001- Skaar. - Here. - Streiff Oji. - Here. - All right. First item on the agenda would be B1, Lakeaires Elementary update. Dr. Gillespie and Cary Krusemark. Welcome. - Thank you everyone, it's great to be here. Appreciate the opportunity to speak to the Board today and share just a little bit about Lakeaires Elementary here in White Bear Lake. So just a little bit about Lakeaires Elementary. Every year, sometimes we come up with like, what's our kind of a theme, this year, we had a little activity, threw a little AI into Gemini. It was amazing. It worked so awesome the first time and it created what you see, that little graphic there, roots to grow, wings to fly. What a great way to describe elementary school building that foundation. Then I should have stopped, tried to
002do some refinements. Thank goodness I saved what I had first created and it just went downhill from there. So clearly my AI skills and navigating that needs some work, but it's a good growth area for myself. But it is kind of amazing what AI can do. And that was just one prompt. So kind of the world that our kids are walking into. A little bit about Lakeaires, our mission statement, I won't read the whole thing for you, but I'd just like to point out a few key words that resonate with our school staff, our community, our parents that created this mission statement several years ago, really is about compassion. Lakeaires is about empowering kids, giving 'em that confidence to be learners and also advocates for their selves. We really strive on thinking from an equitable
003lens or approach to what we do at our school. Really thinking about kids as individuals. What can we do to meet their needs? What are the things we don't know that we need to try to think about and get to know to make their student experience the best that it can be at our school? Really inclusivity is a huge thing at Lakeaires, we have a lot of diversity, a lot of different backgrounds that our kids and families come to us from. And just making sure we're really a welcoming community. And also of course our job is to teach kids, support kids with not only academics but social emotional learning and making sure we follow those guaranteed and viable approaches to instruction and giving our kids what they deserve so that they are able to be
004not only lifelong learners but aligned with some of our keywords that I mentioned with our mission statement. Just a little overview of just kind of the breakdown of Lakeaires. We're a little smaller this year. We had a big fifth grade that went on to sixth grade, little smaller kindergarten this year. So we're about 355 give or take. Every day is a little different. We get new enrollments, kids leaving every so often, about 355, with our pre-K, we do have one pre-K program in our school, so we're right around that 372. Pretty diverse from a socioeconomic perspective at about 49% ML I believe. Sarah Spear from Vadnais is not here to correct me, but we are the second largest ML school I think in White Bear for elementaries with 14% of our students learning English as
005a second language. Special education is at 21. I just like to point out that that is a little higher than the district average, but that is also because we provide a quite a handful of kids that come to our school that are non-public school students, Magnusson and other private entities that those students, you know, that need special education services, they come to our site and receive those supports in speech, language, academics, whatever their IEP or needs are. So sometimes my front office is kind of a revolving door with lots of friends in and out, in and out. They have the routine down, they come in, they say hi to Ms. Summers and away they go. So again, kind of that inclusive welcoming environment. And then just a little bit about, you know, what makes up
006our diversity. You know, we have 60% of our students are white and we have a lot of diversity with Hispanic, Asian, Black students, Native Island, Pacific. So a good variety of students in our community, really reminds us like what Lakeaires is all about. And that's why going back to that inclusivity and really empowering our students to see them as who they are and embrace that and what are their strengths that they bring to our school. Some accomplishments and initiatives here at Lakeaires. One thing, if you remember and were here last year when I shared we are an AVID site. We are an AVID, elementary, Advancement Via Individual Determination. We started that in 2019. We are also a BARR elementary site, which is Building Assets Reducing Risk, just helps us with a framework of how we
007are supporting students both academically and social emotionally. A little more about AVID, this is kind of my quick little overview. If a parent asks me and doesn't have a lot of time or maybe they don't want to hear the full in depth because I can talk forever about AVID, but it really is like best practices. Good teachers at any school, White Bear Lake, anywhere, are doing good instructional strategies for their students. AVID is just that with a lot more intentionality. We're really aligning instructional strategies that are in those we call WICOR, W-I-C-O-R areas. And there are lots of strategies in each of those areas, but we really kind of think about like what are the anchor ones? What are the ones that we want to see our kindergartners starting to learn? And they've really expanded
008it by fifth grade. So there's consistency stuff that they see and they're exposed to, but it also, they can expand on those skills. And of course that is stuff that they can take right into middle school and high school. Everything focus note taking. I know I could have used that in college a lot, how to take notes 'cause I didn't know how. And one of the things with note taking is teaching kids how to take notes including kindergartners. And then BARR, the multi-tiered systems of support. Again, it's a process that helps really align the work we do with our students and the needs of our students. Helps our teachers kind of focus in on kids. But one thing about BARR and you maybe you've heard this from other schools that do BARR, it's really, it
009focuses us on that strengths-based approach. I always like to say teachers are fixers, principals are fixers. We see kids, we want to help them learn, grow, expand, what are they good at? What can we make them better at? But sometimes we forget that they already come to us with lots of great things and this just helps us have that intentionality of like what are the strengths? Start with that. And not that our teachers don't do that, it's just, but like we get caught up in the, but we need to help our students and that's just outta love. So BARR is one of those great things that gives us a good framework. Student achievement. Just a few highlights, there's lots of data that we're digging through because we've hit that midyear, but just a few things
010to share. We have a midyear goal for our kindergarten and first graders this year to be at 60.5% in low risk on the early reading composite score. And we had a 12% increase from the fall baseline and our spring goal is 67%, we're already at 66. So the kindergarten and first grade teachers are really, they're locked in as they told me the other day. They're like, we're locked in, look great. And you know, growth and numbers are wonderful to share but sometimes also another piece of data is like, well how are some of those kids that are some of our most at risk students doing? Are we moving them, are they making changes? So as it says on the bottom there, 55% of our kids that were high risk in the fall score are now
011some risk. So that is a huge number of kids that were that most risk academically in K-1 are now in that kind of that middle bubble, that means they're growing. So kudos to that K-1 team. They were really, like they said, locked in, grade 2-5, a little bit broader group of grade levels. Again some things that they are really focused in on and proud of this year with their goal as a grade level 2-5 band in our fluency, 35% of the kids that were in high risk in the fall have shifted to some risk. Again, that's a big chunk of kids moving out of the most needy areas and 23% of our kids in the some risk will be kind of those bubble kids we like to say are now in low risk. So again,
012we're making good progress but we're not done yet 'cause we wanna keep moving more and more kids up and growing. As I said, you know we have a good number of students that are ML, multilingual students. And again, when we think about those kids, they have another piece that they're working through learning English. And this is something our team is very proud of at Lakeaires is that 50% of those students that scored in the high risk winter, we are at 28%. So we had 22% growth of just those ML students. So again, on the right track, making good growth. Some of our focus areas this year, two key areas we're working on this year really were to align into our new evaluation tool called the 5D and the five dimensions of learning. But our building
013has really focused in on everyone is really working on learning targets that are connected to standards so students really know what it is that they're supposed to be learning through I can statements or learning targets and then really using formative assessments. Teachers do a lot of things to see how their kids are learning, did they get that concept or not? But then using it, what are we doing to intentionally use formative assessments to inform instruction, future lessons, reteaching and so forth? But really that also kind of aligns with some of our data driven dialogue, really thinking about what do we know about our kids, what can they do? What do we need to focus in on for growth areas? And then with our instructional coaches, we are engaged in coaching cycles, which is a really
014powerful tool where our teams can collaborate with our instructional coach in a student focused collaborative conversation and really deciding what do they want to tackle. Is it a math, is it a literacy strategy, is it a lesson that they're working on? But that ongoing dialogue in the coaching cycle that really focuses it on the students and the student experience. And how does the teacher help that student get to where they want their students to be? Like any school, we're always thinking and reflecting and where do we wanna go? What do we need to refine, adjust in real time 'cause that's what we do. One of the things we've realized is there's a lot of best practices, instructional strategies that align with a lot of the work we do. And one of the things that we
015want to continue and we realize is time in real estate, right? Time is always valuable and we never have enough of it. So prioritizing some more work during the remainder of this year to really bring more professional learning around our AVID strategies. Making sure new teachers that are in our building are getting those foundations and helping our more veteran teachers get reconnected or go back and be like, oh yeah, I used to do that. Why don't I do that anymore? It's like, well we get busy and we forget. But again, aligning things to instructional best practice and continuing that ongoing learning as a staff. And so the rest of this year we're planning on three more PD sessions around AVID learning strategies and then our site team made up of a few different grade level
016team members and staff will think about, you know, what do we wanna do this summer? Get feedback from our staff and how do we want to continue the learning into next year with our professional learning, not only with AVID but other areas that might come to light. Student experience. We have a goal this year to really make sure we're doing everything we can with attendance. One thing that I'm very proud of at Lakeaires is our goal is to have 85% of our kids attend 90% of the school days. We're currently at 94% of our kids are attending 90% of the school days. Now, knock on wood, the flu bug and all things can derail my data. But that is a great start to the school year. A lot of it goes down to some action
017steps in our building improvement plan, which is good teacher communication. Parents are connected there. If there's something that we need to make sure they know about attendance or just checking in, Hey we haven't seen Johnny for three days, like what's going on? You know, it's not a gotcha but it's more of a we care about your kid, is there something going on or are they just sick? Did you forget to call? Just making sure we have good communication and making sure parents understand the guidelines 'cause sometimes they don't realize that, oh I do have to call in and communicate that my student's out. And then oftentimes those phone calls lead to our community connect team, which is made up of myself, our social worker. And we discovered that there's a barrier and we're able to
018at least try to navigate that or learn more or help the family. More times than not we are pretty successful in figuring out something to support the family, whether it's homelessness or transportation needs or maybe there's just some other dynamics that we can help with outside resources, point them in the right direction. So I went fast, I know time is precious tonight, but any questions, things that I piqued your curiosity or any comments? - Do we have any questions? Ms. Beloyed. - For AVID, how many students do you have participating overall? - In AVID, all students K-5. - Every single one? - So it's, yeah, so middle school's a little different where it's more of an elective but AVID in elementary is really like a framework of how we design instruction. So teachers are teaching
019using those best practices and all students are experiencing the strategies based on teacher instruction. Some schools I will say that are not in White Bear, but others might be only a third through fifth or a fourth and fifth. It just depends on how they're designing it. And it just sort of how it came to be. We had the opportunity to have all staff get trained in in 2019. - All staff has been trained in AVID? - In 2019. I want to have new staff coming in that's, you know, making sure we get them onboarded and trained in. But you know, but like it's never a one and done right? We always have to keep learning and growing and collaborating. - For the instructional coaches, how is their time structured? Like how many instructional coaches do
