School Board Meeting 11.28.23

0016:47 p.m. and I'm calling our business meeting to order um before I read our agenda I'm going to read Our Land acknowledgement we are gathered on the land of the Dakota and ojibway peoples I ask you to join me in acknowledging the Dakota and ojibway Community their Elders both past and present as well as future Generations St Louis Park public schools also acknowledges that was founded on upon exclusions and erasers of many indigenous peoples including those on Whose land this school district is located this acknowledgement demonstrates a commitment to dismantling the ongoing legacies of colonial power and the district's desire to support the ongoing work of local indigenous communities to thrive in our schools on our agenda we have open Forum certificates of election for the 2023 Schoolboard general election superintendent report discussion items including

0022024 25 and 2025 26 Calendar uh uh year and audit preview for FY 23 superintendent search um two items review msba executive Search Services proposal and review draft communication plan we have our consent agenda and on our action agenda superintendent search msba executive Search Services proposal labor agreement SEIU Local 284 School nutrition followed by Communications and transmittals and adjournment is there a motion to approve the agenda as presented move by Ken there a second second second by Virginia all in favor please say I I any opposed all right first up we have open Forum I've got four folks signed up for open form here I'm just going to take them in the order that we received them so first we have um Stephen and while you're coming up Stephen I'm going to just read our

003description here in the interest of open Communications the St Louis Park School District wishes to provide an opportunity for the public to address the board anyone indicating a desire to speak during open Forum will be acknowledged by the the chair and allotted 3 minutes to present the topic Colin has the timing thing so he'll show you when you have when your time is up um during open Forum the board and administration will listen to comments Please be aware that disrespectful comments or comments of a personal nature directed at an individual either by name or inference will not be allowed okay so Stephen Anderson you can come up and sit right at the chair that would be great thank you all right visual aids okay so good evening I'm Stephen Anderson and I live in St

004Louis Park and I want to speak to some of the concerns that were brought up at the October open Forum but before I do I want to tell you about my my experience attending Junior High in high school in Shaban Wisconsin during the [Music] 1970s some of my peers picked up that I was different before I even knew that I was I became a Target and you know the names [ __ ] [ __ ] fem queer fairy Etc it wasn't everybody but it happened enough that had hurt deeply luckily I had some supportive friends I came out to them at age 16 my first full-time Elementary teaching position was in a South Suburban School in the metro area the principal was homophobic it wasn't safe for me to be out at school um as a probationary teacher can

005be dismissed without reason a few years later I transferred to a different school and there I could be my whole self with the support of the principal um I just lost my place um several parents had requested that their children be assigned to my classroom because they suspected that their kids might be gay they wanted a positive role model for them and I know this because one of the parents said so as much at our first conference I ran into another student now an adult a couple of years ago at Target and I realized why his mom wanted him in my classroom one of the concerns brought up at the October school board meeting was about a children's book our Subway baby it was a read aloud in a third third grade classroom the parents

006said that it was not appropriate for third grade I disagree I taught third grade and fourth grade this book is not about sexuality it's about a family and the love that they share each of these books has a place in our schools my concern about providing an opt out is where would the students go to the office they have to be supervised what about the parent who doesn't believe in climate change does her child opt out of that unit during science class what about the child who shares going to the park with her moms during morning meeting will the teacher have to say I'm sorry we can't talk about that here how might my school experience just about done finish your thought thank you how might my school experience have been different if these books

007were read aloud in elementary school in Shaban I respectfully ask our school board members to consider very carefully what an opt out would mean for our lgbtq students parents and staff thank you all right um next up we have jeck Thompson is there a microphone or just talk loud this is it right here cool all right where's my timer practice this oh okay it's not digital all right good evening thank you chair Casey Dr Maguire school board from for making these public forums available each month I think they're great hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving uh my name is Jeff Thompson currently have three children our school system here and uh three things I'd like just cover real briefly first I'm really here today at the urging of friends and neighbors who we all

008moved into St Louis Park about 20 years ago approximately 20 years ago the main reason we chose St Louis parks to live is because it was a great school system right small community setting the schools were consistently ranked in the top 10 in the state lately we've asked ourselves what happened to St Louis Park schools the latest US News and World Report ranking of high schools has St Louis Park at number 73 in the state I recently receiv the results of last year's MCAS I specifically have information on Seventh on last year's seventh grade class the class is below the state average and only partially meeting both reading and math requirements in fact for math which is the universal language the Middle School average school RS one tenth of a point away from being in

009the does not meet category now I know administrators and school boards will point to co and the unfl nature of tests that might all be true but we still understand what the plan is and it begs the question are we listening truly to what teachers need or are the board and administrators hearing what they want to hear due to their ideology is there a better way of measuring academic results within the school if there is people are open we'd love to hear it for example maybe our kids who take the act or AP tests have amazing scores amazing results we just don't know based on lack of sharing so where my neighbors and fellow citizens get sad and frustrated seeing good families choose not to asend not to attend St Louis Park because like it

010or not families make decisions on where to send their kids to school based on these academic measurements and we are surrounded by school districts that are ranked in the top 10 in the state as Citizens we've done our part we've passed every referendum our property taxes have increased yet school performance goes down the district seems to be fine with part kids leaving the district as long as we can offset by opening enrollment by open enrolling Minneapolis kids and we asked for that to change second one area I do want topress my appreciation for is critical thinking and the focus on it I know critical thinking is uh one of our measurement areas uh for 23 24 and so important in today's world however I do find it a little paradoxical that when I started researching

011the candidates for Schoolboard this fall I ran into two things candidates endorsed by political parties and other candidates who promoted their work on Flipping States from Blue to red or red to blue I honestly can't remember and don't care but when I started to see people align with political parties that is the antithesis of critical thinking political parties represent rigid thinking structures rigid rigid thinking structures essentially Echo Chambers and herd mentality I would like to see St Louis Park School Board rise above political parties and part partisan reasoning as our first President George Washington warned political parties May now and then answer popular ends but they are likely in the course of time and things to become potent engines by which cunning ambitious and unprincipled people will be enable ble to subvert the power of

012the people and to assert for themselves I think an impactful show of critical thinking by our leaders would be for school boards to refuse Pol political endorsements didn't get to my third one but thank you for the time hope you guys have all a happy and healthy and safe winter season appreciate it um all right next up we have Matt Kenny thank you um I'm speaking to tonight to express my opposition to allowing parents to opt their children out of lessons that address identity based topics my broad definition of Iden based uh topics includes but it's not limited to lgbtq gender racial religious identities I think that allowing opt outs for any of these reasons sends a message that's harmful to students teachers and staff allowing parents to opt their children out of these lessons

013teaches our children that some identities are less worthy of discussion than others this is dangerous and harmful message that can lead to discrimination and bullying all students deserve to learn about the full range of human experiences including those of people who are different from themselves identity-based lessons help students to understand the world around them to develop empathy for others and to become more tolerant and accepting individuals I feel the same way whether the in the motivation for opt out request is based in religion politics beliefs based on race misinformation or even simple misunderstanding doesn't matter I trust our schools and our teachers to know what is appropriate and what isn't we don't need to burden them with additional administrative task tracking what would surely become a long list of opt out requests thank you for

014your time do you want to hard copy sure you can get it better thank you um next up we have [Music] Cliff hello uh my name is Cliff Caston I'm a resident of St Louis Park and I'm also here tonight to address the issue of curriculum out uh opt outs especially in regards to specific segments of our community uh all of my children uh matriculated through the St Louisburg school system and uh I strongly believe that one of the purposes of our schools is to build community uh community in s Louis Park and Community beyond the borders of St Louis Park and one of the ways in which uh this happens is through the exposure of students to A diversity of people background grounds as well as exposure to ideas and information that may be

015unfamiliar and even uncomfortable and I think that allowing parents to opt their students out of specific uh curriculum matters uh is an impediment to the building a community I therefore urge the board to uh oppose such op out op thank you right thank you all right next on our agenda we have someone to follow up yeah I know this is this is why I oh okay say you pass if people want to follow up pass oh if people want to follow up yes thank you um anyone who those of you who spoke does anyone want to follow up um connection with the superintendent and myself we can okay we' got the we got a contact he just raised his hand got it thank you got your email address right here thanks Jeff okay uh certificates

016of election for the 2023 School Board general election um we have the resolution authorizing issuance of certificates um I'm going to read the I'm actually just going to read the resolution instead of the description here um be it resolved by the school board of Independent School District number 283 um as followed it is hereby found determined and declared as follows number one the board has canvased the general election for school board members held on November 7th 2023 number two the board chair and clerk are hereby authorized to execute certificates of election on behalf of the board of the district to the following candidates Celia Anderson C Colin Cox Virginia Mancini Taylor Williams who have based on the results of the canvas received a sufficiently large number of votes to be elected to fill vacancies on

017the board caused by expiration of terms on the first Monday in January next next following the election the certificates of election shall be in substantially the forms attached there um as presented after the time for contesting the election has passed and each candidate has filed all campaign Financial reports required by Minnesota statutes chapter 211A the clerk of the school board is hereby directed to deliver a certificate to each person entitled th too personally or by certified mail the clerk is hereby directed to enclose with the certificates of election a form of acceptance of office and form of O of office in substantially the forums attached is there a motion to approve the resolution as presented move by Abe is there a second I'll second second by Sarah any further discussion all in favor please say

018I I I any opposed all right my carries thank you okay now we have our superintendance report right thank you chair Casey I begin each of my reports by sharing the miss it grounds our work and it's the reason we gather St Louis Park 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 energizes and enhances the spirit of our community tonight is all about Student Activities I'd like to share some information about the middle school and then some other activities that are taking place this month the Middle School fall Athletics season had over 250 athletes in grades 6 through eight competing at the Middle School uh in the fall football volleyball boys and girls soccer girls tennis and

019girls speed swimming and over 507th and eighth graders competing at the high school level currently the Middle School girls basketball is in full swing and we have two teams competing against Area Middle Schools until winter break we also have many Middle School athletes competing in multiple High School winter sports and boys basketball starts in January and registration will open this week so December as you might recall is an action-packed Student Activity month so in addition to getting snow which is my favorite part of December we also are jam-packed with Student Activities and that's through at the high school and the middle school level there are so many musical performances scheduled in addition to athletic events and community members can find specific information about dates that they might want to add to their family calendars this

020month at the district website wwwo park.org thank you right thank you next up we have our first discussion item which is the 2024 25 and 2025 26 Calendar I think we have director CER here chair members of the board superintendent it's calendar time again so we um we do this every year we bring you and and remind you a couple things and for people in the audience um you know we create this calendar each year and we believe it to be you know an instructional tool so we have some principles that we use when we're putting our calendar together um we try to have as few broken weeks of instruction as possible uh we try to have our semesters roughly balanced we try to maintain our student contact time um you know of days and

021total teacher contract work days um making sure that we're doing what we can to minimize um transportation cost and not having unnecessary routes and things of that nature uh we typically start after Labor Day unless there's construction and we can get a waiver by the stat by the state uh we begin as early as possible we end as early as possible winter break is roughly two weeks but that always changes because of uh where the holidays fall and where the breaks are uh laying out so that that's part of the puzzle every um year spring break has historically been one week sometime right after the third quarter uh we avoid major religious holidays for events whenever possible uh in 23 24 we included non-instructional days for yam kapor and Eid uper uh graduation we try

