001I have so many Um, I'm going to call the May 12, 2020 6 regular business meeting to order at 6:30. Um, today we have quite a bit on the agenda, but first I'm going to read the land acknowledgement. We are gathered on the land of the Dakota and Ojiway peoples. I ask you to join me in acknowledging the Dakota and Ajiway community, their elders, both past and present, as well as future generations. St. Park Schools also acknowledges that it was founded upon exclusions and erasers of many indigenous people, including those on whose land this school district is located. This acknowledgement demonstrates a commitment to dismantling the ongoing legacies of colonial power and the district's desire to support the ongoing work of local indigenous committees or excuse me, communities to thrive in our schools. Um, so
002at regular school board meetings, we have public comment, but it doesn't look like have anybody signed up for public comment today. So, we'll move on to the approval of the agenda. Why are you waiting? What's going on? Um, it is recommended that the school board approved the agenda for May 12th, 2026 as presented. Do I have a motion? Thank you, Taylor. Second. >> Thank you, Patrick. All in favor say I. >> Um, all oppose say no. Passes 70. Oh, I see I went out of order. Thank you. All right, we're going to start with the superintendence report and it's cheers to the class of 2026 retirees. Good evening everyone. So, um, today we are going to celebrate the retirees of the class of 2026. And so, we have a dedication video that we will run
003Just want to know Congratulations on your retirement. I hope that you have great wonderful plans of sitting and you know doing what you love to do grand. So we're moving on to discussion items. Um our first discussion item actually our only discussion item is online safety and digital learning. Um Tom Marvel our executive director of information services here we go director of innovation and learning and Angela Branson director of digital learning will be presenting and Dr. All right. Thank you, board chair mani, superintendent Dr. Hines, and board. As we get get ready to present here on technology, we want to acknowledge that once again, we do have a responsibility on making sure that we provide safe tools for our students to use, but also equitable access for our students. So in this presentation you will
004see how we will have safety uh guard wells guard rails in place along with that also how it goes into the classroom and our learning platforms that we have. So I'll pass it over. >> Thank you Dr. Cooper. Um Chair Mancini, Superintendent Hines, board members. It's it's been a while since I've actually been up here speaking to you. I'm running around the back here all the time. But um I'm going to talk a little bit about the uh technical things. So don't fall asleep on me. It I'll try to get through this quickly. If I'm drone on, Angela will kick me and get me going. But um so we've had some discussion recently within us uh and some public comment here about wondering about what we're doing to keep people safe and how we're selecting
005certain things to use. So we're going to go through some of that tonight. I'm going to take some of that and obviously uh Megan and Angela will too. I'm just going to start from the technical standpoint about what we do to try to keep our uh systems safe in our when our uh students and our staff are online in our district. Um uh doing their work, doing their studies, all of those things. So, um I'm going to start at the kind of layered approach. So the upper layer um we've actually partnered with an outside firm um and they're called what's known as a security operations center. And what they do is they're actively scanning our networks internally and externally all the time and constantly. And they're looking for vulnerabilities, they're looking for abnormalities, anything along
006that line. If they find it, they communicate with us immediately. And it's based upon the severity of what they find. Um and then uh we partner with them to mitigate this the uh vulnerability. Um and this is 247. So they have my phone number, they have several other phone numbers across the street over here. Um and uh you know hopefully we don't hear them in the middle of the night, but uh if we do, we know we've got they've got our back and we we have that partnership. Um, one of the other things that's been real prevalent recently is when uh some of our uh users login get compromised. Um, you'll start to see them trying to be logged into from all over the planet. So, our security operations center is also monitoring that and
007if they see something coming from slpschools.org trying to log in from Bellarus, we get a phone call and then we're in uh identifying who that account is, changing the information so that they can't get uh logged in. So that's a high level and that's a partnership that um you know trying to replicate what they do internally would be really tough and really expensive. Um then there's kind of the network level. So we have our firewall and our firewall plays multiple roles but the the main thing that people think of is filtering and filtering content. um we filter content on um uh different categories that are set forth in the Children's Internet Protection Act. And in order for us to get uh certain federal funding for some of the for some of our infrastructure, we have
008to have those things in place. Um, when people think about content filtering, they obviously they're thinking about bad images and things that uh we don't want students to be uh accidentally stumbling upon or um but really what it also does and and mostly what it does is it protects us from malicious websites. Um, and if you look at our logs, uh, on any given day, we're we're, uh, repelling millions of hits, um, that, um, we keep out of our system through that level of, um, network filtering. There's also device filtering. So, every device that every one of our users has has agents on it that are monitoring um, what's on that device, um, antivirus protection, all of those things. If something is detected, then that device is quarantined and we uh are able to mitigate
