St. Louis Park Schools School Board Meeting 6.11.2024

001e e e good evening it's uh 6:30 on June 11th 2024 and so we are going to begin our regular business meeting here and uh before we do that I will read the land acknowledgements we are gathered on the land of Dakota and ojibway peoples I ask you to join me in acknowledging the Dakota ojibway Community there others both past and present as well as future Generations St Louis Park public schools also acknowledges that it was founded upon exclusions and erasers of many indigen 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 a District's desire to support the ongoing work of local indigenous communities to thrive in our schools okay with that behind us now we will talk about

002the the agenda for tonight we have on the agenda superintendent report we have uh discussion items 5A emergency preparedness update 5B fiscal year 25 preliminary budget we have a consent agenda um we with just one item on it minutes we have an action agenda which um has a lot of things on it but um and and some things that we've seen previously but uh or seen this kind of approach previously with some employee agreements 7A employee agreement operation supervisors 7B employee agreement technical employees 7 C employee contracts directors 2024 to 2026 7D employee contract aquatic supervisor 2024 through 2026 7e employment agreement fourth year probation 7f second reading of policies one2 equal education opportunity and 418 drug free workplace and an app will bring us up to Communications and transmittal so do I have it

003is recommended that the school board approve the agenda for June 11 2024 as presented do I have a motion moved moved by uh director Anderson uh and do I have a second second second by director Casey uh any discussion all those in favor say I I pass the 60 all right that brings us up to superintendent TR and I have nothing but good news nothing but good news tonight for your pen ultimate yes sharing that with my team before we came down here uh I'll begin the report tonight by sharing the mission because it grounds our work and it is the reason that we gather St lom's Park Public Schools sees inspires and empowers each learner to live their Brilliance in an environment that centers student voice and experience to create racially Equitable learning that

004energizes and enhances the spirit of our community two things tonight first I want to recognize High School teacher Abby Lugo a business education teacher for SLP High School who received the educator of Excellence award from best prep best prep is a Minnesota based nonprofit that provides educational programs to students in grades 4 through 12 with the mission of preparing students with business career and financial literacy skills through Hands-On experiences that Inspire success in work and life Abby teaches practical skills to students including how to apply for jobs interview and prepare for their lives After High School uh as the year wraps up there have been many celebrations happening I'll name just a few the adult options program which offers English as a second language classes GED and College prep classes for adults wrapped up their

005year and nearly 50 students came together in celebration right here in this very room and as part of their celebration a number of students shared uh things about their cultural background and traditions before they um wrapped up their celebration transition plus a program serving students with special needs held a ceremony for students who will be moving on to the next chapter of their lives and journey early childhood Elementary and Middle School teachers uh middle school students finished up their last day on Friday they finished the year with field trips bounce houses dance parties other fun celebrations and lastly more than 350 High School seniors graduated last Wednesday the clouds literally parted the rain stopped a double rainbow appeared and the students and guests were awesome and we enjoyed a wonderful commencement ceremony there were five

006student speakers who shared powerful personal Remar thank you thank you um okay great well then that brings us up to our first discussion item and we have Patricia Magnuson here to introduce that and she has a whole panel that I think they can all just kind of roll up as they need to or however you're you're planning to do that but we're just seeing we're just seeing this panel of people here talk about emergency preparedness so director mag yes thank you good evening chair Co superintendent McGuire and members of the board we want to also start with the mission um for St Louis Park public schools because this work that we are doing um in emergency preparedness is inext inextricably linked to the mission statement creating an environment that centers students and in a way

007that empowers them and staff to feel really prepared in this world that can sometimes feel a little scary so tonight we want you to understand the work that we're doing as an emergency prepar press committee folks back here have joined as they've joined the district or have been um I think Clarence and I have been on this since its Inception working together and we have done a lot of work over the last several years so we want you to understand that there is an existing protocol for emergency preparedness um and where that came from um we want you to understand the work that this committee has been doing over the last four years this new District protocol that we are I'm going to unveil with staff um in the fall and how we got to

008that and then some next steps so I think at this point I turn it over to Jim next so thank you very much um so like I said the original and I have a copy of it right here in front of us it's a little bit bulky a little bit uh a little bit too much information to try to get down to so it was developed in 2019 for my time being here but it's been used it's been revised and we've got it down to so far from this P this whole book down to one page it's still a decent manual it still has what we need but there's new um Technologies new ideas and this program that we're looking forward and moving forward with and hopefully with your your blessing on that moving forward

009I love you guys really sums it down to a single page and the avability of it rather than trying to F through try trying to have staff memorize this or work through this is on a single page so we're really trying to make sure that it's ease it's bold it's big and it's there for everybody to understand very quickly um technology coming as far as it is will'll be in instituting some more technology with raptor technology and some of the other stuff so what it does do is it brings us down to a very distinct standard language for every classroom every office every situation this was has been and is except we're right here which I see um in every classroom and every office in the district once again we'll be doing that with I

010love you guys but it'll be a single page there rather than a great big book um what we've also done is you know we have annual requirements so right now the state requires us down yeah okay um with the existing annual checklist so we have we have required to do five fire drills five lockdown drills and one severe weather drill we've done a Google spreadsheet and on an annual basis I send that out to principes administrators saying you know here's where it is here's where we need to be and then I keep up with it and then towards the end of the year if we haven't got to it hopefully we have but usually there's one or two extra fire drills that are needed before we can take that off um we're also reviewing the

011procedures with all office staff and then trying to get them trained as well so with this new program we want to start the year off the intention is this we'll have this ready to go uh all everything will be up and ready by start of school um and then we we are working with staff on confirming evacuation sites so we have current evacuation sites principals assistant principes District or administrative staff on an annual basis reach out to that staff to make reach out to that site to make sure that they are still available and we can still use them for an evacuation site Clarence and I are going to give you a little history about the um emergency preparedness committee so this is a little timeline um way back in 201122 we started working on

012a charter um for the committee why did we need a bigger group of people to work on emergency preparedness it was really coming out of Gym's position in the facilities office and we didn't have a lot of voices um gathered on it so we worked on getting a charter together and then as we rolled into 22 23 we used to have a health and safety committee that did environmental health and safety like indor equality and they met once a month so we broke those two apart and said emergency preparedness now has a committee as well as health and safety and we started meeting every other month so we had we just slipped into a protocol that already existed and just started talking and you can imagine how that goes everybody wants to move fast and

013and be way ahead of where we can be so we started with some internal Audits and and moved our way through I'm going to let Clarence just talk about what we've been through as a team since we first got started good evening everyone I'm Clarence poik and the proud principal from Susan lingren so um I appreciate being here and honored to present in front of you so um as you can see in front of us um you have the years I wanted to also not beer off but share that our district I believe um being one of the oldest not oldest age maybe but oldest principles here um we have had a lot of trainings and a lot of um even M drills if you want to call it that when I was the assistant

014principal at the high school there was one at the middle school so we have a lot of experience and I think the more experience we have the more knowledge we have the better prepared we're going to be be in those stressful times so I just wanted to share that you can see on this um Slide the different years right now we want to we want to move into implementing as you've heard I love you guys um it's the name of a protocol and program that we've been trained on many of us have had online training and then a group you'll find out a little bit later went up and had training at in duth emergency preparedness committee the purpose of this committee is to continuously improve the district's emergency response plan in order to ensure

015robust and racially conscious execution of the plan like I said earlier the more we practice the more we talk about this even though let's be honest it's not necessarily A a fun thing to talk about it's a needed thing to talk about um so I really appreciate our district and how much um time and effort we put into this because it's going to be um helpful when unfortunately we need to use it here are some names of the emergency preparedness committee I'm not going to read through every name but we have many principles on this list um many directors uh as well as um our police we have a wonderful relationship with our St Louis Park Police and Fire um and we've had members from both uh organizations on this as well so I'm going

016to move it over to Ash thank you I'm Ashu I'm the communication senior specialist and I'm going to speak to a little bit of the communication procedure around building a safety-minded culture within St Louis Park public schools so when director Hicks and I both started within the district um that was one of the priority areas of communication was to assess what our current communication practices are around incidents that may be quite serious um that would affect our students and families and school Community as a whole and how do we uh increase or start doing some more messaging and I know that that may have been startling to families because there was a lot more messaging that has gone out within the last few years um and that is part of increasing our awareness around instances

017that are happening in our schools so that people can feel more safe and secure and again understanding that with more proactive messaging around these situations that can be uh a shift in our our mindset um so part of that is we have already different layers within our security that we ask people to um to be aware of and participate in because ultimately safety begins with ourselves as individuals and what we choose to do um to ensure that safety overall so we built out this um this image that identifies the different levels that you might encounter like at when you go to the front front desk of every school we ask that all staff members wear wear name badges for example all visitors must check in and get a visitor ID so if they're walking through

018the hallways they can be easily identified as a safe person within the building um we've also increased our mental health support and you'll even notice that within our messaging that we encourage students and staff to utilize those mental health support including our Vital life Workforce which is our for our staff to use um those are just a few of the things that we are trying to do so including things like locking doors which um even today right so our doors locked uh outside the building that's a good thing we ultimately want our doors to lock when there's not someone in the building we don't necessarily ask we tonight but we make sure that those are resolved when we have Community functions we're also again implementing more emergency notifications so during this last two years we've

019implemented texting as a a new function to be able to text families to say this is some there's something that's happening within the school building because we know the that the concern for our our students well-being is a high priority um as well as just generally this portion of safety planning and getting our staff involved at different training levels is immensely important so that our families our staff can share this information with families as much as possible um so that everybody is coming along on this journey including developing um our community relationships including with our police emergency responders um so that we are ensuring that everyone's is in this journey with us so as also a part of this this work um we have have heard of um some various needs of what else can

020we do to inform the community around this safety Mighty culture so just even within the past six months or so we have P pushed out several stories within our SLP Communicator around some of the changes that are coming including information about I love you guys and have also started informing people through things within the building so if you walk around this building you'll see the staff safety checklist which is again procedures for our staff to go through but we've also created a student safety checklist which is information for students and I'm happy to say that these have been utilized there have been several instances where we have been able to recognize students for informing us when something has come up and we're really proud of our students when they take those steps forward to to