022not to have that on a Monday or a Friday due to set up and tear downs and uh we approve this we approve next year's calendar and then the year after that is a draft so that people have uh some planning and thinking about what we're going to do and then we usually bring that calendar that seconde calendar back the following fall to say Yep this is what we still want or we got more input from staff parents you know community and uh we're going to make some adjustments to the thing that we drafted uh two years earlier so um in doing that and I know this is small up here and I think um and it's a little crazy color coordinated for those who haven't seen this before uh the blue day are typically

023have something to do with professional development uh the the light blue days have something to do with digital learning days where we then have family connect conferences or or you know family connect time uh in student Le conferences the green days have something to do with holidays or break periods uh yellow days are the end of of uh end of quarters and the brownish tan days are like grading and Reporting conference uh days so when we put that all together we get you know our calendar and that's this year's calendar for 2425 we're trying to roll this over as closely as possible um and and then it's never perfect and we'll give you some feedback um even in what we've been able to do um what we have in this draft is we um this

024this was the draft we looked at a year ago and said we think this will be our 2425 calendar uh we're going to bring a few modified changes back to here um and this will be our recommended calendar um to avoid rashash Shana yam kapor conflicts we're moving one of those light blue instructional or um uh digital learning days with the um Family connect conferences on October uh 10th um yam kapor starts at um Sundown on the 11th so it doesn't happen to fall on an instructional Day this year um just like Eid uh happens to be the uh April 30th and then April 31st the following day after Sundown would be um the first day of spring break so that's also not an inst structional conflict this year as well um with a couple

025changes like that that we we have students would oops I see a just a color coding issue but kid uh students would be done on June 5th and the teachers would have their last work day on um on uh the 6th of June in in this recommended calendar and you can see that the semesters are roughly balanced at 86 and 85 days per per semester any questions on the recommended holidays yeah go ahead yeah how come um you're putting the observance for y Kapur on Thursday instead of Friday uh no the um if I could look at it the Y yam kapor starts at sundown on the 11th which is a Friday right which then puts yeah it's just noted just so we didn't lose it it on a Saturday so the day that we

026would normally celebrate it is a Saturday which is a non-instruction day the the light blue day on the 10th is a digital learning day for students and then they would be doing student Le conferences at the at the middle school or family connect time at the high school I thought it had something to do with Y so no um okay well we originally I think had um the 10th up on the 3D or the fourth which is right in the middle of Rashana so we moved the the connect day later to to avoid that okay thank you um so I think we always run into this issue on spring breaks and winter breaks and things like that it looks like our winter break comes back for Thursday and Friday yeah is that is there a

027w well there is there's a way and you know this is one of the feedback I wanted to say is like in in bringing calendar there's always problems with calendars and um so we don't like we certainly don't like to bring students back for one day right um and yet if we bring if we extend winter break and we had a number of people say we'd like to extend winter break uh because of uh flights and if I fly back on New Year's Day that creates a more expensive flight there's so there's you know T less time with families and things like that um if we extend the break to the third and we can then that pushes the end of the year out and it actually if we just keep the number of instructional

028days then students would go have one day on the 9th and that's not productive either to have you know just that one day hanging over on a Monday so that would be you know a different tradeoff we have two day weeks at Thanksgiving two days weeks on mea I mean just not unheard of it's not unheard of we wouldn't do a one- day comeback on a Friday uh but we have done two days yes do you have a sense of what other districts are doing about that next year or anything um I I personally don't I know that um you know there are some school districts that always have two day you know two week winter breaks and there's some school districts that that never have you know full full full two week breaks I

029think we've gone I mean I think like my six or whatever some sometimes six time doing this like we've done both and it just kind of depends on how the calendar Falls and then it always is the conversation of like what happens at the end of the school year and how does this affect so it's always that little bit of a balance and I totally agree I mean going back like for one day on Monday and I I think when we really asked folks like would you rather have week on winter break or go until like the 9th of June they would they would not going till the 9th of jun the teacher Union year after year has said it depends when you ask if you if you ask Stu if you ask students or

030if you ask uh people in uh the fall they want a longer winter winter break and if you ask them in May why didn't we get out earlier and so it it always depends when you ask and the reason that I ask too is also just because if there's like a not that we have to bend to whatever but if there's a general Community you know like if most of the Metro is having those two days off or something like that then then we we stand out and we're visible and that just that you know I then I think we should just get ahead of that right that should be clear to people if that's the choice we're making that people should understand why we're doing this or something and you know I I would

031superintendent I would recommend that if that's the interest of the board we could we could look at our neighbors uh before we bring this back on on the 12th but not all of our neighbors celebrate the or at least recognize the Hol religious holidays that we do so I mean there right and I think they're just just for our advise you know just to sort of make sure that we're you know generally aware of what what's going on in the community I just think it would be work well I'm not saying that we have to back to it I'm just saying that it's having some awareness of that I think would be helpful for us so in my opinion we have to be leaders for our neighbors I like that leers I was asking about

032that two we break um can I ask another question though yeah and then Virginia's next oh okay but but and you have that point on it moves digital learning days to three for high school and four for middle school I'm sorry not tracking in in uh this year in this year's calendar we had um four digital learning day days at the high school and four digital learning days at the middle school which at the high school they also had another digital learning day for ACT Testing so we felt that that was too many digital learning days uh so we reduced one of the family connect days and they're going to have a evening family connect instead of the digital learning day with the daytime family connect so one less um digital learning day at the

033high school the Middle School retains theirs and ultimately there will be another when we get to the at a glance calendar or the City calendar we will have known when we can schedule ACT Testing and then there will be another light blue day somewhere in the spring for ACT Testing well my my questions were about the family connect days so um the first question I have is I'm looking for parent teacher conferences in the fall and so I'm assuming that's the 17th and the 18th what is I don't know where so this this calendar does not um lay out the evening conferences for for but it does take into account that there there will two evening conferences in the fall two evening conferences in the spring and so there's when teachers work two evening conference

034nights then they get uh an alternative day off uh we Peg those days at um uh August 27th which is the day before Thanksgiving and then it's the last Friday of spring break November but that's okay I did you I exactly I what did I say in August too did I say August wow that's odd um so here's here's my other question could you tell me and I um I probably know the answer to this but I don't remember it when we went from so there's a difference between parent teacher conferences and family connect days or are we now calling parent teacher conferences a type of family connect day what is the superintendent I'm out of my Lane here uh here's what I would say from my learning um where our um use of these

035days days is evolving so the uh number of days they had this year evidently is new and I've asked the uh secondary principles to evaluate what they're doing to those days so that as we think forward to the future they'll be able to um have some assessment of the value of those days but there are you talking about the value of a family connect day like the way that the high school just had or are you talking about parent teacher conferences in the digal how we're using those digital learning days which are some of them are currently being used for things like family conect I can add one little bit of knowledge that I have on you know so one of them is you know in the in the previous years of work we you

036know had strategic objectives of increasing family engagement so this was one of the ways that the middle school and high school looked at increasing um Family engagement was to have these family connect conferences they still have regular conferences and it's the same amount of time and the same amount of time but they what they're doing is they're trying to avoid having traditional conferences on the same night because then that uses up our translator services and all that so they so one will do a family connect day where they you know they sharing information about the students and then and then they'll be and then the other one the you know the Middle School's having family connect High School's having traditional conferences I'm just going to say that perhaps there needs to be some clearer communication

037to families about what the intent of these are and why we're doing it I think there was some confusion um and there was um they just like people just didn't know it at the high school I had high school families reaching out to me asking what it was and I didn't know and I and I realized that I should have just contacted you um instead I just directed them to Lisha and I because I didn't know I don't but I felt embarrassed that I don't know the answer to that um so it's still kind of fuzzy in my so it would be great especially if we're going to continue with a family connect model and if it's connected to making sure that all of our families have the services that they need um that might

038need to be clearer more clearly communicated right especially for families like I didn't know I signed up for the parent teacher conferences so I didn't know if I was supposed to go to the parent because I'm like okay I've gone to the also it was just a really I can't take off school and you know so I couldn't take off work in order to um participate in it I do know what the high school is doing for their family connect in the spring and it sounds fantastic and phenomenal and perhaps really great communication I know I'm looking at you um would be uh would help to the turnout because it's a great opportunity for us to engage with our families if they don't know about it then there and and and I get it that

039it was in the 6425 did I get the numbers right yeah um but it was still fuzzy about what it was and it and what the feedback that I got was that we were only as parents we were only notified two weeks it wasn't even two weeks it was just it was approximately 9 days before it happened if we had to make so that's what I'm just trying to clarify in my brain what was going on um also is there um what do you have a calendar committee yes and does that include community members who would like to be on the calendar um I'd say it it it it h our calendar committee has not we have taken um the calendar to deack in previous years got it yeah okay for to get you know

040and I know calendars are super complicated because we have contractual things but we also have state statute as far as ours that student contact Time needs to be in place I was just wondering where um if a Community member approached me and said what is this calendar comme and how do I get on it I can see a response to that join deack thank you um I know you probably told us this before director CER but the numbers on the left for each month you have a lot of like the numbers on the left yeah like far left and I and I want and I'm going to just stand up so if I can you know but I um and I know this won't broadcast on on the streaming but this is really an internal

041uh accounting tool and the over here are how many days of instruction are there in this month so in the month of September there are 20 days for you know one through the and there's 19 days for kindergarten and you see there's zero here of other things for second graders there yeah there there are here in the month of October there are 20 instructional days there's one teacher Duty day that's accounted for with this PD day that's a non-instructional day so we tally up all the days to then feed these numbers here of how many instructional days are here how many teacher work days are are here and so we need to we need this to be 185 we need this to be 171 and then that flows backwards pardon me and you're trying to

042balance out each quarter to be rough each semester yeah each semester to be roughly 85 86 what is it 185 what uh that's 185 teacher Duty days oh and then 171 contact times and 171 student contact days and does digital learning count as student contact can I picking off does that count as student contact yes according to our mod people and the business office okay and the digital learning days can be asynchronous or synchronous and um and I know I'm sorry this just is on my brain too so for e-learning days because of snow like do we do e-learning days do not okay um we do not have an e-learning plan in order to capitalize on e-learning base for snow days you have to have uh developed a plan it has to get run through

043teacher meet and confer that's new in statute um and we have not you used to have to submit the e-learning plan to MD I'm not sure you have to do that anymore but you have to have a written plan really uh We've looked at at least one from a neighboring School District uh it's I would propose it's on the longterm to-do list so that you can capitalize on e-learning opportunities now has look different for elementary because we don't have devices you can modify I have brought up e-learning days before so so we did that during Co right everybody one so why wouldn't they just say okay you guys already went through this I think you should R for the legisl because that is the question that school districts are asking legislature can't you know can't