009that and keep it from spreading throughout our environment. Um, our Google environment is probably the most used environment in our district and the Google environment has many many different settings as as Angela can attest to as well. Um, but we think about email is probably one of the most used pieces and one of the one of the biggest things that we deal with today is fishing and spam. And so there's all kinds of uh things within Google that we uh uh employ to try to um keep fishing to a minimum. All of these things are not 100%. Okay. Um it's filtering and all of this stuff is a moving target and you know if we talk about artificial intelligence AI this is one of those areas that we really believe is going to help us
010in the long run and helping with uh um identifying these things that are constantly coming at us and trying to infiltrate our systems. So we just hope and see that these things are going to get better and more accurate over time. They do have false positives or blocking things that they shouldn't. And then they also let things through because again this is it can be a gigantic whack-a-ole game of uh one day this site is is being let through, the next site we block it, the next thing it's moved on to something else. And believe me, our students know about these things. Um um so let's uh let's take a turn now away from kind of that and we're going to talk about applications and online resources and um kind of the process by which
011we choose things that we approve. So I don't know if Angela wants to step in at this point and talk a little bit about it. >> Right. And prior to 2020 really we only had a couple of systems that were systems wide because a lot of our devices had come in by curriculum or there were carts there were we had sets of Chromebooks sets of iPads kind of depending on what uh the needs were across the site. So there was not a one model that we didn't have a onetoone program so we had schooly for quite some time since 2013 we were one of the first districts around to to adopt that. So that was kind of one of our main platforms that we've done professional development around and building um infrastructure through and over
012time then of course once 2020 happened and we one went onetoone very quickly and as director you talked about um like all the tools that came in for teachers there was lots of free stuff um so post 2020 we had folks using all kinds of things and then began to rein that back in as we were kind of settling into what onetoone looks like for for SLP uh Chromebooks 312 and iPads K2. And once we kind of paired back and started to look at what is our instructional goal, what are our priorities, what do we really need uh for our learning environment. So, we have really uh stuck pretty cleanly to tools that are both for creators, like we want tools that kids are going to be able to do really cool stuff with to
013show their learning, demonstrate their learning, and then we want that learning management system kind of that hub, which is Schooly and Seesaw to kind of bounce from and to kind of be that that starting place for resources and just building that uh classroom digital um resource community. So those are pieces that kind of now as we've come into like 2022, 2023 and we really started to get kind of an idea of what this looks like, we at that time started to create uh a vision for what the alignment could look like with our strategic priorities. And that included starting um a team together that looked at kind of the overall needs of our learning environment. And that was teachers and building administrators and district leadership. And at that time we created um really looked at
014a vision and then what type of system would make sense to um allow folks to to be innovators and to ask for different things. So that kind of started that that approval process which kind of starts with teachers that might innovate or we look together around at districts and what are what folks are doing around us and we would bring that to then our instructional learning team and then we talk about it as a system. So >> yeah, more about that. >> The next piece of this is was the next piece about this was you know how what are what are the criteria that we use to choose different things. Well, this is the the um uh uh word salad up here or the acronym salad up here. So I actually had to write down
015so I could tell you what these things mean. Um so what we look at first is compliance of these um uh systems that we're going to use especially if it's going to be using personally identifiable information about our students in there. Um so the children's internet protection act that's sea fura is the family educational rights and privacy act and uh HIPPA of course deals with uh health information and if we're sharing health information with other entities outside of us. Um the other piece of this was the the most recent um uh I think it was 2022 when Minnesota passed the student data privacy act. So when we're choosing anything that has student information in it that's being moved into their system, they have to have privacy statements and they have to have practices that are
016compliant that they're not reselling data. They have statements about that that we have agreements with them that they're not reselling the data that we're putting in there about our students. So um we do have a new tool and that's up here on the screen too. So if you go to uh www.sopschools.orgfamilies, /families, you'll see this link and that will bring you to a list of all of our approved apps and each app has a description about what it is and they also have a link to that company's privacy statement. So I I would uh encourage anybody who's interested go out and and uh you know dabble and spend some time learning about our stuff that way. >> Okay. So in addition like that really has uh driven a lot of what we have adopted um
017ensuring that we have a few really great tools rather than a whole bunch of tools that don't have the privacy protections in place and licensing. So we've been very thoughtful about bringing in tools like we video um you see a few examples there um uh Adobe Express uh things that sorry things that um definitely keep kids in that safe environment. So we've asked staff to stick to those tools. >> Right. And there's also a process the the question always is okay so what are we are we only allowing teachers to use those approved apps or are they using other things well we don't actively restrict our teachers from going out and and uh exploring other tools right we can do we can put things under evaluation and before we adopt them um and if we
