking two out so i if i i know there's support for this it's just i'm just saying there's a lot of there's and there's probably hopefully they're supporting the public but

097if there's not support in the public for that and we lose the track area that we absolutely need that's concerning to me now if everybody here feels i went back and forth and back and forth with this going okay if we build the softball complex will that help pass you know if they're both these questions are together or separated we talked about okay if there's four questions that might be too many three questions sounds just right and i still agree with three questions sounds just right so then there's a portion of okay we absolutely need a track no doubt about it and the equipment and things so our kids can you know actually run on something that they're going to run on or bring people in to to so we can actually have a track

098meet here we can have softball games here we can't have track meets here so that's something that we do not have so i went back and forth on okay well if we do the softball complex and it's and then i was thinking of two million dollars i wasn't thinking of three will this could this help pass so that help pass the track so that we get the track will it hurt it i don't know i don't know what the answer is all i know is it's a lot of money for right now which is also the opportunity maybe this is our only chance of getting it so there's that question too but i think i would be i would regret if i didn't bring it up that i mean that's a lot of money for

099something that we don't necessarily need that could risk something that we absolutely need if dale doing the math part of it like if you break out the four and a half million dollars that's i mean based off of the numbers you gave us earlier that's twenty dollars eighteen dollars a year hundred thousand dollar home eighteen dollars so the the thing that we're short on um that michelle did a good job explaining it but right now we have varsity and jv and junior high programs in baseball and softball and we have two baseball fields and and one varsity field and then another field that suffices for jv and with softball we have one varsity field and a jv field so we we don't have a practice location for each individual team and if we have competition

100where we we we play an opposing team and since we're going to a higher classification it's certainly legit legitimate to think that we might end up with you know three teams wanting to play softball or baseball at our site and we we can't do that so to minimize travel so so that's one of the things where we're short um on um you know darren i i think your your question certainly is deserving consideration on on one project threatening another or you don't get we get nothing um but if you read jake's letter and talked about that vision it's kind of tied into what the boards talked about since i've been here making this uh a site that's extremely attractive to our neighbors and to our opponents and and by doing this and and getting questions

101one two and three we put the district in position which we're looking at at the proposal that exceeds 40 million dollars for everything but then things are done this district doesn't go back or this board doesn't go back our future board go back to requesting money for facilities we're we we have it done we moved our fifth grade out we can do renovations inside and renovate rooms so we've made the space here that's needed we've right-sized our our curriculum and and by doing all those academic applies right now we also put our outside field in a position in which we're we're set for the future too and i know that looking at the the cost for the the softball portion which is you know approaching three million dollars that's a dollar a month that scares

102a lot of people but when you pull that out and talk about how much is that contribution annually per person to set you up for 25 years that that gets to be a lot smaller um the the current supple baseball fields i anticipate that those were constructed at the time that this school site was developed so i think they're that old so they last a long time you know so you maintain the fields you put aggro lime on and and you you take care and respect the facility it lasts a long long time what's your projected maintenance of that annually as far as mowing agri-lime haven't gone there darren i'm not i'm just i have to i have to ask the question is it's it's an awful lot of money because you we talk about

103you know you don't want to move kids or whatever so then i guess when i think about that you know the idea of we've we've talked about restroom facilities at our sites and you go to some you know you go to some of these not that i'm trying to keep up with the joneses but i mean just as simple as a you know a place to go to the bathroom when you're at a game is that's that's a big deal you know so um when you talk about if you just keep i mean i believe we need another field at least for baseball and for softball and if we're going to do it right we do it all together and we make that a complex where there is that option to have a bathroom to

104have a you know to have a concession stand we don't have either one of those neither one of our fields have that right now um if you talk about just staying where we're at and adding to each field i mean now you're doubling up on what you could do with one shot if you put it all together and you and you and we just do it in at one time so i don't know when i when i think about you know where where do we use our money obviously we're going to still use these two fields and and we have a purpose for those back there and all that sort of thing if we do it but um you know the idea of you know let's do it once and do it right and we're

105set like you said dale we're we're going to be you know we're going to be in good shape for a long time and we're going to have facilities for all of our teams you know we we had many nights where we had a varsity game and a junior high game and a jv played in you know the outfield grass of a you know an open area they didn't even they couldn't even have a practice because both fields were you know used so you know now that's not a you know that's not fair to that group of kids you know we're not you know we're not helping them you know get better they get kind of pushed because because this team doesn't have a jv team you don't get a game tonight and you can't practice

