001(gavel bangs) - I now call the order the school board, Independent School District 624 to order. Roll call. Will the clerk Clerk please call the roll? - Streiff Oji. - Here - Thompson. - Here. - Arcand. - Here. - Daniels Here. Ellison. - Here. - Skaar. - Here. - Please stand. If you have a hat, take your hat off. The pledge of allegiance. Gimme me a minute. I got it. - All right. - [Group] 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 moved - By Thompson. Can I get a second? - Second. - That's Streiff Oji.
002Is there any discussion? This will be a voice vote. All in favor say aye. - [Group] Aye. - Opposed? Save the sign. The motion passes. We also have before us a consent agenda. This contains a variety of business items that come monthly, including donations. We are truly grateful for all the support shown every month by our staff, for our staff and students. So we wanna thank everybody that's contributed. Can I get a motion to approve the consent agenda? - So moved. - Okay. - Oh, sorry. - Daniels. Can I get a second? - Second. - By Thompson. Is there any discussion? This will be a roll call vote. Will the clerk please call the rollout? - Streiff Oji. - Aye. - Thompson. - Aye. - Arcand. - Aye. - Daniels, Aye. Ellison. - Aye. -
003Skaar. - Aye. - Okay, now we're to the public forum. Part of our agenda, we had zero people requests, so we will not be doing that. We're going on to our informational items. C1. Dr. Kazmierczak with student recognition. - Alright, thank you Chair Arcand, members of the board. Tonight we proudly celebrate the achievements of members of the high school speech team and middle school students who participated in History Day. Congratulations to each and every one of you for state and national level accomplishments. We also extend our sincere gratitude to the dedicated staff and support of family members, who played a vital role in these successes. In recognition of their accomplishments, students have received a certificate and a bear pin plus a letter acknowledging their achievements was mailed to their home. Now please join us in
004watching a video highlighting their accomplishments. Go Bears. (pleasant music) (pleasant music continues) - [Chair] All right. Congratulations to all those in there. I know a lot of hard work went into it. We're gonna go on to information item C2, recognition of student liaison. Dr. Kazmierczak. - Thank you Chair Arcand, members of the board. So on behalf of the White Bear Lake Area School Board, I want to commend and recognize Lydia Kleinhans, our 12th grade student, and then Thomas Reese Thomas is here tonight. He's our junior representative for their outstanding roles as the 24-25 student representatives to the school board. So thank you. (group clapping) (members faintly speaking) (group laughing) (members faintly speaking) No, that's okay. (group laughing) I don't want camp for style. So next year Thomas will be sitting up here with us as
005we're expanding the upfront, so there's a little more room and he'll be joining us upfront. So thank you Thomas for your regular attendance. - Okay, thank you. We're now on to C3 Super attendance report. Once again, Dr. Kazmierczak. - All right, thank you Chair Arcand and members of the board. Congratulations to Mariner Middle School language arts teacher, Carla Triggs, who was named the White Bear Lake Area Educators 2025 Teacher of the Year at a recent recognition ceremony. Also, congratulations to the other finalists and to all those who were nominated this year. Willow Lane Elementary, fifth graders are taking over local restaurant Donatelli's in White Bear Lake working as the cooks servers and hosts over the lunch hour. Students will be there from 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM again on May 13th and May 20th. Tomorrow's
006May 13th visit will be an extra special one as Gabe Kessel, a white bear high school student and former wrestler who is fighting a rare and aggressive form of brain cancer, will be there with his family. And the students have chosen to donate their Donatelli's tips to Gabe's treatment. This is a full circle moment. When Gabe was in fifth grade at Willow, he worked a shift during the restaurant takeover, and we confirmed, I have to make sure Gabe is the student second from the left. So, he'll be there tomorrow. So tomorrow might be a great day to go and support that project. Alright, the high school varsity baseball team has an exciting game on the calendar next week, not only will they be taking on our rival to the West, Mounds View High School on
007Wednesday May 21st, they will be doing so at Target Field. Tickets can be purchased either through a high school baseball player or coach or you can find more information as a news item on the district's website. And as the school year comes to a close, a variety of end of the year student celebrations are taking place throughout the district before the last day of school on June 6th. I'd like to offer a special congratulations to those who are reaching important milestones, whether it's graduating from high school, middle school, elementary school, kindergarten, or preschool. I'm excited to celebrate our Area Learning Center graduates on June 4th and our White Bear Lake Area High School graduates on June 5th in new commencement spaces. The high school's Performing Arts Center will house the ALC graduation and the White
008Bear Lake Area High School commencement ceremony will take place outside at the high school stadium. So enjoy the last days of the school year and have a safe and relaxing summer. - Alright, thank you very much. - Yes. - Alright, we're done with discussion items number one. We're gonna talk of graduation rate and student attendance update. Dr. Gillespie. - Hello Chair Arcand, members of the board, thank you for having me tonight. I will have some guests join me in just a little bit as part of a panel discussion. So I'll let you guys know when to come up. Tonight, I really wanna take time to talk to you about graduation and student attendance data and really look at in the context of celebrations of where we are, what's the context around that data. And then
009as we continue to get better, where are the areas that we have to get better and are continually diving into that. Again, I talk about graduation and attendance data. Clarify some of the key metrics. These are metrics that get talked about across the state and so making sure that people understand what they mean and why they matter. And then again, highlight what's working and where we're growing. So as you may have seen, our graduation rate for the class of 24 was just released this past week. Our district rate for the class of 24 is 91.6%, and we really break that down in three schools that we have. We have our High School, which is 96.5%. Our Area Learning Center, which is 77.5%. And then our Transition Education Center, that data was, we have it internally
010but it's too small in terms of the number of graduates to report publicly. And so those three factor into what our school district rates are, which we are happy that it has increased and that we continue to be competitive with the state. I think it's really important to note we get compared, which I understand completely why we would with school districts across our area. And not all school districts offer the same programming that we do. So we're really proud of our Area Learning Center. We're really proud of our Transition Education Center. But that isn't the case in all districts, especially our neighbors closest to us and they're our friends and colleagues but Mahtomedi really doesn't have those programs. They use those programs with 916 where we have our own and we also partner with 916
011as you know. Our high school rate is 96.5%, which really keeps us very competitive. We're the second highest in the area high schools and we're really proud of that. Everyone should be proud that the ninth grade year for these students was 2021, the school year. And so that was an interrupted school year for them. And really we worked really hard to make sure we could get as many students to cross the stage as possible and really make sure that they felt prepared for their next steps, whatever that might be. So celebrations, if we look at specifically the high schools graduating class last year there was 488 students, 17 of them were nongraduates, but 11 of those 17 had already planned with their teams that they would go on to our 18 to 22-year-old programming. And
012so when you look at 11 of those 17 graduating according to plan, what we planned for 'em and their teams, that's a graduation rate of 98.8% and really something to be very, very proud of. The other piece is looking at our Area Learning Center. Many of the students that go there, one of the reasons that they go is they have had some sort of blip on the screen in terms of completing credits. And so many are credit deficient when they're referred there. And our Area Learning Center at 77.5% is one of the highest. And it really sets out compared to others that are more traditionally around 50%, which again, not to be critical of them 'cause that is a program that we provide for our students, but the fact that we're still getting our students
013to graduate in that four year rate speaks a lot to the program and the staff and what they're doing. The other piece that we keep looking in and getting better and really my commitment to you and our commitment is to continue to think about what other evidence do we have in terms of how are students doing academically as we couple that with graduation. And one of the data that we have, which it's lagging. And so some of this can be kind of frustrating sometimes in terms of how we impact our system is from the SLEDS data. And I linked the website there, but they track the percent of high school students needing to take developmental coursework in Minnesota colleges during their first two fall terms. And you may or may not be familiar, but when