018do those would show up in that list as well as under evaluation uh and not as adopted. Um but it's also a training with our staff about you should not be going out um uh using students information in systems that we haven't adopted. So um you know it it it's again an awareness and a training that we have to continue with our uh staff and and we'll be touching on that a little bit as we move along throughout the presentation. So, I wanted to share some information here about the one of these new tools that we just put into place. And I I decided to show some of these screenshots because screen time seems to be a real uh concern and uh a topic out there, right? So, this is a new tool we put
019into place and they have just gen generated this report for us. So, this is a work in progress. Okay. What you're seeing in front of you is a report from the last 60 days. And this is an overall average use at each one of our schools. And we can we can go down to the grade level at each school. Right now, we cannot go down to the classroom. So that's part of what we're working with with them is to develop reports where we can roster uh individual students into a classroom and you can see from classroom to classroom the the amount of usage because again this is an average and yes I'm sure some teachers are using it more than others because of their comfort uh you know how comfortable they are with with using
020technology versus others. And so again, we can talk about consistency of use as as we uh talk about the future plans that we have uh for helping our teachers uh be comfortable with this and using this in in um the most effective way possible. So these are just uh again take this a little these numbers with a little bit of a grain of salt because it's kind of the first stab at this. Um, this is the middle school for the last puh 60 days overall average. And this is the high school for the last 60 days overall average. Um, so Angela um alluded to our digital vision. So, back in the spring of 2024, we gathered about 60 people from the district of MLL teachers, uh, uh, special education teachers, classroom teachers from every level,
021administrators. We got together and re tried to identify every last piece of software that is being used in the classroom. We uh, organized this into a spreadsheet. We we uh said, okay, what's the reasoning for using this? We the costs of all this, where is it being bought, purchased out of, that was a huge thing for us because things were being bought bought out of this piece of pot of money, that pot of money, and trying to get this all into one place and organized so we know exactly what we're paying for, what's being used out there. Is it compliant? All of those pieces. And as part of that, we developed this vision for digital learning as well. Um and that with so then last year in 2025, spring of 2025, we c we brought
022a smaller subset of those people together and we reviewed those applications again. Um so this is the vision. Um this speaks to all of the things that uh end up really in ascend now. And it talks about equity. Um, and it talks about uh uh having our our students be creative and uh and critical thinkers and all of that. Um, so I'm going to pass it off now to Megan. >> Bless you. >> Okay, Chair Mancini, Superintendent Dr. Hines, and board, thanks for having me here tonight. This is my first time speaking at a school board meeting here in St. Louis Park, just having joined um July 1st of this year. So, I'm going to shift us into visioning forward and our plans as we move into the 2627 school year and some of the
023changes that we've made. Standing on the shoulders of the great work that came before, as Tom mentioned, that vision coming out of 2024 is reorganizing our media specialists within the schools to be through a district-wide coordination. So they will now be um learning and innovation technology specialists that will serve to support our learning and innovation department. We are looking to that team to work collaboratively across the system where we will be designing um curriculum across a vertical alignment that has to do with digital citizenship so that we can be critical consumers of information. That's a major important part of learning. um that online safety component as well. In addition to that, we really want to be thinking through a learning and technology framework that encapsulates all of the um elements of portrait of a learner.
024So, in addition to uh digital citizenship, we also want kids to access and analyze information to be critical consumers of information. We want kids to collaborate and be curious about connecting with one another. um as connectors in our portrait of a learner. We want kids to be nimble. We want them to be able to know where to go when they're researching. And we want kids most importantly in in addition to the safety to be able to create and innovate and publish their thinking in multiple ways and have some agency around that. So, as we bring the team together, we're going to be anchoring on our Minnesota standards. So this is one example of one standard that comes out of the ELA standards for the state of Minnesota. It's from strand three. So that acronym stands
025for listening, speaking, viewing, and exchanging ideas. And the purpose for including this in the presentation is in a moment Angela is going to show you an example of how we are getting at and building from the standards. What I want to highlight here is anchor standards regardless of the content area are the same kindergarten through 12th grade. So we see the same anchor standard and what changes are the benchmarks which are a learning progression. So we're looking at both both are important and how we're integrating those standards and the decision making that we are putting in place around um digital technology and how we're providing professional learning opportunities for teachers so that we are creating those equitable learning environments for kids. So Angela's going to speak to an example that we have here. >> Right.