020you have visiting your building? Like how many times per week are they in the building? - Yeah, so I have one instructional coach that I share with another building, but right now we do that with basically like building student size. So I have my instructional coach 60% of the time and another building has her 40%. And we just work out a schedule that works well for both myself and the other school but obviously having consistency. So usually we're like three weeks on, then they do a session and then we have her back. But it's nice being, Willow Lane is our partner school, so there's always things that are coming up and teachers wanna collaborate. So the principals, Willow Lane, Jen Sexauer and I would just like, we're flexible, like what can we do to help
021each other out? - Do they do any type of evaluations? Maybe not like official evaluations for different teachers or different grades on maybe where there's some gaps in things or what they're doing right that we could pass on to another building or another classroom? - So you know, the instructional coaches, we have to do peer review and that's part of statute with observations, but that's something the instructional coach does. They'll partner with the principal and like who are the teachers that are on that rotation of doing the peer review and then they do an observation, they're having feedback sessions with that teacher around growth and opportunities. But that's between them and that colleague and I know a lot of times from conversations they're always talking about, oh you know, you are asking me about how
022you can increase something or this strategy or you wanna learn more, maybe you want to go watch this teacher. I know there's lots of conversations that they have about growth and opportunity or they might just say, let me get back to you, I'm gonna learn more about that and maybe we can partner again in the future on that particular question or strategy that you are curious about. - Well I'm excited to see the percentage of growth you're seeing. So thank you for that. - So am I. - Thank you. - Okay, Ms. Ellison. - All right, couple questions, Mr. Krusemark. First how many, do you know how many of the elementaries in the district have AVID at this level? - One. - So just Lakeaires. Okay. And maybe this is a question for, for Dr
023K, is that something that we're considering expanding or are we keeping it at Lakeaires only? Or Ms. Babish. - Hi, I can speak to that. So really it's about the instructional leadership I think of the principal. Really seeing a need for an instructional framework that's specific to college and career readiness and things like that. So it really needs to be a fit for that school and the needs of that school. So we have entertained and I have talked with some other elementary principals, but as of right now, it's just Lakeaires and then we have the AVID elective at the middle school and the high schools. - And then I have the same question about BARR 'cause I know that we've really been expanding BARR in the last couple of years. Are there other elementaries that
024have BARR as well? - So my colleague Sarah Spear at Vadnais is a BARR school, Willow Lane, Jen Sexauer, myself for the elementary and then I believe both middle schools. - And the high school. - And then, yeah, and then the high school. - So we were lucky enough to receive grants so that we could expand it at those elementaries. We're very active in looking at our whole student support framework, the multi-tiered systems of support. And BARR is well aware that we'd be interested in expanding it to other elementaries with that grant support. And we also try to manage how many initiatives and how many things our, you know, principals and staff are receiving. So we had Cary and Sarah, it was like right before we started LETRS that that grant came for them. So
025continuing to work with the principals again, but it is my desire with them to have BARR at all of our schools. It'll just take a little while for us to have that. - Yeah, I mean it's been really successful and I remember when we first went to elementary schools, that was a really big deal. So thank you. The other question I have, and again this is Mr. Krusemark, but also Mr. Weld, Ms. Johnson, when you were talking about special education students coming in from outside schools, from charter or private schools, how was that funded? I'll just look right over here. - We capture ADM, adjusted daily membership, for those students as well. So their attendance counts towards funding. - Okay, okay. So it's not coming necessarily from the charter school, it's coming from? - No,
026it's state aid. - Okay, good. I just wanted, yeah, I just wanted to make sure 'cause that's something that I wasn't as familiar with. So wonderful. Thank you. - Ms. Streoff-Oji. - Yes, a couple of things. Thank you for your presentation and your work, your growth around literacy. If I were to ask your teachers, it's exciting, so very exciting to see. If I were to ask your teachers what is the number one thing that changes that they have made or strategies that they're using, what would they say? - I think one of the things that they will say is LETRS, the LETRS training and the initiative we took in prioritizing that is really had educators think differently about their practice. And of course connecting it to the science of reading and the research. And just,
027again, it's founded in best practice and sometimes it's going back to, well what does our LETRS training do? What taught us, you know, when we're struggling with, you know, instructional decisions or with how to approach instruction for students that might still be struggling. And then probably another thing they would say is, you know, part of the principal's job is to, you know, keep using the same important phrase but guaranteed and viable instructions. Like, are we doing what we're supposed to do? Are we doing the curriculum with fidelity and my kindergarten team for example, they will just say, well we don't do anything special, we just teach the curriculum. Well I know there's more to it than that 'cause they are just special themselves and do great work. But that's probably the foundation is like starting
028there and making sure you do that with fidelity and with high integrity and quality instruction. And then the rest, you know, is just makes it even better. So not drifting away from what has been designed by many people in our district, including many educators who are part of that instructional team that has helped design and make decisions around curriculum. - Thank you. AVID, I don't know enough about it, but is it something that is aligned with standards? - It's really, for elementary, it's really founded in instructional practices, best practices strategies. So, you know, if I was to pick, you know, like the reading strand or the reading area for WICOR, we like to say, how do you make it rigorous? You know, there's, oh now I'm drawing a complete blank on the strategy. Jen, you
029probably know what strategy I'm talking about reading. - Marking the text. Focused note taking or critical reading strategies. There you go. I had it, it disappeared. So, but yes. You know, so really again, what are some of those key strategies that are high impact to help students grasp those concepts? - So not necessarily the standards, but how to help them meet those standards. And the last thing, have you seen any, you were talking about your attendance rates. Have you noticed any change in the last month in your attendance rates in relation to the activity around ICE in the region? - A little bit. It's been very, like, I thought we would have like, you know, going into it, I thought I would see, you know, a certain number of kids just not coming to school.
030But it's been very day to day. We'll have families give us a heads up that yeah, we're probably gonna be out for a few days and then they show up the next day. And I think it's just for every family it's different and every family's comfort level of what they're dealing with. And you know, I can't imagine what they're working through. I just know that if they're coming into our doors, you know, we're ready for 'em. Keep school as consistent and safe as possible and you know, with all the things that are going on outside for those little friends, like the best thing we can do at our school is just, you know, make it nice, easy, calm, consistent 'cause then they can predict what the day will bring and that brings safety and security
031as a student. So it hasn't been as significant as some of my other colleagues, even though we do have a quite a diverse population. And again, every day is different. You never know. - Thank you. - But I'm glad they're there. Most of them are there almost every day, so. - Great. - Okay, Mr. Skaar. - You go ahead. - Go ahead. - I was just gonna thank you for the presentation and also you probably regret having talking about AVID and BARR because now I got another question. So maybe note to self, don't include it. So for AVID, would you use that for where you would have more inexperienced teachers or what would be the driving force for using that? - So with AVID, as I said, it's good teachers. Any school, White Bear Lake,
032somebody across, not too far away that we don't like to talk about. You know, those competiting schools around here. Any school, we know good teachers do good practices in all of them. And you could go into any of those schools and if you were aware of what strategies kind of fall into the AVID strategies, you would see it happening in many schools, they just don't call it AVID perhaps, but because we have identified, well, AVID has identified really strong core strategies and we know there's many, many more. These are some of the high impact strategies. And we want kids to really learn these skills or be exposed and engage in these strategies when they're doing learning. Philosophical chairs is a great way to debate and not just debate because I like, our kindergartners get into
033using philosophical chairs, for example. We teach them how to read a text, learn something about it. Literally they will say dinosaurs or unicorns, but they have to then I think dinosaurs are better because, and they have to go back to like why they think the reasoning is behind that and it's going back to the evidence that they read. But you know, that's a kindergartener. But as we, you know, get that with older kids with more complex texts, they can really, they're using a lot of analysis and synthesis of information to engage in pretty high level debate conversations. And so that's just an example of like a strategy that would be good in any arena. - I'm just curious, I mean, do you benchmark that with other schools that may not have that same framework? You
034know, you seem very confident that it's working, so that makes, I think that makes everybody in the room feel good. But how do you know? - Well, I think some of it goes to the data of like, how are we doing academic? I know I don't have AVID data from the national perspective, but there's a lot of data that we could reference and share that later. But one of the things like you said, like how do you know or what that decision like, it creates a foundation for all teachers in my building. And it depends on what's the makeup of your building. You have a lot of young teachers, old teachers, old teachers, veteran teachers. Oh, that was recorded. - We know what you meant, we know what you meant. We're not offended. - So,
035but you know, the the point I guess is just, you know, it creates high impact strategies, which we're just doing it with more intentionality. Good teachers will do a lot of the same things, but maybe they're not as intentional. So if we have the same core three or four strategies in the writing area in kindergarten, well it's gonna look different in kindergarten, but then first grade, second grade. And we just keep building onto that, making it more rigorous. And with all those strategies, it allows our kids to really have a good foundation of being successful as they continue through the school grades. - All right, thank you. And the other thing just on the attendance, that's great and you know, I think the parents and the guardians of those kids also deserve a shout out
036as well. Thank you. - Yeah, no, we appreciate that too 'cause when they get 'em to school and that's half the battle, then we can do our job. - Right. Thank you. - All right. - Ms. Daniels? - Yeah, just hi. Just wanted to, I'm glad you mentioned special education and realizing that you're a little bit higher than the district average. So you get the Community of Grace kids that our district is obligated to evaluate, write IEPs and provide services for all the private schools within our school boundaries. So there used to be five or six, I don't know what we're up to now or if we've lost a couple. I know St. Pius I think went to Liberty Classic and we have St. Mary's and we have a Montessori. And so it's, I just
037want the public to realize that our public schools provide all that for our private school kids and we develop good relationships with those principals, with families. So we know that we want all of our kids in our community successful. So it's great that you said it's kinda like a revolving door, like kids are coming in and they're coming to their services at your building and welcoming them in just as you would any student coming from the community. So I think that's great. And I know you have quite a, I think you have a cluster of level two program there too in your building. You're providing lots of good special education services too. So thanks for that. - Thank you. - All right. I just want to close by saying thank you for everything you're doing.
