September 8, 2025 - School Board Regular Meeting

001- I now call this meeting of the School Board of Independent School District 624 to order. Will the clerk please call the role. - Streiff Oji. - Here. - Thompson. - Here. - Arcand. - Here. - Beloyed. - Here. - Ellison, here. Skaar. - Here. - If we could please stand and face the flag. The Pledge of Allegiance. - [All] I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. - We have before us an agenda. Can I get a motion to approve? - So move by Ms. Beloyed, can I get a second? - Second. - Second by Streiff Oji. Is there any discussion? - Yes. - Okay. You want for this agenda? You

002want for the consent agenda? - Consent agenda. - So we'll grab that next. - Okay, thank you. - All right, this will be a voice vote. All in favor say aye. - [Board Members] Aye. - Opposed, same sign. Okay, the motion passes. We have an agenda. At this time, we're gonna have an introduction of our student representatives. Dr. Kazmierczak. - All right, thank you, Chair Arcand, members of the board. So, we're pleased to welcome our student representatives for this school year. We have Tom Reese, 12th grade student at White Bear Lake Area High School. He'll serve as a student representative. Tom is active in student council, Nordic skiing, and the link crew. And then, we also have Lily Johnson. She's here. If you maybe give a wave, everybody's met you, yeah. She's an 11th grade

003student at White Bear Lake Area High School, and she will serve as the alternate student rep this year. Lily is active in student council, theater, Mariners Choir, Dungeons and Dragons League, and crochet club and karate. She also enjoys writing, reading and learning new languages. So, welcome to both of you. And I think we're gonna take a photo, is that right? Okay. - [Photographer] So, I lied, you all have two photos to take. (people chattering) - You want us all to come up? - Yeah, if you come up to the front, and then we'll get our in there as well. Board members will go on either side. Leave behind. (chuckles) There we go. Okay. In a bit more please, Chris. Oh, sorry. Oh, there we go. Oh. (chuckles) (board members chattering) Okay, look here please. One,

004two, and three. (camera shutter clicks) We'll take a few. Perfect. Thank you very much. - Thank you. - Sorry. - That's all right. - Okay, well, welcome. Thank you, we're glad you're here. We also have before us a consent agenda. This can retains a variety of business items that come to us monthly, including donations. And once again, we wanna say we are truly grateful for the support shown every month to our staff and students. Thank you. We have it for us that consent agenda. Can we get a motion? - [Thompson] So moved. - By Ms. Thompson. And a second? - Second. - Second by Ms. Beloyed. Any discussion? Yes, Mr. Skaar. - I'd like to move the payment of invoices to the regular business agenda. - Okay, so you wanna pull it off? - No,

005just put it in a regular agenda however you wanna put it, it doesn't matter to me. - Because I think if we're gonna pull it, we can do the consent agenda, and then immediately after that talk about the invoices. - That's okay. - And that means you'd be pulling it off, does not require a vote then. - Pulling it off doesn't require a vote? - No. - No, I read the rules before the meeting. Pulling something off the consent agenda to put it on the regular agenda, according to Robert's rules does not require a second, any board member can pull something from the- - Yep, that's what I was saying. - Okay. - So, we can just go ahead and do that without. - Okay. - So what I'd like to do then, knowing that's

006there, can I get, because we're gonna change the agenda, or we're gonna change the con, give me a minute. We are gonna change the consent agenda. We're gonna pull off the check registry or the invoice payments. - Mm-hmm. - So then, can we get someone to amend that motion to accept it? - We don't need an amendment, we're just gonna vote on it as is with the- - I did not. Okay, so we're gonna vote on this with the invoices pulled, this will be a roll call vote. So, can the clerk call the roll? - Streiff Oji? - Aye. - Thompson. - Aye. - Arcand. - Aye. - Beloyed. - Aye. - Ellison, aye. Skaar. - Aye. - Okay, so now what we're gonna do is we're gonna look at the check registry. Can I

007get a motion to approve the invoices, and then we'll have discussion. Okay. - So moved. - So, moved by Thompson. A second? - Second. - Second by Streiff Oji. Now, we're open for discussion. Mr. Skaar, you have some discussion points? - Yes, thank you. - Okay. - By the way, I just had questions on some of the items on the invoice register. We had a number of invoices paid to various universities, Bethel University, Century College, University of Minnesota, I can go on and on. And they are fairly substantial when you add 'em all. - [Speaker] Those are the scholarships that were awarded to students as for a scholarship night. - Oh. That's great. I have another question, it's line item 148080. It's a check for 11,695 to a Konstantin Vasyakin. What is that about? -

008It's for enrichment, youth enrichment classes. He just happens to be the owner of a group that we use to offer some of our youth enrichment. - Okay, good, thank you. - Mm-hmm. - Then, I have one other question related to item 148242, Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation for $105,000. What was that for? - [Speaker] Yep, that's who we pay for our BARR programming. - Pardon me? - BARR, BARR. Building assets removing risk. - Reducing risk, yep. - Okay. - It's a program within our schools. - Okay, thank you. - Mm-hmm. - That's all the questions I have for that. - [Speaker] Okay. - My other suggestion, which I've suggested to staff. - [Arcand] Can I just interrupt? So, this is a time we're discussing the accepting the invoices. So, is this a question about the invoices

009that we're gonna accept, or is this others? - Yes, this is a question on- - [Arcand] Okay. - On this register, which we're- - [Arcand] We wanna make sure we're phrasing your name. - We're proving. - [Arcand] Yep. - So, one of the things is, is that it has these letters on the side, R, C, A, and you gave me a description of those at the last board meeting and I wrote 'em down. But I'm old and my memory's not that good, so I have to go back and look at that. It would be much easier if you put down in the bottom, like a legend that tells us what those are. Is that possible to do? - Yes, that is something that would be possible. It would need to be something that the whole

010board would want us to include. And if that would be the case, we'd be happy to do that. - Okay. The other one is to just add a classification on the far right to describe what that is, what each item is. Otherwise, I'll likely have questions every month if we don't have some kind of a description. And as I said before, as a CPA and somebody that's presented these things, you have to look towards who's using the report. It's the public and it's us. So, we need to make it easier for the public and the board to decipher this invoice register. - Yep, understood, yep. I would say, again, if that would be the wish of the whole board, that's something we'd be happy to include. - [Skaar] It requires an improvement. - [Arcand] Approval.

011- No, an improvement to this report, which is a simple, logical, rational, reasonable way to make this report better for the public. And that requires board approval for that. Is that what you're telling me, that staff can't generate improvements? - The board would act on recommendations to make changes like this. So, if it's the will of the board, we certainly would do that. - [Skaar] Well then, I would make a motion to make those two changes. - Well, we have a motion on the table right now to accept or not accept the registry the way it's presented. So, are you asking to amend, and we can't change it for now. - No, we can't. So, I would ask that to be as a separate agenda item to talk about this. - We've already accepted, approved

012the agenda. This is just the consent agenda. So, that's where with that. So, do you have any other questions about the payment of invoices of the checks? - No. - Okay. - Other than improving it. - Mm-hm. Now, do we have any other questions? I just wanna say that as a board, we must determine what is required to effectively fulfill our role as governance. And so, if the board feels that they cannot fulfill their role as governance, then we can bring that forward. Otherwise then, if you're comfortable with what we have. Yes. - Can I. - You may. - Is a description anywhere else, like on the website, and the finance documents, is there anywhere else that information is. - Not at like on a per invoice level, it's something that could be generated, but

013it's not something that's out there anywhere. - How many different classifications show up on that report? - I think it would probably be 50 to 100 pages to include that level of detail in the board packet. - But A, C. - Oh, that classification would be pretty simple. If we were to provide the breakdown or more description that Mr. Skaar is asking for, that would really enhance the length of the report. - [Beloyed] Can you give me a couple examples of those classifications? - Yeah, so the one that comes to mind that's really obvious is Amazon, for example, Amazon, we get an invoice for every single shipment. So, we may make one purchase that comes in seven different shipments. And so, each one of those would show up as a separate line item. And then,