014students take developmental coursework, they have to pay for it. But those credits don't then impact whatever they might be studying. And so for the class of 2018, 19% of our students who enrolled in Minnesota colleges needed to take developmental coursework. And the most recent data that we have right now is the class of 23 and that's down to 9%. And again, it's been a focus as you know we've talked with you at the board, but we continue to think about how do we make sure students have the skills necessary so they're successful beyond their time with us. So who are the 52 students that didn't graduate? We have, that's across the district. We have 21 students who are currently enrolled with us, seven who've graduated since the cutoff. And the cutoff for the Minnesota Department
015of Education is September 15th after the June that you would call four year graduation. And so we're diving in, there's a few that we're asking MDE just to look at for us 'cause we believe we reported them as graduates within that timeframe, but five of them for sure graduated after September 15th. Then we have 22 students that we're really looking at where might they be and what happened. And so some in our system are seven students are designated as a 15 day drop, meaning they didn't attend school 15 consecutive days and then we have to drop them from our enrollment. Two transferred to other schools and 15 are for unknown reasons. So I'm gonna talk to you a little bit about those 15 as well. I think it's important to note that a student when
016they leave us, them graduating or not graduating counts against the district or the high school where they were there the most time. So you'll see, I'm gonna click on a chart in a second. We had a couple students leave us in 10th grade. Well that might mean that those two solid years were the longest that they were enrolled in one high school. And so then that comes back to us. So that's one of the reasons that graduation data is lagging is all the different calculations that they need to do with districts making sure their data's correct. And then also at the Department of Education. So as we continue to think about that was gonna, it's gonna take me a little bit here again, we had 52 that have not yet graduated. That's 8.4%. And so
017I wanted to really look at what do we know so far about their stories? And we're still diving in our ALC leadership team and our high school leadership team are really working with me. But of that, what student groups do these students fall into? How long were they with us? What might we find out about the students? And of the 52 students, four students are multilingual learners, three students or excuse me, 36 students qualify for educational benefits or what we used to call students and families who qualify for free and reduced lunch. 19 students who receive special education. Then you'll see the different ethnicity and race groups that each student falls into. Then as you think about, okay, 52 students, 21 again are currently enrolled with us, seven have graduated, and then that unknown category
018with two that we know transferred to another school district, we have 22 that we're still trying to figure out what can we do. It's still not too late to have them come and take part in our classes to get their diplomas. And so really right now what what we know, and like I said, it literally is hour by hour we're diving into it as we got this data last week, 10th graders, four of left us in 10th grade, seven of them left us in 11th grade and then 12, or excuse me, 11 of them left us in 12th grade. About 16 of the 22 have been enrolled with us and came to us as middle school students. And so that's one of the areas I'll talk about at the very end. But diving into how
019do we support students who are new to our system in sixth grade or even at the high school to make sure that they graduate and feel part of our system. And then if you look at the credits earned, a total credit right now is, our current schedule is students need 22 credits to earn their diploma. So we have eight students that are pretty close, seven who are a little bit closer but a little bit further away. And then we have seven students who really aren't very close in terms of credits. And so each student has a different story that we're diving into. And then again, our commitment is to partner with Principal Reetz, Assistant Principal, Jenni Sjosten, and to really dive in and say what can we do across both of our programs to make
020sure that we help students with graduating? And then I put over here also, just so you know, 17 students, which I already talked about at the high school, 32 students that didn't graduate were part of our ALC and then three students in our Transition Education Center. So shifting to attendance and people might think that's a weird coupling that I'm doing, but part of this is because people are talking about it a lot and making sure that people understand what it means, but also that you understand that we're leaning into it and have continuously done that. So regular school attendance is essential for student success and students who attend regularly perform better academically, are more engaged and are more likely to graduate on time. So there's one of the connections. The other piece is as we
021think about intervening around attendance, the earlier we intervene, that really is the best way we can improve academic outcomes and reduce future academic struggles for students. So MDE releases each August something called consistent attendance or you maybe have seen it called the chronic absenteeism depending on, its shifted titles a little bit. And that data is released each August and it lags. So this August we'll get the data from the class of the school year of 23-24. And that data is how many students, the percentage of students that were in school 90% of the time. And students have to have been enrolled with us for 50% or more. And so it is, right now our district data is around a little between 70 and 71% of students have attended 90% of the time. I think it's
022important to know that doesn't mean our daily attendance is 70%, that really our daily attendance is quite high 'cause that's what our principals look at all the time. This helps us track how's that cumulation of absences really impacting our students. And so as we look at it, I just wanna make sure that we understand one, I'm gonna dive in what that looks like for each level, but also that this is just one point of data and it can be a little frustrating for our principals 'cause it's so lagging. It's good for us as a system. But what they see day in, day out and they'll talk about that a bit and our support teams that they really are looking who are the kids right in front of me and how do I make sure to
023positively impact that number and their experience. So consistent attendance data that the 70 between 70 and 71, it's 70 point something and it's escaping me right now. It's really from the class of the school year 22-23. This August 23-24 will be released and then 24-25 would come out obviously next August. We do our best to recreate the calculation internally. But it is another, we're pretty good. We predicted 22-23 and each number was within 3%. But it does take some calculations at some, frankly if we can get close, it's just not worth the manpower 'cause it does take that to have to figure out who's been here how long, and we can look at different ways of looking at data, which really is what our data department partners with our principals on. So in this graph,
02423-24 is an estimate as is 24-25 to date. And the date was by the end of March that I was able to get. And so really what I'm wanting to show is that each one of our schools have made significant improvement. 21-22 was the first time that data has been publicly released for five years prior to that. And so it was a little bit of a shock for all of us that that was a way that people were tracking attendance. That being said, we worked really hard to increase that across the board. Our elementary saw a rebound faster than secondary. And you'll see that in a little bit, but then we keep asking more questions. So right now it looks like maybe this year from 23-24, 24-25 might take a little dip. So what's going
025on each school, each student, each situation 'cause 90% attendance means students miss no more, if they start missing around 17 days of school, that's when they drop below 90%. And as you can imagine, if you have a student who maybe gets the flu or something else and then you take a family vacation, it can be easy for people to accumulate that number of absences. And it's actually just the way life has collided for our families. Our secondary attendance for middle school and high school took a little bit longer to rebound, but I'm really excited about what we're seeing for, especially for this year. We did have a hunch that the split campus wasn't helping us in terms of attendance. And that really, I think that's one of the reasons that we're seeing such an increase
026right now at the high school, ninth and 10th graders have the role models of 11th and 12th graders. And 11th and 12th graders really get to be at a school that they've already established a culture and excitement. South campus was wonderful, but also 11th and 12th graders, if you've had your own, you know, get focused on what's next and sometimes engaging in the culture at the high school, it just doesn't come as easily. And so seeing that change is really exciting and leaning in and saying, "Okay, but who are the other students who aren't attending at least 90% of the time? And how do we partner with families to understand the impact that can have, but also find out is there something that we need to do better at school to make kids wanna come
027to school more?" So what are we doing? We are working really hard. We've streamlined our attendance recording procedures across our district. We did that last year. Each one of our buildings has teaming structure at each building. They examine monthly attendance data as well as discuss individual students. And then we really work hard with our partnership with family and county resources when barriers to attendance continually persist. One thing that we, excuse me realize is we needed to help families know when do they send their students to school when they may be not feeling the best, but can still come to school. Especially since COVID, if you remember, if your kid even had a little tickle, we wanted everyone to stay home. And so how do we reset this is when you can send students. So our
