001I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Good evening everyone and thanks for coming to the March regular board meeting with Becker schools. Uh we will start tonight with a presentation from robotics. All right. Good evening. Uh, it is now. Here we go. Uh, my name is Alex Eric. I'm the head coach of F FRC 4607. Uh, this is Becker's varsity robotics team. Um, we've got our roots all the way back in 2012. I'm going to let Kirsten get set up for a bit and I will kind of go through a little bit of her history uh while she does that. She just needs to connect to the uh the AV
002here. Um people always ask what is CIS? Uh it's a coalition of independent students. Why CIS? The group that we had back in 2012, we had nine seniors and they were raid uh Star Wars fans and they thought that having something tied to Star Wars uh would be appropriate. Um, we didn't have we weren't really attached to the school at all at that time. It was more of a community- based team and Mr. Mayor Cobanger and myself thought we'd just work out of our shop and see if we get things put together. Um, we didn't know the impact that we'd have not just on Becker, not just on the kids that were in that room that day, um, but really throughout central Minnesota and now this team has, uh, reached kind of nationwide and even
003worldwide prestige. Um we have and host uh five different training events. Um three of them with which are with uh Medronic. Um they have theirs in Denver uh obviously Minneapolis and Boston. And then we have started in NDSU St. Cloud State and then this year the brand new one was at the University of Minnesota Rochester. Uh throughout all that it's about a thousand students that uh are trained in robotics every year. Um we've been very successful. Uh I I owe that a lot to the support of the community. Uh the students that we have here, they're exceptional. But I'll be honest with you, you walk around any school in the state, uh you're going to find these types of kids. It's just giving them the opportunities uh for something like this. And that's one of
004the biggest things with this program, it's not just giving them a space to build a robot. It's giving them opportunities to become leaders. uh it's giving them the opportunities to uh really enhance their skills and what they want to do and then also giving them the support. So I'll turn it over now to Charlie and Kirsten. >> All right. So as said, my name is Kirstston. I'm a junior and I'll be in my fifth year of robotics this year. Um just a little overview, we wanted to talk a little bit about our team and then talk a lot about our STEM center. So to start us off, um I kind of want to talk about what goes into our program. Starting off with our volunteers. Um we have many amazing mentors that we get to
005work with and it's a really great opportunity to work with industry professionals, engineers, programmers. Um they really put a lot of time and effort into our program and we would be nothing without them. They are phenomenal. And with that, our alumni and parents that volunteer and help us out too. They really give a lot into our program and help us grow. Um, and then more into the support, our sponsors. Um, these are some of our biggest sponsors. Of course, not all of them, but like uh AAX Mechanical, the Lions Club, Grand Irrigation, Liberty Paper. Uh, we are very grateful for their continuous support. and just to shout them out. It's something that we find important. Um, and robotics isn't just about building a robot. It's more about the impact on the community. Um, as Eric
006said, it's a great leadership program just teaching students how to grow and take risks, try new things. Um, being in robotics gives us gives us the opportunity to serve our comm community through things like the Palmer Day parking, Freedom Days, Adopter Road. Um, and it's just we really like to emphasize that robotics is about what we can do for the community and not just building a robot and going to competition with it. And now I think I can hand it off to Charlie. >> Okay. So there's kind of a map here. So one of the things that our team strives to do is identify problems and then create solutions. So this is how a lot of our initiatives end up getting created. Um, the two that I want to focus on. So STEM funding, this
007is a big one. We spend a lot of time advocating both at a local level and then at the state level. So we are down at the capital about once a year. Last year me and Kirsten were down there with a couple other students. Um and then we'll be down there again this year. We were part of advocacy for the deed grant. We had a student actually go up and testify. So that was a really good experience for him. Um so then looking when we start talking about the STEM center kind of the process that took us to identifying we needed that space. So kind we'll talk about this more in the presentation, but schools have swimming pools and hockey rinks kind of litter Minnesota. Robotic spaces aren't a very common thing, but the goal