014each of those payments may show up as a different like budget code. So, it's Mrs. Johnson's supplies and Ms. Beloyed's supplies. And so, that's the kind of data that would be presented. We try to be pretty detailed in our descriptions in our finance software. So, yeah, it would show the supply, it would show the name of the consultant. Well, there's a couple of different varieties that we could pull. - Are there any other subcategories that you have? A. A could have 500 different classifications under it based on what it is, correct? - Yes. - Probably not 500. - Yep. - Is there another subclassification that is smaller that could go under A, so that we're not talking about 2,000 pages worth of meeting notes? - I'd have to dig in and just kind of see

015that's not like a canned report, that I'm aware of about our finance afterwards. Certainly, I think something that we could create. - I'm assuming this is just a program and we put it together and it runs and we print it out. I didn't count how many pages this was, but if we went to all the classifications, how many pages would that make this. - Without actually running it, I don't wanna misspeak and say, but it would be significantly larger. - [Beloyed] So, right now, it's 90, would we say over 200? - Potentially. Just because this is one line item per check and it's really not uncommon for each check to have multiple budget codes. So, I'd have to run it, I don't wanna. - Is there a possibility before anybody makes a decision on this

016that we could see an example report before? - [Speaker] Yeah, and I think maybe something we would run by our executive finance committee. - Okay, all right, thank you. - [Arcand] Okay, thank you. Ms. Thompson. - If anybody in the community wanted to ask any questions about what is on our finance report, they're welcome to call and talk as we know with anybody that they had a question about. So, if they wanted to know what item 148248 is, they could call up and say, "Hey, can you explain what we spent this money on?" - Yes. - Okay. Thank you. - [Arcand] I just ask, would that require a data request or is that a simple question? - If they just called it. - Pretty simple. - It was pretty simple. I would be able to

017just answer. - Okay. - Yep. - [Kazmierczak] Depends on the scope of that. - Yep, correct. - [Kazmierczak] If it was a simple one like that, it'd be. - [Arcand] Mr. Skaar, you had a question too. - Well, you know, there's other ways to simplify this. I mean, you could just put everything that's whatever is over 10,000. We could stratify it based on that, that would be a lot less. And then, you could put the description on there. So anything less than 10,000, we don't review or approve. We rely on the controls that you have within your department. We can take this offline if you wanna have a discussion about how to simplify this report to make it more meaningful and not put the onus on the public to call the district, but put the

018onus on us to be clear in our reporting to the public. I'd be happy to do that. - [Arcand] Yeah, Ms. Thompson, - Just a follow up. How many times has anyone in the public called and asked about? - I've never received a call. - You used to be in our finance department, Dr. Kazmierczak. - [Kazmierczak] Yeah, I don't recall any- - As a board members, we're all able to call and ask any number of questions about anything that's in our packet that we received. - [Kazmierczak] From time to time, board member will do that, yep. - Yeah, I mean, I could see adding the table at the end to what R, C, A, that might be something that's simple and doable. Those are questions I had to ask what those letters stood for, with

019the ones that I couldn't figure out, some are obvious. Okay. No further questions. - Okay. I would just say that us asking and communicating with staff outside of the public, I don't think is necessarily a good practice. So, I'm thinking that, the questions that I have maybe other people have, they don't have the time to call. Why shouldn't we make this convenient for the public to understand our finances? That's all I'm getting at. - Okay. - And I would be happy to work with staff and the board to try to simplify this to make it more meaningful for us and for the public. - I think it's important that we follow our governance, and so this is something we can have here that we let the finance department bring forward. That's my opinion. We want

020it out in public if we're gonna do that. So, what I heard was maybe they would run a sample report so we could first see and move that way. But the question on hand, I go back to, we have the invoices and check registry where you're trying to approve. So, I wanna bring it back to the question. Is there any other questions or comments? Okay. This will be a roll call vote. I'll ask the clerk to call the roll. - [Ellison] Streiff Oji. - I'm sorry, what are we voting on now? - Approving- - Approving the register- - The register that we pulled off the consent agenda. - The invoices- - As it stands. - Yes. - Okay. - Streiff Oji. - Aye. - Thompson. - Aye. - Arcand. - Aye. - Beloyed. - Aye.

021- Ellison, aye. Skaar. - Aye. - Okay, and then we can look at future media to see how you're gonna put it on the agenda, so I'll look at that. - You will? - We'll look. See if we can get it in. - Can I get a commitment that we'll put it on the agenda to discuss? - Well, we're gonna wait and see what they bring. - Okay. All right. - Okay, so now, it's time for public forum, but we have zero requests to speak. So now, we're gonna go down to C1, student recognition. Dr. Kazmierczak. - All right, thank you, Chair Arcand, members of the board. Tonight, we proudly celebrate the achievements of fishing team members who participated in the Minnesota Junior Bass Nation High School Championship. Congratulations to each of you for state

022level recognition. We also extend our sincere gratitude to the dedicated staff and supportive family members who played a vital role in this success. In recognition of their accomplishments, students have received a certificate, a Bear pin, and a letter acknowledging their achievement. Now, please join us in watching a video highlighting their accomplishments. And this is a shorter one than what we've seen lately, but go, Bears, nonetheless. (board members laugh) (gentle music) (upbeat music) - [Arcand] Well, that was awesome, thank you. They can always come in my boat and fish with me so I can catch some of those. - [Kazmierczak] Teach you the rope, teach you the ropes. - We're gonna move on to C2, superintendent's report. Dr. Kazmierczak. - All right, thank you. All right, so in addition to our regular communication, we invite our

023community to follow us on our district Facebook and Instagram pages. Every Friday, we will post a video update of The Week in 62.4 Seconds. And weekday mornings, right at 6:24 am, we will share facts on the district's Facebook and Instagram pages. Videos can also be found on the district's YouTube channel. Otter Lake Elementary and Mariner Middle School are among just 13 schools statewide to be recognized as 2025-26 Minnesota Schools of Excellence by the Minnesota Elementary School Principals Association. Whiter Bear Lake Area Schools is the only district in Minnesota to have more than one school earned this prestigious honor this year. We are incredibly proud of the hard work, the Otter and Mariner staff members have put in to innovate and lead their schools toward student success. Terrific things are happening in both buildings and our

024students are benefiting from the investments of our staff, families, and the entire community. Two of our elementary schools are celebrating new playgrounds with ribbon cutting ceremonies this week. Otter Lake Elementary community dinner ribbon cutting and celebration event is happening from 5:30 to 7:00 on Thursday, September 11th. And Birch Lake Elementary ribbon cutting will take place at 4:00 pm as part of the Bounce Back to School Event on Friday, September 12th. The event is hosted in collaboration with the Birch Lake PTA and the White Bear Lake Chamber of Commerce. The playgrounds were built with an emphasis on inclusiveness of all abilities and we're designed with student input. We look forward to the structures being enjoyed for many years to come. Homecoming will kick off on Sunday, September 21st with a Bear Bike Ride and a Bounce

025House Carnival. It's a funny event for all ages, so bring the whole family. The homecoming parade is Friday, September 26th at 4:30 pm in downtown White Bear Lake, followed by the football game versus Forest Lake at 7:00 pm. The complete list of homecoming activities can be found on the district website. And join us at Central Middle School to tour completed construction projects, including the new gymnasium edition, expanded cafeteria, renovated learning commons, and more. A community open house event will take place from 4:30 to 6:30 pm on Wednesday, September 24th. And September is the Minnesota School Board's Associations, School Board Recognition Month, Guiding Light for Student Success. To recognize school board members for the commitment to Minnesota's Public School students. Board members, we've created this year's version of our Bearshey's bar to commemorate and honor you.

