Board of Education | Board Meeting - April 13, 2026

001call an order yet. >> Thank you, Justin. >> I now call the board of education order at 5:30 p.m. Per board regulation 202.02, O2. In the absence of a board secretary, a pro secretary, a secretary prom shall be appointed by the board. Do we have a motion to approve the appointment of Carla Hogan for the April 13th, 2026 board meeting? >> So moved. >> Is there a second? >> Second. >> All those in favor say I. >> Oppose say nay. >> All right. Uh, is there a motion to approve the amended agenda for Monday, April 13, 2026, removing items five and six under board governance? >> Moved. Is there a second? Second. >> All those in favor say I. I. >> Those opposed say nay. >> All right. Uh before I turn it over for

002the to the area chiefs for the student highlights, I just want to thank everybody for being here tonight. I recognize many of you also from the wonderful volunteer recognition event that we just had. And I'm just I love how passionate this district is. Whether you're here you're here to offer feedback or you're here in celebration of a volunteer or both. Um welcome. and and thank you for being here. With that, I would like to pass this meeting to our area chiefs for student highlights. sir. Okay. Good evening. Norbert Francois is a fifth grade student at Van Beern Elementary. He's a responsible, friendly, and hardworking student who truly represents the best of Van Beern. >> He leads by I'm sorry. >> It's It's like we had an event in the other room or something. Can you

003hear me now? >> We can. Thank you. >> Sorry about that. >> It's okay. I wonder why my voice didn't have quite the same gravitas. So, uh, okay. You ready to try that again? All right. Perfect. Okay. Norbert Francois is a fifth grade student at Van Beern Elementary. He is a responsible, friendly, and hardworking student who truly represents the best of Van Beern. He leads by example each day, demonstrating a positive attitude, respect for others, and a strong commitment to his learning. Norbert takes pride in his work, supports his classmate classmates, and consistently goes above and beyond to do what is right. His compassion, leadership, and dedication make him a valued member of our school community and an outstanding representative of Van Beern. He is especially proud of his skills in the Gaga pit uh

004at recess and spends uh and time he spends with his friends. As a member of the Van Beern student leadership team, Norbert is a quiet leader who is dependable, thoughtful, and kind. If asked to help with something, he is always eager and willing, and he can be relied on to make good decisions while continuously working to better himself. Norbert also shows quiet, calm, and caring support for the residents when visiting Meadow View Retirement Home, making meaningful meaningful connections during activities, and demonstrating genuine compassion. He has a great sense of humor, works well with others, and has been a true asset to the leadership team this year. We are so proud to celebrate Norbert and can't wait to see the amazing things he will do in middle school, high school, and beyond. >> All right, perfect.

005You can come on up. Louise and I got to meet earlier today at Truman and I kind of just wanted to stay in a room all day. So, um I did make it uh back to to work, but it was tough. Hi. >> Excuse me. Ha. Okay. Uh Louise Lenan is a preschool student in Miss Lorie's classroom at Truman Elementary Learning Center. Louise was nominated because she is a perfect example of a portrait of a preschool graduate at just 5 years old. Uh yeah, at just five years old, she has already established herself as a natural leader whose confidence, upbeat attitude, and caring nature energize the entire classroom. Whether she is leading her peers through the morning routine of songs and calendar, or being the first to volunteer for a new challenge, her presence is

006felt by everyone around her. In Miss Lorie's classroom, Louise serves as an exceptional role model by consistently following school expectations and demonstrating what it means to be a good friend. She is known for her kindness, her ability to include everyone, and her readiness to help those in need. Her love for school is truly infectious. She arrives each morning with a bright curiosity, and a willingness to encourage her classmates to always try their best. While Louise's favorite part of the day is playing on the playgrounds, she already has ambitious goals for her future. When she grows up, she plans to become a veterinarian to care for farm animals. Uh Louise, your leadership and spirit represent the very best of our district. We look forward to watching you do great things throughout your years with CRCSD. >>

007Hello. I have the pleasure to introduce Frerieded, third grader at Pulk Alternative School. So, we are proud to recognize Freed for her exceptional growth as she has demonstrated in both her reading and behavior. Her hard work, determination, and positive attitude have made a meaningful impact and have not gone unnoticed. Has increased her reading fluency by 30 correct words per minute and has developed a genuine pride in her reading, often choosing to read now during her free time. Well, beyond her academic progress, consistently models kindness, compassion, and empathy. She treats her peers with respect and actively contributes to a positive and welcoming school environment. She also demonstrates generosity by sharing rewards she earns with those around her. Grant Elementary, and she continues to be a great addition to the school. Is frequently noticed as being kind,

008being safe, and being her best. She even has a special role in our upcoming music concert. Brayley's classroom teacher at Grant, Mrs. Hazy, shares, "Every day welcomes me with a hug and creative drawing." Brayley is proud to read to me and takes ownership of her new school. I can tell she has gained confidence in herself, and I am excited to see how continues to progress through the rest of the year. Nice job, Thank you. >> Tonight we have one public hear. Oh, are we doing photos quick? >> Yeah. >> Yep. Let's do it. Let's do it. We can have all the students up toward the front with the board. >> Good job, you guys. >> Very nice. >> Perfect. >> Thank you. Always the best part of the night. >> Yes. >> All right. Tonight

009we have one public hearing for for fiscal year 2027 certified budget. Before we open up the hearing, Derek Lash, business services lead, is going to provide some information. >> Yeah. Going to be much more pleasant than what's coming. though. Um yeah, I love the opportunity that we get to celebrate our kids and um we get to do that because of public school uh funding. >> So I just wanted the opportunity to kind of speak and kind of ease some minds um especially after last public hearing just kind of what the uh public notice uh means and kind of the direct impact um to our local taxpayers. So this here uh is a chart just representing this is every Lind County uh school district's uh proposed rate for the current or for FY27 for next fiscal

010year. Uh so you can see uh we are the second lowest um proposed rate within Lynn County um compared to all of our surrounding districts. Uh well below um a lot of those districts sitting in the 1617 $18 range. Um this here is uh just represents the direct tax impact um and what that means for our taxpayers. So even though um you can see on the bottom line there that our proposed district rate is increasing uh from 1365 to 1391, the actual tax impact um could um actually decrease based on your assessed value. So there's a state roll back percentage that is applied um that's determined at the state level and so the taxable valuation percentage of taxable valuation is actually decreasing. Um so assuming a flat valuation from year 1 to year two using

011a $100,000 um uh home value uh your property taxes could actually decrease by 4.33%. Um, I think for there to actually be a flat tax impact, I think your assessed value would have to increase by more than 4 and a.5% to kind of make up that difference. So, I just wanted to kind of represent um kind of what that actual impact is and some of the calculations that go into this. So, uh this could fluctuate on a hometoome basis. you'd have to kind of plug in your um your personal valuation into this uh formula, but it would spit out your actual um uh tax change from year uh last year to this year. Um how public schools are funded, they are funded through the state foundation formula. Um and it's a combination of state foundation

012aid and local property tax dollars. Um and how that formula is driven is the two main components are uh district enrollment and the district cost per pupil. Uh the district cost per pupil is um really guided by the state um by state legisl uh legislators through the state supplemental aid rate or what we call SSA. Um they set that at 2% this year, which uh gives us a um which increases the district cost per pupil from just under $8,000 last uh in the current fiscal year to what will be $8,000 $8,148 per student uh for next fiscal year. Uh the other main component um I guess so to touch on that SSA um you know having early advocacy for what that SSA rate is um is really what determines what school districts receive for funding.

013Generally the higher SSA uh is set, the more uh funding public schools get and the state aid typically picks up any increase. So, as SSA increases, your local property taxes typically decrease. So, um if your um I guess main concern is local property tax dollars, that's why advocacy at the state level is important because not only does it increase funding for schools, but it puts more of the burden on the state and less burden on our local property taxpayers. Uh the second main component is enrollment. Um so we've had um a general decline in enrollment trend over the last 25 years. Um and again kind of state legislative uh discussion and changes um have um kind of increased uh school choice for families. Um which have we have nearly 400 students attending uh public charter

014schools. Uh public charter schools they're not directly affiliated with the the resident district. So, um, charter schools within our boundaries are not affiliated with Cedar Rapids Community School Districts, but funding does follow those students. Um, so that is about $3.4 million that we'll lo lose for students attending um, other charter schools within our boundaries next year. Um and those charter schools aren't held to the same um you know standards that public schools are. Whether it is um you know fiscal responsibility um staffing um requirements and student outcomes. Um they're just not held to the same um accountability standards as your uh public schools. And lastly, this is just kind of a breakdown of the property tax rate. So that $13.91 uh this is kind of specifically where those dollars are going. Um $10.72 of that

015is going directly to our general fund which is um educational programming. That is our um education um our educator costs. Uh support staff and uh building administrator costs. um curriculum um as well as our uh kind of categorical funds which includes special education, English lang language learner um kind of different categorical funds like that. Um $152 of that rate is going directly to our management levy which is uh for insurance needs uh risk management so property casualty insurance auto property um and workers comp compensation type need uh insurance. And then lastly, $1.67 is going towards our uh physical plant and equipment levy. Um, which we primarily use for building improvements, repairs, maintenance type needs. Um, so that's just kind of the overview I wanted to give uh before public comment here. So, um, we can

016turn it over to that. >> Thank you, Derek. We will now open the public hearing. Board Treasurer Hogan, have we received any written correspondence related to the public hearing related to fiscal year 2027 certified budget on tonight's agenda? >> We have one written objection and you have those at your seats. >> Thank you. Uh do we have anyone who has requested to address the board this evening regarding the public hearing tonight? >> No, we have not. >> All right, moving on. Do we need to close that? We need to close the public hearing. Yeah. Right. Well, the public hearing is now closed. Moving on, we will hear from those who have requested to address the board. Board Treasurer Hogan, do we have any requests this evening? >> We do. >> How many requests do we

017have? >> We have eight. >> With eight speakers this evening, you will be given up to five minutes for your remarks. Please respect the time limit allotted to each speaker. Board Treasurer Hogan will serve as your timer and indicate when your time has expired. If you've submitted a request to address the board and choose to refrain from speaking in the interest of equality and fairness, your time may not be yielded to another speaker. To abide by the open meetings law, there will be no dialogue between the board um board of directors and the public during this time except to clarify the nature of questions or comments from individuals speaking. We ask that the audience and speakers refrain from using inappropriate language and outbursts as a matter of respect for all in attendance. And lastly, I'd

018like to remind our speakers that the board cannot address personnel and student matters. The board policy outlines a process for addressing and resolving concerns. We ask that speakers refrain from using personal names and information during public comment. Before we begin, I'd like to remind our speakers to state their names when called to the podium. Board Treasurer Hogan, please call our first speaker. Our first speaker is Claudine Haripka. >> Hi, I'm Claudine it Tekka and I go to Jefferson and I'm in Cedar Rapids. Um, so philosophy should be a required one semester course. Students make various choices every day about life, politics, and relationships. How are 17year-olds expected to enter adulthood without a framework for understanding who they are, what they value, or how to navigate moral complexities? With the growth of artificial intelligence, it is

019increasingly harder for students to find meaning in critical thinking. As students become dependent on AI, the value of competence drops. We can't pretend to see the shortfall of critical thinking and the coercive systems dysfunctionality. Research shows philosophy and education improve reading and math scores within a single year. Philosophy for children raise reading ages by six months and math by two. Additionally, higher GPA, stronger college retention rates, and reduce susceptibility to media misinformation. So, what can we do to change that? We produce like-minded thinkers. Students in our own district recently surveyed teachers on critical thinking skills. The results showed Mr. Collins stating books and media are extension of people. A book is created from the author's thoughts and belief. It is important to engage with new ideas so that you can identify your own thoughts and

020belief by comparison or contrast. The same is true about media. Another pe great piece of feedback was from Miss Alers who pitched on how the process of critical thinking works. She states that it's taking the time to truly understand what is given as evidence and process to take those different things and figure out the connection between several things. Before I learned about the grounding frameworks of absurdism and stoicism, I went through an existential crisis in 2024 November 9th. I wrote in my journal. I thought about how my life would play out. You know, since Tammy suggested being an illustrator, I felt so inspired by her words. She saw me. Is it bad that I want to be friends with her? Every time Tammy would express how I'd have a bright future, I wanted to cry.

021Not because I saw myself being a millionaire, but because I didn't see myself in the future at all. The future was blank for me. How was she able to see me beyond my own capacity? It felt uncomfortable and it made me confront how I haven't really been thinking about my future lately. It's like I'm waiting for something so horrible to happen to me. Something to provoke me into a spiral so I can use it as an excuse to end it all. I just don't know anymore. I don't know what I need from my environment to feel okay. Nothing's helping even the puzzle. So what if our community implements the antidote to coercive models? Instead of relying on what to think, what if our community showed students how to think, how to understand themselves and create

022more independent, creative students. Times are changing and schools are deemed to be stressful and a prison to some. In this case, coercive models internalize rigid frameworks valuing compliance over divergence and perpetuating unnatural standards instead of fostering individuality. As a neurody divergent, these frameworks taught me how to manipulate systems to reflect how I process the world. The following year in 2025, I wrote in my journal, I failed my second AP test in stats 12 out of 24. I'm confronting the fact that I did not fully understand the concepts at all. Sadly, I should have listened to my intuition. I was anxious that day and thought it was my past insecurities. I was afraid that I would fail. I'll try crammify for my study guide. We'll have to see. But let's talk about my achievements. I have

023an A minus in physics, an A minus in human relations, and an A in African-American humanities. I'm pretty sure a B in economics. I have $800 in my checking account, about 250 in my savings. I may be depressed, but I do hold myself up pretty well. Should I treat myself to shoes this Friday? I think I should. Also, my chemistry teacher wrote a pretty meaningful recommendation letter for me, which opened my eyes a little. He pointed out my intellectual curiosity going beyond expectations. How I connected connect connected classroom learning to future interests and my awareness and strengths which makes me feel so seen and valued in this world. I recently been thinking about the things that kept me moving throughout my high school years. And it was truly my goals to be someone Miss Honey

024since I never had one. My focus on Claude's foundation, my focus on building the life I always wanted, being true and authentic to myself. I actually do see myself building a new life. My writing reflected stoic thinking and virtue ethics. Even when I failed my AP test, I reminded myself of my achievements and didn't let my value lie within grades. Alongside that, instead of letting my existential crisis defeat me, I chose to find joy and meaning through Claus's foundation and use Miss Honey as an inspiration to build my own authentic life. In conclusion, I suggest that philosophy be a required one semester class for all students beginning ages 15 and 18. Instead of understanding how thinking works has the following benefits academic performance, civic engagement among students, reflective self-awareness and then analytical reasoning. Thank you

025guys. >> Thank you. >> Next is Tom Weber. That's a tough act to follow. I'm Tom Weber. I live at 10:22 7th Street Southeast in Cedar Rapids. I want to thank you for this time to tell you teachers, students, and parents about an opportunity for students to learn about space and astronomy that won't cost the school district a dime. You guys are talking about budget. That's good news. >> Uh we're fortunate to have collaborated with enthusiastic teachers from Metro Steam Academy. With the recent Aremis mission, student interest in space and NASA is peaking. The Eastern Iowa Cosmic Conference on Saturday, May 16th at the Double Tree Hotel downtown is a wonderful opportunity to build on that interest and expand on the district's current steam curriculum. I'm with the conference hosts, Cedar Amateur Astronomers, also known

026as CAA. We operate the Eastern Iowa Observatory and Learning Center at Palisades Dallas Preserve. Some of you may know us from field trips or our uh public events. CA is hosting a conference of the North Central Region of the Astronomical League, NC. We've collaborated with Metro Steam Academy to hold what we call track two, which is geared towards students and families. Saturday, May 16th, morning session is free and open to the public. Doesn't require any registration. We have two renowned speakers that will come and talk to the students. The first speaker is part of the Harlo Chappley visiting lecture program and he will speak about space hazards, things like solar flares, asteroids, meteorites. The next speaker is with NASA engages group. He'll talk about his experience with NASA and his work with exoplanets. There is