026So as we've always have been thinking about ways to impact our learning environment, we've always known that it's not about digital learning instruction or digital instruction that instruction good instruction is good instruction and we've not wanted to ever isolate just the use of technology on and so on and when we have done that or needed to do that for learning various tools sometimes it's very difficult to wrap it into exactly how this can really enhance our learning environment. So, as we think about moving forward and what it really takes to kind of create some ideas and some some visuals for what this learning can look like as we put kids um into the driving seat of of being creators and really having agency and being able to demonstrate in lots of creative ways. Um, one
027thing that we've kind of done lately is created this inspiration menu. And this is just a highlight of a snapshot of third grade. But it was really quite quite easy to take our portrait of a learner, look at all the tools that we have available to us, look at the ISTY standards, which is the International Society for Technology and Education. It's kind of the gold standard for learning experiences and driving um educational technology use. along with our standards, we have everything we need to do a great job of really bringing out um awesome learning experiences for kids and giving them context for what they're they're what they're learning. So, this is just an example of one grade band of that. And I hope that this can help us to get some um just some mindset
028uh shifts around what this learning can look like, that it's really engaging, that it's thoughtful, that it really provides a lot of ways for kids to to uh work through their learning with lots of ways Oh okay. >> So so next steps in this as you've heard about pitting once again technology and learning they cannot stay separated but we got to blend this together and what we're doing. So as we evolve in this, the next steps in this is you saw the filtering system that outlined how many hours were spent on screen time uh light path which will our administrators will have a chance to take a look at it too as it continues to evolve. Also the next steps is forming a committee. A committee that involves parents, students and staff and administrators on
029working together on how technology is involving in our district and working together on that and also inviting that group onto learning walks as well to be able to see it firsthand on what is taking place in the classrooms. So those are our next steps as we continue to evolve in our work. Questions? question. Sorry question. I know there's also techn Yeah, I mean we've been as we've been working through even that many of inspiration uh we included early learning we included T+ because there is all of those elements and as we look about an ecosystem uh we know that adult learning is probably like right alongside of being curious with kids that our adult learners also need that inspiration to think about how they're using things. So I would say that definitely we are looking
030to to not miss any area of our district when it comes to really positive use of technology. >> I think that's great looking outside But I think as we think about appreciated talking I critical media consumption, all sorts of things. Just really important that you know county support was broadband digital inclusion department there and some of the same things that we're talking like are helpful for people to be thinking about for again adults and other people too just in terms of you know thinking they had campaign public twice but once you know some things like that just you know being careful what you're doing just appreciation that we're teaching our students how to do this work >> um I think one thing that I noticed that maybe you could consider thinking about if we're going
031to go out into the community and talk a little bit more about how technology is being integrated into system, but teachers use technology that students don't have any time with. And I think that's an important aspect of your jobs as you support teachers because um teacher burnout is real. Um and what I have noticed significantly in my life over the last two years that it's gotten easier because there are certain things that technology has helped with. >> And so while when we talk about technology, I think that it's much broader than what is what might be in front of kids. It's also what teachers are using to be more effective and innovative in their own classrooms. Um and uh it has um I'm not ever going to say that it's made my job easier, but
032it has made my job more efficient. It has gotten so like what is really important about my job is getting feedback to kids in a timely and manner so that they can learn and become those um student agents of their own learning. So I That's an important thing to remember. And just the the last thing that I think is also important for um folks to because a lot of the digital literacy run like falls onto the English language arts teacher. So we have three different strands of digital literacy and our anchor standards, but the anchor standards are also in other areas. And so like when we're looking at media specialists, they have anger standards that have to deal with different technologies and things like that. um we do want to stay cutting edge and we
033want to stay innovative and we want to make sure our kids are prepared for the future and I recognize to the balance and I think that um what I'm experiencing as a teacher just within the profession is that having the conversations with community is really important and I don't think that we've done a good job and I'm saying me as teachers notic you as like leaders of technology in this particular district, but um I think that educators can do a better job of explaining how technology is impacting their classroom and what the hopes and dreams are of us and why we're using that. So, thank you for having that discussion because I think there does need to more. Awesome. Oh, and I guess we have one question. Um, thank you. It was really helpful for