026This is our traditional. - Yes. - Yeah, at this board meeting. - Thank you for your commitment to the success of our students and our community. And the ingredients, thoughtfulness, accountable, open, representative voice, good-willed, conscientious, fiscally responsible, supportive, and proud. So I'm gonna hand these down. Tom, there's one for you here too. All right, now Marissa, were you gonna do another picture or not? Not on this. No, I don't think. (people laughing) I think we're good. All right, thanks for all you do. - Okay, thank you. We appreciate the support. Now, we're gonna go to an exciting time. We're gonna go to opening school report, Dr. Kazmierczak. - All right, I'll kick it off. So, we've enjoyed welcoming students back for the 2025-26 academic year. Elementary and secondary students started last week, early childhood, starting

027this week. Throughout the district, there were many exciting smiles as students returned to school after summer vacation. And for many students, they're in White Bear for the very first time, so welcome to those students as well. And tonight, members of our leadership team will provide an update on the work done this summer to help students, staff, and families get off to a good start. So, up first is teaching and learning with Dr. Gillespie. - Chair, members of the board, thanks for having us tonight. We get to share all the work that happens over the summer to make sure we're ready for another school year. Really the key to the work that we do in our teaching and learning departments is we partner very closely and collaborate with our principals to make sure not only are

028our staff ready for the upcoming school year, but also our students. And so, I'm gonna highlight the work that our staff has done over the summer, and then also some opportunities that students have taken advantage of, to start the year with a lot of momentum. We do a lot of leadership development over the summer, that actually starts in June. We prepare for the beginning of the school year, as you know, throughout the spring. But in June, our leaders took two days to really dive into what was the data showing us. How do we start preparing and really thinking about launching the school year in August. And that was an enhanced version of what we've done in other school years. And so, we keep doubling down on this, what's our instructional leadership? How is that influence?

029As I've mentioned before to you, principals are second, depending on the research, sometimes first, in terms of their influence on students, because our teachers absolutely have an influence on student achievement principles because they influence the teachers in each one of our buildings. And so, we worked on instructional leadership, database decision making. Over the summer, a lot of curriculum work happens with our instructors. We worked, and I'll talk a little bit more specifically. We also had our Instructional Leadership Institute, which we started a few years ago, enhancing that. We're in August, solely principals and have two days in June, and then there's two days in August where each principal, we bring 'em together at North Star and they dive in with their teams of leaders and educators to really specifically look at each one of their

030schools, what are their continuous improvement goals. That launch is a process for them. They work then with their leadership teams, turning in their school improvement plans to us by the end of September. And so, we're really proud of the work that's been done there. Hosting it at North Star as you know, it's a beautiful space, but it also allows for our schools to do cross collaborations. So, we have elementary schools sharing their goals. We're able to quickly get, if there's transition goals that come up for our kids coming from fifth to sixth grade, and then teaching and learning staff is there to support the principals. And then, finally, we have professional development all summer. A big focus is our continued implementation of the READ Act and our literacy professional development. And then again, I've mentioned,

031curriculum implementation and development. Two areas of professional learning that I wanna highlight, this year will be the year that we do our literacy training with our paraprofessionals. And so, in August, we had 150 of our paraprofessionals come together for a day of learning. And that was the first half of their learning, the second half will come this coming school year. But really the focus of the READ Act is any of our paras that support instruction with our students. And so, the instructions directed by the teachers, but they also need to have professional development around the science of reading. White Bear continues to be a leader in terms of the timeline and implementation of that. I'm really proud of our staff, thankful for the paras, that's a lot to come into right away, but it's really

032important for our students. The other part is our middle school English language arts curriculum planning continues, and that's been really exciting seeing both of our middle schools have an opportunity to align and really think about what's that guaranteed experience that we wanna have for our students, regardless of what middle school they might attend in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. We welcomed close to 70 new educators, we do that the week before workshop week. And so, August is extremely busy. The theme this year was Proud to be a Bear. It was really exciting. Our new teachers spend time with their mentor, teachers, instructional coaches in their buildings, and then we bring them together for a half day on the second day to talk about what it means to be part of White Bear Lake. They hear

033from each one of our different departments in the district and get a chance to meet each other. And so, it's a really exciting time, and lots of positive energy starting their time with us. Then as I mentioned, our students have been really busy this summer as well. I asked Brian Peloquin, our activities director who will come throughout the year and update you. But our numbers, we have 850 plus students participating in student activities in the fall, which is an increase from what we saw last year. We had 347 students participate in summer strength and conditioning. Our progress towards graduation. So, over the summer, we offer credit recovery opportunities for our high school students. We had four additional summer graduates, and then 200 plus students participate. And it's really important that we get them back on

034winning streaks is how we would talk about it. If they failed, life happens to all of us as we know, help them recover those credits, and so they can start the year close to being on track. So, it's exciting that we had that many students participate. Then, our career pathways. We've mentioned this a few times, we had 15 metro-area students participate in the Minnesota Trades Academy. White Bear continues to have the highest number of students participating in that. We had five high school students work at Chromebook Parts and I wanted to make sure they worked in production, repair, and house roles to meet local industry needs. As you've heard, but this is when Derek received the award, our Automotive Career Pathway Program was named 2025 Automotive Secondary Program of the Year. So, that's very exciting.

035And then, we also received a donation from Luther Cadillac and White Bear Subaru of a 2018 Subaru Forester for our Automotive Career Pathway. So, just really thankful and exciting times in those areas. I wanna make sure I didn't look at anything, I didn't. And then lastly, I wanted to highlight and give a huge shout out to our small but mighty team, is how our tech department described them. These young students were part of the Tech Depot this summer and they worked to prepare and deliver 1500 student Chromebooks and 200 staff Chromebooks, managing the entire process from unboxing to deployment. They also ensured that all return devices were efficiently processed and prepared for repurposing. They're dynamic. We're very grateful for them. That's a lot of work that happens over the summer. So, that was my highlight.

036- [Arcand] My question is, do we wanna take questions at the end? We can do it at the end. What's that? - However you wanna do it. - [Arcand] Okay. We'll grab it at the end if that's okay. - Okay. - All right. Good evening, Chair Arkand, members of the board. For the operations update. We provided a construction update to the board in August. And so, this is just a very short version of what you saw in August. You see, we completed the Mariner Middle School, phase 2 HVAC improvements, and that's actually the end of the HVAC improvement projects at Mariner Middle School. A complex project, and we're really pleased to have that done, and the ceiling's all closed up at Mariner before the kids arrive. Central Middle School, the phase 2 building renovation is

037complete, cafeteria, and the kitchen were a big part of that this summer as well as HVAC. And I didn't put on the slide, but also the renovation of the old district offices. Sunrise Park, the building we're in now, we completed phase two. So, the senior center, the professional development suites, gymnastics, all of those are completed. And it's been a lot of fun to see our seniors in the building, making good music and lots of good energy, and as well as our gymnasts have been filling the gym just about every night. So, a lot of excitement around Sunrise Park. And then, as Dr. Kazmierczak mentioned, the inclusive playground completion at Birch Lake and Otter Lake. The big project underway still is Sunrise Park, we'll complete the early childhood and transition education projects by spring, and have

038those spaces ready for use in the fall. We have a couple solar projects that will be rolling out later this fall at Vadnais Heights Elementary and the high school. Those solar projects were possible in part because we were able to get a really generous grant through the Solar for Schools Program. You can see the Sunrise Park renderings on top and you can see how those entrances to early childhood and transition education will pop a little bit. So, it's clear where to enter just as we have on the district service center side. And you can see the rest of the building once you get past that construction wall, there's a lot of construction still happening. For safety and security, this is definitely heightened awareness and concern around safety and security in schools. And our hearts are

039with the Annunciation Catholic community as they grieve. Projects and improvements in security are ongoing. And as we complete the projects such as Central Middle School recently, we complete the security upgrades with them, and so much of Central's was in place before this summer phase of construction. And then, as we completed like the kitchen and cafeteria, we add those new security features as well. Emergency drill in management, we have a new digital system to manage tracking emergency drills. And so, this is a communication improvement, just helps us with the efficacy of those drills. And we're rolling out a digital package communication app that we're starting at the high school, and that's been rolled out with administrators, and our student supervisors, initially, as we start the school year, and would be bringing teachers and staff on board