028student support team created this graphic and it's been shared with families around when do students stay home and when can they come to school. All right, I'm gonna have my friends join me now. So I have four representatives from across our system. Brian Morris, who's the principal at Lincoln Elementary. Ryan Clark who's the associate principal at Mariner Middle School. Ally Lohse, licensed social worker at Central Middle School. And then Russ Reetz, principal at the high school. And I have two questions that I wanna prompt them with so that they can share some things with you and then they'll be up here to answer any questions that you might have at the end. All right, you guys can decide who goes first. Welcome. Can you share one strategy or approach your team has implemented this year
029that has positively impacted attendance rates and what made it successful? - I would just say, excuse me. Brian Morris, principal at Lincoln. Across our elementary schools, we automated parent communication for unexcused absences. So tiered levels of unexcused absences. And that has opened up a lot of time for us, right? Unexcused absences are what we use for communicating with the county also. That's what the county requires that we track, sort of taking that direct communication and decision making piece off our plate really allowed us to focus on more complex barriers. What is keeping our kids at home? What do parents need to hear from us to know that their kids should be in school, that every day they miss is a missed opportunity to learn and that our school is a safe and respectful environment. So
030yeah, this year really opening up that time for us to focus on the individuals around attendance has been huge. - At the high school, we really focused on two things. The first one was our theme to start the year, and it was around belonging. So we really encouraged our staff to be intentional about how they welcome students to their classroom. We armed them with different strategies like four at the door, a top 20 strategy, as well as some relationship building activities early in the trimester, or sorry, in the semester to help our students feel more welcome and comfortable in the classroom. And then we are much more proactive. We have nine student supervisor hall monitors that are doing hallway sweeps, helping students get to school on time. We added a warning bell so students know
031they have one minute to get to their classroom, which helped. We also were reactive if a student misses two or more classes the previous day, they're met with by a student support specialist the following day. And goals are set and parent phone calls are made in an effort to partner with parents of students who are absent. And then students that were on our radar for 10 or more absences in a week were brought forward to what we call our community connect teams. Those teams meet and collectively talk about different intervention strategies for helping students get to class. So those are the major initiatives this year around attendance at the high school. - Greetings. At Mariner, we believe a problem like attendance is a complex problem, requires a multifaceted approach. And so I'm gonna talk about
032two initiatives. One's kind of a bigger scale that touches all students, then one's kind of more of a dive down deeper and talk about specific students. Similar to Lincoln, we've automated our attendance letters, which gave us a really predictable cadence to when we communicate with families, allowing the communication to be really proactive and predictable. And when parents understand the attendance pattern that needs to be interrupted early on, they can be proactive and they can interrupt some of those attendance barriers before they become fully entrenched. We found that opening up that line of communication with families, it allowed us to create a partnership proactively, right? And kind of work together in that collaborative problem solving. Zeroing in on specific students, we also emphasized a sense of belonging in fact created a belonging committee comprised of teachers,
033counselors, and administrators that tried to zoom in on what caused the student to not feel belonging. And so we leveraged data from our DESSA social emotional learning screener and we zeroed in on students, who told us through their self-report that they're not feeling connected at school. And had our counselors dive deep with students who felt the most disconnected and found some really interesting things. By holding these empathy interviews, we not only validated those students' emotions and feelings about not feeling connected at school, but it really informed some of our practices as we strive to continue to foster building that that community and that connectedness in middle school, which is of paramount importance, especially in middle school. - Thank you for letting me be here to speak. I was struggling to think of an answer to
034this question 'cause I think what you all are pointing out is attendance is a very complex thing and it requires a lot of different systems at play. So it's not just one person that's doing the procedures, but we have our counselors, our administration, our attendance clerks, our technology, like all of those things have to be in play to have an efficient and effective attendance system. So Central's worked really hard the past couple of years, really post COVID to create a system that's effective and central I think is unique and maybe just middle school in general as post high school where we have our students aren't being truant from our classes, roaming the building or things like that, but that they're not coming to school. So we really needed to figure out and partner with our
035families of what's happening of why you can't come to school and trying to do that early as well. So looking at their data and being able to just kind of plug and play interventions. So if you have this many absences, then you're meeting with a counselor or myself a school social worker and you're doing what we call an attendance success plan. So we're asking the student, what do you need from your teachers to feel more successful in the building? What do you need to do yourself? What are you responsible for? And then what can your family at home help you with? And then we share that with their families. Talk a little bit more about, "Okay, this is what your child said, what are some things that you maybe would wanna add?" And then letting
036their teachers know too. So when that student does come in, they can say, "I'm so happy to see you here today. It sounds like you talked with Ms. Lohse about this and here's some things that we can do in the classroom to help support you." School attendance. The number one factor with that is school connectedness. So another thing that we've done is start an attendance group and then in that group, we're helping the students meet some different student support service roles and different school staff members. So our principals coming to that attendance group, our student supervisors, our health office staff, our lunch supervisors. So then they can come meet these people, have a personal connection with them and then when they're in the building or in the lunchroom, they can say, "Hey Mr. Kelly, I
037know you." And so just to help them feel connected at school. So we've found a lot of success in some of those things and being able to just have that efficient and accountable system. - Thank you. So I hope you're hearing that it really is a multifaceted approach and that each one of our schools is, and levels are taking ownership around how can we impact this. So it's a continuous area that we talk about. And so I asked each one of them to think about, just so you know, what's one challenge or area of growth each one of their teams is focusing on to further improve student attendance or graduation outcomes connecting to that beginning for anyone could tackle that as graduation is graduating from our system. But maybe we'll go in reverse order. Start
038with you Ally. - Yeah the one I thought of is reframing how families view county involvement. So counties become involved when a student has unexcused absences. And that's a very fear inducing thing. Like being like, "I don't want Washington or Ramsey County to be involved with my child" and thinking about like child protection and things like that. But that hasn't been the case with either counties. They really wanna support the family. Get down to the core of why are you not coming to school and be responsive and help that student. So maybe it's connecting with therapy services if there's some mental health going on. County case management, maybe just needing more economic resources, connecting with medical assistance, any of those things. The county's been super helpful. So that's one challenge of sometimes coming into those
039meetings we have our like feeling more heightened or defensive when really they're here to support. And then one other thing that I thought of too is thinking about attendance as not just unexcused or unexcused or excused absences, but it's really just showing up and being in the building no matter what the reason is, whether you're on vacation, whether you're sick, whether you can't get out of bed, we want our students in the building, that's where they're learning, that's where they're connecting with adults, that's where they're getting food, all resources, all of those things. So that's another barrier too of just seeing attendance for what it is. - Looking ahead, Mariner's focused on tackling timeliness of school arrival. We have a lot of students who show up late and it's very easy to look at what
040is outside of our locuses of control. Some of those barriers that we don't really have our hands on, right? That feel just outside of our reach. And so we believe there are some positive gains to be made by improving our family communication and engagement. And then also kind of just shifting our mindset and shifting our focus to what we can control, right? The things at school, the connectedness, the warm welcome when a student does arrive. And then continuing to invest in our community, in the belonging culture that's currently existing at Mariner to help drive student success. - Sounds familiar. So we're really struggling with attendance first period. Our attendance numbers aren't great sixth period. And right now we're struggling a little bit around the lunch hour, which is fourth. So we are really looking at