008is that someday they will be because what we do takes up a lot of space. Um, and the more space we have, the more opportunities we're able to create for students and the more we're able to work with other people. So knowing that we needed that space, um, the thought of a STEM center kind of comes to mind and then it began with just advocacy. Again, the referendum was what eventually allowed us to take over that space. But just know going in as we're talking about this, this is a very intentional thing. Um, we knew what we needed from this space. We know what we need from the space currently. And then we have hopes for what we can do with it going forward. Um, this is just a little video if you haven't seen
009our space before. remember. Okay. I don't know how Max works. All right. So for the brick um first thing that we needed was that ECF space that was again that referendum and then a lot of work goes into actually creating and maintaining this space. So those four mentors that you saw in the video um they put a lot of hours into creating that field. It is a nearly exact replica of the CAD of the competition field. They put a lot of time and effort. So, hundreds of hours is what we think. So, yeah. >> Yes. And uh this space and our field that we have um impacts us tremendously by giving us an extra space to work in or a dedicated space to work in. And also to practice on a replica of a competition
010field so that we can have a good practice in for what a competition would actually be like. And that helps us a lot. But it also helps all the teams in the central Minnesota area get better together because we invite other teams over to the brick to practice on our field every night or not every night but a lot of nights of the week. And then we also host uh we host uh teams at week zero events which are pre-season practice events to see help them see how the robot's working and how they can uh get better. Um, and then it's just a great model to uh for a collaborative community of teams working together and growing all together so that the whole area, our whole central Minnesota area can get uh more uh have
011a better impact together. Oh, shoot. Oh, no. I'm trying. Um, we have helped over uh 21 teams just going to our brick and uh we've helped 15 teams just this year. In the past, uh two weeks we have 15 teams at our brick and more showing up every day. We have two teams at our brick right now and that helps support their robot or robotics team and help support team they want to start in the future. Uh the opportunity to grow currently the future need is equipment upgrading. It's mostly in Urick's shop. Some of his tools are going out of date. It's one of the chopsaws died. We go. And the phys facilities over at the brick are outstanding. It's really nice what we have what we've been giving given to work with. Thank you
012guys for um helping provide this space for us and um get teams and our team to help impact the community around us. And um we actually have students over at the brick after the meeting. If you guys want to come over there, it's at the ECF building and there will be students building and testing robot at on the field. Yeah, >> let us cook. So, um, one of the big things with Becca Robotics, this is kind of coming to be understood in the community, but we do a lot of things. We have a lot of different programs. Um, we make a lot of impact. That's kind of our goal. So, one of our asks for you as a school board is just to kind of let us cook. If you see a way to support
013us, great. If not, um, please ask questions, be curious about what we're working on. If there's a way that you can think of that you might be able to support the programs that we're doing, invite more kids to things like unified robotics, um, and our younger programs. Please do. Otherwise, also just if we approach you and ask for help, same thing. Keep an open mind. Um, we have reasons, I guess. Yeah. For the things that we do. So, we are happy to have conversations about those things. Um, but until then, just keep an eye out, watch our socials, and ask some questions. Do you have questions for us? Um, this year in F FRC it's 31 students. Across other programs we've got over 100 students with LL and FTC programs. LL is our program for
014like elementary students and then FTC is middle school students. >> Two questions real quick. First off, NDSU was kind of out there >> because I mean obviously yeah >> your STEM program but >> Oh, this is really cool. So, um, so NDSU is one of our field sponsors this year. So, they are they gave us a couple thousand dollars to put into the field. Um, that's obviously a really big support for us and having it come from a place like in NDSU is really cool. Um, it's also really cool because Uric is the one that headed up he headed up getting that sponsor and we well he runs a spreadsheet that tracks where all of our graduates end up and it just so happens that about half of the graduates of this team have ended
015up at NDSU. So, >> it feels like that. It's uh it's it's definitely the um the largest uh college that the students go to. I should say it's uh the one that we send most of our kids to. Followed up directly by the University of Minnesota, then UMD. Sadly, St.Cloud State just doesn't attract a lot of our students. I think it's because it's just too local. Um but yeah, we go back all the way to 2013 and we can show where our students went to. Um we've had students go to the Navy. Actually, we cover four of the five armed services, not including >> Space Force yet, but we'll try to get there. Coastg Guard is the one that we haven't been able to kids just aren't interested in Coastg Guard coming from Minnesota. Um