040at the high school over the next month, then we'll be rolling it out to middle school and elementary schools. And this will provide really improved communication. Teachers and staff will have the ability to report anything that they have concerns right through that app. It'll include our first responders. And so, we're pleased to be rolling that out as well. Last spring, we added some videos to our safety and security webpage. So, if you go to the About and Safety Security, you'll find the standard response protocols. Those are really considered best practice in schools. The standard response protocols are from the I Love You Guys Foundation, and they provide that common language for all people who are concerned and involved in a school community to utilize when considering locking down a school for any reason. And so,

041encourage you to look at the safety and security webpage for that. Nutrition services. They're entering the third year of the free school meals program, but there's some pretty crazy numbers there. They've served almost half a million breakfast last year, and over a million lunches. Remember that that's a crew of about 80 people in our nutrition services staff that are putting out about 9,000 meals a day. So, a pretty incredible effort. So, I congratulate Bridget Lehn and her entire team in the nutrition services, what they do to provide our kids, really great meals, and with a pretty positive attitude while they're doing it. They're the recipients of the Bronze Berry Award and that recognizes nutrition services departments who have a lot of creativity and how they utilize locally grown foods raised by Minnesota farmers. On the

042photos on there, you can see one of those locally grown foods that big, I don't even know how to describe it. Tank of chicken, wild rice soup that they're making there. And then, the meal on the bottom right, she tells me, honey hot wings, salad, biscuit, and a banana. And one of the favorite lunches in our schools. Nutrition services department has been awarded two grants for electric school buses. And so, they're continuing to work on preparing for that. One from the MPCA, and then two buses from the Department of Commerce. We're pleased that while we have a bus driver continuing nationally, and in Minnesota in White Bear Lake schools, we are fully staffed with our drivers and aids. That doesn't mean we will always be fully staffed, and so we continue to look for really

043passionate people to work in that area. Yeah, it's cut off a little bit on the bottom there, but our contractors and our drivers will drive over 1.8 million miles, bringing kids to and from school this year, and they'll have over half a million bus stops. And so, that requires a lot of safety, commitment to safety. You probably know this, but our director of transportation is better known around the district as Safety Dave. And so, they have a terrific record of safety in our transportation department and we expect that to continue this year. And that's it. We'll turn it over to Mr. Mons in Human Resources. - Hello, everybody. As Tim was saying, often we are staffed for the moment and then still looking. My department took on the somewhat herculean task along with all of

044our hiring managers of bringing on 152 new employees this year, and 67 of whom are educators in our system. And that's a ton of work to make sure that we get really excellent people in front of all of our stakeholders. So, I'm deeply appreciative for all of that. The summer is definitely not the time in the human resources department where we take a break, that tends to be our busiest time of the year as we make those transitions and wrap up for staffing, but we are very pleased to note that we are fully staffed. At the same time, we're always looking for quality candidates that are excited to join our team, and this moment is no different for that. We will absolutely have ongoing openings through the year, and we make lots of efforts to

045go out and reach our community, and will continue to look for opportunities to do that. One thing that I will note is, we've really, I think, through the school culture positive news that's out there, we're in a much better place staffing wise than a lot of our neighboring districts, again, for which I'm deeply appreciative of. So, that's really the work that we've been doing as we have made our way through the summer and geared up for the year. - All right, good evening, chair, members of the board. Thanks for having us here tonight to share the opening school report updates for our departments. We're kicking off my departments right away with a slight name change. If you guys have noticed or if you've seen in our recent catalog that just came out into homes as

046part of our strategic emergence planning process last year, two of our main areas of focus are that we're around identity and culture, which we're tasked to divide, or to create newly developed core values for our department. So, through a process throughout during the year, we develop new core values for our department, which are care, connect and create, and then a really strong focus on joy in many different areas. But we diverted that into a tagline at the bottom there, which we've also seen in our catalog as well, where the community education and recreation, Discover Your Passion, Define Your Joy. And I have to give kudos to Dan Schmidt, principle at North Star, as he did a mic drop at one of our advisor council meetings for that tagline. But everyone loved it and it stuck.

047And following developing this core values, we went through a cohesive branding standards process, and to create a new brand and new marketing materials and stuff to create those cohesive branding standards across our departments, or programs all across our departments. So, what I'm just showing here are a quick overview here is some new logos that you'll be seeing and probably have seen on the website. So, the name change from Community Services to Community Education. Again, following that process, our whole team was involved in that, really felt that has been our name since 1955. As you can see, we kind of put that into that brand of established, the department's been established since 1955, kind of honoring that history. But really felt that shifting that shift from services to education really reflects the heart of who we

048are, and connects our work to the broader field of community ed across the state as well. And you should see a slight, the logo on the left that resembles a T-shirt that some people have been known to wear around the area. So again, kind of fitting that history into a new logo and a new brand, but honoring that history of where we've come from, and where we are, and where we're going. So we are all very, very excited about that. So, a core logo on the left, and then you'll see individual badge logos that we call on the right throughout the presentation, which every one of our program areas are able to use to help promote their programs and find that unified source. So, what we really wanted was anybody that received anything from early

049childhood to senior programming sees our stuff and they know it's community, right? So, super excited to kick our year off this year, and then as we lean in more into our strategic plan priorities for this year, that'll be grounded around communication and staff development. So, looking forward to moving that forward this year. As Dr. K mentioned earlier on his update, early childhood started today, we were very excited to see our preschoolers join us for the school year. The numbers you see on the screen for ECFE and pre-K have been adjusted a slight bit. We're at 131 and 282. ECFE is up 19 students from this time last year, and then we're up 18 students from this time last year in preschool. Again, I believe you are all well aware, but we have full day and

050half day program options across the district at all of our eight sites, which includes six of our elementary buildings, and then our Normandy Park Education Center, as well as our partnership with Tamarack Nature Center. We continue to have a maintain focus on alignment with our elementary buildings and preparing our students to get ready for elementary school. We have a new leader, our new assistant director of early childhood, Jennifer Chappuis started with us in the fall. It was really hit the ground running. Things are going great. She hit up four or five buildings today, and I hit up the other ones. But strong start to the year, and looking forward to day two tomorrow. And another partnership that we're continuing to work on is with our Washington County Head Start Program in the north end of

051the community in Hugo as they complete their licensing requirements and get approval. Once that approval is done, we'll be looking to partner with them and our ECFE team on some outreach and family events and activities to bring awareness to the Hugo Early Childhood Center up in Hugo, the former Hugo Elementary building. As we continue our facilities plan of trans, (stammers) ugh, transitioning that space to an early childhood center. Out of school time, which includes extended day, I think the big focus right there is in that little shaded region for this fall. We're currently at 1,010 contracts to start the year, which is amazing. Big increase from where we were last fall, but the biggest highlight on there is the current wait list, current wait list of 33 kids. And a majority of those have all

052been people that have submitted contracts within the last two weeks. So, that's a huge, huge appreciation and recognition for all the work and outta school time, all the work they've done to build partnerships across our buildings and working on finding staff to create that, that is a significant shift as you see from the last two years. Couldn't be prouder of all the work that they're doing, the passion they're putting into it. It's just been great. So, another big shift in that has been the partnership with our Future Bear Educators at the high school. So, I think you guys remember sharing about that last year. So, when they start, they're able to start, I think this week or next week after training, they have to have their first couple days of classes as part of that

053program and that partnership. But once they begin programming, we do expect to alleviate that wait list pretty quickly. So, it's a huge, huge partnership and we're super excited. The high school folks have been fantastic. Matt mentioned numbers from human resources, and again, we couldn't do it without HR having our backs and processing people, onboarding people, bringing them on board. So, it's been a huge lift. So, I wanna take time to recognize our team and human resources as well, they've been amazing. As we get going, their focus is gonna be increasing non-school day and summer registrations, and then continuing to offer before and after school programming and partnership with our after school community learning grant. We're in year two. This grant we are awarded from MDE to provide additional opportunities to our title schools in the

