001all right welcome everyone to the February 25th 2025 meeting of the Lakeville School Board um I'm going to call the meeting uh to session if you would all stand up with me for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge alance to the flag the United States of America and to the Republic for it stands one nation God indivis Li andice for all all right we're going to start with the Roll Call of the board members Amber if you want to start us off uh amber Cameron Brett Nicholson Paul Carbone Matt Swanson Michael Kim Baker Carly Anderson Brian Thompson and if the executive cabinet wants to introduce themselves Bill Hogan Executive Director of Business Services Michelle Humphrey executive director of student services Emily McDonald assistant superintendent Brenda alre executive director of administrative Services all right we've got
002some additional guests over on the right here uh Jack Baker controller of Finance Amy GM American Indian education coordinator Tracy broville director of technology and data services and Kim Elson assistant to the superintendent all right and Mr superintendent if you'll run us into the good news thank you Mr chair and good evening all uh good news from Lakeville area schools we'll start with with uh uh a big one here assistant superintendent Dr Emily McDonald she has received the K Jacobs Memorial award so Lakeville area school's assistant superintendent Dr Emily McDonald has been named the recipient of the K Jacobs Memorial award from the Minnesota Association of school administrators this prestigious award is presented annually to a female administrator actively involved in Masa who has demonstrated exceptional leadership and a strong commitment to students with more
003than 25 years of experience in public education Dr McDonald has been dedicated and Innovative leader at Lakeville area schools and her leadership has supported the district through times of growth and change with a steady focus on Student Success and Equitable educational opportunities for all she has spearheaded efforts in strategic planning social emotional Learning multi-tiered Systems of support and leadership development additionally Dr McDonald has stepped in during times of leadership transition serving twice as the interim superintendent for our school district through her leadership she has maintained continuity stability and a Clear Vision for Lakeville area schools so we congratulate Dr McDonald on this honor and thank her for her ongoing leadership and dedication to all of our students and staff and Educators here in Lakeville area schools a round of applause for Dr Lakeville South and
004Lakeville North math leagues calculate their way to the top the Lakeville South and Lakeville North math leagues made large strides this season competing in the Canterbury division of the Minnesota math league with 409 total points the Lakeville South team finished first in the canbury division for the first time since 2018 yeah let's let's give a little round of applause for [Music] that Lakeville North team finished fourth in division with 354 points so congratulations to both Lakeville North's lead scorer was 12th grader Patrick Sinclair tied with Lakeville South's lead score 10th grader Trey eersel in the end Sinclair won the tiebreaker finishing fourth overall in the division followed by EOL in fifth place so congratulations to north and south on a fantastic performance uh in that competition Lakeville cheer shines bright at our state and Nationals
005with over 200 athletes from K12 the Lakeville cheers 2425 season was filled with energy passion and Unforgettable moments the program offered through Lakeville Area Community Education proudly boasts 10 teams five competitive two sideline and three recreational on February 1st the competition teams grade 3 through 12 took the stage at the 2025 Minnesota cheerleading coaches association state competition with the following achievements Elementary second place elementary Advanced second place Middle School fifth place junior varsity seventh place and varsity fifth place the season finale took the varsity competition team to Orlando Florida February 7th through the 10th for the 2025 National High School cheerleading championships this marked the first time in five years that Lakeville area schools was represented in the National High School cheerleading Championship the team competed in the small non-tumbling D1 division facing off against
00642 teams while they didn't make it to the finals their Spirit hard work and performance were nothing short of inspiring and we are congratulating our Minnesota cheer uh teams from Lakeville area schools for their participation in competition a little round of applause for our cheers thank you all um you can read more about uh some of the more or other amazing things that are happening in the district District at isd194.org newws and I will hand it back to you Mr chair all right moving down the agenda um agenda additions uh if no one else has one I have one I'm going to add um I'm going to move to amend the consent agenda to approve the settlement agreement that the board discussed during the special meeting in close session and also to authorize the and
007direct the superintendent to sign the agreement on the district's behalf uh the special meeting was held earlier today on February 25th 2025 is there a second for that motion I'll second it all right director Carbone seconds the motion to uh there being a first and a second to add to the consent agenda um for today uh approval to execute the settlement agreement on behalf of the district um and authorize the superintendent to sign that all in favor say I I I I all oppose say nay all right it is unanimously approved and added to the consent agenda any other additions to the agenda if there are no other additions I would entertain a motion to approve the agenda with the addition uh to the consent agenda it's all moved all right it's moved by director
008Anderson is there second I'll second all right and seconded by director Anderson sorry camon Cameron and Anderson flipflop them all right with there being a first and a second motion to approve the cons or the agenda um with the addition to the consent agenda uh all in favor say I I all oppose say nay all right it's approved unanimously uh we are going to move on to public comment so I will read my piece uh the board is going to open up the floor for 30 minutes to allow the public to address the board with comments and concerns uh anyone interested in participating in public comment must have registered in advance using the form provided on our website by noon on the Monday before for the scheduled public comment session there will be no board
009response during the session public comments framed as complaints Andor concerns about students and or staff are not appropriate in the public forum due to the data privacy laws these comments should be addressed to the administration outside of outside of our public meetings likewise complaints about the school board members should be privately directed to the board chair and or the superintendent no formal action will be taken on a topic presented during public comment as necessary the administration will follow with the appropriate personnel on any concerns that need to be individually addressed also if necessary the board will follow up during board Communications at the next regularly scheduled board meeting uh individual remarks are limited to 3 minutes and the board will provide a signal when the participant has 30 seconds remaining on their time uh director
010Baker do you have that signal you could show everybody so and also if we just ask the audience to please try to keep noise at a minimum to allow everyone the opportunity to speak uninterrupted uh so I'll just call the first name and we'll get rolling uh Savannah turn your mic hi Savannah good evening for in all audience my name is Savannah D and I am currently enrolled in the lake Bon Online Academy I was enrolled in 196 online for first grade and second grade and had to transfer to Lakeville Online Academy as 196 had to close down other students from 196 online are currently in my class which has been nice to have the same friends I feel that my current school has subjects and assignments that are exactly what I need to do
011to learn for example I'm learning division which was hard but also a challenge which I like I was worried about the changes that I was going to face moving to a different school but turned out to be a really great and exciting experience I love my teachers and classmates my amazing teachers Miss saber and Miss KK are always there to help and teach me they provide help when needed and is very flexible for me and my family I do not think I would learn as well if I was in a classroom my parents took me to toward the school I would be enrolled in but I didn't really like it and and I really like virtual learning Lake fall Online Academy has math reading social studies gym and all subjects we cover in the virtual
012meeting and I love it I start off my day by getting dressed and doing my hair and I believe that feeling ready in the morning helps me be successful for the day I eat breakfast with my 2-year-old brother and I look at my daily schedule to see what the plans are for the day I join my online meeting and my teacher reads our book shows us our assignments for the day and we also get to share how we feel on a chart we have small groups so we can have one-on-one talks with my friends it's so fun after my meeting I start at math and then I take a break to have play time with my brother and go outside in our swing after that I go finish up any assignments I have for the
013day my teacher my teacher provides the homework for throughout the week so I can work ahead if needed if I need help or I have any questions within assignments I can message my teacher on Cesar or send an email and they get back to me right away and always make sure I am understanding this way of learning works so well for me my teachers have taught me to be brave and confident in myself I love spending time with my brother and having my parents is my learning coach my mom and dad both review assignments and make sure I'm on time with everything my school has adventurous activities for me and my classmates to get together like bowling the park and even the state capital please don't close my elementary school that I love I am
014worried about having to make another big change in my education in just elementary school I will miss my teachers and my friends I am sad and hope my school will be there for my last year in elementary school I appreciate your time for listening to me today thank you board and all audience thank you Savannah thanks Joseph uh Joseph is out sick thank you for the opportunity to speak we open enrolled our son into the Lakeville School District in February 2020 for Lakeville Online Academy because we found this program was a perfect compromise between public school and home school we planned for our son to stay in this Virtual School from kindergarten through the 12th grade when our son started kindergarden in the fall of 2020 enrollment had ballooned to hundreds upon hundreds because of
015the covid pandemic then enrollment declined the following years as more and more students went back to Brick and Mortar schools with declining enrollment we became a target for the massive School District budget cuts of 2023 our school was hit hard we lost curriculum staff and resources more families left the program however our fantastic teachers pulled together entirely new curriculums kept the school running and continued to foster a close-knit school community of dedicated families to our knowledge there is not another online program just like it proudly our enrollment today is almost double what it was before the pandemic but we have been told that this is not enough and our school is set to close I believe that our school deserves more time and consideration as we recover from the budget cuts of 2023 most importantly
016we need the school district to see value in US invest in our school by making an effort to properly promote it to help us increase our enrollment so many in this community do not even know our school exists we are not even advertised to incoming kindergarten families nor are we properly promoted on the Minnesota Department of education's website I will take the time to promote the program tonight other parents have shared with you their reasons that the program has worked for their student I wanted to add that this program is broader than those individual stories Lakeville Online Academy Elementary provides a flexible learning environment that allows students to work at their own speed on their own time the program offers individualized attention personalized curriculum and one-on-one and small group help from certified teachers this program
017also Fosters student to- student interactions both virtually and at in-person social events perhaps most importantly of all this program allows parents to have a Hands-On active role in their child's education parents get to engage learn and grow with their student my son has been in the program for 5 years now a fourth grader his educational Journey with the Lakeville school district will end with the closure of Loa Elementary there will be no fifth grade next year like his classmates he is devastated so I wanted to speak tonight on behalf of all Lakeville Online Academy families so that the administration the school board and the community would know about this program the best kept secret of Lakeville schools if the decision is ultimately made to close the program at least everyone will know what this school
018district had decided to give up on thank you Joe you uh Devin Devin going once twice uh Paul I'm not too good at these mic settings yeah um you're fine thank you um hello board uh Mr superintendent audience my name is Paul D and my daughter Savannah is currently inrolled in the Lakeville Online Academy uh first of all I want to say thank you uh for moving the public comment um to the beginning of the the board meeting um My Little two-year-old son gets a little active lowly um during the evening so that kind of helped us to go back home last time we was here we stayed until 9:00 and it was getting a little crabby for him so I appreciate that um so I was here at the board meeting two weeks ago
019and uh my family and and I you know listened in and acknowledged the presentations um the Powerpoints that was demonstrated um we took the all on account um in this meeting here I kind of want to uh have it to speak on you know the the the the the academic the the knowledge and the career development for my daughter Savannah that's being acknowledge from not just the activi she's doing in school but from a parent standpoint um my daughter started her kindergarten years at faithful Shepherd and then Co happened and then uh we did not have the opportunity to switch right away so we found a online learning we transfer her to district 196 online as we wanted Savannah to stay local and to be virtual uh6 online shut down and where we were worried
020about that situation uh because where Savannah would go to school and we wanted her locally and have local friends and teachers but also be online and close to home um we transferred Savannah to third grade uh year to lak Phil Online Academy and we have been so happy and generous for everything that's been provided to her from an educational standpoint um the meeting that we all all organized and there's a time to cover everything and questions and students have a lot of questions and you know blockers during the day but it's all been aned with her teachers and efforts is put into it um the benefits there and values add at the end of the day um this is the growth of her education the curriculum Savannah has is perfect and on track for her
021learning skills um for all the state exams that she has taken so far um feedback from her teachers a family and friends her teachers are very involved and and in learning and always making sure that students not only Savannah but students overall are always making uh time to make make sure they're on track of their homework and other guidance as well as needed we like the Lakeville Academy because it feels very much like home school and Virtual School hybrid and we with the rates of homeschooling On The Rise it's shocking that today we think about closing on the program if the program was properly promoted to more people like family and wanted to Hands-On engagements um in our children education believe that Roma race would U rise to conclude my conversation here um this is
022you know concerning stressful and very sad her families enroll in our school I hope the board Mr superintendent and our can help stop the school from closing the program thank you for your time thank you thank you [Applause] uh William thank you for having me again my name is Bill Fink I was here a few weeks ago and I got to learn a lot um when sitting back there about your budget about everything it was actually very informational I testified or spoke to you all about how great my son is doing he's 9 years old and he's in the fourth grade and he's able to test out at fifth and sixth grade for Math and at grade level for English so I know everyone is so you're hearing the same thing Lakeville Online Academy is
023great for our kids and then I'm hearing um we just don't have the money and that's why we need to cut and the numbers that was sent to the parents to justify this from the superintendent was that his email said $1,275 per online student is what it costs and his reasoning for shutting us down is for iners this it cost $6,450 180 per student for in person person and it also doesn't make sense to me because um well you can find that online it's the same 11,380 and it doesn't make sense to me that next year we're projected at $1 14,2 per student now if you're only spending 6,000 for inperson kids that doesn't make a whole lot of sense what are you doing with all that extra money because some of these schools what
024I learned last time was you have a 40 students to one teacher ratio we have 41 students for three teachers and we're still making money because if you go off of the $144,000 that we're supposed to get next year that would mean $2,737 per student for online so how much money do you guys need I just because to me that's making money um I just don't understand it I'm trying not I hope this doesn't come off being disrespectful I'm just I'm an auditor I like numbers if you guys have different numbers I would love to see them heck all even audit stuff for free um if it'll help 30 seconds okay so basically as my nine-year-old would say the math is not mathing um I just want an explanation and I'm willing to help um
025also other online programs they have taken away the principal and made it where because well that's a hundred plus thousand that you're spending on them we have three teachers funnel under a school that's what other schools district 196 did that we can do that there's Ways work with us that's time thank you Quenton I can move it three reasons not to close my school one I've had three teachers and everyone was nice and understands me I can get excited and distracted but they always get me back on my track without getting upset with me two sometimes I can get confused or frustrated and I can't do my school work because I'm at home I can take a break go for a walk pet my dogs get a hug for Mom and then go back to