106because we don't have enough facilities because we're going to play games on these two fields you know so it's just one of those pieces where you know if we're going to do it we're going to take care of and we're going to move up in you know classes you know we wouldn't want to you know you wouldn't want to say well boys you can't practice tonight because the girls got a game you know that's not what we want to do you know they dropped the auxiliary court you know whatever it is we we try to make that work but you know we wouldn't we wouldn't expect them not to be able to still practice but that's you know that's essentially what we do with our teams now and and like dale said if another school

107comes in with with three teams we either have to go really late because one team has to wait for the other game to get done to play or you know they don't get a game that day or they have to travel somewhere else because there's two games already going on so i don't know i guess i feel like if we're going to do it let's let's do what we do in basketball right what's that which is what we do in basketball because we only have one game here at a time we do like what we do too often like oh you can do a is over you can do a snowboard at the same time in here right i mean you can play those you always play jv and varsity separate on on basketball i

108mean that's just the way they do it you know but you they oftentimes play c squad and a jv game at the same time you know that happens all the time we have the facilities for it you know would it be you know if you if you only have one yeah then you have to play three in a row and you know it's hard for a c squad parents to probably get to their game because it starts at 4 30 or 5 o'clock but anyway the point is is that right now we have two fields and if you get to play in the outfield grass for a while and you don't even get to run a base you know i don't know it's just i feel like if we can do it and we can

109do it all at one time and we can benefit both baseball and softball and we can just find with me as long as we can get it to pass because that there again that's what matters we don't get to spend this money without asking for it so we have we have to be able to make sure we can educate the public that it's a legitimate expense that they were are willing to pay for otherwise it again just like all the other questions doesn't matter what we really think because we have to ask them for the money so if i guess i i stayed in my concern it's not that i don't support it it's a it's it's it's a lot of money and i just want to make sure that that everybody at this table

110and everybody else feels like the public will support this and we won't lose something that we absolutely need which now you're making the argument i shouldn't work that way because it's it's felt as though what you're telling me is that we need it so in your opinion it's two needs right right it's not a want it's two needs what you're stating so my question can you can you sell it there and can you see the value in the in the what we're trying to put forward here can you can you go and sell it to the public that says this is a you know this is good for our school you know if you if you are going to think yeah question in the public then it doesn't do us any good but if i

111i hope so okay i i think it's i mean i think it would be great but it are we going to use all the facilities to the to the fullest are these ones that are the ones that everybody looks at every time they drive in that we talked about are they going to be make sure that they're maintained as well as the other ones that you know so that something doesn't get left behind but there again it's you know other than the fact that i'm going to try and sell to the voting public that this has been that this is a need i'm still only one vote one vote here and i'm one vote in november so we have to make sure that that's how the public feels i guess another comments questions discussion mr

112hoagie did you get what you need from the board well um darren's expressed concern about question three and i i guess i'd like to have direction to make sure that as i move forward in contacting baker tilley and dorsey whitney and zareberg and grinch construction services that we're including these questions as they're kind of laid out today if i don't if i don't hear any opposition i'll continue this format and then at our next board meeting we would be looking for a resolution you know that uh the language was finalized and dollar amounts will be finalized and then that would put us in a position in which we're moving forward also our next board meeting um zerberg will have the review and comment document available for your review that will be submitted on august 5th

113so we'd have our meeting on august so okay all right we'll move on to number two related referendum timeline oh let's see so i just addressed up a little bit of this right now so um july 21st board considers preliminary resolution for november 2nd 2021 bond referendum um that final decision would be made um you know november 2nd our excuse would be made august 18th to be that final decision uh for that resolution but more work would be done in advance like completing that review and comments submitting that to um mde for for a positive approval and um so that that lays out the timeline for us to have things accomplished for a november election so um it appears as though we're in a position to get that accomplished uh that would be a discussion

114that we'd have also next month but um to finalize it but but right now are we in a position which we care to go forward with november i think we need to um i don't know i guess i think that we if we're if we're lined up where we think we're going to have the information that we need it makes time is money i mean that it is what it is we know things aren't going to get cheaper so i mean i i guess personally looking at the timeline i think it's doable and i think if we can make it work we need that we definitely need to go for november i agree i think the members i think that's a doable date i think logistically the nuts and bolts of what we need are

115there my question would be around communication and sending information out to the public or and i guess maybe i don't know if you would put any thought in here already yet but are we talking about town hall meetings are we talking about a mailer what does communication look like because for me the big one is it's fine that the board has a clear vision but without educating the public which has come up a few times the the the mailer that would go on be prepared there'd be a lot of assistance provided by zerberg and that document wouldn't be a book like it was last time last time we really needed in that booklet to justify one site over two we showed a lot of comparisons in there now we're showing you know what two site