038You know, one of the things that caught me was when you talked about your teaching your students to take notes. And I thought that's great because having students take notes is one way of transferring knowledge from your working memory to your short term. And so that's helping them remember it then because we get so much information, it's easy to, your brain is gonna filter it out, but by taking those notes, it lets your brain know it's important. So keep that up. That's great, and keep up your attendance. That looks awesome. So thank you for everything you do. Sure. - Just because you brought up charter schools. So I was gonna say public charter schools, we do not provide special ed services for it 'cause public charter schools are like their own district, so they have
039to provide those. So it's the private schools. - Point of clarification. - All right. - Thank you for your presentation. - Thank you. - Okay, we're gonna move on to discussion item, excuse me, B2 Lincoln Elementary, Dr. Gillespie and Mr. Morris. - Hello, my name's Brian Morris. I'm the principal at Lincoln Elementary and I want to thank Mr. Arcand, Dr. Kazmierczak and the Board for having me here today. So I'm just going to, similar to what Mr. Cary Krusemark did, just share some things about Lincoln and about the things, the good work that we do. One piece about Lincoln is that, you know, we think about Lincoln is our goal is to create a safe and respectful learning environment where our students can attain their hopes and dreams and explaining to get into more detail
040about that. But just this evening, I just wanna give you a brief overview of Lincoln, sort of who we are and our goals and initiatives for this year. Snapshot of our current academic progress in reading and math and sort of how we respond to student data in reading and math, our work on school climate and culture. So that's our house system that we have is a large part of that. And how we're building student and staff connections within the school. And then our ongoing work, right? This is, we're getting late into January. We've got a lot of work that has been done. A lot of work still to do over the course of the year. So just to sort of share some of those efforts with you as well. So I come into this thinking,
041oh, the School Board, they know where Lincoln Elementary is, but just to give the public as a whole that information. We are in a very vibrant neighborhood school, very close to downtown. We have our musical going on right now. Our rehearsals just began at the Central Middle School auditorium. We are in walking distance. I walk the patrols over at the end of the day, those that are in the musical. So we're in walking distance to Central. When the weather's nice, we're also walking distance to downtown and we take advantage of that. Lincoln is known for its focus on student achievement, welcoming climate, active parent involvement, and just our passion to partner with families and guardians, just to prepare the whole child to reach their hopes and dreams. And also just as Mr. Krusemark did, we
042had a group of teachers, community members and parents come together twice over the past 10 years to lay out a mission statement. Again, the pieces that I, you know, I am not a principal who has every part of the mission statement and every action move memorized, but just that safe and respectful learning experience and achieving hopes and dreams, like those are the words that I feel sort of embody the work that we do. Those are the words that, you know, I think charge get families and teachers charge to serve our students the best they can. So who are we? Right now, we have about 451 students. That's 16 K-5 classrooms. So that's three classrooms per grade, except we have a small incoming kindergarten class this year. We have just two classes, small outgoing fifth grade
043class, two classes. We also host the Explorations program and we have three classrooms there. And those are multi-age grades three through five classroom for our sort of a magnet for the district for our advanced learners. Like most of our or all of our elementary schools, we offer PE, music and art classes. We also have a special service cluster classrooms within our school as well as partner and have onsite services from a licensed therapist through North Homes and additional student support and Reading Corps and Math Corps. Our building goals and initiatives just, we're gonna focus on our academic and student experience goals. Our academic goals for the year is at more than 80% as a building, but then in some of our grades where our students are starting at a higher percentage rate in the fall,
044we have the goal of 85% or higher. We'll score low risk in reading and math, and that's as measured by our FastBridge assessments, our screening tools that we use fall, winter and spring. We have a goal of closing gaps between student groups and academic achievement, reducing that by at least five percentage points this year, as well as gaps in attendance and our student experience goal. So that is how our students feel about the school, whether or not our students are coming to school. We were looking at at least 90% of students reporting positively to a measure of school belonging. And at least 90% of our students in attendance 90% of days. So how are we moving towards those? If we look at academic progress, this is kindergarten and first grade, I know you've seen some
045of these graphs before. We're looking for as many kids as possible in that green low risk range. So in reading this year in kindergarten, we started off the year with close to 72% of our kids in low risk. And our kindergarten team has gotten our 86% of our kids that sort of our halftime check-in in the winter to get into that low risk. In first grade, we started off the year a little bit below 72%, we're still in that 71 to 72% range. So our kids, our percentage of kids at low risk has stayed about the same from fall to winter. And again, we're looking for that increase in kids in low risk. And just a reminder, you know, and I think it's important just looking at these two slides, when the percentage of kids
046in low risk stays the same, those kids, we still have kids growing. They're just growing at the same rate of the national norm. When we have an increased number of kids in the low risk bucket, we are achieving accelerated growth compared to the national norm. So I don't want to just like right now, our reading hadn't increased low risk from fall to winter. Those kids are still growing. They're just showing growth at the national average. When we look at math at our primary years, we see increased percentage within low risk in both kindergarten and first grade. We started kindergarten with close to just below 80% of our kids at low risk. And by now, the winter check-in, kindergarten team has gotten us to 95% of our kids in the early math measure are in the
047low risk. In first grade, they've taken close to 83% of the kids at low risk and moved that to 87. So both of those areas showing that accelerated risk higher than the national norm. Looking at our upper grades, they have another band level, the blue band is quote advanced. So we really focus on the green and the blue. And really what you wanna see across the board is, again, I talked about with the primary age, the green expanding here, I think it's a little easier to look at, is the red and the yellow shrinking, right? Are the percentage of kids in the high risk and the medium risk is that decreasing? And you'll see at a lot of our grade levels in reading, it is. In second grade, we're seeing that, or you know what,
048I've got my next slide just gives you a bar. It makes it a little easier for comparison. That bar is the, if we can get a red and yellow down below that bar, then we have 80% or more of our kids at low risk. So you can see second grade has a little bit further to go, but they're moving in that direction. Third grade in reading has increased the kids in the low risk and advanced, getting down to that 80%, fourth grade stayed about the same, right around 80%, in fifth grade, we've got our kids that are in low risk and advanced has decreased a little bit. So there's, you know, we've got, I feel for the most part, our kids are heading in the right direction. What do our teachers do when they see,
049oh, we don't, you know, our winter check-in doesn't show us moving towards that 80% goal, that 85% goal. Our kids are still growing, but we've lost a little bit of ground in the percentage of kids. And that's really where, you know, I think when I spoke at the work study meeting last year, we had a really heavy focus on our collaborative teams and building that collaborative team time. That's where a lot of this work takes place. This week, we're having our data, team data meetings that are related to these winter check-ins where we look at who are our kids, our specific kids that are not where we want them to be. What are we gonna do both in our core learning time, in reading and math to push them in the right direction? What are
050we gonna do in our WIN time, our 30 minutes of what I need time where teachers take into smaller groups and really focus on some of those skills that might be holding them back. So we're at that part of the cycle right now with that goal of having all of our kids at that low risk for being behind by the end of the school year. Just looking at math real quick, you'll see that our second grade, again, moving our kids accelerated growth compared to the national norms. Third grade, the same, fourth grade, the same, fifth grade, about the same as the national norms. All of them getting to that 80% line or getting awfully close and moving in the right direction. Just next, transitioning from sort of that academic progress in reading and math to
051sort of what we're doing to come through on some of the parts, sort of the kids' feeling of belonging, providing that safe and respectful environment, making Lincoln a place where families and kids feel like their hopes and dreams can be accomplished. Actually, I see I can't click through slides and follow my own notes at the same time, but I did wanna share, we had our kindergarten open houses two weeks ago, three weeks ago. And at Lincoln and at a lot of other schools, we asked families and some kids, what are your hopes and dreams for your kids as they enter our system? And I brought a few of them with me tonight that I just wanted to share. Some of the parents and like some of the parents shared, you know, to make new friends,
052become a good learner, listener and friend, to be happy and healthy and feel accepted by peers, to be a kind and a respectful man and to help improve the lives of everyone he interacts with, another parent, other parents shared happiness, well-rounded, kind, independent and confident. And then the last one, I'm pretty sure this is a student hope and dream. I want to go bowling and I want to go to kindergarten. So if that we can take care of, give the kid a 20 and drop 'em off at Flaherty's and Iron Hills, but we are gonna get ready for kindergarten. So just that idea of, you know, we get kids in the door, we work hard to help them learn reading, math, writing, science, social studies to be good friends, members of a community, members of
053a community that give back to the community. And that's not just in the reading and math, right? That's building a community within our school, that's making our school a valuable part of the community. And one way, so a way that we are building community at Lincoln is through our House system. And that's really the core part of those sort of community building, nurturing the whole child pieces of our mission plan, the House system. You can switch your mind to Harry Potter a little bit. The House system, our students are all organized into five different houses and within those houses, we have house families, right? I'm part of House Quantum. Quantum is the House of Respect. We also have Fitus, Unitatus, Forditudo and Compassio. Each of those are built on sort of one of these core
054attributes that we want to build in our students. And really a lot of the work happens in our house families. So within Quantum for instance, the kids are in families of 25 students per family and two adults that are a part of that family. That family are students K-5, they are students from Explorations, from Neighborhood Lincoln. And the staff are not just teachers, they're teachers, they're principal, they're other professional staff. They are custodians, they are clerical, they are nutrition services. And we really work hard to, you know, I'll be with my house family for 15, 20 minutes and then I'll hustle down. And so that either the nurse or my admin assistant, Joel, can get up to their houses or nutrition services can get up and at least support their house family for a while.
055But it's building those relationships. The idea is that our kids will have another adult in the building that is their adult. It's not just their classroom teacher. It's not just their PE, music and art teacher. It is me, it is a fifth grade teacher that is another adult that is, is a go-to person for a kindergartner. And that kindergartner is gonna be in that house family and with those adults throughout their six years. Again, building that relationship. They're also building relationships vertically. So you'll see kindergartners working with fifth graders as they make placements for Serenity. We have, we'll be making, doing service project for Children's Hospital coming up in our next House family time. So that collaborating, learning together, building those relationships so that we really feel like a family. Again, like I said, we
056do it through family days throughout the year. We have four family days, we have four House assemblies. Back to feeling a little bit like Harry Potter again. We do collect House points. A student earns a House point if they are caught by an adult going way above the line in some of our core values of responsibility, respect, and readiness. Kids earn those House points at the end of the year. One of the Houses wins, last year, Team Quantum, not that I have favorites, but I am a member of House Quantum. House Quantum won the House trophy. This year, Compasio is really strong. And even there like teaching how to be positive yet competitive, yet supportive between the houses. That takes effort. Like we have had to do some work to teach kids that like this
057House point thing is fun, but we're not gonna go overboard with it and we are gonna cheer and support everyone in their successes. This House system is majority teacher driven. It came from our teachers, the House committee is who steers it. I am sort of like the focus leader, the keeping us on track leader to the good work that the House committee does. The House committee also collaborates with the PTA and the PTA provides a lot of the, both the functional support and some of the monetary support for things like our T-shirts. The fact that we have house flags hanging in the building. The PTA is very collaborative and supportive in that. So that just gives you an idea about one of the things that we are doing to build community, a community that kids
058want to be a part of, a community that we see kids hopefully taking beyond Lincoln Elementary. Some of our ongoing work, like I said, it's only January and we want to keep the growth going academically and in social emotional and building relationships. Coming up, professional development is looking at best practices for supporting multilingual learners and all kids and how that ties into this LETRS learning that we did over the, most of our teachers did it three years ago, but just the foundation of best practices in teaching reading. We're working to build our instructional capacity in math. We have a series of short professional development around the eight most effective practices in teaching math. We're doing that both to build our current skills as well as prepare for change in our math curriculum that's coming next