026my school work when I'm feeling calmer three my dad works on the railroad he leaves for work at 1: in the afternoon he works for 12 hours then comes home at 4:00 in the morning he sleeps till 11:00 in the morning we have lunch together and talk if you if you close my school I won't get to see him wait oh if you close my school I won't get to see him all week right now because my sister and brother also do online school we can all sit down and eat together mom says that's the reason that school choice is really important because it helps families spend more time together no matter how much they work I don't need to go to school for 8 hours to learn but I do need my family to
027feel happy and loved right now my school helps us all be together more please don't close my school thank you thank you Quinton [Applause] Brad I don't know how I'm going to top that so give it a try we'll try we'll give the old College try all right good evening board members it's often said that while things change they tend to remain the same tonight I find myself in the same situation I was a year ago questioning the the district's boundary adjustments looking for answers and urging the the people in charge to fully consider the effects of the decisions on our children's education as a parent whose children was forced to move schools last year the frustration is very real and I understand the firsthand consequences um somewh are unintended the frustration is real especially
028when you have to move your child in the final year of their school and be held at a different standard than the 700 children who are open and rolled into the district you can imagine my surprise when I heard about tonight's meeting and the possibility of more boundary Chang es of course the agenda that was initially posted is no longer available because of new and additional information over the past 24 hours I've seen social media posts received text messages and field phone calls from individuals expressing their frustration and lack of confidence in the district's handling of the boundary changes it is clear that our community is on high alert and carefully reviewing the agendas and watching board meetings with great interest ironically if the district had shared the original PowerPoint from the agenda we would
029have heard that the boundary changes were deemed a success but a success by what standard is it a success to move children to a new school just to overcrowd others is it a success to move one of the best teachers in the district Katie Lions to a new school simply to manage student numbers I understand the board composition has changed since last year with only three of the original board members remaining however the central question remains what went wrong in Risk Management there's a saying if it's predictable it's prev able and the overcrowding issue was certainly foreseeable last year using teamwork own data speakers warned their models would lead to overcrowding unfortunately their concerns were dismissed with smirks from the superintendent now we're left with another question can we have faith that these adjustments will
030be a long-term solution I urge the board to ask tough questions gather all necessary information and hold District leadership accountable for presenting a full picture of the impact of Border changes it is unacceptable for decision makers to say as they did last year they simply want to keep the process moving this process cannot continue to be Revisited every single year it is crucial for all stakeholders to be brought into our conversation if the goal if our goal is to set our children up for Success not subject them to a revolving door of school transfers re research shows that children Thrive when they have stability in their lives and is necessary for them to form relationships and grow this is about our children's well-being and development they deserve better than to be treated as ponds in
031a process they never chose thank you Dan got the stool out for me good evening board my name is Dan REO and I'm an English teacher at Lakeville North High School I was hoping you might humor me for a second here and just pretend you're a teacher and in your mind just answer yes or no to these following questions I would let a student wear a Walkman in my classroom I know that dates me a little bit um I would let a kid have a gaming system in my classroom I would let a kid bring violent or pornographic videos into my classroom I would let a kid carry a tool that may Aid in bullying into my classroom I would let a kid carry a device that can assist students in cheating in my classroom
032I imagine you all answered no to those questions or at least most of them so why would we let a kid have an unrestricted personal device in the classes all day long I did a little Anonymous personal inquiry with my students and what we discovered was the daily average screen time of my students is just a tick under six hours a day with numerous students having greater than 10 hours of screen time phones only so if we assume some things about our high school students like they get roughly 8 hours sleep I hope uh there 6 hours in class not on screens of course and then 1 hour of miscellaneous time in the morning getting ready and when they get home uh and then we assume that they're home about 3:30 after school unless of
033course they're in extracurriculars then it's 5:30 or 6:00 so if we do that math and they're going to bed say 10:30 it leaves 6 hours of screen time in a 7h hour window the numbers present three possibilities one kids are on their phones every every waking hour when they're home with their parents not spending time with their families I hope that's not the case two kids are staying up way too late and they're losing sleep and this might correlate with our attendance issues three they're on their phones in classes none of these sound like positive solutions for our situations for our students and I'm having a hard time understanding why we all see it but we don't want to do anything about it cell phones bring zero value to our classroom whether they're in a
034bag or a phone pocket they serve only as a distraction the current phone policy places the responsibility on teachers to police their students it is one more piece we have to worry about that takes our time away from teach teaching in addition it creates situations that can be challenging and sometimes confrontational between students and staff it's not always easy to take a cell phone away from a high school kid I believe the best decision for our students education is for students to leave their phones at home at a minimum we need a policy that clearly defines expectations limitations procedures and consequences everyone seems eager to get back to academic excellence and we can either continue looking for hidden malfunction our curriculum or sorry instructional practices or we can address the elephant in the room if
035we're serious about academics like I keep hearing taking the most distracting device in human history from our classrooms seems like a great way to get our Focus back to learning I thank you for your time thank you all right Melissa hello my name is Melissa nesbet I'm a Lakeville resident parent of two elementary students in the district a school psychologist and a school safety and Crisis Prevention trainer and team member in a nearby District I would like to share some concerns about our district Crisis Prevention and response measures first I want to make it clear that none of this is easy I'm not here to point fingers or criticize but just to ask some questions and share experiences that I hope will help you superintendent Bowman and board members to shine your light on our
036district policies and procedures and how they can be improved to consider both the physical and psychological safety of our staff and students the district website and Communications highlight the threat assessment process and security systems in our school buildings but School Crisis Prevention and response is so much more than those two things guidance from the National Association of school psychologists the National Association of school resource officers and board policy 806 recommend that the district maintain a District crisis team along with a crisis team for each School building what does this structure look like in Lakeville area schools building crisis teams should be multidisciplinary and include administrators mental health professionals School nurses school resource officers and teachers do all of our buildings have an official crisis team with the necessary members building crisis teams should meet regularly
037to discuss training activities and review the building response to any recent events and identify ways to improve moving forward does our District require that teams meet a certain number of times each year is there any oversight of building teams to provide support answer questions and check in to ensure that District policies are being followed I ask these questions because while we love the school that our children attend we've had some missteps over the years our school has forgotten about lockdown drills required by the Minnesota Department of Education and squeezed all five into the last two weeks of a school year this is far from from best practice and can be traumatizing to Children especially when repeated so many times in a short time frame my child was so afraid after doing two drills in a
038row that she ran and hid under a play structure during after school care when a couple of unfamiliar older children just walked near the playground she never reacted in that way before the intense focus on drills when our school's security system had a false alarm the staff and students were understandably distressed and it highlighted some gaps in the building crisis procedures instead of carefully planning ways to address those gaps in a way that is supportive of the psychological safety of staff and students a plan was quickly made to create more scheduled and UNS scheduled drills to quote build muscle memory drills with students present are only one way to practice crisis procedures teams can do tabletop exercises walkthroughs and drills before or after school student contact hours these are all valuable tools to practice crisis
039procedures that do not involve damaging the sense of safety of our children while they're in school I hope these questions will inspire you to look for further into our district school crisis procedures sorry I forgot to give you your 30 seconds and that you will focus not only on physical but psychological safety as well thank you thank you all right thank you for those that were willing to speak today uh moving on back on the agenda items um I would entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda as drafted plus the addition um that was approved prior in the meeting I'll make a motion all right so moved by director Baker is there a second I'll second it the motion is seconded by um director Carbone is there any discussion on the motion or on
040any of the topics Dr Anderson do I have to make a motion to pull an item or can we talk about any of the topics we can discuss it before we approve but or if you want to pull it we can pull it I believe the the yeah I don't think you have to make a motion I think the the the process as you ask is there a consent agenda item you'd like to pull out for further discussion and then uh and then we um uh vote on what's remaining and then we vote and have a discussion on the the what was what item was pulled out so Direct Car Anderson do do you have a I would like to pull item G policy 524 okay and I don't believe we need even need a
041second for that correct correct all right um all right so we're looking at an amended motion then to or just a motion to approve the consent consent agenda minus item number G correct I yeah yeah we all right I'll move to amend the original motion to approve the consent item consent agenda uh to remove item G is there a second on that second all right there's a second by director Cameron all those in favor of amending the original motion to approve the consent agenda minus item G say I I I all those post say n nay all right it's approved um so now we're back to approving the amended motion I believe yeah yeah all right all those approving the motion to approve the consent agenda as amended um so moved moved by Dr Cameron
042I'll second it uh it being first and seconded a motion to approve the consent agenda minus item G all those in favor say I I all those oppose same sign all right it's unanimously approved um I'll hand it over to you yeah director Anderson yeah I just I want to I wanted to pull this out just to make sure that we're um in light of some I mean we just had a teacher speak to this um issue with cell phones in classrooms and also um I feel like this has come up and obviously we've had different our principles presenting and one thing that um one thing that I'm thinking about and and this very much comes um from my background in mental health and what has been going going on in um in our schools
043for mental health and how this is impacting our students and hearing from our Middle School um principles that they have had stricter policies this year and how well that is going and you know I know that high school students are older um and I think the argument has been well this is part of their culture and how do we kind of educate them to use um cell phones appropriately but so I I think my challenges I've been hearing such different things in terms of some people feeling like um the current policies that are in place in high school are working and some people saying absolutely not I know my kid is on I mean I know for instance I've received a tech text message for my child and hopefully it's during the passing time but
044um one thing I just have in my mind kind of made a comparison is you know um smoking in restaurants and other places was absolutely the norm for a very long time until we realized that secondhand smoke was a Public Health crisis and I feel like we are in the stage of um an epidemic with from a mental health standpoint with our kids and adults um with regard to cell phone use and so I do want to just entertain the idea that I know we have it on the policy or on the consent agenda to approve the policy as written but I just also want to put it out there that do we want to consider I I mean I I feel like we've heard different things from teachers who are willing to speak out
045about it um but is there any utility of getting any more information from teachers in terms of how they feel like they can regulate or not regulate cell phone use in classrooms um so do we want to consider any of that before we do have to make a final decision I know we're due to make a final decision in March um and not that we can't update policy going forward and see how works but I also feel like I've heard variable things about whether or not it's working as is so that would be my director Thompson I I think you make good comments absolutely and I think that makes sense um with the regulation asking to have a policy in it in place I see I believe sometime in March 15 or March something is
046um I don't want to rush it but I also want to make sure that we we have something in place by then from my understanding the existing policy that's being recommended is aligned with how all three schools have implemented since the beginning of the school year and so uh what I would like to do and I think you're right um I would love to see kind of an endof year summary SL minor task force assessment with asking hey parents how did it go hey teachers how did it go hey admin how did it go um and and I'm not proposing that we need to ban cell phones across the board at the high school level but it may be an opportunity to Tee It Up is there an appetite from our community community that that
047may say we don't want cell phones at all uh but I do feel like we've got to let this year run its course to uh collect the appropriate experience and the data and get that feedback maybe at sometime in June uh and then make a course correction where it makes sense for the following school year if it if we choose to move forward with maybe zero cell phones at all at all at the high school middle school and Elementary levels so that that would be my thoughts I mean I'm not opposed to revisiting the idea I know we've heard um several principes speak on the current policy and they're very much in favor of it um yeah I experienced the same thing with kids getting text messages from my son um I know that we
048had a a teacher speak today uh I mean we're always going to run into enforcement issues regardless of whether it's a complete ban because kids are going to bring their cell phones to school even if they're not supposed to um and then I think you still run into that same issue where okay now what do we do um so regardless of what it is um so yeah I do like to hear from the principles which I you know we had requested and they came in and recommended this policy uh and I think as we've discussed it we can always modify it if we need to moving forward director Baker so I agree with director Thompson I feel like we need to make database decisions um up until this point like we wouldn't know exactly what
049we need to modify or change because as director Anderson said the information that we're hearing is variable um so I guess my uh suggestion would be uh to request from the administration that they collect some data for the rest of the school year once the polic is in place um so that way we can review it at the end of the school year and determine like where the tweaks need to happen um maybe have some as director Thompson suggested some discussion with um several different stakeholders um to determine what what we would need what changes would need to be made because right now we're just kind of guessing based on information that we're hearing I I guess like I want some some data around it some specific data that shows like there issues with uh
050teachers not being able to get the phones out of students hands or there's bullying that's happening with students in the hallway or and I'm just labeling things now but um just making sure we have data surround it so that we know what tweaks to make um I appreciate the conversation I agree um with you director Anderson and Dr Thompson and Dr Baker and or um director Baker and and Swanson all of you um I'm wondering with like the a quickly evolving landscape in technology if and this is something maybe the policy committee can think about um is maybe this is one of the policies that's looked at annually to to see like is it working with and I think with data to back up like um is this working or is this not working I
051think I think just to make sure we're in state compliance getting um something passed for March is important um but I also wonder like with I think we don't I'm not sure about what student surveys we do in terms of um uh student belonging and and those types of themes but maybe that's a survey to look at too um in addition to parents and and teachers so that's something we could consider to I had a question just on the policy side I mean we're kind of setting the Baseline here right I mean if a teacher or principal wants to set additional standards or requirements that are you know maybe one step further is it your understanding that they can do that I mean we're providing standards that they yeah like I see this as the
052floor right students aren't to have them in class um or using them in class if they're in high school but yeah um My Hope Is that it's not I think it provides high level guidance but my I I look to the superintendent around insuring consistency within the various classrooms in high school I mean if I go to English and I put it in a pocket and then I go to math and but I can put it in my backpack or whatever it may be so I would look I would I would assume a certain level of consistency in in that process uh but in regards to that Baseline the Baseline would be no cell phones in the classroom or having having having them out but there may be some variation I was just going to