044you give us a break we did this during Co we demonstrated we can do it why do we need to have an e-learning plan can't you just give us flexibility in the calendar but not yet I mean I think it was in response to the unprecedented what was it seven days off of school because of the severe cold in 2018 I don't know if it was 2018 or everything is a little fuzzy before Co but it was that I mean it was it we had a full week of school off plus like the Monday and Tuesday of the following week and I think that was the response any other questions on the 2425 and so this is not our last time seeing this correct we bring see it for approval December in December okay so

045people you know if there were community members watching who wanted to provide comment to us they certainly could and we'll look at other school calendars locally and see what sort of St bring that back to December on the 12th okay thank you and I just one other note that we didn't talk about but we did arrange the end of the semester and the teacher professional development day um so that it coincided with the election day just uh it was it was brought up as a Safety and Security not to have our you know our buildings filled with with people when we're running um programs on those on that day appreciate that thank you yeah and then um so on our uh if oops I got to advance so then we we did a first look

046at what would 25 26 look like if we just rolled that over and tried to do it again and um so what you'd see here is similar thing there's an opening week uh Labor Day is a holiday we start right after that um no other days in September we have uh one of the digital learning days um right before yam kapor so Sundown on the on the second uh is Yum kapor and so Friday the third is a non-instructional day um and then everything else pretty much flows through you you will see a two we break in this calendar so this is like you know I think something like four out of six years uh you know whenever uh Christmas Eve Christmas Day New Year's Eve New Year's Day falls on you know that Wednesday

047Thursday um it it ends up it ends up being that it's you just it's hard to run it any other way can I just ask a question about that cuz it seems like do we traditionally have the 23rd off again acknowledging that I just have little kids so I don't know historically how this has been but to me it seems like it's the same sort of argument like you could do a two-day week the week of December 22nd and then cuz otherwise it's pushing you to the last day of school on June 9th so I just clear that would be an option um to um have come to school on the 22nd 23rd and then that would put the last day for students back on the 5th and the last day for teachers on the

048e8th so you know if that's feedback precedent on that I'm not sure again like we've gone I think we've gone both ways over the yeah over the years so it does push I mean that is late for in June for sure so this is our first look community members who are watching let us know um what your thoughts are who should community members specifically send an email to school school board at SLP school.org just checking not super or Dr McGuire y I don't think I got any questions about the calendar I got questions about the parent teacher conferences and the parent connect those are the only questions that I receiv received and I will say that I haven't done a lot of feedback about how things are going I get some from my son right

049um about why is it like this and this doesn't whatever he has lots of opinions about it I welcome those but I I weigh them differently than I do for the community but I know that um I know that I have heard from at least from members of the Jewish Community just appreciation for having the holidays and um what that means for them so I have heard that and and the high school and middle school work very hard especially to you know these asynchronous days we're looking out to make sure that things aren't fall you know like we're going to do a family connect right in the middle of a holiday as well yeah I mean yeah and I became director Ibrahim saying that the Muslim Community is also thankful too so the board was

050you know leading on that one as well so you will notice it's it's a little out of balance that it's 88 and 83 which isn't crazy but we we moved the end of the second uh or the end of the first semester uh down a week so to to avoid because there's Martin Luther King holiday if we had it up in the normal week there we then we'd have a two-day week so we figure four two four or you know two four day weeks is better than a a a two and a five so okay we see this again soon too okay thank you Dr CER next we have FY 23 year on audit preview Magnuson it's going to give us the highlights hello good evening chair Casey superintendent Maguire and members of the board

051I am here tonight to give you a little preview of the fiscal year 23 audit we have not yet closed the books um but tonight I want to give you a preview of where we think our fund balance results will be and want you to understand what what the next steps will be in the budgeting process um there was a memo attached and I made reference to this is our first year we're closing the books in our new Finance system and as the board knows we've had significant staff turnover in the business office and it's given us an opportunity to really review the way we are doing things and I'll try to it's nothing dramatic but I think there are important things that the board should understand about um the way that we're displaying the

052information as far as fund balances go um so this is just a step back at the big picture of the of the um budget timeline and remember when we were way at the end of the budget last spring and now we are back at the beginning doing our data Gathering again um we've been meeting um working throughout the fall to close last year's books we're in the middle of implementing this year's budget and beginning to gather data as we start to build next year's budget so that little orange star you can see we're sort of mid to um you know a little more than Midway through our data Gathering and we'll have to be getting into budget preparation for next year's budget so we're this is the budget timeline as we prepare next year's budget

053understanding we're still closing last year and we're implementing this year's budget um I'm just zooming in here a little bit on that data Gathering portion so you can see where we're at we're here tonight previewing audit results Finance advisory committee is meeting again next week we have begun looking at expenditures and um are puzzling a little bit over how to start attacking you know the Behemoth that is expenditures in in these public meetings in a way that makes sense so it's really been interesting conversations and we have um one student who's been involved and will continue to work on that I don't know how far we'll get this year but it's really been an interesting process so we made that commitment to them last year and will continue um down that path um we have

054a tax hearing coming up with the board um in the community in December we may or may not have our audit results um our Auditors there on December 12th if not we'll do that in January we did that same thing last year um if you recall so I want to just preview the audit results here for you these are sort of the big picture ways that I'm starting to think about the results for last year that word steady shows up for me we aren't getting any big windfalls of funding and um There's Nothing Dire as it compares to the budget um so if we think about our unassigned and unreserved fund balance we are indeed looking like we were we will end the year above our board policy minimum of 6% it appears that we're

055going to be at 8.71% um that's also steady in comparison to our budget parameter I just want to call out that the board set a budget parameter of 8% even though the the minimum in your policy 714 is 6% so we're above that minimum the school nutrition and community service funds are also steady um I'll talk a little bit a little bit more about this but the school district is the expenditure um fiscal host for the community for the children first um program we have moved those funds out of Community Education where they have lived I think since its Inception and and more appropriately moved them into a custodian fund and I'll talk a little bit more about that our building construction fund is running strong it's in alignment with the work that we had

056planned to date and our self-funded medical um fund balance is growing so I I'll talk a little bit about those but you it just it shows signs of steadiness there's nothing um emergent or um no big windfalls of funding to talk about um this then is the just like I did with the timeline this is a big picture I don't expect you to read this this document is in the board packet but you will notice up in that top part there are a lot more details under restricted funds and we did that so that the board could better understand the types of funding and I'll spend a little bit of time talking to you about that tonight you'll see a little more detail also in the community service fund so this table takes that big

057old document with all those line items and just shrinks it down into one line item per um per fund and I just want you to notice this this terminology that we haven't really used um here in this District but we have operating funds and we have non-operating funds and the three operating funds are basically those where we get revenue and we spend things to operate the school district and the general fund is one of those operating funds where most of our activity occurs the school nutrition fund is where we run the school nutrition program so anything from the doors of the kitchen back have to be paid for out of the school nutrition or the funds that we get for school nutrition um can only be used within that area of the of the school

058district and in the community service fund where we run our early childhood through lifelong learning programs including our Afterschool child care so those sort of operate the district and then there's these other funds that are nonoperating they're either one time in nature or they aren't a part of our general operations so you building construction there um Debt Service where we service the debt for the bonds that help us build our buildings we have some internal service funds that's where you'll find ourselves funded dental and medical program um we have a trust and agency fund this represents the present value of our um post-employment benefits which are no longer in contracts for um for newer employees as they come into the district um and then this custodial fund and I just want you to notice they're

059small dollar a months but these are really important shifts that we're making and so as you accept audit results these are these are how we have closed the books so we moved um balances a negative balance for Children First out of the community service fund which was an operating fund of the district and moved it instead into a custodial fund which really portrays what we're doing we're just holding funds in custody for Children First also in custodial funds is a scholarship fund so we're really just not operating the district with those funds we're holding them in custody for the family that donated the funds for scholarships can I so like so when we say custodial in this we tend to think like maintenance type right and emping so many things like say School nutrition and

060we say custodial it's nothing to do with how we're maintaining or cleaning facilties exactly thank you I see custodial and here H far's terms but thank you for reminding me that that's not how the world sees these words so if you so I would like the board to think about to start shifting our thinking around operating funds versus non-operating funds every line item and every penny is important and we're tracking them and hold the same internal controls on every line but um to spend um so for instance if you look at the building construction fund where we sold $135 Million worth of bonds and earned some interest on them this year and only spent $16 million so far we have a big fund balance it's important to separate that from operating because we cannot use

061those funds even if we wanted to even if our voters said go right on ahead we cannot use those funds for General operations of the district so it's it's an important distinction to make that's one example next year it will look the opposite because we won't be selling more bonds we'll just be spending down that fund balance and that can often be confusing in a full financial statement um so what I'm going to do now just look at this um um operating funds and I'm just going to dig a little bit more deeply into those so in the general fund in total this just Compares our operating funds to the budget we don't really budget those non-operating funds except for Debt Service because we really know exactly what The Debt Service revenues and expenses will

062be so the the budget really centers around the operating funds so this particular slide Compares where we budget our year fund balance to be and where it looks like will be ending so in total for the general fund we are about we are you know $276,000 below where we thought we would be a little over 2% and what that means is that our our budgeting and budgeting budgeted ending fund balance we assumed would be at 88.8% we think we'll be at about 88.7% so you know within um 10 you know within 9% % so really close really good results the school nutrition fund um ran really strongly last year um will be ending ahead of budget um by $55,000 and then the community service fund is just a slight bit behind budget but all of

063the operating funds are really close to to budget so those are steady results there's nothing remarkable about them they are steady um and again just pointing out that those are just your operating funds um and now just look there's the general fund and now I'm going to dig that general fund apart to all the components of the general fund that's where most of the work of the school district happens so this first snippet is just two categories of the general fund there's that Top Line which is unassigned general fund that's where board policy lives um and over to the far right I split up all of the parts of the the general fund so that you can see of the of the total general fund less than half is unassigned and available for the school

064board and School District to make decisions about how we will spend the money beyond that first but beyond that 41% everything else is assigned in some way through law or through the way voters approved funding so there's the board um made some decisions to assign um some category is about 10% we'll talk about that um this nonspendable is a is a little bit of funding we had some items that we paid for in advance so we have to hold fund balance so with some bills we had to get paid before before this year that were in so we just have to hold the fund balance so we don't spend them again and then there are restricted funds and I just want you to notice there's $10 million worth of Revenue that's restricted purposes that we

065cannot decide about that if we want the funds we have to spend them in a specific way so really more of our funds come in a restricted way than in an unassigned way I think it's important to understand that little Nuance um and then with the restricted um not only is it that we have to spend it in a certain way but also doesn't are there some restrictions on how much we spend in order to get right didn't yeah say more I don't know but you keep talking it'll the fund will pop up in my head and I'll be like oh that's I'm going to break these part a little more so back to you'll notice there's one line for unassigned and then there's so unassigned assigned nonspendable restricted are the four categories so this

066this slide shows you the unassigned on the top line there's nothing more to it the unassigned fund balance um that fund balance is actually growing and the the biggest reason for that is that the current Year's budget is not in a deficit mod mode as much as it has been in previous years so we're able to release that amount of funds that the board assigns for the budget deficit for the next year we were able to release that to just $261,000 so that's all that's happening we're just moving something that the board had assigned to protect us against future deficits into an unassigned fund balance there's no more money it's just the money in that fund balance has shifted and when we calculate the board's percentage after the advice of a the finance committee maybe