059year. And a change in the math standards at the state level, we're working to support student agency. This really came out of one of the areas in our 5D plus instructional framework. One of them is building student agency. We have our teachers at the fourth grade level really went all in on that and are looking how to build, how to help our kids become independent learners. How to help them be confident in asking questions and some of the success in work. You know, that type of stuff, sort of bubbles around the building. And we're hoping to do some professional development for the entire staff along those lines as well as to continue to refine our collaborative practices. We have two to three collaborative inquiry time by a grade level team on Thursdays over the course
060of every month. How do we structure those? What are the best practices at looking at student data? Identifying a need, adjusting our instruction or reteaching, coming back, seeing did we get the job done? Did we move our kids the way we needed to? That's what that has looked like in our professional development over the course of this year And moving forward. And questions, before you have questions, our musical Willy Wonka, we're in full swing. That happens at the end of February. Look for it at, like I said, Central Auditorium, end of February. - Thank you for that presentation. Do we have any questions? Ms. Streiff-Oji? - Thank you. Thank you for your work that you're doing with your students and I have a question about the, and I don't know if you know the answer
061to this or not or how this has played out over the years, but when I see 86% of your kindergarten students went from 72 about to 86% low risk, is that a predictable indicator of how they'll do in first grade? Have you seen a pattern of that kindergarten data? - I would say yes and no. Right? I think because of that we start off first grade with strong, kids coming in with strong skills. You always see some sort of summer, I call it backslide, right? But we do see kids come in with strong skills. You also see patterns between grade levels that you have a hard time explaining. Like just, you know, I would say this type of increase at the kindergarten level we've seen for at least three years now really as they really
062went whole hog into LETRS and yet still over the summer going from spring to fall, we see it recede a bit. And whereas you would expect it to stay exactly the same, right? Because things staying exactly the same. Kids are still growing but they're growing the same as the rest of the nation for some reason from spring to fall, we do drop back a little bit compared to that national norm. And that's hard to explain. And I can say that that's a three year pattern that I've observed and I don't have real strong explanations for it but so yeah, so many things go into our student's success but yeah, we look for those patterns and look for how do we affect them and move them in the right direction. - I know it's much more
063complex. - It's really complex. - Than it seems like it should be in having taught kindergarten, first grade. I understand that. I have one last question about your House system and how you have it set up. Is it multi-age or single grade? - It's multi-age, so it's the whole school and when you're in a family you've got just as many kindergartners as you've got fifth graders there. And that's really, it's a nice to see opportunity for the older kids to lead, for the younger kids to be paired up and learn from and follow the example of the older kids. That's one of the things that I think in immediate practice that feels the best 'cause you see that and you're like, oh, yeah. That's how it's supposed to work. - Do you try to keep
064them in the same house? - They stay in the same house. - All the way through, same teacher. - And you know who the adult is might change if a teacher moves, retires or moves to a different building or something like that. But we work hard to keep it consistent and then you don't have to get a new t-shirt every year. Saves money. - Kids grow. That's true. We have said that we buy t-shirts in kindergarten and we buy t-shirts in third grade and that was a little ambitious and so, I dunno, some kids are squeezing into some t-shirts and we gotta do something about that right now. It's like when they still wear their be a bear and they're in second grade, it's like, you know, it's time to retire. - Thank you. -
065Mr. Skaar. - Thank you for the presentation and being here. I just have a question on enrollment is where is enrollment? Is enrollment going up, flatlining, declining? - I would say this year with a small second, or I'm sorry, small incoming kindergarten class. We have 45 kindergartners right now. That is surprisingly small. We always start the, you know, we always assume we're gonna have 60 since this is my fourth year at Lincoln and since I've been here, this is the first time we've, you know, usually we're at the 57 to 62 range, right? And this was the first time we're 45 and I'm having a, I'm really, I don't have a good explanation for it. So I'm really hoping that we bounce back this year. We've been working extra hard. We all made sure that
066we had this kindergarten open house early. I know that our communications department district wide is really working on it. We are following up with the families that are within our census numbers that we haven't heard from yet. So I don't know if this year's lower number for my school's incoming kindergarten 'cause it's not the same all of our schools. I think we had a little bit smaller of a kindergarten class this year district wide, but we did have schools who, whose kindergarten increased this year. So yeah, I was surprised by it. Some of the other principals are like, yeah, that happens every once in a while. Don't worry about it. But I am worried about it, but you know, I want it moving back in that direction. I want three kindergarten sections. I want 60
067kids. - Actually, I think you're right to worry about it and I think it would be good to get an explanation and I think you're gonna need help from the district staff to find that explanation, especially with the parents that have chosen competitive schools and not White Bear Lake. We should find out why and figure out why and see if we can, you know, bring 'em back. - Yeah. Well, and it's, yes. And I think about like, just thinking about knowing what parents want for their kids. Like what, you know, like we asked the question at our kindergarten open house, what are your kids' hopes and dreams and both parents to know that we care what those are and for us to know what those are so that can guide our work. Right? And yeah,
068I mean, we feel that when we have kids in our classrooms, we put our whole heart into it and we work hard and do well by our kids, by our families and we need them here. - Thank you. - Thanks. - I have a quick question for you then. - Yes. - Knowing that the location of Lincoln and how close it is to Otter and with the start of the Spanish immersion. I'm wondering how many of those kids, because they could almost walk there from Lincoln, so I wonder how many went there. - Right. And I might, I'm gonna say not a lot. This past year, I think we, if I remember correctly, it was three Lincoln families made that choice. So, yeah. And that's actually, to be honest, that's a little less than I
069expected 'cause that's a pretty strong program, but it was not a huge draw on the Lincoln community. - Okay, thank you. Ms. Beloyed. - The Explorations program. How many students, I know that's multi grade. How many students are in that particular program? - Right now, our classes are at 26 and 27, so that puts us a little under about 80. So three classrooms there. We usually invite about 30 to 40 kids every year. And you know, last year I wanna say we had a big incoming class at 28 or 29. - Has that been pretty consistent? - It has been, we've fluctuated between two and three classrooms over the course of the program. It's probably, is it 10, 12 years old now? And we've been pretty consistent for the past. This is our third year
070with three classrooms and right now, they're kind of big, like I said, 26, 27. And so I don't see it. - So you have three teachers then? - Three teachers. - Not everybody probably knows what the Explorers program is. Do you maybe wanna? - Sure. So it's a district wide, I'm gonna say magnet, that might not be the exact correct, but it does serve all students in the district, plus some kids that come in from outside the district in grades three through five. And they're what we call advanced learners, gifted and talented students. We base invitations to that on three measures of ability, I'm gonna get it wrong, three measures of ability, achievement and sort of the skills needed to be successful in sort of that type of, I wanna say heavy on project based
071and self-directed learning and growth. And all kids across the district, similar to like Matoska, any student in the district gets busing to Matoska. Any student who's part of Explorations in the district gets busing to Explorations. We also have a handful of younger siblings that'll introduce, transfer to Lincoln. And yeah, it's the program really, it really focused on on project based learning, really focused on sort of these explorations. So explorations of culture, deep dives into our city and community, deep dives into history. And through those explorations, that's where a lot of the math, the science, the reading and writing is taught and learned as well. - The current teachers submit recommendations for students. Correct, for that program? From other schools. - We screen all kids in the district for the program well, I should say for
072advanced learner identification and then invitation to the program. Part of that is, so the part that is sort of your executive functioning skills measure is called the Hope Scale, and that is based on a teacher survey. So we're getting that piece of data as well. - Okay, thank you. - Ms. Daniels. - Yeah, I just wanna say, my great niece goes to your school, she wears your T-shirt proudly. Loves Lincoln. - She's a lovely young lady. - Well, thank you. See her around all the time. We always talk about Aunt Kathleen. - Great Aunt Kathleen. And I just wanna say, you know, just anecdotally, my own kids went to Lincoln. They're early 40s, late 30s. But I look up and down our street and up and down, I mean, this is maybe getting to not
073a scientific answer for why maybe you only have 45 kindergartners or, you know, Dan wondering that too of kids left the district or not. But I look at our street, long street, lots of houses. They used to have kids in them. And now people like me are staying in our houses a long time. And so we don't have the neighborhoods that we used to have, at least in my area of the Lincoln neighborhood. So maybe, you know, some of that is some of our house, they're not big houses, they're average size houses. People stay in them. You know, maybe, it's not scientific, but maybe that has something to do with, you know, the people are staying and the kids have grown. I don't know. A little bit, maybe a little bit of that. - Yeah,
074it's a wonderful neighborhood. It does have everything from starter homes on up. - But yeah. And some they were newer when my family was younger. But I know a lot of those families, and they're, again, around my demographic, are a little younger and they're still in those family homes. So I don't know. Who knows? Lots of questions. - No, and it is, so, you know, I've been in the district a long time and used to teach high school. And right now one of the fun things is a lot of those families, their parents, there's a lot of former students of mine. - I'd like to come back to Lincoln. A great school. Thank you. - Can I just respond to Kathleen for a minute? I think I was talking to somebody from the White Bear
075City Council and they were talking about how they want to bring families in, but people like it so much they don't move out. So we probably need, you know, you and some of the other people have to move to make room for the people with kids. Is what I would suggest. - I know, I know. Ours was a great family home and still could be. - Right? - But we're still doing the stairs. - Yeah. I get it. - Thank you. Let me know when you're moving. Thank you very much for the presentation and keep up the great work. As a student from Lincoln, many, many years ago, I started there in the 60s, so I have a special place in my heart for Lincoln. - You've gotta stop by. We have a much nicer
076gym than what you had when your children attended. Was basketball going on? - When I was at Lincoln, that small gym I thought was very large. - It's a very nice cafeteria now. Thank you very much. Now we're gonna go ahead and transition to B3, fiscal year 24-25 annual audit report. Mr. Wald, Ms. Johnson and Mr. Eichten. - Thank you Chair Arcand. Annually the district contracts with an accounting firm to conduct an audit of our financial records for the previous year. Here to present on the audit for fiscal year 2024. 2025 is Jim Eichten from LB Carlson, our certified public accountant, who audits our record or audited our records for this past year. So welcome Mr. Eichten, we'll turn it over to you. - All right, well thanks Mr. Wald. Members of the board, Chairman,
077Superintendent. Thanks for having me this evening. I did have a PowerPoint. Look at that. Well done. My name is Jim Eichten with LB Carlson. As mentioned, I'm here this evening to provide the audit results for the year ended June 30th, 2025. It is a requirement in state law that the district complete an annual financial statement. That particular financial statement has been expanded by the district to complete what's called an annual comprehensive financial report, an ACFR, that particular ACFR is about 160 pages long. So there's a lot of information and a lot of historical information, both from the financial results for this year, but also from a 10 year perspective. As well as some supplemental information regarding activities of the district, some strategic plans, as well as some financial analysis. That particular ACFR is required to
078be audited by an independent certified public accountant, a CPA, which is my role with the district. The audit process is guided by various agencies, both the Minnesota Department of Education, as well as the Office of the State Auditor here in the state of Minnesota guide the audit process for us. The federal government also provides audit processes related to the federal single audit of federal awards, which I'll get to as well. As I mentioned here, those particular audit processes include us auditing the financial statements as mentioned, but also auditing your compliance with Minnesota laws and regulations as well as federal laws and regulations. So as part of this particular audit process, we issue a multitude of documents. One of which of those documents is a management report. That management report is my document that I issue
079as part of this particular process to summarize the audit results in a format that can be understood in a, you know, a quick consumed methodology. So what you'll find in that particular document, one of the items that is highlighted is this particular year, we have not issued or completed the single audit of federal awards. The single audit of federal awards is really our auditing of the federal monies you received. The federal government had a delay in the issuance of the compliance supplement, which is the standards that we use to audit federal awards. As a result, the Minnesota Department of Education extended the deadline to March to complete and submit that particular audit. So this evening I'll be presenting the regular audit, if you will, and then I'll be back if need be to present the
080single audit when it's completed prior to that March 31st deadline. So the audit results, as mentioned in the management report, are summarized as follows. On the district's financial audit, we were able to issue an unmodified opinion. It's a clean opinion. It was the opinion that you were looking for going into the process. That particular audit opinion does have an emphasis of a matter specifically related to highlighting the implementation of an accounting standard, governmental accounting standard 101 on compensated absences was a pretty significant change in the financial report. And as a result, we're required to highlight that particular element. It doesn't really change the opinion, just emphasizes to the reader that we implemented that change. So in the financial results of the audit, as mentioned, we did audit your internal controls over the financial activities of
