001Good evening, everybody. I'd like to call the Monday, March 3rd meeting to order and ask everyone to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right, thank you everybody. Next item is approval of the agenda and I'd like to make one minor change. Just want to flip the order of number six and number seven. So we'll do our student representative report before we do recognition so that all of you can hear the awesome student representative report. I've lamented the order of this for like three meetings and we're finally going to remember to switch it. It's good. So with that change, I'd ask for an approval
002of the agenda. motion to approve thanks i said it wrong second second by marcus all those in favor signify by saying aye aye aye i was opposed thank you next item is the consent agenda if you've taken a look if there's no conversation or changes i'd accept a motion to approve motion to approve thank you byron i get a second thank you tim all those in favor signify by saying aye aye those opposed that passes Thank you. All right. Next is our listening session report from Director Hill. Thank you, Chair Larson. There were no attendees at tonight's listening session. That concludes my report. Thank you. You didn't use up your full five minutes, but that's okay. Next item on the agenda will then be our student rep report. Take it away. Hello, good evening everyone.
003It is March finally. It is March 3rd to be exact, which means that it is National Cold Cut Day. Yes, yes. I'm Patrick Bohnbach. And I'm Noelle Hassan. We are so glad to be here to share some exciting updates from our district from the past month. And I'll start us off with the Early Learning Center, which has only one update. An Early Learning parent meeting occurred on February 12th at the Early Learning and Family Resource Center, virtually from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. Now moving on to our elementary schools, which there have been a lot of updates. Starting off with Somerset Elementary, conferences took place on February 4th from 3 p.m. to 8.30 p.m. The third grade music concert occurred on February 4th at Pilot Knob from 6 p.m. to 6.30 p.m. There were also
004parent-teacher conferences held on February 6th at Mendota Elementary. Mendota's Dad Club Movie Night was hosted on February 7th at Mendota. And then Mendota Soccer League played on February 8th at the Mendota Gym from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., which had a lot of demonstrated interest. The District Orchestra Lullaby Festival took place on February 9th at Mendota Elementary. The fourth grade music concert happened on February 11th at Pilot Knob STEM Magnet School. And then a PTO meeting was conducted on February 11th at Pilot Knob STEM Magnet School in the library. And then Mendota Day of Service was held all day on February 12th at Mendota Elementary. A PTA meeting was conducted on February 12th at Somerset Elementary. We also had a book fair on February 13th at Somerset Elementary in the media center. And that's it
005for the elementary schools in the past month of February. Finally, moving on to the middle schools, a student council meeting happened on February 6th at Friendly Hills Middle School, which I was really excited about because they came in to our last meeting and they were all so adorable. And then we had coffee with a principal that took place on February 12th at Friendly Hills Middle School. And then finally, the Winter Ensemble concert was performed on February 13th at Friendly Hills Middle School in the multi-purpose gym at 7 p.m. And that's it for the middle school. And now on to the high school. February was kind of a slow month at the high school, but we did have our girls bowling team finish fourth in the conference tournament. And a little shout out to junior Haley
006French, who earned an all-conference honor through bowling. The Two Rivers social media accounts have and are currently sharing... and highlighting some of our student athletes who are committing to different post-secondary education. One of them happened, actually no, two of them happened to be in the room today. Awesome. Two Rivers Model UN is gearing up for their conference on April 3rd through 5th, and our girls basketball team is, okay, kind of really good this season. recently advanced to the next round of the section championships against Cretan this upcoming Thursday. The Two Rivers Nordic team has officially wrapped up their season and the girls team took the MEC conference championship title for the third year in a row. And last Friday we had a college fair in the Two Rivers gym. And we ended up having 94
007colleges showcase their different programs to Two Rivers students and also 23 specifically, 23 St. Croix Lutheran students who also were able to attend. Tomorrow, the Two Rivers juniors will be taking the ACT. So let's... Keep them in our thoughts. And we also have school conferences taking place the next upcoming two Thursdays. So, yeah, that's about it for the district. Do you have anything else to add? No, thank you all for listening. This is Noelle Hassan. And Patrick Bumbach. Thank you. Thank you, too. I just realized while you were talking that we're getting down to, you only have two more reports left. I know. So we are very appreciative. We've enjoyed having both of you and we will just soak it up, right? Soak it up. All right, next item is our recognitions. Who am I
008turning it over to first? Okay, thank you. So tonight we have three student groups that we are recognizing. Some super readers from Pilot Knob, some Heritage Scholastic Award winners, and the Two Rivers Key Club leaders who organized another successful Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service in January. So first up... We'll call up our Pilot Knob readers along with Principal Tom Benson who's going to help introduce them. So Principal Benson, bring them on up and please introduce these incredible students of ours. Well, Chair Larson, ISD 197 School Board, Dr. Peter Olson-Skog, Superintendent. It's always a joy to come here in front of you and our audience today to talk about two things we love at Pilot Knob. Recognizing student achievement and effort and growth. and, of course, reading. So today I have some wonderful students.
009I asked our teachers, could you tell me some of the students that have made exceptional growth, are working exceptionally hard? And these are the students that I have, and they're going to introduce themselves and tell you one quick, brief tidbit about why they like reading. And I'm going to let Shireng, who's been here before, lead the way. All right, Shireng Alston. good evening my name is sharon masalge and i'm in second grade at pilot novston magnet school where we do great work and read read read i would like to introduce my fellow pk students and they will share what they like about reading and pilot not to magnet school hello my name is victoria rafael i am in second grade and i love to read ada's mysteries I'm Manuel Emilio. I like to read The
010Wild Robot. I like it because there are a lot of characters. I like the book clubs because any grade can do it. Hello, we are the Schendel Twins. My name is August. And I am Leo. We love to read. The books that we read inspire me and give me ideas to make my own books. I am making a comic book series with Aiden called Baby Bosco. I am Leo. And I like The Lord of the Rings. My favorite book is The Hobbit. It is full of adventure. I am also writing a book with my friend, Titor. The name of the book is called Steve. Hello, my name is Logan, and I am in first grade with Mrs. Underdahl. My favorite book is The Last Firehawk, and it is a series of 16 books. Hello, my
011name is Aiden. I am also making a book with August. Reading is also a good way to pass the time. Hello, my name is Amenti Daniel. I'm in second grade with Ms. Cash, and I love to read the Hardy Boys series. Our book clubs are exciting and fun, and I love the Cahoots. Here are the reasons I like to read. Number one, I like to read because reading is the gateway to everything. Number two, reading is entertaining. Number three, reading lets you explore a lot of new things. These are my three reasons I like reading. And that's from some of our students here at PK. And I think it's the same for all 382 of our students, that they love to read, they love to write, they love to learn. As the mentee said, reading's
012the gateway to life and learning. And I'm really excited that, you know, we're reading a couple big books here. We're reading at Pilot Knob, we read The Wild Robot, go Tex. and Dog Man seem to be two big hits. And Dave Pilkey is a famous author. And I think everybody in the world now has read Dog Man. And I wouldn't be surprised if these guys that are creating some books with friends might be the next Dave Pilkey. And in five or 10 or 15 or 20 years, maybe Pilot Knob will be reading their books. We just want to thank our students, their parents, and the teachers that have done such a great job of encouraging reading and lifelong learners. So thank you to our students. We're very proud of you. And keep up the good
013work. And do great work. And read, read, read, read. Don't go away yet. We might want to ask you some questions. First of all, I appreciate this because I also love to read. So thank you for bringing it up. And I'm wondering if anybody here has any questions for them. Oh, both of you do. Go ahead, Byron. So just show me with your fingers, at what age did you start reading? I see four, five, six, four. Excellent. Do we have a three down there someplace? Congratulations. It showed that you got a good start and you'll continue on and it'll only get better. Thank you. Go ahead, John. Sure. I have a favorite place I like to read. It is on my couch with my dog on my lap and a coffee in one hand and
014a book in the other. Do any of you have a favorite place you like to read? Westcott Library. Westcott Library. Might be one of my favorites too. Oh, everybody go. Go ahead. On my couch with my dad. Nice. On my bed. On my bed. On my couch with my dog. Very nice, very nice. I welcome any of you to come back if you write a book someday. We'd be happy to recognize you as a... Pilot knob alum and I don't doubt that we're gonna be recognizing many of you again sometime since I've already seen you twice. Oh We're gonna take a picture before you go too far so we'll wait till the end though So have a seat and you can hear about all the other cool students that we're gonna recognize. All right. Thank
015you guys Oh, your turn. Sorry, I got so enamored with the Pylenob super readers, I forgot my job, which is to introduce the next group. We're going to call up eighth grade heritage students, Elizabeth Pendergrass and Ezra Yochum, along with their language arts teacher, Christina Anderson. So come on up. While they're coming up, I'll just note that both Elizabeth and Ezra are being recognized for earning the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. This is the nation's longest-running recognition program for creative teens. So, Christina, if you could help me introduce the students, that'd be great. Yeah, good evening. Thank you for having me. Good evening to all those on the school board. My name is Christina Anderson. I'm an eighth-grade language arts teacher at Heritage. and it's my pleasure to introduce two of my students, Ezra and
016Elizabeth. And as Mr. Peter Olson-Skog said, this is one of the longest running recognition programs for young people, people such as Truman Capote, Sylvia Plath, Stephen King are some of the alums. I hope one day that both of these students go on to write some amazing fiction. Elizabeth received a silver key for her short story and an honorable mention for her poem. Ezra earned also a silver key for his short story and an honorable mention for his poem. And as a teacher, it just brings me so much pleasure and joy to have people that excel and enjoy writing. When I'm grading, I'm grading. mounds and mounds of short stories. So to come through and find like two, just like, it's like finding a treasure, a gem. So I'm just super excited for them to share
017a little bit of their talent with you tonight. Thank you. We're going to each read a little bit of an excerpt from our short, you're doing your short story as well? Yeah. Okay. We're each going to read an excerpt from our short stories. I'll go ahead and start. Mine is called Conformance Case 536. My leg won't stop jittering. I sit uncomfortably on one of four identical chairs lined up in a neat row along the glaringly white waiting room wall. I stare directly at a desk that reminds me of errors I've only read about in books. The bouncing of my muddy boots on the shiny tile squeaks in a way that would be annoying to anyone else, if there were anyone else in the room to hear it. The only other human I've seen was the
018receptionist. After promptly appearing from a set of metallic double doors behind the desk to check me in, she disappeared just as quickly back behind them, rendering the waiting room barren. Except for me, of course. Despite wearing my best clothes for this appointment, I feel out of place. My t-shirt is blotched with grease, my work pants caked with mud. The entire building gives off an air of cleanliness that tugs at my skin like too tight clothing. I feel I must be careful here, lest I dirty the building with my human imperfection. The smell of disinfectant stings my eyes. I want to kick the walls down to open up a gap and let some fresh air in, but the last word I would use to describe this building is fragile. I doubt I could even make a
019dent. I glance around, listening to the harsh whirring and wailing of some distant fan. The waiting room is bathed in harsh, cold light, making the whites and off-whites of the harsh chairs and tables seem dim in comparison. The decor is sparse and likewise washed out in monochrome. The only color comes from an unhealthy potted plant behind the translucent screen that separated the receptionist from the rest of the room. I find myself feeling a sort of kinship with the browning thing. If only I had some water, I thought, I would find my way behind the desk and try to revive it. Suddenly, the fan's whirring, which I had just started to consider background noise, switches systems to a deep, thrumming sound. The fans' moans send an involuntary chill down my spine. No, this building is definitely
020not fragile. Thank you. I'm Elizabeth. My story is called The Evening Chair, and it's about an older traditional man who begins to read a different book, and it's about the clash between generations and advancement in our society these days. The book he was just starting, though, was completely different. It was a long, long book, not an unusual topic for him. From the moment he opened its yellowed pages, his wise blue eyes seemed to grow suddenly heavy if he looked anywhere but the book's contents. It was only composed of simple sentences with no great meaning, and yet somehow was still so captivating. The book was about a crew of men in a spaceship headed slowly to the sun. The beginning of the book especially was rather plotless, just a basic account of their preparations for liftoff
021and of their strange need to reach this destination. Adam couldn't even foresee any superbly interesting turns of events in the later pages, but with this book, it was as if all but the end was irrelevant. When Adam started reading the book, it was around eight o'clock, and the sky still bore remnants of light from the then-absent sun. The moon was only half full, but glowed starkly, making the candles lit to illuminate the room superfluous. His grandson was being put to bed, and though Adam usually enjoyed hearing the sweet cries of protest from the child, tonight they seemed to agitate him, making him flinch with each sound as if they were blips in his new reality, that of the book. For the time when the rest of the neighborhood was still awake, Adam wore a sort
022of grimace, annoyed at the existence of those living in this boring world as opposed to the one he now knew to be far superior, that of the sun, his destination. But when slumber at last came over the others of the world, he dove into a dreamy haze and became wholly unaware of his own physical form outside of the book. It was as if not even shutting his eyes or closing the book could have awoken him from its trance. The spaceship had by then taken off, and every day the sun's light shone in through the clear panels, seeming brighter with each passing moment and yet never bright enough. All right, for the second time, I feel like we're in the presence of people that are going to come back to us having written a book someday.