054south end of the district. Just some highlights from there listed. So, we are actively working with students that are in extended day, and then working in collaboration with our school psychs and social workers to identify other students who might be in need of some enrichment opportunities that would qualify for some free experiences. So, we do that in collaboration with them and partnering with community vendors. We offer opportunities between that 2:15 to 2:30 time, and then additional enrichment by our team for that remaining time until five o'clock. Students that participate in this program, that will end at 5:00. And then, we do have a transportation partnership with our community friends at NewTrax that we have kids that may need a ride home are able to get a ride home from those four sites after school. And

055their goal is to continue to expand that offering. It's a three-year grant, so they would like to see an additional 83 kids recruited to participate in that program after school by the end of this school year. So again, wonderful opportunities happening. It's nice to have opportunities in buildings that in the past, on that side we've seen a lot of cancellations due to not getting minimum numbers. With the grant in place, we're able to offer these without worrying about minimums. It's cost is covered, they're coming in, which is great because it allows that foundation to grow, and that word of mouth builds up across, friends tell their friends, friends tell their parents, and they participate, and then, hopefully, we get increased numbers. So, just some examples of enrichment topics that are included, around cooking, art, engineering,

056theater, improv, yoga fitness and many, many more areas. So, that's also in collaboration with our youth enrichment. So, we've seen an increase of 150 students enrollment over our summer programs, which you saw a couple slides back. Our middle school flex program numbers were down a little bit from the year before, but our enrichment numbers have increased. So, we think it's a nice little trade off of families just looking for different flexible options, providing their kids different options and opportunities throughout the summer, and still participating within our program offerings. They did do an intentional reduction of core offerings for the fall. You see it's 20 less courses but only, what is it, eight less sections. Mainly part of the week, we offered a lot last fall and ended up having to cancel. So, what they did

057kind of reflected, we have a new person that filled our youth enrichment rule too. It just kind of reflected on starting the fall of what went well last year, and let's start with those and try to get those filled, so we have less cancellations happening to start the school year here. We continue to explore additional partnerships constantly to create different opportunities and new activities and things for our students to participate in. So, we're always looking for new vendors, and working, especially with vendors to offer some music and cooking classes, especially at our middle school level. And I think another great thing too, towards the end of last year, and even a little bit over the summer, we've had our own teachers reaching out, asking if they can provide different enrichment opportunities after school, which we

058love. We're working with a specific teacher with us, we're able to offer that at a lower cost for families too, since we're not paying a vendor, like an outside business coming in, so we highly encourage and are excited to work with our teachers to offer different opportunities around areas that they like to work focus on with outdoors, cooking, whatever it may be. So, if they're listening, which I'm sure they all are, (board members laughing) we'd love to have them reach out to us and look for different opportunities, we continue to offer the kids throughout the year. Our youth rec and middle school athletics are off and running. These programs, especially in a flag football, soccer, I mean, it's just insane the amount of kids that we're serving to come out. Between flag football, rec volleyball,

059rec soccer, we got over 900 kids participating in our programs right now. We have in collaboration with some other surrounding communities, we have a new girls flag football league for grades three through eight. So, we'll be looking to have those teams play against other surrounding communities of the girls flag football, which is awesome. It's nice to see that those opportunities grow and the popularity of flag football grow around the area. Of course, we couldn't do any of our rec sports without our parent volunteers and adult volunteers that help coach. So, Matt's working with over around 90 some parent coaches that make this go. So, a huge thank you to them and we hope to continue that high volume of volunteers in the future, it's a huge, huge help. Middle school sports, again, we're off and

060running for the fall, so it's busy, and we're also running some ultimate frisbee as an intramural option at this time. And just Matt made me sure to mention that rec basketball's right around the corner so information for that will be coming out soon. And then, going into our adult programs and facility use, again, Wayne mentioned this in his report last week. Over at the senior center, we had our grand reopening of our new space and it was a hopping place to be with little kind of exhibit vendor tables of our clubs and different activities that they can do as part of our senior center program. I saw Mr. Wald talking to a handful of people a couple times or over there for a long while too. They had your attention, but it was great, we

061had a lot of people over there volunteering, helping out, and a lot of staff from district center came down to support and check in, and see what everything was about. But we've seen a lot of new people coming through too, which has been great. I think the move, Marissa helping with sharing the update of the new space, it's kind of caught a lot of people's eye. We had some people that live right across the street that popped over last week and just said, "Well, you guys moved across the street," so we figured we might as well walk over and see what you're doing. So, welcome everybody, welcome all. We hope to see more coming through. We're at about 241 members at the senior center. We're averaging about 35 to 50 visitors a day on a

062non-foot care day. (chuckles) So, traffic doubles and we have our foot care come in, which is a huge program and glad to offer it. Yeah, so they're working to continue to advocate for our new space and make people know what's available to them. We'll continue our TGIF meals, our holiday meals, our craft corner events, and partnering with local service organizations to help kind of gain awareness and gain some new membership and let people know that we're here to help 'em out. Our Meals on Wheels is running strong, we're averaging around 1500 meals a month coming out of our kitchen. They're heated, packed and delivered, again daily by a team of volunteers. So again, it comes back to people in the community that wanna make sure they're helping their neighbors and helping people out. So, if

063anybody here is interested or anybody listening interested and wanting to be a Meals On Wheels volunteer driver, don't hesitate to reach out. We're always in need of people that wanna help deliver meals. And adult enrichment continues to be strong. We're starting to use more space at the high school with growing enrichment classes and activities as the buildings have settled in there, excited to use our new spaces to expand offerings and new class options for our adults that are looking to find hobbies and explore different interests. So, we're really excited to use our spaces. It's also been evident in our facility rentals. We continue to see expanded rentals across the district of people that wanna use community room meeting spaces, and especially our gyms and our field spaces. We have an amazing facilities that we should

064all be proud of, and we're here because of them, so we're happy that they're using them, and our local associations and community are benefiting from those new spaces as well. So, it's really been a great thing to see. And then, another big shout out here on the right, the Hippodrome Ice Arena. We had a new dehumidifier put in the past year allowing us to start putting ice in a little bit early and maintaining that ice a little bit later, which has been great. So, thank you to our partnership with the Local Hockey Association to make that happen. And then, our dry floor activities in the off season, the off ice seasons have also been expanding with inline leagues, craft shows, home improvement shows are just some different opportunities and programs that have used that Hippodrome

065in the off season. But a special recognition coming out this year. This will be the 100 years of the Hippodrome this coming fall here. So, I'll be working with John Anderson. We haven't come up with finalized plans yet, but we definitely wanna find a way to recognize and highlight the Hippodrome this year, celebrating a hundred years, it's a big deal. And then, just another update, it's out there, but on the About Us section of our website, you can find all of our publications and upcoming events. So, you'll find catalogs, our senior center, the voice publication, our community bridge publication is part of our community bridge for our adults with disabilities programs. And then, our preschool registration guides, ECFE guides, anything you want to know, find out about our register for authority community ed can be

066found there. And then, as Wayne also mentioned earlier, our Bear Bike Ride supporting youth scholarships will be Sunday the 21st as we kind of kick off homecoming. So, we have different options there. You have a nine-mile, 25-mile or 50-mile bike ride if you'd like to. And then, we're also opening this up to all families, the little ones as well, so one mile little fun ride around the high school and Central Middle School campuses. It can be free to participate, and if you're looking to help contribute towards those youth scholarship funds, we do have different donation options that we ask if people would like to. But it is not a requirement to pay, if you wanna come ride, come ride, we'd love to see you. And that will wrap up right as those other high school

067activities begin to kick off homecoming, so we're excited to be a part of that day on Sunday. So, thank you. - Thank you. - And for my portion of the meeting or this report, I'll just do a quick show and tell, I'm Marisa Vette, communications director for anybody watching. But hello to all of you, thank you for having all of us. The first show and tell item that I'll show here and I know you all have them at the data as well, our printed calendar. And that is something that I think that some districts do, printed calendars. White Bear absolutely does printed calendars. And anytime I ask a family member or a staff member, you know, "Do we go by the wayside?" They say, "No, we do not." I wait for that calendar, and I