067three years ago we combine those two anyway because we don't want to count that against us um a future budget deficit against that calculation so that's um so that's good news and something that we knew as we built this year's budget that we were trying to get those revenues and expenses back in line a new category it's a small small amount but it's really important to the day-to-day operations of the district we're trying to get a better handle on donations and giftss and local grants and we've been talking about that um so we are we've we're setting aside just $43,000 um from last year that were little donations or gifts that someone went out and got and received and a generous donor gave those to us and instead of just burying them into the unassigned

068fund balance we want to honor the the reason for the gift and continue to track it into next year it adds a little bit accounting um work for us but it's really important to honor the the reasons for those gifts and make sure that we're tracking them really well so we're recommending that as a part of the board's assigned fund balances we continue to assign at the end of a school year recognizing that that that money is there in that fund balance it ought not be just thrown to the winds there's no law that says you can't do that and so we're just saying let's let's keep track of that in a better way do most donations come with like oh I'd like for it to be spent on this such sometimes yeah sometimes um

069and within law you know we can spend those donations in that way it's often like a a grant someone will go out and get for um nutrition or for um doing something positive in the school and so they'll have you know little events in the school that will be held and maybe spend $500 of the, and then there's $500 that just disappears not a big deal to the general fund but to a school that could have $500 worth of Mental Health supports that's a that's gives them something um that they went out and got the grant for it's those kinds of things we wouldn't accept grants that violate the law or um purchase things that have tails like technology that we would have to replace in 5 years that kind of thing um we have

070a fund set aside for future Severance payments and I want you to notice this is a little bit complicated I've told Dr Maguire the story and told her I think I think the board should understand this um we are using $580,000 worth of the severance payments and it's a decision it's a recommendation I guess I'm making and a decision I made as we were closing the books that was we were not planning to do that in the budget we were only planning to spend about $250,000 and here's why in the expenditures budget there's a bill for about $300,000 worth of unemployment benefits not associated with the summer program but associated with the backlog of covid unemployment and we were instructed to not pay that bill um for a couple of cycles and we got to

071the point where now we have to start paying that bill and you might remember back when we um set the preliminary Levy in September our Levy went up by that amount because we are allowed to Levy for 100% because it's sort of a self-insured unemployment fund but as you might recall from our finance 101 the levy for this fall isn't Revenue until next year so I've got the expense sitting here and the revenue doesn't come this year it comes next year and so I sat down with the Auditors and said I want to take that money and I want to we call it Advanced recognize I want to bring it past this year and into the last year and then somebody's got to remember it was there then we got to to the accounting right

072and that we get the budgets right so we don't accidentally lose $300,000 in the process so we were ready to set up all of those accounts and you know document it um for for posterity and um decided why not instead use our Severance fund and not do all these gyration with accounting make it clear the bill was this year the revenue is coming in the future so then a future board could make a decision to assign Revenue so we could as we're building next year's budget make a decision to um to replenish that that Severance account I just want you to be aware of that we know that that's more than we said we would use in the budget but that's why it was to not make a bunch of complicated accounting moves so does

073that mean that will that will adjust the levy that that we're ultimately putting no the levy will look back and go to just spend the money and it and the levy system we'll see that we spent the money in unemployment last year so the the revenue will come it just doesn't come for two years past the time when the expense hit so this year's budget was we were going to have a lower fund balance by $300,000 for Revenue that's coming in two years so instead of jumping through the accounting Hoops to line the revenue and expense up we're using a a unbalance that the board has assigned to close that Gap and that's it's just a recommendation I'm making because I don't think um it's a good practice to move funds around like that and

074try to remember from one year to the next what we were thinking so it's it's something that we can talk about as we build next year's budget whether we want to make that intention I want to do a little more digging into um what our future liability is around Severance to give the board a better recommendation I'm not prepared to do that tonight about the sufficiency of that dollar amount and we have that sorry and we have that we have that Severance in case we have to pay out something for somebody it's for severance that it's in contract so we do this this amount actually represents the dollar amount of severance payments that were made these aren't payouts to people these are contractual amounts that um folks are paid as they leave the district in

075Old contract language that has Severance associated with [Music] it and then the last one is atps which is the Q comp program alternative teacher professional pay system is what atps stands for um we there there's no statutory requirement to reserve that fund balance we assign it um to track the spending within that category and you can see that we had been running a deficit amount and continue to in atps but we are starting to catch up a little bit at a time and our goal to close those Gap that Gap and continue to assign that we can't we there's no um statutory authority to reserve it but we have recommended in the past that the board assign it and we're continuing that recommendation so that's those amounts um the prepaid accounts you can just all

076we're doing is holding fund balance because we've paid a bill that belongs to next year and we can't spend that money and that is a requirement that's a called a nonspendable account so that's unassigned and assigned now there's two pages then of restricted funds and in the past we hadn't shown all of these as line items um we've always shown the capital projects the technology Lev that's the voter approved technology Levy um then that's that fund balance is growing and we are fortunate to have held a fund balance as we meet future technology needs and all of our technology staff has paid for from the the project Levy in addition to equipment and Wi-Fi and all of the things that keep our technology running and as costs for staff increase um we are going to

077need that fund balance over time um and that fund balance did grow this year um there's the long-term facility maintenance fund that's within the general fund there's um a small amount of funding um that we still are not in on par with other districts around us with our access to l TFM funding um but we do carry a fund balance there so that's things like um we have to make a repair to a a building an HBA system has a problem it's maintenance time types of things operating capital and again these are restricted so the funds come for a purpose we can only spend it for that purpose operating capital is curriculum um textbooks materials um musical instruments band uniforms um athletic uniforms those types of things we carry we've carried a large fund balance

078and have been spending it down gradually over time and we'll talk we talk about that every spring and there's specific line items um set aside within operating hospital then there's some categories where you'll see that we spend exactly the amount that we receive and that's because we do not want to carry if we get reserved types of funding we want to make sure we're spending the reserve funding and not carrying these weird weird fund balances um when there these are categories that we can spend down completely so um basic skills is one of those categories the the majority of that is compensatory funding that comes to for schools in the the most poverty in the district and so what we do is make sure that we um expend um specifically the amount to spend down

079the revenue we can't go into the negative so we have to do some you know splitting of teachers salaries and then the rest of the spending goes into the general unassigned fund balance medical assistance is a program that we we get funding for um Medicaid type funding for services provided in the district some nurses salaries are paid for from that staff development is assigned specifically for staff development we spend that we spend more than this on staff development the rest of that cost goes in the general fund unassigned we can't bring it into the negative Learning and Development is about class size reduction that's some language that's been in statute for 20 or more years um so we assigned some specific um staff to keep our class sizes where they are at um there's a

080little bit of area Learning Center funding for specific types of programming for students gifted and talented we get a teeny tiny amount of funding has to be spent on gifted and talented we spent more than that we spend more than that on our talent development program the rest of that goes to um unrestricted general fund achievement integration is for our approved um desegregation program um integration program we have to spend again the exact dollar amount can't go into the deficit um the safe schools um Levy is as it sounds specifically for safe schools we can use that for counselors and guidance some districts use that for police layers on officers we do not pay for police layers on officers or our um our plan that's in place right now I can't remember what it's called

081but um we don't pay for that here off juvenile resource officers we have not had to do that here in our district so we can use those funds for other things and then we have Student Activity accounts that are accounts um we closed a few of those a couple of weeks ago at a board meeting for inactivity but those are accounts set up by students for students and we shouldn't you know in general be carrying a fund balance but like grants and donations there are things that carry over fiscal years can I just also ask a question so the what I mean in my understanding this or remembering it correctly from um the financial advisory committee the folks on the committee wanted a little bit more of a line item to understand where those funds

082are going and so part of the ask that they had was to have more in line item so that that's if you're wondering where that came from that was my remembrance MH um they didn't need to go so far as to say like what are they spinning in each classroom but they wanted kind of more clarity on what this is for thank you and I think it's important for a board to understand you know two pages of restricted funds um that's a lot it's a lot to keep track of in the business office and you know it's a lot of um mandated types of um of spending that aren't that we aren't free to then make decisions as a as a board about well and what I appreciated about what Patricia did for our the

083latest the last two Financial advisory committee meetings is that it does help us to understand the story of our district and how we spend our money because I think that a lot of I know I did um thought that oh well it's like my house budget so if I have a leaky roof I can move money around or if I want to take a vacation I can move money around but there's a lot because of the restricted fund there you can't do that and so I think that this very clearly shares with our community members the story of our district and the story of our money because I think a question that came up at the meeting was where do we spend our money like how how does it how is this possible that we

084pass Lees and we pass referendums like how is it possible that we can go into a deficit and things like this and I think this is so I commend you and I applaud you and I um I'm full of gratitude for you because I have learned so much but I think also Patricia puts it in a way for every it's very accessible for people who don't deal I mean we're really lucky we have Mike who is like he's a tax attorney so or um accountant so that's really helpful but it's also helpful um for people who are you know I was an I was a lit major so that was this was very very helpful for me to understand School Finance anybody can understand and love school finan I'm not going to go so far

085as to love relationship but you know I love Cher you it's okay own so then I just want to reiterate oh I just want to reiterate um that I think these results are steady I'm not jumping up and down because we are not um we are close to having a balanced fun um balanced budget is it is not balanced for this year and our um revenue is set at a 2% increase next year so um we we will jump into a deficit again possibly so we just have to be really cautious about these results I think they're steady they're what we had thought they would be um so there's that um next steps in the budgeting process so if I could get 23 off my back I was telling Rick earlier today you know if

086we could get that year to go away we could start to really concentrate on these next two years so we need to get this year's budget updated fiscal year 2024 the first thing will be we'll take last year's ending balance and start this year with these new balances and that's going to have an impact on how we end this year we're studying enrollment right now and um the impact of current Year's enrollment um on this year's Revenue you might recall we clo we set last year's budget based on a 2% increase in state aid and made the commitment we are not going to increase the budget um because it's just too much to try to build that in and knowing that we're deficit spending um we got a 4% increase and we're going to need

087every penny of that to make sure we don't continue to deficit spend so we made the recommendation of the board um as a finance advisory committee that we don't spend into these These funds um that we received that we use them prudently for future Year's budgets um will'll be be really looking at school nutrition revenues and expenditures because the way revenues are coming in are completely different this year for school nutrition because now um state and federal funds cover the cost of our pattern meals we don't have to um families don't have to pay um even if they don't qualify for free and reduced lunch so we have to update all of that once we have a new pattern set for how that revenue and expense comes in and we're starting to learn more um

088we are settling contracts and so we've got to get those dollar amounts built into the budget and then there's other market-based operating costs that we just want to make sure we were on track in our budget setting for transportation utilities property and liability insurance so we'll be updating this year's budget and then starting to think about next year the basic funding formula is set in law at 2% now there's chance that something different Could Happen there'll be an inflationary concept but that doesn't start until fiscal 26 so next year's budget is at 2% um will enrollment projections will be an important part of Revenue and expense funding we'll be talking about fees in our operating funds so last year we added Community Ed fees to the board budget parameters in the spring we'll do that

