001Tonight's uh March 16th schoolboard meeting and uh uh do we have anyone for the forum Mary or >> No. >> Okay. And so we'll move on to number four, approval of today's agenda. So I'd look for a motion to approve today's agenda. >> So >> is there a second? >> Second. >> Is there any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying I. >> I oppose the same sign. Okay. Agenda carries. And uh number five, donations. Mr. Durban. All right. Thank you, Chair Clott. School board uh Superintendent Hy. Um so just continuing our uh process uh requesting for board approval uh and recognizing uh donations to Albertly schools. Um so on this uh agenda it's for the month of February donations received from Minnesota Bofuel for grant funds for a busing tour. Um
002$535 from the education foundation uh for a field trip for Miss Netzer's class at the high school. Um, Freeborn Mau, $200 donation for the Southwest Middle School, Tiger Den. Um, and then two donations. Um, the Rotary Club of Albert Lee, $100 towards um, early learning uh, student assistance. Um, I think that's student uh, it says scholarship on your board packet, but it's for the tuition assistance for early learning. And then Albertly Education Foundation, a very generous donation of $5,000 uh, to that same program, early learning um, student tuition assistance. So, um, request your approval of those donations this evening and thank you to all of our partners in the community. >> So, moved. Dr. Well, thank you for the opportunity tonight. Um, see if we get up there here. So, tonight I'm going to go
003over a little bit of kind of the enrollment update. And every week I get um an en enrollment updates. I took some screenshots just so people can kind of see what I get. Um, and it shows me a rolling enrollment. Um, then we'll connect that to budget and then we'll connect it to the budget cuts and staffing. Um, gotten a few questions out in the community and um, and from board and from a lot of different people. So, um, so we'll try to clear up some things. I'm going to do there is some generalizations in some of the budget here and I'll say that when we get there, but that's just so people can, uh, have an idea of of what we're working with between the business office and enrollment and then as we get
004to cuts. So um so you can see here I get a weekly update um and all the administrators get a weekly update. So this is just again a screenshot of that and you can see I've got today's weekly update where it shows there's 193 in kindergarten. I'll jump to 7th grade at 249. And then you'll see in 11th and 12th grade um I also have uh the ALC enrollment numbers in there um which are are different because this really just shows uh within the high school. Um so you can see that 231 um right there there's 23 at the ALC. So the class size there is 254 and then 219 + 71 makes it 290. That's a little bit exaggerated because it's hard for me on this report to take out any second or third
005year seniors that may be at the ALC. Um there's very few of them, but there's a few in that number. Um here we get um a record on on the year. So you can see uh we've been decreasing students. We actually gained two this last week. Um so a family did come back um last week. So, we're down 130 students this year. Uh, when you look at 2425, they were actually adding in ALC enrollment in there. Um, so that's this one year is kind of hard to judge by. Um, but when you get here, you can kind of get the gist of it. We were at uh 64 down, 65 down, 34 down. So, you see this year we're significantly different um with students. we do accelerate um just a little bit before Christmas and
006then as you come through January um we do accelerate uh losing students. So I'm just going to say that certain national activities in the state of Minnesota affected enrollment a little bit. So um on this uh page here you can see um this is our K5 by building and the district. So you can see how what the student count is at each grade level. Uh K1, two, three, four, and five. And then when you get to the total amount for the district, so you can again see that 193. So you can we could go back and forth and you could see how the numbers line up. On this one, we have the number of sections we have total in the district and then we have um the average uh students per class. And when you
007look back through here, you'll see some kind of orang-ish colored numbers. That's wherever we're above what the average would be. So take it take it for anything. If if we had one giant schoolhouse, right, we would know the average would be right here. But we have four different schools. So we're going to fluctuate a little bit. And that gives you an idea of where we're under or just about it to where we're over it. So, and then here's where we've got total K5, total at Southwest, total at the high school, and again, those numbers, and then there's where your ALC numbers are. So, I've had a lot of questions from the community about, well, what's declining enrollment doing? How do we see this? Where do we know that is? And so there's two spots in
008our attendance where we can see what we would call like a bubble going down or the or the bubble bursting or or a drop in attendance. And so when you get right here at 67, sixth grade, 7th grade, you can see we go from right around 250 a class, right? Because you got to add in on these ALC's. go right about 250 class or slightly more to when you average all these classes out with sixth grade over here. Even though there is a 234 and there's actually a little explanation for the 22 and 234 in here. Um you do get that but they actually average about 208 students for each class where when you get to 7th grade through 11th grade you actually average about 250 per class. So that's that kind of little bit
009of a bubble. So each class is roughly about 40 and again it's going to fluctuate. So you're roughly about 40 less students. When you get to um 7 through 12 and you're looking at again 290 so uh you got about 40 45 students maybe 50 in there that you're less when you talk 7th grade through 11th grade. Um, so that's an two important numbers to kind of look at. So, we've been able to see the declining enrollment. Um, and the district's probably made little adjustments there. Um, but but what you're getting now is we've got one large class. This will be the last of the larger classes that are graduating. Then we'll go to those medium-sized classes. And so, you've got um five of those. And then now you've got seven total of your smaller