023Come back, Ezra. We're not done yet. Would anyone have any questions for Elizabeth and Ezra? Go ahead. I think one of our students had their hands up. Who raised their hand? Patrick, go ahead. I would recruit you guys for speech and debate right now, but we can do that later. My question for both of you, because I don't want to call you young aspiring authors because you already are authors, but who are some of your biggest inspirations when it comes to, you know, when you write and your process? Do you want to go first? Well, I'm not sure. One of my favorite authors is Agatha Christie. I'm a huge mystery person. And I don't know. I just love reading classics for the most part. So any of those authors are inspiring to me. Yeah, definitely.
024I find most of my inspiration in fantasy and sci-fi. I really like reading dystopian novels. And I'm a huge fan of Lord of the Rings and the work by J.R.R. Tolkien, which has really in-depth plot lines, which I find very interesting. Awesome. Good question and great answers. Who had a... Okay, go ahead, Morgan. I actually stole my question. Oh. I cannot wait to read more of your writing as you keep working on it. Can you share the pieces that won prizes with the superintendent and he'll share it with us? Sure. We'd love to read all of this. And then I think they might also be on the Scholastic Art and Writing website. I don't know if they've published the 2025 stories yet. I'm not sure when they did that. Yeah. Maybe. Okay. Was there a
025question over here? Slightly different than Patrick's question. So first of all, those are both very excellent pieces, very visual and outstanding. So what was the inspiration for... each of your short stories? Not who inspires you, but the inspiration for your stories. Well, I think for this one, I wanted to talk a little bit about how in modern society, we are all kept in our little boxes or expected to be put in little boxes. And I wanted to make just a remark on that aspect. My story doesn't necessarily have a happy ending, but it has an ending that is an escape from the box. Mine is a lot less deep. I had a writing prompt in Ms. Anderson's class, and it was just like two sentences or something, and I just got a complete idea within
026the first five minutes after seeing that prompt and just rolled with it, and that's how I normally write. I just get random inspiration. It was about a chair, right? Yeah, it was about the evening chair. Yes. So title and everything. Well, congratulations. By the way, Patrick's right. I can see you both on the speech team. No problem. So talk to him after. But the other thing I wanted to say is I'm super proud of both of you, but I also love what an inspiration you are to your teacher and how much joy she clearly has gotten out of working with you and reading the stuff you wrote and that you've won. Thank you for giving back to your teacher too. So thank you guys and you stick around for a picture too But we got
027to talk to Key Club next. Okay. Thank you Alrighty, so finally we will call up the members of the Two Rivers Key Club who organized this year's MLK Day of Service along with their advisors. I see Mary Beth here. Is Jim here tonight? He is, Robert Street Business Association. Ah-ha, yep. So Mary Beth, why don't you go ahead and introduce the members of your team about the event? I'm going to let them introduce themselves. But yeah, I'm Mary Beth Thompson. I've been working with Key Club since 1999. You do the math. And this has been just the most amazing thing to be a part of. We had close to 500 people. A year's worth of dedicated work and labor went into planning and promoting. I couldn't be more proud of all of them. So why
028don't you take over? Because this is a student-led organization, and they're going to lead, and I'm going to let them do that. And then you can introduce everybody and do your thing. Hello, my name is Jalyn Dotson. I'm a senior at Two Rivers High School right now and also the president of the Two Rivers Key Club. And I'll kind of let everyone else introduce themselves and tell them what year they are. Hi, I'm Evangeline Fuentes. I'm a junior and I'm vice president of Key Club. Hi, I'm Sophia Agin. I'm a senior and currently on Key Club. I'm a grade rep. Hi, I'm Ellie Ludwig. I'm a senior and I'm the publicist of Key Club. Hello, my name is Kendall Dawson. I'm a junior, and I'm also a grade rep. I'm Kate Murphy, and I'm a
029senior, and I'm just a member of Key Club. Yeah, so about two years ago, me and my older sister, Loray, who also was a student representative, we kind of had this idea to celebrate Martin Luther King Day by... acts of service. So we held the first ever, I believe the first ever Martin Luther King Day of Service in what was Warrior Hall two years ago and around eight people showed up and we were just as happy with that eight people as we were with our 500 because at the end of the day we have always just made that difference in the community we wanted to, just as a little way of saying, hey, we're here, this is how we're supporting the community. So we had over 12 different stations where anybody could walk into the
030school and say, hey, I want to help, how can I help? Even we had people all the way from... South Minneapolis, North Minneapolis. So yeah, we were able to get a hold of Justice Alan Page as well, and he came in and spoke. And it was such a good way to thank our community and to help build our community. And you mostly hear people say what I'm about to say when they're like... have already done something, but to all the little ones, or anyone who wants to do something big, that you can do it. And this is us kind of showing the world that we can do what we want to change the world. Yeah. Anyone else? All right. I know we have questions or comments. Yep, go ahead. I know you guys work diligently
031since last year. So I wanted to ask each one of you guys a question, which is, what is your biggest takeaway from the event or working towards to creating the event? Yeah, well, mine definitely was kind of what I was going to before that. Really... You can do what you put your mind to and it also helps that our school has given us so much opportunity and really if you want to do something you just have to take that opportunity and go full force into it. No backing down and that's how you create a legacy for yourself and for your school. You guys go ahead. Yeah, I think it was a years of planning. I mean, pretty much three years of planning because everything that we did from the first year, I mean, it's all
032leading up to this. But as much as it is planning, it's the 500 people who decided to show up and just be better that day and helping our community and just doing everything that we can to better our community. So, yeah. I just loved because it kind of showed me how like giving to your community kind of gives back to me because it was really like the most rewarding experience that I've gone through like at least through Key Club and probably my whole high school career. I would say that it taught me a lot about community as well and that it kind of takes a village to put on an event like this. So we had a lot of service projects that, you know, when they're just in their boxes or unmade, they look great,
033but you can't have a lot of use for them. So with all the people who completed the service projects, you know, the event wouldn't have been possible without them, as well as the community sponsors. So South Robert Business Association, Amore Coffee, and just, I don't know, it was very rewarding watching the community step up to support an event like this. Yes, I definitely agree with Evangeline and also speaking towards the sort of service projects when we had a set amount of time that the event was going to go on for and we realized even with an hour left people are coming up to us and saying you know like what else can we do and we realized that all the projects had become completed and I say that in the best way possible that we
034had completed so much and it just felt like honestly such a good problem to have because everybody was so diligent with completing these projects that were going to communities that needed it. And so to see that happen was just the most rewarding thing for all of us. So I'm just so proud of all these people. I think for me it just kind of showed me that people like really come together for good causes and that was kind of like fulfilling and it was just really nice to like see all like the members of the community really step up and come to the event and help support us and donate money and it was just it was really fulfilling in that aspect. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Well. I'm going to ask the question because we usually don't
035take member questions. But yeah. And I'd also like to say that Randy and I were at the very first one. And we thought it was, I would add, like, the intent of the first one is clearly still there at the one with 500. Like, some of the activities were the same. The spirit was the same. Like, that makes me really proud, knowing that the, I mean, some of you were there. But the students present at the first one versus the third one, you kept the spirit the same. It's inspiring and I'm wondering if you need more space next year, but yeah Yeah, so really kind of going off of what Evangeline says it does take a village and When you're when you are working to do something great and to do something for your community
036So many people are willing to help you we reached out to Amore coffee I know I asked my mom who works in the district to kind of send things out to her students or the teachers Really like just Learning to use or learning to ask for help and ask for Kind of a hand It really yeah, I would say shout out to our district communications department. I know we got the flyers translated We got them sent out to all the elementary middle and high school Which I think again, you know very important because it takes the people coming to the event to make the event what it is Good shout out. Thank you, Sarah Yeah, it was also just great to see that there were so many almost like news. I think that Also what
037helped us was the year before last year, there were a lot of different news programs and broadcasts, and we would be at our regular meetings during the week just to continue preparing for the event, and we'd hear like, oh, Dr. T would say, oh, I saw this on a different Facebook page that they're posting about your guys' event, or it would just spread quicker, and it's the same thing that Jalen and Evangeline were saying, that the more people were sharing it and the more people were responding, we knew that it was going to be a really positive thing. I'd just like to reflect both on the event. It was fantastic. I think you really uplifted our community in many ways and you modeled what it means to be a servant leader within our community and
038to really care about the people around you. So thank you for that. I'd also like to reflect, if we can, have a shout out to Brenda Corbett, who is not here this evening, and I'll tell you why. Brenda Corbett was one of our board members who recently retired from the post and a little bit before that retired as a teacher in the district. And it was one of her dreams is that at these board meetings, we would begin to recognize and honor more and different types of contributions to our community, to the different types of things that students were doing. And tonight, Pilot Knob, we will start with you. We saw excellence in academics. So congratulations. That's a way that we can honor the achievements of our students. And you are clearly achieving that. And
039we honored. creativity. And it was, I gotta say, I was blown away to a level of, I started reorienting my beliefs about what I succeeded in doing as a child. Thank you for that humbling moment. And then, obviously, we wrapped up with service. And that is something that should be honored and celebrated. The acts that you took both to see the needs in our community and take action, the way that you believed in yourselves, it's a model to everybody around you to say, like, hey, if we believe in ourselves, then we can accomplish great things. And you modeled and demonstrated that. And I'm just really proud that you're part of our community. You did a great work. So congratulations. Congratulations. Thank you. Yep. Okay. So we're going to take a little break to take pictures.