068know Rachel gets calls, we get asked at Market Fest in July when is a calendar coming." So, that's always really fun for us to be able to produce that and work on that during the summertime. The other thing that we certainly do all the time, but during the summer, we work on doing the Back to School pages of the website, really trying to help people have a one stop shop for where they wanna find information. Of course, very detailed information is always at the school site, but trying to help families really figure out where they're going as they start the school year. And then, in addition to that page alone, just making sure that the other pages of the websites are up and ready to go as we start the new school year. So, additionally,

069we always do a beginning of the school letter. So, we send a letter out to our families and our staff members as well through email, but our families receive the letter in the mail, and then families also do receive a Spanish version of that. Something that we added this year, because we had the capability to do so with ParentSquare, is that we took that information and we sent it out through ParentSquare to all of our families electronically as well. And what that did was, it did get it to our families in English, but then it also got the information to all of our families in whatever language they speak that we have in our parent view system. So, families did get that information mailed home to them, but they electronically got it in whatever language

070they speak at home as well. So, that was something, and we'll talk about ParentSquare later, quickly as well. But that was something we were able to add into the mix for this year because of that new solution that we have started to use. All right, we also worked with the nutrition services. Department, we worked with them a few years ago, and they just run with it every year. So, that's a full confession. They've done an amazing job with it. But they send a postcard home to all families so students can work on punching in their numbers, which we know when we tested it a couple of years ago, that families literally did and students literally did have fun doing the number. And then, of course, they were sharing information about the application for educational benefits

071as well, which is very important for families to have. On at top of mind, as the school year is beginning to get discounts for, obviously, our school lunches are free to everybody, but that application for educational benefits is really important for families to get other services and benefits as well. So, Tia and I, we're also able to work on some school videos this summer. So, the Central Middle School screenshot that you can see up there is coming out very soon. That's being finalized this week, but it's well on its way to being an invitation to that event that Dr. Kazmierczak talked about. That's happening, coming up on the 24th. We did do a principal welcome video, or a principal introduction video for our new Willow Lane Elementary principal, and then the Bear's bus tour on

072the bottom pointing to the map. That is something that we showed our new staff members to give them just a glimpse, and obviously, it's available on our website as well. But to give our new staff members and families a glimpse throughout the district. Convocation was something that we all came together at the end of August. So, our department worked on pulling together students and staff members to rouse the crowd. Thank you all, who were able to make it for that. The weather did turn out to be beautiful as opposed to last year when it was hotter than hot. So, the weather was perfect and it was a really fun way to start the day. Having the addition of the band, the drum line has always been amazing, but adding those extra bodies in, and having

073the full band was a really, really fun way to kick it off. #BackToSchoolBears, we haven't been saving the fun for ourselves. Our families have gotten into the mix and done #BackToSchoolBears photos as well, so that's been fun. Again, this is a preview on Sunday when you get the e-newsletter, you'll see a collage of photos that have been turned over to us. So, it's been fun to get the community involved as well. And then, additionally, we've been doing our regular communications. Of course, our e-newsletter that we send out is now again, on the more regular process while we're in the school year, our 62.4 facts that Dr. K also talked about. We do those every day at 6:24 am, and then our weekly videos on Friday, we got to publish our first one of the school

074year, and hopefully, you saw all the students sort of running into school excited, and then showcasing the #BackToSchoolBears photos as well. Some other things that we have on the docket. We started in August with our leadership team, some communications trainings that we're doing. And then, we'll do trainings throughout the year, monthly as well with our principals, and members of our school teams. And then as I mentioned, ParentSquare, that is a communication, tool that we have been using district wide, and building wide principals have been using it last school year, and this school year, our teachers will be using that to communicate with our families as well. So, that provides families with an opportunity. They will get an email, they can have text capabilities as well, and it's back and forth. We've called it sort of

075a many things in one, it has taken the place of email systems that we used to use for community newsletters, school messenger that we used to do for school closing days, snow days, we can use it for that. And then again, at this classroom level, we can use it for that as well. And something that's really neat about this program is that it has back and forth translation capabilities. So, I might send you something in English, and Chair Arcand, if you speak French, you would receive the information in French, you'd write back to me in French, and I would read it again in English, because that's what is in the system for me in knowing what to read and how to communicate. And so, that is really exciting, we'll be using that more robustly starting

076or this year, and we're excited to have that capability. That's it for the show and tell. - We have a lot of fast talkers in our group. (people laughing) Yeah. There's a lot of Viking fans that might be that. (people laughing) Opening school, opening week enrollment. We run our opening week enrollment to report to the board at 3:00 pm on the first Friday of the school year. So, these are early numbers, and they will look different at some point. But this is where we're starting and we'll just compare to where we were last year at this time. And so, as we look at elementary, we'll look at elementary, secondary, and then we'll look at cohort changes. At the elementary level, Birch Lake is up 20 students graduated a small class. But we see have seen

077cohort growth improvement at Birch Lake in every grade level from last year's kindergartners through this year's fourth grade, so they're attracting students there. Matoska, or excuse me, North Star, Oneka, Otter, all seeing growth, and that reflects the increasing enrollment on the north end of our school district. We're seeing a drop at Lakeaires and Lincoln, both of those schools enrolled smaller elementary classes. And as we look at kindergarten, or excuse me, birth rate data, that's to be expected at Lincoln, we underperform that birth rate data, which can happen sometimes within elementary schools, you can see a 20 student jump in a kindergarten class. We see that often in Otter Lake. Usually, Lincoln has a wait list in kindergarten, this year, we just saw a really small kindergarten class report to Lincoln. And then, at Willow Lane,

078we saw really pretty slow enrollment throughout the summer until the last few weeks. And then, we really saw pretty intense registration at Willow Lane. So, Willow Lane's up a bit. At the secondary level, we're seeing a plus 22 at the middle school. We're seeing some good gains at the middle school level over this time last year. However, I'll caution you about secondary numbers that families tend are more apt not to withdraw their students when they move or enroll in a different school. And so, we're taking those first two weeks of the school year and really cleaning up those secondary numbers to determine, well, how many students didn't let us know that they weren't coming back. And that was the case last year. We saw it in sixth grade last year significantly. And so, I would

079just warn you not to fall in love or to hate any of our secondary numbers. High schools that the numbers is down 55. If you look at 6-12 total, we're down 68 students from this time last year, and then with a plus 22 at the K-5 level, and the K-12 total at the bottom is minus 46. We thought we would see a bit of a downtick this year 'cause we were graduating a larger senior class, bringing in a smaller ninth grade class. Really, the ninth grade class has performed better than expected. And we'll kind of get some context in these numbers as we look at cohorts. So, you follow the cohorts from year to year, you can see in kindergarten we enrolled 557. And first grade, we have 564 first graders that cohort as kindergartners

080were at 546. So, this year's kindergarten classes a tick bigger, but that really good growth in first grade, and then second grade from 600 to 628 is great. I just wanna point out, that cohort of 628 second grad was 591 as kindergartners. So, we really are seeing some good growth in the early grades. And you see that all the way through fourth grade, pretty significant cohort growth. Fifth grade kinda leveled off. Sixth grade, I said we had a smaller fifth grade class entering, but it's a large sixth grade class so that's interesting. We'll see how those numbers pan out here over the next few weeks. Sometimes people have enrolled their kids in multiple schools, trying to figure it out over the summer, and then forget to tell the school that they're not attending. So, we'll

081keep watching those numbers at the secondary level. Yeah, that ninth grade being at plus 41 was a surprise. 12th grade, we always see a large cohort jump in 12th grade, and that's because we count in our transition education numbers into the 12th grade class. So, if you take 49 is what we have at tech out of that, then you see the 12th grade cohort increased by 35, and we see some significant changes as students are finishing up that senior year. We get a lot of new students and some open enrollments in 12th grade, mostly at the area learning center, but we see some growth in 12th grade. When we look at just then tech out of it, and just look at the cohort growth, we're at up 138 students in grades one through 12. So,