041where are the trouble spots and how can we address, you know, students that are arriving 10 or more minutes late to first hour. Those count as an absence right now. And many of those students end up showing up or arriving at some time. And so we're doing a lot of reteaching of our expectations around first hour arrival, we're moving to a five period day. We did a lot of listening to students. They asked for more time during passing time. So we're gonna honor that. They'll have eight minutes instead of six. I do think those two minutes will matter just in what students need to take care of between class periods in terms of their attendance. And then we're still looking for ways to improve attendance with our juniors and seniors, the students that drive to
042school every day and specifically those that drive later in the day. We have a lot of students that leave for 916 or they're half day PSEO, they might start their day at Century. And so we know we have a targeted audience there that may or may not return when they leave campus or when they're supposed to be arriving late to campus. So we are considering all of those factors in trying to improve our attendance rates for next year. - And I just think about two things that we've implemented, I dunno, two things that I think do make a difference and that we've been working on. One is really monitoring that 10% absence, right? That tipping point of chronic absences regardless of reason. I feel like at least I personally have spent a lot of time
043focused on that. Is it excused? Is it unexcused? But if you're at Disneyland or if you are sick and mom calls in, if you're sick and dad calls in, it doesn't matter. Those are all days that you missed a day of important learning. So focusing on that 10%, tracking that 10% and reaching out to the parent. At the elementary level, those kids don't have the autonomy that our secondary level kids do. So it is a lot of work with the parents and it's not just harping at parents about calling in absences, right? It's helping the parents understand that your school is a safe place. That your child is wanted there. Even something bad happens at school every so often, I will admit, you know, kid gets an elbow jab in the line and is upset,
044and I talk to him or the social worker speaks with him. And if we can make contact with that parent before the child gets home, let them know what happened, let them know how we've resolved it so that parent knows that "Yeah, there's something when my child gets home today that I'm gonna hear about. It's not, wasn't a pleasant experience for my child but these people care about my child. These people have things in place to help the experience improve for my child." There's less odds that that child is gonna say to mom the next morning or to dad the next morning, "Hey I've got a stomach ache and I don't want to go in," right? So just working with those parents overall around their attendance regardless of reason and helping them know that we
045care about their kids and their kids are safe and wanted in our school, I think is what's gonna really help us in the long run. - Thank you very much. So as we move forward, really we have some areas that we're focused on as a whole system. How do we continue to strengthen our internal processes? In particular, I'm looking at our students who maybe, you know as our schools are doing all this, but what's our follow up? Even if we had to drop them because they've had 15 non-consecutive days of attendance, how do we stay connected to those families, make sure kids end up in school and come really wrap around them as a support 'cause school can sometimes after a while feel like we're being a little scary and that isn't the intent at
046all. It really is to make sure kids are successful. I mentioned this already, how are we supporting new students to our system in particular when they come new to us in middle and high school to make sure that they have the most resources for success. Looking at those non-graduates, and I'm like I mentioned already working really real time right now on this class, but how do we do that more closer to the graduation? So this year class of 2025, when we know who hasn't walked across the stage, what does that look like? So that we are making sure that students stay connected to us as close as possible to that four year rate, so that they earn their diplomas. Continuously looking at how we communicate with families and engagement. Attendance is one, especially at the
047elementary level. But families do take their kids on vacations and you know, we wanna support that and don't wanna be a clearinghouse for it. But it also can be hard sometimes when it is and we're looking at attendance and it is a student who also was sick or had other things going on. And so how do we really have that transparent partnership and communication 'cause we want the same things. We want kids to be successful. And then finally, how are we aligning our supports across our whole system? And so you've heard each one of the representatives today talk about their own teams. We're also looking at our ALC programming and Jenni Sjosten will be here with me and Russ next at the work study session to talk about more about the ALC, but also really
048diving in and doing some program review. It's a wonderful school that's seeing a lot of success and are we really meeting the exact needs that we have in our system, and then constantly and continuously looking at credit recovery options. The high school added an option this year that really helped kids recover some of those credits that they missed. So what questions might you have for me or any one of our panel members? - Hey, do we have any questions, Ms. Streiff Oji? - So super exciting, the graduation rate itself. And also I really appreciate that you're digging in to the percentage in the kids that are not, you know, you could say it's a great, it's a great rate, we're doing good and not really dig into who is it and you're going right down
049to the student level. So I really appreciate that. I love that you use the DESSA data to make decisions, which is exactly what it's supposed to be used for and I'd love that you're doing that to help kids wanna be at school. Allison, you mentioned something about what programming do we have that or we have programming that kids can continue taking classes if they don't graduate? What is that programming? - So we have two, our students can be in the Area Learning Center until they're 21 years old and earning credits, and then we have the Transition Education Center, which houses multiple programs, but it really is for students who receive support through special education or an individualized education plan, and they have transition goals and so they forego their diploma and then end up graduating
050at the end of that time. And it always has been till 21 at least as long as I can remember. And it was just extended to 22 for students' last legislative session I believe yeah. - [Streiff Oji] That's all. The other comment I was gonna make was someone said about making sure they get a warm welcome when they arrive, and I've heard that also when kids come and they're late, how they're treated matters with them wanting to be there. So thank you all for your work. Excellent. - [Chair] Alright Ms. Daniels? - Couple of questions. I did appreciate too, all the graduation data and how you're digging into some of those students, and I would just say all the graduations are so exciting. The big graduation that we used to have at Aldridge and that
051we're gonna have on our field, very exciting, many great, wonderful stories. Everybody has a story, right? And then if you get a chance to attend an ALC graduation, it's smaller and you either the student is telling you their story or sometime a staff member is telling you their story and it's just so wonderful to hear, and some kids have had to overcome lots of life before they graduate and it's very inspiring, and the Transition Education Center graduation is the same way. So if anyone in the community or in the school board gets a chance to attend graduation, it's always very exciting. And then I just had something about attendance, and I wondered if the Bear Care Clinic has an impact on attendance or kids getting back to class faster. They have a sore throat, they
052go in, they don't have strep and they go back to class, you know, that kind of thing 'cause we used to have, the only thing we really had was, well if you're gone for three days, you have to prove that you're sick. And now we have that clinic right on site. So that's so exciting. So I just wondered if you could comment. - Yeah, I don't have any concrete numbers but we do see students using it more specifically since the start of semester too. So I think it took a while for us to kind of gain traction. I do know that students are taking advantage of getting immunization or a booster through the Bear Care Clinic. I know that athletes are getting their physicals done at the Bear care clinic and these are normally appointments
053that would have to be made outside of the school day or during the school day. But not sure how to track it. I do think it's having an impact on getting our, keeping our students in school and then getting 'em back to class sooner. - Thank you. - Go ahead Mr. Skaar. - You mentioned that Mahtomedi uses 916 for transition in ALC but we offer it here in-house. So I guess my question would be is it because our size school district is larger that we can afford to offer this? Is that the main driver for that? - I don't know if that was the original driver. How I see it is we're making sure that we offer programs that meet the needs for our students and some of our students we've had in Area Learning