040So Pilot Knob, you want to come line up in front of us? Oh, there, buddy. Stand up, everybody. Push the cheers all the way back and then squeeze together. It's like he's done this before. All right, are you ready? One, two. All right, one more. Okay, everybody get one? All right, thank you guys. Now, caretips, creative children. Should I do? Yeah. Christine, come on. All right, key club. There she is. She's coming. It's like they've worked together before. And working for us. Yes. Coming back and working here. You already signed something, right? Just kidding. Oh, yeah? Nice. It's the hair. Thank you Mary. All right next item on our agenda is the superintendent's report and sorry everyone left. But go ahead. Now I get it. Now I get it. Right before you go on, they
041all leave. I get it. I get it now. All right. Well, that's okay. We will muster on. Well, good evening, everyone. Whether you're at home watching on the couch or here in the viewing audience this evening, my name is Peter Olson-Skogin. I'm the superintendent, and I'm here with my report to the board. Let's start off right away because March is Read Across America Month. And so today's report is going to be all about reading. I'm surprised actually. We didn't hear about it from Principal Benson that it's read, read, read. But nonetheless, it takes a team. So here we go. Read Across America Month is a time to promote reading and encourage the love of reading, especially for our young learners. And while we focus on reading each and every day in our classrooms, we have
042a number of extra fun events taking place across our district. And we're going to recognize that in this report. So last Friday, nearly 40... Two Rivers students visited Moreland Arts and Health Sciences Magnet School to share their love of reading with elementary students. In addition to reading books, both in English and in Spanish, let's go to that next slide, I think. We've got a couple more pictures. There we go. They connected with younger learners by sharing why reading is important to them and to share their favorite childhood books. It was a wonderful opportunity for our high school students. They shared their, and they inspired a love of reading, and they built meaningful connections with the next generation of learners, which was just great. So then at Mendota Elementary, they welcomed the children's book author and
043Garlow alum, I will note, Isaiah Allen, for a special reading of his book, A Smile, where he shared the importance of a positive attitude. His ability to connect with students of all ages, along with his background as an athlete, made his presentation especially meaningful. And then at Pilot Knob Magnet School, they brought stories to life during their Book Character Day, a highlight of I Love to Read Week. Students and staff joined in the fun by dressing as their favorite book characters, sparking excitement for reading and sharing the love of stories with one another. Our middle schools. Also have been doing a lot of reading as well and Friendly Hills Middle School just wrapped up their school-wide read-a-thon where students collectively read near nearly 25,000 minutes and the fund rate and the funds raised from that
044read-a-thon will go towards buying Reading materials for both the classroom libraries and the school library so great job to students at Friendly Hills Middle School as well as heritage East and magnet school which just hosted up one of their favorite annual traditions, which is the Battle of the Books. where students put their love of reading to the test. And in a fun reading competition, teams read a selection of books and compete in a trivia-style contest, answering questions about characters, plots, and themes. So congratulations again to Ezra, Mary Jane, and Elizabeth for their first place finished, and to all the students who participated. So I know there are many more activities planned throughout the month, and we'll be sharing those on social media and in our newsletter. And with that, Chair Larson. i conclude my report
045well i'm going to do my part to read this month about everybody else i do my part every month but you you read like 200 pages every two weeks not what i was talking about all right sorry next item on our agenda is with carrie joe strategic framework college and career readiness implementation target update welcome carrie joel and miles sorry Good evening, Chair Larson, Superintendent Olsen-Skog, members of the board. Miles and I are here, but we do have two guests. I'm sorry, three guests. And so I think we'll start by introducing them, and they'll share a little bit in our presentation. So we have, you guys want to stand up? Sure. So we have Anne Henry, she's our Two Rivers High School work-based learning coordinator amongst many other things and teacher. We have Heather Gardner,
046Two Rivers special education teacher and we have a student they've brought with us, that is? Eliana Schmoles. Eliana and you're in the work-based learning program? Correct. Perfect, all right. So all of us are going to take part and we're going to share this presentation because... We thought the principals kept bringing lots of extra guests, so we would follow suit and do the same. So this is, we're doing these updates on the strategic framework. Tonight we're going to talk about the focus area, increase E-12 opportunities for career exploration and preparation. As you might remember from our presentation this fall, there are four specific areas where we have identified targets where we are trying to do more. And tonight we're going to provide you you one update in each of those areas. So we're just trying to
047highlight some things that we're doing and intentionally highlight some things different than our fall report so that eventually we'll cover most of the things in the report itself. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Myles and then at the end he'll invite our guests to also share a little bit about the last focus area. So Myles, the clicker is yours. So the first goal area in this presentation is going to focus on expanding and sustaining opportunities to improve student outcomes across the district. The one we're going to focus on is our plan for the native language course. So we are really thrilled because we've developed a brand new partnership in the metro with Metro State University. And we have some pretty significant steps forward that we've been able to take because of
048that partnership. So we're going to be offering a native language course at Two Rivers High School starting next year. Actually, two of them. And it's in large part because of a grant that we were provided some access to some resources from MDE about this. There's a statewide effort around native language restoration. And so we were able to participate in that granting process. And because of that, like I said, we're not launching just one. We thought it was just one. We're going to launch two native language classes here at Two Rivers. Both of the classes are going to focus on the Ojibwe language, which is also the language that most students in our district speak Ojibwe, and there's various students who speak all different kinds of languages. That's the one that has the highest enrollment right
049now. Like I said, Metro State's been amazing. They're a great institution to work with. They have been really helpful about figuring out this first partnership with them. I'm not sure how many of these they've had, but they've been very, very easy to work with, and I appreciate all the support they've provided us. Each of those classes, like you see up there, are going to be with four college credits. So students can take one class the first semester, and then the next class is the second semester. And what also is very cool is Metro State is going to travel to Two Rivers. Their faculty will travel to Two Rivers and teach the class on site across the whole school year. So it's a very exciting update. We were really fortunate to have all the pieces fall
050in place the way they did with this class. We are really proud of this class. And I will say one other I think a rather large part of this slide right here is it's been a really largely student-driven recruitment process because it wasn't able to get into some of the academic planning guide resources we have because of the timeline of the grant. So we didn't know for sure. But because of that, we've got some students who've been working real hard, and we believe we have enough students to run these classes next year, which is also a very, very big step forward because you just never know. So really exciting things, more to come. And again, it's gonna be these two classes with four college credits each. The second area here is around our commitment to
051reducing student outcomes for underrepresented student groups. And the one that we'll focus on here, as you can see, is the widening and diversifying student groups for feedback. So what we have here, there's some visuals here. We've expanded in lots of ways. One way I'm going to highlight right now is our expansion from the high school to the middle school. We have some student groups now. We're meeting with the middle school on a regular basis. Middle schools on a regular basis. There's three sessions we've held so far. and at least one at each middle school and there's more plans throughout the rest of the year to do this. And we've been using some of the existing student groups we have at the middle school student councils are where we've been doing it first and primarily. It's
052a group that's already organizing and so Friendly Hills meets on Thursday mornings once a month or so and then I've been meeting with a student council group at Heritage during the flex time. I would say that the two main themes of these sessions have been focusing on these two things. Number one, we wanted to hear from our middle school students how the new schedule has gone. What's their experience been? How do they feel about the new courses? How do they feel about the schedule, the flow of the day? And then we always want to take the advantage of hearing from students about transitions. And so that's been the other main theme is asking our eighth grade students how that transition, the work we've been doing around preparing them for that transition, how they feel about
053it. And students are great. They have no problem providing feedback, even to somebody who's just straight, they've never met in their life. I just walk right in and they have nothing, they have all kinds of comfort around sharing their opinions, which is great. I mean, they're middle school students, too. They have a lot on their mind. Some of the feedback they had, the early feedback, is they appreciate the flexibility that the courses have provided at the middle school level. I mean, a lot of that has to do with the fact that teachers have been working real hard at developing those classes. And there's some pretty fantastic opportunities. The students appreciate those new opportunities. In that same vein, they've been offering some other ideas around other courses we could offer in the future. which is helpful
054too because we don't know necessarily what we should do until we hear from the people whom it's going to impact. We did hear some good feedback about the transition plans we have for eighth grade to high school. One part is our trip over to the high school. Middle school students all go over there. I believe it was like November 26th this year or something around there, that date. They love that. They think that's a fantastic experience and it's a lot all at once and you just never can do enough. So they had some ideas about, well, could you do this? Could you do that? Could you do this? But overall, they're really excited about that. and they continue to give us more ideas about how we can make these transitions, especially that very important one.