034me to see the daily screen time hours. I think a lot of us, well, I'll speak for myself kind of exaggerated the time I thought that was being used online in classroom. So, this was helpful. Um, but how was this captured? Is this like the computer was open? So, was it active or was somebody actually recording this? How much time you spent on here? No, this is a there's an agent on the computer on the device that will report back and so this is about activity on that u on that device. Now it's not telling us was that um directed effective use by the teacher or was this passive consumption. That's you know I think that's the challenge for districts right now about how do you collect that data? You know, screen time is this
035general term, right? And so I think one of you asked the question in advance about what if the teacher is up front on their Smartboard, do we count that as screen time? I guess you could, right? But if take the Smartboard away, if they just had a whiteboard and we're writing on the whiteboard, are they doing the same things? Right? But um you know we can get into the whole thing about you know the Smartboard is supposed to be more dynamic and give students opportunities to to interact with with things with the class and and with the teacher and all that as well. Um but right now it's just what we were showing you is just activity on a device, right? And that's during school hours what we were showing you. We're not showing you
036for those students who take it home. uh we can show that as well after 4 pm I think we have it set up and and uh um you know that that bar is is much shorter for those devices than what has happened so maybe about 4/10en of an hour or something like that on average at home right and the other point that I don't know if I made when I was talking about filtering is that at the device level those things the agents on them when they take them home when they take our devices home they're filter filtered because of that agent on on that on that device. So, um but yeah, it's this is evolving about how I'm my statewide group I was just on not too long ago and this is a huge
037topic with everybody as you can imagine because parents are concerned about screen time, right? And so, how can we report this? How what data do we need to capture to report this and show that yes, your student was on this an hour and a half today and threequarters of an hour of that was directed use and the other half hour or whatever was uh passive consumption. Right? So, our goal with what we're doing with the reorganization and the and the uh lit team, the learning and innovation technology team. >> Yeah. Is to uh >> it's the lit team. Um you know, we're going to be using all of those people to help us develop and and also that is going to help us with the consistency of delivery across our classrooms, across grade levels, all
038of those things. So >> students are such great exciting All right. So, moving on to the recommended that the school board approve the consent agenda with the following items for the May 12th, 202. All those in favor say I. I. Now we're action items. So action item resolution approval for the renovation of community center. Um it is recommended that the school board district number 283 um approve the totaling 1,115,996,000 I got that plus the communities and general conditions of 418,245 for the total contract amount of1,534,241 along with the resented first we got to Thank you. >> Uh thank you um members of the board, Superintendent Hines. Yes, we were fortunate enough that uh this bid came in within uh about 1% of our actual total. So our our budget was $1.5 million. We had to
039do some engine value engineering on the backside to get it down. Initially, it came in about $300,000 over, but we value engineered a couple of things around and got it down to 1,500,000 roughly. Um, just acknowledge that this is part of the 22 bond referendum and one of the final projects with the 22 bond referendum that we have left. >> Yes. >> Um, yes, because original budget was $1 million. We added 500,000 from the savings from the high school so we could get the secure entrance at Lennox. So it is consistent with all our other buildings at this time. Very. Yes. And that was one of the bigger challenges with this site is we wanted to make sure it's welcoming. So, we moved their front office to where it is currently to right as you
040walk in the door. there'll be a brand new um doorway sitting there and you'll enter in and automatically go to the left where their conference room used to be. So, we did some juggling to make sure that this was as welcoming as possible for the community as a whole. >> We've met with them on numerous occasions already and the intent is not to shut down entrance number one at all through this construction project. Um as well as we are we'll have uh bond referendum voting going on. So we will make sure that that is also a site that we can use at that time as well. >> We're kind of challenged with the parking lot with having the size of the building and the number of occupants in it. And um one of the bigger
041challenges is they wanted to see a ramp from the lower parking lot to the upper parking lot. We would lose too many spaces and the city would uh have a challenge with that. So, um, what we've done is we are going to be kind of persuading them with by putting a rail, um, down the center of the median there to make sure that they don't try to cut through the rock and the the block and pushing them down around the side to where the sidewalk goes straight across and then up the other side. >> Any other questions? >> All those in favor? I say no. Next is the budget assumptions. So 2027 budget assumption budget approval. It is recommended that the school board approve the fiscal year 2027 budget assumption 26 budget as presented. Motion