054Center for as long as I've been here in many, many years prior to that. And so really making sure we can offer those supports for our students. So we partner quite heavily with 916. The closest Area Learning Center that they have is on Centri'S campus. It's called Mahtomedi ALC. And they really focus on 17, 18 year olds who maybe are ready for more independence and it's on a college campus. Well I think we can partner with them differently and we have kids here that we, we're the closest and so how do we keep them in our district and how do we make sure that we're meeting their needs too. So in terms of the financial and why we did it, I think it is really to make sure we have programmings that we house internally
055to really make sure we meet the needs of our students and families. - Have we ever thought of providing those services to Mahtomedi as opposed to 916 as a revenue generator? - Yeah, I don't know the answer to that. We could look into it but not since I've been here we haven't; I mean, we do have students that can come from different districts in terms of our Area Learning Center, but I couldn't tell you how many specifically come from Mahtomedi. - Yeah, that might be a way to get our enrollment numbers up. You mentioned SLED and 9% of the students need to take developmental classes, which is where it was before. So it's trending down. Where was it before? - 19%. So that's a pretty, that's a pretty good decrease. And does that 'cause I
056know our test scores in math, science, and reading have been declining. Is there a correlation where we would say, well those test scores are probably gonna go up because now we know it's gone down from 19% to 9% so we should see test scores go up. - That's for sure our goal. What I think assuming, when you say test scores declining, you're talking in specifically about the MCAs. - [Board Member] Right the report card. - Yep, so the MCAs, it's interesting at secondary I actually was just asking students questions because I part of it we're wondering how serious students take those tests and we have quite a few students and families choose to opt out. I'm still working on that data but I will present that publicly here. And so I think we have an
057opportunity to really look at the ACT scores. We offer the pre ACT in ninth and 10th grade and then 11th grade is the ACT to see what correlation are we seeing there. If we're seeing students who it's dropping for their developmental, I need to dive deeper into it. We're working on it right now around the ACT. So I think when I have that, I'll have more evidence to say what is this looking like and how are we feeling about the test scores 'cause we'll be able to compare those even back to 2018 when we had a higher rate of students needing developmental courses. - So the fact that parents have to pay for those developmental classes and these are all colleges. This is not trade school, right? - No, some trade schools have it as
058well. It's whether you're enrolled in a Minnesota college and that's part of the minuscule system. So some of the trade schools are as well. - So do we have any responsibility back to these parents to say, okay, you know, your son or daughter graduated. We didn't meet the expectations. So then do we pay for their developmental classes? - No 'cause it really would be dependent on the schools. You know, it's really hard to tell what determines that. But for example, Century when students needed to take, we had higher numbers of students looking at literacy, we would say, okay, what's going on and how do we make sure we reduce it? But in terms of, it's major specific, school specific on why they're determining whether students have the entrance exam and need to have the developmental
059courses. - Do any school districts pay the parents back for the developmental classes? - No. When you talked about interventions, like what's the most important intervention that you can do to incentivize students to graduate? - I'm gonna ask you guys what you think. - I think first the conversation with the student. So we do a student interview, then a teacher interview and then a parent interview. Those are the first three steps into coming up with an intervention plan for that particular student. In some cases we've had success with credit recovery online, where students can test out of a class, you know, so they are able to acknowledge previous learning and then apply that to a course. They're moving through courses much quicker when they can do it a second time around online. And then we
060also have students that will work through summer school for credit recovery. And then obviously we have students that are doing credit recovery through our ALC. Those have been great ways of helping students that fall behind early in ninth or 10th grade get caught back up in 11th or 12th grade and graduate on time. - I think the other thing that is, which we've, you know, talked about at our last work study session, as we continue to expand those career pathways, having students see okay, how does what I'm learning in high school connect to what I'm excited about or interested in after school And then all the different real life experiences we can provide for them. So even that day, I can't remember what it was called, the 11th graders where they all were in the
061gym. - Junior takeover? - Yes. No, not the junior takeover. It was where we had so many community members and they were like simulating real life. They chose a- - Oh test drive. - Thank you, test drive, to see that and see kids like I had kids come up to me and be like, "I can't afford my current life on my salary." You know, just stuff like that. So then I think however they're connecting in high school to what they're doing right now till later and realizing we know adulthood takes you on many different paths. So how do we prepare them for the twists and turns that'll come? - You know, now I'm gonna switch to attendance. Social media can be a double-edged sword, can work with us and it usually works against us unfortunately.
062But do you see social media having an impact on attendance, especially with middle schoolers and high schoolers? You know, primarily the negative parts of social media. Does that come up at all as to why people wouldn't, why students wouldn't want to attend because something happened on social media? - I do think it comes up. What I would say is I've noticed a lot less of that as we've tightened our cell phone procedures. The middle schools have always had cell phones outta sight but then what Russ and the team have done at the high school, it seems like what gets to me? Which is really the big, big stuff. I've heard way less of that. But you guys would maybe, I'm sure it's still there. - I would say maybe not specifically social media but I
063can think about like technology. I have students that when they're not coming to school, maybe they're at home then playing video games all day or on technology or things like that. And part of my role is, and my student support team is educating the families of when that student can't be at school or choosing not to come to school, kind of maintaining those routines at home as well 'cause that makes it easier for them to then get up the next day and make it to school on time 'cause they're not up late at night on video games or on technology and things like that. - Sure, I mean maybe you should have him watch the George Carlin bit where he has, you know, showing up his 90% of success. Remember that quote? That might help.
064The other thing maybe can we find parents if their kids don't show? No, you don't have to answer that. We don't have finding authority. Anyways, thank you. - All right. - Go ahead. I have already asked one. - I don't really have any questions. Just thank you all for all the work that you've done. I'm very excited to see our graduation rates going up and just to kind of comment on some of the social work aspects. As somebody who works in child protection services, I know why kids don't come to school sometimes and saying a kid who stays at home and playing video games, it's probably staying at home playing video games 'cause there's a lot of other things in the home that are happening that are outta that child's control and the parents aren't
065able to control it. Whether they have mental health issues at home, whether there's addiction in the home, poverty, like there's all kinds of things. I see this every day. I am on some of those in another school district I work or yeah, I work in Hennepin County so I don't intertwine my work with this role, but I'm in those meetings where we're talking about attendance, child protection cases that are happening. And while we can do everything we can do to provide a safe and welcoming environment for those kids to come here, we can't change what's happening in that home. It would be wonderful if we could, and I work with the family so we do our best to try to help change those things. But sometimes you just, you can't do that. And mental health
066month, right? May is a Mental Health Awareness Month and so that is a big player in a lot of these cases I would imagine in our kids who are in that smaller number that we gave who aren't graduating. And then when you take into consideration what we do at our ALC and our tech school, I mean it's just fantastic work where we allow those kids, they might not be graduating and meeting it into that number but they are graduating. And I think if we could like figure out that number and go, well these were the ones who didn't graduate on time, but this is how many of 'em we were able to get to graduate at a later date would be wonderful. And then I had one more thing but I think it's going away
067from my mind, menopause. We can go now. - Thank you. - Jessica. But thank you all. - Yeah, so just a couple of small things. One, I love that the pre ACT is available. My ninth grader took it this year. Is that something that we've done in the past? - Well I thought it was the first year for ninth grade. We've always done 10th grade. I could be wrong. - I think we did ninth grade before too. Maybe not since COVID, but I did ninth grade when I was back in yesteryear when I was a principal at North Campus. - It's hugely helpful, because it is able to give him a sense of, okay, here's where I'm at right? So I love that. I'm glad that we're continuing that. Also the communication that is coming