053follow up I I feel really good about us getting some data that would inform our decision making here I just feel like what I really want to um and not that I it's absolutely not the case that I don't value um The principls Who or our um principal who spoke on the high school level it's just I would love to get that kind of teacher confirmation that they feel like it's not interfering and that there's good um kind of follow through with policy um so I would feel good about getting some data and then moving forward one other comment I'll just make about this um is that I think and Brian I think you've highlighted some policies in other districts where they um include the procedures around you know what happens if a student brings
054a cell phone or takes a cell phone out and I think we've decided to not include it in the official policy but I think to the extent that buildings um perhaps the same grade level buildings like both high schools all three midds get together um with guidance from um teachers on what what those procedures should look like what are what will be the um disciplinary actions taken if um the procedures are breached I think it needs to be a collaborative process and I think our principes and teachers hopefully know that but I'll just stress that that um I think those have to be um well solidified the procedures in addition to the policy Dr Thompson uh so changing topics just briefly uh in this policy 524 that we are about to approve uh we haven't
055had a chance to actually look at policy 525 524 in its entirety uh the policies that I believe we've received in the past couple weeks have been uh section five 15 and Below which is just the cell phone policy and below and the reason I share that is because as I I as I am looking at policy 524 uh I think it's like page 91 in the board book we've got some uh we have a section in I think it's like 11 called filter where here's alternative option number one here's alternative option number two sounds like we haven't actually discuss which one we want to use and so I think I'm going to make a recommendation that uh or I'll make a motion that we approve section 15 and Below which is the cell phone
056use uh with uh with a a request from the administration to conduct an end of the year school assessment and when with that data we can make uh additional changes consistency changes um procedural changes if we want to embed that um so let me re let me restate the Motions in a smaller uh I make a motion to pass section 15 of the cell phone use with a request from the administration to provide an end of your assessment uh feedback for the uh for the board to review is there a second to the motion just to clarify here the rest of the policy we're not addressing today correct I mean the rest of the policy is it's policy yeah okay so it's just the added okay I'll second all right seconded by director Anderson so
057being a first and a second um the motion is to approve uh section 15 only of the cell phone policy everything else Remains the Same uh with additional direction to uh the superintendent and the district to provide uh information at the end of the year regarding the effect of the policy and its implementation yes all right all those in favor say I I I all the oppos say nay all right the motion is passed all right we're going to move on to our report and discussion section of the agenda uh first on the docket is the American Indian education plan vote of concurrence reading Miss Gish Meer and Mr Johnson no no thank you only when he's standing next to his boys you're welcome too but yeah no I'd be a little tall finally okay
058um I appreciate being able to address you for the second time this month so um thank you chair Swanson members of the board and superintendent Bowman I'm Amy Gish Meer the American Indian education coordinator for Lakeville area schools my role is to support our indigenous students families and provide guidance and resources to staff supporting our native students as a district of 187 American Indian students we are required by state statutes to fulfill specific tasks and Implement to the best of our ability culturally relevant opportunities and encourage greater um understanding of the needs of our students and families Guided by the American Indian parent advis Council my work is focused on improving outcomes for the Native American students in ISD 194 as require a required part of the annual compliance of these initiatives our APAC meets
059to discuss the state plan to ensure programs are being implemented and they vote whether they agree or disagree with the level of incorporation please uh welcome Steve Johnson a member of our Apec to read the resolution for this school year thank you chair Swanson members of the board and superintendent Bowman my name is Steve Johnson I'm a member of the APAC and I'm representing all members students and families to present the American Indian parent advisory committee resolution tonight whereas on the 28th day of January 2025 we the Lakeville area schools APAC issued a vote of concurrence no further actions required beyond the board chair signature uh which completes the annual compliance process the compliance documents will be submitted to the state before the March 1st deadline this concludes the American Indian resolution for 2425 school
060year thank you thank you thanks St moving on to the enrollment report good evening everyone and thank you for allowing me to present to you today my name is Tracy brovold and I'm lucky enough to serve as the Director of technology and data services for our school district today I am happy to present our student enrollment data for this school year as we begin our discussion on student enrollments we will cover several key areas to provide a comprehensive understanding of our current landscape and future planning our agenda includes an overview of our team an introduction to the data services team we'll examine the latest data on student numbers across our district highlighting any notable changes we'll provide an overview of the diverse backgrounds of our student body including insights into economic status and ethnicity we'll
061look at how our district manages open enrollment allowing students from other school districts to attend our our schools and the impact it has on our community and we'll also discuss the process that enables students to transfer between schools in our district ensuring flexibility to meet individual student needs by delving into these topics I hope that I could provide clear picture of our current enrollment and the strategies that we have in place to support our students educational experiences on this slide you will see some of our staff on our district support services for information technology or discit is the name of our team the data services team is a smaller subset of this group our uh in this department organization chart you will see that our department is led by Dr Emily McDonald we are very
062thankful for her support and guide guidance I lead as I said both the technology and data services teams we have Douglas ninow on our team who oversees the data services team you met Douglas back in October when he presented the enrollment projections uh for you Douglas supervises Garrett uh uh nto who is responsible for identity management state and federal reporting and enrollment our identity management team is Amy boy who works with access management for staff and isma Ali who works to connect all of our online resources to our uh staff and student um lakel area schools accounts Garrett also supervises Kim Meyer who is the newest member of our department Kim is our data accountability specialist and she has jumped right in to support state and federal reporting as well as our enrollment team our
063enrollment team is very small it includes um Robin kala and Sylvia Campos Robin is our enrollment manager and Sylvia is our information system support specialist putting together this presentation gave me the opportunity to reflect on all that our team has accomplished over the last few years I would like to express my sincere gratitude to um this Dynamic data services team these dedicated individuals manage our student Information Systems oversee daily student enrollments they support state and federal reporting and support staff with data visualizations many of which you have seen over the past few weeks and you will see today their hard work ensures that our student and staff data is accurate timely and accessible enabling us to make informed decisions that benefits our students and Community they are a pretty small but very mighty team oh
064yes just I want to make sure I understand this this respective team and while a small and and Super Mighty which which is what I'm hearing uh is this team responsible also for ensuring all the uh academic data is connected to a student all the data is connected into the cloud all of the various applications that we might be using uh any API connections that are all set set up together so that we have a holistic picture or is that generally outside the scope of this team I just want to be mindful because if they're just doing enrollment and they're sending data to the state but they're not doing the data mining of stitching everything together I want to make sure I understand we are um we work in conjunction with uh Cheryl gangler who
065is on our um uh uh team with Nicole Adams who presented to you last week um we work with Cheryl to make sure that the data is consistent and accurate and in uh visualizations that um uh people can understand and read and I'll get more to that in just a little bit but yes it is the team that um organizes all of that other questions okay I would like to share some of our team's recent initiatives as understanding their work will highlight how these efforts have directly contributed to our student enrollment numbers just for your awareness all of these initiatives that I'm going to talk about are big things they are big initiatives that this um Team performed for our district and sometimes I would look at them and say you want to do that
066and they did they did it with their whole heart and all of the the time that they can put forth into these initiatives um they never cease to amaze me um to begin centralized enrollment and registration prior to 2018 each School provided their own student enrollment imagine having a family of three or four students that were located in different schools elementary middle school and high school you would have to go to each one of those schools to be able to register or enroll your your children um all on paper each school had families fill out the same type of paperwork but it wasn't exactly the same and then they put information into Infinite campus in similar ways not necessarily always the same way um site staff were doing a great job welcoming our families and
067getting them enrolled into our schools but the process was not standardized across the district or was it efficient moving to centralized enrollment created a One-Stop shop for our families and a better control over the data that we're putting into Infinite Campus we launched online registration ation in the spring of 2021 this allowed our families the convenience of registering their children online with a standardized form in format input of the data by our families allowed for fewer mistakes made from transferring handwritten documents into Infinite Campus by our staff we offered the Avail availability for families to be able to come into our office if they need language support filling out their enrollment applications or if they just need help making their way through the um through the forms we launched the annual household checkin in the
068fall of 2021 the annual household check-in allows parents to review all of the data that they have in campus once a year some of that data could be emergency contacts student health information family contact information we make sure that we have the most accurate and upto-date information in campus by having the annual household check-in completed as I said the annual household check-in we like that to be completed once a year in case uh information is updated by families in the past it was voluntary for families to complete this past summer we required families to complete the annual household check-in before they can see their students schedule or their students teacher we weren't surprised that we had 95% complete uh in uh completion of the annual household checkin that was great because we know we have
069some very up-to-date information in campus before that when it was voluntary we had less than 50% completion of it so um that's been very helpful for us to make sure we have accurate data when we assumed responsibility for open enrollment and in District transfers our team created a robust process for accept applications and an objective process for determining acceptance of those applications all of the processes re um were aligned to our school board policy and to State Statute the process is spelled out online and takes families through it step by step if you click on enroll you'll see that process there and then data analytics as um director Thompson asked about in the past if we wanted to look at district and school level data like we are today we would have to manually process
070that data and create charts and graphs um I believe Dr Anderson you um mentioned Dr Baron last um last time Dr Baron was the guy he would download data from campus and upload it into Google data studio and manipulate it he did a great job the problem was Dr Baron was the only guy who did that if you wanted data you had to go to to Dr Baron since he left we will we were able to restructure our department and with that we purchased actually two platforms for data analytics one for our teachers called educ climber and it allows our teachers to dig deeper into classroom level excuse me classroom level data and another uh which is uh run off of Tableau which uh allows our uh a 30,000 foot view or for our administrators
071to look at uh District level analytics is your question Tracy um Tuesday ago Nicole was saying that when we were looking at academic outcome data um she was saying that there's you know there's a reasonable amount of manual pull to to calculate the data so that they can make decisions on curriculum on Student Success etc etc just roughly throw a dart what's the percentage of manual whole activity versus not is it 30% 50% every time somebody's trying to look at look at an analysis to make a decision um you you asked a great question and I don't I I hesitate to throw a dart um because data brings up additional questions and sometimes we don't have those visualizations created and so um we just started as I said in 2022 actually um uh having systems
072that are able to pull our data and that is just from Infinite Campus uh we have a data warehouse with Infinite Campus that stores all of our data and these two systems pull from campus we have some systems that are outside of um Infinite Campus that we can't pull from yet so our human resources data or our um uh efp which is our business office um uh information system we can't we're not pulling that data yet that would be a manual export and then an import and so we do have um Cheryl gangler who is amazing on Nico's team who actually helps us pull some of that data and create visualizations so um so if you pressed me I would say that we are about 40% there with the problem that data creates new questions
073and then creates new visualizations that it's an ongoing process to continue to answer questions with data yeah and and that is the cool part of data it just keeps expanding the mind so you get you you'll think of things you would have never even thought of if the data wouldn't have Pro prompted it right yeah if I could um weigh in here a little bit the challenge is Fusion uh from from the different sets that you have and having a single Source uh data analytics that can do that Fusion because uh you just take finance and take finance and H R how do you how do you fuse those into academics and any other kind of um data sets that you want so this is not a problem unique to Lakeville area schools we are
074in fact if I can add to that we are in fact ahead of a lot of schools with the data systems and the data that we are beginning to look at so a lot of the stuff we talked about last week seemed like it was not connected so in terms of data you're talking about tables charts I mean it's it's a lot of ones and zeros but it's all put into a database if you have multiple databases you merge in multiple databases and you put it into one central location so you can slice it and dice it in any way you want I'm confused as to how that is the biggest challenge we're running into in terms of data analytics if you have multiple databases you just have to build the connection to talk to
075them I'm I'm struggling well let me help you un struggle the challenge there uh uh director Nicholson is uh a data warehouse and the in-house capability for somebody to do that backend work that is have the capability that's correct okay not on scale not for the uh V the different systems that we operate under uh can it be done yes uh it becomes a priority of funding on where you're going to put your money to do that and bring that talent in to do that so I I just want to make be clear about that Tracy can I ask what what data are we collecting um it sounds like it's all on infinite campus but then you're talking about through educ climber we have some classroom specific data like what data would that be um
076so they uh we have uh the standardized testing data so um from MCA data we have in there um uh we have some classroom grade data we have attendance data um we have some Behavior data in there so that teachers can look at a full picture of uh of a student rather than just looking at one piece of the puzzle is Edge climber available for the principles as well to access and that information Brian yeah um so I appreciate the clarification because I think this will help with providing um how we want to move forward with 25 26 budget uh where it make sense to allocate additional funding to maybe accelerate the the the the stitching the the joining of the various data elements cuz if you've got all this data in Infinite Campus you've
077got all this data in educ climber and then a variety of different applications and systems that that we have deployed with data but no true Lakeville data warehouse to to bring all that data in and then having a subject matter expert and or team to connect all those pieces build the data have a ticketing system where people may ask I want this kind of report can I see this that doesn't exist today and so as we move forward and as we want to monitor academics and as we want to monitor student progress Behavior whatever may be this is an investment where uh that might that would be very beneficial to say data drives how we make decisions so I want make sure I understand yeah okay correct Dr okay um I appreciate uh the comments
078about this and I think for me in addition to pulling like the existing Data Systems that we have together to tell like a complete story to make better decisions as I understand it um I'm not an educator so Kim jump in if I'm getting this wrong but there's so many assitive assessments happening on a daily basis and formative assessments that teachers are doing as well that aren't getting put into these Data Systems per se right and those are just as valid as mechanisms to evaluate student performance academic achievement and so while I agree like we need these Data Systems I don't think that is the end I'll be a to understand academic um performance and how our student are doing in in school so Edge climber does have the ability like you can add in