027an afternoon session also that does require registration. Uh students will be able to talk to NASA solar system ambassadors. We have five of them coming out. Three from Iowa, two from Minnesota. Um, and we'll have all kinds of interactive activities. We'll have an indoor planetarium, a large solar scope, telescopes. Um, and the Metro Steam Academy is planning to launch a weather balloon, weather permitting, I guess. Uh, the afternoon session does have a nominal fee, but we're working on a sponsorship program to cover that cost for students and and teachers. We're putting together an educator package. Um, so if people are interested, I hope you guys are interested. It's a great Steam opportunity. The website is NC2026.org. And again, click on track two. That's the one meant for students and teachers. Um, and you know, who

028knows? Some of these students may be NASA employees someday. They may be the next astronauts on the Aremis mission. So, it's a really great steam opportunity. it. My hope is that this board will continue to encourage collaborations between Cedar Rapids Community School District teachers, nonprofit clubs and organizations, and businesses to enhance student learning. Thank you again for your time to be able to speak to you. I can I ask if you guys have questions? Do you guys have questions? >> We can't have dialogue from the dis, but we appreciate all that you presented tonight. >> Okay. Thank you for your time. Next up is Kevin Wymore. Thank you very much. I'm Kevin Wymore. I live at 451 Pine View Drive Northeast. Um I have a well several questions frankly about the uh process for the

029bond issuance of uh $118.6 million roughly uh that amount in save backed revenue bonds. Uh it's on the agenda for later tonight. But frankly, I have quite a few questions and I've attempted to reach out to uh Superintendent Lennon and and her administration and I I just haven't gotten any any responses yet. So, allow me to go through my questions. And in a just world, I think you uh might uh given the uh extraordinarily large amount of uh revenue bonds we're talking about, uh considered uh uh moving this approval back and and allowing people to have a bit more questions and a bit more answers. For example, I would like to know the total amount of the interest for these issued bonds uh that the issued bonds will obligate uh the district to pay. Um

030secondly, and I've I've put this in the form of um uh open records request. I simply would like to know and it seems to be a uh simple pie chart sort of thing that how much money of the $120 million will go to Harrison, how much to Hoover, how much to Van Beerren and how much also to uh the Washington and Jefferson career uh readiness projects. As most of us know, uh those projects are already under uh underway, so to speak, under construction. So, uh it appears that this is is um must uh go to cost overruns, but I'd like to know to what extent that is the case. Um also, what is the cumulative total of public funds uh committed to each of the projects? Um, for example, I uh have gotten uh information

031from the district that uh the two career uh career, excuse me, career readiness projects have already received $45 million in construction contracts and another $15 million, excuse me, in uh federal funding. Uh so it seems like the the price tag the cost uh per project is going up. Next, if uh the district has uh ready access to that much money in save back revenue bonds, uh why did the district go to the time and effort of asking district taxpayers for a similar amount, $187 million, uh via a proposal to increase property taxes that occurred, of course, uh just last November. Um, and I do understand and I do please understand that I'm uh cognizant of the fact that I'm most people would be happy that this is not going against uh property taxes to my

032knowledge and so that that is a good thing. Uh there are lots of people who are strapped these days paying for increase in gas prices and groceries and some of those are lowincome property tax owners. And so yes, I'm pleased that this uh amount will um uh go against the save back revenue bonds. And yet I think at the la one of the last meetings you uh did say that uh there's a move in the legislature to scoop or reallocate the uh funds from the save back revenue bonds uh to property tax relief. And I hope this is your your intent is not to evade or cir circumvent uh the types of um uh input that the voters can have uh in the ballot box. So um in some I guess I didn't get my

033the answers to my questions. Uh so I'm still a bit in information poor. Uh but I hope to have that information soon. THANK YOU SO MUCH. NEXT IS BAILEY FRICK. Good evening. My name is Bailey Fricky. I attend Harding Middle School and I'm here to talk to you about the things that I have experienced as a sixth grader that this year that I don't think future sixth graders could have if you change Phyla Gibson into an intermediate school. I used to attend Violet Gibson and when I learned Gibson might be turned into an intermediate school, I started to think about all the things I was able to do in a bigger building that was built for older students and how future kids at Gibson might not be able to experience these things. The first concern

034I have is pack classes. These amazing opportunities I was provided with at Harding would not be the same for sixth graders at Gibson. For example, Future Cities takes up a lot of room. Where would you put all the huge boards? If I think about the space we had in the pack room at Gibson, there were only about eight kids that could fit into that room without art projects. What about mock trial? How will two teams have space to fit into a room to practice? In fifth grade, I was pulled out of my core classes, whereas in sixth grade, we had class during exploratories. What happens if there are no exploratory classes? When will the kids get to go to the pack classes? How would you be able to support the time and effort it takes

035to prepare for competition at higher levels? Out of all of the 27 students at Harding going to state for National History Day, 17 of them are from Gibson. If you take away these opportunities from the kids, I'm afraid they will go to other schools to get the extensions they need. How will you be able to push these kids academically when you don't even know if you'll have time for pack classes to happen? Another big concern I have is the bathrooms. If there are more than four people to go to the bathroom in line, kids won't be able to make it back to class on time. This is because there are only three bathrooms in the entire school. What if a big number of students need to go to the bathroom at the same time? And

036what about the toilets? They are all at a preschooler's height. At 5'5, I struggle to use those toilets. There are people at my school, even taller than me, that wouldn't be able to use the bathrooms. I also don't want to use the bathrooms in the classroom because it'd be very embarrassing. You would need to fix all the bathroom, sinks, and counters in the building to be at adult height. They were clearly built for elementary students. My last question is, what's going to happen with our music classes? Where will you put orchestra and band in a classroom where learning is happening next to them and above them? Nobody would be able to focus. And where will you store everything? There's no storage for instruments in any of the classrooms. As of right now, Harding has a

037teacher that is split between two buildings and he is only there every other day. The main limitation is that we get no individual lessons which holds us back from being able to play more complicated songs. So, by adding another set of music classes, would all music teachers be full-time? Would students be able to receive their lessons from their teachers? By changing Violet Gibson to an intermediate school, these opportunities that other fifth and sixth graders will get in an intermediate school won't be fair at all. Are you going to tell the other intermediate schools that they aren't allowed to use their locker rooms, auditoriums, bleachers in their gyms, and take away their access to exploratory classes to make it fair for all Cedar Rapids Community School District fifth and sixth graders? I just ask that you

038consider what the future sixth graders will be missing out on just due to the lack of space at Gibson. Thank you for your time. >> Next up is Debbie Fricky. >> Um, good evening. My name is Debbie Frickie and I'm a teacher, a parent, and an alumni member of the CRCSD. Um, all the information I'm going to share with you tonight, I have personally gathered from the Iowa Department of Ed website, the planning for the future website, um, on your CRCSD website, and the district data tab on the website as well. I've also sent everything I have collected to you via email before the board meeting. On March 31st, the board was presented with the new boundary maps as presented by RSP. Within the boundary map slides, it was presented that Biola Gibson has 27

039general education rooms and that max general ed capacity would be 675. In that same slideshow, there was an elementary projection data spreadsheet that stated the future capacity at Gibson would be 633. On the district data page, there's a table of building capacity spreadsheet that shows that Gibson would have a capacity of 600. My question is, how can a building that has never made changes to the layout of the school go from a capacity of 600 to 675 to 633? I'm unsure of the numbers and which one is accurate. This then makes me start to question all of the numbers for all of the schools and the inconsistencies that I see when I look at all of the data. Let's say that capacity for Biola Gibson is 675. When looking at the Iowa Department of Education

040website, I pulled the current enrollment numbers from all three area 3 elementaryaries. Using the most up-to-date data that I could find, current enrollment states that there would be 762 students in area 3 in fifth and sixth grade for the 2728 school year. In 2028 2029, there would be 759 students in fifth and sixth grade. So if the capacity is 675, how are you planning to fit 762 and then 759 students? I know that there are projected numbers for the future, but these are real current numbers that are happening in CRCSD buildings today. Yes, some of those students would move from Maple Grove to West Willow and won't attend Gibson, but also according to your projections, that would only be 121 students. That would bring the number down from 762 to 641. That would then put

041Gibson at 95% capacity based on max capacity being 675. That doesn't account for any growth that is expected to happen in that area or the resale of houses which will bring in families with younger students. Those numbers also raise concern about safety in a building at 95% capacity and management of all those other students. This would also be a concern if scenario one was chosen with Roosevelt being at 94 to 96% capacity. There is an inconsistency with numbers being presented when compared to district and state data that makes me question if these plans are actually viable and if numbers being presented are accurate. As I have stated in previous conversations and emails I have sent, I strongly encourage you to walk the buildings and get accurate numbers using a group of stakeholders. We shouldn't be

042depending on one or two people to gather information and put blind trust in them. There should be a group of district leaders, board members, principles, area chiefs from all areas, and even teachers walking the buildings. Each building should be considered in the same manner and under the same rubric filled out by the same group of people. Please find the time to walk through all the buildings as a group and look at each of them for an equality perspective. Will all the students in the district receive the same experience in each of the intermed intermediate buildings? I ask for you to take the time to pause now, push the vote back, and consider more options for stakeholders to start trusting the things that district leadership is telling us. We need to start seeing accurate numbers, cost,

043and plans for what it will look like that prove your proposals would work. We're past the point of we have a plan to figure it out. We need a plan backed by data and proof before there's a final decision made. Thank you for your time. Next up is Morgan Seitzba. Good evening. My name is Morgan Seitzma and I'm a teacher at Vio Gibson Elementary and I live on the northeast side of town. I would like to bring to your attention that Vio Gibson is the highest achieving school in the entire district. Our scores outperform all of the other elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools. Our report card score from the state for last year was 74.03 with the next highest schools coming in at 65.13 and 64.54. That is almost a 10-point difference. Our

044ISAT scores were the highest in all grades and subject areas of all the elementary schools with with the exception of 510 of a point in science versus Madison who only tested 19 students compared to our 74. I know that the goal of the district is to balance our buildings. However, the boundary proposal sends almost all of our students to Maple Grove, which is consistently high in most of the scoring categories as well. Therefore, that means you aren't balancing buildings across the district. You are still keeping the highest achieving schools in area 3, just at a different school. I think it is also important to note that all of the achievements we have at Gibson are because of the teachers. We have no extra supports like title or interventionist for both math and reading. Our one

045interventionist is paid through our backpack funds and that varies every year. So there's no guarantee that we have intervention support. Our teachers currently provide 100 of our students, which is almost a fourth of our population, their interventions. The work is solely in the hands of our classroom teachers. That means that teachers are providing instruction for students of all ranges on a daily basis for multiple subjects. We have a PAT program that is filled with mostly 99 percentile students and those students meet with our pack teacher for enrichment. However, the students who are 95th to 99 percentile aren't receiving the same pack services that students around the district are receiving. That means that their classroom teacher is responsible for providing enrichment for those students during intervention time. That same teacher is also providing intervention to the

046fifth percentile students and everyone in between. You board members sitting here have the choice in the end. The choice to create well- balanced schools across the district. The choice to make sure students aren't on a bus for 75 minutes. The choice to make sure staff can stay with some of their people. The choices in your hands decide what the future of CRCSD looks like. And I hope you choose correctly. Thank you. Next is Nick Swarner. >> Hi, I'm Nick Sworner. I'm at 6202 Michael Drive Northeast. Um, uh, yeah, a lot of it was already covered by what people are saying here. Um, I guess the only thing I can add is one of the reasons we moved to the area was because of Gibson. So the whole community there and everything. I'd hate to lose

047everything we built there because yeah, the teachers are great. The PTA is amazing. Um, yeah, it's just, uh, a lot of my other points were already covered by both all three speakers that went before me about the Gibson, uh, intermediate situation. Um, but yeah, I I don't I there's houses being built up all the time around us and if Gibson goes away, it could cause more people to go to either the like Xavier or other charter schools and lose them to the Cedar Rapids district. So, I don't want to see that happen. I want to see public schools succeed. So, I'm hoping that you take the time to make the correct decision here and maybe push back the vote to get more information on everything. >> Thank you. >> And next is Kyle Mo. Hello.

048Uh my name is Kyle Moscup. I'm a parent here at the Cedar Rapids School District. Uh my wife and I have a daughter that currently attends kindergarten um at Viola Gibson. Uh we also have a three-year-old son who we had planned to attend Viola as well. Um, first I would like to thank you for taking the time to listen to comments this evening as well as acknowledge how difficult of a situation our district is in. Um, and I know you as a board uh do not take these issues and decisions lightly. Um, and I know there are no perfect solutions. Um, that being said, I would like to strongly urge you to reconsider the planned conversion of Viola Gibson away from an elementary school. Viola Gibson is not a struggling or underutilized building. It is

049a thriving school community um that serves a key growth area of Cedar Rapids area. Getting uh gutting not only the sole elementary school in this geographical area but also the highest achieving school in the entire district uh is just not a sound decision particularly at a time when retaining families in the district is more important than ever. There may not be any perfect solutions to the problems our district faces. Uh, but I do ask that please consider other imperfect solutions before uprooting the Gibson theater community. Thank you for your time and your service and your consideration. Is that our final speaker? Thank you. Are there any board reports this evening? >> Yes, I have a board report. Um I have a board report from the legislative committee. Uh there's been a lot happening in De

050Moines recently as we close in on the final days of this legislative session. And in fact, uh the last day that legislators will be paid is April 21st, which is next Tuesday, I believe. So that does tend to maybe speed things up a little bit. Um, as we approach the end of the session, there are a few bills um that uh we've been monitoring closely and we've weighed in with our legislators to let them know how uh these proposed bills would affect our school district. Um, we heard uh a presentation earlier about the property tax and as you may know there is work going on in the legislature to revise the property tax system. There is a bill in the house, there is a bill in the senate and the governor has also proposed her

051version of property tax. Um, so to speak briefly to that, these are big massive bills. Um, but a couple very specific things that we're keeping our eyes on in the House property tax bill. As Derek was talking earlier about save and how property tax works, one of the components of this particular bill is to move some of the save money which was originally designated for public school infrastructure, buildings, facilities, technology, and move some of that to property tax relief. That was always part of the plan, but they are proposing that that be accelerated and more of that money moved to property tax. Um, for the entire state of Iowa, that amounts to about $220 million that school districts were anticipating that now will go to property tax relief instead. for us here in Cedar Rapids

052that amounts to $25 million um over the 10-year span of that. So, that's in the House bill. In the Senate bill, uh they have a piece in the Senate property tax bill that uh changes the way the pebble levy works. Right now, we can levy at a rate, a maximum rate of $167. They are proposing that that rate be lowered to $118. So Pebble is is again money that we use for buildings for facilities. So again, it's money that we're planning on and now they're sort of uh changing how that could potentially be levied. So we're those are two things that we're watching. There's a charter school uh bill in the House. There are a couple components there that could have an impact on us. One is the teacher salary supplement which is money that

053comes to the public school system. Um they are proposing that that money goes to the charter schools along with any charter school student that goes uh to that charter school. That would come to a cost of about $300,000 for us in funding that we would lose. Um the fourth bill that we've been watching is a a bill that's in the Senate. It's a bill around student behavior. Um again, it's a very complex bill and they're negotiating. There have been some changes to the bill which make it a little more palatable. We are all really concerned about keeping our staff and our students safe at all times. Um the original bill was a little cumbersome and added some potential additional cost. Um so we're we're watching that. Some of these bills, they're good parts, they're bad

