001Hello Bloomington Public Schools community. My name is Matt Dymoke, and I'm our school board chair. And I'm Eric Melbye, your superintendent. And we'd like to share a few highlights from the October 27th School Board meeting. So at the October meeting, our student school board representatives shared some great updates that we're here to share with you today. First off, Kennedy soccer superstar Marlon Seahorn Jr. was named Mr. Minnesota Soccer and finishes his career as the all-time Kennedy leading scorer in school history. Really incredible. Amazing. And the National Honor Society at Kennedy also inducted its largest class ever this year. They’ve gotten right to work with service projects and fundraisers and really showing that Eagle excellence. It's really great. So cool. On the Jefferson side of things, the marching band held their popular, always popular indoor concert.
002The Jefferson Theatre Company hosted their annual haunted house. Had a great turnout for a weekend performance of Twelfth Night and are starting rehearsals for their winter show, which is going to be Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Our students are just amazing. There are a lot of cool things going on right now. So cool. At the board meeting in October, we heard a discussion around a new e-sports club happening at Kennedy. So, a new organization for students who are into video gaming to really come together and do e-sports together. So I'm super excited to see what this new activity looks like and how we can help engage a new group of students. Yeah, it's exciting stuff. And then we also did some budget work at the school board meeting. So budget adjustments for the upcoming next
003two school years were approved in the amount of $5 million each year. The district had previously anticipated having to make some larger adjustments. Due to ongoing, slightly declining enrollment and state and federal funding challenges. However, preliminary results, from our annual financial audit and other projections have allowed us to adjust those numbers down a little bit, which is good news. And our hope is that by identifying those lower than anticipated reduction numbers now, early, for two years, our leaders have time to work with those stable numbers and come up with recommendations that we can use. And we hope to reduce some community anxiety about what that number, quote unquote, is going to be every year. So we're hopeful that that's helpful. Yeah, it's never easy for us to go through budget reductions. But I'm glad that
004we have a solid plan to to really move through the next two years for sure. And help provide some of that context. And of course, more to come on that work. So it was a it was a good October, and we're really excited about the work that we get to continue to do in November. So we'll be right back here at the end of the month to share another update with you. We look forward to seeing you next month.