079your District assessments like through the curriculum if you wanted to uh um kind of a timely process and it takes a while so it would be making sure you have the man the manpower to do that and then multiply that across like all the different assessments that happen in a classroom across the district so like I think at the elementary level like they're doing summon of Assessments daily you know through little worksheets they're not putting every worksheet into this but they were checking I'm make sure students comprehend so I think that's important part of this I feel like um what we need is more of an assessment from our superintendent and you in terms of with what the board is asking for or how we can kind of be I know you have data uh
080data driven decision- making what you feel you need or do you feel that you have everything you need so I think that's what's kind of missing from this equation is how our Administration and our director feel they have their needs met and also there are a lot of priorities on the table um and so does this outweigh other priorities that we would potentially invest in yeah Brett so we talked last week about um a dashboard I I don't think we still have a link to a dashboard I haven't seen a dashboard I don't know what it is yet um still waiting to see that um I I feel like there continues to be a gap in terms of like data that gets presented it's not connected to anything we talked about absenteeism we're in a
081very affluent District you know people pull their kids out of school for a week to go on vacation it's not spring break it's other times we don't know are those the kids that are falling behind are they not like if we can't connect any of this stuff we're just throwing random stuff on the wall like I I'm confused as to like why this would not be a priority I mean we need to know like is this correlated is this a random you know random piece that's connected or is it not connected at all is there no causation I mean if it's not something that we need to be concerned about then we need some data that actually puts it all together for us I mean I I look at this as like I mean it's
082just data it's just tables we just need to get this stuff into a format that we can use it slice it and dice it and see the whole picture and if we can't do that I think we're missing something here director Carbone yeah to to follow up on on uh director Nicholson's comments you know we've got a a $28 million budget or or entity that's being managed by a number of people and you know to to spend and and I don't spending is a priority and you have to prioritize budget and so forth but to me that's a cost of doing business to to create something that's going to help Drive decisions and help uh look even deep deeper into academic outcomes so better decisions can be made from the data and the analysis of
083the data so again I know there's priority in budgeting but still I think again that's that's a cost of doing business for a 28 million 250 million whatever it is entity 299 it's 299 Brian so so no I want to be mindful guys like this this isn't this doesn't exist and it's not Chas his faults so let's try to go to page four but this is something that we do need to think about and as as we plan for 25 26 budget uh be mindful but I think all the comments that people have shared 100% spot on uh but I'm okay moving on yeah I think we're all talking around Tracy's presentation um this is for the next time you come in front of us I think but uh Carly did you have something to
084say I was I was we haven't heard from the superintendent we haven't really heard from the superintendent and that's where I feel like because he is well aware of the long list of priorities on the table that's where I and not that we need to hear from you right now Mr bman but this is more just obviously there's an interest in developing greater support for your team and those kinds of things but yes a proposal and where does it fall on the list of priorities priorities well I will say uh the fusion of data problem is is not unique to Lakeville that doesn't make it right or wrong yes we're a $299 $300 million operation the biggest operation in Lakeville and that capacity uh on the scale which I believe many of you are comparing
085that to private sector no problem it's a matter of having the capability the capability priority has not resided I'll say in K12 in the state of Minnesota and you can just look at how the data requirement and Reporting methodology from the districts to the state exists that fusion and both way traffic does not exist can't say we can't build it absolutely the capability is out there it's where does it fit in the priority the implied task for me is tell you what that number is and share that with you uh so that we can maybe get on the road to doing that uh if that's a feasible uh course of action so that's what I'll say about that okay thank you um I just want to finish up with one other initiative and that was
086our automated access management in uh the fall of 20122 we move to single sign on through a portal that we have for our staff and students where when you sign into that portal you get access to many different resources and so our staff doesn't have to remember all sorts of passwords and credentials to get into um uh to access other resources they have a One-Stop shop for that and that is um thanks to our C collaboration with Moren carrian who is on our um technology team um as we continue to grow as a district and we have more questions about data and more needs um we will as a team continue to audit our systems make sure that they are safe and secure for our staff and students and we'll continue to collaborate with other
087departments so that we can continually evolve and do our part to make sure that Lakeville Area Schools is a welcome place to be um understanding and monitoring our enrollment numbers is crucial for the effective operation and strategic planning of our school district these figures influence several key areas as you heard from Bill hrin our funding is directly tied to student enrollment accurate enrollment projections are essential as even small discrepancies can lead to significant budget fluctuations enrollment numbers guide our staffing decisions fluctuations in our student numbers can drive changes in Staffing which could impact the level of service and support that we're able to provide to our students the variety and location of programs that we offer are influenced also by our enrollment data understanding our enrollment Trends helps us to allocate resources effectively ensuring that
088programs meet the needs of our student population and finally enrollment projections inform our decisions on facility usage maintenance and future development accurate projections allow us to plan for efficient use of our facilities ensure that they meet the needs of our students by closely monitoring and forecasting our enrollment data we can make informed decisions that align with our District's needs and uh the needs of our students now let's dive into the enrollment data there are two things that I would like you to um or I'd like to highlight before I go into the numbers the first thing is I'd like you to note that these numbers that you're going to see today are reported to the Minnesota Department of Education from a moment in time so they screenshot October 1st it's a moment in time they
089freeze that moment but while they freeze that moment we continue to operate so we continue to have students that come and go so you might see our total numbers fluctuate in some reports the Minnesota Department of Education report card hasn't come out yet but our number might be a little different in that than what you um see here uh see here today we have uh time to make adjustments in our system that reports back to the Minnesota Department of Education um from that October 1st number we have until December 31st or we had until December 31st to make those changes so um when Douglas came and reported the enrollment predictions report in November our October 1 number was a little different than what you'll see today um so all of these numbers that you're going
090to see today are kind of a new October 1st number for us remember also the second thing is that this is a total headcount of students this is not the PE pupil unit or ADM that U Mr holgren said that we are funded on we give our students the flexibility to participate in a variety of programming an example is post-secondary enrollment options through colleges or universities or PSO if a student takes a PSO class at a college or university we might not get full funding for that student so although we're counting them in our numbers as one today the fun uh uh the funding mechanism might be a little bit different so as we look at our total headcount of students we look at our student enrollment three different ways the first way is enrollment
091of ourc through 12 students this number you can see is 11785 students the second way is our total enrollment of Early Childhood special education through grade 12 this number is 12,024 students and our highest number is our total enrollment of early education programs through grade 12 our early education programs um Encompass our early childhood special ed our early childhood family education and Small Wonders Early Childhood family education or ECFE and Small Wonders are Community Education uh programs so they are not counted as part of our funding when we look at the middle the middle number that's the number that we are State reported and we are funded on and so that's the number we will be going off of today as you may recall in uh November when Douglas ninow presented enrollment predictions this is
092the same uh chart that you were able to see uh when he was here you'll see that for this year um 20242 he presented that we had a total of 12,29 students so you can see a little fluctuation in that number there our real number is 12,024 since 2019 our enrollment has continued to increase with the exception of 2020 2021 and that was during the covid pandemic and also this school year where we have remained stagnant as I as I said the numbers continue to fluctuate um Douglas whose history I value and respect he has been with the district a long time he tells me that typically where we end the school year is where we will start the school year next year and I looked at our enrollment numbers today and we are at
09312,12 students which brings us closer to our 12001 140 students that is predicted for us uh this coming fall another way for for us to look at our enrollment numbers is by site remember again that these numbers are a total headcount of students so if you look all the way on the left side of your screen you will see cleck or Crystal Lake Education Center um this is the total headcount of students that we have at cleck that's a lot of students isn't it this includes our um three programs Early Childhood special ed Early Childhood family education and Small Wonders the 1,00 37 students being a headcount those students might participate in multiple programs they might not just be in one but we only have them counted as one uh person uh for this number
094just to give you an idea of how many students we have going in and out of cleck you will see on the right hand side of your screen you'll see LPA and that is Lakeville Pathways Academy and then L OA E M and H are Lakeville online elementary middle and high school rules uh one of the data points that I want to call your attention to is um Lakeville North at 1,873 students um Kim buy our principal at North is usually watching this and so I I have to say that for the last three years she has come into our office and said you need to recount my kids because I am sure we have more students than South has and so we can say for the first time Kim booty you do have more
095students than Lakeville South has so congratulations to you you could now go to Shawn Murphy and let him know you have more students Bri uh uh will we see a slide like this later in your presentation that shows the capacity levels of each site location I do not have that for you today another way to look at our enrollment data is by grade level this gives us the opportunity to see distribution Trends across our grade levels you'll know notice on the left hand side of your screen we have early childhood and this isn't that big number that you saw before because on this slide we have our state reported numbers so you're seeing here early childhood special ed and in early childhood special ed we have 239 students as we look across the grade levels
096I'd like you to take a look at our third grade number this is the highest in our elementary schools we have a bubble of 9 148 kids in that grade level and so that's one that we're going to keep our eye on um as Douglas had mentioned when he presented to you that we use um something called a cohort survival rate to project the size of each grade level for the following year the cohort Court survival rate method tracks the number of students advancing from one grade to the next within a district helping us to forecast future enrollment based on historical Trends so our projections start with the current grade levels enrollment and then we factor in our five-year trend of student growth or decline and this datadriven approach allows us to make informed predictions
097uh about future student populations ensuring that we plan effectively for Staffing facilities and resources for our students let's take on here grade two for example yeah want me to go first okay let's take grade two for example um in grade two we have 879 students if we follow the cohort survival uh rate model next year we expect to hold on to those 879 students and then factor in additional grow growth because our five-year historical has F uh growth involved I just looked today and it looks like our second grade cohort has increase to 890 students for next year so this tells us that the cohort surv rate model does hold when we look at that bubble of students in third grade according to our model in our projections uh this this group of students or
098this cohort will continue to increase so it's just something for us to watch Brian you have a question yeah for the um for the average consumer and myself obviously when you look at 12th grade you've got 993 and then kindergarten 86 and one can make an assumption like we've got less kids coming into our school system but but again based on your projection and and the growth of Lakeville more kids will eventually be added as the years progress so that your kindergarten KS kids could get to 993 by the time we get to kindergarten so again just from a visual Optics it does look like we're declining but we've got a l time but but they could also change I mean they we may not have enough that join go ahead uh watch the housing
099that's what we watch um and I think an economy shift could create uh will create a shift in those numbers so that's another element that we have to pay attention to director Thompson to your point I do feel like some of that uh lower kindergarten number is also uh related to the fact that our Early Childhood Center is overc capacity and we don't have any capacity to serve any more of our early childhood population um I have talked with the superintendent about it as well like I I question uh the percentage of Early Childhood students that were actually able to serve within our District based on the restrictions of that building um and knowing that those students are going to other districts for Early Childhood Services um particularly 196 is getting a lot of our
100students for Early Childhood um they are trying to address that need and making uh Early Childhood programs available within their Elementary buildings to accommodate for that um so we are losing students to other districts for that and then sometimes those students choose to stay okay on our next slide um we are going to be looking at racial and ethnic demographic designations our district collects this data based on both federal and state requirements parents self- select their child's race and ethnicity upon enrollment with both federal and state designations optional if a parent or Guardian chooses not to provide race or ethnicity information to US during enrollment federal guidelines require the district to assign a designation using Observer identification this ensures compliance with federal reporting requirements related to civil rights and funding however the additional State designated
101categories remain optional and the district is not required to assign a designation if the parent doesn't provide that information the Minnesota state legislature has also mandated that districts collect more detailed student data beyond the 7 Federal categories so that we can better understand our student needs and improve educational outcomes the last bullet point on this slide uh references the mandated Minnesota Department of Education racial and ethnic demographic designation form that's a long title for a for a document um while I won't be pulling it up for you today I wanted to have it here for um your reference um if you wanted to take a look at it this form while it's optional for parents to fill out is mandatory for us to use and it's replicated in our online registration system we cannot change
102this form director Thompson have we um I'm just curious do you incorporate this in your annual household check box form so it forces folks to actually fill this out before they see their schedule um so thank you for that question th this is not the form is not in the annual household checkin but um families can see their designation their racial and ethnicity designation and if it's incorrect they could make that change there and then and and I think uh a couple weeks ago we had a conversation around if you were more than two races uh it doesn't allow you to say what those are have we made those I'm going to explain that to you in the next slide awesome thank you yeah um I will be honest this form it can be really
103confusing and I think our families that are coming into our um School District who have to fill this out who are new to our country um or may not speak or read English it is it's very difficult and so I can understand why some of our families struggle to complete the form accurately or choose not to complete it at all so on this slide you will see our federal and state demographic data for this year this is the these are the same students students so this is how they're designated as Federal and you'll see how those same students are designated um as uh as mde uh looks at them um Federal data provides broad racial categories while MD's approach captures detailed information on specific ethnic subgroups the federal race and ethnicity reporting process um the
104form I uh mentioned follows a two-part question on uh on that document first the very first question families are asked whether the student is of Hispanic or Latino ethnicity then after that they select one or more of the racial categories in this method is set by federal guidelines to ensure consistency in data collection across all districts Across the Nation federal reporting gives a preference to students counted as Hispanic you will see here that we have 33 there's a 33 student difference um between those designated as Hispanic between federal and state while Federal gives a preference for students counted as Hispanic Minnesota gives a preference to students counted with a designation of American Indian there are 119 students different here between federal and state so if we look at 119 students different here and 33 with