068outta the middle school, super effective. So I don't know if you've made changes from last, just last year alone, but I know when my kid is late to class and so I really appreciate that it's text messages, it's emails, I know that it's happening. And then the one question I have is specifically about connecting students with the counselors and social workers at the school. If kids know that they can go to you and they feel comfortable going to social workers and counselors, they're probably more likely to talk about these things. But I feel like sometimes kids don't know or don't think about that step. So what do you do in your buildings to encourage students to come talk to folks? - Yeah, I'm really proud of our team at Central. Our counselors, every sixth grader
069they get to meet with their school counselor and then in eighth grade as well, they meet with their school counselor to talk about and prepare for high school. And then what you were saying of kind of like how are we preparing people and wanting to graduate? Like our counselors are talking about that too with the kids. And so then when they go into the classrooms too and are doing lessons saying here's how you can reach your counselor, here's how you can, here's all of our student support staff. Here's who the social worker is, the school psych is. So that we're really on the forefront of some extra support for students. - I remember I'd echo a lot of the same ideas and say we host some events that makes students feel really welcome. For example,
070elementary students are visiting their middle schools this week, right? Fifth grade students are coming to middle schools and part of that is, is an introduction to who their counselor will be broken down by Alpha. And there's a few other events that lead up to the school year, like open house and things like that that create the opportunity, the entrance ramp into a relationship with your counselor. Our counselors are also very involved in our Where Everybody Belongs program. If there was a theme for tonight, belonging, which is a long standing program in our middle schools that have had tremendous success. And so through that programming, they are engaging with students either with like back to school rallies with our sixth grade only first day of school or through some of our advisory curriculum. Thank you for
071asking. - Thank you. - Alright. Ms. Daniels, that's a question that we'll go back to you. - Yeah, do the counseling staff loop in both middle school and high school? So they're with the students all three years or all four years in high school, right? So they really get to know that student and the families. And that's something I don't think you guys mentioned, but I think that was a change we made a few years back and it really I think has such a great impact 'cause you really do know. And then the other thing, when you have a 15 day drop, that student, if they come back into the community or come back to live with mom or dad or whatever, wherever they went and come back, they can like re-enroll right away. -
072Absolutely. Yep. - So they surface again in our community. So we want them back and we want them to re-enroll, right? - [Educator] Absolutely. Yep. - All right, Ms. Thompson. - I remembered when it comes to the, I was a student who had to take some of those classes when I went to school 'cause I barely graduated high school and so I did do it. My parents weren't gonna pay for me to go to college. That wasn't an option. And I think that's not an option for a lot of our students. It would be nice but it just isn't how it works all the time. But just because I graduated, barely graduated and was one of those students who could have been right on the edge, didn't mean that I was a failure to the
073school system. The school system did everything they could and they got me to pass that line, which got me that diploma, which allowed me to do so many things 'cause without that diploma you have to fight to like if you're gonna get your GED, I have family members who unfortunately didn't graduate and never got the GED right? And so they just go through life with that. Like, "Oh my gosh, if somebody ever actually asks me, I don't have that," right? But I have this job I've been working at for 30 years and I am doing fine in life. I just didn't make it past that line. So I don't wanna think that all of our students who aren't graduating are somehow a failure to our district because they are 'cause I did go to college
074eventually and graduated with honors as an adult working, being on a school like so there is possibility and it's just sometimes our life circumstances don't allow us to be super successful when we're in school and we're younger for sure, but it doesn't mean we don't have the possibility to get there on our, you know, and a lot of times it was school staff and a teacher who made the difference in my life. - Yeah and we can, we will share when we share more data in the fall, we get our seven year graduation rate as well. So for some students, and that is extremely high, has been for years, you know, they need a little bit more time for a lot of different reasons. - Yeah and I know it's 'cause we have a lot
075of wonderful staff in our district, so thank you with Teacher Appreciation Week last week and just in general for everything you all do. - All right, I just have a couple of questions 'cause I don't know what I had to say. First Mr. Morris, I like how you talked about it doesn't matter whether it is excused or unexcused because my question was how do I get an unexcused excused? Does a parent have to call in? Is there any time when the parent calls in and said, you know, since I didn't want to come, just excuse it. I mean, how does that work? How do you determine excused or unexcused? - It's a hard thing honestly. We do have a list in our policy of excused and unexcused and then as you know, even absences for
076illness after they hit a certain threshold, we let the families know we really have to require a doctor's note or you know, we do other support. So we may, a family may be really trying to excuse an absence and we have to market unexcused, but it is because we're held accountable to making sure we're educating students. And so, like Ally was mentioning, how do we partner those two things? 'cause it can feel like then we're not part of the team and then the county can get involved and so it's nuanced and they're all really good at it, but there is gray that we work through. - Okay and then my other thought was if you have a student that misses first period every day, how does that work when you calculate your absentees? I mean,
077is it overall because maybe they came to six outta seven or five outta six. How do you calculate your attendance rate? - I'll probably have to look into that for you. But we do period attendance at secondary. So those not attending first period impact us. But how it does, I'll need to double check 'cause I'm, it's a- - Yeah, I was just curious 'cause when I talked, I always struggle too to get my students to come, my driving students to show up to my first period. But I do agree with making that connection and greeting 'em at the door and knowing their names, knowing what's going on in their lives. And maybe you're on a first name basis with their parent and that seems to help. So thank you for all your hard work. I
078know we're not done yet. I know that you've got at least another month of things going on, so keep up the good work and we don't have any questions. Thank you. - [Group] Thank you. - The next thing we have is discussion item D2, which is the first reading of our school board policy 702, 720, 729, and 732. These policies have been reviewed by the policy committee and they will come back to us on June 9th, 2025 or are another meeting if needed for second reading. We constantly have our committee, they're constantly looking at our policies, making sure they're up to date, making sure that there's nothing that's changed in the law. And so they come that way. 702 was accounting, 720 is vending machines, 729 is Minnesota post-issuance debt compliance. And 732 was credit
079card usage. Any discussion, any questions about those - Chair? - Yes Mr. Scott. - Who is the chair of the committee that reviews policy? Who was that? - [Chair] Dr. Kazmierczak. - [Kazmierczak] Well Chris and Angela are the board reps. - Oh, okay. - There's not a, you don't have a chair. - Okay so was there, this kind of gets back to the last board meeting was these changes, I mean they look fairly minor so I'm thinking they're just to true up to legislative changes and things like that, so. - Yeah MSBA typically comes up with updates and then we look at our policies and make modifications based on MSBA and legislative changes or language that we decide we want to change. - So was there anything in your I looked at it, I didn't
080see anything material. But I mean does do you, as the, I guess the lead, the lead person on this committee, do you see anything that was material in these? That's worth doubting? - No, I don't think so. I think these were all pretty, most of 'em are pretty mundane changes yeah. - Okay. Thank you. - Alright, any other questions? These will come back like a later date to vote on. We're up to now operational items E1. Action, the student transportation vendor proposal. Mr. Wald. - Good evening Chair Arcand, members of the board, Dr. Kazmierczak. We're here tonight to present recommendations for student transportation vendors for 2025-26 school year and beyond. With me tonight is our director of transportation, Mr. Dave Johnson for many, many years. We refer to Dave as Safety Dave. He has a
081great handle on student safety in the school district, especially as it relates to student transportation and as a thoughtful leader that way. He's been leading our transportation department the last year and a half or so. Also with, with us is Tom Watson. Tom was a former University of Minnesota Finance Director, Mayor of North Oaks, and he serves as a consultant to school districts in a very specialized area. Student transportation contracts. There's not very many people in the state who do this and none who do it as well as Tom. So we're very thankful to have Tom with us. - [Chair] Is your mic on? - Yeah, I just turned it on. Thanks. - [Chair] Thank you. - I got it before you do. There are several different classifications of school buses that school districts use,