016why NDSU? Uh we've been working with them for so long. Um again, we started a jump start program there um two years ago and they want everything from these kids. They want in fact we got Zachary that's uh going to be going to NDSU full ride correct uh next year. So it's we just have a strong connection. Um Bison Robotics was started by Ryan Swanson. a 2014 alum of 4607. There's just a lot of connection. And then when they knocked on our door this past fall and they're like, "Some things fell through. We're starting this robotics and automation. You know, you guys are running jumpstart. What else? How else can we support you?" And I'm like, "Well, we have this field that we can't pay for. Um it's quite expensive and like what are you
017thinking?" So I told them the cost of materials and like we'll cover the materials for you. So that was phenomenal. Um, so yeah, they get a title sponsorship on all of our stuff. Um, Blunt Graphic does a great job, but man, those decals get really expensive. So, we're going to try to figure out a way to lessen that cost next year. >> What else? >> Second question. Maybe one of the students can ask. You said you shared >> you share your field with other local teams and kind of improving their aspects. Is it improving you guys as well? >> So, you want to stay dominant, right? >> Yeah. Okay. Robotics kind of has a mindset of actually helping each other get better. It's more of a collaborative get better together sort of thing than we
018obviously like to win but >> but I mean are you finding yourselves getting better? >> Yes. As a consequence of collaborating more with other teams. We get better as a group as our team gets better because we get to see we get to collaborate with other teams and get to know like their best practices and how they do better and then we learn from them and grow our team and implement some of their things that they do so that we can get better. So we have grown and gotten better because of the collaboration with other teams and they have obviously gotten better too in uh flip the flip of that. >> So I think one of the other and maybe you want to speak to a little bit is why why so many schools come
019to use our field? How many other fields are there >> as like ours? There's not. Yeah. So, this space that we have is really cool. It's very, very, very, very unique. Um, things like this don't exist. So, even if you think if you'd been down in the senior commons going back two years, we had a pretty similar setup to what most schools have. And that is like a couple of the field elements just crafted out of plywood so that we could get a rough idea of what we were working with. That gets stuck in a corner and then when you want to try and test something, you just have to pull everything out and get it set up. Um, it's it's unique. It's very unique and again the whole like ice rink pool thing comes
020from Eur because he has a thing for like analogies and acronyms and metaphors and all that but it really is this is a new thing and one of the huge well I guess new cool example right St. Michael just passed a referendum, so they'll be getting a STEM center. Do you want to talk a bit more? You know more about that? >> Um, this is just the next natural step in competitive robotics and STEM in Minnesota. This isn't a unique idea to Becker. We borrowed it from uh Minneapolis Urban Robotics Alliance, and they have a facility in an old abandoned school uh right down in North Minneapolis. It's interesting taking our kids from Becker down to that neighborhood. um ushering them as fast as they can into the school and it's not a joke. It's
021trying to get them not on the street. Um we realized what they had was so impactful, so powerful, we pushed hard for it. So back when when they're talking about the Minnesota deed grant um back in 2019, we were a big part of that and because of that, we were able to to secure u the surround the field surround the dasher boards um but we had no home for it. So it just kind of floated around. It's set in different parts of the school. When we could set it up, it was great, but it takes about 150 to 250 a man hours to set up this field depending on the year. It just takes a lot of of job. It's a lot of time. Um, so my analogy always has been uh what makes a
022hockey besides the money and the cake eating, what makes the Dina Hockey so good? What made War Road so good? Why are they the leaders in hockey in the state of Minnesota? If you look back in 1942, the Adina uh ice sheet first went up. They adopted this idea that they wanted to have the their own very own ice sheet that their kids could go practice on. And ever since then, you can go look at their numbers. Multiple state championships, many many kids that are playing in the NHL. Uh War Road, same thing. Difference was is War Roads practicing on frozen rivers. Um finally got their egg sheet, that sort of thing. But again, pumping out the NHL uh players as well here in Becker Robotics and across First, the saying is that all of