105Hispanic where did all those students go if a student is both Hispanic and American Indian they are reported as two or more races for federal but for State they are still counted as American Indian they are not reported in two or more races so you'll see 112 students different there Minnesota also assigns uh other indigenous peoples they have a category for other indigenous peoples whereas fed has those um families design designated as American Indian or Alaskan native so clearly as it relates to our students who are American Indian it is more complicated to make sure that those students are designated accurately for State reporting and funding and as director Thompson mentioned our American Indian coordin coordinator Amy who was just here she was saying that her persistence allowed us to accurately identify our students who
106are designated American Indians so that we can receive that state funding when she started her position I believe we had around 40 44 students that were designated as American Indian for 3 years our data services team collaborated with Amy to run reports on federal designations and state designations and then she had her list of students that she deemed or she thought were American Indian and so what she had to do then was to compare the students on her list with who we were reporting for federal andate she had to call those families or reach out to those families to see if they could change their designation so that we can receive that funding and designate them appropriately the law does not allow our district to just change it based on what we think we know
107we have to get parent permission to be able to change that so moving forward this will continue to be a manual process um if a family de declines to indicate that they are American Indian or if they choose a designation incorrectly or if they don't choose and we choose incorrectly for them and Amy believes them to be American Indian she will have to continue to reach out to families to make sure that their designation is correct on this slide you will additional student group data and director Adams reviewed this information for you last week a couple things that I wanted to highlight is that 16.3% of our students are served in special education five 5.6 are um involved in English language learn learner programming and 99.7% of our students are State reported gifted um as
108we talked about last week 21.2% of our population is suppor Ed with educational benefits or free and reduced benefits uh last week director Cameron had asked about free and reduced educational benefits and if we saw a drop in the percent of families identified since all lunches now are free across the state people might foro to uh choosing to fill out that educational benefits paperwork so I went back and looked at the numbers and in um 2223 we had 22.8 8% free and reduced benefits in 23 24 we had 23.4% reduced benefits so we have seen a little bit of a drop um the state has put in some uh ways that families um can get access to educational benefits without filling out the form um there is a um a direct um they directly put
109people into the program or they're directly certified from the St if they participate in another Statewide benefits program so that has helped us a lot and then as Dr McDonald shared last week um we did a campaign to get people to see that there was more to educational benefits than just receiving free uh lunch in both of the slides we just reviewed it's important to note that over time our demographics have shifted we continue to have a more diverse student student population and that's something that we can truly celebrate last week director Adams also shared that we have over 85 different languages that our students uh can speak and I just thought that was such an incredible statistic that I wanted to bring that to the Forefront once again okay next we are going to
110move on to open enrollment excuse me I do have um a few um slides um to go through here and so if if you have questions um I might cover them in the slide so if you um can wait until the end of this section that would be great open enrollment is the acceptance of students in a district other than their resident District in Minnesota school districts are required to participate in open enrollment but we are not required to accept all open enrollment applications acceptance really is based on space availability if we have uh enough capacity at certain grade levels and the state bases it on grade level capacity um or um in programming we do have a robust process that follows Schoolboard policy and state statute to determine which applications we accept and after
111applications are accepted as I said we look at space availability that is the first place we go after we um gather those app appliations and I'm going to come back to space availability on the next slide um we do use an objective process where we assign a number aligned to a PRI priority criteria to each application examples of priority criteria include if the student is a child of a staff member if they are a sibling of an already enrolled student and if the student is coming from another achievement in integration District uh such as Burnsville and Prior Lake are the two that we specifically work with again you can find the process and the list of priority criteria on our website it's really clearly spelled out for parents and it brings them through a stepbystep
112process as to how to apply for open enrollment couple other things is that once a student is accepted for open enrollment they are accepted for their entire K12 career and then another side note is we do not provide transportation for our open enrolled students they have to find their own way to get to school so as I said I'd like to dig a little bit deeper into how we determine space availability we have strong collaboration with our human resources team um and uh great communication with them we need that um so that we can determine Staffing together and how many students we can accept we also have especially at the secondary level um great communication with our um principles um when we need to we might have to review classroom sizes and course sizes to
113determine if we have space available and so we really look to them for um their support when looking at this slide you will see two second grade classrooms and they each have room for 28 students um you will see that Mrs Chen's second grade class has 26 students and Mr Adamson has 23 students at the elementary level we have class-size guidelines that help us um guide how many students should be in the classroom at a time grades K through 1 are set at a maximum of 24 students per classroom grade two is 28 students grade three is 30 students and grades four and five are 32 students since this example is talking about second grade we have a cap of 28 students we will never fill a a classroom to 100% with open- enrolled students
114because we always want to keep space available for any Resident students who move into our district so when determining how many open enrolled Stu students we can accept into these classrooms we use the 94% capacity rule in this case 94% of 28 students is 26 students so you can see you can see that uh we have two grade out seats in each one of these classrooms those are the classroom those are the seats that are left open for our resident students U Mrs Chen according to this example Mrs Chen's class doesn't have any room for us to be able to put any open- enrolled students but Mr Adamson does he has three seats available for open enrolled students so that gives you some idea of how we make those decisions about what our capacity is
115or space available at the secondary it is a little bit different because we don't have classroom caps so instead we look at the capacity per grade level and then we do have to go a little bit deeper we work with the principles in those cases to determine team size at the middle schools and uh the size of core classes at the high schools and so our core classes are classes like English or social studies those classes that every student has to take so at the secondary level we do rely on our leaders to provide some input to help us um determine what those numbers might be on this slide we are looking at the number of students who have opened and rolled into our district and the number of students who have opened en rolled
116out of the district since 2021 uh 202020 2021 the blue bars are the number of students who have open en rolled into our district and the red bars are those who have opened and rolled out you can see that throughout the years we have accepted more open enrolled students than the number we that have open enrolled out of our district for example this year we have 757 students that have open and rolled in while 639 have open and rolled out I'll bet you're wondering why we accept more students in than we do out and if you hold on for a few more slides I'm going to get to that uh we currently do have open enrolled students at every one of our school buildings and this does include High View and Sentry Middle School which
117we know are um buildings that are getting close to capacity so we're keeping our eye our eyes on those we have we are not um approving any open- enrolled students at those two schools because of that reason but we do have students who are open enrolled there because I'll give an example of um High View as we're building uh homes in that area um we have families that build a home they have a purchase agreement their home is being built but it's not built yet uh it's not going to be done let's say it wasn't done until November so we allowed those students to open and roll into our schools so that they didn't have to go to another school and then transfer halfway through the year so we do have some numbers like that
118at High View and also at centry Middle School um some other highlights that uh we have from our um School base numbers is that at the high schools we have about the same number of students who open and roll in as open and roll out and there is one elementary school that I do want to point out um because I looked into this one because I thought this is kind of strange as to why we have so many at JFK we have 83 students who are open and rolling out of their building and that's why I thought this is kind of strange why do we have 83 students open and rolling out well JFK's boundary attendance boundary area is South and it includes the Elco new market area um new pra schools built a brand
119new school in New Market and so 67 of those students are actually transferred out um open and rolled out to um that new pra School Brian yeah I know but I I'm just curious if if we know that the middle schools are full and we're not going to add any more students open enrollment into middle school but if you come in as a third grader or fourth grader then and they're set to be in our schools throughout the rest of their term uh do they get to pick and choose which middle school they get to go to so if I went if my daughter I open enrolled at a Lake View uh do I get to pick and choose no no so we do have and and we we can't kick them out either so
120we shouldn't be actually enrolling anybody in third fourth and fifth grade so um we have our um open enrolled students on a school path and in that School path we have um pushed those open enrolled students to Kenwood and to Maguire middle schools so um you know that was a tough decision because we want to keep kids with their peers but for the majority of them we have them going to the other two middle schools where we do have some some more wiggle room so we don't choices at the middle school high school level we don't yeah they're on the and I just want to correct I think you said we have no room at at our middle schools plural actually we do have room at Kenwood and Maguire century is where we have some
121significant space issues and um student enrollment challenges okay I think we'll maybe we'll finish finish up and then we'll ask some questions okay um so you might be asking where are these students uh coming from in to R enroll into our schools and where are they going to um so this gives you a little visual of um just some of the top schools that our students are coming from and where they're going to you'll see that Rosemont e uh Apple Valley Egan uh district 196 uh we have 223 coming in while 207 of our students are going there um Farmington Public Schools 221 students and then um students are also coming from Burnsville and uh new pra Prior Lake um we believe that proximity we're very close to all of these schools and so where
122students live within our boundaries um plays a factor in where students are coming from or going to uh one of the pieces that I wanted to highlight is that new pra you'll see 126 students going there that includes those JFK 67 kids that are open and rolling out to um to new pra if um I I did shorten the list but um on the list of where our students are coming from I saw iio and farbo and I thought these kids are driving a long way to come to school here and then I realized it was our Lakeville online um students so we do have some students coming from aways away to participate in Lakeville online so here we will take a look at students who are choosing to go to non-public schools and H
123School the Red Bar TR can I ask an open enrollment question two um before we move too far beyond that uh when people submit an application for open enrollment is it for a specific School usually we ask them to submit three schools that they're interested in going to so that we can address capacity concerns if we can't accept them in a particular school okay and then once accepted they're accepted K through 12 correct um do we have the right to move them year to year um we do not according to our policy we do not they stay in the school that they were accepted in okay I have question yeah Brett go ahead oh I was just going to say something that I that I learned like a couple years ago when first coming on
124the board is with regard to the requirements we are required to open enroll and in some cases the board can set the capacity of that to let's say 1% as so for Century or High View we could say we're keeping this to 1% so that that is addressed in the open enrollment we actually can't um the limitation of the board is by grade level it's by grade level or you know like second grade third grade it's not by school um but we are well above that 1% anyway we are open enrolled between five and 6% across the board and so um we do have that option to say there's no more capacity in this building do do we give them say the top three are you know our fullest schools do we say well you
125can go attend I don't know whatever School Orchard Lake that has some capacity we do okay yeah we offer that up um in terms of like so we talking earlier about um you know there was some comment about moving boundaries within our existing District do we move open enrollment students uh the same way we would kids who live in Lakeville so we do not at all um and we're not allowed did not when we did our attendance boundaries they were accepted into those schools and they stayed in those schools so we move our own kids but not open enrolled kids and we are are we legally required to do that um I I guess I don't know the answer to that okay it's something I can look up and let you know okay okay on
126uh this screen we are taking a look at the students who are choosing to go to non-public schools and home schools um the Red Bar represents our students leaving our district to go to private schools and the blue bar represents students who are choosing to be homeschooled the green bar represents the total number of those two together you will see in 2020 21 we had 630 students who were going to private school and 419 students who uh were being homeschooled for a total of 1,49 students and this year we have 727 choosing to go to private school and 3 41 homeschooled for a total of 1,68 students we know that families make choices other than public schools for a wide variety of reasons they make intentional choices that might work for their families um we
127don't survey these families to find out why they're making this um this Choice uh when we looked at this data to analyze it we we can see that it looks like we lost quite a few um students during covid that made some intentional choices elsewhere and um looking at um this school year we might have lost some more students due to our attendance boundary changes um but we don't uh survey people to um find out why they made those choices Tracy how do we track um The Homeschool kids how do you find out find that data um they have to fill out a document and then we have um somebody in our student services team who um puts that enrollment into uh campus they have a certain date in which they have to report that
128they're um homeschooling is a charter school considered a private school or is that a charter school is in open and rolled out okay um a question on this slide too are we finding and if you don't know tonight that's fine that like if a student enrolls let's say in All Saints and goes K8 I think they go through there are are the majority of those students coming to our high schools or are they continuing on in private somewhere else we do see a lot of those students I don't have exact figures for you but we do know that a lot of um them choose to come here when um we have students uh registering for high school our um our staff go to All Saints to um help register those students and they report a
129a large percentage of students coming to us can I those students are all they go to wherever their home address is though yes correct and if they're what if they're outside of Lakeville how do they get funneled in then they would have to apply for open enrollment okay Carly Tracy do you know um because I know a lot of this is from like covid time and Beyond do you know are the numbers a lot different before covid um I think for non-public specifically is that what you're asking for this specifically and maybe I'm thinking even on your next slide about kind of net net gain loss like are we seeing a big shift that happened at that time that is stuck or was it somewhat similar maybe we saw an increase in yeah we'll see
130that on the next slide if that's okay so it is always good for us to see where we stand comparing the number of students who choose to enroll uh outside of our district through open enrollment non-public and homeschool with the numbers that we um have coming into our district through open enrollment uh in this chart you can see the number of students we lose to open enrollment out private school and home schools over the course of time and then you'll see a total of those students um in that middle total out uh which is uh uh bold there uh when we compare that number to the number of students who open a roll into our district we end up with a net loss of students each year so you can see in 2021 we had
131a net loss of 933 and then covid I I believe we saw a higher net loss of students in 21 and 22 and then it seems like we um came back a little bit and now we're back up at that 950 um 50 range now I'm going to circle back to the question that I had asked a few slides ago why do we accept more open enrolled students than the number of students who open and roll out we do this to try to offset the number of students that we lose to other options and we still have a net loss here am you question go ahead no go um you might not have this either but how does this compare to other districts it would seem like it would be similar I guess I knew