042second. Yes. Thank you. Good evening, Chair Mancini. I'm Superintendent Hines. Members of the board, nothing has changed since we talked about this at the end of April, but I want to run through to just reiterate um a few items. This is just for the general fund. Um and tonight we're going to do a couple of things. I'm going to put do the whole presentation for the next two um motions. One's for the fiscal 27 budget assumptions and one is for the midyear budget. If you don't mind, I'll just keep going. Um, >> actually all >> they are in one motion. >> Yay. Good. So, here we are down to the approval portion of the budget and you can see in detail um we're doing the midyear update tonight and then um at the next two
043board meetings in June, we'll be looking at the fiscal year 27 budget. So um the good news for the general fund is that we are increasing our projected ending fund balance. We are still in a slight deficit. So our expenditures in this budget slightly exceed revenues, but it is about $400,000 better than it was in the original budget that was adopted. And we will do everything we can to um end this year in a balanced budget. But this is where the um in a balanced actual I guess this is where our budget is at right now. Again, nothing has changed. Our revenues are going up by um our projections are going up by about $768,000. The majority of that is in the state aid category because of increases in students and in the special education
044category. We did um take a reduction in the property tax budget to reflect um what happened last year with uncollectible taxes and um so we just want to make sure that we're not surprised by that in this year's um audit. Our midyear expenditures are going up just slightly um less than a half a percent $293,000. The main category is um in purchase services for substitute teachers and transportation. We increased the budgets just a little bit. And then in the supplies and materials budget um building fuel and um software costs. Um this better reflects the costs associated um with those budgets and getting categories in the right places. Um so that's the slight increase in expenditures. I'm going to walk just a little bit through this. It's a lot of numbers. Um, but this general fund
045balance um, depiction eliminates our board assigned for severance. And I just want to make sure we're really clear about that. Um, if you look at that first column of numbers, last year we ended with a $6,97,000 unassigned fund balance, which means that's the general fund um, that can be used for anything. that was a 10.35% fund balance um according to the state the way the state calculates it and the way that's calculated is the state also includes any board assigned funds. So we had a million76,000 set aside for future severance payments for contracts who still have severance in them. All of those have been eliminated for folks who have new contracts for the last 20 years or so. Um so that's the way the state looked at it. So in that calculation we were combining
046both of those items and then we had this separate calculation internally. The finance advisory committee made a recommendation that we combine those two fund balance eliminate this board set aside and have the fund balance that we use internally reflect um what is reflected at the state level. The restricted funds um are there's about 20 categories of restricted funds in that um 1 million or $3,600,000 um for restricted. That includes things for capital like operating capital, long-term facility maintenance, the technology levy, and then all kinds of little things like a little bit that that must be set aside for media specialists. Um, student activity accounts have to be set aside. You know, some of them are as small as $50,000. We have to keep record of those individually. They are required to be restricted by state
047funding purposes. So, can't be used for general operations. So, that's something I wanted to point out for the board. So, we are increasing um our year-end fund balance from what would have been 9.38% in the original budget and we are projecting now a 9.81% um year end um fund balance percentage using the new calculation. So, our our fund balance in the general fund is projected to go up over midyear or at midyear um by $474,000. It's a lot of moving parts. Um but the the main bottom line is I want to be clear that we've moved a million dollars from a board assigned balance into the unrestricted balance because that's how the state sees it. So, we wanted to reflect that um equally. But all of these percentages are apples to apples comparisons. So our
048request here then is to have the board approve the budget for revenues and expenditures. And then as far as assumptions go, we these are all of the recommendations from finance advisory committee. We're recommending those um as you see them here. And we will move forward with a budget for fiscal 27 if the board approves these budgets that reflect those assumptions. Our next steps then once um we get our approval from the board, we continue to build the budget. We'll have a preview for you for fiscal 27th on June 9th and the board will approve the final budget on June 23rd. Keeping in mind we've been keeping the board updated all along um all year long. So we do meet many more times with the board than these two times to talk about the budget. Um
049but these this is the formal action step. Okay. >> Questions. try to compare the what we're looking at for our assumptions next year. >> Yes. >> So >> with our goals going last year >> without And then with another bucket comes to about 10% you're going to next year%. So does that mean the budget will be created somewhat dipping into the current fund balance about 10%. >> So the budget will be created with both of those things in mind. Unfortunately, at the or coincidentally, I guess um at the time the the finance advisory committee's goal was to not dip into fund balance. So, we're going to or to not move fund balance down either by percentage or by um revenues versus expenditures. What I did here was just move forward the finance advisory committee's assumptions.