021do the Vigilant um Act of reporting um situations of concern so that that's what I've got here with the transition Melissa right good evening I'm Melissa Kinowski I'm the principal at St Lis Park Middle School and I'm happy to be with you tonight um and to be part of the emergency preparedness committee um you know as a principal I can say that you know one of your worst fears is having an emergency or something but what we can do is have some protocols and place when sort of the unexpected occurs we obviously want to be encouraging a safety-minded culture but there are sometimes instances where some protocols where we have common language and common understanding about what we should do in particular situations is essential to keeping everyone safe through particular situations I love you

022guys as a foundation that um Erica will talk in a moment around sort of the history of why it was established but they have a mission to restore the joy of Youth through educational programs and positive actions in collaboration with families schools communities organizations and government entities in particular through um safety protocols so they have a crisis response protocol some standard protocols that you'll hear about um you can see kind of the IM on the bottom is around five different crisis response or protocols that you might use in varying situations including a hold which would be a hold in place where you don't have students moving through the building for that particular moment secure where you would secure the building from anybody coming from the outside uh lock down and that would be more of

023your perhaps Intruder um situation evacuate we need to get out of the building or shelter and place which we practice for for tornado drills um but I love you guys Foundation programs for crisis response and post crisis reunification are used in more than 50,000 schools districts agency organizations and communities around the world and they really have a mission of really having some common language some common protocols so that in those moments when it's really important to communicate we're all communicating the same thing and we don't have different expectations about what's happening or understanding about exactly what is happening so I'm going to turn it over to good evening my name is Erica Scott I'm the Early Learning Program supervisor and um it's a privilege to be here with you tonight sharing important information about the

024I love you guys foundation so the sad reality of the world that we live in is that schools need to have strong crisis response plans and protocols in place if in emergency should arise and what I think makes I love you guys um incredibly powerful is it's founded in uh a terrible tragedy that one family endured uh in September 2006 uh John Michael and Ellen Keys sent their daughter Emily keys to the plat Canyon High School and after a series of events um Emily um Emily was murdered and through um an intruder um assault on this on the school so uh I think what makes this the most powerful is that the training that we received both online and in person in duth was led by John Michael keys and he and other community members

025in pla Canyon banded together almost immediately after this tragedy to pull together in the mission statement that we read uh just now and the most comprehensive crisis response protocol and they have thought of everything and I personally am so excited about implementing it here um we have a short video clip that we wanted to share with you to just give you a little bit of context and background regarding the foundation of this um I love you guys 27th 2006 unchallenged he held several girls hostage before he shot and killed 16-year-old Emily while she was held h G was able to send a text message I love you guys now they want to make sure no family suffers the same loss that's where the keys I love you guys Foundation comes in it is focused on

026creating action plans during emergency situations and against threats I was looking for what are the protocols that are common in the school environment and what we found was all over the map but the keys were eager to get some Direction they found a local program teaching students and teachers to long after lock down and evacuate we took those three core actions and added the fourth and that was shelter dubbed the standard response protocol key says it's been implemented in more than 1500 Colorado schools since 2009 the keys also want to make it harder for strangers to enter school grounds through these vestibules they would have to push a button and identify themselves before being allowed in this already exists at many Jefferson County Public Schools you get into the vesle and then you have to

027go into the office and check in 70% of the time in these active violence events the perpetrator goes through the front door and into that main Corridor a barrier Emily's killer did not face we've got I think today an obligation to continuously evaluate and evolve our materials and we're in a very unique position to do that Inver I'm Castillo Denver I will say that in the middle teacher shortage and at the end of another school year burnout is causing many more teachers um just one last thing about the um John Michael keys and I love you you guys background um because uh this poor family endured this tragedy um the scope of the that they have developed the program is truly impressive and I had an opportunity to share some of this presentation with my

028early learning staff and with the Early Learning parent advisory Council and Ann was present for that and you could hear a pin drop in the room when we are sharing this video and talking about this the serious nature of um emergency of responsiveness and parents are receptive and it's scary it's emotional to hear teachers are incredibly receptive to it because they want to have clear um and concise uh ways to respond to crisises so I believe that this will be really well received in the fall hi I'm Maria princial you may be tired of looking at me it's really nice to see you all tonight um you know I I think that as Educators administrators teachers staff and schools the first thing that we say to kids when we interact with them is that my

029first job is always to keep you safe um no matter what is going on I would like for you to walk in the hallway because my first job is to keep you safe we're waving goodbye on the last day of school please put your hands inside the bus because my first job is to keep you safe and so so that's something that we need to be able to pause and really have a process for and I think that um when I look at uh John Michael keys and the way that their family has paused for us and developed a protocol that can be utilized in schools in government agencies throughout the country what what they we've done is sort of give us the same language and same frame which lots of people have mentioned tonight

030so that we can we can use them and so there are two um two parts of the I love you guys um method that we're going to be adopting that we're already in progress adopting and the first is the standard response protocol so this standard response protocol relies on uh those five different um things that uh principal Kal and hold shelter these things so that kids understand regardless of where they are in the school regardless of what school they're in as our kids move from um Early Childhood to Elementary to Middle the same language that they're going to encounter and while this is also great for our kids it's great for our community and it's great for our itinerant staff no matter what building you're in those words are going to be the same the

031method the protocols are going to be the same so that's the beauty of um the standard response protocol as as a site response across sites and then as we develop that we are working also to um to lay out all the plans for our standard reunification method one of the speakers that we were able to interact with um at the training in duth told us the story of um of her kids and how she collected them um from school in Sandy Hook uh after the shootings in Sandy Hook and how harrowing that was even as a parent uh for whom all of her children survived that day but because the district didn't have the benefit of a standard reunification method because they didn't have the benefit of the stand response protocol the experiences that those

032kids had were unnecessarily horrifying in an already horrifying situation so as we move um to the standard response protocol and the standard reunification method our goal is to ensure that we are modeling ourselves after um I love you guys after after the keys family and pausing to get everything set and in order so that on the day that we hope will never come we are all moving sort of in mashed right like we are doing what we want for our classroom teachers to do ritual and routine we know exactly how we're going to do this um and so the goals of our efforts as an emergency response committee are to ensure that we have a pragmatic systemic response consistent across all of our St Louis Park School and Community sites and you will hear Lieutenant

033Barnes to speak later about our partnership with um St Louis Park Emergency Services which is so crucial which we saw and heard about throughout our training in duth um um the same language same frame common language there's nothing more important than using plain language so that there's no room for misunderstanding and I don't know if you noticed um on the the list however many slides ago of all the members of the emergency response committee but I hope that you saw Sor Carman and tabi right because it is incredibly important that our families across languages are aware of what this looks and sounds like and so they being part of the team is a reflection of our commitment as in St Louis Park to ensuring that we are empowering all of our Learners across culture across

034language empowering everyone's Brilliance and ensuring that we keep that brilliant safe um and also in uh like in concert with this systemic pragmatic approach and the plain language we then develop this muscle memory so that we have automaticity in a crisis so that our response is Swift efficient and practiced right there's not guesswork we're not trying to figure out what channel to be on our walk is we know exactly what what we're going to do um and so just to to give you an example of of where we've been and I know that uh proud principal poock that principal Pollock and um and director magson have been working on this consistently since 2021 um they also undertook exploratory meetings with the I love you guys foundation in the fall um throughout the the later fall

035and winter um director magon met with the Burnsville Edina and Brooklyn Center School Districts to better understand what um what I love you guys was like and what they had to offer on the sixth and seventh many many many folks um from across the district lots of folks who are not here attended an online standard response protocol and standard reunification method training um that was a really powerful experience though it was virtual it was it was very very powerful um and then a few of us who are pictured here you can't tell The gales The gales of April were happening outside um we were warm and cozy inside but we had the opportunity to attend a Regional training and train the trainer workshops in duth um April 16th and 17th which was an effort across

036the district because it meant that some of us as building principles um had to ensure that things were shorted up for for MCA testing right like we made this a priority um and so we are ready to move this work forward and so I know um prepared next to talk through that are Lieutenant bars and director Magus I wanted to just make mention that our um Partners from Park Adam Transportation were also in attendance at Dan deth and they're prepared to be a really obviously important part of our um standard um reunification method and our standard response protocol so we were very thankful that they were in attendance so ultimately we're going to create the culture of safety in St Louis Park this should be a place where people go oh yeah I feel really

037good about Safety and Security in St Louis Park that should be stipulated you know as sort of foundational and that's where we're heading um so you can see sort of the things that we need to think about are these common languages and protocols thinking about what are our um Customs around locked doors um if um John Michael Keys said it once he said it 50 times lock doors lock doors lock doors he just had no other response with any body would raise their hand with I have a you'd like lock doors like time is your friend in these kinds of things so we have to think about how that fits with um who we are as a school Community um we know we have some Capital investments in the future we are on the very

038beginnings of a application was just submitted on Friday for there's a Federal grant for emergency response like Capital funding which there is no other funding source that is dedicated to emergency response in the state of Minnesota it's it's a gap that's been in existence for a long time long-term facility maintenance should include um emergency response it does not it does not so we need more cameras we need more card readers we need updated enhanced cameras we need more door locks we need a um visitor management system all of that requires um capital investment um and then of course working with our um First Responders and um Lieutenant Barnes was here to just talk a little bit about that thank you yeah thanks for having me Lieutenant Barnes I'm a lieutenant with our Police Department uh

039one of my roles is to oversee our juvenile response officers uh and our community outreach team and it's a pleasure to be a part of this committee uh my my message here is simple we my entire 22 year career uh we've been strong partners with the school district we will continue to always be we'll be partners in the in your transition uh of planning here uh but I know it was important for this group to hear and they wanted me to share with you that that uh our police and fire department are ready to respond today uh we were yesterday uh we've been TR practicing and training for nearly two decades on a regional response uh that involves both police fire and EMS um uh some of the members of our department are leaders in