054parts. We're we're just trying to make it better um and better for our students, better for our staff. So keeping our eyes on that. So basically long story short um as Derek talked about earlier we have SSA which was set at 2% which is significantly below the rate of inflation. We have unfunded mandates in some pieces of legislation that uh Director Burns spoke about the last time we did a legislative report. And now in addition we have some loss of funding that we were anticipating getting. And if these bills find their way through, we will have to make those adjustments as well. So, um, just as Derek referenced earlier, it's really important to know who you're sending to De Moines to represent you and to do the best possible job for public schools. So, we'll

055keep you posted. Like I said, session's almost over, so we'll probably have uh lots to report at the next board meeting. Thank you. >> Thank you. Director Drosinski, Vice President Droski, >> I can give I answer to both. Um I can give an update on our facilities and finance committee meeting and actually will help answer some of the questions that Mr. Wymore um asked here earlier. Um so the uh uh the team met uh overall our projects u on the facility side are progressing well. Um, one of the things we have the board, I think since my first meeting been really focused on are these change orders and and uh, Director Taminsky actually talked about this at a previous meeting about how uh, we're using a different method um, than maybe what most people are

056used to on our our projects at Jefferson and Washington. And what it uh allows us to do is as a district to better monitor those projects to work with our um um contractor and then with the subcontractors to determine where savings can be found and then if there are unexpected costs or things along the way, you can make adjustments that way. What it ends up doing is it ends up creating a lot of change orders. And so we have several in the consent agenda tonight. Um, and and with that and trying to keep track of that, our facilities team has done a nice job of putting together uh a tracker for us that that we can uh talk about. So, as I go through the projects here, I'm going to actually talk about where we're

057at on those change orders and and the regular um you know, the amount compared to uh what was initially expected on those projects. So, uh we'll start with Jefferson and Washington. The freshman academy projects are complete uh completing roughins and moving into uh finishes. not the finishing stage, but the finishes that go into the the building. I'm learning about facilities in this role. Uh substantial completion is expected. They're still scheduled for July. The career and college readiness additions at both schools are progressing towards enclosure uh with a December completion timeline. So, here's the information on where we're at with all those change orders, including those that we'll be approving tonight. Um first of all, the industry standard is to try to stay within 3% of those initial costs. The district actually has a goal of

0582% instead of 3%. I'm pleased to share that at Jefferson, it's less than one half of a percent or about $145,000 on a $30 million project. Uh at Washington on these uh the projects taking place there, it's about 610 of 1%. So less than 1% there as well with about $122,000 on a $20 million project. Uh meanwhile over at Harrison, the addition's taking shape and the historic remodel is in the roughin phase. The project remains on schedule. There's walls going up there if you want to drive by and check that out at some point in the new portion of the building. It's scheduled for completion in July of 2027. Um and change orders for that project are less than.3% or about $100,000 on a $33 million project. At Hoover and Van Beerren, construction's moving into

059substructure phase. Uh if you go out there uh you can actually see I got was at Van Beern for an event and got to look and see the kind of the outline of the building there in the in the dirt. Um and it'll be starting to rise from the ground here soon. Uh there are no change orders that have been issued to date e either uh Hoover or Van Beern at this time. So uh those two projects are scheduled for completion by July of 2027. And so just to be very clear in our uh five projects or seven if you want to split up the the two high school projects into uh separate uh in all those projects the current change orders have represented just 0.23% increase over the initial construction cost. So well below

060our 2% internal goal and even lower than the 3% uh industry standard there. We'll continue to watch that as a board of course and I know our facilities team will. On the finance side, the committee discussed the upcoming bond sales to support all the construction projects. I did just want to address that real quick. Um, so the reason you don't go and bond all of it at once is then you have money sitting that you're paying interest on. And so what the district has done is built what they needed to build at first and now we'll go and finish the bond issuance. And that's why this is coming out. It's not to cover an overrun. It's to pay the costs that we were expecting to pay. And I already talked about, you know, where we're

061at on change orders there. So, so that's why we're now bonding at this time so we can finish those buildings that have um begun construction, but to save taxpayer dollars, you wait and you do that and and get that money when you need it and not before. Um, we also uh chatted about the presentation that Derek gave tonight and appreciated him giving some clarity on what that levy looks like. uh president, I'll also mention uh the strategic uh planning executive committee uh has met and uh I won't say anything more because we'll be coming back with a uh an agenda item later in this meeting that I think will be helpful to those who who spoke on that tonight as well. >> Thank you. Any other board reports? >> Okay. Uh we will now hear

062from Dr. Lannon. >> Thank you so much, President Newman. always want to say thank you to our students who joined us tonight. It's always great uh to hear from them. I'll turn my focus to our four priority areas just to give you a little bit of an update. Um starting with our priority area number one, safe and secure learning. Um we had a a special guest in our school district last week, special agent in charge Kyle Basset from the Governor's School Safety Bureau. He visited Cedar Rapid Schools uh to deliver our 26 27 safe plus sound Iowa materials. Um it's just been a lot of effort on part of the school district and the board to focus on safety. Um during that time um they also uh selected Janessa to represent Cedar Rapid Schools on

063a team to help develop the free Iowa statewide threat assessment that will be available to all schools. Um in addition we have the opportunity for uh representation on the advisory board for crisis go um nationally uh which Janessa will also represent Cedar Rapid schools. So just want you to know that a lot of great effort that's happening and our ability to influence uh safety guidelines going forward at the state and national level. Um moving into priority area two, our students being prepared for life. Again, just uh very excited to announce that the Cedar Rapids Community School District that uh we recently received three, not one but three STEM best uh awards uh for the district. Uh each of the awards receives $20,000 to invest in STEM programs, which is u right in line with our

064portrait of a graduate and our focus on college and career readiness. Um so those three projects um the first project is uh a at the district level where it focuses in on a fiveweek career ready uh deep dive where students will build professional skills and explore high demand careers while earning college credit. Um second u we have the opportunity for Iowa big to host a camp for our middle school students with a focus on cyber security. and three um the third project is with Metro High School students um with their advanced robotics in the field of work environmental conservation with the national park. So congratulations to all of those and the continued focus and also the opportunity for us to win grants also allows us to um have a better financial opportunity in those areas

065in priority area number three partners. So, we want to take a moment to uh thank the Cedar Rapids Titans. Um, and I guess for those who may not know, I guess we have a local football team, like it's called a an arena football team, something like that, in the Cedar Rapids area. Um, and so always interesting partnerships, but the kids, they had a blast um with that. This past week, uh, they visited Trailside and Poke, uh, where they spent time in classrooms reading to our students and sharing meaningful lessons, um, on perseverance and importance of education and teamwork. Um what a great highlight as we um had a chance to represent all of our volunteers today. And then moving into priority area uh being physically responsible. Just want to give a shout out uh to

066our stars program um which is our grow your own efforts. Uh we had the opportunity uh to continue our principal path uh way program where we had a capstone opportunity where uh teachers, administrators within our um organization. Um they were able to share uh some of their own ideas um in terms of how they could influence from that from a leadership level. um which a couple of those projects included um areas of how to think about AI um as well as attendance um and how that could also lend itself to being physically responsible in our school district. Um great job. At some point we should get up all their names and projects. It was uh super I know we had some board members that attended as well. Um and then I also want to just

067um provide the board quickly with a staffing update as we kind of move through staffing. Um of course this is always on our mind. Um but as we think about for the 26 27 school year um as of today we had 27 certified teachers um within the surplus pool. So after all of the movement and talking about staffing going through all of the budgeting all of that there were 27 um teachers in the surplus pool. But I do want to say that some of those were u voluntarily um in there. They wanted to um participate maybe get another opportunity. We also had some people come back from leave and also we had some um shuffling around. Um of those 24 have been offered a placement and 20 have already accepted um new positions. We hope

068to have the rest of those completed um by the end of April and then we will move into our other employee groups. Um that concludes my report for tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Moving on to our consent agenda. Are there any items on which a director has a comment, question or further discussion? Okay. Um, are there any items on which a director requires an item to be pulled from the consent agenda for a separate vote? Are there any items on which a director needs to abstain? All right. Do we have a motion to approve the consent agenda as written? >> So moved. >> Is there a second? >> Second. This is a roll call vote due to the personnel report. >> Director Taminsky >> I. >> Director Burns >> I. >> For the life of

069it. >> Zimmerman. >> Director Zimmerman. Sorry about that. >> Unforgettable apparently. It's okay. It's okay. >> Yes. Hi, >> Director Derinski. >> Hi, >> Director Buyers. >> Hi, >> Director Garlic. >> Hi, >> President Newman. I do. We have a motion to approve the amended consent consent agenda removing item. Oops. It just has XX in here for a separate vote. >> I don't know what that is, Carly. >> That was only if we had to move something. >> Yeah. >> Is that what we >> We have to move. >> So, we're not doing that one. Okay. >> No. >> All right. All right. >> We have Hold on. I just want to make sure I got it. So, we're not pulling anything from the consent agenda for Right. >> Correct. Okay. All right. Uh, moving

070on. We have three items um under administration. The first item is the resolution approving interfund loan. Um, Crystal is going to provide information on the item before we move to approve. >> Good evening. I just wanted to briefly explain the inter loan request um that's before you this evening. We're requesting a very temporary loan from our management fund um to our safe fund to cover the bonds that we're paying back the 19 million that we're paying back from our 2019. >> Yeah, I don't think so. >> You ran away. Yeah, I'm just going to use this. Mr. Schaefer hosted our uh volunteer session before and then he ran in here and got that done. So, we we do appreciate you, Justin. Thank you very much. >> They were so useful. >> Batteries were useful. >>

071Back in business. >> Thank you. >> Thanks for your patience, everybody. Yeah, I missed. >> All right, we'll try this again. So, I just want to briefly explain the interf loan request before you this evening. We're requesting a very temporary loan from our management fund to our save fund to cover the bond payment from our 2019b um bond issuance. Um it's due prior to the receipt of the bond proceeds we'll be receiving in May. Um so, the timing difference is just simply a matter of when funds are received versus when our obligations are due. Um, so as you know, we've already incurred significant costs surrounding our projects that we have going on, our CCR, Harrison, Hoover, and Van Beern. It totals about $17 million. Um, so once we get the bond proceeds, we can reimburse

072our save fund with all of those expenses and then we'll immediately pay our management fund back and we'll include interest in that payment back to our management fund. And once that um is paid back, we will alert the board to let you know that that's been taken care of. We're also going to let the finance and facilities team know that that's been taken care of and then they're also going to include that in their board report to you guys next board meeting. Um, so that should happen early May. We're expecting to receive those funds. I believe it's May 4th. Um, so I just wanted to emphasize this is a very routine cash management procedure. Um, and if there's any questions, I'm happy to answer those for you now. >> Do we have any questions for

073Crystal? >> All right. Thank you. Thank you. >> Is there a motion to approve the resolution approving inter fund loan? >> So moved. >> Second. >> This is a roll call vote. >> Ashley Burns. >> Director Burns. >> I. >> Director Zimmerman. >> I. >> Director Deinsky. >> Hi. >> Director Buyers. >> Hi. >> Director Garlock. >> Hi. Director Taminsky. >> I, >> President Newman. >> I moving on to the resolution authorizing the terms of issuance and providing for and securing the payment of school infrastructure sales, services, and use tax revenue bonds and appointing paying registar and transfer agent and approving the agreement authorizing the execution of the same and approving the taxexempt certificate and continuing disclosure certificate. Are there any questions from the board on these resolutions? Okay. The resolution will be approved in

074four parts. Part one. Is there a motion to approve the resolution appointing paying agent, escrow agent, and registar and transfer agent, approving the paying agent, escrow agent, and registar and transfer agent agreement and authorizing the execution of same. >> So moved. >> Is there a second? >> Second. This is a roll call vote. >> Director Zimmerman. >> I. >> Direct Director Derinsky. >> I. >> Director Buyers. >> I. >> Director Garlock. >> I. >> Director Taminsky. >> I. >> Director Burns. >> I. >> President Newman. >> Is there a motion to approve and place the tax exemption certificate on file? >> So moved. >> Is there a second? >> Second. >> This is a roll call vote. Direct >> Director Minsky >> I. >> Director Buyers. >> Hi. >> Director Garla. >> Hi. >> Director

075Tmensky. >> I. >> Director Burns. >> Hi. >> Director Zimmerman. >> I. >> President Newman. >> I. >> Jillian's never taking a day off again. >> We know why Julian took Julian took a night off. >> Is there a motion to approve and place the continuing disclosure certificate on file? So move. >> Is there a second? >> Second. >> This is a roll call vote. >> Seriously. >> Yeah. Director Derminsky. >> I. >> Director Buyers. >> I. >> Director Garlic. >> Hi. >> Director Taminsky. >> I. >> Director Berts. >> I. >> Director Zimmer. >> I. >> President Newman. >> I. And finally, part four. Is there a motion to approve the resolution authorizing and providing for the terms of issuance and securing the payment of $122 million in school infrastructure sales services and use

076tax revenue bond series 2026 of the Cedar Rapids Community School District State of Iowa under the provisions of chapter 423F of the code of Iowa and providing for a method of payment of said bonds. >> So moved. >> Is there a second? >> Second. This is a roll call vote. >> Director Buyers, >> I. >> Director Garl, >> I. >> Director Tmensky, >> I. >> Director Burns, >> I. >> Director Zimmerman, >> I. >> Directors Derinsky. >> Hi, >> President Newman. >> I got it done. >> All right, moving on. The last administration item is a presentation on the fisc year 2027 certified budget. And I believe Derek is presenting that. >> Back to the podium for you. Thank you. Roll call. Right. Okay. Um All right. So, we will go over our uh fiscal

077year um FY27 um proposed certified budget. You should have the full packet there. Um so, kind of looking through our budget cycle. Um so you can see kind of on the bottom of this um uh timeline kind of the progression of what our property tax rate has done as we've made it through legislative session and um you know you know as director Garwick has mentioned you know we're having to monitor uh legislative sessions decisions um things that are propo proposed at the uh state house and governor's um desks um kind of along the way. So, kind of looking back um in February, we had to kind of assume worst case scenario. So, that's where we were at that $14.37 proposed or initial rate. And then once we come up on that first uh public hearing,

078which was that proposed property tax notice, at that point, we knew that uh that state supplemental aid rate was set at 2% uh which kind of locked us into that $13.99 rate. And then kind of where we're at today. Uh we had the second public hearing earlier tonight. Um so we're currently at uh kind of honing in and finalizing at a rate of $13.91. And the main reason that that has dropped is because the state has um approved to uh cover the budget guarantee portion, which typically that is uh pushed on local property taxpayers, but they did approve a one-time payment this year, which does reduce that local burden um by a little bit. So, that's kind of where we're at today. And then we will propose the full adoption at the April 27th board

079meeting to be able to meet that April 30th statutory deadline to have our um school district budget for FY27 um proposed. I went over this chart uh earlier in the night, but I just kind of want to um just kind of push and show uh that even though our property tax rate is going up, uh because of how the taxable valuation is calculated at the state level, um assuming a flat valuation, you'll actually see a decrease of about 4.33% um in your total property taxes. Um you can plug in your personal um home valuation into this. it'll spit spit out um a comparison of last year to this year if um you'd like. So, how um properties uh how schools are funded is through this school foundation formula um using state foundation aid and local

080property tax dollars. Um two main components being enrollment and the district cost per pupil. Um and our uh largest all school districts across the state li uh the biggest um expense is salaries and benefits for their staff. Um with ours being about it is makes up about 80% of our general fund which is our educ educational programming uh fund and it is about $188 million. um with a lot of our staff living within our community, that is essentially a direct reinvestment of dollars right back into our community with our staff members owning buying homes, buying groceries. Um so a lot of that that funding does trickle down and um is um a reinvestment back into our community. Um so looking at that supplemental state aid rate. Um so I have a little um table there