116option and talking about the value and the advantage of these individual questions with that other information in the past the only thing that i that i see still comes up occasionally is why don't you just renovate south you know that question still comes up and then that's been tossed aside long ago by by all board members and and the large percentage of our community members so the the things that we go forward and promote are very specific to these three questions in the the specific projects there so as as far as communication we were at disadvantaged last year's we couldn't do a town hall meeting we couldn't get to those smaller groups now that would need assistance from from board members perhaps community members to take charge of some of those i can't be at

117all those locations so when we get the the basic format of a brochure or the template to hold those discussions that's when it happens and it might be some things as simple as explaining student fitness center or explaining what steam is we're explaining how we came to the conclusion of three questions and why do we package them together and why are each of these individual things important to us so uh it would be a rehearsal session with board members to help lead those um we had discussion before about short video snippets that are done that addresses these issues that go on our website people can have access to at their leisure so rather than one long presentation it's a a three minute five minute presentation that explains a portion so those are are labeled and

118sorted and organized so people can go find out about about specific factors i think the key would be to know whether or not we can provide we know what the mailing ballots like that caused some problems last year's effect people already voted like as information so i think it would be more not in november like do we know can we meet a timeline that gets pallets are mailed out you know that people have the information before they have a ballot in hand i mean that that would be my only question is to verify that that timeline isn't trouble because i don't remember what that date is it was did they get them in september or was it i don't remember that's a fabulous point well that's what i'm saying as long as we can meet

119that i'm fine you have to get the education and the information out prior to when they get their ballots so chad vancentine of of grand county is going to work with chrissy diane me missed me sarah and also carrie it's going to provide training there's four of them will go through the process of getting everything together to have information available for those absentee ballots and the mailing ballots so last december you passed resolutions about the election process so that's in place so what we need now is just send assistance from the county to get everything available get ballots created and and have them will in advance have the information out in advance of when those things start so this document that you have been provided for again shows that that timeline the absolutely available dallas

120have to be available september 17th so we're four six seven eight weeks out and that was my only question is as long as we are have that deadline in mind and we are aware that we can get the information we need to get in hands of people before that deadline that would be my only thing and i think we can still have education after that i just think we need to make sure that there's information out the bulk of the information about that like the calls and stuff after that you know if that makes sense because there are going to be there's still going to be a lot of people that are going to wait you know that's what it is hearing though is that maybe these have more of a structure of like coffee

121tax would that be this is correct dale where it's more of a you know an opportu let's say that i'm at uh i said a specific time that i'm going to be at chewie's and hoffman and anybody that wants to come and ask things about any of the questions we're putting forward as opposed to you know a big formalized type or do you do both i think you still do the large setting presentations as well but i i think it's you know critical since we have the time and the ability now to have the smaller group sessions whether it's uh um meeting with alliance clubs in the different organ in the different communities meeting with the civic organizations you mentioned that previously you know to go the fire departments hit those people because the more

122opportunities you know that we can hit with those we we reach people and then they reach people and that will be a a real um critical part of this another critical part will be um a community committee that will promote just as the committee did last year um you know supporting the building bond referendum uh you know and and you we have to recognize that there will be an opposition you know that is out there that makes itself known that they're opposed to this so um we have to be ready to refute those kinds of things and that's where i see i become more important to which when i become apprised of that then i address that with information that you begin to share again as long as we think we can get information i'll

123be prior to that the absentee ballot then i'm i'm good with november was that everybody seems to agree with that absolute ballots are available september 17th yeah so we need to have information out before that and have those meetings well you're not necessarily going to have all your educational meetings because some people i mean that's not all going to happen before that i would say not right but that i mean that's that's kind of the scary part because i i don't do i've never done because more than likely you're getting but yeah is yours mailing bill can i ask yeah so and the rest of you that are failing ballot i'd ask you the same question so when you get the when you get your mail mail and ballot in the mail how long do

124you wait before you vote oh a long time but that's not not everybody is like that some people do it right away and get it out but i think that i think the key is is the information that we get out prior to the mail and ballots is gonna specifically state hey here's the information but you know september 20th we're going to have you know and have those dates available have the information hey don't vote yet but yeah here's the information available we're going to have town hall meetings or presentations or our website you know all that stuff needs to be available right away when we send out that information knowing hey we know you're going to get your ballots but here's where the meetings are i think that's remember that that's the answer i'm

125looking for it's almost a survey in the question that i'm asking because i'm there's multiple tear you do yours by mail kayla do you yep and i don't know anybody i don't care who wants to speak but what i'm kind of looking for is is there how many people fill this out right away when they get it so they get it in the mail they open it up within a day they've already filled it out put it back or most people wait so we we have some time even after they get the mail and ballots to to educate i mean you're obviously gonna have some people that are that you know if if this is all that's gonna be on the ballot is the school i think that's a different situation too then yeah it's