089again along with the general fund class siiz guidelines we've been holding them steady for 5 years that I've been here so you know will we be able to afford that to continue to hold our class sizes we set a contingency every year and then we'll set the fund balance limit do we spend it down to 6% do we try to hold at 8% do we try to increase fund balance those are the conversations we'll have at Finance advisory and bring those recommendations to you and then there's other things we still continue to settle contracts we'll have to build in a cost for contracts and all of those other market-based items again so lots of budgeting coming um and this I am just taking us back to where we are um here tonight where we're previewing

090audit results so that's a lot and if we had study sessions I wouldn't have to do this in in a board meeting but I'm thankful that you take the time to understand that yeah as I as I always say thank you complex uh topic so for my understanding is uh nonoperating fund General prer to not day-to-day operation right right exactly the operating funds are for yeah yeah so my question is uh how are the non fund operating dist distributed or utilized the non-operating funds so the the major non operating fund is the building construction fund so that's the the voter approved bond issue we sold bonds got $135 million we invested and we're earning pretty good interest on those funds right now so that sits in a specific non-operating reserved fund and it's exclusively for

091building construction so that's the the major one the other non-operating major non-operating fund is Debt Service so when the voters approve a bond issue we go out and sell bonds and then we have to pay them back and that happens in Debt Service and that's like the mortgage payment the principal and interest payment so every year we have a tax levy that's what the voters approved these tax year these tax levies for 15 years 20 years so the principal and interest payments um custodial accounts are the other non-operating fund that will now be children first and then scholarships medical and dental um we are self-insured in the district for medical and dental so we bring the premiums in and disperse them internally and we hold those in a um internal service fund so it's they're

092very specific um and not for General operations of the district did that answer yeah is there any like reporting mechanism the purpose those will always be reported um on the fund on the fund balances and they're part of the audit say like itemize yes yeah there's line items for every one of those non-operating funds as well I'm trying to get back to that page so every one of those have specific line items and um there's no difference between how we treat them accounting wise but I I think it's an important distinction about how we think about them as as we fund the district and operate the district so every line item is scrutinized and goes through the same internal control process in the business office so my my last question is the success and the

093impact of the non non operation so uh now uh you say you move right children pres custodial I just want to understand that yeah so it's really it's an accounting transfer but we've since we made the agreement I don't know decades ago to hold 30 yeah to hold CH to be the fiscal host for the expenditures for children first which just means that we um bring in the the revenue that comes from Park nicholet Foundation or from donations for children first into for some reason the community service fund that I don't know the history on but into the community service fund and it was always reserved in the community service fund it really isn't part of our operations so really didn't belong there so we finally just decided we've got to get that moved into

094more properly a custodial fund which properly assigns it into a custodial account probably really doesn't belong there either we ought not be holding those kinds of funds in the district and we should be working toward that but it gets it out of an operating fund we always accounted for them as a Reserve balance within Community Ed within community service fund could another way of looking at custodial and I might just be thinking of in terms of like education and child care but custodial is like a it's caretaking it's taken care of like a custodial if somebody has custodial rights over a a minor it means that they don't have they have essentially the same thing as a parent the parental rate but they're not blood related necessarily so custodial just means that we're taking care

095of it and we have no Authority about the decision- making around it and as long as they run through School District books they are subject to every law and Regulation and internal control that we hold for every other fund so rest assured we're not purchasing things through any of these funds um even custodial funds that wouldn't meet the letter of the law or board policy thank you couple couple of things um you just you know that I've been a champion for this but the longterm facilitates maintenance talk about it a lot you you kind of went past it really quickly and said it's not the same as other people that's because by law like we are limited uh because of an old law so that's something that I know that I keep bringing up to

096to like our Schoolboard organizations to say can we get this changed because it's really outdated and so we are really Limited in what we can do because of a law that was created 25 30 whatever years ago to help address an issue that I think really no longer exists and so that's that's a hard thing for us to sort of put around and um the second thing that I was going to say sort of related to that is when I was door knocking and I was meeting people at the door and they say what's the biggest issues for your schools and I say well when's going to be money and I said because I and you know the question comes well you got the windfall and I'm like we got to it was a windfall

097in many ways but it was it was just making up for what we had lost right so it's really hard for people to swallow they're like you got so much money why are you saying you're still at a deficit still like to be at a deficit or all of that stuff and I said because it's just it's just scratching the surface right so we are that's and I know that you know that's a goal of the legislator is to keep to people lobbying the legislature to keep that going and keep that discussion going but I just want that to really be fresh in people's minds too that we like this we're doing what we can with what we got here but it's still it's still not enough and and I don't know maybe the thought

098is if we can do gradually then we can get there and people won't notice it but it's really hard in the meantime it it's really makes tough decisions and that we have to pay so um that's the end of my my quasa political there all right thank you you and we'll see you again next month and we have our truth and Taxation hearing at 6:00 at our next meeting on December 12th thank you all right um our superintendent search reviewing the msba executive Search Services proposal we have Barb here from msba again welcome back thank you um do you kind of just W to do you want to start do you want me to que you up a little bit or do you want do you want to start I'll give you a choice uh

099so first of all um chair Casey members of the board Dr McGuire thank you so much for inviting me to be here tonight to talk about your upcoming superintendent search we really appreciate the opportunity to answer any and all questions you might have about our proposal so I could do a couple of things I could I know you've seen the proposal I could go through it at a very high level I know you don't want me to read every page of 36 pages to you but I could go through and highlight some things and you could ask questions along the way or you could simply start asking me questions so that I sure to address everything you're interested in learning about from The Proposal so I could do a very short presentation or we could

100simply dive into what do you need to know about the proposal in order to make an important decision I say all of the information that you're talking that you would go through is public information would be available online too so if there was ever if we were trying to decide for the sake of people's time whether it's a value to to present the information it is it is fully available it's pretty it's pretty gone but but that's I think that it includes a lot of detail in there too so no I'm fine I read it that's fine I didn't have any questions I would have written them down okay so I mean so I for the sake of time I'm okay with sort of launching personally into into some questions but I don't but I

101mean I okay other other folks okay with just stting questions okay I I will just say I I was not at our last board meeting where you all shared your hopes and dreams and I really appreciated um reading through all those and seeing like um the alignment I think of the people's hopes and dreams and um so um you kind of informally I think um agreed to um ask for a proposal from msba and um so Dr McGuire and I have have chatted with barbar about this and um I I believe that the what I'm seeing in this proposal um really um meets the hopes and dreams of or will allow us to meet the hopes and dreams of the board members so that is why I'm um I'm I was wanting to bring here

102to to discuss this tonight so um why don't you guys just jump in with questions if I may yes I just maybe one I mean one or maybe two minutes quick recitations for the public okay so some high level overview of what's in here without necessarily referring to pages okay great thank you for asking I appreciate that I think what's in this proposal if I were to summarize it with some adjectives I would say that our search services our um process that we use is inclusive it is transparent it is collaborative it is well-managed and above all it is student centered all of those pieces come to life in the process and I try to summarize it in 36 pages but that's what we're all about we also believe in school boards and believe in

103school boards towards understanding their districts far better than we ever could so we are very adaptive in what we can offer so there is some um Scaffolding in here of what a search looks like we have a process that we believe in that we feel is outstanding and yet it is flexible enough to meet the needs of what you might want in particular to be offered or included in the St Louis Park search we also believe that you can handle seeing private data so we will share with you all of the application materials for all of the applicants for this position we'll work with you to understand what is private data and what you need to be careful of because you're discussing private data in a public meeting and yet we believe that you have

104the right to see those we will do all of the vetting checking pre-interviews and bring to you some recommended candidates we feel align with your leadership profile and yet ultimately because you've seen all the applications you're welcome to ask questions of us about certain candidates that we maybe are not recommending as one of the finalists and you could move them forward you certainly do not have to do everything msba might recommend our main goal is to empower you to own this process answer your questions provide information and then be there when you need us in any facet that you feel is necessary so that was a little longer than two minutes I hope that was okay you questions but that I appreciated about the proposal maybe I'll have a question as I go through it

105but I mean there's a I think there's a whole page that talks about uh rce equity and and and commitment to De and and things related to that so I would call that out for people we' want to take a look at that to say this is reflect I thought personally I thought it reflected what we talk about and so um I was happy with that but um encourage other people to take a look at it um there is a you know one of my we've talked about like um you just said will have access to public or to private data that's the board I just want to make clear that's not the public so there is part of this that is by because we're a board we get access to certain information and we

106want this to be transparent that but that doesn't mean like that everybody gets to see everything right so there's just reasons why legally why we would see some information other people would not and why I think we don't announce until we get to a finalist stage who are the finalist so um just making that clear to people I like that we have you talking there's some options for us in terms of um that you would do some Q&A with the community as what the search looks like that that was really kind of interesting to me that gives an opportunity for the community to ask questions directly to you right to you as an organization that seems really like great they're not talking to us about about that but they're saying how are you going to

107do the search and I thought that was that was really nice I think similarly there's some some comments about forums and the ability to have some focus groups and what those costs are and stuff and and all that and so we can balance that out and think about how we can reach certain stakeholder groups um so all those things were really stuck out for me and then I was like really I printed out the proposed timeline because I'm really nervous about this right like I'm like we have a short time Dr Maguire is is gracing us with her with this extra time out of her retirement and this moment of need but we need to get somebody in here for um not only because she's leaving but because we need to set things up for

108next year and as I look through this it's like okay I'm getting a sense of how this works right power laning is out and maybe even if I was doing something like this or we're still to hear from our Communications Department about stuff where are the people sort of into where does the community get to enter into that and calling that out because again that's a transparent thing that I think we want to make sure that people understand where are those input points for them um so those those are a few things that come to mind that when I read through this I was like and then there's list of other things but I just you know there's other things in there too but um but those were things that but i' like to appreciate

109it um I I thought it was very helpful and very thorough believe it's 36 Pages as an overview and I want to agree I think as somebody who's never been through this it really helped give some context to what we're going to embark on I wondered if you could talk a little bit um I did read the page about U Dei and sort of the alignment with our strategic uh mission uh strategic plan here at SLP but I wonder if you would talk about how that might show up specifically in the superintendent search process great question thank you director Davis we are on a journey at msba as an organization to continue to strengthen our understanding of educational Equity across the state of Minnesota we serve districts with varying degrees of of um addressing Equity

110issues and we are trying to be as Progressive as we can to ensure that every student in every district has the opportunity for a quality education in Minnesota's Public School Systems so we are internally working on some things toward better understanding our journey as individual staff persons our Publications our events our Communications our services with an equity lens I think superintendent search has given us an opportunity to be relatively at the Forefront of that because our history of doing searches is not 100 years old um as msba is our history is 13 or 14 years of doing searches and so in the search what we tend to look for is helping our boards um understand bias in terms of the screening process for your applicants in terms of the questions that you are asking of

111candidates in the interviews in understanding the answers candidates are giving and in working with your stakeholders one of the things that I was so pleased with to see and I'm excited to hear Rachel present next is the intentionality of the communications plan with that lens in St Louis Park is phenomenal truly outstanding and so in working with stakeholders in particular one of the things that we have learned is that the way searches have always been done does not mean they need to always be done that way it's not always the best way focus groups historically have had the intention of including people and the impact of excluding people and so we've started offering them as an allart option early in the search in addition to the survey and our survey we learned a lot during