023our kids go pro. So, what they're learning right now, um not just the skills, but be able to come up here and talk in front of a school board. We throw them in front of everybody. Like I said, we're down at the the state capital and our kids are talking to uh congressmen and senators and they just fit right in. um you watch a lot of the other students from their teams, not knocking on them, but it takes them a little bit to get to that level. Um when we're talking this jump start training stuff and our kids get to get up there. Uh Dr. Schmidt was up there this last year uh visiting. He was on campus with us at St. Cloud State. There's 50 different um sessions going on. Uh I think when
024him and I walked through, seven of those sessions were being put on by Becker students or alumni. At that time, there's only 10 there's only uh 10 classrooms going on. So at that time 70% of the the sessions were being put on by our kids, our alumni. So why is this such a powerful program? Because we give those kids the opportunities. Becker public schools, Becker community has afforded something so unique and the other schools want it. The other schools, I'm sure you've talked to them, those of you involved in uh uh the different programs, you've heard about Becker. It was always Becker football and I'm very proud of that history. But now the page has kind of turned a little bit where we're going around and it I laugh and it's awesome to hear because
025I try to hide myself. Um but when they start talking Becker they ask what is with this robotics program and like I said it's the community the support that we've gotten. Um Mayor Coinger the vision he had back 20 in 2012 was unbelievable. I wasn't giving up wrestling. I wasn't giving up soccer. And after one year of coaching robotics, I attended my resignation for middle school wrestling. You know, everybody join wants to become that middle school wrestling coach. For me, it was a special place. But yeah, this is awesome. Um, I get to coach these kids. So questions congratulate all you guys congratulations as somebody that's in the community a lot as well. Amazing. Basketball, right? It's not football. It's football. I I've joked before. I've always said there must be something to whether it's
026the robotics, the basket, archery. We decided to do something successful. So, very well done. Got to get them down to present at the school board association >> down there. >> Having been few years I can't remember what year was that school board. Oh uh so >> 2020 >> January right before co >> right >> we got to go put down there but yeah it's it's typically run by a lot of notes they try to sh more more te >> we try to give a presentation this year we know >> so we were down at the schoolboard convention in January and we were walking down through the different vendors and everything and there's a robotics one set up >> I think Proctor was it >> I think Proctor Anyhow they were how excited they were. Hey,
027you know, robotics and we're like, yeah, we're from Becca. And they're like, oh, all right. >> Yeah, >> that's how it was two years ago, too. >> So, they all know. So, yeah. So, >> Good. Good luck on your season. Good luck on the build. Um, >> continue having fun and thanks for coming to present tonight. >> Well, we better hurry then. >> Thank you. Are you leaving? >> All right. You're late. >> Got five minutes. >> All righty. Move on to item two. Student report. >> Pressure. The pressure's gone. >> You can take a break after the first. >> All right. Um, so in the past month, um, we've had a lot of teams go to state here. Wrestling was at state on Saturday. They finished with two or they um had three of
028their six wrestlers finish second which is it's good. Um and they had a very successful season in in all. Um speech received their first team award in four years at their last competition. Um the dance team state tournament was on February 14th. They placed eighth and last week they had their end of year banquet and they said it was a very successful season for them too. Um, the gymnastic state meet was last weekend and they competed as a team on Friday and individually on Saturday. They placed fourth as a team despite having several injuries which took out two of their very good gymnasts. Um, archery has been competing in tournaments across central Minnesota every single weekend. Um, girls hockey wrapped up their season with a loss against Fairmont and they had their banquet last night
029and celebrated their nine graduating seniors. Um, boys hockey ended their season in the quarterfinals. NHS students have been working on getting their ISPs done for the year. They had students run bingo at the Shepherd of Grace at the nursing home. They played bingo with the residents last week and they were asked to visit again soon. Um, two students from DECA are currently at state. They are wrapping up their year also. And girls basketball won an important section game against St. Francis last week and they hope to continue their success and hopefully make it to the state tournament. Um, as things wind down in these coming months, speech has four meets left in their season and they hope to do well and continue with the awards that they've been getting. Robotics has their first competition of