040the region in training others on that response um any officer could um Can can pull the fire alarm on a regional response that will lead to dozens of officers firef ERS and EMS coming to any active threat in our community and uh I know it was helpful for this group to hear how um we feel prepared that even as you make transitions even as you change just know that your first responder Community is ready and is as prepared to respond any threat thank you um lastly there's a lot that has to happen between now and um the fall we've done a lot to get ourselves ready so we're pulling together all of our leaders that like we normally do at the end of the school year and we'll be focusing on um I love you

041guys protocols um and how we are going to roll out and our new superintendent our new assistant superintendent and perhaps other of our new leaders will be there as well um there's a local Law Enforcement Training who's attending that so uh both of our juvenal response officers and their supervisor are going to be re receiving the same training that your staff has and the I love you guys protocol uh there's a special training tailored towards law enforcement so so later this week uh they will be Atty mat I think in Jordan uh right now they're at uh the youth juvenile officer uh conference in duth and then they'll follow that up with this uh training that I love you days this training just popped up as one of their newer offerings and I was so

042thankful um that the police department was ready and willing to send some folks and that's the great thing about this protocol you'll find it probably in most of our neighboring districts if you haven't heard about it already in some of our neighboring districts and um uh the if you go on their website you will find robust training materials that are always updated and ready to go so that we can utilize them as a district um we are we have a position posted right now for an emergency preparedness um and transportation supervisor it seems like an odd combination but we have budget capacity available um in in what was our transportation um position and we want to just turn the focus um at a district level towards helping our staff and our site leaders Implement our

043emergency response protocols so we'll see how that goes um in July we'll be there's more training offered there's an online training offered through I love you guys they also offer to come out on site so we could get um folks on site as well in all kinds of different ways we'll be producing whatever it is that we need to produce materials and posters and supplies and then in August we'll have a district w introduction to I love you guys at our all staff kickoff um with Dr Hines and then each site will be doing some sort of um robust training in the I love you guys protocol and then in Fall we'll we'll turn our Focus toward the implementation of the standard reunification method as well so does anyone have questions I do yeah um

044thank you first of all for coming here to pre what um I think one of my colleagues asked previously um when they were preparing for the meeting about the intersection with policy 806 which we just revised last year um I'm hopeful that you all had a chance to see the discussion and the video of the expert who came in to talk with us about why the board made the decision that we did um the one of the co-founders of the violence project related to policy 806 and about our decision to not have students in the building during lockdown those um and I see I just want to confirm that this can coexist I see has um one of the things so I I'm very supportive of us having a protocol and it seems like this

045is very comprehensive um but one of the things um that I haven't seen in the materials that I've read Rel to tell I love you guys is an understanding and I I haven't been trained on it so I'm mostly asking about this that often times when folks are coming into a someone's coming into a school to cause harm um that that the data shows very clearly that more often than not it's a person connected to that school Community which also plays into why we said students should not be a part of this right you're giving folks a ro M but the other thing is that what they found folks from the violence project who studied these mass shootings is that it's um often tied to it's a suicidal ideation right and so helping folks understand

046that as part of the protocol response you're actually responding to someone who's in crisis for suicide right and that actually shifts the mindset and the framework of how you approach them and I don't know if that's integrated into the learnings um from I love you guys but um so it's a question and if it's not or if there's space B for more learning on that um the folks who came from the violence project have this off ramp project where it's not it's not this it's not emergency response protocol but it's a bigger picture sort of helping folks understand the evidence-based um research related to why this happens and the ways in which you can prevent it and respond in a way that recognizes that the vast majority of people who are doing this it's actually

047suicide mission um that takes on their lives a long so I just put that out there and I wonder if that was addressed at all in I I will say there is room for policy 06 to coexist with this while John Michael Keys was definitely you know promoting like the practicing the automaticity I think what's more important in this when we talk about a lockdown or a secure situation or um is just the common protocol so while we won't practice a lockdown with students they still need to understand like what should happen or what their role is and if we have to lock down inse secure and also what the teachers role is and so you know we continue to practice and train with our teachers but also inform students this is what you need

048to do in this particular situation so they don't need to necessarily be an actively participant in um in that drill so so to speak so I think there is space for that to coexist I we did not address the violence prevention program in this particular train but I do think that there is definitely space to combine the two the I love you guys Protocols are really more around when you are facing a crisis and you must respond in the in the name of keeping students safe making sure that every everyone understands this is what should happen in this particular situ ation and I feel you know our work around a safety-minded school culture around that kind of also helps to perhaps address some of the concerns uh that were brought up you know by your

049previous training but I mean I been tring in it and I would love to hear more about it too you know as far as that so I think there's space for both to coexist and not contradict I would agree I mean just based on sort of the violence project and their offering project is sort of a broader more comprehensive look um but I think it takes a really and I don't know what the research and evidence is behind I love you guys but they take a very they study every mass shooting that's happened in the United States in the de over decades and looked at sort of what are the warning signs and and what are what was happening there so that folks can actually have a protocol related a broader protocol related to how

050do we intervene they call it offra like they you know when you look at each of these situations and break it down from a research based persp perspective there are off ramps um that are often missed right I do have concerns about um I think it undermines policy 806 a bit to have students participating in practicing I mean that's essentially what a drill is and the purpose behind that the board's discussion and decision on that previously is really related to the trauma that it inflicts and the there's a nationwide effort focused on not traumatizing kids in that way and the again the evidence and research related to the I don't know the statistics but the vast majority of the time you're just training people who are if you're going to have this happen are likely

051the perpetrator right and so I do have some conar Rel to that to colleages I just want to thank you all uh I also want to thank P for answering supp the questions the one question I forgot to ask and I apologize I'm late maybe other one other one already you guys first one is uh what strategic implemented to address a specific specifically special uh need kids uh due to the IM I'm happy to see that um so when we had the opportunity to be at the training you should come up because otherwise they're not going to hear you I just want you to hear that I was also listening for those answers when we were in Delo um not just as a educator and principal but as a parent I want to know what

052it looks like for neurod Divergent folks for folks who are differently able to ensure that the process um of responding to a an emergency and reunifying that those processes are thoughtful um and so I was really heartened on the second day um of the training in duth the train and trainer day we had a presid ation from um from special district 916 which has it's a federal setting for most mostly um throughout I'm not going to know the counties because I'm not from Minnesota so if somebody can remember Ramsey County is what I was not going to say um but the thoughtfulness that was demonstrated just gave a lot of ideas and ultimately what it means to ensure that these protocols work for um for our differently abled learners for our under Learners is it's

053dependent upon relationship it's that we have to know our kids which is not so different from neurotypical students or students who are typically able um we need to know our kids and understand what's going to work for them in an emergency situation so that's dependent upon the strength of our relationships as Educators and community members in St Louis Park that is the they had a a full two-hour presentation and they had great materials the one of the wonderful things about um I love you guys and literally everybody associated with them that we've been interacted with is that they'll just give you their materials they want a culture of school safety um and director Davis um to answer or just to speak to your question one thing that John Michael Keys was really clear about is

054this is what we have make it yours and so I think the multiple perspectives that we have that I'm honored to like work in St Louis Park for to to respect like we need to be thinking of this and of this we need to be thinking of survivors we need to be thinking of what might drive someone to to do to do this so I think that's an opportunity for us as St Park to make this really our our process within this Frameworks like sorry for speaking to that the director I think that um what we need to do is follow the model or look at the model that was laid out by 916 and then ensure that it is personalized to our Learners I don't know if that answers your question but I hope

055so thank you so the other question I have is just what overall I don't like specifically I don't know it's right question to us but I just want to know the school coordination between the local emergency respon ages in times so given of Crisis are we for yeah we we respond on a daily basis to the school Community for a variety of of you know smaller crisis and unfortunately we haven't had to respond to a uh a crisis at the scale that we we're talking about today but I feel strongly that we will be prepared for that uh on a on a daily basis we're helping with smaller social media threats or a a fight at a school uh preparing for events uh spoing events or um prom um so we work very closely planning

056and coordinating with uh School leadership and uh on a very regular basis we do respond to uh incidents at our schools and I feel like we have a very strong uh partnership and relationship there thank [Music] you um yeah great thanks uh we imple my the district that I work for implemented I love you guys two years ago um and we're a part of 916 uh so I guess for me um you know I started teaching in 1988 which was in col happen and so this has been an Ever evolving thing in our profession um and I uh from an educator perspective it is much easier having the having words um having common language the kids understand it we don't do drills uh at my school um however we do have conversations with kids about

057when this happens because it go into a loudspeaker when this happens this is what will happen during that time and for us that we've had um in the last two years since we've implemented it we've had a number of medical emergencies that have been um like high need medical emergencies um and so having the um response protocol in place was really critical um to get um First Responders to the classrooms that needed to go there to make sure that kids and understood what was going on so I like this program um a lot and I think it's really important and um I don't think anybody spoke to this but all of the Educators in the building um which includes support staff um cafeteria workers the people who greet everybody at the door all of us

058went through this training together so that we all had the same um conversation and the same common language and we know how to respond to it so I thought that was really important I guess I just had a couple questions for you p as far as like the capital funding goes um so I guess one concern I have because I have a high schooler is that there seems to be a number of and maybe it's just hearsay and rumor but um high school kids letting in other outside kids from different doors so they're not going to that front door they're being let in I know I can speak to my high school we have alarms on them and everybody just ignores them because kids are opening them all the time and nobody pays any attention

059to them so have we I don't know what the question is except for just to say like this is a problem that I feel exists um I think that there needs to be some maybe some collaboration with youth in the building to prevent that from happening I don't know maybe I'm making something it's one of the first things we addressed four years ago before we even started like we can get protocol calls and we can get machines and Technology to do all kinds of things but the most important technology of each one of us and how we respond and so probably the most important thing about all of this is that we talk about Safety and Security create protocols around it um not being a high school principal and I don't know if principal fock