081the district. We did have one audit finding to report. That particular audit finding relates to a duplicate payment, which ultimately resulted in an audit adjustment that occurred as part of the preparation of the financial statements. That particular audit finding is summarized in both the management report, but also in the special purpose audit reports. One has a little more detail than the other, but ultimately what occurred in that particular finding was we noted as part of our search for unrecorded liabilities, as well as in conjunction with our auditing of your purchases of subscriptions, a duplicate payment. So the same invoice was paid twice for the same subscription, which is mostly a technology subscription in this particular case, that particular process in our audit was identified as a finding. It is something that we noted as part
082of the process. It wasn't identified by the district. And as a result, it becomes a finding in the audit process. What does that mean to the district specifically? You know, this audit finding, as I've mentioned many, many times, that these presentations audits come with findings. Our goal and the goal of the Board as well as the administration, is to develop some corrective action plans around that particular finding. Ultimately determining why did this occur? How are we gonna look into developing corrections, and how are we gonna work towards correcting it so it doesn't happen again? And I'm not back here next year with the same finding. So there has been a corrective action plan issued as part of this. That was a summary document that was submitted. When I complete my presentation, I'm going to open
083up this particular discussion and the district staff is gonna actually talk about the corrective action plan. We did briefly talk about the corrective action plan when we had a opportunity to meet with the members of the Board earlier. Forget the actual group that that entails there. But we did go through a number of items previous to this discussion, and we can talk about that more once I complete my presentation. So continuing on, we did have, like I mentioned, testing related to the Minnesota Legal Compliance Standards. We do audit statutes that are on a list that are guided by the Office of the State Auditor. And we did not have any findings to report specifically to our testing of those particular laws and regulations. So continuing on, there was a finding last year, as I mentioned,
084you know, as part of our audit process, we are required to look at prior audit findings and develop audit procedures in and around those particular findings so that our audit does ensure that the same finding didn't happen again. So we adjusted our risks, we adjusted our audit process so that we tested sufficiently to verify that those findings didn't reoccur. That particular finding last year was in and around the accounting for contracts payable and construction and process. And as you can note, based on my presentation as well as the documents that didn't, we did not have any repeat findings in that area. The district did an exceptional job of looking into last year's finding and correcting the actions that were noted and developing better and improved standards related to that particular finding. So moving forward in
085my presentation, my report does go through the financial results of the year, as well as utilizing some comparable information that are provided by the state of Minnesota. This particular graphical presentation that's in my report summarizes fund balances that are fund balances as a percentage of expenditures. So fund balances as a percentage of expenditures is a widely used ratio. This particular set of standards and information is really provided by the Department of Education, so people can use it as comparable information. So what you're seeing here is the yellow graph is the statewide fund balances as the percentage of expenditures really accumulating every district in the state and comparing that to their overall operations. What's occurring in our state from a fund balance perspective, is it's been pretty flat probably from years prior to 2020. It was
086about 20% of operations were in fund balance and equity. The fund balances actually statewide increased during the pandemic. It was ultimately less costly to operate a district during the pandemic 'cause of remote learning environments that were occurring. As we got out of the pandemic, fund balances started to go down related to less available federal dollars. As you remember, a lot of COVID funding was provided, and once those dollars started to dwindle, fund balances statewide became lower. In 2024, there was a one-time increase in funding, if you remember, it went up to 4% of that one year in general education aid, many districts actually determined that it would be best if we don't spend all of those dollars and utilize them as we move forward. So you can see that there's a one time kind of
087increase in fund balances statewide, which we anticipate is gonna go down as we move forward. The district's fund balances here again are statewide percentage calculations. I'll show individual district percentages, which are subtly different based on rule and based on district's calculations compared to how the state does it. But you can see over time, the fund balances have gone down after initiatives that were put forth by the district during those eras, during those timeframes. And it really settled in at percentages in between 9%. And at the end of the year, this year was 10.9%. And I'll get to individual districts percentages as we go to the next couple of slides. So this particular slide shows the fund balance position of the district for the last five years in comparison as well to a cash position, as
088well as just showing expenditures, which really shows the volume of the district's activities. You can see that the district's expenditures increased from 139 million to 147 million showing the change, the overall increase of the district as a whole. You're a growing organization and that is reflected by your expenditures. For the year ended June 30th, 2025. The fund balances of the district did increase as reflected in this particular graph. They increased by about 1.3 million, that compared it to a fund balance budget that projected about a $700,000 increase. So the actual results were very close to what was expected in the budget this year and are reflected here in this particular graph. We do provide information on this particular graph, which shows the breakdown of the fund balances by category. You can see here that the
089total fund balance is now 15.9 million compared to 14.5 the year before. The unassigned amount amounts that are not set aside for various restrictions or assignments ended at 12.7 million. Why that's important, the district does have a fund balance policy in place. That particular fund balance policy strives to maintain a minimum unassigned fund balance of 8%. And as you can see for the year ended, you're at 8.6% of fund balance as a percentage of operations. So you are meeting year fund balance policy as of June 2025 as shown on the presentation here. I did provide quite a bit of additional information in my report regarding budget to actual results comparisons of last year to this year from a revenue and an expenditure perspective. I wanted to reflect on a few of those items in this
090particular presentation. State aids revenues this year were, were over budget mainly in a couple of categories, general education and transportation aids, as well as other revenues specifically related to things like student activities and other revenues, gifts and such, which are generally conservatively budgeted. The district state aids increased almost $5 million this past year. Most of that was increases in the formula as well as increases in special education aid, which are generally related back to the increase in the overall costs of special education program. Your district is experiencing a decrease in federal resources as spending or available grants are going down, which was to the tune of about a million dollars this past year. On the expenditure side, the expenditures were over budget by about 3.5 million, which matched at some level, the revenues ultimately netting
091to a very close to budgeted expectations. Many of the amounts over budget were very typical to other audits that we work on in this area. Things like transportation, contracted services, special education costs are areas that are growing in almost all districts that we're working with. One area that the district also had was a technology purchase towards the end of the year, which wasn't ultimately in the original budget. And we were actively purchasing that to get ahead of those particular purchases. The same with the expenditure trends. I looked at my report as it came here and things like health insurance costs is a major increase that we're experiencing all over our community and you're no different when it comes to that. Other areas like transportation, long-term facilities maintenance are also areas that are increasing in your
092district, but others are increasing similarly. The district has other operating funds as well, a food service fund, a community service fund, the food service funds, as you can see here, is doing quite well in terms of its overall fund balance. It ends the year at about 33% of operations, which is a good position to be in. The community service fund, as you can see here, is functioning at a deficit fund balance position. Most of that is in school readiness. In the preschool program. In my previous comments and discussions with the Board, there's an active working environment to work on eliminating that particular deficit that we're seeing on that particular page. The district also has a pretty significant self-insured health benefits fund. This particular fund is a self-insurance program, which ultimately can have a lot of
093ebbs and flows. Health insurance is becoming very expensive, if you will, and these activities can be, you know, all over the place, if you will, in financial results. You can see at the end of the year you did have a positive increase in fund balance in this fund of about 700,000. After interest, it was 800,000. At the end of the day, this particular fund's sitting at about 35% fund balance compared to operations, which is slightly below the averages we're experiencing, but nothing to be concerned about overall. So in my report, we do go through a lot of the other funds. The building construction fund is certainly a significant portion of this audit. About $62 million were utilized during this fiscal year, which is a significant number of activity for a district like yourself. You also
094have a debt service fund. I mentioned the internal service fund as well as an OPEB trust, which is accounting for the other post employment benefits of the district. So to highlight in my report, we also do support and communicate other changes in accounting. The Governmental Accounting Standards Board is very active in changing accounting standards and this past several years, if not the last three or four, have been significant in overall change. Looking forward, there is another report, GASB, that will be implemented next year that modifies some of the reports from a financial model improvement perspective, unlike past years, most of the work to implement these standards have been on staff. This particular improvement will actually fall on me. I'm sure staff will be happy to hear that particular change. So that's the end of my
095presentation and I'll open up for questions, but just to summarize, I was able to issue a clean opinion on the district's financial statements. We had the one finding to report that we'll talk about a little bit more here in a second as we open it up for questions. I will be back to talk about the single audit of federal awards. The district fund balances are improving in the general fund as well as you're adhering to that fund balance policy, which is probably most important part of this discussion. And then we talked a little bit about the other operating fund balances and the implementation of the new accounting standard. But lastly, I did wanna state, as you see at the last bullet point there, the district is very committed to this audit process and it always
096has been. This process goes on for almost six months and there's a constant back and forth of information and requests. And I would say, you know, as I work through the process, it's always been very efficient and effective. And as well as the district is very committed to the results that we have. And that's always been the case. And I don't always say that, and it doesn't always look like that. And so it's important to understand that the environment that I'm working in. So with that, I'll open it up for questions. And we'll turn it over to them for a second. - Yeah, well, thank you Jim. Great presentation. Very thorough, appreciate that. We wanna address the finding that Mr. Eichten identified in his presentation tonight. As a school district and as district finance officials,
097we take any finding and our fiduciary responsibility very seriously. So when we do have a finding, we act very quickly in the corrective action plan and make sure that all of that is addressed. We look forward to working with Mr. Eichten and his team because going through the audit process, part of the value of it is having conversations about our internal controls and where are those areas that we can improve from year to year. So we appreciate your work and your team's work. During the audit, there was an error was identified regarding duplicate payment for curriculum subscription. The vendor sent two invoices with different invoice numbers for an item about six weeks apart. Each invoice was submitted for payment resulting in the duplicate payment. And that kind of a unusual invoicing method by that vendor
098helped contribute to that error. Andy will talk a little bit about our corrective action. - So I wanna note that the issue at hand occurred during the summer. So part of it was at the end of one fiscal year. And then at the beginning of the next. Given the time of the audit, the auditors caught it before we had a chance to finish all of our audit work. But I am very confident that had we been through our audit process, we would have caught it and we would've made the correction without the audit finding. We've already taken several steps to, or in our correction process to make sure that we don't make the same mistake. So we've reviewed our software and our internal procedures and provided additional training to our staff to make sure that
099we're following those procedures. We've worked with the vendor to receive our funds back for that duplicate payment. And then finally, to continue to improve our protocols, we're in the process of working with a third party to come in and review our accounts payable procedures and our records, and then identify if we have any vulnerabilities in our controls and if they have any recommended strategies to strengthen our controls going forward. - Yeah, so I want to emphasize a key point. Mr. Eichten, you know, noted that this is a significant finding. We don't disagree with that. In our conversations though with Mr. Eichten, we noted that when we asked the question were there any concerns that you might have about fraud or any willful abuse? And he said, no, there's no evidence of any of that. And
100so then as the corrective action plan is developed, we've actually exceeded that corrective action plan by moving toward a third party review of our internal controls related to accounts payable. So we'll continue that work as we're moving forward and we're looking forward to that work. So to that point, gonna turn it over to you. - I just want to ask a couple clarifying questions and I'll turn it over to the group if that's okay. My first question is, how is a business audit for a small business different than like a government or school district? Are they the same? How is it different? - Yeah, so a governmental audit is guided by a variety of standards. You know, first and foremost, the financial reporting is guided by a Governmental Accounting Standards Board. A commercial audit is