050I think come fall we're going to want to change that number to eight to 10%. Or something different. What I didn't want to do was intervene artificially here. Certainly the board can do that, but the two goals combined I think keep us from from eroding fund balance. >> Okay. So yeah, just >> exactly >> a really specific question. Is that an exact? >> No, our severance um liability is larger than that over the next several years as folks retire. For instance, there's $800,000 of severance built into this year's budget. So, we have several teachers and some and a few a handful of administrators who who are retiring under contracts that still have severance. So, it wasn't enough to cover our ongoing liability and we've been building that into the budget over the years for several
051years and not really dipping into that severance set aside. Um, it was set aside before I arrived so I wasn't ever really sure what the intent was behind it because it was never sufficient. Um, >> you know, to consider presenting a balanced budget. Um, you know, when you're talking about almostion, I just It was a wise um previous board and administrators that um wrote those out of contracts over time. So we're paying folks um so we don't have this deferred item and we're paying folks in other ways with ongoing benefits. So that will we'll benefit from that um decision from many years ago eventually. Other questions? All those in favor of FY 2027 budget assumption and FY26 budget will say I. All say no. Motion carries. And now we are employment contract for executive director
052of business services. Um, it is recommended that the school board approve the employment contract for the executive director of business services. >> Good evening, Chairman Menzini, members of the board, Superintendent Hines. Um, bringing to you this evening the executive director of business services contract. um the district, we posted the position, we went through the selection process and um through the interview process, we did determine that Josiah Nebo was selected for our next uh business service or executive director of business services. We're excited to welcome uh Josiah into this position effective July 1, 2026. Josiah is currently serving as our director of business services and has been with the district for almost about two years now. >> That's great news. Yes. >> Who will be missed dearly? >> How important it is to have business and
053I know from serving on the board for a number of years looking at budget it's not an easy job and and and I think as we talked about too it's also not a job that that we can provide as a school district. It's as enticing as maybe some of the people who do this work could get paid in the private sector as well. But just appreciate people who are driven by our mission by our work. >> Listen, so all those in favor of Patrick, executive director of business services, I all say no. Motion carries 70. Awesome. Um and now we are on employment agreement for year of probation. It is recommended that the school board approve the employment agreement as presented. Do I have a motion? >> Thank you Sarah. Second. Thank you Patrick. >>
054All right. So I know a number of you had some questions around this. Um what happens here in the state of Minnesota is when an individual a licensed individual is employed they have three consecutive years of probation. Upon the third year um when they return on the fourth year they then become a tenur staff member which um gives them certain job securities. It doesn't mean they have a job for life but they um have certain protections under Minnesota law. um in when a when a teacher leaves a district upon being tenured um and they move to a new school district, they then have one year of probation. Um one year of probation sometimes is not enough given the fact that they only have to be in front of students for 90 instructional days. um 90
055instructional days sometimes does not give the principal enough time to properly evaluate and assess all the different aspects of their instruction that are needed. Um so in some cases individuals will come to us, they'll be tenured. We will want to make sure that they are a good fit for St. Louis Park and our students and our community. And if the principal sometimes evaluates the person and sees um some areas of opportunity that they feel are manageable, coachable, workable with that employee, we will provide feedback, monitor the situation. In a situation where the person might not be making as much progress as we would like, but they are making meaningful progress. This option is used for an individual to extend that additional year of probation to let them know, hey, we need you to continue to
056work on these areas that we see as opportunities for you, but then it also provides a commitment to um the employee as well on behalf of the district to say we are still interested in employing you. Um how the statute works is that we offer this additional year in lie of probation or in lie of non-renewal, excuse me. So, it is an opportunity for both the district and the employee to um just kind of continue to test things out and make sure that everything is the right fit. All those um all those in favor of the employment agreements for fourth year of probation say I. I oppose say no. Motion carries 70. Now um we're going to move on to 7E and the motion to forgo the reading of individual names of probationary nonrenewal staff.
057It is recommended that the school board forgo the reading of the individual names of probationary nonrenewal employees. Roll call is required for sending a motion. I'll second it. >> So basically what we do here is we just go we forgo reading the names for the sake that this is a public meeting. It's broadcasted. on the internet and there's a variety of different reasons why we might not renew someone. It could have nothing to do with the person themselves. It could strictly have to do with budgetary or maybe a teacher's coming back from a leave of absence. So, we just want to make sure that it's clear that, you know, the names are not read and it gives that person the opportunity to remain confidential. So now we are to approval. It is recommended that the
058school board approve the resolution related to the 2023 2024 246 director. >> Yeah. So, as I mentioned, all of >> Sorry, we got to do the motion first. >> Sorry. >> So, I'll second it. Um, did you want us to read the resolution first or did you want to do it? >> Whatever you choose. Congratulations. contract. Whereas employees whereas employees employed employees first school year be resolved by the school under Minnesota statutes. The license contracts of those 15 employees are hereby further resolved by the school board of 283 written notice be provided to teachers regarding termination teaching contracts forms. Yes. So, as I mentioned before, um our licensed employees were notified by the principles of their non-renewal around spring break. Um it's very difficult, challenging time for our principles to have to communicate some of
059these things to our staff. Um so we always try to do it in the most humane and um humanizing way as possible. Um human resource then follows up with the teachers. So this is a very transparent process. We communicate with PAT to ensure that they are fully on board and understand what we're doing, what teachers are being non-renewed. Um, and then what ends up happening is we work with the teachers to u provide them the letters that will be signed this evening by the board. So the motion passes 70. >> Thank you. Um and now we are to board updates. Um I uh don't have a lot of updates, but I have just a few questions. We have a number of listening sessions coming up. Um I sent an email. We just want to make
060sure that we don't have three board members at a listening session or excuse me um more than three board members at a listening session. I'm attending most of them. So if you would rather go instead of me, let me know and I will gladly not go. Um and we have uh excuse me in my email I did not include um the PSI I think so I'll be sending out or you can just send me indicating if you're willing to go to those are at different times of so that might be more challenging for some board members by that time I will be um on my break so I will be able to make those as well um graduation There's all sorts of things that are happening at the high school. It's a really exciting time.