112the pandemic about the value of that as a qualitative and a quantitative tool together Sur so it's in um Somali it's in Spanish and it's in English it's online and it's in hard copies and we get the hard copies out there to communities who may not want to nor can for whatever reason use computers so very inclusive with that survey with the stakeholders early on in the process the timeline I've suggested to director Cox's question does indicate that the school board could create hiring criteria and from that develop a leadership profile in order to potentially post the vacancy before the end of the year I don't know that you need to wait for the amount of of potential stakeholder focus groups listening sessions survey results to come in before crafting that leadership profile I think

113it can H happen simultaneously and then using that stakeholder input to help you as board members screen the applications and look for what you are intending to um bring forth for as finalist we use it in that regards also because we'll simultaneously be doing that vetting and that stakeholder input needs to be included in the creation of the interview questions so I'm not convinced that you need to wait for all of that involvement to be done before you could post this position which is why it's about a three and a half month timeline including a lot of work to be done in December and then when you get to your interviews as well you can use um bias training if you'd like us to do that around interview bias and what that might have what

114that might look like for you if you do want interview committees involved in some way shape or form we want to work with those individuals not only to make sure they adhere to legality that's required in the superintendent search because you are an EEOC employer so if you do have interview committees made up of stakeholders we want to make sure that they are prepared to not ask questions um that are on the don't ask list and things such as that we'll talk to them about bias we'll talk about the rating scales that all of you will be using whether it's stakeholders or board members in the interview process your deliberations we want to continue to use that Equity lens as well I think for every districts it's different and there are districts that are more

115interested in the particular page that you have both called out than others and this is a district that is very engaged in racial Equity work and so here we would be doing the absolute best we can and I think we would learn some things along the way from working with your District in that regards as well because we are on our own Journey that was a long answer director Davis did I answer that appropriately you did thank you I have a followup that I hope would be relatively short but um and I don't know how much you can share but I wonder to to what degree does your team that's reflected on here a search team reflect um diverse identities the search leads uh I think it's on pages 22 23 and 24 you can

116see our resumes um Craig Morris John Ward and myself would be the leadership team for this search and we are um 2/3 identified as white and one3 as bipac on the leadership team and then the additional folks whose rumes are on here are msba staff and service providers who are superintendents and former board members and they are majority white um thank you presumably s standard yes as well oh no I'm sorry not necessarily no I the only thing I would add and because I think this is lovely just from I shared it with Patricia and I don't maybe I'm totally wrong but it's a really competitive market out there right now and so right I mean from a teachers perspective there's a lot of job openings and there's not a lot of teachers and there's

117not a lot of superintendent out there and I think there are a lot of openings I don't know if it's the same as the superintendent but I know in the um for administrators and teachers there are it's you know there's a lot of job openings out there so I think doing simultaneously engaging Community to get input as far as what we might be looking for when they answer them you know is a good thing but also developing that leadership Pro profile early to get it posted and get the get it going I'm a little nervous because it is there's just not a lot of there's just not a lot of people right to that point can you speak to that in terms of like where do you usually see these superintendents coming from like what

118is where you know like I think we mentioned it briefly at our last meeting or whatever but it's like this is the time right where people are started looking they're they have contracts close to expiring there's assistant superintendent who looking to make the leave are you getting any sense of that do you have a general sense about like what does that candidate pool look like generally speaking or you know I don't know like just think you know thinking about that so right I think you'll have a very strong pool St Louis Park it's my personal opinion pools are smaller when I started doing this almost 5 years ago we would see on average 20 to 30 applications per opening regardless of where it was in the state now the Pools range anywhere from 4 to

119perhaps 25 it depends on uh location is Big location reputation of the district particularly in terms of relationship between the board team and salary last year about 54% of the people who were placed in Minnesota were firsttime superintendents so there are a lot of emerging leaders previously it was a lot of sitting superintendant that might move now there are fewer sitting superintendents seeking New Opportunities there are some there are a lot of phenomenal administrators looking for the opportunity to lead as a superintendent so I can't predict the future but I can tell you that this is a very exciting opportunity to many administrators and smaller pools are not necessarily a bad thing I would say when we had 30 applicants per or per position about half of them were not ready for the job perhaps

120perhaps didn't even have a license and just threw their hat in the ring now the people in the pool are committed they want the job as a superintendent they know how difficult it is so I would say the quality of the pool has gone up although the quantities have gone down my observation there's I mean just in general there's just fewer administrators out there and there used to I was just talking to mine and if and if an administrator had to leave the building and had to put somebody in charge there was at least five teachers in the building who also had their Administration license and in one of my buildings there's no teacher who has their administrative license and then at the high school level there's like two so I mean there's just you

121know there's a shortage of Educators right now any response to that director menini we are um beginning to craft succession planning services to help boards develop exactly what you're talking about what is the plan not necessarily just for the superintendency but for the administration of the district so we're in the early stages of putting together a workshop on succession planning so you're correct I know this really great super who could probably help you with that I'm doing my part to try to that's what that's what it's going to say I mean maybe for the sake of other people like in the audience or watching at home there are like there you're doing some things to help like there's the there's a superintendent organizations and other sort of administrative organizations that do you said emerging leaders

122so it's not like we bring somebody in they're emerging leader and we see how they do there's some efforts out there to build cohorts out there to build some energy to use people like Dr Maguire when we release her back to to her retirement time she'll have plenty of time to do all but also um but one thing that I was going to point out in your proposal too is that you I don't know how extensive this is so maybe you can speak to you said you do a year checkin you come back and ask them the board member or the superintendent after you replace them you do like a onee checkin and am right and can I speak to that almost right okay so we have what we call a transition workshop and the

123new superintendent would start July 1 2024 so we would like them to get their feet under them in about 2 months and then at some point that fall we want to come back and meet with the new board team and we do a trans ition Workshop where we talk about what that first year is going to look like as far as expectations of one another what are you expecting from them that first year what can they expect from you in terms of support do your goals as a board align with the goals you're going to help them set do you want to use uh performance evaluation measures that are based on standards and elements do you want to craft some goals not too many because their first year you can overwhelm them with goals and

124then you evaluate them and they've done everything halfway so we talk a lot about prioritization that first year for them so they can be successful and that's usually in the fall so the fall of 24 is when we would do that and then we would come back as needed if you need us to further develop the performance evaluation process with your board team so it's not like you place it and you're like good luck see you no no no in fact we we're speaking in January or February we're speaking at uh one of the elementary um principal's conferences on the superintendency what is it what does it involve how to stay in it uh what are board expectations so we're trying already to help develop people who are serving as principles and we're continuing to

125add to I think our repertoire of trying to ensure strong administrators so that boards can be successful it's a partnership you need to work together with them so other questions yeah I know it's late I want to go but I think it's important uh stakeholder input uh I know uh there's a lot of barer so how you going to engage with that that's a wonderful question thank you so um on page I will at least for a moment point to that there's a page on stakeholder involvement S7 okay oh on Bo my proposal oh right on my proposal it's page three okay thank you okay 47 I'm like wow okay uh so stakeholders there's opportunities for stakeholder input in the beginning of the search and again toward the end of the search so in the

126beginning of the search some of the ways that they are involved are through the Q&A session which we started doing about two years ago so we would work with your Communications team to get the word out a week or so before that session that people can submit questions and in advance that they want answered about the search process we schedule it usually for 4:00 on a Wednesday or a Thursday outside of contract hours and such and yet we know not everyone can come at 4:00 on that day so we record the session and we ask for those questions to be submitted in advance because we want to answer every question that stakeholders may have about the process to ensure accurate and very transparent information is shared during that session and it's not a board meeting

127you all don't need to be there and sometimes it's better if board members don't sit in because people might be asking questions they submit them anonymously in the chat they don't ask them verbally on the Q&A um but they might not want to ask everything if they do see a board member or two on that session but you will watch it later when it's recorded so we'll answer questions live during the session we'll share the timeline what's happening when it's happening and why it's happening that way we'll share the vacancy brochure let people know where it's posted what is in the brochure it'll be a leadership profile it'll be a timeline it'll be points a pride for the district and for the community and how to apply and then we'll share the stakeholder survey and

128we'll walk folks through this is what it looks like here's the questions it's hard copy it's online it's in three languages and then we answer all of those questions we record that and it's anywhere from about 35 minutes to maybe an hour but not usually more than that and then the next day or so when it uploads to YouTube we'll get it to the district to put on the website on the the landing page for the search so that's available for the Entre higher 3 and a half or 4 months of the search are you guys collecting the demographics of the we certainly can if you would like us to add demographics into the survey stakeholder survey we can do that we typically don't because again every district is so different and yet if you

129want to know those things we will talk about the self-identifiers people use as far as their um if they are a parent or staff or a caretaker whatever it might be and if you'd like us to collect demographic information race ethnic City age we can certainly include that in the survey too I think that's going to help us to see how inclusive we are yep excellent point excellent point so then the other thing I'd like to talk about early on is it's not in my proposal but early on actually before the Q&A we would like to meet with your administrators and your cabinet members to share information about the search answer their questions and ask for their help to get people involved we'd also like to meet with the leadership of your bargaining units early

130on to explain the process answer their questions ask for their help to get people involved and then there's the Q&A and then the other uh way to involve people well the focus groups and such Rachel's going to talk about the suggestions you have in this plan again just incredible we would obviously do whatever the district would like but the ideas that are in that plan are spot on later in the search toward the end you can involve stakeholders again at the interview phase typically it's the second round when you're down to perhaps two or three candidates you could do it in the first round if you'd like you could have the separate interview committees you could have informal meet and greets with the candidates on that day where people can come and meet them and

131just visit informally you could do uh Q&A sessions with them where we would collect questions from the audience and read them to make sure that they're legal and then we would ask candidates to respond one candidate at a time you wouldn't have two or three in the room so he's a lot ways to structure the input at the end uh also you could have stakeholders from different representative groups watch your interview and then provide feedback electronically to us on strengths and opportunities for growth that you would read before you begin deliberating who you'd like to move forward or who you'd like to hire so that's it's not ever asking them who should we hire because you don't want to set people up to be disappointed that you know they're not the hiring committee you're the

132hiring Authority that's it but but you would like to hear from them about the interviews highlights low lights things like that and finally one of my favorite ways to involve stakeholders um is to have students help give the tours in round two and so if there are students that are interested in um chaperoning the two or three people around the district obviously they would take them to buildings you want someone from the district to drive to the different buildings you don't want students driving they could however represent your district and speak with the candidates and get to know them and then the building administrator would take over and give the tour and the students would visit along with them that's one of my favorite ways of getting the student voice in the search process and

133they tend to absolutely love it as well um that was a lot director Ibrahim I hope that was okay yeah thank you I just want to like thinking like deeply like when I say barrier to like those who have digital ly who can do this but I know you all sending had copies some people even they can't write it too but I know District have tools so I think where also can facilitate that we have two we has on to good assist and other mechanisms for translation I know that we did the Q&A sessions right for that's what we did last time when uh Dr I was hired was like towards the end was Q&A sessions that we did last time and remember sitting in just observing some of those but I don't know if