082and so we'll make reference to these class A, B, C, D buses as well as type III. And that can be very confusing. Confusing to people who aren't living the world of student transportation regularly. So when I started in this role, I really had to like, okay, when you say type C, what are you referring to? So put those images up here so you understand. Our class C and D buses are the big yellows that run our regular three tiers, three tier routes in the morning, three tier routes in the afternoon. Sometimes the type C vehicle might also be equipped with wheelchair lifts and be used for specialized transportation. We run many vans, the type IIIs that you see there for specialized transportation as well. And when we presented to the board in March, we
083shared that we run a hybrid transportation system. The district runs some transportation services and contracts out for others. The diversity of that situation works well for the school district. Gives us some local expertise that we think is valuable as we work with contractors and families and we provide all our own routing services, so we're not relying on people who don't live and work in our community to understand those, you know, best practice routing. First Student is our primary vendor, has been for several decades. Metro Transportation Network. You've maybe seen the buses that say MTN on the side run a smaller number of buses for us. Type III, again we have some hybrid services, we provide some van transportation, but mostly we contract out with six different providers and they're listed there. All these contracts expire
084July 30th. And so it's important that we have been negotiating this process and this RFQ throughout the year. The procurement process was a very formalized process. Steps one, two, and three are primarily just defining the parameters, getting the word out to different vendors so we get the best vendors submitting quotations. We wanted to have, you know, the very best at the table. We contacted some providers directly in case they hadn't seen the posting. We did a public opening of the quotes in this room, about half the room full of different vendors here. I'm curious to how that went. After that we interviewed directly with vendors and we're able to get what we think were the best prices available. And that brings us to tonight we're making recommendation to the school board. At that formal opening
085in February, we had five full service providers that submitted quotes and we had 21 type III vendors. There are a lot of type III vendors out there, and many of 'em wanted work. In terms of the full service, those companies that provide the larger buses, there's not very many of 'em out there. And, so we had just five that submitted. Key factors that we considered, you know, really about rates. Can the vendor handle the volume that is required for a bigger school district like ours? What's their safety record? Are there buses in good shape? We reviewed state records for inspections to see if the vendors were even worth talking to, because if their safety record was not good, we just excluded them from from the interview process. Then again, those contractors we worked with, we
086had, you know, we had relationships with, and we knew what kind of performance level they provided. We knew what their strengths and weaknesses were and then as well as did they meet the criteria of the RFQ. So our recommendation for our C/D routes, that's the big yellows, the primary vendor would, we're recommending that First Student Incorporated continue on as our primary vendor. They were the most competitive responsible bidder in the mix. They have a solid record with us. They have a terminal in our school district, which I think perhaps makes them more competitive in being able to start their buses right within the school district and not have to drive from Fridley or wherever to get the buses to White Bear Lake. And they, you know, they're a larger company. They have the capacity to
087handle the volume that we require. The agreement with First Student is that $454.68 for a route that's increase over where we're at now. Four and a half hours of route time handles the three tier routes in the morning, three tier routes in the afternoon. We negotiated a five year agreement, they submitted a four year proposal, we negotiated a fifth year with them and statute allows us to negotiate up to 10 years with them. Neither for student nor the school district was really interested in, well we would've been interested in negotiating up to 10 for the right rate, but they wouldn't have been interested in talking about the rate we work. We don't know where the world will be in five years when it comes to student transportation. So I feel pretty good about locking in
088our prices for five years. With First Student, we pay the fuel cost. So the route, the rate that you see here is, does not include the cost of fuel. That comes to about $32 a day on average for our buses. First Student is committed to keeping their fleet eight years or newer, which is about the same as our fleet. So that rate of 454.68 is a significant increase over our 24-25 rate of 416.18 and 9.25%. And this is where we're really glad we had Mr. Watson at our side here because the rate, the proposal came in at a 17% increase and you might remember that from the March presentation, and it was through a lot of meetings with them and some significant negotiating to get to that bring it from 17 down to 9.25%. And
089then those rates decrease us through the years to a 654. And then we requested that we go a fifth rate of a fifth year of 3%, they agreed to do that, and the contract allows us to continue negotiating then in that 29, 30 year, you know, we can negotiate five more years or it might be to our benefit to go for a, you know, for a public bid offering at that point. For the type III vendors, recommendation is that we go with the vendors listed in this slide. There are, is that six different, six different vendors. They average $315 per route on the type IIIs, which is actually slightly less than we're paying this year. So this was to our benefit to negotiate though with the type IIIs. And again, thank you Mr. Watson for
090your skills as a negotiator, because we were able to get some vendors who were used to charging quite a bit more to drop their rates pretty significantly for us. Many of these vendors for the type IIIs have a niche. One thing we looked at was do any of 'em have 10 passenger vehicles? Not very many do. So we have a few that have 10 passenger vehicles or the universal, we looked at where they start. So oftentimes with the type IIIs, we're making calls trying to get coverage because somebody didn't show up at one of the vendors and so can we get coverage from another vendor? And so we need some flexibility. We went with providers that the ones we've worked with before we know have been really responsive, and the others we gain that sense
091through our interview with them and feel like we have a pretty strong group of vendors here for our type IIIs. It's only a two year negotiation with the type IIIs. And so within that contract they've all agreed to match the CPI student formula increase, which is great because typically vendors are looking for increases that are greater than what we get as a formula increase from the state and you can't continue to do that for very long. Okay, so it brings us to the recommendation, which is, the recommended action is to approve the agreements with the following transportation providers in the 2025, 2026 school year as presented. Type C and D provider First Student Incorporated, type III providers, Integrated Transportation, Northline Transportation, Odaa Transportation, Safetree, Treasured, and Universal Transit Services. - [Chair] Alright, you've heard the
092proposal. Can I get a motion to approve those? - So moved. - Okay, Ms. Ellison. Can I get a second? - Second - Second, Vice Streiff Oji. Okay, I'll put it for questions. Mr. Skaar? - Maybe this is to Mr, is it doctor or Mr. Watson? - Mister was my father. (group laughing) - Hey, so what's the, you know, we have this five year, five year agreement proposed here. How does this compare with other districts of similar size? Is it pretty much the same as other districts similarly situated as us? - Good question. Just by comparison, American was listed on that list, their proposal was $590 a day. And so if you add the $32 fuel, we are at 4.75. I only do two districts, work with two districts up in this neck of the
093woods. One of the competitors to the west. I do Mont Zeus work as well. Both these contracts are virtually identical. And part of what we tried to do in this case with these contracts, these are basically price agreements is what they are. And the way the language in the law now was changed four years ago that added that 10 year window. It's essentially the leverage we used, and I think that's what that that sectional law talks about. The vendor has to agree to a set of prices for that term, whether it's four years, five years, or 10 years. First Student wasn't willing to do that. We said, "Well don't you wanna be in White Bear? I mean you could give us a knock-your-socks-off proposal." Corporate, they took everything to corporate, which is in Cincinnati and
094corporate came back and said this is the limit. We're not willing to go any further. The fact that they were here, we were satisfied that the prices were probably as good as we were gonna get. The big national firms that can work on districts that command the kind of resources that you need to support transportation in this district. There aren't a lot of them anymore in the Twin Cities. Many of the big national firms have bailed out of the Twin Cities. Some of us are trying to work on that a little bit by inviting these contractors to talk now, even though the contracts may not expire for 2, 3, 4 more years. The problem is when we go out in January and December and we're gonna make a decision in May for that next school