082that's an encouraging number for us. Like I said, we'll feel more confident in the numbers as we get through these first few weeks and see where our secondary numbers are. We don't expect to see changes at the elementary, those are pretty solid numbers. Okay, and that's it. - A lot of work is going on this somewhere in fall. Do we have any questions about any of the presentation stuff that we covered? - I do. - Yes. - Of this presentation or all of them? - We were doing all you anywhere of those that we had. - Okay. So, with the operations, thank you for that update. And I agree with you on the nutritional staff being happy and engaging. I walked through the cafeteria in the high school, and felt like welcoming, and I almost

083ordered something but I didn't because I shouldn't have. Didn't need to. - I mentioned to our nutrition staff how friendly they're to the kids, and I hear from them all the time. We have the nicest kids in White Bear Lake. - Really, that's nice, that's good to hear. Question on the electric buses. Have we baked into our budget the infrastructure to charge those? - Yeah, that's included in the grants. - [Skaar] Okay. - Yeah. - Good. And then, on safety and security, and maybe this is for the other board members. I was thinking, it may be a good idea for us to have a security assessment by facilities in a executive session or closed session. I've done a number of assessments and done security systems on facilities including K-12 and critical infrastructure. So, I'd be

084interested in that if you think it's something that we should do in executive session, it may be a good idea. The other one was on the facilities. And you're not gonna be surprised by this, because I've mentioned it a couple of times before, but the budget versus actual, we did such a great job on being transparent on the front end of where the money was going by facility, it was very detailed, very transparent. And now that the chickens have come to roost, I think it'd be helpful to get what the actuals are compared to what the final budget was by facility. And I know the projects, everything's gonna be completed. At the end of December is a completion date for everything? - Yeah, it'll be spring, the punch list continue, and then there's final billing.

085So, it's quite a while after a project is complete before that budget is really sound. - [Skaar] Right. - We can say that this project is done. - Yeah. So, I think that would be helpful at the end to do that. So, maybe January, February or something like that would be the timeframe. - [Speaker] That might be a little early. - Okay. - [Speaker] It might be probably next fall before we'd really have what those numbers are. - Okay. That seems a little late, but I trust you on the timing. And then, on HR. Can I ask a question on that? - Yeah, sure. - Okay. I don't know if you need to get up but this is just a quick question. I saw those new people at the convocation, it was a lot, and

086that's a lot of staffing work. So, kudos to you and your staff for recruiting. And then, as I got to think about it, I thought, well, do we have a high turnover rate? Do we know what our turnover rate is for just overall or by teacher? - Yeah, our turnover rate is generally right under 5% is kind of what that tends to look like. - [Skaar] Is that voluntary or total? - That's total. So, that's including our retirements, our resignations, et cetera. - Okay, that's good. 5% is good, probably what's the average with the school districts across the metro-area? - [Matt] I don't have a sense of that. - Okay. That's all I had, thank you. - [Matt] Yep, you're welcome. - [Arcand] You want more? - Well, just on the community, sorry, but on

087the community ed one, I just wanted to say on that, it was on 59. This is really kind of an important nugget that I saw, which should not get unnoticed, which is our wait list was 390 and it's gone down to 33. So that's a reduction in the wait list by 90%. That's impressive. And our numbers are up about 30% from 753 to 1010. Don't quote me on 30%, I was doing that on my head, and I'm thinking about the Vikings maybe losing. No, they won't. Listen, I got a bad history with Monday night at the Bears with the Vikings, I don't wanna get into it. Anyways, and that's a nugget that we can take to say, hey, the investments that we made in the facilities translated into real benefits, which is reduction in the

088wait list and also increase in capacity. So, I think that that's an important nugget that shouldn't get overlooked, thank you. - [Arcand] All right, Ms. Streiff Oji. - Yes, I had a question also for community ed. Mr. (indistinct) quick question for you. I also was gonna say good job with things being way up, enrollment up and wait list down. I had a question. - [Matt] It's the group, it's the dean, but thank you. - You and your team, and to everybody, just so much good happening in this district, and I really appreciate the work of everyone. My question was about the senior center. I heard 241 members of the senior center. Do they pay a fee or do they register, and what do they get for that? - [Maurer] Yep, so it's an annual fee

089of $35. - Okay. - For the year just to become a member, and then they will get access to the clubs and activities that go on during the day. So, if they wanna be a part of wood carver, cribbage, any of the clubs or different activities we have just gives them access to come in and participate in those groups. - [Streiff Oji] And that all takes place in the senior center. - Yep, all here. Yep. - Thank you. - So, feel free to stop by any time, they love visitors. They love to show what they're doing. - [Streiff Oji] Nice. - And I think another note too is part of our senior consortium with Ramsey County, we have additional resources that we can, if there's anybody that's in need of something, whether it be housing

090help or any kind of different resources that we don't provide, but obviously, we have a connection to help them find the people they need to talk to if they need any of those supports. - Nice, thank you. - Yeah, you're welcome. - [Arcand] Can I just ask for some clarity real quick? How many trips around the sun do I have to make to be part of the club? - You can join tomorrow if you want. - [Arcand] Am I old enough? - Yeah. - Okay. So, I don't know. - Yep. (people laughing) - [Kazmierczak] What is the age, Tim? Some of us might have just hit a milestone. - [Maurer] I think officially it might be 55. - Oh, yeah. (people laughing) - [Arcand] But I think I need you- - [Maurer] We don't discriminate

091on the- - I meet that, I'll just say. Ms. Ellison. - Yeah, thank you. I just wanna start by saying kudos. I mean, this is a tremendous amount of work. For anybody who thinks that educators don't work in the summer, I feel like this is the proof that that is false. So, thank you for your professionalism and expertise in your work. And I'm not sure if this is a question for Mr. Maurer or Dr. Gillespie. I love that the Future Bear Educators are the ones really helping to alleviate the wait list. One of those is my kid and she loves it. It's really an incredible transition for students who are interested in the education world to get to have this real life experience. And I guess my question is, 'cause when we also have the

092students in the summer who are working with the Chromebooks, what are they called? What do you call 'em, the tech? - The Tech Depot. - Yes, Tech Depot. Are those kids from the IT career pathway? - [Maurer] I think it was a question for Susan. - For Susan, okay. (people laughing) No. Well, okay, because this is like a multi-pronged question here. So, for Susan that, but then are there other ways that we are integrating our career pathways students into the district? - So, currently, they're not necessarily part of the career pathway or they don't need to be, but as they continue to develop, there's actually the high school's planning to offer a Tech Depot as a course so they can learn more of that. Then, we intend to fully support them and have them work

093for us in the summer and continue. And even during the school year actually to help us maintain all of those devices during the year. - [Ellison] It's just so hands on. These students are digital natives and they know what to do. - Absolutely. - Wonderful, thank you. - Yeah, and I can just add with the Future Bear Educators, which is our courses for students that maybe wanna go into the career of education. They can be AVID Cross-Age, so they can tutor the freshmen, sophomore students in our AVID courses, which is a college and career readiness courses. And they also get paid for that experience as well. - Yeah, it's amazing. I would be interested to hear about other career pathways as we move forward that we might integrate into the workings of this district. I

094mean, this is the reason that my daughter decided she wanted to be a teacher is because of the career pathway. So, I appreciate that. And then, my other question, or I guess just more of a comment is that Dr. Kazmierczak and I have talked about this for years about middle school sports, and the difficulty of middle school sports. There's not, oh sorry, thank you. (board members laughing) That if you wanna participate in middle school sports, you often have to be part of a club or an association which is so expensive. And so, I'm thrilled to see that we have soccer now in the middle school, and ultimate frisbee, basketball. I mean, it's the ability for students to be able to play these sports in middle school as well as getting to do things that are

095already available like the musical, and music, I think sets them up in such a better way and their families who might not otherwise be able to afford it for high school. So, I'm really glad to see that that's the path we're on and I would love to see the growth of that in the future. Baseball in middle school and softball, please. - [Arcand] Thank you, any other questions? Yes, Ms. Thompson. - I don't have any questions 'cause I've been asked already, but I just have to give a kudos to the new logos because I mean, I saw them both, and right away they caught my eye. And they just look nice and fresh, and it's awesome. And then the wait list was like, I was so excited. I think I might've like yelled out loud

096a little bit 'cause I know we've struggled with that. And when you have a lot of parents waiting, like in that fall, where we had 390, it's a lot of calling and frustration. So, to be able to make that go down to 33 this year from 175 last year, I mean, kudos to everybody who worked on that and making sure we had the staff to support all of our families and our community, I mean, that's just fantastic to see. - [Arcand] Right. Anything else? Yes, Ms. Beloyed. - Just a question, maybe a comment. So, if the teachers, if our students are looking to go into teaching, do we have any burgeoning people that could fix our school buses, or maybe whether if they're 16, they can drive the buses when we're short people? Just kidding.