030the year next week and band has a concert at 7 tonight in the pack where that is where Charlie went. Um, NHS students will be working on getting service hours logged with the new trimester. Student council will continue coming up with new ideas to get students through the winter months and begin spring fling planning. Deca has their end of year banquet next week and archery has a huge tournament this or coming up here um next week and it's their home tournament and they're expecting like over 3,000 people there which is nuts. Um but yeah, big tournament. Any questions? I believe it's indoor. >> Yeah, it's this week. >> What? >> They must have filled it in last week. I think it's >> it's this weekend. >> It could be this weekend. Yeah. >> Yeah. The
031old house. >> Yep. Yeah, that's in the whole It's I think it's in both. >> Yeah. >> Where cuz the boys if they win on Wednesday will play Saturday >> because they were supposed to play Friday but they can't because of back >> say boys basketball. So >> what >> were co- champions for the Mississippi? >> Yes. >> Do you know who they were tied with? >> Was it Monti? >> Um >> we didn't get a report from boys basketball. There's another shot. >> That's right. >> That's all right. >> Girls basketball plays on Thursday. I know you alluded to that the second championship. Very interesting. >> Should be a good game. Thank you. >> All right. Good. >> Thank you. >> 2B superintendent report. >> So MCA's testing season starting up today um through
032May 8th is our MCAs. Uh we've also been continuing fast bridge assessments and we did the CAPD read basics recently as well and on February 13th our staff throughout all the buildings looked through that data. Um that's a new assessment that we've started as far as the dyslexia assessment that's required by the state. So uh we got some really good data from that and we'll continue to figure out what the best way is because it is an additional assessment that we haven't had to take before. So, we have to figure out how to be more efficient with the assessments and what we're going to do with that moving forward. March 26th is the region 6 day at the capital. Angel's been working really hard setting up meetings with legislators. Uh, also I'll be at the
033MAMSBA joint day at the capital on March 9th. If any of you want to join me, let me know. We can go to that as well. Uh, legislative update transition here. Uh, there's a number of bills of particular interest and I've got them linked below. uh the fiscal year 2627 projected fund balance came out I think last Wednesday and then it was released on the th on Thursday I believe u but it's 3.7 billion which is 1.3 billion higher than the November estimates uh it still creates a deficit for 2829 if we were to spend zero dollars additional dollars uh this fiscal year in 2829 we would still be about 400 million 377 million short uh at that point so um so I don't anticipate paid a lot of things being added at the capital
034that pretty much any money that's going to be spent this year needs to come from somewhere else in that. So again, there's a number of bills here that you can you can take a look at. L changes um is a is a big one. The one that's not on here that came up just toward the end of last week was the statewide health insurance. Can't remember what they call it girth or something like that they called it or >> Yeah, I think it was girth. GRF. >> Girth or something. Yeah. Anyway, a statewide health insurance for >> for another one that's similar to that. I don't know. But anyway, it's uh for all >> time >> for all school employees and something and I don't I don't know what that's going to end up being.
035I don't think it's such a big project or undertaking. I know it came up three, four, five maybe years ago. Um it's come back up again. Obviously, health insurance costs are going up for everybody and so I don't know how much traction that's going to get, but it's probably more of a posturing type of thing for future >> opportunities with that. Um, yeah, special ed is a big one, compensatory, all the things we've talked about pretty much every month for the last six months here. Uh, then you've got the calendar as well. uh important dates. First and second committee deadlines is the same day. Uh which is weird because usually they have two different dates for that. Um some people are just calling it the second committee deadline and not having a first or the
036other way around. And then the third committee deadline is April 17th. So all the bills pretty much have to be in uh by that time. Uh MASA spring conference is March 19th and 20th. Carla and I are both registered for the conference. I'm presenting on Friday for that. Um, I'm also at that same week I'm attending the American Indian Education Conference and we'll have staff members there and members of our AP pack will be there as well. So, I'll run back and forth between those two in the metro. Uh, if you're planning on attending graduation, that announcement is now on here. So, May 29th is the date to graduation and uh if you want if you're going to go to that um let me Angel know and arrival time will be around 6:30 for that