126just different than what you're used to yeah on a normal election probably over 50 percent of your voting public votes on the day of election so that's different than now i would say i'm i don't know what the number is but right of a mail-in ballot if 50 fill it out within two days and the other 50 percent fill it out in two weeks i mean that's well we know there was a lot of people last year that voted before they had you know before they probably you know as soon as they could so we that's why i'm saying we need to be ahead of the game that's if we communicate within the the miller the flyer that brought whatever it is that's going out here are these upcoming town hall meetings for people that

127don't feel like they got enough out of the the mailer that we have to say that too is that you know go ahead and there will be more information coming out so don't be afraid to hold on to your ballot if you don't have enough information because right if if ever if 75 of the people vote within the first week that we that they get their ballots and then we do 75 percent of our educating is after that date right it's not it's not going to work that's the tricky part though here is we have to balance it because it has to be questions that are going to wait past do you feel that we need to educate i mean if we if we have the faq on the website like we did before and

128if we send out the mailer that's got information in it if we have these you know bite-sized videos that people can watch i would ideally like that out there be as the mailers said we need to have that available so people if they want to vote they can and they want to go get information they can go see but i mean so it would be that can we have that stuff available when we put the mailers out that's what we need to know some of these smaller meetings like what you're saying have to happen as early as possible because if you reach say you should use a lions club for hypothetical if you reach alliance club and there's 18 members in that in that meeting they're going to reach a lot of people in a

129hurry within the next two to three days after that meeting to they'll either be asked questions or they'll or they'll freely open up and say yeah i was just at this meeting and they talked about the school and here's a bunch of information also not spider webs and i think that sometimes spider webs even faster in those small meetings than it does in some of these larger ones i think in some of these larger ones some people come and they go home and they might not talk to anybody yeah they may be one but the small one is nobody's i most people aren't intimidated about asking a question in a small group especially when they have a similar um uh relationship like the lions club or a civic organization because they feel comfortable in that

130unit so they'll ask questions that they might not ask in the larger group um so i think it is a good location i i don't want to give you the impression that there's a lot of time to do this but if you look back at at the the document here it says have absentee ballots available that that doesn't mean something's mailed out yet so the mail referendum notice has to happen sometime between october 3rd and october 18th so that's when they get noticed that it's mailed out so it's that's not going on in september people can just come back yeah so if somebody's going to be gone if they're a snowball even earlier or they're they're not going to be around for some other reason they can get that ballot in september but the the

131mail ballot portion the mail referendum notice that the timeline is october 3rd to october 18. that's good to know because i suppose most of people that would i guess in the past if i went and got a absentee ballot i knew how i was voting when i went to pick it up right right right it's not just something most folks already know they already know what they're doing anyway likely know how they're going to vote where the ones that get mailed out that was my concern right so i think if we have have information available by the time that the ballots are available but at least for sure you know have something as long as you're comfortable then i'm comfortable yeah and i i've never been involved in a in a mail ballot for a

132school election and that training will be done by our our county official you know so so we'll we'll be on top of things so um so so we'll get that managed but it provides a little additional windows i think it alleviates a bit of your concern but that doesn't mean that we put things off so after that august 4th meeting i mean he hit the road curious question they made because of extenuating circumstances last year didn't they extend by when you had to have mail and ballots and things like that but by when would we doing this the mail-in ballot way by when do you think the board would have clarity on how the public voted does my question make sense do you have to wait to how does that work do you have to

133wait i have no idea we haven't done the training what the canvas your timeline looks like timeline tell us when they have to be postmarked by or is it what's the if you go all the way down for canvassing results november 5th so i'm going to select election um adopt resolution canvassing results so i'm going to guess that i'm laying there between the fifth and twelfth so it's like 10 days after the election i think it's three to ten days after the election and then notify the commissioner of the results by the 17th so um that counting process for mail and balance i i'm at lost i don't know how that's done i'm assuming they wait to do i don't know we'll find out together yeah just it's something i was curious about certainly not

134related to the conversation we were having about whether or not we feel ready to go in november any other questions comments or thoughts about the referendum timeline if not we'll move on in our agenda and i will um ask for a motion to consider and approve going into closed session it's proceeded oh boy guys i'm struggling today as permitted by minnesota state statute section 13d point zero five subdivision three to discuss possible conditional property purchase agreements and a second second all in favor say aye aye oppose the same sign board will move into closed session at 8 50 a.m just a minute making a decision on