060would even have an answer on how you stop high school kids from just doing the things that they do but if we have a staff in community that understands what our protocols are I walked up to the back door of the high school and two kids came running up with me and they're like you have a badge let me in I said no you need to go around and like that's painful painful to stand there like a pointy-headed administrator but like we love these guys and that's our job so I think it's it's a matter of um School culture and I don't know if anyone else feels differently or has more to say about that I think we all feel that I I do know that I had the opportunity to be an assistant principal

061in in Richfield at the high school um and I do know that the conversations we had had to do with um creating a safety minded culture right so the car like that that liberary Narrative of creating a culture of we all safe but also the installation of cameras that were motion activated so if you're opening the door you're getting your picture taken and we know that you open the door right because I think that the struggle with opening the door and there's an alarm is that there's no repercussion not that I'm a fan of repercussions however in order to ensure that we're taking this very seriously that I me that's a that thought that that we had I don't know if they went through with that so I guess it's a part of my question

062as far as the money that you need um to for other safety measures so with that so it says cameras card readers um door locks oh that was the other question I have for you so like are we just talking those Capital Safety Investments are there other ones hi Jen hello good evening the well as part of our boming referendum we did have a line item in there for deferred maintenance and I think it was about $3 and5 million that was set aside for security so with the high school being probably one of the bigger areas and we have 28 doors that lead outside and some of them are very remote um and I've just finished walking through with State Fire Marshall uh last month and some guidance with him so we are looking at

063upgrading some of our camera systems to these doors to this one some of the doors um that we'll once it's open we'll we'll take a picture of that individual opening that door as well as one of the things the outside or the they're they're inside but they're at an angle that will you'll be able to see them our doors have to be pushed out so they can't pull the door block their Vision or block the face so you'll be able to see them put in the corners one of the other things I have clarity on with the State Fire Marshall is delayed ESS um this was a big uh challenge of a number of years ago with the fire marshall with local municipalities and that and I was always under the impression and I know

064in previous districts they said no you couldn't do it State Fire Marshal says no you can do it as long as it's tied to your firearm the challenge there being oh my gosh the delayed eress will hold it won't open the door immed mediately they can we can hold it for 15 to 30 seconds hopefully that gives us enough time that somebody walking by or somebody seeing this or the camera catches the individual trying to do this as well but once that door opens the fire alarm goes off now is that something that we want to be doing is that something that you know we're going to have discussions with Paddock with the board ftic just to make sure that is you know we can do this fa welcome to come and cl which is

065the last classroom before you fall off the planet and that alarm is going off all the time and like it starts to you get like this you don't one of the other major things that's going to help us as well is going to a closed campus as well starting next year with you know I know lunches McDonald's is going to be very upset with us but I'm happy to write him a letter to say I apologize but you know security is our number one thing here for the district and for our students and staff so you know we are looking at different ways to help mitigate this and to move forward so there is some dollars now is there a lot that depends on your definition lot security can cost a lot you know we're

066looking at some of the other areas with the the double uh vestibules we have going when we did this I don't know and I haven't checked out the specifications when we designed them do they have the laminate glass some did some didn't I got to go back through to find out which ones did which ones didn't you're looking at roughly about uh I want to say $300 a square foot to add that to a piece of glass um but is it you know don't all of our buildings have it they have the vestibule but I'm not I don't know that all they have the laminate glass with it and an important part about this is you can make an investment in Safety and Security from a bond issue but cameras only last so long card

067readers only last so long so we need an ongoing source of infusion of funds over time and it's a it's a big gap in the funding formula but yeah like said we do have some dollars in the bond we are going to use those as best to our Abes as we can to to get the challenged areas taken care of and then put together a plan moving forward from there thank you so um I look forward to hearing more about what this is going to cost us at some point um and I just my last question I promise um Lieutenant Barnes so we have like these little magnetic strips so that our doors are always locked so that if they got they we going into a lock down we just remove those metal strip and

068the door automatically locked so that um teachers don't always have to like is that like even a thing anymore should I not be doing that I mean nobody's told me so yeah I you know everybody's facilities are different um I can tell you that part of our response would be that uh we would plan on either having a key to enter we we don't want people to open the door for us even if we had no I'm saying as a classroom teacher I just remove the metal strip and the door is automatically you know Ed I love you guys they address that and they really are against anything that requires a human being to think straight in the moment so if there's something about locking the door that requires you to intervene as a teacher

069they're saying you know they just showed videos of even a person trying to make the video of doing the thing got so nervous making the video they they were fumbling with the equipment they were fumbling with so the idea of I love you guys is that classroom doors are locked period and then there's a way for administrators to get in and out um and Jim might know more about the specifics of that myself like my door is always locked yes and then the kids to come in because of the metal Stoke they can just come in but when we going to the lockdown you just that sounds like a a good Sol anything that can slow slow someone down is a good thing anyway sorry Jim well there are other Technologies I know a lot

070an Noah and my colleague up there they've been going to more of a badge reader for all all doors including classroom doors so um it's a terribly expensive thing to do um but you know they have other funding sources that we don't have in there um so we also have what we call a Z1 key so all when we've gone through the the construction all the new cores uh as well as all the buildings have been re Reed and record so every every teacher has an interior called Z1 key that will lock that door uh with them and every teacher should have one they don't we have plenty available for them and that's usually one of our larger with new staff coming on on a first first qu on in the fall uh we got

071to get hit with a lot of Z1 key requests so you know we're trying to do our best with what we've got and we're moving forward with it but we're also trying to expand newer ideas as well I think it also there mentioning that Our Guest teachers all get that Z1 key on their ID when they check in so that's not a key if we lose that key it's not the end of the world because it doesn't allow them access to any buildings it only affords them the opportunity to lock up building or a door from inside and so I think that bears interest so our guest teachers have that and then um at Aquilla we have a blur and I I would love for this to be something that we uh formalize or cify

072systematized throughout our district Ro BL that goes on our sub plans and just informing guest teachers about that key um so that's something for for us to think about but sorry Casey yeah uh I wanted to go back to Sarah's question about drills and the policy and I wonder Eric if I put you on the spot because this question came up when we talked about this at Early Learning and I think especially talking about that age group and our younger elementary students are early Learners I think you talked really um well about the responsibility of adults and I think that kind of speaks to Sarah's concern or question about you know are we teaching are we like if we're invol what to what where's the line between teaching kids what the protocol is or teaching

073the language and actually like having them participate in in the drill right like where where is the line so do you do you know what I'm asking I think so okay so we um we did get that question and um we in early learning the lockdown are particularly they're scary for everyone but they really freak the little kids out because they don't understand it and we don't want to go into detail about why we're doing it so um we have made a decision during Workshop week when there are no children in the building because we also serve Kids Place preschool and they're they're year round but there are these two weeks during the year when there are no children in the building where we will go through the protocol and and the process of lockdown

074drill so that every every teacher parah assistant admin knows how to to go through the lockdown drill and so we also you know with question that you had um director arabo about um children with special needs like with young children there are different considerations that we have to take into account to kind of keep them calm to keep them quiet to keep them you know kind of contained in one part of the room so we've been really thoughtful about creating plans around songs books maybe having some sort of a little lock down bag of tricks that we can bring with us in the corner of the room to keep everyone occupied cuz 163 year olds are not going to stay quiet for a long time and you're turning the lights off it's it's just a

075scary thing am I am I I also tell me what I heard you say that really it's the adult responsibility and that what that what we're teaching our kids when we're teaching them about this is what is to listen to the adult in the room right like we're not teaching them how to do they're not taking responsibility for the drill no they what we're teaching them is these are like the simplest in the simplest terms possible like these five words this is what we do when when this when the the adult in your room says this is what we have to do right now and we're not really going into why and we're not practicing it and we're not saying like this is the hallway would you you you would use but so that kids

076just know like um what what it means to you know sh like shelter right or even just for younger kids right like you stay you stay right here the teacher tells you what to do right I think that's kind of what I heard yeah and I wanted to speak to what you asked about Dr Davis too at the up in duth um John Michael keys and uh the female officer who was kind of doing negotiations with the as salent walked through kind of this you know Blow by blow and it it was just minute by minute of of how the scene unfolded and how they responded to it and I will say that it was interesting to me that the uh First Responders were tending to the Intruder to some degree I mean I think

077that when you say that the person who is perpetrating this violence is in crisis himself herself there's in truth to that and I noticed and I wonder if um Lieutenant Barnes can speak to it about how there is like a negotiation aspect to it but um to try to create that off rant for the person person who's perpetrating um and there's certainly I you know as um Melissa Kinowski said room for us to to keep that front and center when we're training teachers and say remember let's look at the whole picture you know of course we hate what's happening here but the person who is here is in Christ of themselves so that's just a perspective to consider in my in my crier roles I would I spent uh 12 years as a crisis negotiator

078here in St Lis Park and our training and UC ation is around um Rapport building and empathy and trying to understand what led us to whatever incident got us there so that speaks to I think what you're saying uh and I think that that's how most of our officers would handle that uh when when confronted with somebody who is holding people hostage um that is that is uh not an easy problem to solve and it isn't just solved with force it is solved with understanding what got us to this point and building Rapport so that you can have influence on the outcome so yeah that makes sense well this has been a really great conversation we've spent nearly an hour on it which um which I think just speaks to people's interest I mean you

079guys had a thorough presentation so I think we really appreciate that and I think that there is a number of questions and comments and people really appr appreciating what you're talking through here and I I just I'm literally doing some feema training about crisis response which is a different type of crisis response and incident command stuff and I can't oh my gosh it is it's painful to do that training um there's other people that that's meant for but hearing that like the Simplicity of some of this training and everything really speaks to um what I appreciate but there is a component both in both of those which is uh common understandings I just want to say that PL language part of this and they really encourage us all to do FEMA training um so that's