081kind of showing um you know what the impact of that SSA does to the local property tax rate. So you can see um you know if we kind of aim for the skies, got adequate funding at 5% that would reduce the local property tax burden from kind of where we're proposing um at $13.91 to that 1336. Um and that is because that kind of shifts funding onto the state um through their state aid um and just kind of the need for school districts to cash reserve levy to cover deficits. So that's, you know, it's important to advocate early uh for to state legislators uh for high SSA to not only adequately fund schools so that we can pay our educators, so that we can retain staff, um keep programming, expand programming, uh but it also

082has a direct impact to your local property tax rate. Um, and then you can just kind of see I already went over what our kind of property tax development has done throughout this process. Um, so a part of our certified budget, so our um, assumptions that we're making, um, we know that SSA is set at 2% uh, which results in new money uh, to the district of about 0.62% or $787. school districts are guaranteed a 1% budget guarantee. So, we know that we are guaranteed uh about $1.3 million. Um again, that difference is typically picked up by local property taxpayers, but um the state is covering that by one-time funding this year. So, um that's where you see that kind of um property tax reduction. Um, when we take into consideration enrollment, I'll have a

083handful of slides kind of showing our enrollment trends, uh, just because that is a large piece. When we take into consideration enrollment trends, uh, we'll actually see a decrease in new money of 1.92%. Um, we are assuming um or you know take into consideration um, our certified enrollment. So again, enrollment um plays a huge impact to this. Uh cash reserve levy, we are increasing from 7.4 in the current year up to $14 million. And the ability to cash reserve levy is determined by our general fund balance. And that goes to directly support special deficit, English language learner deficit, and enrollment declines. um management fund. Um we are decreasing that levy from $13 million we levied the current fiscal year. We are decreasing that uh to 10 million uh to kind of help offset that general

084fund levy um increase. And then also uh save um is so we will sell about $30 million in bonds uh next fiscal year to finish up the elementary projects. Uh but it's important to note that that bond is revenue bonds and has zero impact on property taxes. Um this is just to kind of represent um what our federal funding trend has done um going back to um kind of the height of COVID and esser dollars. Uh but you can clearly see kind of a decline in federal dollars that we've received as a district. Um you can see we've kind of leveled out the last over the last year being able to backfill some of our uh federal funding decline with magnet funds and um that federal grant program. Um but as federal dollars go away,

085that does have a direct impact on um kind of, you know, what we can retain and kind of the decisions that we need to make as a district because we either need to uh sustain those costs or decide um what we do with the programming that those funds directly um correlate to. On the expenditure side, um we are uh we took into consideration the uh board resolution to cut uh $12.8 million in general fund spending. Um we also so we kind of followed along through this process too and we have added back into the budget the $1.2 million for um the teachers that were um kind of brought back into the model um to be able to support and sustain at our campus levels. Um so kind of net there is we're looking at about

086$1.6 million reduction in general fund expenditures. Um enrollment out we expect to increase by about $1.2 million and then our state foundation aid um is reduced for charter students served this year. Uh will be reduced in funding next year. Um current year we sp we uh pay about a million we lost about a million dollars for those students. We'll lose an additional 2.4 four. So about 3.4 million um we'll lose in state funding for charter students. Um our management fund which is our risk management and insurance. So property and casualty is expected to increase by 6 to 7% which will be about a $300,000 increase to our insurance premiums. Um and then looking at our save um this is our capital projects. Uh we'll have about $75 million of capital projects and draw downs um

087for the three elementary projects and then about $20.5 million uh to complete our high school projects at Jefferson and Washington. Uh this here is a summary um of each of the kind of funds or the buckets uh that we have access to. Um, again, each of these buckets kind of have a very specific use, allowable use as determined by state law. Um, kind of. So, I have the top half shows kind of our reestimated for FY26 and then the bottom half shows um our um our certified budget projections for FY27 or next fiscal year. Um, so we do kind of have two targets of specifically to general fund and management. So we're trying to live within those uh kind of two targets. Um so so to kind of point out with management fund, we are

088expecting about a $1.6 million deficit in our management fund. Um but that is to be able to spend down to live within uh that target because again we're monitoring state legislation. Um they have kind of reviewed and are looking at management fund uh balances. So, we just want to make sure and stay ahead um of, you know, potential state legislative uh decisions. Um and then also save, you can kind of see a flip. So, you see a large surplus in save in FY26 of 60 uh $67 million and then a deficit of 64 million in 27. And that's just the timing of bond sales. we re will receive the proceeds in the current fiscal year but then majority of those projects will will occur in FY27. So that's what where we'll see the majority of

089that draw down. Um this just represents a um the how SSA um or that supple state supplemental aid rate has kind of impacted us over the years. And then you can see net open enrollment how that impacts our kind of net new money um over the years. And then we'll uh next handful of slides um go through a few um enrollment trends just kind of because that is one of the two main components of uh school funding. So this just represents kind of our overall students served over the um 20 past 25 years. You can see a clear uh decline um you know losing um nearly uh 2,800 students from going dating back to uh FY22. Uh this chart same exa same exact information. Uh it's just zoomed in. Um this one does show kind

090of a little bit more of a drastic decline but a little bit more specific as to what the trend in any given year is doing. Uh this is our open enrollment out. Um so you can see um kind of in the last two years in the orange there uh with public charter schools uh showing up and being approved for applications within um our borders. So you can see kind of the definite uptick in the last couple years, but kind of the more telling is the kind of upward trend throughout the years um with the blue um being um students open enrolling to other public schools um surrounding our area. And then kind of the inverse, this is our open enrollment in trend. So you can see kind of, you know, kind of that clear decline

091over the years. Um so which is a lot of what um our discussion planning has been surrounded um involving the board uh community members uh district leadership to um try to solve the trend of both of those two charts. Uh this one here is non-public schools. Um so the blue in the last 3 years is um how many of those students are receiving or families are receiving the vouchers or ESAs uh through that program. Uh so I think one thing to note here is you know they do see a lot of the same trends that uh public schools see. Um I and I think you know kind of seeing where it's capped out at the top at just over 2,000 students. a lot of public schools, non-public schools in our area were already kind of

092at capacity um as far as enrollment goes. So, I think the perception is or the belief was that we'd see a lot more students uh attending non-publiclix, but we're really seeing them just kind of level out at that cap um kind of to where they were historically um even as all families are now eligible to to receive that ESA. And then this chart um the bar chart uh shows if all students were to um were required to attend their resident district. So all students that attend non-publiclix um other public schools open enrolled out. Um the blue bar shows what our enrollment would be if they were required to attend Cedar Rapids. Um you can definitely see a large decline in 2009 and in uh 2020 and those were due to two catastrophic events. Um back

093in 0809 we had the flood. So we w saw a lot of displaced families. Um so that was a large decline back then and then in 2020 we had uh COVID. Um, and again, a lot of displaced families, a lot of families went to homeschooling. Um, so then they kind of drop off of the public school figure. Um, so that's kind of just the overall trend. You can see a decline, not only because of that, but because just birth rate in general um is declining across the state. Um, so kind of in general, the state of Iowa is seeing a decline in enrollment. Anyway, uh the line charts show kind of percentage of our students that are um open and rolled out. The blue shows non-public schools. Um so again, kind of leveled off. I

094don't think it increased as much as people um think that the ESAs were going to impact um and see as many um students exit public schools as they were. Um and again kind of I touched on other students um you know exiting to other non-publiclix um or other sorry getting all my words mixed up. So the orange is students being outruled to other public schools um in the districts or you know in surrounding districts and in the county. Um so you can see that's the definite upward trend. We've seen that kind of um trend increase kind of over the years steadily. And then the yellow you can see the charter schools enter kind of the the scenario there. I won't spend too much on this. Um this is just kind of a uh what our

095property tax rate has done in the different uh levy areas. Um so you can see um the declining rate there um kind of over the last six years. Um, again, this is just kind of a breakdown um of kind of the largest impact to that rate. Um, and this is kind of what the school district and the board has kind of the most impact um when it comes to the property tax rate. We really don't have many levers that we get to pull. The state formula really determines what the rate um is. Um, so and this is just kind of the portion that we have kind of direct control over being the cash reserve levy, instructional support levy, and management fund. Um, this is, as I mentioned, the cash reserve levy. Um, so we could

096levy up to 17.5 million. Uh, but we do want to be sensitive to our local property taxpayers. we don't want to um reserve the maximum just because we can. Uh so we do you know look at maintaining a balanced budget while also um kind of looking at the impact to the local property tax rate. So of the maximum 17 and a half that we could levy, we are only levying $14 million. And these funds are important to not only backfill some of the deficit spending areas such as um our special ed deficit that is not picked up by the state and pushed onto local property taxpayers. Um but it also just kind of helps overall solveny and make sure that we can kind of cash flow those months where we're not seeing uh state aid

097payments coming into the district. And then this is just to kind of show this is uh historically what we've cash levied um over the years. So we can cash levy up to 20% of our general fund expenditures. Um and you can kind of see his um prior to esser dollars when we started building up that general fund balance uh we cash reserved about $14 million in three years running. So now that we've kind of come off of that esser cliff, we've uh kind of strategically spent down our general fund balance. Uh we're kind of at a comfortable level again that we're looking to kind of get back to a balanced budget overall. And you can see we're back to that $14 million cash reserve threshold that we were at historically. Um again uh just kind

098of to drive this home um the uh kind of impact to the local property taxpayers um you know at that you know see a decrease assuming um assessed value um a flat assessed value from year to year. Uh we have zero impact on what the assessed value does. We have no input into that. Um so just wanted to kind of show um year-over-year there. Um this is where uh we kind of come in line. So everybody's um FY27 proposed tax rate for all of Lind County school districts. And you can see we are the second lowest. Um this one shows each school district just their three-year trend. You can see that we've historically been kind of in the bottom one or two as compared to all other districts. Um and most districts tend to stay

099relatively um level um any given year. um uh kind of by design just to reduce the the kind of roller coaster impact to our local property taxpayers. And then this is where our um general fund or where our property tax rate has been um over the years. So you can kind of see um that uh steady decline and we're trying to flatten out here at the bottom. So that's all I have for today. So open it up for questions. Thank you. That's a lot of information. It is. Yes. >> Everybody still awake out there? We good? Okay. Okay. But uh very thorough. Thank you for that. Um I was I had a question about the proposed budget assumptions. So this the charter school reduction of that 2.4 million. Is that >> um are those based

100on the what exists or do we have projections based on what might be coming online? >> No. So it's based on what exists. So the students the charter students served this year will be paid for next year. Um the state um has an appropriation. So those charter schools are receiving money for those kids this year but we re get reduced in our state funding in the following year. So that's a known number. We know that that's what how much will be reduced next year. um kind of what we're projecting out further is, you know, paying attention to applications and um enrollment and then we have to kind of look and see what do we expect um of our students may attend those. >> Okay, thank you. Uh same slide, I asked a a question about

101the save dollars. Um as we talk about you know the intermediates were retrofitting and converting schools potentially. Um, will any of the dollars uh from save or in the future be directed toward those expenses or will that be can you maybe talk through Yeah. what that looks like for our spending? >> All right. Um, I was just referring to Chad. So, um, so yeah, so our primary goal is uh to use PPE dollars. Um, so we are I know our building operations team is reviewing um kind of ongoing projects um that are currently assigned to Peeppble um or building needs. So they're trying to, you know, balance that and set kind of a reserve to be able to um have kind of that cash available to put towards some of those projects. >> Okay. I

102have a follow-up question regarding that. Um how far are our save funds allocated into some of our current projects? And then just a clarifying question about ple versus save. Does save renew or excuse me save we've already have maybe allocated out but ple does that renew yearly and we don't like you said you might be reserving for something but we haven't yet. Could you clarify that? >> So our projects are looked at on kind of a annual basis. So those projects do get proposed to the board um on an annual basis. Um so we know that we'll be receiving PEP dollars up through um it was just passed in 2025. Um it was approved for 10 years. So we know that those dollars will come for the next 10 years. One thing that we do

103need to um kind of pay attention to is legislative changes knowing that there may be a levy impact at the state level. Um so we kind of have to monitor that as well. Um so those um dollars aren't really planned out p more than a year at a time. Um so but we know that there will be um funding coming. Um on the save side um we know that we'll receive that penny sales tax through it's passed through 2050. Um so we can kind of borrow against that and that's what our bond um sales are borrowing up through that date. Um and then again just if the state decides to extend that past and beyond 2050. >> Okay. >> Thank you. >> I have one last thought on this um enrollment out summary. So there

104was one of those charts where you see the total enrollment enrollment out tuition out charter out non-public enrollment out and you mentioned there was a dip in 2009 uh we saw you know that's on a local level COVID 2020 and then really never like rebounded right. So, I'm just curious if you were to lay this side by side with other districts, would they be pretty similar in the state of Iowa given what we're all experiencing? Um, this is a Cedar Rapids thing. >> Yeah, I would say um the flood is specific to Lynn County. Um, so I would imagine a lot of Lin County districts uh saw that same dip. Um statewide I know we're seeing just kind of a downward trend in you know just student age uh student um children in general. Um

105but I think kind of that dip in 2020 we did see statewide >> and then the the years since are pretty are we seeing that I guess just when you look at other districts that are you know as we're all dealing with charters and vouchers and whatnot. Um, is that pretty >> um, I can't speak just off the top of my head. I might have to kind of dig in and I can probably definitely get you more information on that what districts are doing. >> I appreciate it. Thank you. >> I think it probably depends on the availability of a charter school in a particular area or a private school that would use an ESA. >> So, it might vary. That would be my guess. >> De Mo, Cedar Rapids areas um, kind of saw

106that bigger uptake. >> Yeah. UEN districts. Additional qu additional questions from the board. Okay. Thank you, Derek. That was >> Thank you. >> very thorough. >> Perfect. >> Okay. >> Tonight we have two presentations. The first will be a strategic plan executive committee uh commonly um the um known as spec update. And I will invite the first presenter up to start us off. Hello. Uh, my name is Jason Klein. I'm principal at Kennedy High School. >> And I am Sarah Hail Kaisman and I am a parent in the district. >> I'll see if I can figure out how to use this thing. There we go. Uh, so the uh, strategic planning executive committee uh, is a committee that has been put together to review the proposed consolidation plans. Uh it consists of 13 members from

107our community. Uh you can see their names up there. Uh it has two community co-chairs, Kate Weber and Jamie McGrath. Uh both of whom had commitments tonight and couldn't be here, so uh they stuck me with this. Uh we have one representative from the school board, uh Director Drainski, and then uh we have six CRCSD school leaders, uh and three district leaders as well that are part of the team. Um, and I will I will just note that uh this is probably the most open and transparent process I've ever seen when it comes to trying to make a decision like this. Uh, this particular group was formed after we also had community coalition meetings where community members could come and be part of that team as well and then those individuals uh signed up to

108be part of this uh organization. So all of this uh being said is being done in the hopes of creating a plan that actually will work for as many people as we possibly can make it work. And this is a very difficult plan and the board is definitely has a very big charge in front of it. But um these individuals have spent a lot of time and a lot of resources taking a look at uh these particular proposals. >> I do want to clarify the community members were by invite. It wasn't a signup process but yeah >> that's my only clarification. Oops. So, um just to recap where we are today and what the strategic uh plan committee has been working on. Uh as everyone knows since uh early last calendar year or late last

109calendar year I should say we have been looking at ways to save money by consolidating the school district. uh and in doing so uh we were given the charge of looking at uh different uh consolidation models uh that were proposed by the community coalition and then as well looking at one model in particular and using that to determine how to reboundary the school district. Um the committee has supported uh the following things. Reducing our building inventory in order to save about $5 million per year. The goal being to uh provide for resources for students instead of spending money on buildings that are not being utilized. Uh implementing an intermediate school model which creates three intermediate schools which are grades 5 through six and three middle schools grades 7 through 8. Realigning the schools in our