132someone was going to ask that question that's okay um other districts don't really have this information readily available okay like to to be honest with you when we're dealing with um students who who enroll outside of our district um we we call them elsewhere students and sometimes they're hard to keep track um in the past a long long time ago we had one person that kept track of all the elsewhere students and so this data we're actually we pulled from Mars which is our Minnesota reporting uh system so we pulled this data from Mars we don't have all of this data even in Infinite Campus because it's too hard to track down when we had the one employee who did that she called families where are you going to school why are you going to
133school there that that whole thing and we just don't have have the capacity to be able to do that now so at like 950 kids that we generally lose I mean if you just take it you know rough estimate at 10 11 Grand a a kid I mean that's a ton of Revenue that we lose 10 million roughly do we do any uh analysis in terms of like why we lose them um do we ever try to look at you know do they you know they select away from Lake for a reason I mean do we ever try to look at that pair that back to data that we can say hey if we fixed a couple of these things maybe we'll keep more kids if they're you know are they unhappy with whatever I
134mean classroom sizes you know the whole deal like do we pair it back in any way shape or form we have not and it's a um a matter of uh again we don't have the people to be able to do that for us Brian yeah I think Dr Cameron you may be asking I think 12% is the number I have so when you've got 1707 that's total out plus the 12,000 students that we generally have that's about 13 137 and then if we lose 1,700 we're losing about 12% of our general population going elsewhere now obviously we can make that up with 757 coming in but we're losing you know 1,700 kids 12,000 that's about 20 million dollar obviously there's expense expenses that's associated with it but at the end of the day is 12%
135a normal number that you lose in your population to uh open enrollment else elsewhere private school or homeschooling and when I look at the 341 number for homeschooling there's a little bit of some of your target Ence for other opportunities so yeah I mean you look at one of the the slides before for open enrollment inbound and outbound and it seems like we're taking in just slightly more from 196 than we're putting out but they're close you know so they're probably looking at the same number I would assume a question car go for it do we know um any further breakdown of this in terms of at what stage of Education people are is it mostly Elementary and it keeps or we don't I don't have I didn't collect any of that data i' be
136curious something we could anal further if it's starting at the beginning where people are making different choices based on private ver versus public versus does it have anything to do with their experience in our system and they're leaving versus you know other things too so I think one one thing I'm thinking about with this and tell me if I'm should think of it differently is that if this number stays more or less consistent like around the 12% that Brian that you're saying um I'm hearing like it's a it's a challenge or it's a problem and that like this is revenue we could be gaining however if it's consistent it's just the Baseline student population that we work with is always that 12% less than what our citizen re is of the district and I don't
137know if that's really a problem I mean yes it'd be great to maybe get all these students but also then we're just there's that comes with also additional challenges so I don't know like I don't know is this a problem or is this just like it's 12% it's 12% matter I don't know that's just something I'm thinking about and we don't have to answer that right now but yeah I think does that impact our our projections for enrollment though I mean if if we're looking at you know you know there's 1700 kids somewhere just split them evenly across the grades I mean are we projecting based off of a number that I mean are we projecting 12% out out of what we think is coming into kindergarten yeah um yes because um these students aren't
138included in our projections and so if they choose to come back then that's great for us we'll have more but when we roll over those students we don't consider these students in those projections so when we're doing the the front end projection coming into kindergarten we're saying we're going to probably not have 12% of whatever the number is that we think might be potential correct okay so when I look at this um our funding is based on per pupil correct so to me when I'm looking at this those are dollar signs going out the door if we're if we're talking strictly funding um so anytime you're trying to manage a budget you need to manage um your money coming in and your money going out and there's our money going out right there so I
139would want to know I would want some more specific data on why those students are leaving now we can surmise or at least guess on some of them specifically new prag where they have built a new building right that's close for those students that are from Elco New Market so that totally makes sense to me um we could also look into some data as to you know 196 that District makes sense to me too but then digging a little deeper and um looking are our kinderg garden numbers lower because people are going elsewhere for that early childhood option because our Early Childhood Center is full that's another thought process but I think the reason that this is so important to me um and looking at those numbers right now is that I think they're going
140to continue to grow when I see um the Christian Academy that's being built out here well it's it's cleared out to be built that that's coming eventually right that's going to pull a lot of students too and it could pull more from that elk New Market range as well because it's right there on exit 881 of the interstate so it makes it a a short drive for people um so I mean options are great like people need different options for their students but I also feel like we also want to keep people here like we we want to promote our district so I would love to see more data on this and just like a deeper dive into where students are going I see you're talking about how to make ourselves more competitive and attractive
141to those that might go private or homeschool yeah okay we are going to leave open enrollment and go to intradistrict transfer next um intradistrict transfer allows students who live within our district boundaries to attend a school other than their designated attendance area school this provides our families with some flexibility in choosing a school that better meets their child's needs intradistrict transfer is not in State Statute like open enrollment um we have to have open enrollment by State Statute interdistrict transfer is only Lakeville area schools uh policy the in District transfer process follows the same rigorous and objective review as open enrollment applications are reviewed based on Space availability and our district policy when assign those priority guidelines to uh priority guideline numbers to our open enrollment and intradistrict transfer student applications intradistrict transfer students get
142a higher priority than open enrolled students so as applications come in we assign a priority to them based on criteria as I said before if they're um if their parent is a staff member if um they're coming from an achievement in integration ation District so if a student is an in District transfer student requesting a school within our district they get the highest uh priority students can return to their attendance area school at any time if they choose and an example of this would be our ignite Academy that is at Oak Hills Elementary School um students are on a school path to go with their peers to Kenwood Trail when they leave Oak Hills some of those students will choose to go back to Maguire or Sentry rather than traveling on that school path we
143also have students who are placed in specific schools due to spe special education programming so we consider these interdistrict transfer students as well um but we want to make sure that they receive the necessary programming um something to consider is that transportation is not provided for our intradistrict transfer students meaning our families are respons responsible for arranging transportation for their children and the only exception to that is special education students who are placed for programming that's required by law if we look at the interdistrict transfer count over the last 5 years you will see that in 2021 we had 747 students and you can see that uh those numbers across the years in this year we had 585 students we did pause in District transfer as we went through our attendance uh boundary changes and
144um when we looked at this number I wanted to dig a little bit deeper into that and we thought that perhaps that's due to the fact that through the attendance area updates students who were considered interdistrict transfer actually ended up in the school that they were uh for their attendance boundary and so um those 173 students no longer were considered interdistrict transfer because they ended up in the school that they were transferred to right so so is that basically saying then the same number more or less would have been inter District transfers for last year then assuming the district I mean assuming we didn't do boundary changes you still would have had the same number then I mean is that what you're kind of getting at that because the because we changed the boundaries if
145we had it open yeah yes so that that's what you're saying there so we still basically allowed 580 some kids to move even though I thought we were kind of we didn't U these were students who were already in District transferred they were able to stay in uh those schools that they were transferred to so you're saying 585 stayed no new inter District transfers unless it was for um special education programming and they were placed in a school by our team okay um you mentioned so then so so then because if you would have seen a higher number if if you saw more transfer if that makes sense I've got it I'm following that um you mentioned though that interdistrict transfer you give a higher priority for again the staff siblings and whatnot with kids
146who I mean I know it was a contentious issue last year so how did that play out in terms of people who were you know seventh graders going into eighth final year whatnot were the were any of those appc ations looked at did they were they reviewed did was that just not considered whatsoever it was not considered we had a pause on intradistrict transfer in grades K through 8 we did allow High School interdistrict transfers okay um we have opened up this process this year and um we are getting a few applications but we believe that people have really settled into their new attendance boundary schools because we're not seeing that many um applications at all we think that they're really enjoying their their new schools although it might have been kind of scary to
147move um they've been uh we haven't seen many applications for in District transfer for next school year so in summary thanks for hanging in there with me um our District's enrollment continues to grow bringing increased diversity and new opportunities to support all of our students um we are keeping an eye on that part particularly large third grade bubble class that that may continue to grow and impact resources and planning as they Advance through the school years at the same time we're seeing students choose Alternatives such as neighboring districts private schools or homeschooling uh while we do have students open en rolling into our district the number of outgoing students currently exceeds that and then to encourage a fair and strategic approach our district has a strong open enrollment and intradistrict transfer process that P prioritizes
148our resident students while also maintaining balanced class sizes and school capacities and then finally enrollment projections are constantly evolving while we use data to inform our planning we recognize that there's so many external factors such as housing developments and economic shifts that can influence those enrollment Trends so for us keeping a close eye on those Dynamics really helps us to make informed decisions to best serve our students and families Kim question uh Tracy this is just a a general question I'm just asking your opinion on this um you you had mentioned several buildings that are close to capacity or at capacity that we currently have right now and again I understand that that's a topic for a later board meeting um but just thinking you know when we have that presentation to address this need
149um I guess I'm C ious because um when I look at those buildings like and I'm going off of bills numbers that are in the appendix of um the financial report that he provided us um High View JFK Lake View um Century I know for a fact that um when we did those boundary redraws like the board was very concerned about the numbers for High View and Lake View when we did that report like we thought that the projections were a little off on that and we thought they were high at the time um so I guess like I'm wondering what went wrong there as far as like were our projections just were we ignoring the data that we had in front of us did more people move in than we had anticipated I mean
150what what was the thing there that was the driving Factor because I I think all of us that were previously on the board the last thing we wanted to do was even attempt to look at boundaries again within like a year of doing that process so we're always trying to learn from you know the information that we have in front of us and then look back and what did we do what can we do better with this time around so that if we do have to make adjustments we don't have to do them again for several years sure um we will be looking at that in a couple weeks um we are pulling together our data and um uh in order to make recommendations so I would feel more comfortable addressing that question in a
151couple weeks oh yeah okay perfect I just wanted it to be on your radar for knowing that that is coming yeah let me just uh also address something uh with regard to Lakeville area schools and what um the situation we find ourselves in we'll go through that in more detail there's a couple of of um I'd say rules that were used for boundary adjustments that um are were reviewing those um the second thing I'll say is in the 90s if you go down ipava there's a lot of schools there and uh the way the district maintained the stability of boundaries over the years was to do area refinements because the the building growth that we experienced and I'll just speak for the time that when I came to the district um required us to make
152some internal adjustments by almost by neighborhood in order to keep the the space available and the building program and the funding for all of that synchronized and if you remember we did a uh a lot of additions in our elementary schools I the number in my head is at least five um we we built a high View Elementary um so as these things as you're looking at these you're always going to have to in a growing School District you're always going to have that situation come at you the question is how far out do you see it and so to do that we are plugged into the city of Lakeville and there's a process to build homes in in Lakeville and it you have to be plugged into the front end of that process and
153walk it in so that the city's not planning and coming to the school district and saying we're thinking about building more housing over here or there we have to respond to that so we have to see it so we're plugged into all of that and solution wise in order to minimize radical boundary shifts like a new school would require uh we are going to have to look at area scenarios um and I think those are prevalent with century and with High View and I'm not going to impune any decisions that were done over the last two years although I have to look at those processes and one of my biggest things is minimize disruption and um that's what we're actually highly focused on and new neighbors neighborhoods where families are coming in new so they
154don't have a standard and or an expectation Beyond maybe a realtor misstating something which we're trying to also be plugged into so that on the front end when as we do these uh adjustments that are going to be necessary because we are a growing Community the economy is revving up we will have more build going on in Lakeville so this is iterative but um our responsibility is to again minimize disruption so things like grandfathering things like allowing our kids to progress in the patterns that they expect but new people having to make a change or adjustment now that creates some problems inside a neighborhoods like my my friend next door just moved in after and I'm going to High View and now I might have to go to East View and their nextd door neighbor
155so I that's a real thing it's not lost on us um but we we also in that scenario have to deal with siblings right because a family is a family unit and you know Mikey goes to high view so when Little Billy is out of the crib is he going to High View right so we we are looking at all of those things and in my view the process needs to look at that and be sensitive to that as much as Fe so grandfathering is term um I don't know if there's a better one but I think people kind of know what that is where you stay on a certain path and all others go on another path so we're that's what we're trying to do and and this is not new to Lakeville school
156system uh if you've been around long enough you know that so I'm just want to make sure we all hear that and know that we're we're basing what we're doing on process and procedure that has precedent and has worked in the past now I also acknowledge it's 2025 and not 1990 so there's differences there and we're going to try to account for them and I really appreciate your overview of that and just and that's kind of what my goal was to is the process and procedure and and trying to make sure that we refine our process and the reason I bring it up was because um this was the first time that the district had used Teamworks to do this process before it always had been a a district driven initiative and the board worked
157on it and all of the things so um with a new process in place right like we just have to make sure that we are um making sure that our process is working and that we're making tweaks along the way and and doing what's best for our district and I I really appreciate that you brought up working with the city too because I'm not sure if everyone has has read the news or has is watching the City Council meetings but there was a discussion about um an apartment complex by antler's Park um which would also impact Lake View so um or possibly impact Lake View I'm trying to think of where that line is but um all of those things are important as we move forward and and talk these things through so and we're