080it's really in Lo step with FEMA well I won't help you with that because I'm I'm oh my gosh but I do appreciate again back to that common understanding where do you how do you respond to the situation what do you do and then what's a common language and making sure that people have that common language and it's simple and plain right there's a lot of technical stuff out there we want our police to have technical language for the technical things that they do but in a crisis moment we need to know what to do in a very simple way we don't understand what 77 MHz is or whatever right nobody knows I think I made that up so I don't think that's a real thing um but uh so I wanted to say that

081and I also wanted to say thank you to our community for the facility improvements that we have been able to make so far uh I think when I started on that learning design team I it was painful knowing where some of our buildings were at in terms of access um I know that we had slowly made some improvements and stuff but we had those secure access points came as a result of that referendum in 2017 yeah that and we made huge leaps or just having like at the middle school we had such a failure of of a of a a a situation there and stuff and so I'm really appreciative that we've gotten to that point and I know that we're looking and we continue to do that in terms of our hallways and how

082we have things set up and I think even just making some of the improvements at Aquilla are going to help with some of that just flow and where people are at and I think about way finding and signage and all of those things too helps people you don't have suddenly 10 people that are in an office and you know where people are at but they're in Secure places where they can go that can securely hold people and everything so again appreciative of so much of what the community has to offer and I'm sure we could talk for several more hours but it's summer you guys I know aren't totally on break but but you're kind of on break and and we do have a couple more things to get on it so thank you very

083much appreciate you guys all here tday thank you thank you but director Magnuson doesn't get all to director Magnus who um loves talking budget yes is here to talk to more budget with us and I'll let her get herself prepared for that and um and whenever you're ready PR and I think do every know that like after two years of still are you just waiting for things to sink up there director magn yes I am so I can get started um do you think it's not gonna go just need a minute okay thank you good evening um I'm here to talk about the um our proposed 2425 budget um what we want to do is have the board prepared to take action at your final meeting um in June to adopt the budget as statutorily

084required before July 1st this is the big picture of the um budget timeline and do you see the little star way at the bottom um we're almost through a you know can you believe how quickly a year goes and how much um ground we've covered so here we are at the approval part of um of the budget process so we had some board approved assumptions and I just want to um prepare you I you've probably seen this in the presentation already I don't think there's a pathway to get to 8% in the budget assumptions um the way we've laid out expenditures um and the available Revenue with the costs Rising particularly in transportation the way they are um I'm confident in putting together the budget that we that we presented um that we'll present tonight

085and the midyear budget that there is potential room that we might get to 8% by the end of this year we're still getting bills coming in and we haven't finalized all of our Revenue I think we did a conservative approach to revenue in mid year um but we'll continue to do all we can and I suppose I should just front and load this because that's the news of this presentation we're very close to 8% which is above the board's policy of 6% but it's not what we had presented to you with Finance advisory committee what we're going to start doing this year is um once a month budget manager meetings and our goal will be to um make sure we're attending to every month what is it that we need to do to even make

086budget cuts during the school year if we have to to get to to hold to the budget we have and to get to 8% as a goal the other assumptions that are included are the 2% general education funding formula we've got 4,212 students projected in 309 kindergarteners this afternoon we had 320 kindergarteners um with an application in our enrollment system I'm trying to gather some data about how many of those don't end up becoming kindergarteners it's not enough at 320 to ensure we'll get the 309 but I'm feeling optimistic we we have changed a lot of things in the enrollment process with the sites and with our Central enrollment and with the communications department and I think things are going much more smoothly for our families and um we're already beginning our communication with families

087who have enrolled um so uh that is a reduction of about 80 students from current projections or from current year uh based on what our history has been and there are no fee changes for local revenue and again I'm just reminding us that our finance advisory committee's goal was to focus on expenditures my plan would to be to would be to invite our finance advisory committee members which will include one or to Schoolboard members and our community members to join us in our budget meetings um I have some experience with that in another District where community members just walk alongside us and in this next iteration on expenditures we need the entire team um to be a part of those conversations we can't really manage expenditures from from central office so here's some other budget

088assumptions that you should know about as we built the budget we did increase special education Revenue in next year's budget to reflect those increased expenses this year so we've got more Revenue that you'll see is helping us to balance next year's budget but if our expenses continue to rise at the pace they did this year for transportation we're we're in a vicious cycle and we've got to get a handle on that I want you to know also that Park Adam transportation for instance is already partnering with us to reduce bills to think about ways that we might interpret the contract in ways that are more favorable to the district they reduced a bill just this well I guess was the end of last week um after some conversation but more importantly we need to look

089at um how we're referring students for specialized types of transportation and if in fact it's required then we do it but are there ways to do it in the most efficient way possible we have employee contracts which are mostly settled thank you director CER um reflected in um our budget assumption that we have Market based increases in transportation I do have a very aggressive budget for transportation assuming that we can get our this pattern of growth under control of just exponential growth we have a 5% increase in utilities we know our property and liability insurance rates which haven't gone up and we did reestablish a $200,000 District contingency which is normal um this is the major overview for all of the budget just to show you by fund on the on the left is the

090fiscal 2024 um forecasted beginning fund balance which is what we're hoping we end the fund balance and working toward ending the fund balance this year our projected revenues in each fund for next year our projected expenditures and where we project that we will end the year and that's where we are at 7.56% um these are are the major funds operating funds include the general fund the school nutrition fund and the community service fund and a non-operating fund but where a lot of tax levy dollars and expending happens is within the debt service fund so we wanted to reflect that on this page as well so we'll get into more of the details this is our our traditional fund balance page and I wanted you to see it um we've talked about this many times in

091our budgeting conversations all the different line items of Reserve spending and all of the different funds that exist within the school district and just visually first is the general fund so there's um if you look here $81 million of expenditures in total only 65 million of them are not restricted for spending in some specific way so we have to be really cautious about the way we um assign spending to different funding categories um so that we can um maintain the requirements of each of those statutory set of sites I highlighted a few things that I just want to make sure you're seeing are unassigned um revenues and expenses are balanced this budget asks that we use $400,000 of our Severance Reserve um we have a total of $600,000 built into the budget for severance however

092you can see that the capital projects um Levy for technology we've moved some staff into that as we had planned into that fund balance and we're also making an investment in um Capital Equipment this year into that um line item and then operating Capital um as we are understanding what's actually been spent this year we're starting from a higher starting point than is actually in the budget but we wanted to reflect that here because we do have some operating Investments next year in curriculum and other needs that we um wanted to make sure we're reflected here we'll go through some more details on the general fund the school nutrition fund um you can see is going from a $1.2 million fund balance we held Revenue in school nutrition we did get a question about that

093thank you for sending that Advance um director Williams we did not increase the school nutrition budget for next year we did the study of where we're at for this year and establish the current Year's budget and rather than assume that we know what might happen with participation for next year we held the budget flat and we'll start to study what participation looks like we're optimistic with a Clos campus with our new cafeteria and kitchen that our high school revenues will increase but you won't see that reflected here and as we move through the year and start to see activity which we have a lot of data that comes immediately from a cash register right into our computers from the first day of school so we'll be able to watch that Revenue we did increase expenditures

094however um there are six staff members positions that are open that we removed from the midyear budget update we'll be reinstating obviously those open positions as we start the year AR fresh in hopes that we can fill them we have some school buildings that will need additional hours based on just the the programmatic needs and we're considering the idea of bringing in um someone into the Central School nutrition office that would focus on menus some of the things that you heard us talk about at the last meeting making sure that we're um continuing to implement the things that we learned out of that um that Federal grant so we do anticipate um that even with um without an increase in Revenue we'll have sufficient balance to to cover the school nutrition program the Community Education

095Program is also balanced and and staying relatively stable um director Howard Works through that with her community ed advisory Council um there's so many reserves in community ad it looks very much like replica of the general fund there a little operation happening um with or a major operation happening um in community service there's a lot of areas we don't budget so um I've spent years of my career trying to budget for what we're going to earn on interest and what's going to be spent by June 30th to only end up at the end of the year trying to explain to communities and Boards why we're off $5 million in the building construction fund when it there's just no way of knowing how far the roof is going to be done and build by June 30th

096so um I've taken up a practice with along with other colleagues and other districts of not attempting to budget that but knowing that we know how much is available in the built-in construction fund um and that that's that's what we're working within and with our construction updates and our weekly or bi-weekly construction meetings we watch that budget closely Debt Service is a large fund and it carries a fund balance which is required um and every year through the levy process we have to we have to Levy for 105% so 5% more than what we need to pay the principal in interest on our bond issues and that accurs in a fund balance and then the state tells us how fast we can pay that back to taxpayers it can't be used in the general fund

097or SCH nutrition building construction anywhere else it belongs to our taxpayers so you'll see a negative line item every year in the tax levy in September and then again in December and that's to um as we build up fund balance the state meters out how quickly you can pay it back so it just improves our um tax rates lowers our taxes um ultimately but it's an important part of who we are as a district so here's our revenues by Major fund I stuck um 2023 actual out there we're in the third year of implementing our new um Finance system so our data is so much more easily accessible Under One Roof right now but our general fund Revenue um is anticipated to go up as is our community service fund Revenue Debt Service is basically

098flat and as I told you we did not change our projections around school nutrition this is a just a pie a way of seeing it um we talk about the general fund the most because it is the biggest part of our revenue and our spending sort of organization wide in these active funds The Debt Service fund of course being the next largest active fund so here's some detail then around the general fund property taxes um this coming year which were taxes payable in 24 so it was the tax levy that the board approved last December are included in next year's um tax levy budget and that's going up by about $1.3 million two things happening there it's the operating referendum and the voter most of it's voter approved actually it's the operating referendum and um

099the capital projects Levy for technology both of those have an inflationary Factor associated with them thankfully it's a growing source of funding most um the the general fund and the technology um area the technology fund are largely staff driven and to have a funding source that is um connected to inflation is really important and that's reflected here and we are very thankful to our voters for approving that um that type of formula we have some fees Admissions and interest I um crank down the um our interest um assumption around revenue for next year we had some really good interest rates this year I'm not I just don't want to believe um as I'm building a budget to fit expenditures within um that that that's going to continue so we did drive down the the revenue