061Next weekend is for scholars on Wednesday. Um the listening session, there's a listening session on Thursday. I went to the Peter Hobart um Peter Hobart carnival and I will say that having been to now three carnivals, I am stocked when it comes to um my daughter's favorite places to go to eat and drink. I have all of the gift cards. So that was my first high school last week for I saw some elementary. Yeah, because I think we just had a business meeting. Um, the one thing I was going to call is that before dinner tonight or before I got here tonight, I was at the block and I was there because high school newspaper and they were open till 9 and it I I got some I think I got a mailing sale um
062too and these are just good reminders so that when the community asks you what more can we be doing to support our schools financially but this is one small way you can do it and it doesn't go directly to our general fund but supporting activities supporting our students supporting the many things that they do and so I just I'm appreciative of people when when students come to the door and they happen to make that nervous pitch and some students came by my door the other day they waited for about five seconds and they got bad for them, but but they're learning some of those skills. But also there's just a value again if people can find a way to support students in as many ways as possible. >> This will be quick. Um, we just
063had prom. I heard prom was great. I heard kids had a good time. My daughter had a good time. I appreciate that. Um, shameless plug. So I I'm on a subcommittee at they're advocating for them to reach out to our kids here and get their feedback on how to show up for the youth in um in our in our school. So, be looking forward to that. Um, you know, telling them to connect with our superintendent and the store and some other programs where I know kids are passionate know me that want to um put their input in and um yeah, I think that's it. Guess I also attended the carnival last Friday. Uh wonderful event. Thankful. It was like awesome weather for it as well. I feel like the last few times they had something
064right now. So it was great. A lot of people were there. Uh great food trucks were there. Kids were having a blast. Uh my baby had a great time. Um as a good event. So, thank you. I had a chance to go to the teacher of the year award ceremony, our inspiring in general. And then David Davis won that was very, very exciting. Um, so really grateful for him and the way he's representing our district and the work that he's doing. It was just a really inspiring opportunity to be there. Superintendent was there was there were some other teachers and other folks from the district there as well. I'm looking forward to continue to uplift and celebrate his work. >> Just to follow up on that, the elders wisdom show was on Monday and so
065that was right after he had gotten that honor and he had a standing ovation from the crowd of parents and students and other teachers at PSI. So that was really great and Also, the elder system was um great. Also, the kids were creative and funny and it's really one of the cool unique things that um St. Louis Park elementary schools do. So, that was good. I also want to shout out to the middle school quiz team that went to the national tournament in Chicago this weekend and um they did very well. Um I also have a vested interest in that team as my daughter's on it and she placed like 300th out of 900 kids. Um but it's pretty amazing. These kids are future Jeopardy champions. So that's it. >> Um, Virginia, I forgot one
066thing. I'm sorry. I also had a chance to go to the city council meeting and watch you present. So I'll just I'll kick it back to you for that. But I want to make sure that that we get a shout out to our PTOs. >> Um, Mine's just going to basically be about how uh the previous week and this current week uh a lot of the students at the high school have been doing their AP tests in the gymnasium. So, they are going through extensive studying and spending hours in testing. And I really hope that those who still have some are are confident when they enter that room, hopefully with a charged computer and don't forget their passwords. But I hope that once it's over, things feel lighter until the very final um project every
067class gives you. But yeah. I was also going to talk about the AP exams, but she already said I was also um going to talk about how next week at the high school we're going to have the George Floyd memorial for SOAR and we've been working on that like these past few weeks. >> Awesome. Thank you for sharing those updates. Um I did want to mention that the city of St. Louis Park um did award our PTO's actually the nomination was for the families of um St. Louis Park because the families really pulled um pulled together during the um operation metro surge and out of gratitude um I did nominate them for the human rights award and they needed a singular person so I just put down the PTO's as a way of um representing
068the parent group. So I was really it was u it was an amazing night. It was amazing to see all of the families there. I cried. Um, you know, council member Baldwin cried. We all, not Baldwin, um, Baldwin cried. You could have cried, too, if you had been there. I was, um, so I was like, I was kind of a bucket of tears. So, um, with that, no more updates. So, we have graduation coming up. That'll be very exciting. And we're going to adjourn this meeting. Woohoo. At 7:44. Nice.