055Like I said, I do plan to meet with this group throughout the remainder of the year. And then moving on, I don't see why we can't do this in the future as well. We've got a great established group at the middle school. I'd like to see the same thing at our two middle schools. This third area is around expanding opportunities for students to earn certifications, to work college credits, internships, things like that. The one I'm going to focus on right now is on the work related to what's called a student's personal learning plan, which begins in grade nine. And there's a lot that goes into this. It's actually statute 120B.1, I can't remember what it is. It's something that about 10 years ago was through the legislature. And the personal learning plan, we're going to
056call it the PLP, is Minnesota's requirement that all students have a way to explore careers, identify skills, and set goals for themselves for what happens for them after high school. And like I said on the prior screen, it's required for all students beginning as early as ninth grade. So what we did is we haven't, we've done a lot of work with that over the last decade. We just haven't taken a comprehensive look back at it. And so we put together a team to help us with that. And that team has met a few times throughout the year, but three times already. We have one more meeting still on the books. That way, and it includes counselors at all three of our secondary sites, some high school staff, avid teachers, our bar coordinator. We have representatives
057from our special education department as well as our English learner department and various district office members as well. And these would be the people that would know the most about how that plan goes for our students. The goals for this group was really four goals. Number one was to establish just a basic understanding about what this PLP, the Personal Learning Plan, is all about. There's lots of components. There's ten elements inside of it. There's a lot going on within there. So really hunker in on the statute and get to know what it is we're supposed to do. And then after that, what we did is we started looking at how we've done with our installation over time with the PLP, and this is about a decade-long work. And so we were able to look at
058things like how we've done with Warrior Seminar, how we've been doing with speakers, how we've been doing with things like our new subnaviance. But we looked at all the different ways that we've been trying to support our students exploring of their careers, identifying skills, and setting goals. We did, we've been looking at an awful lot of data. We had a student survey that we submitted out, or we had all of our students submit. We had a very, very cool student panel that joined us right before winter break that included. both current students and former students all the way back to I believe 2016 or so. Which is what the picture is. Yeah, which is what that picture is right there. Yep. We had about I think 12 to 12 or 13 people who were on
059that panel and it was a great panel. We just anytime we can get these panels together they give us just an amazing amount of information that a survey just doesn't pick up. All this will then lead eventually at this last meeting we're going to work on tying up some recommendations. So what will we do differently? What's going well? Where are gaps and overlaps? And this team will help put together that set of recommendations that we will then start working on as early as this spring slash fall going into the next year. I'll also say it's been an honor to work with this team. It's a lot of information. It is highly research driven. There's a lot of reading. There's a lot of data going into it. And we have lots of people contributing to that
060work. Margaret Sitta did a great job of showing us some Naviance tools that we weren't aware of, reminded us of some important ones that are in there. So the team has been working real hard. And it's an honor to work alongside them. And I believe this is the last one, which is our opportunities for students to explore career and technical education pathways. And the objective that we're going to focus on here is ensuring that we're expanding and supporting our work-based learning here at Two Rivers High School. And so, actually, I feel like maybe did I skip? Nope, I didn't. So here to, I'm here to, I'm gonna invite some folks up to talk some more about that. There's some really amazing things and you've already met them. Miss Henry here, Miss Gardner, and we have
061Ellie who I've met for the first time today. They're gonna come up and give us some background about what we've been doing with work-based learning. A lot's happened in two years, not even two years. So a lot's happened in about 13 months. So I'd like to invite Miss Henry, Miss Gardner, and Ellie to come on up and, oh yeah. Right there. The one with the picture. Oh, it is. Oh, the one with the picture. Yeah, you got it. Okay. Thank you very much for kind of allowing us to be here. Miles, Carrie, Joe, thanks for asking us for the update. And it really truly is a pleasure. And we are super excited. I think I was here last year at this time, and there were lots of question marks. And there were lots of, we
062have a few independent study students. We had a, I think, well, I want to make sure I get it right. Again, we are really excited about how the program has grown and I'll kind of fill you in on where we were and where we where we are right now. It's it's so exciting. And we're hoping that the possibilities of continued support and collaboration, not just within the community, because we have a lot of students who are out working in our in our neighborhood communities. And we're really hoping to be able to also have these have these partnerships within our school district and mentorship and things like that that we'll kind of talk about but the historical context of kind of the reboot of Two Rivers work based learning from the school year of 23-24 we
063had two independent study students who worked with Miles and I to kind of collaborate an online version while I was given time Dr. Johnson was very supportive of of this movement forward with work based learning getting the curriculum for a seminar class in place. And so the spring of 2024, we had eight students who were in our seminar class and all who were out working in the community, working at several different places. And I would go and kind of see, talk to their managers and things like that. Jumping ahead to this school year, we have... far exceeded anything that I could have imagined. In the fall, we had 28 students enrolled in the Seminar 1 class. We had 25 of them engaged in field experience, which they would see me every day for the seminar
064class, fifth hour, and then some of them were excused sixth and seventh hour to go to work. Some had classes sixth hour and maybe just had one hour of field experience. They would work, if they had one hour of experience... field experience they were gaining credit for, they worked anywhere from seven to 12 hours during the week. If they were given two hours of credit, they worked anywhere from 12 to 20 hours. And so... They would be excused again from school to go to work. 19 of those students earned college credit through our partnership with Dakota County Technical College in the job search skills. So that was certainly a highlight for us. This spring, We have added 11 new students and have a total of 34 students enrolled in the Seminar 2 class, and 36
065students are out working in the field. So it's, I'm not going to lie, it's a lot of work getting to all these different places, but I'm like a proud mom. It's wonderful. I've had nothing but real positive reviews, and I think it really comes from this collaboration of school, families, and the employers. So the students, I was just at Carboni's last Monday, went in the back of the kitchen and was taking pictures of one of the gals making pizzas. And it's just kind of a great thrill for me to see how these students have grown, how they've matured, you know, with their professional skills and just their ability to go out in the workforce and be successful. Just with preliminary, we had registration a couple weeks ago, and I can't go on the record to
066say this, but I do know the counselors, and they told me that our numbers are even better for next year. So we're talking 40... On the record. Oh shoot, okay. So our numbers are going up and Heather's gonna talk a little bit about some potential opportunities with some grants and just when we spend our prep time talking about this stuff, we get pretty excited and jazzed about it and we're excited about what the future holds. pictures that you see right here at the end of first semester we had kind of a gallery walk and we had all the students who were in our seminar class had to talk about what the seminar experience was like what their job experience was like they included their resumes cover letters business cards we made And just, you know,
067and then also what's next for them. Some are seniors who are going off to college. Some are gonna continue in the workforce. We have a few that are going into the military. So it's really been a great, great opportunity for me and I can't wait, you know, to continue this. And Ellie's gonna share too, once Heather speaks, Ellie will kinda give her... version of how work-based learning has has impacted and been a part of her life so again thank you so much for all your support and um i'm just really excited about you know what's what's to come for work-based learning so hi i'm heather gardner thank you so much for spending time with us to see our program i'm a special education teacher at two rivers high school and my primary goal is to
068provide access to all of these programs that we are doing thank you so this includes the CAPS program the CNA program this includes work-based learning all of our students are accessing these programs so what we have to do is figure out the best way we can provide supports for these students to be successful and eventually get to the workforce and and ultimately that's where I want to see our students grow and I'm not going to take a ton of time, but we are writing a grant right now. It's a youth skills training. grant it's up to a hundred thousand dollars we just submitted it we're waiting to hear what will happen but that also provides opportunities to reduce barriers and my goal and my passion is about reducing those barriers for all students in our
069school and so hopefully they can access any program maybe it's transportation maybe it's job coaching maybe it's support services just to work on communication skills because we're all communicating with our our phones these days and it's really hard to look people in the eye or just have those conversations. So that's my goal, and I work with Ellie, and I'm going to let her kind of talk and tell you about what she's been up to. Hi, I'm Eliana Schmelz. I'm a senior at Two Rivers High School, and this is my second year going to Two Rivers. I work with Ms. Gardner, as she said, and last year, my first year, she connected me with the Vocational Work Readiness Program because I was looking for a job and I was really ready to kind of go on
070my own. Working with her, I was able to work with someone through MyPath, and I was able to get a job at Dogtopia. It kind of gives the name away, and what I do, I work with dogs. Right now currently I am taking the work based learning seminar with Miss Henry and I think it's the funnest class in the world. She's probably the best teacher. She's really taking us under our wings and she just we all feel like a family. I feel like we always say that and because we all just Really talk about whatever I feel like if we have an interesting experience at work Then we'll wall like talk through it and give our opinions to see what we could have done better or what we could do next time I Work with
071dogs. Like I said a dog topia it is a boarding Boarding spot in daycare facility. I've worked here since end of August I believe and I literally say this with so much love. I absolutely love my job. I... It's... probably the best thing that I could probably get into and Through the program work for through the program work based learning. I have learned to be really independent last year probably around this time I never would have thought that I've been would be this independent as I am at work. I am now closing alone at 845 and I'm alone till 845 and my responsibilities I am a Canine coach with Dogtopia and my hours vary, but I do work a lot of weekends and my resume definitely upgraded from getting this job and I love it,
072but I've learned a lot of things taking it from the class to work, like learning how to make a resume, writing a cover letter, and we're doing a fun thing. We all wrote cover letters to Miss Henry and she's going to pick a winner. And I really hope I'm in the top three. Nice work. Get that on the record, too. Yep. That's good. Next year, I really hope, I haven't gotten any news back yet, but I really hope to go to Hamlin University, and I absolutely love science. I know every kid hates science and math, but I'm not one of those kids. I've always loved math and science, and I hope to study forensic science, because I just think that's so cool, and I don't know, I just feel like it'd be... I really want
073to help people, and forensic science, I feel like that's a way to do something that I really love, which is science, and help people at the same time, like solving crimes, and I absolutely love that. Again, to my job. I bring my dog, and I work with probably... Depending which room I'm in either the big dogs or little dogs It can be up to probably like 30 dogs at a time, which is a lot for one person My training was extensive. It was like a full two weeks. I had to learn how to Break up fights if you will like teenagers. They're like literal teenagers I had to learn how to deal with that and I went through a lot of outside of the room, watching videos, learning different codes to call over the walkie-talkies.
074I was really afraid, honestly, when I first got the job. I was like, nobody's going to like me. I'm the youngest one here. I'm probably going to get fired in one week. But I didn't. And the program really helped me kind of branch out and look for more opportunities in my job. Like right now, I'm going through asking for a raise because I feel like I need one. I think you just asked. I did just ask. Yep. Yep. I hope I get one. I hope, honestly, in the next year, I hope that I can add more positions than I am at Dogtopia. I hope to maybe work in the spa. I think I might have to be a little bit older for that now. But I, yeah, I love my job. I love this program.