100associated with interest earnings but we also don't budget for donations and grants and other things that we did update in our midyear budget so we start back from square one so if someone gives us a donation that has expenses attached to it we'll budget for both so that's also reflected here that we don't pretend to know how many gifts and donations will be coming to us there's sometimes little oneoff grants that occur as well our state revenue is um projected to go up by 2.9 Million the funding formula itself is going up by 2% but our enrollment is going down by 2% so that's basically offset this is um nearly 100% special education funding based on the new funding formula which does increase over time and based on our increased spending from this year that

101will reflect it in next year's revenue and our federal revenue is basically flapped I I believe this year we had a few um carryover dollars that we were using up over time it might be that we end up with carryover after this year as well but um there's really no story in federal we're out of the the covid years is that why everyone out no that had been done you know in 2023 we had mostly it's we had some carryover funds so if you don't spend for instance all the title funding it can carry over into the following years so you can grow your budget a little bit sort of like with a fund balance in federal um and we aren't anticipating that for next year that we'll have any carryover in Federal I I

102do know about can I ask now about I mentioned this at a prior meeting but I'm really interested to understand the title funds that come through to our schools and how those are allocated um what does that mean that that looks different in those schools from other schools and like how much funding I think at one point you said if we had another school that qualified as a title school it's not like we get more money just has to be divided and so at some point it would be really helpful to understand how that yeah plays out yeah but my understanding what happening so this is um then just a pie chart of that same Revenue to give you a sense of how much we depend on state aid as part of our funding and

103when that funding formula is only Rising by 2% like it is next year um that does not keep place with what pace with what we know is just inflation on utilities not to mention what staff um cost increases are um and what they're they're facing in their own households and as a result of inflation um property taxes is the next largest part of our funding so we really rely on those two sources of funding federal revenue was a you know more of a 5% SCE of our PI during covid and was really important and then we do have some local Revenue that helps supplement our budget well it's a small tiny slice of the pie it's really important um to our overall budget I wanted to give you a sense for what's happening just within

104that big old pie of state aid so there's a few um categories of state aid that are formula driven the majority of that being the basic funding formula that makes up over 70% of just what's in state aid and look at what's happened with special ed used to be you know more of a about half of that you know more 10 12% of our budget and because of the changes that were made in the 2023 legislative session the special ed funding formula changed dramatically so funding went up but this also reflects the growing cost of special education overall in districts it's a mirror image of what's happening with cost we also um get a little bit of Transportation Aid um and there was a little bit of extra legislative Aid out of 2022 the school

105and Library Aid um um uh support staff Aid um we've built those in I wanted you to sort of see while those are really important and highlights of the legislative session our bread and butter is that funding formula it's super important and special ed of course um is an important part of our budget and then this is what property taxes look like as I was telling you the majority of property taxes is in that blue and orange so it's that capital projects Levy for technology voter approved and that .8 um 57 million is the operating referendum also voter voter approved so the majority of what's happening are voter approved levies the capital related levies are the long-term facility maintenance Levy that's dedicated to um deferred maintenance and operating capital and there's some lease levies in

106there as well then there's some items that are in that are approved by the Department of Education like um achievement integration Aid un employment um Revenue so things that are dependent upon how we want to spend and if we can get um the spending approved by the Department of Education so that's what happens in property taxes we'll dig through that in detail this fall when we set the L for next year and I'm going to flip over to expenses so these are all of the funds across the board um the general fund is not Rising um is rising at a really um slow pace and we'll talk about that a little more 2.38% the school nutrition fund we've built in some increases to school nutrition part of it being reminding you that there were six

107staff members that um that were not filled so we removed that budget when we did this update so late in the year um so we're um assuming that those positions will be filled come next year were they not filled because we didn't need them or were they not filled because they applied nobody applied got um we also we had the same situation with custodians but it's buried in a larger general fund so you don't really see the impact of that as much um here's our expenditures then by Major fund Again The Debt Service fund just like revenues in general um fund being the majority of where our activity happens for expenditures and then as a reminder as we think about Cost Containment that the you know some things we do is push expenses out of

108the general fund into other areas like a charge back to the community service fund because there are things that we do at the district office that supports community service Human Resources um lights and heat things that are paid for out of the general fund but community service participates in that school nutrition the same we push as many expenses as we can into those categories we push them into Federal funding within the general fund we push them into all of our other specialized Revenue sources long-term facility maintenance capital projects Levy we try to stretch every dollar as far as we can to keep this comprehensive program going Debt Service fund stands alone there's nothing um it stands by itself and Debt Service funds are voter approved and meant for and can only be used to service

109debt here's a little bit of detail just on the general fund expenditures um salaries and benefits are going up by about 3.3 8% if you didn't see the email I sent out I thank you to director Williams we had a line item in the wrong category and so it made these numbers look somewhat strange but salaries and benefits are going up by about 3.38% which is you know a little above the pace of our contract settlements we do have a new administrative structure that's included in this budget that we're committed to for next year um we replenish the ency um all the the other thing that would impact this and drive the cost down are that we reduce the severance budget to $600,000 in the midyear budget was increased at almost $850,000 based on this

110year's um activity and but it's back down to the normal pace for next year so that's why you you don't see a a larger increase on the salary and benefits line what happened with purchase services and supplies and equipment basically what we've done um this this year that's a little bit different the sites um are allocated funds for the programs based on the number of students projected and this year instead of trying to um anticipate where those line items should be we we placed the entire budget for side allocations in a 401 code which is a supply code so you'll see you see an increase in supplies and a decrease in um purchase services and that's what's happening there is we just swept all of those things up and then principles and other um department

111leaders can start fresh and allocate their budgets um when we start meeting this summer so this is what the expenditures look like um salaries and benefits as you've always known 76% um sometimes I've seen salary and benefits budgets in districts be closer to 80 85% um we do have um well that's that includes all salaries and benefits even those that are in long-term facility Main in capital projects so those are all part of the general fund um purchase Services being the next largest portion that's where you'll find transportation and we also have our substitute teachers um paid for as an outside service so it shows up in purchase Services as well so that's a really um robust category for a district like ours so here's some things that you know this is a um very

112tight budget and we need to watch every penny um as we go into next year it's um we didn't make budget cuts this year and I thought about that whether that was the right move or not I think the approach we take going into next year is going to be very important that we are Mindful and watching this budget every month um we start to build um a space for our community members to be a part of the conversation because if we do move into another set of budget cuts we're going to need a community that understands where we're spending our money so we can make really um thoughtful decisions about those but so that's the sobering news the positive news for this district is we have a 10-year operating referendum and a community that

113supports public education in St Louis Park that was last renewed in 2017 we are at the cap and we are um like many districts and we have an inflationary Factor um like many districts built in so we have voter approval to really maximize our Revenue that's available under funding formulas that's really important um we have a 10-year Pro capital projects Levy for technology that's important for our technology program but we're also funding a lot of staff that support our media centers that support Communications that support the enrollment center and support technology so that is a super important part of not only the technology it's a space where we could pay for um uh Safety and Security I've seen districts increase a tech Levy for Safety and Security um but we have that in place from

1142022 and it's in place for 10 years back on the operating referendum it can be renewed by vote by board approval now as well after the 2023 session so that's other good news um for future boards to think about we have long-term facility maintenance funding in place which it's been around a long time but it was new at some complaint in my career I just know how important it is to have a place for different maintenance we are now picking up some staff in long-term facility maintenance some of the team that works um with Jim um we attach to long-term facility maintenance funding it you'll be approving that budget which the department of Ed has to approve at our next meeting and that's in place I'd like it to do more but it's an important

115part of what we do and a cou and a few years ago um the district set up an OPB Trust which set aside funds for other post-employment benefits and in 2020 we started an annual Levy because we do not have enough funds in that trust to pay for our liability into the future so now we have an annual Levy in place that can make sure that we can fund each year of our um liabilities under the opep trust until we get to a point where the trust is sufficient to cover the remaining liability we do not have new staff members coming into the district since a long long time ago um you know early 2000 looking for Rick um that have um this is other post-employment benefits so we don't have new staff members coming

116into districts probably anywhere in the state that have retire health and health benefits anymore so this is paying um the health benefits of those that are current that were on plans at the time that change was made so there's a lot of good things in place that keep us table um so here's what we're going to be doing we're going to continue to look for efficiencies we have to adjust staff to reflect enrollment and Bs you're already hearing about class sizes for next year and that energy is only going to get hotter and it's it's really important to all of us that we have really good class sizes because that's one of the things that is really great about St Louis Park we have great class sizes for the most part particularly at element we

117will watch well I watch nearly every day how many kids are enrolling and we go there's a process of students withdrawing as well over the summer and we have history about that and it's um it's not easy to tell somebody who's worried about their child being in a classro that looks like it might be 30 or a teacher that looks like it might be 30 to say just hang on just hang on have faith and then what's even worse is we they hang on and we get to August 30th and we were wrong not as you know it's a good problem to have that we have enrollment that's higher but if um it's August 29th and we need to add a section that's not the greatest news but my I'm here to advocate for we

118wait to add staff until we know that we absolutely need it we're not in a position to add staff to sit on the sidelines um our Energy Efficiency is really important and as we make our new changes um through the bond issue we'll have um greater Energy Efficiency we have a self-funded dental and medical program which keeps our costs down this year we know it kept our cost down to comp compared to what other districts we're experiencing around us um and that helps us keep the costs of our salary settlements with and benefit settlements with employees down um we need to do ongoing Cost Containment measures and I think we'll be looking at budget reductions in some way this here so here's what's happening next I'd like to lay this out because I think sometimes