037as well. And then finally, Rick and his team has been have been working hard with scheduling summer projects this summer. Starting in May, I think May 9th that Monday is close to May 9th. Uh we're going to start roofing projects on the high school. We're going to start over the gymnastics in the gym area, so it shouldn't impact with noise and things too much. Uh and then the whole a big chunk of our roofing on the high school is going to be done. And there will be some smells associated with that and things. We also met this morning uh and talked about the tennis courts um redoing those uh this morning. So, the south courts will be resealed and recolored or repainted. And then the north courts are going to be uh redone totally because
038there's some pretty big cracks and holes in and that court. That's the one where that crack runs from the old light poles, >> the conduit that was running through there. So, hopefully that will be remedied and not be worried about anymore in the future. Any questions? >> That house bill about maybe limiting school lunches. Is that you think there's any traction there? >> Uh yeah, we had a meeting last Friday, a legislative meeting, and it just the thing about that is it's really the governor's >> it was like his thing. This is >> so I don't I just don't see that being changed. And it would make sense to me anyway to to graduate those types of things out. So if you're making a half million dollars a year as a household and you got
039three kids, you should be able to pay for your lunches. So you're making $150,000 even and you got one kid, you know, that that would make sense. You know, I think the numbers, this my own opinion, but I think the numbers originally were so low uh like for the income guidelines, they needed to be raised up. >> Sure. I think we'd all agree >> for families like like you could only make like $40,000 with a family of four and you had to that was just to get free lunch and below and if you made 42,000 you had to get free or reduced price lunch. I think that number needs to go up to >> some other number whatever that 80,000 >> find a number. >> Yeah. >> So yeah, I don't I just we don't
040see that happening because it was the govern I mean the governor's going to have to change his mind on one of his key projects. >> He thinks it's great. It's not going anywhere. >> It's a hard argument. >> Yeah. The funding board's going to get thousand over >> for sure. 100 some million. It's a lot of money. >> Yeah. >> Right. Committee reports. Pete and Connie, you have activities. >> Yeah. So, uh, we met last week on the 23rd of February and we mostly talked about, um, the participation activity fees and how to go about those. And so we still are kind of wanting a little bit more information on how how do we make that decision and you know not just because all the schools are are at this level but where do we
041need to be to to I know it's not going to ever pay the total cost of activities but is there some type of percentage or something that we can kind of go by so we're waiting on that information and that was kind of kind of it. Did I miss anything? >> Um, we talked about uh possibly adding a credit card fee for online ticketing. >> Y >> um currently we're not doing that. Um and obviously we're missing out on a lot of funds with that. So a question was do we want to do away with cash al together and just go strictly online? Um do we keep cash and and do online kind of a a pick. So um we're currently looking at at that as well. Um, and then we talked a little bit
042again about uh with the trainer the they had a trainer expense. We had uh um they're interested in this uh ETSs program which is basically the way I get it kind of a glorified personal trainer that will work individually with teams and putting programs together. So um there is you know a cost to that I guess. Was it the Lions Club that >> Yes. So the Lions and one other >> I think it was Clear Lake Lions and and Becker Lions. >> So they they've paid now for the next three months. Is it six? Is it six months? >> Um but they they actually paid for it so they can we can get a little bit better sampling test of >> who's going to use it, you know, right? >> You know what they can
043do. Um, and also this would be open up to all students that wanted to use it, which was >> so then that adds to the whole activity fee too because it's not totally for activities. It's for any student that wants to use that weight room. So then it's like, well then do we include that in on how we figure activity fees or you know. >> Yeah. But you could say the same for the tennis courts or anything else we have around here. It's mostly for the athletes, >> right? >> I mean that >> true. Yeah. Yeah. >> We don't have a weight room for the non-athletes to use. It's there for the athletes to use and get better. >> We don't have a tennis court because we want to. It's because tennis athletes. So, it's
044>> Yeah. >> And then Yeah. And then there was this person going to just work strictly with the teams. They're not there. They're only was it 15 hours a week? >> So, it's not a lot of time I can't imagine for any kind of individualized help as it was kind of pitched. and >> um looking forward to more information as the program, you know, gets they get to use it with it. So, >> I do have I like the credit card fee option. Unless your only option is use a credit card, then I think it's kind of robbery to put a fee on top of it. >> I think that was the only option is to use a credit card, then you can't charge them for using a credit card. That's the choice we made.