075Ms. Henry's absolutely the best, and so is Ms. Gardner. She's so fun to work with. Yeah. That's a perfect segue to questions in case you have any for Ellie or no, yeah, thank you all of you That was wonderful. We just to the board. We don't have a ton of time if we want to stay on schedule so but get your questions asked i want to congratulations ellie like thank you that's a big year and i think you should submit this video to hamlin you'll be fine you're in and for the raise all right thank you yes all right questions comments for anybody i can go ahead tim lots of people like math and science don't so so run with it this is a comment both to you and to the staff sometimes in education
076you think of things that show up in a PowerPoint in the blackboard but seeing you tonight unless I'm really missing something this whole experience gave you a lot of confidence it did and you were very professional and very secure and you should be proud of that and your teacher should be proud that they've created this framework so congratulations to everybody on that and best of luck thank you Well said. John, do you have something? It might be a quick question. I'm not sure. Super impressive. I bagged groceries when I was a senior in high school, and your job sounds far more cool, so I'm a little jealous. Have you had to solve, given your interest in forensic science, have you had to solve any dog crimes during your... Actually, funny you say that. We do
077have a dog that... pockets all of us. She's a Brittany. Her name is Rosie. She is a literal criminal. And if we could probably put her in jail, we all would. It's so bad. Maybe she thinks they're her truths. I don't think so. She's very persistent at it. If you tell her no, then she'll get even more mad. She's decided. You know who the pushover is with dogs. that's awesome well thank thank you everybody thank you for coming ellie yep and thank you guys for your time we really appreciate it and looking forward to everything to come of course thank you thanks is this the thing i'm supposed to introduce you yes okay even though you're already here okay so i'm delighted to welcome you to today's presentation focusing on the work of our isd
078197 career and technical at advisory committee because i'm also on that committee we established ourselves in 2021-22 school year and the advisory group has helped provide counsel and support in many ways over the last four years for our district oh i'm a proud member of the committee for the past two years and i'm thrilled to charlotte share progress and achievements In the initial phase, our efforts were concentrated on the formation of a cohesive group, establishing a robust structure, and fostering meaningful relationships between our career and technical ed staff in ISD 197 and our local business, industry, and post-secondary partners. Today, our committee is honing in on activities aligned with the three CTE goals I've identified in the 22-23 academic year. One of the most valuable outcomes of our community's endeavors lies in the relationships cultivated
079between our district and community partners. These collaborations provide invaluable insights, enabling us to better equip our students for their college and career journeys post-high school. Simultaneously, our business and post-secondary partners discover avenues to actively support and enhance the CTE programming within our district. Building and nurturing these relationships demands time, effort, and dedication. from you too the longer they endure the more our students and community will reap the benefits so i'll turn it over to miles and carrie joe Thank you. So this is our first committee update. Just as a reminder to anyone listening audience that might not be used to this, we provide updates on all of our committees that involve community members. We've paired this one with our CCR area because they two really go hand in hand together. And so to get us
080started, I'm going to just turn it over to Miles. He really leads the work of this committee and let him walk you through this. Thank you. You might remember this is a yearly thing and there's not a lot of new information in terms of some of the early slides, but just to get people grounded in what we're doing here with this committee is it's indirectly a state requirement to have this committee. Because it's in order to in order for us to access some of the federal funding through the Carl Perkins grant We need to have an advisory committee that will help provide us some councils. So that's why it indirectly is a state required committee The Carl Perkins grant does provide all kinds of funding to both support our high schools and our post-secondary partners
081And I would say this CT advisory committee plays a really important role in their district. And I mean you've heard one already right there. That's some of the things that we've done is built these relationships with our different industries and business partners here locally as well as our colleges. And a lot of what is happening now is because of those relationships. So we have some pretty amazing groups that we do get a chance to work with. So, this is a lot of the statute language here. It's just to give you, again, some background here. We have to have these local advisory councils that can meet with our CTE programs and staff. And the CTE programs I'm talking about are Family Consumer Science, Business Education, Work-Based Learning, Trade and Industry folks. And those folks have been
082meeting with people before all this. The reason why we did this though was that it created some new efficiencies because if we have five programs who need to meet with all these people twice a year which is the requirement that just gets a little cumbersome. So what we did is we decided to do it twice and we'd have these meetings in the fall and the spring with all of our groups and bring them all together at once. So it does create some efficiencies. It does give us an opportunity to talk to everybody all at once around some district-wide updates which I think is helpful too. And then what we see now is some cross-program collaboration, places where if trade and industry was meeting with somebody by themselves, they don't get a chance to work with
083Family and Consumer Science, who's working with the kitchens. So there's some neat opportunities for some cross-program collaboration because of that. The committee is made up now of about 60 or more members. It's growing and changing all the time based on who we're working with and what the community looks like. About a third of the folks on that committee are from our business and industry partners. Another third are from the school member, people in our school district and our staff here at the high school. And then we do have quite a few folks on that team who are from our post-secondary partners. We have students now as well who will be, who've been joining us the last couple years. This slide right here visualizes just some sampling. This doesn't represent all of them by any stretch.
084But these are some of the folks that have been attending these meetings over the last three years. There's folks like Inver Hills and Dakota County Technical College in there. So you see some college post-secondary folks. There's international, national, and local businesses in there. And I'll say in some ways that all of these folks contribute to, what we're doing is they may give us curriculum counsel. ideas for classes or things that we could be putting inside of our courses. They give us advice on certifications and equipment and they do give us the opportunity to talk about field trips, internships. It just takes time to build these relationships and this is the conduit for that. This slide right here shows how we've met over the last two years. There's a fall date that's not on there, but
085you, as a group here, you heard that update last year. So this just refers to the work that's happened since then. Like I said, it meets twice a year, not as frequently as the other ones, but it seems like the right cadence about twice a year. We do a fall and we do a spring. We talk about the fall, what we're getting ready to do. We talk about the spring, about what the impact has been and what we could do looking forward. This is just an example of what that meeting might look like. It's about an hour and a half and there are some places where we do updates around what we're doing and some highlights in the school district around the career and technical education. We do take time. to look at those three
086goal areas which are, you'll see here in just a moment, that the CTE Advisory Committee established a couple years ago for us to keep our focused efforts on. And then at the end we always break out into small group discussions based on the career pathways so they can have some discussion in trade and industry. They can have some discussion for family consumer science for the people who are involved in those areas. I think... This this is always what we do we make an effort here to highlight ways in which each of our advisory committees Help us to further our work around equity and our four-way equity test is one of the ways that we can always keep this in mind and so there's been it's largely in place with our CT advisory as well and
087You know, as we do this, some of the things you saw before are the highlights. So we always go back and look at our enrollment trends. And so you might remember from last year, we continue to add more students to our programming in each of our areas. And we do continue to see nearly a 0% disproportionality in each of our areas as a group. And that's pretty fantastic. I mean, that right there is one of the highlights of our school district because it shows... All of our students have the ability to access what we think is some very important programming. And our staff go a long ways to help students see themselves in those courses and to make them available for as many students as possible. I'd say another effort that we have recently is
088we do have another grant that we've been working with Minnesota Department of Education around expanding our computer science pathways for underrepresented students. Ms. Henry was just talking about the growth we've had in work-based learning over its tripled or more in one year time. And we, Ms. Gardner was talking a little bit about the youth science, sorry, the youth skills training grant. which would help us expand to more work with our students with IEPs. And I should say at this point when we talk about all these grants, because there's probably been three or four we've referenced so far between this and the last one, is we build in this concept of how to make it sustainable over time. Nothing we would do wouldn't be something that we can keep in place unless we knew how to
089do that at the beginning. So these are all... that gives us the momentum to keep moving forward and the gas in the tank to keep it going fast. And then we always build in ways to make sure that that can continue in the future. This is where the CT Advisory gives us those goals. These were created by them. They designed these as a group a couple years ago, and so we just continue to pick up where the work left off last year. And so these are the three goal areas. You heard of one already, which is establishing a sustainable work-based learning program. The second goal is making sure we have comprehensive pathways in each of those career pathways and program areas. And we're always looking for ways to expand college credit and certification opportunities for
090our students in each of the program areas. The following slides here will give you some information around each of them. The first one here, I mean, I feel like the boom has already went out with Ms. Henry and Ms. Gardner and Ellie. about expanding the work-based learning program. I don't probably need to add too much more to that because they did a really fantastic job talking about the work that has gone into that. Again, I'll just say the highlight is they've tripled in one year time what we've been able to do, and it was at zero last fall. It was, you know, like so for the beginning of the school year. Ms. Henry and Ms. Gardner have just been working real hard on that. We're really proud of this reinvestment in work-based learning. And anybody,
091I think anybody in the world now sees the value of having skilled workers. And there's a lot of work to be had out there. This is one area that we can use to help make sure students are getting ready. This slide right here shows some information from last year. This idea about full pathways in each program area. There's two snapshots of the slides. The first one on the top left are all of the courses that we put in place at the middle school level this last year. These are all the new installations or were planned installations. And so we were looking to expand our pathways down to the middle school. We found some folks who'd be willing to help us out with that. We've got some exciting opportunities at the middle school level. And these
092are all offered then here this year at both middle schools. And then you also see on the right were the high school classes. So a lot of concurrent enrollment opportunities, some AP opportunities, some new expansions into some of the other career and technical education areas. This slide is this year's version of some of that. More and more opportunities. That's something that our advisory committee says is don't just put one place, one course in place. Don't put just two and don't have them connected. Think about how you can put these all together so students who are interested can make their way to and through all the way to post-secondary, all the way to work experience once they leave our high school. It's a real commitment. These goals are an example of why a committee like this
093makes sense and is important to have. They gave us some direction to follow, and it's been helpful because now we can report some pretty important things that have been happening. This third goal area is around college and credit-bearing opportunities expanding in that realm, as well as certifications that are industry-recognized. And these are just some of the examples of the certifications we've been looking at. We, the Comp TA A plus certification in computer science, there's nothing more gold standard than getting that and going straight into work. And that's something that we're able to provide our students now. Vivacity has been working as a great partner. They've been putting together some student repair assistant programs for our students so they can understand how to build and rebuild Chromebooks and any kind of other hardware we might use
094in the school district. And there's a lot more college credit courses now in many of our areas. We continue to expand wherever we can. A large part has to do with just our great partnership with the colleges around us. They are easy to work with and they are fantastic. They work with all the flexibility they're allowed. We expect this expansion to continue. This is something that we're invested in and we have people now who are excited about looking at ways to make more and more of these opportunities. So I just I thank you, you know a part of I think about this It's great that we team these together But then in some ways there's so much redundancy then because you've heard some of the big things already with this Henry and Miss Gardner with
095Ellie But it's nice to be able to highlight some of this work because the staff that are on these committees they show up every time And they meet with our business folks. They meet with the industry folks. They take their advice. They put programming in place. And they help build those relationships. So without our staff and without our local business and industry, this wouldn't happen. So it's an honor for me to be able to do that, to give you this update. If anybody out there in the listening audience would like to join us in this work, they can feel free to get a hold of me. We'd love to have you join. This is now at 60 members, but it could be 160. There is no limit to what we can do. We need partnerships