110district to create direct feeder patterns so that we no longer have the crossovers between elementary and middle and middle to high. uh utilizing that reorganization to provide prek in every one of our elementary schools, band, orchestra, and choir starting in the fifth grade and athletics beginning in the fifth grade. And uh we the committee has also identified uh boundary map scenario 2 uh which alters both the elementary and middle and high school boundaries to best meet the criteria that the board asked us to look at. And then the last part that I'm going to hit is the board resolution because that board resolution that you guys passed um as this committee was put together. That's really kind of been the constraints that we've worked with particularly um the first two from that board resolution the

111theater pattern coherence and the best geographical location. So a lot of our work has been really centered around that. So scenario two uh was or scenario one and scenario two were presented to the community and the board. Um and the community offered feedback on both of those things and we'll talk about some of that feedback in a minute. Uh but in that process some ideas were bandied about about making some alterations to scenario 2. Um, and scenario two, uh, as you know, involves the clock the clockwise rotation of our high school boundaries and some reallocation of where the elementary schools would be located and which schools they would feed into. Uh two of the areas that were brought up uh to look at in terms of possible readjustments to sen scenario 2 were adjusting uh

112the area down near Wilson uh would be Wilson Elementary School. So that everything west of Sixth Street would become Jefferson and everything east would be Washington as opposed to the boundary that was set where all of that area would be part of the Washington area. Uh the other uh area that was looked at was uh so the in the map that you see there the outlined uh red and outlined green sections in the middle. It's a little bit hard to see on that map uh but would allow for um the Violet Gibson students all to go to Maple Grove and the Maple Grove students uh that would go to Pierce stay at Maple Grove. So reassigning some of those areas that were proposed by RSP in uh scenario 2. When we took a look at

113that uh as a team, we realized that uh and and this was also based on the recommendation of RSP as well um that those small shifts had much larger problems that they would create. they might solve a small problem uh initially but the domino effect would be greater than the benefit of making that shift. Um so it it did allow for a little more proximity. Uh that was one of the things that was was looked at but it did not improve and in fact made worse enrollment balance uh amongst the high schools but also amongst some of the elementary schools and it widely uh changed the utilization rate um especially amongst again elementary and some of the middle schools. >> Right. We've been looking a lot at, you know, capacity and reaching 95% getting over

114that and below 50% is kind of critical thresholds and those shifts would impact those thresholds. >> Sarah, when you speak, can you get a little closer to the mic? You do have a voice that carries, but not quite enough. Okay. >> So, we surveyed uh the district uh and that district survey feedback was provided to the spec team as well uh to allow for a good understanding of where community members are, where staff is, uh where parents are in terms of these changes. There was a lot of uh great uh numerical feedback which we'll get to but there was also a lot of very helpful comments uh and in taking AI and analyzing those comments because there was over 700 comments uh times two because there's two areas to comment on uh they we were

115able to look at what came up the most frequently. Um frequently coming up was enrollment balance being a very highly prioritized thing amongst our uh community and that came up quite a bit. the uh people are want to see better enrollment balance between all of the schools. The second area was the true feeder pattern uh the consistency so that students go together from elementary to middle to high um and intermediate. Sorry, I forgot about them in there. Uh all together and and don't break apart and don't split up and that they specifically identified um scenario 2 as the preferable choice. Uh in those comments there were also quite a bit of um concerns or questions that came up. Uh the number one was transportation. Uh as we can assume I guess that when you are

116going to consolidate the district and close schools, it is going to create uh scenarios where people's houses will be further away from some of the schools. uh that is one of the natural consequences unfortunately of where we are financially and having to close schools is not an easy thing to do but um there is concern about uh the distance that some families may have to travel. Uh I will note that RSP which is the company that did the boundary mapping for us commented on the fact that the northern part of our uh school zone or school district is uh lacks schools. it it just doesn't have schools and so folks living in that particular area are going to travel no matter what because there's nowhere there's nowhere to put students um in the in that

117part of of the of the district. So it is something to um that we have to continue to recognize where our schools are located and um how we can save that money without necessarily disrupting and creating long bus routes. Uh the second thing is the loss of neighborhood schools. Obviously, we very much want to keep people as close as we can to their schools and uh this plan because it closes some elementaryaries will result in the loss of a neighborhood school in um certain neighborhoods. Uh and as well students switching schools, the transitions between elementary to intermediate, intermediate to middle, middle to high. Um there are concerns that were brought up by a number of people on the survey. Um you see the 52 mentions, 44 mentions, 38 mentions. Uh there were over 700 responses,

118but these are the ones that came up the most frequently. One of the things that folks identified, we asked them to rank in order what they felt was the most important priorities that we should be using. So we took what the uh school board gave us in that resolution and said, "What do you think is the most important things that we should be looking at uh when we make these decisions?" Uh and the number one was geographic proximity. uh having that closeness to a school and again that is something I think everyone wants to have but because of where our schools are located it's not an easy thing to do. Uh building utilization came in as a very close second. Uh I think our our community is recognizing based on this that we do want

119to save the money on buildings so we can spend it on the people to help our kids and and give that money back to the kids so that they can do the great things in school. uh and then 74% came back with balanced enrollment. So those three came in very very high. Um the the fourth one which was high high school boundaries remaining the same um came in as of a a distance fourth of those three um when people were asked to select three of those four. Uh this graph is actually kind of confusing so I'll explain it. Um so how strongly did people support or oppose either scenario one or scenario two? Keeping in mind, scenario one keeps the high school boundaries the same. Scenario two has the clockwise rotation of the high school

120boundaries and changes three of the elementary schools in terms of their feeders. And I'll break the numbers down for you. Uh but essentially scenario one, about 25% of of respondents total were strongly or partially in favor of scenario one. And about 48% of respondents were either strongly opposed or partially opposed to that. Um, scenario two, about 48% of respondents were strongly or partially in favor of scenario 2 and about 33% of respondents were negatively uh strongly opposed or partially opposed to uh the scenario two. When we break it down by giving people two choices, you have a choice to make. Uh it breaks down uh 65% to about 35% between the two. I'll also note that uh 82% of individuals who identified as staff members, they supported scenario 2 over scenario one. And 63% of

121parents, people who identified as parents on the survey uh preferred scenario two to scenario one. some of the themes that we continue uh have heard about and we continue to think about and the spec team wants to continue to address um the building closures and the boundary lines. That was a big thing that people wanted again uh to to understand transitions for students, families, and staff. How we're going to help families uh when we do uh close schools and when we realign the schools, where is my kid going to go? how are we going to make that transition as smooth as possible and gaps in things like transportation permitting and what the actual implementation will look like. These are things that continually came up in that survey. So when we talk about permitting um one

122of the things the spec team is recommending is that we uh do something now to help families uh if the board goes forward with this proposal uh that we do something now to help these families make that transition simpler for them. Uh, and that would involve a three-week early choice window this school year to allow families that will be impacted for 2728 uh to move their child, permit their child uh if a seat is available in another school so that they can make the transition easier for their own children, make their make the transition easier for themselves or for any other reason that they might have that they want to to uh do that. So, um, the proposal is we would pause our current permits and focus only for 3 weeks on individuals wanting to

123permit because of the potential changes. Um, based on a criteria that focuses on uh whether the students are already attending a school, for example, um, my school boundary is changing and I want to continue at that school and so that might be a reason that we would uh, grant a permit for them to stay. Uh, school closure. Uh, my school is closing. we'd like to move to our 2728 school now is something that we might uh look at parent uh being a staff member or uh somehow other way otherwise connected to the school siblings currently attending the school of choice and so on and so forth. So having criteria in place uh that has not been decided but we work on very quickly to get an idea of how many permits we could allow again

124depending on the number of seats they're available at any given location. The current permit process is a first come first serve. And so by pausing that and then having that open window, the hope is to have a more equitable approach um so that all families we you know we can get the communication out and all families then will have a chance to enter into that process. Mhm. >> So the final recommendation that comes from the spec team is that we uh keep boundary scenario number two as it is written as it was presented by RSP. Uh that we keep the feeder pattern consistent. Uh this will allow for better enrollment balance and achieves better consistent building utilization. Um and uh that was a very clear recommendation that was uh we asked the the the team

125if there was any disscent uh and I believe there was uh 17 people present at the meeting uh and there was no disscent amongst that team of individuals uh against against this recommendation. So we felt pretty confident that um the team that's been spending the most time looking at this is pretty confident this is the direction that we should go. Lots of discussion about um you know consistent enrollment in different areas particularly with wash. It's still the most underenrolled but trying to even that out some. Um let's see what I'm trying to think of other but still coming to scenario two clearly over scenario >> conversations like were brought up tonight about Violet Gibson uh the use of the different buildings um reviewing all of the different things that have gone into all of this

126which has been months and months of analysis. Uh and it's it's it's been a kind of an interesting journey because there's a lot of divergent perspectives on the spec team. It's really not a group of people like I I always I I said this from the beginning. I I was not in favor of the intermediate plan when it was first proposed back in November. Um but then I came to understand how it would work and have changed my mind obviously. Um and I know that like a lot of people that are on the committee have had to uh alter perspectives or had to really look at this from a variety of different uh areas. And the other thing too is thinking about um the representation from across the city. We have a lot of people

127from a lot of parts different parts of town um understanding how this particular plan uh will work. Uh so any questions that the board has we'd be glad to answer. Um but it is our it is the specs team's recommendation uh to go with scenario two. >> Oh here's the questions. Okay. >> Got it. >> Yeah. I can I can but don't hesitate to speak up. Okay. I Yeah. Um I know you won't. Um so so again we've talked about this um a fair amount in this entire process. There's a there's a chicken or egg issue that constantly comes up here because you you'd like to know this before you decide that. But before you can know that, you have to know this. And and and so one example of that is before you can

128actually plan out the transportation, you need to know where you're sending the kids to. And uh and and again I I all along was hoping we could have more information on that earlier. The problem is that's expensive and again as a board we've been looking at uh particularly consulting costs and that sort of thing and trying to keep cost down and appreciate that the uh staff have done a lot of the work to get us to this point um all internal and and that's been fantastic. You got to have help when you're putting together the routes and so there's cost involved and and each individual route would cost different. So the goal would be to get to a point where we know the schools and we know the student uh area or the the attendance

129areas to help understand where the students would be and then we can begin to uh provide more detail on that. But again the the standards remain that have always been in place uh K through 8 uh you have to you're two miles away or more and you get bus 3 miles or more uh for 9 through 12. But it's been interesting. One of our our members who's the principal at uh the spec members uh who's a principal at Wilson pointed out that there's actually some uh individuals who attend some students that attend his school that will be benefited by being a little farther away because you won't be able to bust. And so it's a mix. I'm not suggesting that's a great thing for everybody, but but there is a mix of benefit and and

130impact uh negatively as well on that. Um and then uh there are maximums on on how long you can be on the bus. 60 minutes for elementary, middle school, high school is a maximum of 75 minutes. >> Can I ask a question on this slide or as we go? Is that okay? Just on the topic. >> I was curious um because I know this came up during the Viola Gibson meeting. So, I just was curious because I can understand our families are wanting to understand like when they're going to know that information, right? So, do we have a timeline around um when we'll have like clear more concrete transportation plans? Chair, you want to I mean chair >> maybe a window. >> So there's kind of a threeprong process that needs to go into this.

131First we need to know um how many kids do that we need to bus. Then we get into the routes. Then we can get into whether or not we're going to need to look at our um bell schedule to u modify or accommodate those routes. As we currently speak right now, we're working on uh identifying those students that reside within the new boundaries. And then we're working on identifying those kids that would come and go out of those boundaries through permitting um magnet um grant magnets transfers, those types of things. Um open enrollments and all those. So we're we're compiling a list of those kiddos that we anticipate would go to a school based on the new boundaries. And that work is happening right now. That's phase one, identifying those students. Then phase two, we

132would start to get into our bus routes. Um, and so you're asking a timeline. I would say, um, we're hoping to have some more concrete information by the 27th. Um, but we won't definitely, we will definitely not have the ability to say if I live in house X, this is my route, this is my bus stop. We might have a bigger view of like how many routes we're looking at or an additional routes we might be looking at. >> Okay. And then a quick followup because we'll have additional routes and we have some shortages in transportation and just from a board perspective of cost. Do we do we have any sort of early anticipation of increase in those costs and what we're planning for? >> Yeah, it's it's really tough to look at what the

133costs will be right now without identifying exactly number one those kiddos and then number two the routes. But um we're working on that. Um, and so we know that there's probably going to be some additional routes, but we just we don't know exactly what that's going to look like without getting into um the nitty-gritty. >> I I totally understand that. And I think it's just coming from the conversation that or emails that we're hearing and um the conversation that's was happening in the room around, you know, what are the cost savings when you factor in the building renovations and the transportation costs. And so just trying to get a sense and um sounds like we're working toward that, but I understand there's >> and I think it's important to um also remember that the cost

134savings are going to be yeartoyear with consolidations whereas some of the upfront costs will be onetime costs. So um when we take a look at the cost to uh do some renovations or up um changes to buildings, those are going to be upfront onetime costs. Um, and so, but the year-to-year savings over the long haul are going to be better for us along the way. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Yep. >> I I'm glad that we're looking at the permitting process. Um, I have a question and maybe we're not far enough into that process yet to know the answer, but >> I think that's the next slide. Are you done with transportation before we go there? >> Oh, I'm sorry. I was going back to the permits. >> Are we Are we done with the

135transportation slide? we >> Okay. >> All right. >> Go ahead. >> Yeah. I mean, I think we Jason shared a little bit about that there. I mean, there's work to be done, right? But and it's one of the questions I've been asked a fair amount of um you know, I I've gotten to know my band director and, you know, I've got a a middle schooler now and I want them to go to this school, but we're going to be moving high schools. Can I permit? and and the goal would be to uh be able to accept as many of those permit requests as possible. Obviously, you have to have the CV available. I think uh Jason, correct me if I'm wrong. I think it was probably less of an issue at the high school level

136because both the high schools the the utilization actually between the three high schools under scenario 2 is very close like 66 or 67% across the board. And so there's capacity there. Obviously in in some schools, elementaryaries, uh intermediate or or middle schools, there may be less capacity for that, but the goal would be to try to um meet as many of those. And as Jason mentioned, try to uh accommodate as many permits into the school you're going to be in the next year anyway. And especially, you know, if you're going to start at a new school and and you don't want to have to move again, trying to reduce those transitions as much as possible to be part of that. Yeah, I think that was my question actually. So, we have a three-w weekek window

137uh for families who are um going to be moving to different schools. Within that 3-week window, will families be selected based on the time like the earliest people get first shot or will there be criteria within that 3-week window to determine permission? I can fill you in on some of the discussion that we had. Um, so we looked at that. Jason had mentioned the criteria. Um, like you're already attending the school. So this would be a kid who's like a junior at Kennedy and wants to stay at Kennedy, right? So taking a look at that that kind of level as those permits would come in just gathering them for that two week window and then what we had discussed and this I don't believe that this is finalized yet but then kind of sorting through

138and so making a pile of those kids you know someone who's at Kennedy and wants to stay at Kennedy and then taking a look at like my school is closing um can that would kind of be like the next level of taking things in then working with like my sibling is at this school my parent is a staff member and then going down to a random selection. So, we had a lot of discussion about this um and how that would look like and I can use one of my own kids as an example. I have a fifth grader at Trailside and so thinking about will he go to Franklin for one year and then go to McKinley or you know the parents in my friend group are discussing do we permit our kids to McKinley

139next year so they can stay there for three years. So just those kinds of questions um are things that we talked about and had some really great discussion on. So that's kind of the the outline, the tenative outline of how that would look. We also discussed the potential um one of the staff reps is an ELLL um specialist within the district. So we talked about how do we communicate that to our ELLL families. We talked about, you know, things like sending out postcards or something like that costs money. But, you know, how are we going to do our best to communicate this to all families so that it's not just families like mine that are realizing I want, you know, here's what I want to do. >> So, >> I really appreciate the thought that