045But there's a lot of help with people that struggle with their online payments, right? >> Yeah. >> That's why you're probably good to go that way, but you're ready for a lot of push back and and like you said, elderly people that might not start attending or some games because they don't want to do it. >> We talked about a slow transition out of it where you still have the cash because it's the cash box carrying that around. So many places without it. Either way, you have you go to a state tournament, it's a cashless event. Yeah, it'd be a slow transition. >> Everything community there was a that $40,000 number. Do you remember if that was what what where where those fees those online fees came from? >> That was community ed. >> It
046was a community ed. So there's there's a lot of dollars being left table. >> All of these >> are 717. Okay. for everything. >> Food service, athletic payments. I mean, credit card fees aren't anything new. >> No, but you're starting to find places though, even like restaurants, right, that you have a cash amount and you have a credit card amount because you have to cover the fee. >> Yeah. >> I'm not not new either. And that's that's a talked about too is that a lot of places are >> bringing it back to the consumer and >> making the consumer pay it. I know the cash box is always >> Yeah, >> it's a lot of work by the activities. >> Yeah, I just I struggle because we want more people to attend. We don't want
047to make it harder for them to attend, you know. >> All right. Thank you, too. Ryan, you have a community ed? >> Yes. Actually, a lot of that stuff we spoke about, we met on Tuesday, February 10th. And so yes, the community had fees last year were $40,000. So now they're they're setting it up and their new registration programs, which is just coming online now, they have an option. You can pay like with a online check where there's no fees or credit card where there'll be a fee. So at least you have an option to not pay the fees. Um, again, we we talked about the ETSs thing and and community is working directly with activities to try to figure out how to make that happen throughout the year if it's a success. So, some
048sort of community program in the summer and then during the school year like the activities department would would work on it. Um, just a lot of more good things going on. Um, our our winter participation numbers are up 40 from last year. That's like 5%. Um, we will be offering all day prek next year as an option at ECF. >> Um, and then camp opportunities working on their summer planning. They're going to have 160 kids in their program this summer, which is which is good. They're using the space. I think they could probably get double the kids if we had the capacity that we just don't. But it's good. It's good program. So, everything's moving and really really good direction. I know I say that every time, but we've always got notes and it's organized
049and there's always positive positive movement. So, it's kind of fun to see. >> Yeah, she's doing it really well. >> For that uh when she's the Iraq, what's it what's it called? >> Ax. Yeah. So, >> we did we did the uh early education open house last Thursday, I believe it was. wasn't super well attended. Had to play Play-Doh with a lot of kids. >> And she's met with me like six times already. Just kind of see where she's at towards her budget. So, it's she's on top of it. >> Good. Good move. >> All right. Brings us to item number three, summary of the closed session. At our February 2nd regular board meeting, the school board closed a portion of this meeting pursuant to Minnesota statute 13D-05, subdivision 2B for the preliminary consideration of
050allegations or charges against an individual subject to the board's authority. Um, at that time, no formal board action was taken in the closed session. Moving on to item number four, consent agenda. Make a motion to accept the consent agenda. >> We'll second that. >> We have a motion, a second. Do we have any questions or discussions? >> All those in favor of the motion signify by saying I. >> I. Opposed. Motion carries. Brings us to item number five, resolutions for accepting donations. >> I'll make a motion to accept the resol the donations in front of us. >> We'll second it. We have a motion and a second. Do we have any discussions or questions? >> Thank you again to all the businesses. Special shout out to the Lions. They're huge this month. >> I don't
051know how Lions keep bankrolling all this. >> I think it was $237,000 last >> $237,000 >> last uh whatever our fiscal year I suppose it's called. >> Um yeah, that's how much we gave out last year. >> They have pab boos. I mean Yeah. Uh it's all >> their lunches the lunches that they put together. >> I think it's golf course and that was a golf course. Good. >> There's one one other one. >> There's people we know that really >> they have one at the brickyard. >> Do they have backs up tabs? >> They do. >> That's probably us. I bet that's us. >> Okay. >> And then we meet >> regardless. >> Yep. All right. All those in favor signify by saying I. >> I. All oppose. Motion carries. Uh, brings us to
052item number six, discussion of the April school board. I need everybody to pull their calendars up for this one. Well, if it's not a problem, we can have it that day. I just It's the Monday after Easter. We don't have school is the only thing. It's a work day. So, Kevin and I will probably be here. I'll be here. I don't know if Kevin will >> I mean, it's really a work work day for everyone else. >> Yes. >> No, >> for me, who knows? >> Is everyone okay with meeting on Monday the 6th? We will understand if students aren't. >> It's not a school day. I'm okay with you guys not here. We'll probably be here. >> Of course you will because that's why you're here. >> Okay. >> We'll just keep it at
053the six then. >> Yep. >> All right. Brings item number seven. This meeting is adjourned. Thank you all for coming. A few all over the brick.