134we ever got any Community feedback about that process and how that anyways it's can be a conversation we have at another point but I just I do remember that that was what we did last any other question I'm impressed with the uh the video we at least listening in and then giving the feedback during the final interview process it's interesting new tools lots of new tools one of the things that's very important to us is continuous Improvement so the last four or five years in particular we've learned so much about search processes and uh what we can do to make sure that they are more um flexible to meet school board's needs without violating the open meeting law the government data Practices Act there are a lot of things I think that you will have

135an opportunity to select from that will match the process that's going to really bring you what you're looking for it's not going to be my search it's going to be your search so if we decide to do the workshop when do we need to make that decision and do we all do it together I'm assuming are you talking about I don't have I I don't know what the Wi-Fi is the H you so just for a moment I'll address that if that's okay so you have the option to participate in this if you would like to it's included at no cost and this Workshop is um intended to serve every member of msba that might be facing a search it is not specific to our services if however you participated in in this as part

136of a search I can customize the information I share about here's what we will be doing because mba's process is different than what some districts use when they conduct their own search or it's different when they work with another search firm so this is a generic Workshop that is intended to give you some really great foundational information I do have I brought these along I don't know if and when you might want them but there is a booklet that goes along with it and you could take this at any point starting tonight just to read and it's also a lot of pages you're going to memorize that but you could if you want CU some of us are left brain some are right brained so some people would want to read this thoroughly and take

137notes we could do the workshop in conjunction with your planning meeting and the workshop could be maybe the first hour because the planning meeting will build upon what's in here that's intended to to set that stage or you could skip it because the search itself is the workshop spread out over three or four months it's just this gives you all of it upfront so you know what to expect some people like that some people don't I suggest that we all take the the the packet and look through it and think about it like do you think that this is something you would want and if if there's anybody that feels strong with that they want it we will do it and if everyone's like no this feels okay we feel supported that's fine then we

138don't but so look through that gra through that and and let me know um and we also have one of our um incoming board members in the room and I'd like for him to have one of those if we can absolutely absolutely I think there's enough for that hysterical tonight I'm laughing so hard on the inside oh man okay any other questions for Barb was okay we're going to talk about this briefly again um on our action agenda so great thank you very much I do appreciate chance to answer your questions you still have the same email right if you have I do yes Bor MN mba.org and my phone number my email address would be on all of the communications so your stakeholders can reach out to me with anything that they might want

139to know further email me call me anytime okay thank you thank you very much okay we have Ashley you don't have Rachel but I mean just as good so thank you Ashley for um Ashley going to talk about our communication plan or D communication plan for the search which has already gotten ruce from the expert so fantastic which is great thank you thank you chair Casey Schoolboard members I appreciate the opportunity to share our Communications plan with you I know this is a really exciting time for many of us because the person who is coming into this role is really going to be continuing to guide guide us in our strategic directions so I know I'm I'm really excited for that and I hope that um in your review of our communication plan you'll see

140that those values are reflected in um the key messages strategies tactics and some of the other ideas that are going to come up as we go through so please feel free to stop me and ask questions or provide suggestions along the way um because that's really going to help us to shape this to be what we want uh to reflect our our community um moving forward so I know you have a the copy of this in board book if you haven't seen this already um the first thing that you're going to see is our Communications goals and one of the really important aspects of that goal is being culturally and linguistically relevant and I think that really uh aligns with what we're trying to accomplish in our schools so a lot of the tactics that

141you're going to see later on in the plan will will be reflected in that so we want this to be the way that we're informing our families um about our search process and we're really engaging with our community at all levels so one of these really important aspects is incorporating student voice in this um throughout our entire process so I'll share a little bit more about some of the areas that we are hoping to engage students at different in different ways um through different groups that they're involved in and whether or not that's through focus groups I know we had a little bit of dialogue around the focus groups already so just to take a look at some of our key messaging um we're really trying to seek multiple racial perspectives throughout the engagement of

142that process um including meeting the candidates when we get to that point and taking in that feedback so that when we're at the point of making that decision you have the information that you need that's reflective of our community so we're also going to be staying informed about the search for a new superintendent by reading district and school level Communications which will'll talk a little bit more about the specific channels of communication and who the audience is best served for um and we're especially again encouraging those students to participate in the engagement opportunities so um let me just make sure I'm hitting all these areas so when we're considering our various audiences um of course we have our district website which will be having a specific landing page for this process um and there might

143be some breakout Pages for specific need-based topics that will come up throughout this um of course we'll be using lotss of social media and our school newsletters so both the SLP communicator and site specific newsletters like the 6425 and then like um lenza which would be at PSI um orial times of the Middle School and I our our other IB schools are branded as SLP or various communicators so um and using these various channels specifically for those groups is going to be really important so that we're hitting all of our Target audiences as far as our internal audiences one of those forms of communication that you're all very familiar with is our board briefs so of course we'll be we'll be using that as a as an Avenue where we're putting in short blurs and

144updates around that um we also have two staff various staff um newsletters including the flow which is sent districtwide to all our staff and then our weekly leadership Communicator which is used for our Administration groups um and then when we're considering our specific groups for um racial um and Multicultural groups one of the key components that we're going to be talking about is um engaging with them in a more on toone area so again we have about 5,000 students I know the exact numbers are included in here 5,000 students 600 a little under 620 employees and so using the specific communication tools that will best meet their needs um is going to be a really key aspect so um just coming through this so of course I we've got some of our communication action steps

145so we included at the end of the the communication plan you'll see some of the examples of the Branded communication examples so director Hicks has extensive experience um in in doing this type of work and has Pro had used some of those um past examples to help guide some of the work that we're going to be using for our search process so you'll see like one of the example websites is from 287 um where she formerly was working at and which really did take in a lot of consideration for the racial perspectives that we want to be considering here and so that's something that we think is um when we think about what makes St Louis Park unique um that is one of the areas that is really important about us is partially um our

146approach on racial Equity um and that's something that we think will will set us apart I know that came up in our past conversation here about um like why what's going to attract our talent that's something that we're really going to want to highlight throughout our messaging so I know we talked a little bit about the various web pages and different information that we'll be putting out there one of our hopes is that we will be updating that website with new information um weekly and with that that might be website popups so we have the ability to do different um you see it on our front page of our website where news posts get posted there we can do that and update new ones so that they're different um different thumbnail images with a different

147story um and short updates the other thing that came up was if we wanted to do like if we start getting many questions and you guys will probably be most informed about those questions if we need to do an FAQ spot um to keep people informed about various needs there the other aspect of this is our flyer distribution Network which is peach jar so we do have the ability to send out flyers digitally um and that's mostly for middle school and Elementary Early Learning also uses those F flyer submissions as well so as far as our um tactics go um we know that this is still very early on in our planning process um and there's still lots to be determined and so this plan is really um kind of our initial thinking we still

148have many and plenty of opportunity to adjust accordingly um and we know that when a search firm is determined that that this could change um so as we move into that the new year we'll continue to work on updating information for the candidate page um and then implementing our plan to engage families so that we can better figure out what information is needed to share at a public um area now I think this next section is the part that's um probably most interesting in in the sense of like what I've hearing through our conversation tonight is around the focus groups and whether or not focus groups is a way to go or not I know we we are planning still to do a survey but what we've heard from our U Multicultural families is that

149focus groups are going to be better received because it's a on toone touch point and translation services are already provided on site so we worked with our Multicultural leas on Carmen and to Robbie to help provide a little bit of guidance so if we were able to do some small very very intentional round taes and we've identified a couple of student groups even that we thought would be good good touch points like sore and there's a principal's Advisory Group as at the high school that those might be really good touch points when we're considering also our student voice um to get those get that perspective that would be really helpful for us um just want to touch on a couple more things uh you'll see on here this the superintendent example here we're thinking that

150this could be either a postcard or a magnet something that is sent home with all of our families that QR code is directly then um families can scan it again on that weekly basis and be able to see those new updates um but overall I think this is a pretty comprehensive use of all the tools that we have of course there's a lot more that we could identify as when things are going out and what the message messaging entails um but of course under further further guidance um as we get to those next steps but my questions that I think would be really helpful for us in in providing us with some some more insight is if there's something that really resonates with you um please I'd love to hear that or if there are

151things that you have as suggestions or ideas um I'm I'm looking forward to hearing your advice I love the QR thing you too that was great and having it on a magnet on your fridge and just like boom I want to know what's going on so I might be the only person that does it but I really appreciate that I just can I ask a question please it's a a just two questions um out of some curiosity is our communication is it is it like it goes out you don't have to opt into it it just goes out to all the families if you're enrolled in in SOS Park almost that yeah so this this is actually a really great question so as far as emails go yes everyone is opted in and as far

152as text goes starting this year everyone from kindergarten that is new yes they will start getting text but last year if you remember this we had the opt-in period so there are still families who have yet to opt into our text messaging so those families aren't receiving those but yes email and phone calls actually um and I didn't message didn't mention that but we will be using both those um strategies as a followup question it's just an observation when mamei went through both the superintendent search our superintendent search and then our strategic plan we had SE we had a separate communication that was from our communication director who just sort of summarized where we were in the process um that was sent out and the reason why I found that helpful was because I paid

153a little bit more attention to it the um like the 6425 is already so full of all of the things and um I'm not entirely sure why anybody would say that they were uninformed because it's so long and it but I think that if we were um if we rece reached a stage it's always good and Barb I don't know if you can speak to it if other districts did it if it was just m that did it but it was great just to have One Singular email update that got sent out and I and again I get do you guys does everybody here get two messages when you get a text I used to I get I get this I get the staff one and I get a parent one so but then in

154mam me I and is it the same with St Louis Park it just says you have a new communication check your email is that what it is too okay so that would be my only suggestions it's just I like having One Singular thing about the superintendent or last year it was our strategic plan just about that thing because it just gets some of the newsletters just gets so long that's great advice and I think actually when we think about our email text voice call we will probably be doing some of those that are just that messaging around superintendent for most of our site newsletters we're usually doing short blurbs three to five sentences as far as like when we're providing District updates so those are usually much much shorter so when we're trying to do

155more of like a feature that's when we would do um like a direct message so this would be exactly one of those times that we would do that I think in hearing what you're saying about text to um that it might be helpful to have um a link in those text messages right a clickable link so that's something that we'll we'll take that into consideration can certainly update it with even the the candidate page just a thought yes great couple things first of all thank you for starting with goals um as a as a communicator you know it's so easy for people to jump over that but you guys are professional communicators so thank you I want to recognize that um one of the um I think I have two thoughts two main things here

156one being well first of all this is great um that one does that's a freebie um the other comments are um uh one would be do we can we put something in certain facilities too is there ability and I'm thinking of the elementary schools like a lot of times kid people are going in there for Bingo or for PTO meetings or things like that parents are going in there and if there's just a reminder as you're going in there hey you know something like that I'm thinking particularly of those like the elementary schools as being key places to do that and I'm also think thinking like sorry I apologize but are you thinking like signage poster display something wherever whatever would be in sort of those key Gathering spaces with a QR code on it