140you're putting into this that it's very, very good. Thank you. >> Anything else on permits? Yeah. And then another of the top questions um that came up in the survey was just about, you know, will the schools be overcrowded? How does this impact class sizes? And again, a lot of the work that's been done to get us to this point is to make sure that you can fit the um the students that you need there. And I know there was a question about that tonight. And I I didn't bring my packet with my numbers in there. I I I do believe and Chad you can crush the use of how the school's used in the grade level changes the capacity to an extent. Correct. >> Yeah, absolutely. So when you start to think about an

141intermediate school, you got to think about it in my mind I think about it as kind of an elementary plus. So questions of like locker rooms for uh PE. Well, typically fifth and sixth graders in a intermediate model would not change out their clothing for PE. um to think about auditorium space and those types of things. Thinking about that as more of an elementary plus model. Um and so really taking a look at what do we truly need for capacity or for um programming in those buildings and making sure we we cover all of that. I think that answers your question. >> Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Uh sorry for this. Those of us of advancing age who've been in the district for a long time remember I I I went to elementary school at Cleveland

142and went through sixth grade. And so to an extent, if you're thinking about, you know, kind of how that works, fifth and sixth grade would be more more like that 40 years ago when uh when we still had sixth graders in in elementary school, they just would be in a a school with fifth and sixth graders. And that's that's helped me kind of think this through. I think the other thing I just note there off of Chad's thought is, you know, as I've been thinking about this, um, it comes down to there's a lot of planning to do and the programming and the program design. And the sooner we're able to move forward that we can start answering for sure the transportation uh, questions. We can start solving some of the permitting uh, concerns that

143we have and we can start understanding what those programs will look like, how they're going to be offered, and how how they fit in there. And so I think that's part of uh this, you know, again that chicken or egg sort of thing. We've got to get to a point where where we can um properly put our effort and time into uh planning that. But um that's all all coming here. >> I I'll also note that it I think it's good that we're using an outside firm to do this boundary work for us because they're looking at it without the emotions of the neighborhood. And so when we're looking at what we want to do based upon what we know about particular areas, um they're coming back and saying that's not a good idea and

144here's why. Because they're actually looking at the numbers and when it comes to that capacity and utilization, that's their number one criteria for how they're assigning these boundaries. They're not looking at keeping necessarily groups of people together. They're looking at how do we maximize the space. And then you take that um with scenario two and you think you throw in a little bit of that understanding of the community and it really does help uh balance those schools out well but also maintains that proximity which is the key board criteria. >> Any other questions on capacity? >> Will will we be providing guidelines or guard rails around um you I'm just thinking of the high schools for example. So, if we start to notice there's a trend of a bunch of students wanting to permit to

145a particular high school, let's say, um will we have guard rails in place that we're assigning to those um um oh my gosh, the committee, not the committee, but the >> considerations consult. >> Yeah. Um will we put a cap on that? Will they um just to ensure that equity piece? Does that make sense? >> So, I'm kind kind of answering your question. We some of the discussions that we had were about at what point do you cap for permits? >> There we go. >> Um because we discussed, you know, there's been situations in the past where um where schools have not been able to like elementary schools have not been able to take in people in the neighborhood. And so we talked about when that permit process happens um not saying like we're going

146to cap the permit at 100% because if you're at 100% what happens to someone who moves into the area, right? So that at some point we're going to need to build in a buffer zone um to be able to flex and um accommodate situations like that. >> I might add uh there too uh Sarah, thank you. Um a lot of robust conversations as you noted. I did have a conversation with RSP today and one of the things that we talked about that we can move into the discussion is about having a floor. So that's kind of what the committee brought up. I just want you to know that we move that forward and I think that's what you're saying because we want to make sure we still have programming that those schools can still function

147and so just having some criteria on both sides. We want parents to be able to choose but not at the detriment of where a campus can't function. >> That was more beautifully stated. Thank you. And and I do think, you know, as the committee's talked about this, I think there is a general belief and it'll take time to play out that you'll likely have more permitting early on because people are trying to finish off their, you know, in the schools they expected to be in as much as they possibly can with this this tough change we're making. Um, but then over time, the the beauty of that true feeder model is that we're actually encouraging you to stay in your home school. um because that's where all your friends are going to go through. So

148we we don't have these splits like Taft does between Jefferson and and Kennedy or you know um Hardingham you know all these the ones we're trying to get rid of right and and so uh a lot of the per and you can probably talk to this better than I can but a lot of our permitting right now is is to an extent based because my friend I went that I went to middle school with is going to this school and it's not my school my neighborhood school but it's the one I want to go to instead >> and that would go away eventually. Just to add a point of clarity on there too is that when we look at the projection data for those numbers that is for all the students who reside in an

149area. So it does not account for any sort of permitting that currently goes on. So you know when we talk about area one being lower in numbers it will continue to be lower in numbers even if those direct feeders go through. So just another discussion we had. >> Can I ask a question? I'm going back to our meeting. I think it was on the 31st when RSP presented and it was at like lightning speed. So, I went back through it and I'm looking at it right now and um the map of the new boundaries. Uh did they ever did they talk about like square miles each area would have by chance? I mean, just looking at it, uh area three is is still pretty large coming down to Maple Grove and cutting, you know, through

150by Kenwood on um 151 on First Avenue. And then Jefferson appears really pretty small and tight just out to the west. Uh, and then Washington is kind of just shifts, right? So, I guess can you help me understand some of the conversations you had about how that was balancing um only because it appears like Kennedy's, excuse me, area three is getting larger and that was our area that had the highest enrollment to start >> geographically larger. >> Uh, yes, geographically larger. >> I I don't know that we discussed actual square miles. I asked Chad if he had discussions with them about square mileage, but I mean area three is going to have the square mileage because of the way the map is, >> right? So I guess to just to add a question based on

151that comment, was there any looking at since area 3 is going to have so much more square miles and it's our area of growth um out, you know, northwest. uh was it considered or did they talk about why the why the area is still so so large and why we didn't consider maybe growing area one? >> So the the the primary um issue is that um where the growth of area one would go would take away that geographic proximity to the other schools. So, for example, if area one were to move north or further west in the north, it's going to butt up against the schools that exist there. One of the reasons that RSP recommended scenario two or proposed scenario two is because Harding is in scenario one located inside of its >> another

152zone, meaning all the people living next door to it would go to a different school. Um and so to keep that board criteria of geographic proximity, that was one of the reasons why uh again we we're living with the reality of where our buildings are. Yeah. Um >> area one if it goes further west in the south again it's going to come very right now even under scenario two. >> It's close to Jefferson. >> It's very close to Jefferson and then might even surround Jefferson. So that is I think the primary driver. I don't know if Chad can speak any more to what RSP might be thinking but that's what we've been talking about. >> Okay. So that was a great uh explanation of the geographical piece, but also then just the utilization of the

153buildings. So when you start to take a look at how we're going to be able to um maximize our utilization, square miles or square feet don't necessarily equate to bodies and buildings. There's a lot of uh area out there in that yellow that you see that's um to the north >> uh west or whatever of our district that's um there's just not a lot of population there until you get out to payload. So, um, they were really trying to look at number one, utilization of the buildings, making sure we try to balance, but also utilize the sweet spot's about 85 to 95%. If you can utilize at that rate, that's a really good sweet spot. Um, anything over 95, you get a little tight. Anything under, obviously, you're not maximizing your utilization. So, the geographical

154piece, but also the utilization piece. >> Yeah. And then I think the other piece, because I know this came up uh in the Washington community over the last week, the question of can we just move Kenwood. Um I I didn't have all the data in front of me and I didn't ask RSP to do this. We could probably do that. But I I think if we made that shift by my math uh we probably eventually drop Kennedy under a thousand students now. And and so I my my point being that um we really well number one we're not growing right now. If you look at the trends from RSP for the high schools over the next 5 years we're actually going to lose high school students and that's birth rates. Um I don't know if

155that has anything to do with know we're kind of moving through the flood time now and beyond that and I I don't know if that has something to do with it or not. Um but uh but that and then you know um CR Prep is talking about a 9 through 12 charter school and so I think we have to think about those things too and how that impacts this. Um and so um so again I I I think where I would suggest as a board we consider rather than planning a an outline for growth that could happen in 5 years, 10 years, 20 years. I think that's where we need to come back and and ask our policy committee to have a discussion of what's the appropriate timeline to come back and have conversations on

156these in the future. Is it every 3 years? Is it every 5 years? And that way if the city, you know, approves and and someone plots 150 houses in the Kennedy area, we can adjust to that. That it's not planned right now, but I mean there may be some, but that a new plot comes up or there's a a new plan on the east side that impacts Washington. That way we're better adjusting to what's actually happening in the community rather than trying to plan something that far out when right now it looks like um we'll actually be in a decrease for the next five years. >> Yeah. Director Zimmerman, one of the things that RSP specifically talked about was that Harding was their largest constraint and that's essentially kind of where they had to start

157with with their boundary lines, which is just kind of interesting when you know last year >> because we've been living with Harding in this spot forever. >> Yeah. >> And also interesting because when we look back one year we were talking about phasing that out of our inventory, right? And here we are building these lines all based on that. >> That's what concerns me. I'll just tell you that's what kind of concerns me because I that Harding is driving some of these when Harding I don't Yeah. Are we hoping to close that building soon and build a new middle school? I don't know. I'm just trying to a little like foresight into into this and and not sure if RSP is willing to do anything more for us to really answer those questions. I don't

158know. Sorry, bring them up. >> I agree. But again, I don't I don't think any of that fixes the prox or the the even evening out the numbers of students in our high schools. And so to me, that I don't care as much about where Harding's located because we have we've been messing with that for decades, right? And we we asked the community to build a new school that put it in a better spot and the community said no. Um it's another conversation I think the board will have to have at some point and hopefully some of our folks that are impacted by this directly will be um alongside us for that conversation. Um but uh again I I think I unless we want to be in a position where we are not where we're

159basically having our Washington conversation from a month ago uh with the Kennedy folks um I I don't know we can make a a bunch of changes at this point. And and again, this is the tough part and am I kind of almost going into the the next slide here about specific schools, but it it's you know that the tough part I think is that I found is I've every time we've received an email, I've sat down, I said, "Well, how does that look? What does that look like?" And it and it may fix a problem that the the person wants to have fixed, but it creates two or three other problems someplace else. I mean, um, I have sat and tried to figure out what in the world can we do instead of Viola Gibson.

160Let's just I mean, that's that's the biggest issue we've got sitting out there right now. What do we do instead? And and um, you know, the reality is it's the largest of the elementary schools that we have out there, even larger than the the new elementary schools we're building, which by the way, we'd be in a huge mess. just in case anyone says we shouldn't have spent those money on that. We should have spent it on another school out there. We'd still be in a mess if we didn't have the new elementary schools coming online in two years. And and so this is such a each little piece moves that. And so, you know, you take Taft now you've got to figure out what you're doing without an a middle school in that part of

161town. If you take uh Franklin, now you have to figure out what you're doing in that part. And and that's the tough part that we're in. And again, um, I don't I've called this a crappy situation a couple times before from the DAS. I'll call it a crappy situation. Again, it's just it's not >> it's not fun and it's not perfect. Uh, we don't have the ability to bulldoze and build new things like, you know, like we'd like to in the exact right spot right now, but it's certainly I mean that's the challenge of what we've got in front of us. >> Yeah. And some of the conversation to jump back just slightly some of the conversation that we've had too or questions that we've asked is like how forward thinking can we be here?

162How constrained are we by our current buildings? Can we be forward thinking and thank you know to land that we own and stuff like that. Um so I don't know we don't have answers to that but they're just conversations that we've had in these meetings. >> Yeah. The reality is that we can't make decisions today based on potential things that could happen 10 years from now without really making some potentially bad guesses. Um, and uh I think you know what you call a crappy situation I call an opportunity to do something with what we have because unfortunately uh RSP like I said they looked at the map and said why are all your schools where they are? Well, that's because we stopped building schools a long time ago until we started this new phase now.

163Um, and you know, down the road, who knows what where the district might decide to build, but what we have right now and and where we where we have them is uh the best that we can make of what we've got. And I think that it it does give us so many opportunities that we don't have right now to keep families in our district through the feeder system and to offer things to our fifth and sixth graders that we're not offering right now. And I think those two two things along with the prek in elementary um the the spec team really is I think the reason that they're they're willing to go on a limb on all of this maybe to a certain degree is because they see the benefits that this all produces. Um

164and the specific schools were were again uh picked not because not through random chance. Chad and his team uh a variety of principles walked buildings. They looked at very specific criteria for every single building. um determining spaces for everything that's needed. Uh Gibson did not score perfect for an intermediate school, but it was the best opportunity or the best option that we had for area 3 if we wanted to keep a intermediate school in that area. Otherwise, we would be moving that school out of the area. Students would have to leave that area to go to that intermediate school. I just want to mention as I was as we've been interacting with families, getting emails, going to um Biola Gibson, I will just say I feel like there's been um a shift of kind of

165this acknowledging that this is really hard and it's really complex and really looking for um understanding that we need this feeder system. We need um we have these financial constraints. So, I just want to like extend a thank you to people for being >> understanding because all of us have friends that are teachers. We have friends who go to their schools. Uh we know these kids and as a parent, you know, if my elementary school was on the line, like I would have all the same concerns and I would address it in the same way that you all have. And I just very much respect that that we're all willing to like really put a fight a bit for our schools. Um but also then when it comes down to it, acknowledging that like we

166we are limited, right? Um, and so I I don't know if now is the time, but I do think there there were a lot of very specific concerns that we've been hearing around, you know, the building limitations, so like the bathrooms, auditorium needs. Is is there the changing of the facilities, the cost of that? When do we again kind of similar to the transportation thing, but where does that come in the scope of things and how do we get those answers to our families? >> Uh, we have a meeting actually set this week with our uh architecture record to start to look at buildings. Um we are actively looking at um without a decision made, we are actively looking at the buildings that are potentially on uh the list to change to start to get

167that process rolling. Um and so um we are very optimistic of having some um preliminary costing uh within a couple weeks. >> Yeah. And I think just because we haven't made final decisions really just understanding why this specific change in the spec specific area, right? I mean, not everybody's not here tonight. Not everybody was able to attend that meeting, but how do we get that information um out to families, so they really understand the the process that was gone through and the steps and all of the, you know, you mentioned like small shifts created larger problems, right? I mean, any way we spin it, it sounds like that's on repeat. So, I'm just thinking about the way we communicate that. Um because the reality is Gibson does represent what's working in our district academically, the

168family engagement, like there's so many incredible things happening and we've learned a lot about that school through this process and I just that makes it all the harder, right? I mean, it really feels a bit heartbreaking when it's like um we heard it here tonight, just the um the high academic achievement and engagement with families. So, um, you know, we're not unintentionally disrupting a specific school, but just really understanding how we got to this and and getting people that information so so we can make the best decision with what we have. >> And to step just back a little bit, like why are we here in this specific place? I mean, maybe I can say this because I'm not affiliated with the district, but we're here because the bond vote didn't pass. We wouldn't be

169having this conversation about intermediate schools. um or we'd be having a different conversation if the bond vote had passed. We're here because there's declining state funding because there's declining enrollment and birth rates across the state. So, just there's a kind of that big picture. And then to say too when we talked specifically about Gibson, we the community coalition came and brought an option one and an option two and the board chose option two that put Gibson as the intermediate school because in part the other I don't remember which school it was was going to >> Roosevelt the other option was for those families to go down to Roosevelt as the intermediate option. So that's kind of where you know it was kind of like well what do we do? And and one of the things

170we also talked about was that um we're doing this in a proactive sense and we appreciate the fact the board is willing to again go on a limb and on something like this um because we're seeing neighboring districts facing uh very stark financial realities that are going to force them to make decisions with much less time uh much less thoughtful planning. And the fact that we're able to put the time and planning into this, I think is going to make this a much better transition and allow us again to do something that's good for the district in the long run. So, um, it we're it time is of the essence to a certain degree because we do have, um, reality coming down the pike in terms of how much money is going to be available