101guided by FASB, if you will, Financial Accounting Standards Board. So they're two separate set of accounting standards, first and foremost. So they're significantly different in that stance. From a regular audit perspective. From the audit of the financial report, if you will. The financial report audit is very similar. They're guided by the same standards. The AICPA, in this case, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants are guiding our audits in the financial statement standard. How they differ on the governmental side relates to how we audit the internal controls, as well as how we audit your compliance with laws and regulations as well as your compliance with government auditing standards, if you will, which is most of our auditing of grants and the oversight and of our auditing of your aides, your state aides is definitely guided
102by government auditing standards. And they're significantly different. A financial audit doesn't have any of that. You wouldn't have to oversee or test compliance with them with a grant or a state aid that you're getting. A government also has a, what's called the single audit of federal awards. Anytime you're over a certain threshold of federal dollars, you're required to have that audit, which is generally not at all in a commercial entity. It does occur in nonprofits. Nonprofits get some federal awards at times, and if they exceed the threshold, they would need a single audit of federal awards. So that's the major differences that occur. - Is it common when you do these audits that you have a finding? Or is this unusual? - What type of audits? - Like school government audits. - It's very common
103to have findings in an audit like this. There's a lot of compliance that's happening here. So it's common that we have findings, audits like this come with findings. - And then maybe this would be for Mr. Wald that and Emma. My question is, how were the invoices that we had for the construction handled, were they handled the same way that the invoices were for this? Or how was it different? I mean, I'm just kind of trying to figure out, you know, how they were done. - So any time we receive an invoice, it's always signed off by the budget manager. We have two people in our office who would check to make sure that they're appropriately signed off. So we get really good at knowing everybody's little squiggle. And then on the construction side, it
104actually has an additional check where our construction manager first goes through the invoice, you know, they know on a progress billing how far is appropriate for the billing. So they review it for completeness, accuracy, they sign off on it, then it goes to our director of building operations. He reviews it, he signs off on it and then it goes forward for payment. So there's an additional check and balance on the construction side. - Okay, thank you. I'm gonna open it up for questions. Ms. Beloyed. - So from the finding from the prior year, you say it was tested again this year, no issues found. What do you mean by tested? How did you test for it? - Yeah, so every audit that we begin with starts with a risk assessment. So we spend time as
105a group, my audit team, assessing our risks going in, right? So risk assessment can be a lot of things, but one of the risk assessments that's automatic in an environment like this is what was the findings from last year. So we take risk in that particular area and move it from moderate to high, right? That's a high risk area now for us, which means we do more testing, we increase our sample size, we increase the invoices that we might look at. In this particular case, if you remember, some of you might, may or may not remember, but it was pretty much a spreadsheet error from last year. And so that spreadsheet we dug into very deeply, if you will, to make sure that that particular accounting was done accurately and correctly. So we added testing
106mainly from a sample size perspective on that particular area. - Andy, it's probably more for you. So you said we probably would've found this error, or what do you mean? - So all of our budget managers review all of the accounts assigned to them, right? So whether they look at them monthly or quarterly. So I have absolute confidence that the person responsible for this would have been reviewing accounts and seeing, oh gosh, we paid this one twice. And so they would've then reached out to the vendor, well they would've worked with us too to see, okay, how do we go about finding this and getting these funds back? It's just that the timing was such that the auditor saw it before we did. - How was it found though if you've got an invoice? If
107you got an invoice that has two different numbers on it, how does that get identified? - Oh, just because of the nature of the subscription. So when we review, we look at a very detailed report to see what exactly is flowing through. So we've seen this subscription, wait a minute, we paid this last year. We paid this subscription, you know, in June of last year. We paid it again August of this year. So that's how we would've seen it. 'Cause we have this, you know, budget amount earmarked, like I'm expecting to spend a million dollars, whatever that number is. And this amount would've been spent already. And there would've been this like worry like, oh no, I need that. I have a different, you know, plan for those funds. - So this amount was paid,
108say if it was summer. So what you're saying is it was paid like June. - June and August, some like six weeks apart approximately. - So July or August is when the next one came in. - Correct. - Okay. You're saying we're taking the corrective actions by bringing in a third party. Do we know who this third party is? - Yeah, we're working with CSO. They have a lot of school finance experts. So we're in the process of designing what that review is gonna look like. We're gonna be looking at that in February. - Okay. If we're building that, what are the assumptions about around how you're building that? What time period are we looking at how, what's the scope of what we're gonna need them do? - I anticipate that we'll be looking at
109probably invoices processed in the last year. We'll establish a threshold, you know, maybe $5,000 and any invoice processed during that time. We'll make sure that we don't have any duplicate payments for those. - Do we know how long that'll potentially take? - No, we haven't gotten to that point yet. It will probably take some time. You know, we see the payment reports, we have a lot of invoices that we process. - I think that's all I had. Oh, our transportation, looking at the numbers, transportation and special education were two of the big factors for expenses. - Yeah, there were really three. Transportation was a very significant increase. Tuition bills related to both special education and regular ed. So those students who attend districts, not ours, we get invoiced for those costs. And the other one
110was related to some devices that we purchased in anticipation of the tariffs coming out. We worked with our vendors and we were notified that hey, we anticipate prices for your devices that you're anticipating you're purchasing these this summer anyway, we anticipate prices going up quite a bit. We really recommend locking these prices in now. So that was a really intentional purchase of like a million dollars of devices in fiscal year 25 that had been planned for fiscal year 26. So really it was those three were the major outliers on the budget on the expenditure side. - And someone said we had an increase of special education students this past year. Do you know how many additional students? - From 24 to 25, I don't know that number off the top of my head. We're up
111about 120 from last year to this current school year. But I don't know. - How many? - About 120. - 120. Do we know what the level of service is for a lot of those? I mean, we're talking a pretty high level of services needed to be provided or can you even estimate that? - But yeah, we've seen significant service needs as students have enrolled throughout this year. - Yeah, I would say that there's a range of services, but we definitely are seeing that we're starting more cluster, which is setting three services for students that have more significant needs. - Is it possible to give a percentage of how much we are reimbursed for those special education costs by the state? It costs this much for us to provide these services 'cause they're mandated, the
112state provides this much in their formula. - I think just what is our cross subsidy estimate? What is our cross subsidy for? - How much do we have to pull over? - Five or six million at this point. Yeah. - Five and a half million. - So we're five or six million short state level. Federal government has never provided anything more than what, 14%? - Oh no, it's much lower than that. - Seven, 14, I don't know? 14 was the number off the top of my head, I could be wrong. So that has to be pulled as a cross subsidy. That's what the cross subsidy is. We have to pull the money outta the general fund to pull and pay for the special education services. And that's not covered. And that's part, that's increased? -
113Yes. - Okay. Oh, I did have one correction on page 48 of the report. The number of years for, or the year for Kathleen Daniels is incorrect. Oh gosh, really? - Is that on the Board's? - 2026, instead of 2028. - I haven't looked at that. - I know Mr. Eichten has another presentation to do at another district. So if you need to leave, we understand. - No, I don't need to leave actually. They're aware that I'm here and it's eight miles that way. But can I comment on that? - Sure. - Well you can send me a note about that error or Andy can probably get directly and we'll correct the files when there's information that is incorrect. We want to get it corrected. - Thank you. - All right, Mr. Skaar. - Thank
114you. Thank you for the presentation. You mentioned that you have, you know, we usually find findings, right? You do, right? I was an auditor and you find findings, but there's different types of findings. On what scale of severity is a material weakness? - That's at the highest level. - Right. We've had 14 of them since 2019. Is that a lot? - I would suggest that's more than normal. More than average. - And I'm just talking about this particular one. I just want to read what you wrote, which is on page 218, the criteria management is responsible for establishing and maintaining effective internal controls. Condition, during our audit, we noted the school district paid an invoice for technology subscription totaling 538,218 twice. That's a big number. Cause, district personnel mistakenly submitted the invoice, the same invoice
115for payment twice. The district's internal controls over accounts payable and cash disbursements were not effective enough to detect this duplicate payment. So those are the facts in the audit report. And I hear some of the discussion, but that is the fact. Do you know, do we have any other ones? Can you guarantee that we have any other ones out there? - Are there other duplicate payments? - Yeah or any other anomalies within our accounts payable or cash disbursements? - I can't 100% state that there aren't any other duplicate payments. You know, my audit is based on a materiality, right? And so we do sampling of testing, you know, we do samples of testing to use statistical sampling to validate and provide an opinion. But to state that there were no more duplicate payments, I can't,
116that's not in my opinion. - I understand. So you just provide reasonable assurance on the financial statements. How many adjusting entries did the district staff have to make in order to get our financials in accordance with, do you know off hand? Was it more than 10? - How many they had to make? - Was it more than 10? - Yes. Yes. We make a lot of entries at year end. And that's not atypical of any school district. So yes. - How many adjusting entries did the auditor? - One. - Just that one? - Yes. - Okay. - Yes. - Now, I wanted to also ask you about, before I get into the other 14, I don't know if you want me to talk about other 14, but they're all material weaknesses. And two, two of
117the 14 were repeats. One was segregation of duties, and the other one had to do with state funding. So there were repeats. So when you look at this and I assess compliance and enforcement at the federal level, that's called recidivism. Correct? Repeat violations. That makes us higher risk from an audit standpoint. In fact, in 2014 or 2024, when you did an audit of the federal funding, the question is, does the auditee qualify as a low risk auditee? You checked the box no. And the reason for that is we had a material weakness in internal controls, correct? - That is correct. - One thing, do you as the independent auditor have a conflict of interest form that has to be signed by the Board that you review? Is it your form? - Do I have a
118form? - Yeah. Do you have a form that we're supposed to sign? - Yes, we have an annual form that we require either the district complete on their end, but it can be a district form or it can be our form. - Does this, I got a note on this. I want to say and tell me if you think this is right. This is from district staff regarding the conflict of interest form from the district's independent auditor. All board members must fill out the form completely and accurately. It is the responsibility of the auditor to determine whether or not the form has been completed satisfactorily. Sorry, I butchered that. Not district staff. Does that sound right to you? - It's really up to the district to ensure compliance with conflict of interest. - Right. -
119It's up to the district to make sure that they're complying. - So it's not your responsibility for compliance with that form? It's the district staff. So this response that I received from district staff is incorrect and also raises an alarm to me about what their responsibility for oversight is. Their responsibility. You're responsible for compliance. So that form, even if it was generated by the auditor or whether it was generated by us, you're responsible for making sure that it's correct, not the auditor. And that's part of this issue with the payments. We're responsible for that. Right? We're responsible for it. - Yes. - We've had 14, I consider these material weaknesses car wrecks with injuries. These are not minor fender benders, minor findings. This is an issue that this Board needs to take seriously. This financial
120oversight of this district. - Mr. Skaar. I would say that we do take each one of those findings very seriously. And that's why if you look at the following year's audit report, Mr. Eichten has always said that that finding was addressed satisfactorily. So they're not cumulative. Each one of those was addressed and six of those findings, and maybe even more, I only looked back to 2020, but six of those in 2020 were prior to my time here. - I understand that, one of my jobs in the past was to assess the compliance environment of organizations and what their commitment was to compliance, to making sure that we don't have errors, that we catch things. We always rewarded companies and organizations that caught things and fixed them. We didn't penalize them because they're doing their job.
121We've had 14 car wrecks that we could have prevented. - No, that we have fixed. - Fixed. But it keeps happening. - They're all different though. - No, you're fixing a individual problem, not the overall issue of oversight. - Okay, we can agree to disagree on that. The other thing is, well, when we have a, when you see a pattern where we don't take these, where we continue to have material weaknesses, doesn't that raise the level of our risk from an audit standpoint when you're doing your audit planning? - Absolutely, as part of every annual audit, we do a risk assessment process. And that particular risk assessment process is done annually and redone based on the prior year results. So things like findings that we had last year raises the risk of that particular area.