097I think everyone has done an amazing, (people laughing) everyone's done an amazing job. I'm cautiously optimistic about the enrollment, especially given the ECFE numbers. I mean, clearly, we're doing something right. There's a lot of families that don't have anywhere to get childcare for their kids, which is obvious by the fact that we've got over a thousand taking advantage of our program. So, I think it's great that we offer it, but it also tells sort of a bigger tale that the school district isn't just the classroom, and it isn't just the teachers, it's a whole community wide, the responsibilities are huge. I mean, we offer some medical services at the different levels. We not like "medical, medical," but I have a cold, I go in and they can. Social services, we bring those people in. I

098mean, it runs the gamut and it's a very, very large job. And I just wanna say thank you to all of you because I know how much work you guys put in, especially over the summer to prepare for the year. So, thank you. - All right, anything else? Well, thank you, everybody. The best thing is when you get your dessert and you get the whipped cream on the top, this is gonna be the whipped cream on the top. We're gonna be able to see the welcome video. - [Kids] Go, Bears! - [Group] Go, Bears! - Go, Bears! (people laughing) - [Team] Go, Bears! - [Students] Go, Bears! - [Crowd] Go, Bears! (gentle music) - All right, thank you. We have no discussion items tonight, so we'll go right to operations E1. We're gonna have action

099on the school board policies 414, and 516.5. As a reminder, we do these all in a group together, so can I get a motion to approve the school board policies? - So moved. - Okay, Ms. Thompson. Can I get a second? - Second. - Second by Ms. Beloyed, any discussion? Okay, hearing none, this will be a voice vote. All in favor say aye. - [Board Members] Aye. - Opposed, same sign. Okay, the motion carries. (gavel thuds) Now, it's time for board forum. We use this time to kind of talk about things that are coming up in the district or things that we're doing in the district. Yes, Ms. Ellison. - Something that I got a notice about is the mom of a senior that I didn't know that we'd participated in before is the pilot

100program with automatic acceptance to universities in the State of Minnesota. It's tremendous. Not all high schools in the state do it, there's a list you can find on the website of high schools, including White Bear that allow their students who qualify for certain universities in the State of Minnesota to be automatically accepted at the university. Yeah, okay. So, this is something I didn't know about. And so, the pressure that this alleviates for our students who are trying to figure out their next step and to see if college might be the step for them is something that I didn't even know we did, and it's wonderful. So, I just wanna say that that's out there, students will get notification in the next couple of weeks about the schools that they can get into immediately. And paying

101for it, of course, is a whole different issue. But I think that's gonna relieve so much stress for our parents of seniors. So, thank you. - Thank you. Yes, Ms. Streiff Oji. - So, I wanted to share a production that is coming up here in White Bear Lake at the White Bear Lake High School Theater for performing arts. It's called The Penguin Project, and it's about empowering children with special needs through theater. It was established in 2004, I think, there's 64 chapters. This chapter in White Bear Lake is only the second one in the State of Minnesota. It's a national program. It provides a supportive environment for children with disabilities to explore their creative talents. It's also demonstrated that participation in the performing arts test therapeutic value by enhancing social interaction, communication skills, self-confidence and

102self-esteem. It's also proven to be a place where kids are able to create a social network that they may not have access to otherwise, there are mentors that support those that need it on stage so they're actually a part of the production. So, kids that serve as mentors have opportunities to build relationships that are ongoing over time and friendships that they may not otherwise have. And the performance is going to be at the White Bear Lake High School, September 11th through the 13th at 7:00 pm, and September 14th at 2:00 pm. And I encourage y'all to go. I took my granddaughter to one of these performances and it was pretty amazing to see, and made me want to get involved with that as well. And I know the school district has supported in various ways,

103so thank you. - [Arcand] All right, Ms. Thompson. Oh, I was pointing that. - Okay, I thought you had. Ms. Beloyed. - I'm sorry. - We've kind of already gone over most of the stuff since it's the beginning of the year, so I wanted to put out there that September is Hunger Action Month, which also affects quite a few of our students within the schools. So, White Bear Lake has pantry, Hugo has a pantry, donations of goods are great, donations of cash are better. That way they can put the money to what they need it for specifically. So, think about that this month, and I believe, since my son was the first year, I'll just give myself a little pat on the back since I was the one that brought this to Dr. K, (laughs)

104for a very selfish reason. But I believe what happens is every senior will receive an email and they have to opt in to the process. It was amazing for my son. It took so much pressure off of him just making that kind of decision, like who I wanted to apply to. And he didn't have to worry about it until he already knew if he sent them something, and they were going to say yes. So, it was an amazing thing for him. So, I'm glad you brought that up. So, I encourage all the parents, do it. And you're still gonna have to apply, but it does make the whole process a whole lot easier. - Okay, thank you. I just have one thing to bring up the, oh, sorry- (Ellison speaks indistinctly) Yeah. - Oh, thank

105you. I was looking at the Minnesota report card that just came out recently, and our numbers went up in all the key categories. Percent of meeting standards for math went up, percent of meeting standards for reading went up, and our attendance also went up. So, those are trends. You don't look necessarily at the raw numbers, you look at the trend and the trend is going up. We still have a lot of work to do, I know we do, and I know we'll continue to work on it, but I think that that's a good sign, the trends are up. The other thing I wanted to just mention is, I started using AI, and it's great. It is amazing what it can do, and it's gonna have profound impacts on K-12 education. This is what alpha schools

106claims, it can increase the speed of learning, speed of teaching, speed of curriculum development, those are three very important things. And we're not gonna stop it, so we're gonna have to adapt to it. So, I would think, again, I know I'm giving you a lot of work here, Scott, on adding things to the agenda, but I think that one is one that we ought to discuss at an open meeting just to get an assessment from staff, how they view AI, and maybe even parents and students in terms of how they're using it, thank you. - [Arcand] Okay. - All right. - I'm just gonna talk today about Friday, the Ramsey County legal local government is having an educational program again, it'll be this Friday, February, February, whoo, September 12th from 8:00 to 9:00, it's a

107Zoom. And the speakers this Friday is gonna be Citizens Against Sex Trafficking, they're called CAST. And this is a very eye-opening for many of us, I think, you don't realize everything that's going on. And so, this is a great session. Anybody from the White Bear Lake Schools can sign up and join. If you need information, let me know. I also know that if you can't make it, most of the time we video it. And so, for the Zoom session, and so if that's the case, we can send you the recorded version of it. But I encourage everybody, school counselors, or anybody, psychologists, anybody, because I think this is an eyeopener from many things, we never really realized what was going on. So, I invited everybody from our school district to attend that on Friday. And

108if you need information, let me know, I can get you the meeting invite information. And with that, I have that, is there any others? Well, we've come to that point. We're at the adjournment. Can I get a motion to adjourn? - [Ellison] Mr. Chair, I move to adjourn. - Okay, Ms. Ellison. Is there a second? - Second. - All in favor say aye. - [Board Members] Aye. - Opposed, same sign. Okay, motion carries. (gavel thuds)