171for us. >> Can we actually go back to the the Gibson? I'm sorry. Um I just I I again kind of like director buyers said I just want to acknowledge with such a sounds just like a wonderful school high performing um just great engagement like something we do want to model other schools after. Um this is a really hard thing to do here. Um so I just wanted to pause and acknowledge that. Uh but also I just want to throw out some things and they might be like nope can't do it. But I just thought might as well say it now. Um, is there any chance because it seems like area 3 just isn't ready, poised like area 1 and two to make the transition to that intermediate. Is there any chance that area three

172can pause? Would there be chance for a bond that we could do? And I know like you said, um, Principal Klein, like we can't hope and wait for that to happen, but what would that look like if we paused on area three on this roll out? I'm looking at you, Chad. I know. I'm sorry. Well, >> the first the first thing that comes to my mind is that um part of the benefit that we've realized with this transition um and we've we have developed some really great benefits is that um our fifth graders would are now going to be um exposed to fine arts at the fifth grade level uh in in athletics. And so if we were to pause that whole area of the of the um district would not benefit from those benefits

173that we have identified. The other thing is is that there is a little bit of a domino effect because we are shifting some boundaries and so um we're taking some schools in and out of uh existing boundaries. So, it's going to be very difficult to say, well, this area is not going to partake in this because um of that shifting and we're not maintaining our our um his high school boundaries. Does that make sense? >> So, it's it's just one of those things where it's it's probably beneficial the benefits that we're reaping. We would like to make sure all our students have those benefits. I'll I'll also add that um from my perspective at Kennedy, we we pull from four of the six middle schools right now and all all but one of them is

174not well none of them are actually in my area. Um and so if we change the other two areas to intermediate and middle schools, I don't know exactly how we would feed that area without doing that. Um it would I think uh we've looked at it and our brains kind of locked up because it's really not possible to do one area especially the area that feeds from the other two right now. Um just where the schools are located. And the other benefit or the other the reason we're able to do this and remember the main reason for this is for the savings that we're going to get financially is being able to take those fifth graders out of those elementarymentaries which allows us then to um introduce or have more capacity but and limit those

175other schools or close those other schools. So without removing those fifth graders in that area we wouldn't be able to reap all the financial benefits that we're also looking at. >> Okay. >> And and we still have our teachers spread out over more schools. Yeah. No, I appreciate you just explaining that out. I appreciate it. >> We've asked ourselves that many times. Trust me, everything that has been you just go over these things and it's it's been >> and it's tricky because we do kind of operate as if we have these three mini areas of town, right? And so it's like how do we we sort of have to disrupt the whole system to achieve something for the whole system, right? Instead of a phased I think that was an earlier conversation around a phased

176approach and how that could work. But I I agree. I mean, it feels like even in the conversation tonight, any way we spin it, it just there's a loss, you know, or someone's the equit, it's not equitable. So, um, yeah. >> Yeah. Again, I think based on, if I remember right, scenario 2, 35% of our students are impacted by this. Um, and and you know, again, we've looked at, can we reduce that more? Can you make the impact easier, better um, for them? And you know, uh, again, I keep moving little things in my head and on a piece of paper and, you know, uh, even that conversation, I'm like, uh, I don't, again, it kind of depends on whether you leave kids at Kennedy or, you know, and and then you still move kids

177to Kennedy or you don't. But at some point, one of the high schools ends up very small if you if you face stuff. So, it it's just, you're right, it's it's tough and and we even talked about this as a at the spec committee. It's like we have to come up to a a district level um because that's what we are is a district with with three comprehensive high schools and um >> and and work through those areas. I do, director Zimmerman, want to say though, I I appreciate that like longer term planning because I think we've been accused of like is this a short-term fix for what could be, you know, longer term planning and I really I mean there's so many contingencies like will there be a bond, you know, all these other

178schools coming online? So other things that even some of us hadn't talked through because we're not on that spec committee. It sounds like you guys have dived quite deep. Um and just again applying the right changes at the right time. It's all it's all feels like a puzzle at this point. But but I just appreciate that insight of the short term versus long term. The other thing I I can't not mentioned is that we do have this building. Has this building been explored in some capacity to achieve to help on the side of town with any um spatial issues. We've been talking about kind of how we might use the space. So I just wanted wondered if that was in the conversation. >> Team has not done that, but I don't know. I've I've been

179engaged in just a few small side conversations and as not being with the district, some of the things that came up where there's no cafeteria, there's no gym and that kind of stuff. But >> I think Chad, I think maybe it would just be nice if it were possible to to figure out like, okay, what what's going to look like, Roosevelt going to look like? Viola Gibson look even like this building. What would it look like to convert? Because if we're talking, you know, price differentials, you know, then but maybe but maybe we're not. I don't know. I just wonder if we could >> just one factor to consider that I don't think anyone really really thinks about but just the HVAC situation. There are certain requirements that you have to have for fresh air

180within uh areas for where students are at versus offices. And so we've done a quick analysis of spaces in this building to say would we have enough fresh air to be able to hold students. there are some spots in this building that they are there, but there are some spots that they are not there as far as the criteria. So, when you start to talk about upgrading HVAC, that's a pretty pricey um um price tag, for lack of a better term. Um and then when you get into cafeterias, gymnasiums, and all those things. So, when you start to think about renovating this building to be a middle school or a a school, that's a pretty big undertaking. And so, then you have to think what is our what's the best investment of those dollars in

181in the long term. um for the long haul of our district. So that's kind of some things to consider with that. I guess another just offshoot could be we we were exploring and I know these are kind of again geographic proximity but could this be used as overflow space for some of those other concerns that we had whether that's storage or performance or I don't know what that would be but >> I think those are all things that we could consider and I do want to point out that we have students in this building right now our Jefferson automotive class is coming here every day and uh partaking in class down in our um mechanic shop and they're interacting with our bus mechanics and actually of um working with him and learning about diesel engines.

182And so we we have utilized and we are looking at other ways we can utilize this building with students. But to think about this becoming a school, it's a little bit more difficult. But I do think there's some opportunities for to say how can we utilize this building um with some more student interactions. >> Also, do we have fresh air in here? >> Feels pretty good right now. That earlier today was very warm in here. So this is actually very warm in Cedar D. I do have just a question. So, we talked about a little bit about the timeline on just Viola Gibson for you're going to meet with the architects and I don't want to lock into a timeline or anything like that, but I think there will still be some questions in the

183community about just what that's going to look like, what that conversation is looks like. Can we expect something by April 27th? But, and if you can't answer that, that's okay. Um, but just larger than that, um, I think it would be helpful for maybe us as a board, but also for the community to just kind of really understand when we say intermediate model, what do we mean? And when we say elementary, what do we mean? And just so we can start to visualize for the community what it's going to look like in each of those buildings. >> Yep. And I would lean on those that are the experts in the curriculum area for that answer of what intermediate versus elementary and middle school really looks like from a curricular educational standpoint. From a building facility

184standpoint, we can definitely give you um some ideas of what kind of um modifications or upgrades would need to happen at each of these buildings. And we are working very hard to have some of those answers for you with some dollar signs on that by the 27th. >> Thank you. I I just want to say again and I think so many people so many of us have echoed this but I'm I am so appreciative of all the work that has gone into this from your team Chad and also from the directors and from the spec committee. Um just it's been amazing to watch this process over the last several months and I'm just incredibly grateful that we are able to take this community input and and really have turned it into something and that there

185really has been no idea untouched. Um, and there's some some comfort in in knowing that. >> Yeah. And I just throw out again, I've had some interaction with other districts and they're asking who we're using as our consultant to work through this process and and obviously RSP is on board now and and we'll um you know need assistance on costs for for that and and for transportation, but um our staff here has put in a lot of time um on on putting this together and and helping get the information that's being asked to them and and again um every question we've asked, they've willing to go and and search out an answer for it. >> There's a whole lot of lemonade being made from very few lemons here. So, >> yeah, everyone's being more positive

186than I am tonight. So, >> I mean, school here. >> I resisted all the jokes about fresh air in this building >> until then. Yeah. >> Thank you. >> Hot air, fresh air. you know, >> I I think the staffing piece, I mean, we we've we've uh run through a lot of stuff here tonight, but um again, I and I think we've all heard this from staff. It says, "Please help us make a decision and then be able to to move through that." and and so um you know the the hope is to have a plan here that also gets the staff because quite frankly we'd like the staff to know where they're at so they can start working to communicate with students and and start building towards that transition before uh the 2728 school

187year begins. I don't know if you have anything else you want to add there but >> the only thing I would add is that one of the things that's really amazed me about this process is how on board the staff has been in all the surveys. Um, and you know, uh, staff in this district is not always on board with initiatives that we we try to do. Uh, but I go back to again because Dr. Lannon made this a homegrown initiative and allowed this to be something that um, we've worked on with the community the way that we did. Uh, I think that's really lent a lot of credibility to it. So, I think that the staffing process um, is going to go well because we have a lot of teachers that are interested in

188shifting to a different model. uh teachers that really love to teach fifth and sixth grade are very excited about being in a fifth and sixth grade building. Um and because of lensure as well, the way that lenture works in Iowa, we'll have a wide pool uh both for our elementary, middle, and our intermediate schools um to be able to staff properly because this will actually meet the um the boundaries of the different lensures much more easily. There was there was conversation around just concerns, fears that um students moving to different buildings out of Viola, if we go in in that direction, having a certain number of teachers, familiar faces at those buildings and dispersing that um in an equitable way so that everybody is familiar with the adults in the building. is can you speak

189is has that conversation even been I want to make sure we address that since that has been an ongoing concern for families and for teachers to >> it's it's that's definitely been a conversation that's been uh talked about but the actual process has not been um >> worked out yet. Uh the ELT the principal group has done some different models and and looked at different ways to potentially go about that but we haven't gotten to the point now where we could say this is the right way to do it. I think getting staff input on how to um go about that process is going to be very important. >> I was curious with the survey the 700 how many of those were educators. Can we pull some of there was a lot of good suggestions

190or just you know preferences. Um so I want to make sure that we can collect that and and segment that out so we we know what what's important to our educators as we go through this process. It sounds like you'll be collecting that in different ways, but if we've already got some of that preliminary information, >> it's a good starting point. the last survey um of the 731 responses 251 were staff members. >> Okay. Okay. >> And previous survey to that the the much larger survey that we did was um I don't have the numbers in front of me but it was a very sizable portion was staff. >> Okay. >> So it and again in both of those surveys the staff was overwhelmingly in support of the transitions we're talking about. >> That's great.

191I just want to say I appreciate that you say that this process will be developed with in collaboration with staff groups. That's awesome because I think they'll have a lot of say of of who they want to stay with and following their kids and and stuff like that. Yeah. >> Thank you. >> The one other thing I'll say is my biggest one of my biggest concerns. We have amazing staff in our district and and the unknown u just like it's tough for for our students and families. It's tough for them too. And so I think getting on with this and and getting that in place helps us to make sure we retain our our good staff. And and you know we we have excellent buildings. Viola good is a fantastic building. Uh the good news

192is it's the the kids, the the parents, the the uh the volunteers and the and the teachers, the educators and staff that are in that building that make it excellent and we want to keep them all in the district. Um even if it's not, you know, some of them are moving to a different place. >> Not to go backwards to permitting and other things, but just because it um has come up, it well to clarify the two we we mentioned there might be a 2.5, right? Sounds like that was the first slide. I just want to clarify that that the tweaking and the looking at >> scenario two with adjustments that was the potential 2.5 >> boundaries. >> Uh that's what some people have called it but the spec team did not call it that.

193>> Okay. >> We never saw the 2. I know it was referenced. So I just want to make sure that that because we put that out there and >> we just sent a couple of ideas to RSP based on some of the suggestions that had come back. Okay. But nothing was actually like put together as a map. and and I can speak to that director buyers because it's so been so interesting. Um so we have intentionally wanted this to be a very inclusive process. So we expected feedback, right? So when we presented to you the first time the scenario one, scenario two, we basically said we expect to make some adjustments based on the feedback. So we did take all those adjustments to RSP and that's what we talked about here tonight. But to your

194everything that we've talked about with every adjustment, it created other obstacles for us. And so the team, they landed back on scenario two. So the the 2.5 is was basically our way of saying >> we anticipated changes because we were getting a lot of feedback, but this is ultimately where we landed. So we continue to say, you know, no final decision and there's just a lot of feedback loops. And since I have the mic, I just want to say the same thing in regards to the staffing model, the permit process. it. We're taking it step by step because we have to have those opportunities for people to give us feedback. We have a draft and so we'll continue to bring you those um after we've had a vetting process. >> Yeah, that's perfect. Yeah, I

195um I just know that was tossed out there and I want to make sure that we clarify that that was that that was part of that. Um and thanks to all those who came out to those town halls. I think that was a helpful event, you know. Um I know there was different uh conversations at each location and um helpful as we kind of explored this uh there was something I was going with this. Oh okay. So um because we kind of talked about wash and you know being boxed in with growth for Jefferson out west and potential growth for Kennedy. Um just trying to go through that permitting process because I uh this came up in our community cabinet meeting from some of our nonprofit partners. So I just was curious if RSB had

196investigated this, but essentially some of the main reasons for the permits typically is like friends and then I think safety was one that came up um and whether that's real or perceived safety that does influence our enrollment. Um which got us to talking about um as a part of the boundary analysis, did we analyze or overlay any of the like community safety data or crime um data per household? Um, I bring that up because that might influence the um just you know supports that we need in those buildings um and other considerations. I that was something I hadn't seen in those slides. >> No, we haven't looked at it. >> Okay. Is it possible to look at that >> or um I wonder city level if thereat that probably RSP would have to overlay maybe

197with >> if the city has that data >> in a granular way. And just thinking as we make the boundary shifts just what are all the factors to consider and how do we plan for levels of supports needed at different buildings. >> And one of the things I mean they did look at property values they looked at what they call the diversity index which took into account education levels um uh poverty rates things of that nature. Um but I don't believe crime statistics was part of that particular index. Um so but when they did make those shifts they did look at how that impacted those diver what they called the diversity index. Um and there was some change but not substantial change to any of the areas. Okay. >> Based upon those shifts. >> Okay.