122It doesn't raise the risk of the entire audit. It raises the risk of that particular area. You stated in the single audit of federal awards, there was a finding, that raises the risk in the single audit of federal awards for that particular year. But does the entire audit risk go up? No. - Okay. So with one of the things that somebody had just asked me last week about, well, hey Dan, they win these financial reporting awards. So what's your issue? What's your concern as to why with this financial oversight? And I explained it because, you know, those reporting awards have nothing to do with the integrity of the financials because Robbinsdale, as you probably know, hopefully you weren't the auditor at Robbinsdale. They had a $23 million finding and a month later, they won the
123financial reporting award. The same one we won. Do you have any comments on equating the financial reporting awards with effectiveness, efficiency of, or integrity of the financials? - Well, the financial reporting award specifically relates to the financial, the 160 page annual comprehensive financial reports. So the district is receiving awards for financial reporting for that particular document. So the integrity of that particular document, and they're being awarded for that. Absolutely. The ATFR program or the award program isn't providing any sort of opinion on the internal controls of the district. The compliance with laws and regulations, the compliance with federal awards. It's really on that part of it is not related to that ATFR but definitely the integrity of the financial report and the financial reporting that's happening is part of that award. - So you could
124win the financial reporting award and still have significant oversight issues and concerns and deficiencies and still win the award? - Yes. - Thank you. - Are you done and let some other people talk? - Well, I was just gonna ask, you know, this, are we going to, 'cause the annual comprehensive financial report is also included in this. Are we gonna cover that separately? Because I think in the action it's to accept the whole package, which includes that report. And I have a couple of questions on that as well. - Do you think the report is wrong? - I think it could. - Because I think that we're accepting it as presented. We're not saying. - Well then yes, I'll say that. You think it's wrong? - I think it could be improved. - Okay. -
125Yes. - So when we get to that point, you tell us why. Ms. Daniels. - I was just gonna say, I do disagree with Mr. Skaar. And in saying that, you know, our district or our Board does not take these findings seriously. Every year I've been on the Board, this is my fifth year. And then prior to that, participating in the audits for 11 years as a director. I mean, I think we've always taken the audit report and the findings very seriously. And I think just by you talking about hiring, is it CSO hiring an outside agency to help you make sure this doesn't happen again, you know, tells us that you're taking it seriously. And I know in the past other things that we have found in the past and have been corrected, and
126again, then you're reviewing them more strongly, the next year shows that we do take all of this very seriously. And I don't think any, I don't, you know, I don't think any of it points to fraud or anything like that. It points to human error. And not only on the billing, the billing vendor, they made an error and someone in our district didn't notice that and signed it again and paid it twice. And we recovered those funds, which is great. And so you know, I understand that we wanna take all of these findings seriously, but to say we're not paying attention or we have a negligent financial or finance department, I disagree. - Kathleen. - And can I just say that what I heard Mr. Skaar say was he wasn't saying that anybody was doing
127anything, you know, stealing or that he was questioning the oversight. - Exactly. - Of it, that's what I heard. - That's fair. - Right. I'm not saying we don't take this serious. - You said that the Board wasn't taking this seriously. You said that. - Oh, maybe I did. I think I stand by. So what I'm saying is the oversight, we have a systemic problem in this district with oversight because we keep getting these material weaknesses and we're fixing them as we go. But that's like a bandaid, that's not fixing the overall issue. So we need to raise up the altitude and find out, well, what is going on? What is the culture around compliance and meeting requirements? That's what I'm saying. So bandaid approaches fix the immediate problem. It doesn't fix the systemic problem
128that this district has. - If I may, I did go back and look. So in 2019, there were three findings. In 2020, there were six. So in my tenure, we've had seven. So the sound bite sounds quite different. In five and a half years we've had seven findings versus since 2019 we've had 16. - Well, I have the facts here and it's 14 and if you want, that's why I asked if you wanted me to read 'em. I don't think it's necessary. And I'm not trying to put you on the spot. I'm just saying we have a systemic issue in this district around financial oversight that we need to address. And bandaid approaches don't work. - Ms. Streiff-Oji. - I would argue it's not a bandaid approach unless it's the same thing happening over and
129over. If it's something new, we find it, we address it. We're not seeing the same things repeated. Correct? Thank you. - You've had two of them that were repeated. - Point of order Mr. Skaar. You've not been recognized by the chair. - Well, that's just a way to keep me quiet. - Point of order. - Are you done, Ms. Streiff-Oji? - I have some questions. - Okay. - Will you walk me through the GASB compensated absences change? - Sure. So Governmental Accounting Standards Board, GASB came up with a standard on compensated absences, which is compensated absences includes things like vacation, sick leave, personal leave. Those are the, under that definition, the Governmental Accounting Standards Board basically came out and told us how to calculate those compensated absences by very specific regulation or rule. Prior to
130those rules, it was really an estimate that the district could kind of use their own rules to calculate. So by implementing that standard, they just followed the rules provided by GASB. - So that's why there's that significant, was it $18 million change? That was because that was the change to GASB. - So the specific change ultimately in what the district had versus the standard in previous estimates that were under standard didn't include sick leave. The sick leave liabilities weren't, were in the liability, weren't required to be. GASB basically said you had to include those in the liability now, which increases the liability, if you will, by that number you're telling me. - Okay. Thank you. So then, you know, we're having a lot of discussion here about findings and addressing those findings. We were given
131an unmodified opinion. So can you please explain a little bit more about how an unmodified opinion is granted, even when there are findings? - Right, so each individual opinion stands on its own, if you will. So I'm giving opinions on multitude of things. One's on the financial statement, one's on compliance and regulations, one's on compliance with Minnesota laws and regulations. So each one stands on its own. The unmodified opinion on the financial statement is an opinion on the 160 page financial statement. So we're providing a clean opinion that you as a district completed that financial statement in accordance with standard. - So what would it take to have a changed opinion? Would it be multiple findings? Would it be, I'm just trying to get a sense of. - Right. And there's a number of modified
132opinions that can take place. You can have a district that's unable to provide records at all. You couldn't even issue an opinion, I can't audit it. There's been situations where you have a going concern, if you will, meaning you're not able to sustain yourself financially, which can happen in districts that have stature operating debt would be a situation. There's a multitude of things that would cause a modified opinion, but generally, that's pretty severe. I mean, it's pretty rare to get to that level. - Okay. And so the idea behind the audit, I just wanna be be clear, is that you are assessing for six months, I wrote that down, six months process with the audit, with everybody in the finance department, you are assessing the fact that we, that our financial statements are accurate and
133that you are looking at our internal controls to see where we can improve and that we addressed any issues that were in, that were past findings. Is that kind of the elevator speech? - On the internal control side, we're actually assessing it to that you have adequate internal controls, not just that you know, that you have them, but that they're adequate. - Okay. - And that they support an operation of this size adequately. One of the comments or one of the findings in the past, not right now, so don't get me wrong, that was a past finding, was you didn't have appropriate segregation of duties, that's an example. - I remember that one. - Meaning you don't, you're not segregating responsibilities enough so that, that things, that errors are being corrected. So there was an
134assessment done at that time to improve controls so that they were adequate to substantiate the size and really the organization as a whole. So that was the corrective action for that one particular one. So it's items like that, that you have to have appropriate controls to support your organization. - Exactly. - And that's the opinion that I'm providing. - I mean, it's a big and complex organization, but what you're saying is that we have, every time there's been a finding, we have caught it and we fixed it, which is the goal. - Well, ultimately the audit found it. - The audit, yes. I'm sorry. The audit found it. And then the district staff has corrected it. - Yes. - Okay. So I guess my question for you is, we do continue to have findings, but
135that's not unusual and we are fixing it. - Yes. - Because we're human beings and we work in a school district where we are constantly asking students to correct their mistakes. And when we find our mistakes in this very complicated, huge set of data, they haven't been the same mistakes twice. Is that correct? - Yeah., I don't have all the data that's in front of me that was provided, but I will agree with Andy in the sense that under her administration or their administration, we haven't had that, that's been the norm. - Yeah I mean, I've been on this board eight years and, you know, this is something that is constantly in motion because as soon as this audit is done, we're gonna start the next one, prep for the next one. And so I
136would say that we pay attention. This is not a insignificant finding, but I appreciate that it's not an insignificant finding that is being addressed. And that this Board then to hold our staff accountable can ask about at future Board meetings. Okay, thank you. - Anybody else? I would just say again, I mean, you always have findings, but we've had 14 since 2019, material weaknesses, which are the most severe, and two of them were repeats. Thank you. - I just have one kind of question to wrap this up. I heard that we don't have enough oversight. Was the same oversight or procedures the same for each finding that we've had or because it makes it sound like we just fixed this, that it's all, but there's different reasons. And so how easily is that to address
137it overall, say this is it and then they won't occur. Does that make sense? - Well, I'll try to address it in this manner. The internal controls of the district don't just stop and you create 'em and they stop. Internal controls are a constant evaluation. So that is one of the items we look for is, is there people in this organization that are constantly evaluating the processes and the controls? And if they're seeing their own weaknesses, they change it and oh, well gee, that even without me sitting in the room, I'm not here. You know, it should be a constant evaluation of controls. And that is what we see. The district here takes it very seriously. Back to my commitment to the process, it's a commitment to the controls. If they see weaknesses, changes are
138made. You know, I had a conversation, or with you, you were on the call when we talked about the audit report. One of the constant evaluations take place is, is you know, there's some change in personnel. And one of the things that we're talking about is, well, let's not stay stagnant with that change in personnel. Let's reevaluate and do we need a different role? Do we need a different person? Do we need more people? That's a constant evaluation in controls. - Okay. Yes, Ms. Beloyed. - This for Andy, you said during your tenure, how many findings? - Seven. - Could you briefly describe the findings just so I have a memory, better memory of what they were? - Yep, so in 2022, we had a time and effort for a federal program. - Had a
139what, I'm sorry? - A time and effort. So related to documentation of time on a federal grant. Then we had one related to investments and collateralization, and then an unauthorized investment. So both of those we worked with our investment advisor and they would typically help monitor those items. - Yeah, can you explain that one? 'Cause that one in particular was. - Yeah, so those two also go in line with the next one that we received in 2023. There was another collateralization issue. And so we work with an investment advisor who typically are experts on watching these items for us, making sure that we're invested in the correct investment type accounts, statute says which type of investments we may invest our funds in. And I don't remember exactly the details because this was back in 2022,
140but I believe it was something about like a credit rating wasn't quite at the right level, or it had dropped down or something like that. And the investment advisor hadn't caught it. So as a result of those findings, we parted ways with that firm and now we're working with a different firm. - Have we had any findings on that since? - No. Then the next one in 2023 was related to a bid issue where the bid wasn't published in the newspaper. We sent it to the newspaper. We have documentation of it in our sent items. We believe it probably ended up in their spam folder. And so it didn't actually get published. We worked with the newspaper and they apologized. They didn't have it. The next one, and then it was the construction spreadsheet one.