096and we'd like to make more of them. So at this point, I think I'd welcome any questions or feedback you have. Thank you, Miles. Questions? Comments? Go ahead, Tim. Acronym check. Acronym check. CIS college, for the people at home. CIS, CE, college and schools, and CE, does that stand, is that credit eligible or college eligible? Yeah, so college and the schools, CIS, concurrent enrollment, CE. Concurrent enrollment, okay. Those are all credit-bearing. I mean, there's a lot of content there, but. There's a lot of acronyms inside that, you bet. Good check. I always pretend I'm sitting on my couch watching. Need a hand. Other questions for Miles? Okay, I think we're saying thank you. Thank you, Miles. Thank you. Appreciate it. Yeah. All right. Next item on our agenda is the Wellness Committee update. Right? I
097have the order correct? You do. I'd like to say thank you to Mary for trying to make it not so hot in here. Much appreciated. All right. Oh, we got a whole crew. Who's gonna go first? Stacy? Okay, you introduce your folks. Hello, my name is Stacy O'Leary, and I'm part of the co-chair for the wellness committee. And with me, I have Jeff Wolfer, who's in charge of food service for the district, and Megan Bedard, who is also co-chair with me, and she's the Live Green sustainability person. So we would like to talk a little bit about the Wellness Committee and what we've done over the last many years. As you know, it's been around for... 25 years or something and we have a wellness champion in every school We're very excited It's a site
098based plan and if you ever want to understand the different schools their culture and what they do is what inspires the champion and the people within those buildings and they kind of make the Decision on what they want to do for that next year for a project That's a list of everybody on there. And rather than read it, we have about four nurses, about four administrative staff, and about four teachers. So it's kind of a nice variety of different people that have a passion to do healthy promotion things in their building. The Department of Education in the state of Minnesota has requested that we follow this WISC model, which is a whole school, whole child, whole community model. And that is what we use that as a foundation for the wellness and what the projects
099they want to do. And so every time we write a grant to the county. for our wellness ideas and options we have to really use this format as what are we going to do how are we going to do it and that's kind of how they're working on that Each school's champion, that person serves as an advocate for the community and the staff and the students and trying to help them and help that building go in the right direction for health and wellness. There are a lot of pride and ownership within that building for that. those projects and whatever they're doing. And we'll talk a little bit more about the projects and what's going on. But not only is it something that we support the students, but we support staff. So they'll see some staff
100projects as well. And one example is of the cultural wellness that we have is the salad bars. Our district over the last 20 maybe 25 years has created a culture of wellness and and every building is trying very hard to continue to promote that and one example of that is salad bars we have when we started many years ago we didn't have salad bars in every school another in every school and the kids are used to them and they see them and they pick healthy foods and it's a choice that they are able to make and i think that concept of health and wellness is something that we really have promoted in our district Okay. Madam Chair, Mr. Superintendent and Directors, thank you again for having us. Just wanna share with you some of our
101school wellness initiatives. We're very grateful for Dakota County and the Statewide Health Improvement Partnership or the SHIP funding that we receive typically every year. The way this works is the county lets us know what type of funding is available and then we reach out to our wellness champions and ask them for ideas for infrastructure or programming that related to wellness that they would like to seek funding for. And then after an application process that involves some contracts, we are able to have access to those funds. So this year, we are excited for three programs with this SHIP funding. The first is at Garlow, and it's looking at exercise and physical physical education equipment such as free weights, yoga mats, and other activities that the gym teacher is gonna be able to work with her students
102on. At Friendly Hills, you may know we have a greenhouse there now and the funding will support additional infrastructure that's really needed to get that greenhouse up and running. Think like... seed trays and watering cans and all the things that you would associate with starting plants in a greenhouse. And then lastly at Two Rivers, this is the picture at Two Rivers from Wellness Day a few years ago that we got our raised beds going. But we need a little more structure on those raised beds if any of you have seen them to just get established. first a garden team and then really some goals around what we want to grow there. And that's where we're going to be able to utilize the slow food curriculum, which is a curriculum that helps students learn about food
103and how to grow food and then actually how to get that into their school. Hopefully through like a salad bar or something. And then next, oh, actually next we're going to turn it over to Jeff. Good evening. I'm gonna just talk a little bit about school lunch. I guess we're always well. We have to be well based on the USDA guidelines. But some of the things that we've done this year that's kind of enhanced that, the snack bar at Two Rivers High School, been closed since March of 2020. We remember that wonderful time. And we were able to open it back up with some simple snacks. This past December everything we serve in there. We wanted to keep it simple. We didn't want it to Pull kids away from the from the lunch program because
104we're now in the second year of our free meals program for breakfast and lunch We have some drinks cookies chips Pretzels, but keeping it pretty simple. So kids are all still eating the still eating the lunch the USDA smart snack guidelines everything we serve in there has Limits on how much sodium, how much fat, need to be whole grain rich for bread items. and things like that. Our elementary breakfast menu, Megan Bernard has been working with us real closely and helping us kind of revamp our elementary breakfast menu, getting more proteins in it. The USDA for many, many years has been very grain heavy on our entrees and we're trying to get entrees that have at least half of them are proteins. And also all our entrees, half of them now have no packaging. Kind
105of with COVID, everything started to come individually wrapped and how can we, you know, eat it in the classroom, eat it in a car, eat it in a bus, what have you. So we're getting away from that. Things that are... we cook and we literally serve to the kids. So trying to reduce the packaging. Another thing we changed as far as the breakfast goes, we went from these plastic cups that really are almost too small to recycle. We went with juice boxes, 100% juice boxes, so those are able to be recycled easily. Lunch plastic free for the most part we have do have a few fruit cups that we're using up from our government commodity program we're serving things in bulk like our Condiments everything's in pumps. We're not using packets any longer Sour cream
106or things things like that that don't have dispenser condiments. We're using squirt bottles things that we can refill and as far as our serving trays and utensils the kids eat with are compostable we do have pilot knob is using stainless steel or they utensils so they wash those but really there's nothing that goes in the actual trash can or there shouldn't be So that's kind of where we're going with the zero zero waste and that's been our partnership with our sustainability manager So she's been a great help. I appreciate it And then Stacy talked about salad bars another just kind of an add to on that we've had those I think since 2010. We're always making sure there's a protein on there, legumes, yogurt, cottage cheese, so kids can actually make a meal out of
107it because a protein is one of the requirements of the reimbursable meal. So it gives them an option if they want to just make it so we're not doing pre-made salads, but they can. Make a meal out of that and then we've also been doing some taste testing again this year kind of got back to that We did have done it at the high school and we've done it each middle school as a result We've been serving chicken tinga and also sriracha honey chicken So we kids seem to really like those So we plan to do some more and get it to the elementary level as well. All right Jumping back in just school wellness in action. We just want to share with you quickly some of the projects that are going on in our
108schools So both Somerset and branch out have student wellness clubs and these clubs Make videos on hand washing sleep hygiene Drinking water and they're so simple, but they're really fun We have staff lactation rooms. This is also some grant funding from Dakota County Somerset Moreland and to reverse Dental ceiling clinics and that's a lot through nursing. We've been able to get that going at ELC Garlo and heritage NAMI which is National Alliance on mental illness We reached out to Dakota County on this as well, and they provide free presentations to schools. And so today, actually, at Two Rivers, at the health classes there, we had a NAMI presentation. And it was both Stacey and I got to sit in on it, and it was just really awesome to have someone who had... experience mental health
109challenges, be able to talk about that. But the cool thing is she works for NAMI too, so she's very well versed in being able to share a whole lot of information about what it is like and what are the resources for students and young people and anyone experiencing mental health challenges. And so that was really cool. both Friendly Hills and Heritage would like to have NAMI presentations for their students as well. And then their Fall and Spring Walk and Bike to Schools, all of our schools do this. They do walking school buses. It's been just growing and growing every year. And then our Wellness Week, this will be our third year for our district-wide Wellness Week. And so this is just like a little blip where it's a few minutes where hopefully teachers can engage
110with students and staff can also encourage each other. Mindful Monday, Take a Break Tuesday, Walk Wednesday, Talk Thursday, and Fresh Food Friday. So we will be putting together some resources and hopefully some fun things that people want to do. And with that, if you have any questions or comments. This is, just to let you know this picture, is the wellness committee from Branch Out. So they formed a wellness club this year, and they meet once a week to decide on a wellness area, and then they present it to the group. That's what this is. I love it. Thank you, thank you. Again, we're running a little short on time, but if there's questions, I think, maybe not. Questions, comments? Okay. I guess you're off the hook. Thank you so much. All right. Next item is
111our discussion of 24, wait, no, 25-26 general fund budget framework with the superintendent who needs the clicker. It's coming. It's coming. I'm just getting steps up. Thank you, Mary. All right. Well, before I even get into this, I think it's worth commenting that everything that we've seen tonight is facilitated through careful management of our funds. And that's what we're bringing to you tonight is a recommended budget framework. But that budget framework philosophically exists to make sure that we continue to support all the great things that are happening in our district on behalf of our students and on behalf of our community. So tonight... is the budget framework. And the first question you might be asking yourselves, if you are an avid annual watcher of the budget framework, is you might be saying, why is Peter
112Olson-Skoog presenting this? He's not the finance director. Well, as you've seen early in our budget, in our consent agenda earlier this evening, the board is aware our director of finance, Jason Stegman, has resigned. And this evening we have joining with us Jason. Different Jason. This is Jason Mutzberger Jason works for the centers for effective school our Center for effective school operations or see so as you may have heard it Akron eyes before but we avoid them we describe them and so but they are they are well versed in help stepping in and helping districts through transition processes and And beyond and so Jason worked with me quite a lot on this budget framework and getting it ready. I'll be presenting it, but he is here as a career finance director in multiple school districts in
113the metro area, now working for CISO, but can answer any specific questions that I might not be able to answer. So with that, let's get into it. What are we talking about tonight? The word framework is actually really helpful because frame if you think of a house it's it's it is the everything once you've built the frame everything needs to fit inside of that frame and sometimes you talk about defining the sandbox, right? Like what are the edges? What are the boundaries? And everything has to fit inside of that. And that's what the budget framework really does. It includes assumptions. It includes parameters that'll guide the administration's development of the recommended budget. So we're not seeking action on this this evening. We want to make sure that you and the community are aware of the
114budget framework and then the approval of it will be sought at the next meeting on March 17th. But to be clear, what we're discussing tonight and what we would be presenting on the 17th is not the specific budget. The specifics of the budget are actually brought back to you in May preliminarily and then again in June for approval. All of this is typical timing and lead up to the budget that the board would approve in its specificity in June for the upcoming school year. What I would like to start off, though, with is a note of gratitude. We have a very supportive community. They have been there for us. through the proverbial thick and thin. They have supported us through a variety of operating referendums and levies, bonding referendums and levies. And when you put
115that together with a really strong business community, businesses deciding, yep, this is the right place to do our work and to put our tax dollars, that equals the vibrant programming that you've been seeing, that you've seen in every board meeting, but also... especially highlighted tonight that is what gives our our teachers the ability to provide the education and the experiences that produce all the excellence that we saw at the very beginning of this board meeting in our student recognition period and it's what insulates us against increasing costs now i want to be i want to be clear on my wording there when i say insulation it does not protect us entirely because our although the effects that i'm going to walk you through are much larger in other districts that don't have this same type
116of funding that we have in our district, it doesn't protect us entirely from these increasing costs. But it does insulate us to a great degree. And so I'm going to keep saying thank you to our committee over and over tonight because we could be in a much different position than we're in. So let's talk about those rising costs. What are they? Well... It's everything, is the bottom line. My brother lives in Seattle and he recently paid $13.50 for a dozen eggs. Everything is going up in terms of costs. And that applies to us as the school district, that applies to our community members, that applies to our staff members, everything is going up. And that state funding gap that we've talked about before continues. In essence, the cost of what we are doing is going
117up at a greater rate than the increases that we're seeing in our revenue coming from all of the various places that our revenue comes from, be it local, state, or federal. And while we are very grateful, because if the legislation didn't do what they did in the last session, whether it's from the special education cross subsidy or whether it was from tying some other metrics to inflation so that that funding can do its best to keep pace, it's still going beyond the costs. And there's a yin to that yang, which is that during that same session, there was a number of things that were also asked of schools to do that cost money. Now, some of them were funded. Some of them were underfunded, meaning we received some funding for them, but they cost more