158talking about enrollment tonight so again I'll just my experience when I came to the district the methodology we used um um for making sure that our Actuarial that that we were looking at our um enrollment um coupled that we we had two things and I I see Bob sitting there uh and I can't remember the name of the the uh group that used to give us our our enrollment data but we always bounced it against Douglas's methodology which was cohort survival and our accuracy was plus or minus 1% year over year over year now I don't know why that went away and I'm not again that's not my business my business is we are back on cohort survival because I know it works and it tells us with a plus or minus one % accuracy
159on projections for our enrollment and for things like boundary we are literally looking at households to include siblings based on the data that we have in our system which I think has improved over the last couple of years so we're we're we're refining what we're doing and maybe in some cases Going Back to the Future so I just want to be clear about that right um bear with me I got three questions so one on enrollment uh you mentioned purchase agreements in the new neighborhoods and they were sort of allowed to open and roll in areas was there any double cheing like okay did all those people still end up in those neighborhoods yep yes and pretty high percentage that that was all still good yeah it's 100% um the check-in process that we use
160um you mentioned you know now we're getting 95% of those completed have we ever looked at a frontend um say you know bolt-on or something like that to maybe make the information easier to digest have we considered that in terms of getting some of that federal and state information cuz right now it's optional right so like have a frontend what did you say to like to the check-in process have we have we like adapted that front end piece of it to maybe make it more palatable for people to understand the information you know the state stuff is I mean I I get State forms are complicated and I swear they do it on purpose sometimes but have we looked to maybe try to make it easier for us um so don't tell Federal that we
161do this but we do require them to choose a designation on the online form don't tell anybody fair enough yeah um last questions for me um what are the like top three initiatives you have for your department your group like what are the what are the key things we should expect out of the is it discus discus disc yeah um so for our data services team I'm glad you asked that question um one of the top priorities is in data analytics um the second priority would be around making sure that we have processes that help support people when they're inputting data that they're inputting it correctly so that when we do create those data visualizations that they're accurate your QC process yes yeah and then uh the the third uh initiative that um we think
162is really important is making sure that as we go through enrollment so a student gets enrolled into our schools we want to make sure that that PO process is seamless for families as we hand them off to the buildings and so we're working with principls and we're working with office managers and our counselors our new counselors to make sure that they have all the the supports in place to be able to help support students as we hand them off from Central enrollment to their actual School site are there any specifics on the data analytics piece like are any there do you have any specific goals around you know whether it's connecting uh edge of climber and fastbridge and MCA and all that kind of stuff or is it some other area of dat data analytics
163is it enrollment driven like what is there anything in particular that you guys have like on your road map it road map like what are we going after and how we going to do it that's a good question so um right now I said that we use a system called Tableau that works inside of Campus um we have to create all the VIS visualizations that we want to see and so it's not a package that they say oh well here's your attendance data and here's your behavior data and your grade data we have to physically create those and Douglas is the person who has been tasked to create those um trying to find time in his schedule for him to be able to actually sit down in do that uh programming to make that happen
164is our biggest challenge because he's also the main guy doing the enrollment stuff he's the he's the main guy he's the go-to guy for questions pulling um attendance area data in all sorts of things got it thank you yeah BR uh just a just an observation I'm sorry just a few things just to recap what I UND what I heard not really a question number one uh in District requests are priority which is great uh two uh the total number of students that uh of our total number of student occupancy that goes elsewhere is roughly 12% is is what I'm hearing uh three when we have open enrollment students that come in they're here for their duration and then they can uh ideally uh s uh recommend here are the top three that I would
165I would like to go but in regards to middle school and high school we provide hey this is where you going they don't get to pick uh but then lastly I think the most alarming thing is is a third fourth and fifth grade population and so when I rant some numbers here we've got about 2,76 through eth graders now and then roughly 277 third and fifth graders so if we do a 1 and a half% year-over-year we're adding 150 students over the next three years so if we're at almost capacity at all three middle schools we're going to add an additional 150 kids we are not we are not if we were but we're adding centy Middle School sir Century Middle schol Middle School is that capacity but we're adding 150 kids over the next
166three years so which makes sense well we have to uh discuss where these folks go so I imagine that's the presentation in a couple weeks we'll figure out where the capacity is and yeah yes and it's Hazel Reinhardt so uh that's the census uh person we used for years and then Douglas always did the the uh what I call verification um and that's how I know what I know uh Hazel no longer I don't think she's with us um she's not with Lakeville area schools I'll say that um but she always gave us uh really good stuff now again I just want to go back and say what is what was was what is is and I'm telling you as your superintendent I have a high confidence in that and you can hold me to
167that as I know you will thank Youk you thank you thank you Tracy all right rolling on uh board reports anyone with anything to report if none we'll go on to superintendent report I'm G to roll with my good news um and uh I just want to say um again uh Dr McDonald she is standing but I know she's talking to a former School Board member and City administrator and as as long as she's standing please stay standing I'm going to embarrass her a little bit I just want to come here come up here yeah yeah director Baker wants to thoroughly embarrass you I just want to say um uh in my superintendent report thank you for uh the amazing things you do in our school district and you earn that award I never believe
168awards are given they're earned and uh they're competitive and you're a competitor and I just want to say uh from from my chair and uh from on behalf of administration uh we respect you and thank you thank you it's been an honor and a pleasure and I will just say that um this district and our kids here have my heart have always had my heart that's why I've been here as long as I have so um thank you very much I appreciate it I also want to say in my superintendent report uh I have two principles uh who are here and um they are our middle school principls and and I just want to recognize them uh because if I asked them to be here in case there were any particular uh questions uh they
169will be at our next meeting as well uh but Jason baky the taller of the two and maybe the less handsome is our Century Middle School School uh principal and I just want to also say uh Jason has the um undistinguished honor of being the first principal I hired in this school district uh but I think it's distinguished just because you are who you are so thank you and then Dr Alexander is our principal at Maguire middle school and uh you know our middle schools are are um where we we have some very very definite um enrollment challenges we need to deal with and uh we thank you for your great leadership thank you that concludes my report all right rolling on back to the budget on a recommended actions Mr hren Cher Swanson members
170of the school board superintendent Bowman uh thank you uh for um letting us speak again this evening tonight we bring um the revised budget to you for Action um the the book I handed out to you tonight is exactly the same as it was two weeks ago there has been no changes whatsoever we want to take just a second and look at some here let me get move in here okay uh so we want to talk about our current year update I mean we just have a couple little pieces of information for you because now we have our ended um January numbers which what we looked at last at the last meeting was the end of December and then we'll talk about the revised budget um so just looking at revenues here I just want
171to point out um when we look at our property taxes our local sales and our state everything is performing as expected and um just as it has in previous years I want to point out you'll see that the state is you know get a lesser percentage as other areas um we get our money metered to us from the state admin they don't just come give it to us at the beginning of the year um so when we get our taxes in the fall the state assumes we're going to use those taxes first so we actually have a period of time where we bar to get any State dollars at all so that'll catch up now as we go through the spring um we look at our federal dollars we've made a change here a little
172minor change over the last couple years and we're we're leveraging our federal special ed dollars towards tuition for kids in other in other districts that are special ed um because of that that Revenue comes in later because that matches when that that particular um tuition is due so that's why you're seeing some fluctuation there in the federal dollar area but it really does give us some more actually special ed Revenue in the long run um looking at the other another place you're seeing kind of a not you know not consistent over the last three years but if you remember um year ago in the fall we sold bonds for our um ltfm projects so we had um you know $20 million come in earlier that year than other years so that's why you're seeing that
173Spike spike there otherwise um revenues are looking great so when uh we're looking at expenditures again I'm going to note the capital expenditure portion of it and you see that it is much higher in fiscal year 24 than it was in either the prior two years so the Red Bar there on our Capital expenditures um the primary reason for that is high view um a lot of dollars and capital expenditures end up going towards that high building another area I want to note is The Debt Service Area uh if you notice in debt service we are underneath what we had in fiscal year 23 and in fiscal year 24 the reason for that is because we have an off-cycle um Debt Service payment that we're making both this year and next year after those two
174years it should normalize again and go back to being near 100% at the end of January okay now we'll dive into the the budget um we have um the rest of the business office staff here I just want to introduce them they've uh stayed for the meeting this evening um but we have Jill Danley on the on the right uh she's our senior accountant and then both uh Jackie dlac and Tiffany um steer um they do all our accounting work we have a very strong team we have many many years of experience with the with the group of us so we really feel very good about the work that gets done and our well our audits have shown it in the past okay U of course you've looked at this slide already this evening but
175these are the these are the numbers we're using to put the budget together um at this point in time um won't dwell on that but when we look at our our general fund revenue from last year to this year um you'll see right as everybody knows we got 2% new money from the state of Minnesota this past year but you're seeing there we got three 3.83% um well of course 2% of that is new money from the state of Minnesota that's right on the formula allowance um but other pieces that would we didn't have in the past something brand new this year is the Reda dollars that were given to us by the legislature to do the training for the react um that's almost a almost a million dollars um special education we get an
176increase in special education of 1.6 million from the prior year so that kind of sums up the uh St sources but why you're seeing an increase there more than 2% uh property taxes you see a little larger increase there than usual um a few different pieces first of all we have a brand new operating Levy in place for this year that we didn't have previous years we had passed $100 per pup unit um um operating Levy to cover the new Staffing we needed in the new Elementary School uh okay let's one the other big piece that's here is over the last few years as you know we have um inflation Factor built into our operating levies and it's always delayed and what we're seeing here is a catchup of the inflation Factor over the last
177two years so it helped us a lot this year by giving us a few more funds but now it's up to that new level we won't see that going into next year be back down to whatever the increases in our in the state of Minnesota um the other piece um well gu Federal sources you see a little decrease that's our Co funds are are gone we've used those up so now we're back to just our special ed federal dollars along with our title programs and then our local um area the biggest piece here is really we have some more funds than we have had in the last few years and we actually have some some some more um interest earnings than we've had in the past so you when you're see an increase here that
178265 okay we'll move on to the expenditures so looking at expenditures you're seeing salaries and wages and employee benefits both increasing um these are generally tied together the reason for the larger increases CU if you remember we back and loaded the teacher contract when we settled this past year um in addition the addition of High View created more Staffing so that would be that increase of 8.3% uh additionally there's purchased services and increasing at 16.1% this is largely due to an um increase in contracted service services in regards to employment with special education uh We've needed to contract out as we are having issues filling those positions so supplies materials is an interesting one we're looking at it's 54.9% so last year we had put money in the assigned fund to cover teaching and learning
179expenditures that we anticipated um coming into this year last year they were drastically under budget and they're catching up in this current year and spending the money that we had assigned for them in the prior barer which is why you see that larger increase Capital expenditures is well generally we're not constructing hu anymore so that is going down and other expenditures is primarily related to Insurance here you can see the then the uh um the the general fund different balances what we where we expect them to be at the end of this year so are nonspendable these are really um um these are items that we've bought ahead of time that are used for next year so they're set aside as a prepaid um the assigned these are dollars again that were expend were budgeted
180in the past but haven't been used yet so these are some more teaching and learning dollars that would uh be sitting at the sitting in that fund at the end of this year for the next year um restricted and we have of course quite a few restricted funds that we talk about on on a yearly bases but it's it's our um staff development dollars there our Capital dollars there our ltfm dollars so they don't always get used up every year so there they sit uh ready to be used in future years and then are unassigned and you see we that's where we seen some improvement you see that at the end of 24 we had jumped up to almost $7 million here and we expect that to go to almost 13 million um if we
181get the end of this year so you can see our fund balance um has dropped down but it has improved back to that 6.3% area of course which is above the board policy of 5% so we feel very very good about what's been happening with our finances here in the general fund so we're looking at student nutrition like we spoke about last time um starting in fisc year 27 the the state is mandating us to go back to that 3 months of expenditures as a fund balance so the current fund balance that's projected for fiscal year 25 is still 400,000 over that fund balance um this is being drawn down by purchases of uh equipment that's a onetime purchase for this fiscal year only of lunch room tables and the like um so you can
182kind of see the Food Service fund balance it's a wave um we do plan on drying it down the food service director has a plan to get that money spent so we are below that 3-month expenditure limit uh Community Ed so good news we're back in the black and on top of that we plan to double our fund balance in FIS year 25 so they're doing a good job they just need to keep at it and keep up with the good work U moving forward um to the actually I was going to point out the page numbers for you in in your book um um um so at this point um we are on page 17 in in your book um so building construction again as uh um Jack had said um earlier um this
183fund is supposed to go down you're seeing a fund balance uh draw down is mainly because now we finished up um High View Elementary School so those funds now have been totally used up in this fiscal year and you see that balance there at 13 I'm sorry 113 um that those are funds set aside for ltfm projects in the next fiscal year Debt Service U that's just the next page in your book and if you remember we've talked about it in the past that school district is allowed to um Levy um an extra 5% on a yearly basis just in case any type of property owner doesn't pay their taxes on time and we don't want to be short on paying our bond payments so they were allowed to Levy that extra 5% and over
184the years of course most people do pay their taxes on the time so we don't need that 5% right so fund balance builds a little bit and then from time to time we actually give the money back and that's what you're seeing here um as an overspend so actually that 800 Grand is actually an under Levy those dollars are going back to the community um scholarships page 20 but this is really any type of scholarship that we've received from the community that's more of a permanent where we just um we just we just give the interest away that we receive and that the principal St intact that's when you're seeing this fund balance not really change and then um our internal service fund this of course is where our self-insurance sits both health and dental
185um we've been um self-insured with dental for quite a while but um Health um was started in 20 um and over the years now we've that that balance has slowly been building our goal really is to get that up to about 25% so we can really have a where we can a little more leverage from it um but that's about $8 million and you see that we're projecting that that amount to be about 7.3 uh at the end of this year at the same time though when we're we just had our insurance um committee meeting this evening and um we are doing very well this year with the with the insurance and we expect that number now to be higher than that so very good news for the for the internal service fund okay um