141And then this one. - Would you describe those as car crashes? - Would I describe them? - Those findings, are those car crashes? - Well, I'll use terminology that I would use based on standard. I'd have to remember if all of those, most of them are legal compliance findings. So we audit your compliance with login regulations and any of those that are legal compliance related are considered findings. There is no, it's either yes, you complied or no, you didn't. So I don't use the terminology car crashes. It's not my words. I'm gonna utilize the words that I can use in standard. And those are, it's a finding or it's not a finding. - The finding is a finding is a finding. I guess, in my opinion, some of them seem a whole lot worse than
142others. But I'm also, I've been in all of the meetings and we go through all of that, but all of those have been, we have not had an issue with any of those since. - Correct. Yes. If you've listened to me, if you have in many multitude of meetings, I say this to you, I say this to all of my clients. Audits come with findings and the focus should be on the corrective action, what are we doing to correct it? - Well, if the thought is that over a period of seven years, 14 findings, you said is a lot. - I didn't say it was a lot. - You said it was unusual. - It was more than normal. - What's normal? - There is no norm to be truthful. I mean, there's no norm,
143- But that's what I'm trying to get to. If you averaged it out, that would be two findings a year. Depending on the severity, I mean, the one this year to me is a lot more severe because it was $500,000 paid twice, which I am happy that I hear that we are bringing in an outside party to look into it more to make sure that we're not finding this again and again, that would be a big problem. - Yeah. - But it'd be a big problem for everybody on this board, and it would be a big problem for the community. I'm trying to find what the norm is because I'm not getting, I'm not getting the sense that I have an answer because we know we're going to have findings. I would question if you
144were doing your job if we didn't have findings. I mean, to be quite frank. I don't like this terminology. If you've got a finding, then you've failed. You failed in something. A mistake has been made. To me, the failure is if we don't fix it and if it's systemic, which I don't see any of these as systemic, at least not yet, because they're in all different areas. And a lot of those, how many different federal, there's so many different rules for all of these that it's really easy for those things to slip by. I mean, there's hundreds, so it is a big deal. But I think we need to have some perspective on this and understand that it is what it is and it needs to be fixed. And I have no doubt that they'll
145fix it. If they don't, it'll be an issue. That's all I have. - Chair, can I add a comment to that? - Go ahead. - My perspective on what you said there is important because every year as part of the issuance of this report, the Finances Committee or a subset of the Board meets with me as part of a committee, right. And I provide the commentary about the finding or overall these years, whatever finding it might have been. And this year there was a different response to this finding, because what you just said, supporting what you said, there was more of a, that's more significant situation. And you as a Board member and other members of the Board as well as the superintendent, said, yeah, we should do more than just the average corrective action
146plan. And that's what I would've hoped to hear. It's not my role, if you will, to act in the role of the Board. I'm the auditor. But that came as a very pleasant reaction, frankly. And that's what I would've expected from the Board. - Well, and I found it an appropriate reaction too. And it was the reaction that I was also hoping for. So I was glad to hear what it was. - So I think one of the common things I've heard is there's nobody in here that is happy about this error. And we want it to, we want to know, we wanna get it fixed, and we want to make sure it hasn't happened in other areas, including, I know Ms. Johnson, you want to also clear this up. You wanna look at it.
147You have that timeframe. We want to make sure we're doing it correctly. And that is, I think I want to, we're all about in that boat. We wanna do it correctly, and we don't, like, we're not real happy with this. That's somewhere as a Board, we can continue to work together and move forward. Because that's the one piece I think we all agree on. And we're all gonna have different opinions of, you know, where we're going. But that's gotta be what holds us together. If you move forward and ask questions, that's gonna be really important. And as they tell us how they're fixing it and how we're moving forward, that's gonna be equally important to find out. And so I think we can all agree on that. - Just one last thing. I just would
148say that, you know, we can feel good about, hey, these were, you know, out of the 14, 12 were different. So we feel good about that. But still the pattern is there. The pattern of a material weakness or a finding that is elevated to a report is significant. You know, you want a goal. The goal is not to have any material weaknesses and not have any findings that are reportable in our report. That's the goal. I've never, you know, my own view of this running a nonprofit, I can't remember ever having a material weakness. I would've went through the roof if I would add one. So would my Board. - Yes. - I'd just like to say that our budget is how much? - Close to 150 million. - I doubt anybody in this room
149has been audited on a personal or your business $150 million, so to say we're comparing apples to apples, I just don't think is accurate. - Point of order. Point of order. - Yes. - I just wanna say, can we get a, an update scheduled on a future Board meeting to get an update on the corrective action? So I would suggest, you know, I know you said it's gonna take some time, so perhaps April, if we can get an agenda item so that we can, as a Board, get an update on where we're at. I would appreciate that. Mr. Chair. - Thank you. - Mr. Skaar. I know you had something you wanted to say. - I would just say, you know, I've audited multi-billion dollar companies and I've been senior executive at companies that are
150much larger than the school district at this. - Can I ask how many school districts you audited? - None. No school districts. But I've used the same playbook you use, which is the GAO, right? Yellow book used the same to audit. So it's the same. It's the same thing. It's not that much different. It's like riding a bicycle. - But you fall off, you don't get back on. - Well, I'd like to say that, but I mean, I can ride a little stingray or a 10 speed. - All right, can we close this discussion then? And I wanna thank you for coming and sharing with us and so we can kind of see how we can move forward. We appreciate all the work you do for us. - All right, thank you. - Thank you.
151- And then I'd like to move us along to operational item C1, action on the fiscal year 24-25 annual audit report. Ms. Johnson, you have anything you wanna say? - Earlier in the meeting, Mr. Eichten from the auditing firm LB Carlson presented the fiscal year 24-25 audit report. So the next step in the annual budget process for the Board is to vote on acceptance of the report that was presented. - All right, so we've had the recommendations accept the audit as presented. Do I have a motion to do that? - So moved. - Okay. - Ms. Beloyed a second. - Second. - Ellison, open discussion? Yes, Mr. Skaar, I think you had something you wanted to. - Yeah, I was gonna ask, does the annual, what is it, the annual financial, the annual comprehensive financial
152report. Is that included in this motion? - Yes. - Then I have questions on that. - Okay. - So on page 44 of the report, and it's paragraph three, it says since, and the second sentence, starting with, since 2003, the level of funding provided to the state of Minnesota has not kept pace with inflation. Now that's true. However, total funding has kept up with inflation and has actually exceeded it. So should we put a sentence in there that says that, and I know that there were issues with the Fallon report and I referenced this annual comprehensive financial report when that report was being criticized. But right here, and I mentioned that all those numbers are in this report. So unfortunately Mr. Wolf passed away on October 13th, 2024 after I received the numbers from Mr.
153Fallon on July 24th and well before I was elected. But his death, Wolf's death doesn't diminish his expertise. And I think using Google searches to disparage the valuable work of a dead man is not very helpful and we should do more critical thinking based on facts. So I prepared an analysis from the 2024 annual comprehensive financial report found on the district website and identical results. - Does that include state aid only or does that include? - Total general funding, - Because I think what this was saying, if I may, I'm asking is we're talking about what we get on our state aid, they're not speaking to the, any kind of levy or other funding, I think, is that correct? If I could get an answer on that? - I haven't been able to find what
154you? - I'll give it to you. - Page 44, you said? - Page 44. Page 44 doesn't match up. - Page 44 of the PDF file. It's called Financial Future of the District. - Okay. - That's all. And all I'm asking is, should we put something in there that says, yes, that's true, but total funding has kept up with inflation. Something like that. That's all I'm asking and I'll give you the numbers. And the other thing that I wanted to mention was even when you look at total general fund expenditures per student, and that's on, well it's on page 123 of the report shows that in 2025, the number grew by 5.5%. And if you look at the CPI or inflation was between 2.7 and 3%. So all I'm asking is that we put something
155in there that says, yes, that's true, but total funding has kept up with inflation. So the other question I had was on the next paragraph where it talks, and this is talking about, remember this is talking about the financial future of the district. So what I was thinking is we should put something in there around enrollment shortfalls and the impacts to future funding. Because if you look on page 70 of the PDF file, it says, and this has to do with factors bearing on the district's future. And it says the amount of funding a district received is also dependent on the number of student it serves. Meaning attracting and retaining students is critical to the district's financial wellbeing. So I always thought we would triangulate that back to the financial future of the district so
156that we can let the reader of this report, which would be the public, know that hey, enrollment also factors into funding. And that's also something that they should be concerned about. So those two amendments. - Ms. Beloyed. - I'm not in favor of amending that whatsoever unless we add in that is kept up with inflation because we've had to increase levies and pull from the general fund through the cross subsidy. Do you understand what the cross subsidy is? Can you explain it? - Probably not tonight. - Well then you really need to understand what the cross subsidy. At the center of the whole discussion that you're going around. We have to pull money from the general fund in order to support and pay for other items that aren't covered. So has it kept up with
157inflation? Semantically, I guess we could say it has, but has it kept up with what we have to spend? No, because we are pulling from a fund that we shouldn't have to pull from in order to pay for things that aren't paid for by either federal funds or state funds that were guaranteed at some point in time and have never come through. - Can I respond to that? - Go ahead. - I would just say I understand that, but I look at the general fund revenues and you just, you cut through all of this, you cut through all of this, general fund revenues were 142, 322, 288 as compared to 130, 218, 478. And the taxpayer, they don't understand all this funding stuff. All they know is our numbers are going up higher than inflation.
158That's all they care about. They are. So if we were trying to confuse the taxpayer and the public with a lot of funding things, we need to net things down so people understand, hey, our general fund revenues have gone up. Now which bucket? That's important, I agree with you. That's important. However, the numbers went up, even though despite all of the obstacles that we have with the state funding and cross subsidy, we're still figuring out a way to fund the schools, right, above inflation. So why can't we just say that? - That we could say, finding a way. But that's through taxes, that's through the levies. - And that's what's important to taxpayers. - I don't think that makes it clear. - Point of order, thank you. - You can go, I'm gonna check She
159was gonna talk. Do you have something else? - That's the semantics that we're getting into that they need to understand when you're saying it's kept, when they say whoever your gentleman were that has kept up with inflation, we've had to keep up with inflation through raising the taxes, which nobody wants us to do. But the reason we've had to do that is because stuff isn't funded and we're pulling, we're robbing Peter to pay Paul. So it's important that, I don't think that's that hard to understand for the general public. - All I see is the numbers. - Well, the numbers don't tell you the whole story if you don't to me explain the whole story. - Go ahead, I'm sorry. - Okay, anybody else? - I agree with Ms. Beloyed and I also don't feel
160comfortable amending our, amending our financial report with information done in the investigation of a single board member. It is not our responsibility, it's in our policy that we do not conduct separate investigations. And so I don't feel comfortable taking the information from a single board member and putting it into something that the entire Board needs to approve. So I would not support making those amendments. - Yes, I would agree that with that in principle, however, I didn't do any investigation. I just went to the district website because folks had an issue with the Wolf Fallon numbers. So I went back and are they right and they're right. That's all. I didn't do an investigation. I'm not doing that. But I think as a board member, if we're not looking at our reports and critically thinking
161about the reports and looking at 'em and comparing 'em to other sources of information, we ain't doing our job. - We're not doing our job. Yes, go ahead. - I believe that even accessing the numbers from those two individuals constitutes an investigation. I agree. We need to do our homework with the information that we're provided, but it is not our role as board members to do specific research investigations outside of what we are receiving. And my critical thinking skills, I take umbridge at the fact that my critical thinking skills are at issue here. I think what we need to do in order to move forward is we need to remember what our roles and responsibilities are. And that is to look at oversight, at governance and to fulfill our roles as board members as we
162have laid out in our policies. - Yes, Ms. Daniels? - I agree with Jessica. - Okay. - I just say I didn't do the Fallon Wolf thing. I didn't do it when I was elected. It was before I was elected. So I don't understand the issue. - Okay. - I'd like to move to call the question if I could get a second. - Second. - All in favor of calling the question, say aye. - Aye. - Opposed? Same sign. Okay. Calling the question means that we've closed discussion and now we are gonna call a vote on the motion to accept the annual report as presented. So this will be a roll call vote. I'll ask the clerk to call the roll. - Arcand. - Aye. - Beloyed. - Aye. - Daniels. - Aye. - Ellison.
163- Aye. - Skaar. - It'd be nay if you're not gonna accept it. - I just have a point of clarification. - No, you're calling the vote. - So are we voting for the? - We're voting to accept as has been presented. - Plus the annual comprehension? - Everything in that audit report that was in there presented. - Then no. - Okay. Is that it? - Keep going. - Streiff-Oji. - Aye. - Thank you. - Okay, motion carries five to one. We're now on to D, adjournment. Can I get a motion to adjourn? - So moved. - By Ellison. A second? - Second. - Second by Streiff-Oji. All in favor say aye. - Aye. All opposed same sign, we are adjourned. (gavel banging)