118to implement than we received in funding. And some of them were just not funded at all. And so when you put those things together on balance, we're still better than we would have been had the legislation not taken action last session, so I'm appreciative of that. But there's still some work for us to do. Health insurance is increasing. The board has heard me talk at length about what it means to be a self-insured district, but whether you're a self-insured district or not, health insurance costs are going up. In the models that we're about to show you, we've built in about a 16% increase to health insurance because that's what we are thinking it could be. We've got contract negotiations coming up for our bargaining units for the 25 through 27 contracts. When we've been talking
119with our legislators, we're not expecting additional, beyond what's already built into the formulas, we're not expecting some new type of legislation to pass that carries with it a whole lot of additional funding beyond what we are already aware of. And that's because of the state budget's forecast, which is showing a deficit in the years to come. So they are, as a legislative body, are not eager to add to that deficit that they're already projecting. And I want to say that we're not alone in this challenge. Now, these are not all of the school districts. There's actually a survey going on right now. I would... We wager a guess that nearly every metro area if not every Minnesota school district is going through some type of budget adjustments And the ones that you see up on
120the screen are the ones that would come up with on a very quick search or just watching the news and these and they are talking about very significant cuts in all of these districts and I will say again thank you to our community because the size of the adjustments that we need to make are not nearly what they would have been had they not voted to support our schools in the way that they did. So I want to walk you through what the administration is proposing as a cost containment plan. Now I'm using those words carefully as well because we do project that our spending would go up. The budget that we would that we would bring to you within these parameters would be a higher budget than it was the year before But we
121believe that though we are projecting it to go up. We need it to go up a little less Than we are projecting it to go right now in order for us to create a balanced budget So let's talk about what we put into this model to determine what our what our budget position is what it will be and what we're recommending. So in terms of what we are assuming on the revenue side, as the board is well aware, but the community might not be, how many students there are in a school is the primary driver of the funding that you receive. And our enrollment has been growing, and it's among the highest years it's ever been. But moving forward, looking at using the same prediction models we have in the past, we project it to
122be stable. no significant increases or decreases, and that it would settle in at about that 5,200 students that we have now. General education aid. This is a story I've tried to tell many, many different ways. And it's a difficult one, but I'll try it again. You may remember that I've used the analogy before that if you're living in a family and one of the earners gets a raise and the other one doesn't, If one earner gets a 10% raise and the other gets a 0% raise, then the overall impact to the family is not 10%. It depends on how much each person made to begin with, but if we assume that they made the same amount, one getting a 10 and one getting a 0 actually means a 5% raise overall for the family. Here
123you can see the numbers specifically. And actually, I will note that this is one of those things where we are talking about little swings here and there. At the time that we put this presentation together, the projection model that we put together, this was at a 2.5% increase. The state has come back and said that it will be a 2.7% increase because it's tied to the consumer pricing index. But back to the story I'm trying to tell is if you look at that 2.5% increase and then you look at that roughly million dollars that it's going to increase our funding by, our overall budget is $100 million approximately. 2.5% of $100 million is not $1 million. It's one million dollars is about one percent so a two point five percent increase in the general education
124aid only ends up feeling like a one percent increase overall in our budget But sometimes this is what gets confused by the by the general public even by even my people in education that they say they hear a two point five percent increase is coming our way or now two point seven and think that that's a two point seven increase overall it's not It's much less than that you can see and you can see the actual numbers there The other thing that we've built into our revenue Assumptions is that our compensatory aid and for those of you who don't know what compensatory aid is that is? That's based on a rough approximation of the number of families that might be economically disadvantaged within the school or families living in poverty and the more The more
125families you have that meet that qualification the more funding that that school would get that Total used to total this year totals about five point two million dollars next year We expect it to be about four point seven million dollars. So that's a five as about a half million dollar increase So speaking in round numbers the one million dollar increase that we're getting on the two point five is About halved by the reduction that we're expecting in compensatory yet now Things change and so I want to make sure that I'm clear on this with both with the board and with and with the viewing audience Is that these are all assumptions and these are all projections and weather projections and weather assumptions like you do the best you can with the information that you have,
126that compensatory dollar could swing our way. In the governor's budget, he's talking about a hold harmless on that compensatory. So that could help. But in that same budget, he's also talking about reducing special education transportation reimbursement, which would lose us about $200,000. Again, speaking in round numbers here. But you can see how things are going up and going down. What we've included in our assumptions is what we believe to be the most financially prudent. middle ground if you will. We're not being overly conservative, we're not being overly optimistic, we believe it to be the closest thing that we can to give to reality for you to make your sound decisions based upon. On the expense side, Salaries, we assume there'll be increases in salaries, whether it's through steps and lanes or through contract negotiations, steps
127and lanes being experience and education. We expect increases in inflation across the board on our benefits, but some of our benefits we expect to go up at a higher rate than inflation. So if you assume... Inflation is in that 2-3 range. We mentioned the types of things that would be going up by more than that. We predict that, as I mentioned earlier, that medical insurance will go up to 16%. Workman's compensation, we predict that to go up by about 7%. Again, purchase services, those, generally speaking, will go up at about the inflationary rate, but some of them we expect to go up higher than that. For example, utilities. The cost per therm. We expect that to go up our kilowatt hour, whichever one you as an aggregate. We expect that to rise by about 5
128percent. Transportation to increase about by 7 percent and insurance to increase by about 7 percent. Supply budgets is something that we have a little bit more control over. So we in our projection model, knowing that we would be looking at some cost containment, we put supply budgets flat into our assumptions. So what do we need to do? So based on those revenues and based on those expenditure assumptions, we believe that we need to make right about a 1% cost containment for the next three years. Now, if you really want to get into the dollars of that, that varies somewhere between $750,000 to a million dollars per year for the next three years in cost containment. And again, I say cost containment because that doesn't necessarily, that could become through something just. costs us less than
129it, we're a little bit more efficient. Think of utilities. Even if the therm cost is going up, if we can reduce our utilization, that's a cost savings. And I'll go through a few more in a little bit here. So that's what we're projecting. And this is why we are recommending that type of strategy. One, it's measured over time. because things change as we go along, as we've learned. And two, it balances the impact on our fund balance and having a stable budget. And two, having to reduce programs that I think are great programs that we want to keep in place. So how do you create a balance of that? Let's take a look at a chart that will tell you a little bit more of a picture. This is our so if you're looking at
130the three rows here This was our last spring's projections for our fund balance our current projections for our fund balance And then what our fund balance would be if we did the cost containment strategies that were recommending So last spring we predicted about a 4.5% fund balance to close out FY24, then 6.5, and then flat moving forward. Where we are currently projecting those to close out is 3%. That one's largely in the books for FY24. I say is in the books for FY24 largely in the books for FY25 we expect about a four percent fund balance to close out this year so gaining a little bit on the fund balance but not to where we had we had predicted our our last year springs were projections were not as accurate as they had been in
131the past and that comes for from a whole lot of reasons one of which is just the volatility generally speaking of our fiscal of our financial environment right now and a host of others but as These are projections, and we've seen this in the past. We've seen it where we've projected it to be at a certain level, and it came in higher, meaning that our fund balance did better than we thought it was going to be, and we've seen it come in lower. We have a much more solid understanding of both FY23 and FY24. If we do nothing, we've got a very solid understanding that our fund balance would go down for the upcoming year. So it would go back down to three and then below two and then into the negative range in FY27-28.
132With these measured cost containment strategies that we're looking at, there's nothing at this point that you can do for FY23 because it's already in the books. For FY24, it's largely in the books. So really the cost containment strategies start to make an impact on FY25 and moving forward. And that's where you see 4.5, 5, and 5. The reason that that middle column is highlighted is because that's really all the board is approving at its next meeting, is a budget framework for that year. We want to paint the picture for what we project for years moving forward, but that's what the board is approving, is a framework for the budget that we'll be putting in place in FY25-26. I will note that the current board's fund balance policy has a target of 8%, and we've had
133discussions about this at this board table before. The 8%, if the board was to ask of the administration to go to an 8% fund balance next year, that would be about $4.8 million worth of reductions, and we're not recommending that. We believe that a slower measured pace will give that balance between... the programs that we want to protect, and fiscal stability. What I'm happy to report is that we've been looking into this and looking at the different ways that we can be efficient in our budget. And I'll give two examples. The board earlier approved a new HVAC system. Well, after we saw the projections, we started digging into, like, what are some different things that we might expect that might not be in those projections that could create some cost savings? One of which was
134that when those new HVAC units go into the middle schools at Friendly Hills Middle School and Heritage, is that we don't have to run our boilers as often. That can save us $25,000 a year. So utilities, I think, will add up to be quite... Cost savings there and elsewhere. We just put actually I'll give you three examples. We just put in New or mark just worked on a new solar project that solar project will generate $50,000 next year that wasn't put into the that wasn't put in so things like that add up Another one that we're that we're going to be talking more specifically and a little bit later is chargebacks But this is essentially saying that rather than have one fund balance growing and another fund balance shrinking, are there some legitimate expenses that
135a different fund should be taking on? One easy example to understand that would be if community education is running a program and our custodial service is cleaning up for that program, or there's utility costs for heating the room for that program, all of those costs can be appropriately charged against our community education budget versus where they currently are sitting, which is in our general education fund. So when we started adding all those different things up and looking at how we can address some of the cost containments, we found quite a number of them. And we believe that when we present to the board a final budget in June or in May and then again June, we feel confident that we can achieve the types of cost containment that we want to achieve and still keep
136class size parameters at the same level, not changing what we've done for... 16 plus years now that in itself is a statement to the fiscal management of this district before any of us were sitting at this table and to all of the support that we've received from our board is that to be able to maintain your class sizes at the same level for 16 plus years there your class size parameters they should be specific for the 16 plus years that is something many districts cannot say all right So let's talk about a little bit about the timetable. So today we're presenting you the budget framework. There's with no class size parameter changes for FY26. Following today, we'll be launching our staffing process for the upcoming year. The board will approve the budget framework or we'll
137seek approval for the budget framework at the next meeting. If there's any corrections that need to be made based on whatever the board lands on that, then we will factor those into our staffing process. But then from already starting, as you've heard, in February and through May, we'll be working on the cost containment specifics. So again, I'll note the specifics of how we contain the dollars. what we're saying is it has to fit within the framework that I'm about to show you. So the administration can work on where the specifics are as long as they fit within the boundaries set by the board and the framework. And then finally, we will present the specifics to the board in a final budget in May and then again in June. Okay. So... I may have said, I
138might not have said that I was going to come back to this slide. I just want to put this into context a little bit. I'm not saying anything that hasn't been said publicly in newspapers. St. Paul is looking at about a $50 to $100 million shortfall in their upcoming budget containments. Now, one could easily argue, well, we're smaller than St. Paul. Yes, we are. If we were to look at a proportionate amount, what would $50 to $100 million mean to us? That'd be $8 billion. eight to sixteen million dollars to us so again thank you to our community this we would be in a much uh significantly different situation were it not for the funding that we're receiving minneapolis is talking about a 70 million dollar cut and oka hennepin's in the 30s and 40s