198>> But again to the point that you're making about Washington and permitting. Um, again, our hope is, and I think it's a pretty reasonable hope, that when we get to the true feeder system, Franklin and right now, Franklin and Harding are where most of the students are permitting out into from out of Washington Kennedy. >> Um, once we are lined up and kids aren't friends aren't going one direction or the other, we're going to see a lot less of that >> shifting one direction or the other. >> Yeah, that's >> so it's a two to threeear solution problem. >> And then to bring it back to the 2.5, that's I knew where I was going with that. So there was some comments in the surveys that u comments that came back where we have situations

199where there's like I think it was said like 18 kids are within a certain pocket which uh is surrounded by our competitors and they're leaving their friend groups very specifically like these little p. So is there at a granular level, are we going back in and saying, "Hey, to avoid losing these families repeatedly in this, you know, specific roundabout or whatever it might be um in area 3 specifically, are we are we digging into that or are we kind of keeping as is or is is there a 2.25?" That was that was what we actually were doing when we looked at those neighborhoods um tonight when you saw those uh cutouts of those maps. That was looking at specific neighborhoods that would have an impact. >> Okay. >> Um and specifically looking at that and

200it was very interesting how much of an impact overall those small neighborhoods really had when you started to take a granular look. And that just I'm going to be a little bit uh I think RSP did a really good job of trying to look at overall enrollments and balancing that out and in their their maps. So when we started to try to tweak that, it really kind of had a major impact. >> Okay. >> And and that's again where the permitting process really comes in so that in those small pockets you're talking about, families will have opportunities um to make a switch if they wish >> in that 3-week window. I wasn't sure if the small shifts creating large ripples was like the Kenwood Wilson conversation or if we're talking about a a bit of

201a neighborhood, >> those little triangles could create um pretty big like for example that one uh talking about Pierce really drop Pierce below 50% um if if we were to do that one that one neighborhood. >> Okay. >> And then it also would put Maple Grove above or approaching 100% utilization. So really overenroll Maple Grove and really underenroll Pierce with those small little neighborhoods. >> Okay. Thank you very much. >> Yeah, I think there's even one down in the far southwest side of town that was looked at and it doesn't look like a very big area, but just that one move >> made enough change to the two elementary schools involved there, I think Van Beerren and and West Willow, that um it no longer worked. And it's I I think part of it what

202we've learned as we were thinking about 2.5 is that RSP goes in and they do math. a lot of it's math and and two plus two always is going to equal four. Um and uh and so you know when you start looking at those are all things that they had kind of had in their model when they were going through it trying to put something together for us. >> Any other questions about staffing? >> I think we kind of covered this. Is there anything else? I'm also looking at the clock. I don't want to keep anybody, but I also want to skip over any questions. I think we've talked about that. And then obviously um you know, we've talked about this a little bit too. Uh we would come back to the board hopefully with

203the information that we've asked about and others have asked about uh to to review with the hope that we could move forward with this on April 27th. um you know understanding that helps us with programming, it helps us with permitting, it helps us with uh teacher plans um and uh allows families to start planning for for that as well. >> Yeah. So for clarity um for our next steps, the spec is next meeting on the 26th. So one day before the next board meeting and our goal is to discuss any specific questions that have arisen today. Um, and we'll be talking about the permit process, transportation, special education, and facilities. >> Thank you. Any other questions from the board? >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you so much. >> Great. Next, it's not over

204yet. We have uh next we have the special education update. I'll turn the meeting over to Sarah and Riyles. We're going to miss the best part. Does someone want to tell them to even set my timer so so I behave and stay on time here. Um coming. Okay. So, uh I'm Sarah Cruz, executive director of special services. I'm very pleased to be getting some time with you this evening. And honestly, I'm hoping you find it to be quite timely. uh with all of the other topics that have that have come up yet this evening, but also where we're headed. Um unlike uh other topics that that we've heard, special education has come up uh in terms of what does this look like for our reconfiguration and and what are we considering as we um make

205all of those adjustments. So, I thought it appropriate um to to go ahead and share some some updates from the special ed lens from our department. Um, and you'll find that each of the the topics I'm going to cover this evening are are all very I would consider them beefy in terms of each one could be its own evening. And so you're going to find that this is a a very brief um touch point on each of those areas, but you'll also see why they're connected. So this evening, what I would like to do is kind of go into the the three areas I would like to focus on. The first of which uh special ed funding, a little bit of of 101, what what that looks like. Again, this could be a whole evening,

206so just bear with me. It'll be a little bit at a time here. The second of which um some feedback, what we learned from our work with the DM group and some of the findings that came out of that opportunity review, and then why reconfiguration is actually a critical step, uh in in our work of special education. And so ultimately what I'm hoping you hear this evening is that this is really about aligning our system to student needs while ensuring long-term sustainability. So let's jump right into the numbers. So for those that are familiar with per pupil funding, you'll see here that in in a general education setting, we're looking at about $7,900 almost 7 $8,000 per per gened student. In the world of special education for for kids that have IEPs, those branch out

207into categorical lanes. So you have your level one, your level two, and your level three. It's not individualized and often it does not reflect the actual cost of services. It's based strictly on that waiting of IEP. So as student needs increasing complexity, the gap between funding and actual cost continues to grow. And this is why system alignment not just the funding is essential. And as just an example for that um if you look at your your level three waiting that would be for our students that have the most significant need. So say for example they need the support of a student specific pair professional. The average sal uh wages that we pay for a special ed uh parah here in the district is about $37,000. So you see that that doesn't even cover that. Uh

208in addition to all the additional services and supports that they may need to access their education. I'm going to keep going here. In addition to this, we also have some structural gaps. um the funding as as we see coming down from the state level in terms of what our allocations look like each year stay relatively uh I guess stable in terms of the amount but what we're finding is that student needs are increasingly complex and variable and not and and those funds do not adjust to that. So this can uh creates ultimately our reality in terms of our legal uh responsibility to making sure IEP needs are met um regardless of what's available for funding. So that's got to come from somewhere. So when costs exceed funding, and they often do, that gap comes uh

209becomes a district responsibility. And that's what you heard my friend Derek talking with us about here this evening. So it's not a short-term issue. Nothing has actually happened um more immediately to cause this to happen. This is actually an example of a system design challenge um that we need to navigate collectively. So, uh, you'll also see here, um, not necessarily on this slide, but you're going to hear me talking also about the impact of MTSS. And I don't oversee MTSS. That's not necessarily in my world, but it directly impacts uh, special education here. Uh, it factors in because without a strong MTSS system, what we are seeing is an overidentification at higher levels of support. We're seeing an a higher reliance on pair of professionals and more intensive uh, service delivery than may be necessary.

210Um, again, so this is where system alignment becomes critical. So I'm going to shift gears here and go into DM Group because you'll see where this MTSS connection kind of comes into play here. So, we partnered with DM Group, as you know, this last year. Um, and really the intent was to have them come in and take a look at how our system is currently structured. How are we providing services? Uh, what inefficiencies might we have that we can correct course on, and how might we better align resources to outcomes. Um, this wasn't about identifying problems. In fact, we just heard Jason Klein talk about identifying opportunities and this was very much what this was intended to be as well was identifying opportunities to improve both outcomes and sustainability for our system. Five key things

211emerged out of the uh out of those efforts with DM Group. The first of which is they said that we needed a more unified vision across general ed, special education and MTSS. The second is we needed greater clarity of roles and responsibilities. Three, we needed increased target targeted training and staff support. Four, we needed a stronger, more defined MTSS framework. And five, uh, and critically, the need to maximize the expertise of special education professionals. So, one specific recommendation from DM Group was to move toward grouping specialists into collaborative teams. And so, you heard earlier about all of our buildings being stretched out and our teaching staff being stretched thin. The same was true for our special education teachers as well. So what this tells us is is we don't need to adjust just practices. We

212need to to adjust the system itself, how we're approaching this. Uh because right now our services are often driven by structure instead of structure being driven by services. Uh so this is what this means for us. If we were to strengthen tier one instruction and align our MTSS system, the intent would be is that we would see fewer students that would require intensive interventions. services could be delivered more efficiently and outcomes improve across all student groups. But we can't do that effectively within a fragmented structure. So this is where that consolidation comes into play for us. So reconfiguration, if we're looking at that model, which is where we're headed, it actually gives us the opportunity to realign. So students to the right level of support, staff to where they're most effective, and resources to where

213they have the greatest impact. This is a system solution, not a short-term fix. So this is how it benefits students. For students, this means increased access to general education environments. It means more consistent and appropriate service delivery and better alignment to IEP goals. So ultimately, the hope would be stronger outcomes across the board. From the MTSS lens for students, the hope would be that uh we'd see consolidation strength in MTSS by improving access to high-quality tier one instruction, ensuring consistent tier 2 and tier three supports, increasing access to general ed environments, and reducing unnecessary movement into more restrictive settings because we've had these pieces set up as part of our structure for intervention. So, this is how we would improve uh outcomes at scale. The benefits for staff in the system would be around clearer

214roles within the MT MTSS tiers, stronger special education expertise in one location, stronger collaboration between general and special education, and more efficient use of pair professionals aligned to skill building for the system. It would actually reduce duplication of services, inconsistency across buildings, and reactive staffing decisions. And finally, from a financial and sustainability impact, we would be seeing a a reduced inefficiencies across buildings and ultimately allowing us to build internal capacity. I'm watching my time. I'm down to my last minute, so I'm sorry. I'm trying I'm trying to go, guys. All right. So, here we go. At the end of the day, this is ultimately about aligning funding to reality, aligning our systems to student need, and aligning our structures to support both. So reconfiguration is not about doing less. It's actually about doing better. Uh

215so with that being said, I I will take any questions if you have them. I did that. >> Well, let's start with thank you and and I hate to have you keep it brief because this is a really this is a a really important conversation, but I will open this up to questions from the board. I don't have a question so much as a comment, Sarah, and it's uh something that I bring up frequently. The federal government just is never ever provided the funding that they have promised to public schools for special ed students and it repeatedly creates budget deficits for us year after year after year. Um, so I appreciate the fact that our reorganization will help us financially as well as provide services more efficiently and effectively for our students. So, thank you

216for all the work you've done to pull this all together. Um, I'm still mad at the federal government, but >> I'm with you. >> I I appreciate what you're doing to be more efficient with the funds that we do have. And I if I could just publicly thank you um for your advocacy of our department and and our work at the state level. Uh it's absolutely invaluable to to us and and any small move of that needle just means everything. So thank you too. >> Yeah. Ditto. Thank you. Um but um I and I don't want to get cut short because I always feel bad for the last presenter in these long meetings. Truly. Um I'm curious because we established that we have this deficit. So I'm cur do we know how much of that

217deficit these plans actually solve for or how much savings we might anticipate through some of this >> what we're working on right now and I can do better with numbers for you but we've been looking about two to three years down the road. So this this first year we were going for $2 million to to bring down that deficit >> and extending that beyond the next two to three years by that amount or better. >> Um with consolidation I've not factored that in. So, I would love an opportunity to be able to do that and then circle back with you if I could. >> Yeah, of course. >> Uh because yes, I do believe that that would would definitely be notable um for this conversation. >> I would just comment you're absolutely right. There's so

218much in here. So, it's almost a shame that it's just tucked at the end and I hope a lot of this stuff isn't lost on our community. I just staring at slide three that you have, which I think is just really eye opening. I think we talk about just the cost of special education and so that level one, level two, level three and then just to because I didn't catch it at first. I mean because it's on the next slide I think where the 797,988 is your peral funding and then the way it's just level three is an additional 21,000 you know. So, I mean, and just the way you said, like, I mean, some of our students do require one-on-one parah, so those salaries alone are pretty significant. So, I just, you know, I

219just want to make sure that our community continues to hear like how important this stuff is. So, I do appreciate you just calling out the advocacy. It's just there cannot be enough of us, you know, doing that advocacy. I mean, a few of us doing it, but I think the entire community kind of standing behind um, you know, just the impact that this type of stuff has. appreciate the work of you and your team. >> Absolutely. And thank you for the opportunity. Happy to come back anytime because I would agree. 10 minutes just felt like an awful lot to kind of bring all of this information, but you can also see too why it's so important right now. >> Right. >> We think about, you know, our specials um art and music and spreading those

220teachers out. And one of our goals is to with consolidation is to have full-time, you know, wherever possible. Um this is the same issue in a way. You know, we're spreading >> staff out over geography. So >> I appreciate you going into detail about kind of the staff retention plans because of staff turnover and how you know that team approach or just you know the different structures will assist us. So I'm excited to kind of get a sense of if you know that that comes to be and that we have that retention piece. Um, on the family side of thing, I was curious, you know, with new buildings, new services, structures, we, this has kind of been baked into the conversations of consolidation and models throughout, but I just want to clarify that, you know,

221um, this probably something you're thinking of, but how making sure that we're informing, supporting families, uh, so they just know what to anticipate because these are, uh, these changes are are big ones, right? Um and then so I'm just thinking staff families and then the what comes up for um students is we said something around um tracking or here the greater independence and access to peer groups right so just how are we going to measure like that that is coming to fruition or you know what uh what other things are worth measuring maybe that's something the board can discuss but when it comes to not just cost savings but student outcomes um you know that staff retention piece. So um looking forward to kind of I know that that takes one two three years down

222the road but um definitely paying attention to what this might look like and how we're tracking that. >> So not really a question just you know I'm sure you'll have that at some point in time and I look forward to seeing this you know actually what it looks like in real time. So >> when uh we were having the conversation around transportation earlier and uh director Denzi mentioned the chicken before the egg. We are one of those groups. Uh once we have decision it will actually help have some of those next step conversations in terms of this is what it looks like in the world of special education and how we provide uh programming services and supports for your learners. Um is having that breakdown. Um, so you're right, it's very much top of mind

223for us and then having that that next step of finality will help in being able to execute those those steps. But I do appreciate the think about this very much. >> I guess on the topic of conversation is in the burden that this may cause um for some of those students >> is that Chad's not here anymore, but is that something that also is like a separate transportation conversation? Um I don't know. I guess I'm just tossing it out to the >> all of the conversations. So all the way from facilities, both facilities need to accommodate all to transportation. We work very closely with Scott >> um >> because we want to make sure we're we're mindful of all of the needs. And so um we have some wonderful, as you know, wonderful partners and

224advocates here to to work with. And so some of those are already underway in terms of in this scenario, this is might this might be how that looks. Um what would we need to make sure that that happens? what would be those those layers of connection and communication um with all the stakeholders and things like that. So, they've definitely started. Now, it's like, okay, are we are we about ready for that that next step >> in due time? Okay. >> Exactly. >> Thank you. >> Y >> any other questions from the board? >> Just one quick question. I mean there's a lot of conversation within our state right now about um whether um money is going to to charters and and other places are are you know um really opportunity for all or or some

225of the the levels of services that we provide. Where are are there other options to students beyond level one or are we the only option or is it even level one? I mean, what could a student attend a different school um in a you know, charter or a private school and and receive that level or how does that work? I just I'm interested in that. >> I might use if I could the Xavier uh partnership. >> We we currently are are working very closely with Xavier and the way we currently have those structures set up is that the the kids with IEPs being served in their system can be supported by what's called a Strat One lensure. anything or any any children that require more than what a Stratwan lensure can provide, we bring them

226home here um and we and we serve them here. Uh the difference with the private and charter schools is they ultimately get to decide what layer of lensure they they want to have and allow for in their systems. We're we're here. We provide the full continuum of services under that DDSDP you heard me talk about last year or the district developed service delivery plan. um because we welcome all of our kids here and and of course we we want to be able to meet all of their needs here but it's my understanding I don't believe we have any strat to lentures that are beyond our home district here in our charters or or private schools right now. >> Thank you. >> Which is why public schools public education matters so deeply. Back to the earlier

227point um I was uh playing off of that. So, do we find that now with the private or charter vouchers, have we had a lot of students that maybe opted there and then returned back? Do we have do we track those numbers of they weren't able to serve them, but we have the full continuum? You know, what does that look like? >> We are working on that the very data collection set right now because we are noticing a flowback. >> Um, and we're needing to to really get a good handle on what is that rate, what what does that look like? And so we are very much working on on getting that data right now. Um as well as doing everything that we can to make sure that we're welcoming back >> um any of

228our learners to to make sure that that they get what they need because that's always our top priority. Um >> so yes, very much a data set that we're working on trying to find a way to to to get a better grasp on. >> And once you have that data set, it would be interesting to make that public. I mean in a world of competition, you know, showing and really uh in real time saying these are >> at a community level what this looks like and what we provide. So again, just sort of that advocacy piece. I think that could play in. >> Um >> that's a good point. >> Thank you. Yeah, thank you so much. >> Thank you all very much. >> Okay, the board will take a I'm going to say 10

229or 15 minute recess. We're going to film our board recap. take a break and then we will um reconvene and then go into close session after that. >> Do I I have a motion to take a recess? >> So moved. >> Second. All those in favor say I. >> I. >> Those opposed say nay. >> All right. Is 8:34. Okay. Um, the board is back in session. We don't need a We don't need a a motion for that, right? To go back in session. Okay. The board is back in session at 8:46 p.m. Due to the amended agenda, we have two close sessions under board governance for litigation strategy discussion with council pursuant to Iowa code section 21.51c. Do we have a motion to move into the first close session pursuant to Iowa code section

23021.51c? >> So moved. >> Second. >> It's a roll call vote. >> Director Taminsky. >> I. Director Burns. >> Hi, >> Director Dumski. >> Hi, >> Director Buyers. >> Hi, >> Director Garlic. >> Hi, >> President Newman. >> I The board will now move into close session. >> All right.