095year, the lead time isn't sufficient for them to, you know, put their best face forward, figure out their resources, they gotta look for properties, et cetera, et cetera. They probably gotta invest in a lot of buses and many of 'em can't do that. So I thought we did pretty well with these. And the other thing I was gonna say to Tim, and we've talked about that we really did take a hard look at which vehicles and the prices involved were serving what services of the district. First Student, for example, was providing also type III vehicles, vans. They were charging you in the neighborhood of $400 a day. The common rate that we've got on three of these vendors is 315. We got, you have two of them that are at 285. So if you quickly
096heard what I just said, that's about a hundred dollars a day. And as we know, I am sure my friend over here can answer this question, but over the next week, the legislators are gonna consider the governor's proposal, right? And the proposal has to do with transporting special needs children. This is probably as good as we're gonna get with protecting that because as Tim and I talked many times, we are gonna be going to the board with an answer, but probably before the legislature adjourns, well we're mind readers I guess. So we don't know quite what that means. But we took all of the type IIIs away from these high cost vendors. And so the 315 vendors and the 285 vendors, they are people that have been in the business for 10 to 20 years,
097and their locations and their terminals are pretty much here in the North Metro. So there isn't a lot of deadhead time and so we're getting you, I think a better economic plan with that as well. So I hope that's a long-winded answer to your question, I hope, but that's okay. - No, it answers, it was one of the criteria, one of the concerns I would have is as these transportation companies exit Minnesota for whatever reason, I don't know what the reasons are, you know, that's gonna put upward pressure on prices down the road because there's less competition. So that's something maybe in six years we'll see. But was there any consideration of looking at the viability of, you know, the financial wherewithal of these? Was that a criteria? I mean that they're well capitalized or
098not thinly capitalized that they have the, they're gonna last five years, they're not gonna exit, you know, in year three. - In their requirements they were, gave us the assurance that we could speak to their bankers, their accountants, et cetera, and analyze that very answer to that question. We did not take that step, but rather referred to a lot of them with respect to experience and where they're working and how that investment's working, et cetera, et cetera, across the board on these candidates. And we limited ourself to people that, let me step back. There's two issues going on in this market right now. There are those providers who are brokering the services. They don't own a bus, they don't own a van. One of the criteria we used is the district would like to see
099the provider and the owner of that provider face-to-face in the district. Not some second, third party that's brokering those arrangements. And I think we did pretty well with that. And the, probably with respect to the capitalization, I know most of these candidates, there isn't a single one of these candidates that we haven't, I haven't dealt with in this market in another district. And so we've looked at them, I know a lot about the school district's response to these folks. Universal Student Transit for example, has been in the business 20 years. Integrated for example, it's on the list. I happen to know a little bit about. It's an organization that was formed two years ago, but the principals have been in this market about 15 years. They also have 10 passenger and specialized safety vehicles. So
100children that act out in the vehicle and all those kinds of, so we got a lot of experience and knowledge. Hopefully I try to bring that to the district and say, here, let me tell you about these particular folks. Remember we had 21 proposals, we really worked hard with about eight or 10 of them. - Have we ever had one of these companies, maybe in year two or year three say, you know what, we gotta walk away from this. We're gonna walk away from this agreement 'cause it's not good for us and we're not making any money. So they just exit. Can they do that? - They could serve notice as the district could serve notice on them as well that they're not interested in continuing that. Honest to goodness I haven't had that happen.
101- Okay, good. Thank you. - At all. - Thanks. - Okay, other questions? - I have just a comment and this is just more of a personal comment. I just want shout out to Safety Dave and the training does with the drivers and the aides and I have a relative that lives near me, and I often meet this child on the bus and the drivers and the bus aide is a special needs student. Phenomenal, just they know the student, they know the family, they know the dog, they know me, they know the uncles, the aunts, they know everybody and they're so great. And I just have to say I appreciate so much the safety and care because it's such an important part of a student's day getting to school, coming home and for parents to
102feel that their child, whether it's a general ed student or somebody that has, is more vulnerable to make sure they're delivered safely and they have a ride safely. So thank you all. - Thank you. - Thanks. - Great. Any other questions? - Thank you. - Well we have the motion in front of us. This will be a roll call vote. Will the clerk please call the roll? - Streiff Oji. - Aye. - Thompson. - Aye. - Arcand. - Aye. - Daniels. Aye. Ellison. - Aye. - Skaar. - Aye. - Okay. Motion carries. All right, thank you. - Thanks. - The second item we have today for operational item is E2. We're gonna take action on school board policies 413, 512, 706, 710, 711, and 712. These came before the board for the first reading in
103April. So we get 'em first. I'm gonna go ahead and ask are there any questions? Can I get a motion to accept these board policies? - So moved. - By Thompson, can I get a second? - Second. - Second by Ellison. Any further discussion? Hearing none, this will be a voice vote. All in favor say aye. - [Group] Aye. - Opposed? Save aside. Motion carries. All right, we're gonna go to board forum, it's now time, and for any board member that would like to share things, and I want to give you an example, this is a time for us to talk about things that are going on in the buildings or something's happening. For example, I'm just gonna lead with, we are part of Ramsey County League of Local governments, and so anybody from White
104Bear like school system, you know, teachers, anybody could participate. Well on May 22nd, we are gonna have a Karaoke night in Shoreview, that In Vino Re vert- - Who do you think it was? - And so you, it starts from six and goes to eight. So I'm inviting everybody to our karaoke night and once again, we're members of Ramsey County League of Local Government. So those are the kind of things we could bring up during the forum. Anybody else have anything to share? Go ahead. - I was privileged to be a part of the Teacher of the Year interviews and I just wanna shout out to all the teachers that were nominated, and it's so inspiring, and I feel so grateful that we have the caliber and the love and the dedication of all the
105teachers in the district, whether they were part of that process or not, it's just a really uplifting thing. If any of you get a chance to be a part of that committee, please do so. You'll just come home and just feel like the best and was such an honor. And I just wanna congratulate all the graduates coming up and enjoy the summer and be safe and thanks to all the staff and families for a super year. - Okay, Mr. Skaar? - Yes, I just wanted to make sure everybody knows that we were having our 25th annual White Bear Lake Area Education Foundation Golf Tournament on June 16th. It's at Oak Glen Golf Course and your entry fee includes a lunch, green fee, golf cart, dinner, drink ticket, and a golf gift. And the board's been
106generous enough to be a Copper Green sponsor for this. So, and if people can attend that would be great. Again, it's June 16th at Oakland and check-ins at 10:30, tee off shotgun start at noon. - And I just wanna point out, we used our own individual funds. No school district money was, to sponsor that we all chipped in so I wanted to make sure it was real clear we didn't spend district funds for that. And thank you for all your work. - Thanks for that clarification. - Okay, Ms. Thompson. - Just a point again about it being, you know, Mental Health Awareness Month. I know that there's a lot of people out there who may be struggling. Just take care of yourself and know that you, you know, get some help if you feel that
107you need it or just talk to somebody. Anybody that you feel comfortable talking to and sharing can really make a difference. And so I hope everybody just continues to take care of themselves and each other. And just be aware, if you see someone struggling, maybe just ask 'em, you know, if they're having a good day 'cause even just that can make a difference in someone's life. - Night of jazz starts in three minutes over at the high school. So if anybody, I'm gonna race over there to watch my kid, but this time of year there's so many great concerts happening in the district. So if you have time, go check 'em out. - Alright, everybody had a chance? Alright, well we are gonna go to negotiations. This portion of the meeting may be closed to
108consider strategy for labor negotiations, including negotiation strategies or developments or discussions and review of labor negotiation proposals conduct pursuant to Minnesota statute 179A.01 to 179A.25. After we're done with that, we will just go ahead and adjourn so you know, you don't have to wait around for us. So first thing I need for this is can I get a motion to move into close session? - So moved. - By Daniels, can I get a second? - Second. - Second who? Streiff Oji. All right, we have that in front of us. This will be a voice vote. All in favor say aye. - [Group] Aye. - Opposed? Same sign. Alright, we're gonna move into closed session. Thank you everybody for coming tonight.