139and 50 million dollar cut depending on what you're looking at there most of the districts you see up on the screen are talking about double digit changes to their budget and we're talking about actually what will end up being less than 1% over each year for three years. All right, so now let's get back to the budget framework. This is actually what the board, most of that was context and letting you know what the assumptions were built in there. This is actually the thing that the board, the administration will be seeking approval from the board at the next meeting. The budget framework contains and says that we need to be looking at and being guided by our strategic framework that the board adopted in 2020 when building our budget. That's not changing. That stays the
140same. Our budget framework includes the assumption of a stable enrollment. Our budget framework includes the assumptions of the levies that were approved by the board, local levies that were approved by the board back in December. And then we are using current state and federal funding. So an example of that is CompEd is predicted to go down by $500,000. That's what's built into our budget right now, not the governor's proposal that would hold us harmless because that's just one proposal and there's a whole lot of negotiation that has to happen before now and the end of the session. So in the framework that we're building, it's that we would be building it based off of current legislation. You heard me mention chargebacks. So again, that is where one fund, community education, child nutrition, a bond fund,
141if there are things that are being paid out of the general fund that would be more appropriately paid out of those funds, then those are the types of chargebacks that are permitted in state statute that would help us avoid having some funds going up and other funds going down. And then purchase services. This is a little bit different, so I'll call this out. Like chargebacks, chargebacks have been there, but what they've said for the past few years in the budget framework that's been approved by the board is we would do the same ones that we have in the past. We are wanting to be explicit about the fact that we intend to increase those chargebacks in the proposed budget that we would bring back in May and June. The other thing that we're being explicit
142about when it comes to purchase services is there's a couple lines in there that you'll have noted where in the past it would have said it's X amount per pupil, 140 bucks per pupil, or it's increasing by 3%, which takes it from 140 to $145 a year. This year what it reflects is a range. It says for that example it says for for supplies and purchase services It says 126 to 140 140 is current 126 would be a 10 10% reduction So it's allowing the administration to bring you back a budget that includes up to a 10% reduction in purchase services and supplies transportation fees we The eggs and everything else that's going up, it's not just going up for us. It's going up for all the families that we serve. That's one of the
143things that is in the budget framework is the amount that we would charge for transportation fees. We recommended holding that constant as one way that we can help families with the increasing fees. staff and class size ratios this is one thing that we this is another thing i've mentioned a couple times and i'll mention again that would be staying the same so when we're staffing buildings at 1 to 25 1 to 27 1 to 29 depending on the grade level um 31 and third 31 and 33 are all the way up through through those different parameters that we would hold those constant the same that they've been for the last 16 years plus This is a new one. It's a recommendation from the administration, and it just provides a little bit more clarity around what
144we are trying to achieve in our budget, and it's that we would bring you a balanced budget. And that would be at a minimum. The expectation would be that given the board's fund balance policy of 8%, and we're asking that you not ask us to get it all the way back up to 8%, but we are recommending that we at least create a balanced budget for the upcoming year so that our fund balance does not drop below the 4% that it's currently at. And that is my presentation. I don't stand for any questions. Again, we're not asking for a vote tonight. That would be taking place on March 17th at the will of the board. All right. So in preparation to vote on March 17th, now's the time to ask your questions. And I will
145note just for the benefit of the audience that as always, board members have the opportunity to speak with me and ask questions of the administration. So I've received a fair number of those and I've fielded most of those questions and included them in my presentation, the questions that we've received. Go ahead. Morgan. Just for clarity's sake, on slide, I think it was slide five or whatever that had, All the projections, yeah. If we did not contain costs for next school year and we kept going on the path that we are on, what would that look like for us? We project, and remember, this is all based on projections, so sometimes those aren't right. But we would project that next year our fund balance would shrink by 1%, then it would shrink by a little bit
146more than 1% in the year following, and then we would be negative to the point that we would experience what is formally known as statutory operating debt. And that is when MDE enters and starts giving you more specific direction on how you're going to spend your funds. and and could we assume that that would look like large cuts if we were to do that and end up in that situation they i mean jason have you worked through statutory operating debt can you speak to some of the types of things that happens if that happens yeah um thank you good evening board Statutory operating debt is when your unrestricted fund balance drops below a negative 2.5% of your annual expenditures. So it's not just zero, it's below that negative 2.5. MD does step in, as Dr.
147Olson-Scope mentioned, and you have to create a plan on how you're going to bring yourself out. You have some runway to do that, but yes, it includes some significant reductions in order to get yourself out of the hole. The ball starts rolling down. You can see the fund balance dropping significantly in the year two and year three. And so as you look to year four, year five, you're having to make some very significant cuts just to balance the budget at that point. And I think that's why the cost containment is important to do at this time. Right. The other thing that I would practice, the other part about the ball rolling downhill that I would note is that once, If you don't have money in the bank, right, because a fund balance is essentially a
148savings account. If you don't have money in the bank at the right time of year, then what happens is you have to borrow money from banks at an interest rate to cover payroll. So the smaller your fund balance becomes, it's not just digging out of that hole. It's also like having a lot of credit card debt, right? You're not just paying off the things that you bought on the credit card. You're also paying off the interest that you're paying on that debt. So that's another reason that you don't want to be in the negative. Question. So should that occur, I would imagine, or I'll ask, would that have an effect on our credit rating? yes it would and to be clear yes it would have a negative impact on our credit rating yes go ahead
149tim um going back to the slide and your presentation The work that's been done and some of the questions you have answered. Thank you for putting them in the report is there's a very focused concerted effort being made by Staff to bring to us a plan that is basically gonna say by having this three-year window We are smoothing a curve under the auspices of that Putting a district in place where there's a shock to the system then the That's an unpleasant scenario I mean, it's, and we're seeing it around us. Like I said, we think that we can, if we do it in the approach that we're talking about, then we can do it with, at least in the first year and maybe years beyond that, do it without changing class size parameters. That's not
150the experience that districts that are making double digit cuts are going through. They're closing schools, they're shuttering programs. I mean, it's a very, it's a different spot that you're in if you don't take the measured approach that you need to. Other questions? Go ahead. So would you go back to the slide that we had on there? I think it was just the one right before. Fund balance? Yeah, yes, yes. So what I'm hearing is with cost containment and a balanced budget submitted and approved for next year, we could anticipate an end-of-year fund balance at... could be up to 4.5 yeah i i want so it's not exact math but i'll say this a percent in our world is about a million dollars right and so if if if we were to move from four to
151four and a half to get us a little bit closer to the board's target that would mean that we spent about a half a million dollars less than we brought in in revenue. But I just want to bring back some of those other projections that we're talking about. We could have them swing our way, and then we would get closer to the board's fund balance target. But we could also have them swing against us. And so that's why... I just realized now that those little things that are intended to be approximate lines could look like negative. They're not negatives. That's not what they're supposed to mean. Those are approximate lines. And they're approximate lines for... because these are projections and that's what we're trying. So yes, that is what you're hearing accurately. If we cost
152contain, we'd put a little bit back into the fund balance this year and or next year and then we would be, we project to be stable moving beyond that. And then things can change. And that's why I highlighted that middle column, because this is a picture that we're painting, but every year you have to update this. Every year you have to incorporate the new legislation. Every year you have to incorporate whatever the current costs are for whatever we settle in contracts and whatever insurance comes in. These are all the things that we don't know, and we have to guess. And could I also add that I do believe that in the past, the board has been presented a very conservative budget, generally speaking. And therefore, we've also been able to see a greater budget reserve
153after our audit than actually we were projecting. I can't speak. That hasn't been the experience every year, but yes. Yes, but I mean, that has been the case in the past, which is positive, I think. So, I mean, I'm saying the more conservative a budget we can work with, the better it's going to be for the future of the district. Potentially. All right. Go ahead, John. Chargebacks so you mentioned the chargeback as a strategy. I'm Imagining it sounds and tell me if this is my understanding is correct but it in some ways is a more precise way of Budgeting given that you're trying to draw the expenditure from the appropriate from the appropriate fund yeah, and right so that technically that's something that we could have been doing but It hasn't been necessary because we've
154been in a safe and constant and pretty secure budget scenario. And I think the question in all this is just this would, the chargeback approach is well within the scope of typical budgeting practices. Correct? Jason, can you speak to other districts beyond ours? I would say, my answer to your question and my experience in other districts is yes, but I can let Jason speak to. Yeah, I would agree. In working with many other districts, it is pretty common to have those indirect costs back to those other funds, but only when those funds are healthy, right? And so we have the ability to kind of charge. one year when it's healthy and not charge when it isn't so healthy. What we're trying to do is ensure that we have healthy food service and community service funds
155that are sustainable long term, right? So we don't want to charge a significant amount of expense, cause them to deplete their fund balance and not be able to sustain that cost going forward. So the chargebacks we're looking at would be in line with those funds being able to support them for some time. Thank you. And I would add that what I was and what we as a team were looking at is how do we minimize, what types of things minimize the impact on the classroom? And these types of things continue to minimize. It's not everything. Every reduction means you have less money to do a particular thing. But right now, I think the community has done its work for us. It has come through in multiple times to support us in our schools. And I
156think the types of cost containment that we are predicting we need to make, it's time for us to figure out where we can make some cost efficiencies to do so. I think... But to your point in terms of the you know what we're when we were when we when we weren't looking to avoid that type of like when we were able to maintain all of our programming without any changes to the chart the charge backs That's why it said charge back same as we've done before but at this point we're having to make some choices and this felt like again making sure all of our down all of our fund balances are being healthy, but not having one one going way up and one going way down trying to balance that out other questions i
157have one it's not really a question but towards the end when you're talking about the parameters i'd like you to state one again because i want to make sure it's clear um the last one okay um right that the way it reads in the document we were provided right is that the administration will present a budget for board approval that minimally reflects the balance of projected expenditure, blah, blah, blah. So we're understanding that as a board, our parameters for the administration are to please balance the budget, but by all means, look for opportunities to go above and beyond within reason, right? Like we understand the 1%, 1%, 1% that we're trying to do over the next three years, but we're opening it up for creativity. opportunity saved now maybe is fewer cuts in the future
158if that makes sense i just wanted to reiterate that part of the parameters for the board and then my other comment would be really grateful that the proposal is holding class sizes the same i deeply deeply appreciate that that's not a change we're proposing it so thank you thank you thank you to everyone part of that conversation anything else from anybody go ahead john i don't have it's more of a something to consider, a consideration perhaps, as the administration goes about this challenging work. Thank you for doing it. It's hard work. in terms of the proposed cuts or what the administration thinks about it, consider applying sort of slightly different context, but taking the equity or equity test that is embedded in our board policy and thinking about ways to apply that to challenging, you
159know, cost savings that have been considered. Good note. Practically speaking, it's... many of our all of our belief statements and our goals and the things that we're aspiring to do are contained in our strategic framework and the in the strategic framework is the first thing that's referenced in the budget framework to guide our work and our decisions and we appreciate that all right i think with that we're done and i would accept a motion to adjourn two minutes late motion to adjourn just kidding 8 15. oh shoot i'm gonna go over time now It's okay, it's okay. I withdraw my motion. Byron withdraws his motion. All right, thank you. Some upcoming dates. March 10th is the District Band Festival. Looking forward to it. March 13th will be the District Choir Festival. It's a good music
160week at Two Rivers. March 14th is Moreland Presents Finding Nemo Kids, which also promises to be fun. That is held at the high school, correct? Yes. March 18th is our 2SLGBTQ Plus Parent Guardian Group Meeting. March 20th, there's coffee with the superintendent. Where is this one located? Amore. Amore, very good. And then don't forget to not come to school March 24th to April 1st for spring break. I'm sure everyone's got those dates down. Right, students? Oh, they don't. All right, good. Oh, poor Patrick. All right, with that, I would accept a motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn, please. Thank you, Byron. Can I get a second? I'll second. From Marcus. All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Thank you. We are adjourned.