119we forget what year were in this afternoon I forgot what year we were in I thought 2023 was two years ago so I you know sometimes we're just working in three different fiscal years so we'll be having you approve so we're in fiscal 24 still until June 30th and we'll be working on the audit and completing that in November we the Auditors are coming next week um so we have um the approval hopefully at our next meeting of the 2025 budget and we'll be reviewing expenditures all year long sort of across the board planning for next year looking back at what we did last year and doing this year we've got enrollment that will be a super important part of our budget we'll know more about that in October and then in March we'll be

120um back doing a midyear budget update of fiscal year 2025 if not earlier and then come September we'll be doing our first steps for the fiscal 26 budg which is the property tax levy so that happens in September we'll start our 2026 budgeting process this fall um final taxes for fiscal year 2026 will be coming up this coming December and then we'll be back again with assumptions for fiscal 2026 so we're we're continually working in three fiscal years um and learning from the past and trying to apply those lessons to the Future do you have any questions about the budget always said there presentation did you have a question oh yeah just a quick question um I think we kind of talked about the midye budget but uh for the 25 budget what's the difference

121between the um 7.5% that we're looking at that we oh the dollar amount it's about $300,000 it covers between 250 and 300,000 it's awfully tempting to just bury it somewhere and not expose it to the board because it's grounding error but I want you to know that I'm not sure we're going to get there and I don't want to be more optimistic than I can be and Dr McGuire and I had that conversation and I wanted you to just know this is where I think we're at I just I'll follow up to that because I'm looking at the paper that you gave out about the areas that are not budgeted and so you these are not accounted for within that within that right they're separate from the general fun so one thing you might be

122looking at is under the trust and agency fund there's a negative balance with um The Children First financials they um that that group ended last year with a negative um fund balance and at the moment we don't we don't budget for what revenues we might receive from Children First we don't budget for their expenditures either but we do have a good sense of what is being spent because that process through District cers um it appears that that deficit amount is going to grow from last year end to this year end um we are working diligently to try to work through that process and um anticipate that children first will will cover those costs but will that assuming that grow by the end of this fiscal year will that impact our so that 7.56 will be

123reduced it'll it it will be reduced so as if as a part of down to s% it could go as low as that 7% if we have to cover that deficit from the general fund which is the only way we can do it we cannot close the trust and agency Fund in total it with a negative balance okay thank you well my other question have the floor is I gather that based on what you're saying what you said that there's not been movement yet on the Susan L in fourth grade section I'm just asking that's not the only place so I was paying attention but then I was thinking about something else so when you can you just go back to the um your comment about the renewal of the 10e it was either the

124operating Levy or the capital the operating referendum or the which it's the operating referendum that boards now have authority to renew we wanted to increase we we couldn't do that but we are in the position of being at the top of the because we're capped yeah because we're CT so I would think that in a future renewal it could look the same you know I haven't talked through any details with the financial advisor connected to inflation operating yeah so you could renew it as is which is still connected to inflation and is that one time only to just is that the one that's to so does it then that then the next time it comes up it has to go out for sorry but I just want I appreciate the clarity thank you so I

125guess my other my only other like comment um is that I think some of the feedback that we've gotten as a board and maybe more personally I suppose is that we have a lot of new Administration coming in um and so here talking about potential budget cuts for next year is really disheartening my I'm looking at you Kate give us hope Dr M I can do that so one one thing I I think that is important and patri you correct me if I'm op um while there are lots of new human bodies coming in it's because people like me are retiring we have other retirements in the system right we have people leaving the system so it seems like we're announcing to you every other day that we have new staff coming on board the

126only change in administrative Staffing for next school year is one assistant superintendent right and then we have two elementary schools where we're going to be adding an assistant principal but it's offset by a reduction in two staff we made at those buildings oh that's right so it's a minimal we are not adding two assistant principles at two buildings and not removing other St staff there is a little small increase in in cost I believe when we costed it it was like $20,000 at each building so that's a total of $40,000 for 2 APS because we're eliminating two positions so there's one significant human being position that's been and K can we be really clear the positions that were eliminated are not teacher positions correct they correct thank you they are not teacher positions they are

127um called an elementary support supervisor um it's not a par educator position and but it is also not a teacher position and the hope is by investing in these new positions that we will increase learning have direct student um impact through learning and which will help and teacher support because you're picking up two assistant principles who can help with the teaching and learning function growth and development for teachers at buildings support for teachers at buildings from a licensed administrator okay thank you sorry can I just add know I'm about this um the other thing that I believe you'll gain which is why I made the recommendation is you'll have a new superintendent who can spend the time doing community engagement that I have not been able to do now I haven't been able to do

128it for several reasons but um a superintendent can't do what I believe you um need and your community deserves around Community engagement with various groups when they're they've got the most direct reports of any leadership member in the organization right I'm not second I'm not doubting my decision to support this and I'm not doubting my I'm just needed a little bit of a reminder of how why we made the decisions that we did and why we believe that they are the best decisions for the district I just to biggy back on that we were thinking that there's going to be high return on investment here too so some things that will help us in terms of what we see delivered in our class room and what draws people to our community as well which we

129talk about student enrollment and I think that that's a key thing is we have to see some some higher success rates some other I've shared that with um as a matter of fact I've used the language that our school board has made an additional investment and I've used that word investment because you expect a return on that investment student outcome that our community is demanding and deserves yeah and our students yeah for sure okay was there anything else we again we feel like we're always I think pretty well up to speed and and just invite the community if they have any questions I mean watch the videos but also I know that our staff are pretty responsive too can help out so really do appreciate it and we have nothing to vote on tonight related

130to that you um thank you we we will move on to the consent agenda we have as I mentioned before one item on here does anybody want to remove that think so it is recommended that the school board approve the consent agenda with the following items for May 28 2024 school board meeting has presented do I have a motion on that so move move by director Williams second I'll second I'll second it all those in favor say I any oppos pass 7 Z great all right now we get to welcome as has become the tradition the closer uh we have I mean we don't he's not the closer because we have one more thing after after this but we have I think it's 7 A through Z tonight um not quite but several here and

131um but we'll do motions for all of these independently because they're all different agreements but we have director PR here the director of human uh resources to talk about a couple things so before we get started on that it's recommended that school board approve the 20 2426 terms and conditions and employment for the operation supervisors as presented so can I have a motion to get this before us so moved moved by uh director Mancini do I have second second second by director Casey okay now uh it's up to you chair members of the board superintendent um first of all I just want to say Wow to Patricia for the budget presentation and the amount of work that she does with HR and me to make these contracts possible so um I know we talk about

132it every spring that we have a very close relationship um because you can't spend what you don't have and so we work very closely on on the parameters and the self-funded insurance plans and all of that which makes it my job much easier so thank you Patricia um so tonight the operation supervisors the operation supervisors um is a a group of people who started off as just the building operation supervisors they were uh uh let's say the the the supervisors of custodians and we have um expanded this this concept um where people kind of come out of the ranks and then become supervisors of the technical people that they're supervising um so we have the the custodians who typically have promoted into building operation supervisors we have the nutrition operation supervisor which typically would have

133come up through the nutrition ranks um and we put in two I think we could have called them office managers uh but we used the term building operation supervisors for the middle school and the high school and they oversee the office function um in the middle school and the um High School uh we did very similar things with this group as we've um done with our other groups um clarifying the language moving things of defining what prata means um adding June 19th as as an official holiday um all of the things that we've talked about in all the other contracts um this is these are these mimic the the contracts we' brought before the board do we have any questions about this again thankful for the work that these people do to help manage and

134support all the work that's happening around here so uh we've had a motion in a second all those in favor say I I any CL passes zero at 7B it is recommended that the school board approve the 2024 26 terms and conditions of employment for the technical employees has presented do have a motion on that still moved second okay and you guys got that so all right let's bring It Forward okay um our technical employee group has also grown um and I would say you know as things get more complicated you need uh people with different levels of sophistication to run computer systems student Information Systems our enroll our online enrollment functions um our our our benefits uh people who who are managing all of these enrollment systems that we have for for benefits and

135um those positions are in our technical unit where they're um uh our clerical function um usually supports a supervisor or man manages the you know the day-to-day functions of of of of a department and the technical people really have to know the guts of some of the systems they're working with and they they're they are they are the kind of the district e experts on some of these functions so we have six people in the technical group um again um all of the things are the same um that we did through here um I can't think of anything new to say about any the things uh we've had a great group of of people who've worked with us to to make really make our our our our contracts standardized so we look like we all

136work at the same company and um um I appreciate the work that that's gone into that by um all of our groups and and not I would say not demanding to be out of line in any of our our specific categories we're very consistent as we go across our groups all right any questions a motion in a second so all those in favor say I iOS pass 7 Z all right employee contracts uh it is recommended the school board approve the 2024 26 contracts for individual directors as presented do have a motion to bring this for so moved moved by director Williams throughout second I'm gonna take that as a second CIA take all right so sure I got my right pieces of paper here we have a number of contracts in here yeah so

137number um so when um on May 28th the board approved what would be what we would consider to be the terms and conditions of employment for anybody who would be in the administrated group it's how much do we pay for health insurance what is it uh what are the salary ranges what how much vacation do people get all of those things uh what What's before the board tonight is the renewal of U the individual uh contracts for the uh Director of Business Services the director of uh Community Education the director of Information Services uh the director of teaching and learning and that would be Dr Lafayette and Dr Duppy um and the the six-month contract for the Director of Human Resources so um uh that's before you tonight we have already uh we've already separately

138as we hired uh a new director of student services we brought that to you in May and the the assistant superintendent Dr Moy um that was brought to you already um back in May yeah so the six months is um is because uh you didn't negotiate just a six-month contract for the heck of it but that's because director cry will be retiring I will be retiring at the end of December the end of December so that will be another position that we will be hiring for but that we have the benefit of having your continued support of human resour services for the next 6 months which will be helpful with all this transition so is there any questions about any of these I question one is is it normal that they're for two years is