186and then just to just kind of an overview here at the at the end um just to see the volumes um for the school district here again the general fund is what we may focus on because that's where all the money comes to you know to educate our students um so that that volume now the revenue is at 29 million um you see overall though through all the funds our total overall um Revenue at 284 and expenditure to 291 of course we're expected we expect that number to be bigger than the revenue just because a fund six itself a building fund buying down that um so with that said I just want to say that the overall Financial Health the school district definitely has improved um over the last two years um the general fun
187unassigned fund balance has moved to 6.3% and of course that again is above the um School the school board policy of 5% so we're back um to where we need to be and then um as Jack said previously to just a this more of a reminder that uh that the student nutrition fund balance is still too high from what the state of Minesota wants us to be at we you have a plan to bring that down but we're within about 400,000 now of what that needs to be so we're sitting pretty good so with all that said are there any questions Carly I just want to say I was at a conference a couple weeks ago so I was not able to attend the meeting but I did watch it and just wanted to also
188offer um my appreciation for all you've done to get us back into the block and moving in the dire right direction and I should have brought cake um right this is proof that I watched we should have brought cake but um you've done a great job getting us back on track so yeah Bri yeah I I'll Echo that as well like hey we when we started again we were thrown into our first year we have $211,000 in the bank by the end of June like that was our first 6 months or the first three months months and to see it at two two projected at 12.9 million which is great uh puts us above our 5% threshold which is at 6.3 uh and then more importantly between the restricted and unrestricted we we're sitting at
189about 21 ideally we want to be at about 10% so $20 million is where I think we would prefer to be in our unassigned balance and we're making a a great Headway getting towards there but with that being said we've had to make some Cuts over the past couple years and so I think at the next budget cycle we should probably have some conversations around how fast do we accelerate the undersigned balance where do we allocate funds elsewhere and so forth but I've got some notes that I want to talk about that but I will in just a moment what I want to do is talk about the existing budget and making sure I understand um you know when I'm on page 11 in the uh in the packet when I see the salaries wages
190and the employee benefits uh you know combine them together it's about $151 million out of our $29 million budget and so I'm anticipating that you guys have already forecasted that we're going to exhaust 100% of that 151 like generally $151 million between now and the rest of the school year uh the question that I have is for is for purchase services and supplies and materials uh you know we're projected to spend about 30.8 and about 6.5 sorry 6.5 million uh in those two respective categories but in the previous year again like you said Jack you know we're we're jumping on the purchase services from 26.5 to 30 and then supplies 4.2 to 6.5 million um I would like to ask if um because we only have three months left of school left are there scenarios
191right now in the budget where there is a higher balance of the budget remaining that has not yet been spent and so while we may have forecasted uh this amount of this dollar amount the number of months remaining uh if they haven't used it if they haven't spent it uh are there scenarios where it's greater than what's projected does that make sense and the reason I'm asking is that you know if I if I give my son I'm sorry I'm going to use my way if I give Kim well if I give someone say hey here's $1,000 you know for per month and and then uh let me rephrase that are there scenarios where we have money in the budget that hasn't even been spent yet and with 3 months remaining just because they have
192the budget remaining uh they're just going to spend it and so can we tighten up the purchase services and supplies and materials are there opportunities that we can shrink that down and the reason I ask is that then our budget of 12.9 million can that actually be you know an extra1 to2 million more for money that's not even being spent so I'm just want to be just because the budget's there you know what I mean does the money need to be spent yeah I I know exactly what you mean um okay first uh first off uh we would expect most of the funds to be spent um when we talk about our purchase Services most of these dollars are in contracts and they'll be spent out by get to the end of the year there's
193a little more I'd say variation in the supply area as you you had mentioned um we do ask the the buildings um we just had a meeting with our office managers yester other day that March 27th that's our last day that we're going to um you know process any POS going into the future I mean there's always some exceptions somebody needs something you know right away but if we're buying things right now they need to be used in the year that we're in they can't be used in future years okay or we tell them we will move that expenditure to the to the next year we always going to match we want always want to match that that expenditure with the product when we use it right so um will there be some areas we're
194under budget probably in that Supply area I would expect that we probably will be but remember that that will just roll up into the UN um unassigned area so yes the fund balance would grow a little faster um but we can't give you exactly what that is today but we we do we we did bring together we did bring you a budget this evening that's conservative we don't expect anything to be over budget anywhere across the board in this in this particular So when you say conservative as in additional paddings SL contingency in the respective budget categories correct what I don't know if the word is we're just not we're we're not budgeting right to the exact dollar we we want we don't want to ever bring a budget to you where we're going to
195be short okay never ever ever so it's a conservative budget we expect it to be a little under budget when we get to the end so so when you're making plans for next year's budget are you basing that on our actuals from this year or our budgeted numbers from this year we look at last year actuals because that's gives a really good picture of what actually happened and then we have to look at the variables you know what is different is is something being spent in a different way is there a different need someplace else that needs to be different so we work through that we meet with every single one of our our departments every single one of our buildings to look at the needs and how it was spent in this last year
196and how that relates to the New Year Brett so one question I have in terms of kind of what you just said there so March 27th is your your last day to process POS so everybody's going to run out and say oh I got budget and I'm going to go spend it is what are the controls for that type of stuff and I'm just curious I'm not saying anybody's doing anything malicious or bad or anything like that but I'm just saying do we need to spend it or is it oh now that we're at the end of the year and I know I got a little extra I'm going to buy something that maybe I wouldn't if controls were or Direction was don't spend it if you don't have have to I'm just curious how
197that gets managed okay well excuse me um first off um expend that come into the business office I mean those any type of Po we see it before that order like takes place okay so we do question if something looks like they're trying to buy something for next year we'll we'll question them on that because we won't allow that okay so they they need to rationalize whether they really need that particular product or or Supply item to finish out this year CU it needs to be used in the same year that they spend the money well that's kind of the question cuz we're you know you're talking the last two months of the school year basically I mean we got three and a half months total left so it's I guess to Brian's point when
198you're looking at like supplies and things like that like how much of that do we really expect that you didn't buy already I mean I I'm just just asking the question I'll just say it's fair it's a fair question the culture here is not um the the federal fiscal coming up on the end of September and you're going to burn it up because if you don't your next cycle budget's going to be lower so we don't have that going on I so I appreciate the what you're saying the internal the icms or internal control measures that we're using uh as Bill said we we see those processing I can tell you that the leader culture it's it's it's very heartening because my transition from St Paul to Lakeville that culture existed in St Paul it
199doesn't exist in Lakeville because there are icms in place that are are questioning now sometimes that can be very irritating to the school buildings yeah well it isn't it isn't but um we we do want to be as responsible as we can be but um finding space it it's precious little um but your message uh is is sent and your message is received bill can I just ask you really quick what are what are our big challenges moving forward from here on a financial from a financial think one one thing to mention because we talked about it last fall just to kind of remind everybody as we'll we'll be bringing new numbers to you for next year here uh relatively soon if you remember when we talked about our projection back in November after the
200audit uh was presented that because of our change in enrollment and that um you know we put a projection into our taxes of what we think that enrollment is and now we know it's it's less so there is an adjustment in our revenue for next fiscal year in our taxes it is less for one year it'll go back but we do have a a we have we do have about a you know $2 million piece we got to deal with um temporarily but again that is a reason we have a fund balance if we need to fall back on something we have some place to fall back um but even when we we talked about that projection um way last fall I still don't see us you know overspending or dropping the fund balance it's
201just going to grow smaller or slower sure than it is now B yeah and so so thank you for that so then again I appreciate your comments and I appreciate that there is um uh some controls in place of hate justification and the culture that we have here so then what I'm hearing is that the 12.9 million in the unassigned balance has a favor probability that it will be probably a bit higher when we do the actuals and close things out throughout the the fiscal year uh the second question that I have is that uh with that $2 million deficit or upcoming expense in the next in the next budget year when I look at the total revenue of 209 and total expenses of 205 we've got kind of this five $5 million Delta right
202now and so assuming if all things are equal uh and and we go into the next year could we one can antici one can assume that might be a 5 million Delta for the following year assuming if all things were equal everything stayed the same is that a fair understanding I I would say it's not going to stay exactly 5 million if you look if you remember again last fall me the projection on a regular basis from the state of Minnesota we get about 2% new money and because the way that the union contracts are built those costs if we keep the staff the same that increase is going to be more than 2% you got teach slowly grows faster than the revenue so that that five will will continue to shrink and then someday
203down the road um you know you can make an adjustment to make sure that we darn deficit spending okay yeah I mean and because I want to think you know obviously this is for the next budget conversation around um while the savings account H isn't as dire are there opportunities that we can explore and and I'll look to the administration around how to be more mindful of of of the funding from data data analytics to mentorship to uh you know having four academic counselors at the high school which is something that we talked about last year but I'll pause on those conversations for the next proposal and and go from there director burer has a question okay so last year um you had planned very purposefully around some of the unfunded mandates and put like
204kind of like a little pot of money back um to to help pay for some of those things um watching some of the current legislation there there are things that are on the docket right now that would cost a significant amount of money to the district if they passed for example um cutting the percentage of uh that we get reimbursed for special education Transportation are you doing kind of like a contingency plan for that um those things yet or is it too early in the process for that well it's it's a little too early to kind of lock that in until we really see some bills with that actually in it um but but to be upfront um that number is about $250,000 for us so that is something that if it's passed that we're
205going to have to deal with but again now that we do have a fund balance we are not in you know dire rates as we were a couple years ago thank so I I will like to say thank you for all the conversations we've had it's been eye openening to see how it all works and how it's all coming together and I definitely applaud you guys for the way you got an investment ladder schedule built out and the way you're doing that stuff I think that's fantastic um in terms of like being able to see how's the easiest way to sort of interpret what you have sort of locked in in terms of assigned money that we can't touch you know you had the slide back there a little ways um you know in the
206general fund balance what of all of that is earmarked or kind of you know you had that slide that had I think four or five categories that were sort of if you locked in where is that one again turn to page 12 of the of the budget book yeah and you can see that our restricted funds are actually on a separate fund balance okay so they are separate from that 129 that we talked about yep we're looking at about a $6 million balance there so that will they will stay separate from any of our regular spending so our Capital dollars our staff development dollars they all sit in that in that fund balance staff development training is that same as training or is Staff Development under a different bucket staff staff development is a separate
207bucket and most of the training we do is comes out of Staff Development there's some few other areas where there's some training that might come out of the general fund okay but in for the most part all our training comes out of the staff development budget which is part of our restricted dollars and so we don't have to worry about take having to take from the general fund correct to cover them yep and then the assigned balance the the 2 million that kind of sits in there right now is assigned for that's assigned for curriculum in the following year yep um because they haven't spent it all this year as in things like bridges for K through three and that sort of stuff yeah and we'll be meeting with them shortly here to really see
208what curriculum they have planned for next year but these are dollars we have set aside in the past that we've just left aside for them to make sure they have enough got it Amber oh sorry oh go ahead no well I just wanted to bring up so it taking us macro and talking the macroeconomics um as you talk about on a sign balance and you say 20% or or 20 million uh not 20% um these are budget pressures that span the entire system and so as as I said last time and there's been a lot of conversation around program and program mitigation in order to strategically drive to some of these things you guys are saying out here in public so I just want to point out that those are guideposts for superintendent and administration
209as we move forward and talk about budget pressures and we are in a resource limited operation in other words we can't fund all our needs so you prioritize and execute on those and so you know as people look at things and say well there's enough money there for my program you can't isolate to that and I just want everybody to understand when you say these things this is what it means well and we haven't got to priorities yet have I understand okay I acknowledge but I also pay attention and there's implied priorities that I have to then find out are those implied actually designated priorities okay Amber sorry um this is a question a little bit tangental but um while you're both up here when we get our property tax statements and there's that little
210quarter sheet of paper that explains the levy for the district at least one was sent this last round do we have the ability to decide what is said on that statement like is that crafted by the district or is that oh yeah no that that was developed by us okay I'm wondering I I remember during that time I forget what month it comes out but there was a lot of um chatter on the Lakeville social media Pages like Lakeville happenings Etc of people really misunderstanding what it was trying to say and people thought that we were going behind going behind their back and taxing them more and approving things in backd door channels and so I'm wondering if like in that little sip of paper because it seemed like people read it which is great
211can we do a better job of educating them about what we mean when we say the levy this year this is not an additional Levy NE like you said the levy went down um but did understanding that the levy exists every year this isn't um you I don't know what it would say exactly but I think some education for our community on that slip of paper would be helpful to kind of show them more about how the budget works and um have an opportunity to to alleviate some of I think the you I guess what we were trying to communicate was can can let me weigh in on this so we've done so many different things with that insert um and it's just an insert and it's very difficult to talk about school finance and
212the levy piece but we will if you have an idea or you have a a mechanism or method we are all years for that but I can tell you not just in this school district but others you know we're always looking for a better way uh to communicate that but it's an insert and there's there's a there might be a science or an art to it I I can tell you I haven't broken the code so I'm all all about that any other questions if none I think we're probably ready to vote and approve the budget I would entertain the motion so moved all right director Anderson makes a motion to approve the revised fiscal year 25 budget update it is seconded by director Nicholson with there being a first and a second um I'm
213going to call the matter for a vote to approve the revised fiscal year 25 budget um all those in favor say I I all those opposed say nay it is approved unanimously thank you thank you guys uh there being nothing left on our agenda I would uh entertain a motion to adjourn so moved all right director Cameron moves is there second I'll second director Carbone seconds uh motion to adjourn all those in favor say I I I all opposed uh we are adjourned e