157and I'm particularly thinking again for people who have a dig digital divide and wouldn't get something you know or if you're sending something home with a kid like we said you know we'll get stuck in a backpack and doesn't have come out um the other thing is you do have SLP residents here and I'm wondering we're talking newsletters and so we know that families get the newsletters but they don't necessarily not everybody in the community gets the newsletter and we have different level of interest from the Community but obviously there's certain people in the community who like to be involved with this too so I don't know if there's a specific strategy that you're thinking there if that's largely the Sailor if there's some other sort of things that we would do just for people's

158General awareness in a community as well to do that yeah I'll speak to that a little bit in here one of our tactics is using press releases as needed um which would include the sun sailor I'm also thinking our postcard potentially magnet idea is that it it would potentially go just districtwide if we were to do that um and that's also dependent on if we decide postcard or mailer right and how that goes well we have things that I think go to the community like our community mailers and stuff like that too right or I forget how that breaks down but that there could be an opportunity there to or something like that thank you thank you for that yeah oh especially like the community ed and the KN that's and having um particularly senior

159no I'm just wondering about this the QR code I'm thinking about my mother right now so um but like using really leading into our Community Education and loox centers as ways of getting out information my mom does not like QR codes but but print outs or having a handful of print outs that aree right there at the or another city Gathering site city hall or something like that if they would be so kind or something like that there are lots ways to make those flyers both for digital people and for people who don't want to do QR codes so yeah but thank you director Cox for that was I had it written down and I just said good to it I just wanted to add thank you for um reminding me about Rachel's experience in

160287 and the the thing there because it connects to ab's question of Barb which is that the board did in that case receive all the feedback disaggregated by race um and also like you know Community member staff whatever so um that did have but Rachel has done this before and it was successful and I think we actually had quite a um we we had a I think we were pleased with the representation that we had it would felt um like representative of the district so um that's great well thank you for that and thank you for your additional feedback if you have an extra questions please feel free to connect with us I think you're going to be spending a lot of time with us so hopefully everything is okay that please do so I

161just asked if I could Express gratitude to um Ashley because Ashley you may have noticed was serving a dual role tonight which are part of her job in any way she performed so we're down a couple of Staff members today who are really ill so not only is Ashley here presenting our Rachel's behalf uh and you know they co-developed this plan which is uh wonderful but she's uh presenting for Rachel but she's also doing the live stream because another team member is down so I just want to express my gratitude and early in the day when we knew this was all coming down I I said Ashley this is a great professional growth opportunity inspiring leadership and she tell you it was going to go till 9:00 p.m. I assumed ass you're going to be

162working on your superintendent Li you know because there's a need I wholeheartedly second that thank you Dr mcer thank you um okay we are at our consent agenda I believe I don't think I missed anything y okay um so is there a motion to approve the consent agenda um as presented move by second by Heather um all in favor please say I I any oppos all right now we have on our action agenda the superintendent search msba executive Search Services proposal it is recommended that the board approved the msba executive Services proposal so what I'll do is I'll take a motion in a second and then we can discuss so is there a motion to approve the msba executive Services proposal moved by Colin second second by Ken um all right any further discussion thank

163you for the thorough information packet I I want to throw out that I I I didn't get to add my hopes and dreams last time and but if I had what I would have said is um for this process I mean I have I have big big hopes and dreams for who our next superintendent is going to be but for the process um I would have said I want this process to be our process our decision our community's process and I want it to be super well supported right like that that we can we feel like we are we have all the information that we need and all the guidance that we need in order to have the decision be ours um and so the reason that I that I wanted to go to msba

164and and look have you all see their proposal is that I really felt that they were going to meet both of those things the support I knew was going to be there because we saw this fall I mean I I don't I don't know if you all know this but like I called msba in a panic and said um our superintendent just resigned so and and I got a call back from Barb within I think 10 minutes and and every time I called her she answered the phone and I know that was the case for S all other folks right like when Barb had when someone had a question call Barb and and she answered so um that support piece um that feels um really really good and then in terms of being our process

165I did not even know this when we first asked um to present but um having being able to have the board see all of the applications is not the case with other search firms um it has not been it was not my experience in the previous search I did and I don't think it was the case here um in the last search that they did here um I just want to add for the record I mentioned that your voice was missing question he did thank you so anyway I think that I that really felt like this is the place where it it it feels like it's our search we're the ones making the decisions the search firers are making all the decisions they we see all the information we don't have anything gatee kept from

166us um so it felt like this um I feel very strongly that um that this firm that msba and Barb and her team are going to be able to sort of really walk us through this process and have it be our process and I just want to say then now that you have shared that I thank you because my understanding was that it they were G and we would not see all of the applications and that was a concern of mine so thank you for sharing that and I saw it in a proposal but um that you knew it going in would have been helpful I didn't know I didn't know until I saw the proposal so or until we talked last so no I didn't know um okay so with that all in favor

167please say I hi any oppose all right we're going to be seeing a lot of you thank you very much we're honored to help we look forward to it we are we are too um get your phone ready because I know there's going to be a lot of calls that good okay we have our SEIU Local 284 School nutrition labor agreement Dr CER are you still here okay you want to just te this up for us it's our first one it's our first one all right yeah so as uh we talked about in the spring we had um it's eight contracts open this year uh we started bargaining with teachers custodians and school nutrition uh over the summer um and then they just kind of go bing bing bing eventually as you get go um

168all good negotiations very collaborative very clear very good problem solving um we're just bringing the nutrition one first we'll bring the custodian contract um uh I believe on December 12th and uh hopefully there'll be news soon about um teachers when we get the final polish on that one too um so um this this contract we did a lot of work this year on um districtwide initiatives to clean up language make things more consistent more clear um one example that I'd tell you about is like um our contracts would say things like uh and your sick Leaf shall be prated or you know deferred compensation employees will receive up to $1,000 of deferred compensation match pro-rated you know HR knew what that was payroll knew what it was but it always wasn't clear to um employees

169what that was and so we took the time to spell that language out better so that when a person leaves uh or the person only is 0.5 and they get half they get $500 a match why didn't I get the ,000 that the contract says and so um that language is is much clear and we're working through um all the contracts that we have open this time so um clear language on setting steps and years of service um you know it's a and you get a step increase for a year of service well how long do you have to be in the district if you're a new hire before that's a year and we had about six different um definitions across the district for what what constituted a year and so we've again met with

170all of our dis yard groups and are starting to um get that consistency so that a year is a year is a year um as you go through the um all the contracts um little cleanup things about debts if you um if you have $30 on your school lunch program when you quit uh we can collect that on the final check if you've overused your sick leave or vacation and then you quit um you know we can collect that on the last check and um when we we've always been able to do that but we've had to do individual um agreements to repay and if we have it in the collective bargaining unit that's a termin condition of employment and we can do it when they have I mean obviously we have to be right

171they could grieve if we did it wrong but you know we can let them know that there's going to be a payroll deduction cuz you you know you you use 12 days of sick leave and you only worked a month and then you you know and then you quit yeah um use it got paid for days you didn't actually earn um we uh coordinated the new uh earn safe and sick leave uh language that's effective January 1st uh into our contract so that um if you get 10 days of sick leave in our contract you don't get another six days when the earn sick and safe we' coordinated those so our since our plan is more generous than the state's plan we can fold theirs inside ours and and and make it um the only

172thing we had to do is broaden some of the definitions because the definitions in the state laws are broader than some of our definitions but we didn't have to go to additional days we could keep it within the the lead plans that we had um coordinated or we in this contract we work through um layoff language we don't have a lot of Lay layoffs we'd actually like to hire more Cooks but the best time to deal with seniority language is when you don't have any layoffs in front of you so we took the opportunity to change language that says and may bump a less senior employee to shall bump the least senior employee um one definition of that would be oh well I want that job over there so I'm going to bump that person

173because they're less senior then that person would bump that person and then that person could finally bump that person and this makes it clearer that if there's a vacancy you you go to the vacant position if there's somebody if there's somebody that you're going to bump you bump the least senior and then it's once one bump and done um so we work through that language um in this contract still has a couple I think three people that are Severance eligible um we now have some Roth IRA options um our Severance plans get put into our 403b plans we wanted to ensure that you didn't create we didn't we didn't if you were going to get paid Severance and it was intended to go to a a non- taxable 403b that you couldn't then divert it

174to a taxable Roth IRA and create a tax implication for the district so we um put that language in and believe it or not we uh we increased the summer differential for the school nutrition people to $2 per hour over their regular rate because they can stay home now and collect unemployment and so we actually created an incentive for people who would come in and work uh nutrition um Services over the summer instead of um collecting unemployment and we increased the clothing differential um equal to the male uh custodial group um for years they always had a lesser amount of of um of clothing allowance and I believe I mean it was perfectly prated to the custodians work 12 months and this many hours and this group Works 9 months and this many hours but

175really you wear your uniforms all year and so there you know if you if you thought about it with a different light it made sense to bring the the two uniform groups um consistent so we did that as well um any other questions and they voted on this I mean I I no I'm sorry I didn't te that up I'm sorry it is written here yes yes it but typically U almost universally uh we have the the Union vote on the contract first and then we bring it to the board after it's been ratified uh due to the timing and how things are stacking up and trying to get this contract done work on the back pay so that we can get it on the December 15 check we're asking the board to approve this

176contract tonight and the uh nutrition will vote on it on Thursday the 30th uh we should know by the end of the day on on that and it takes two parties to agree so if you agree and they don't we're still back to the table if they agree and you don't we're back to the table and so either way we're just asking the board um for convenience sake to approve this and then we'll wait for the we'll wait for the SEIU vote on Thursday okay okay I would entertain a motion to approve the labor agreement for school nutrition employees for 2023 through 25 as presented move by Sarah second by Abby aim any further discussion thank you and thanks to the um the hardworking folks in the bargaining unit um all in favor please say

177I any po right Communications and transmitt anybody have anything quick one one quick thing I'll say I did go to family connect day at the high school and just want to say an appreciation for the teachers that were there and participated um I had I had some really good conversations and there were a few other parents that plus parsly attended in the afternoon but I really appreciate the effort that the teachers put into it um and for English one of the teachers put together a PowerPoint presentation that explained what's going on for math they were already they were going to test us they wanted to quiz us on some things and see if we knew stuff and then they decided since it was a small appreciate the opportunity and looking forward to what it could

178look like come springtime oh be so cool anybody else I said before I'll say it again December 12th our fre in taxation hearing is at 600 p.m. and then our board meeting will be at 6:30 um before that what what time it's 5:00 5:00 our reception for our outgoing board members Ken and Heather who we going to miss yay we're just going to miss that so I'm going to celebrate them at 5 o' and I forgot there is um coffee with the principal next Tuesday at the high school from 3:00 to 3:30 it's always difficult to say goodbye all colleagues but excited for the new ones I think Sarah's bringing donuts for everybody I went and there were free donuts you had a very cute picture I don't know if you saw it didn't see

179it yeah it was a cute picture I forget all right I will entertain a motion to adourn by Virginia second Sarah Virginia and Sarah and um all in favor please say I youst okay we are adjourned at 9:14