139that I know years is six months and I know is that a normal thing for two years um we we've always we've always done two-year contracts we've done three-year contracts with the superintendent uh we've done twoyear contracts with the directors yeah um and is that standard for like for principles principles are covered under the teacher tenure act and they have continuing contract rights like a teacher does and then how is it determine the range and step okay so we have um we have an overall compensation structure that we go from step one to step 30 and um every single job gets evaluated using a a point factor job evaluation system that's required by the state of Minnesota under the pay Equity act and so each job gets evaluated rated and then a certain number of

140points based on that rating which then translates into a salary range within our system any other questions all right all those in favor say I I any opposed pass it 7 Z all right it is recommended that the school board approve this is 7D for those filing at home it is recommended that school board approve the the 2024 26 aquatic supervisor contract as presented um do I have a motion to bring this forth so move moved by an director Casey you have second second second by director manini all right director yes um so we have we have two positions that um fall outside of our general employee agreements uh we have one is the assistant super or the the executive assistant to the superintendent and School Board um that uh that position has a 2-year

141individual contract that parallels our professional bargaining group uh or a professional group and this aquatic supervisor which is a unique position in our community ed um Department um it's Kathy Taylor who does all of the swimming lessons and other things um and so each of these uh this contract is um for a 7 FTE position for Kathy Taylor any other questions any questions all right all those in favor say I I any opposed 70 all right uh it is recommended that the school board approve the employee employee agreements as presented these our fourthe appropriation do we have a motion moved by uh Anderson do we have a second I'll second it okay and and again as uh we mentioned this at I think our May 28th meeting um I foreshadow that we might have one

142or two additional um uh of these uh probationary extensions that come up where we believe that people have the potential we know that they're going to we hope that they're going to get there um if if we didn't do this then they would become tenured and that would be you know a much different process if it doesn't work out and so uh we're betting that this is going to work out the people are betting that they're going to be able to make it and um we're you know we're very excited that um uh that we're going to have another year to work with the two individuals and um hopefully they you know they get to be long-term St Louis Park employees questions here I just want to understand the probation how the probation things works

143you give three years then you give one years oh yeah just confusing so yeah so the um under the teacher tenure law um that the the first three years in any one Public School District would be considered your probationary period so and a person can be let go for any reason during those first three years sometimes it's budgetary sometimes it's performance sometimes just it wasn't the right fit or Direction changes and and um the position isn't uh required any longer um after a person in Minnesota after a teacher in Minnesota and this this includes assistant principles and principal once they've completed that three years if they move to another school district they must complete one year of probation in that second school district and so that so that's why sometimes it's three years sometimes it's

144one year if somebody worked uh in another school district for 3 years and we hire we only get one year uh of probation with that person but if we hire him straight out of college we get three years with them any other questions here okay all those in favor say I I any post passes 7 Z director cry you are dismissed from the table we appreciate your ongoing efforts here as always um that does bring us up to 7 F which is a second reading of policies 102 equal education opportunity for 18 drug free workplace it is recommended that the school board approv policies 10 two Ed equal education 418 directe workplaces as presented we have a motion to bring this forward moved by uh director Davis do we have a second second by director

145Casey all right um I know you all had the chance to talk about this um two weeks ago when I was not able to be here I was traveling for work apologies for that and I know Dr Maguire uh explained all of this in great details so the only change um which is something that you all talked about from what you saw last time is in policy 102 which is related to um the general statement of policy paragraph 2A where the initial proposed language that came from msba suggested that gender identity and expression are included within sexual orientation which we know that they are not and so it just literally removes the word in cluding which is highlighted in blue and crossed off and that's the only change so I don't know if folks have

146other other questions but I know Kate Kate more than filled in for me she's she's first team on second team here so um I don't know folks have other questions otherwise questions just to support that change I just because you weren't here I I did mention it that mean that is how it's listed in the human rights act the way that we changed it too and we have also made that change in a lot of our other policies so it's consistent with our our other polies yes and I I did look it some of that when I was all right well then no questions and all those in favor say I I andos 7 Z guess what that brings us to number eight on our agenda Communications and transmittance who wants to transmit something today

147or communicate Prov funny tonight you know summer whatever okay anybody and I know that director Casey's itching to share some some stuff here so I I will I can go after you I just was gonna say it's um pride month and so just want to acknowledge that it's pride month I got this last year at the it's called the storing that correctly um and just uh want to say to our lgbtq uh plus students families staff and community members we see you we value we we welcome you here and happy PR you uh I get to go to the um Senior Resource Fair earlier today um which was great there were um tons of resources for um at linox for our seniors and one of the resources that was there it's not not just for

148seniors so I just wanted to give it a little shout out today it's our Fair it's the fair program which is a nonprofit where you can get um fresh produce and frozen meats up to 40% off of retail price all are welcome no questions asked they accept EVT cash and credit and it's tomorrow which is why I was thinking I should bring today so it's tomorrow um 4: to 6: pm. at um at M lopin Church on Windle Avenue South so fair for all f a r e for all next and I also wanted to ask that our um I got to travel with our ultimate frisbe team this weekend they came in second last week in the state and then we traveled to Nationals uh in Rockford Illinois over the weekend and came in

149fifth in the country so um that is amazing it um the state the state the final game actually conflicted with our graduation so the State final was played by seven sophomores and juniors the the scrappy seven is how many people you have to have on the field so they had no subs um and they played up until the moment like towards the end of the game when a few of our seniors made it um just for the very very end they all ran onto their field their cats and gowns um and got a huge um Ovation for that so um shout out to the scrappy 7 who played that game and got us um got the the kids that second place um in the state and huge shout out to all of the kids who

150played in Nationals this week and represented St Louis Park um so well in the in their spirit and their sportsmanship um it was really a treat to see them play can I just want to go back to that fair forall and to say that um the other announcement that most people should have gotten messages about today was from the district about the food um program that's being offered I think at U two three sites the Middle School Aquilla and Peter Hobart and there's more information probably online too maybe somewhere about that if people did not get that information but that is available to anybody in the community as I understand so lots of resources if you know people who are food insecure or whatever lots of great or you yourself are who and secure L

151resources yeah I got a chance to attend uh cultural event High School cultural events which happened in middle school and it was great event uh I was surprised to see a lot of diverse group which I didn't know they were in our schools uh it was the I remember too I didn't know we have too in our schools and people right uh toan males so many different Palestinian too it was great so uh I think students and NTA organized non traditional academics St happen every year too um I also had a chance to to uh stop by the the senior beir today uh my way to the cak meeting the community head advisory Council uh I know they had phenomenal turnouts so I think that was very successful then um the the big news from

152the cak meeting was I just want to shout out uh Patrice Howard and her team uh like Patricia had presented uh the community service uh team was able to uh did an excellent job in ensuring that their fund uh was balanced in FY 25 and I know a ton of work went into that so I thank the team and Patrice for that um and then just lastly um I know the the Susan lingren families or the Susan lingren PTO is looking for Susan lingren families um to volunteer for their um Garden this summer they need some help uh managing their Garden so if you have a chance to check out their site or their Facebook page uh to sign up for some gardening shifts that' be great well I just wanted to do a shout

153out to the students in stamp of St Louis Park because um welcome to summer summer furong for those of us who are Educators started out the year was um challenging and I think that this was a challenging year in a lot of ways for um many of the staff and so I just appreciate the stability that they offered our our district and um stepping up in leadership roles that they probably didn't anticipate happening and I know as um to speak as a parent um I think that this was by far the best year that my daughter has had um in a long time I mean I understand that like Co was in there so that's tough um but I think that the her teachers at the high school just showed up every single day for

154those kids and um they provided that stability that they the kids really needed um sense that feeling of safety and things like that so I um I just appreciate that the um for a lot of Educators myself included sometimes summer represents a time for healing and Rejuvenation so I just hope that um everybody gets what they need this summer so that we can start the next school year is super strong I have lots and lots of Hope for it I think it's going to be great I'm excited um so I appreciate everything that that the staff and the students did to kind of pull together the community yeah I did have a resource I wanted to share because food insecurity was brought up so um Shiloh Tempo International Ministries is not St Louis Park but

155is at 121 West Broadway has a food pantry on Wednesdays and Tuesdays I think Thursdays as well but you can call the Ministries or go to the Ministries it's for anyone you don't have to live in the the area just bring your ID you tell them how many kids you have and then they give you a meal to take while to go home and then you can shop while you're there thank you um I want to uh I think there's a pride related event with some uh Community reading of some uh to celebrate pride month coming up on the 22nd I believe is um so there's some information I think that's out there in the community about that um I know that a number of our students are heading off to Japan my son included

156here and next week for a trip with our with our schools and um excited for that and I'm hoping for St travels for them and and excited to hear what what comes out of that we heard from the AP Euro students and um who attended who went to Europe last year and how changing it was for them a shout out to all the people who did all the work for our graduation especially having to Pivot um when the first day did not work out so well and that's a hard call to make and it's hard to to make those changes and stuff and people had to be kind of there and people in our community but as as um as superintendent Maguire said it was a it was a great night it turned out really

157wonderful and it is I've said this before it's is one of the highlights that I have about being a school board member because it's one of the best moments where you get to interact with students see Joy on their faces see the outcome of all the work that we do stenters us back into students and it's just um really great and so really appreciate that and then the final thing is um as I mentioned earlier this is Kate's penultimate meeting which means her last meeting with us is ever and hope she's going into retirement for good good good um uh but we've been so appreciative of that I I'm sure we'll acknowledge that in our next meeting but just want people to recognize that in the community too that um we've been blessed I think

158they have um uh director or director Dr Maguire with us but um uh and uh feel really really grateful and and and we're happy for her to get back to retirement and took her I we her to come back for something C something celebratory I'm thinking about helping with the [Music] garden understand that Dr McGuire has some connections to the community now too so and so maybe we can keep drawing her in here um but we'll also it's also will be our last meeting before we take a little bit of a break until August and start some things done but we've already been in conversations with Dr Hines and doing all sorts of work and so things are are moving along swiftly for that transition too okay all that has been transmitted and communicated to

159everybody so with that I will take a motion to adjourn so move moved by director Williams who I have a second on that second second by director man in favor say I we are adjourned thank you