010classes. So that that's kind of where the distinct line is is that we've moved now past the point where the smaller classes are the majority and the larger classes are are the minority of the district. So and these are very generalized just so that we can work with numbers. and it's using about the $12,000 for 2025 students. And so if you were to go back to when the 11th grade were kindergarteners, that's probably about $8,000 per student. But I didn't want to start monkeying around with numbers. Very general, so you can't really hang on the number total there. But here's what this means. So, a loss of 100 students so far this year, that's a significant amount of money. That's really hard to put a number to because not all 130 students came here on
011day one and were gone on day two, right? They slowly come back and it fluctuates. Sometimes you go down five, you might go up six, you go down 10, you might go up two. So, it fluctuates. So that number is hard uh to get it to wrap your mind around, but when you start talking 130 students and or a hundred or more students uh for a considerable amount of time, that does start um to mess with your average daily attendance. So that will be a significant amount of money. Um and during the year, there was a few things that we were able to cut that Paul and I did. Um, so we're fairly certain that we've got that number kind of shored up um on where it's going, but it it does impact cuts a
012little bit. Um, but when you consider that you're moving from 290 to like 250 students, if you think about 12 uh,000 a student, that's roughly 400,000 per year that that gap, it's only one year, but that that gap happened. But you got to remember that gap was 1415, 1516, 1617, 1718, 1819. So for 5 years, we had unrealized revenue, meaning the students weren't there, but the dis so the district didn't have that to budget. So over five years, that's about $2 million. Is it really in numbers? 2 million is probably a little north of the number because again in 1415 it wasn't $12,000. But it gives you an idea that the district has slowly had money um unrealized money. So a loss of unrealized money. Then in 1920 you're about uh you boost up again
013a little bit um about 40 a little bit north of 40 kids. So then you're about 480,000 and that's that seven years we talked about right? So so for seven years the total amount of that was 3.3 million that the district did not realize and students in other words they were declining. So 5.3 million. Okay. Again that's not in one year. That's realized over those 12 years that happened. But that starts to show you how you're going to have to continually run the district on less money year after year after year. Okay. Um so we had lower birth rates. We have open enrollment and we know there's more people that open and roll out than open enroll in. And we know that we have enrollment at local private schools, right? Um so again, we generalize
014those numbers. So the that's not true dollar amounts, but it helps you understand amounts that the district is not realizing or that we're having to cut and adjust every year, whether or not the district actually cut or adjusted those years. So um you can see here fund balance. So you can see district enrollment slowly going down. There was 2425 a little bump up and but you can kind of see the decline there. This green box is your esser fund years. The esser fund years again because of COVID. So if you go back and you look at this little bump here in numbers, okay, fourth and third, some of those numbers are those preschoolers and kindergarten students that parents did not enroll and kind of held back. So that we seem like we have a little
015tiny bubble in there. And that's that's a piece of not all of it, but that is a piece of that um number there. Um, so you can see, um, and I, in doing a little bit of research, uh, the board did do a fund balance spend down for the fund balance. Uh, enrollment held steady, so it came up a little bit, and then now we slowly decline, and so we're trying to hit that $12 million mark for a fund balance cuts. So, as enrollment has declined, the districts had to start cutting. Um, there was a little bit of cuts in 2122. Uh, we didn't have great data on that, so is really hard to put that out there. Um, we believe this was about 600,000 in cuts, but we know for sure in 2324 is
0161.3 million. We know last year they cut 2 million, and we know this year we're cutting 2.6 million. Again, they kind of work they work opposite each other a little bit. Okay. So, we've had declining enrollment for a number of years. We've had the CO 19 pandemic which infused funds into the district. The district chose to spend money on people as well as supplies. So, some of those jobs had to be rerouted in order to stay in the district. Um, some stayed, some didn't, but remember anytime you do people, you'll have a re reoccurring yearly cost of renewing those contracts. Um, uh, we're not operating at capacity in any of the buildings. So, the buildings are slightly different capacities, right? They range from about 60ome percent to 90ome percent. On average right now, the district
017sits at about 70% usage between 70 and 72% usage um of all the buildings. Um and then we've increased in PSO, we've increased in open enrollment, and we've increased in local choice schools. Um so we need to take some steps to kind of rightsize the district. One of those steps is putting outofclassroom teachers back into the classroom and that would be under our teaching for tigers for the and another uh main is to reduce and find efficiencies in the administrative and certified levels. So those are two areas that we've been really looking at and spending a lot of time on and that would be again within empowerment and systems. So today, what we have are moving out of the classroom FTEES back into the classroom, reducing some classroom FTEEs at schools with low student numbers,
018and that goes for preK12, creating efficiencies and scheduling for use of staff. Part of that is effective use of staff for our own online program, and capturing back a bunch of students that lost. We have a number of students that have told the district if we can get into your online program, we will come back. Is it going to be a significant number? Not at first. But hopefully we can start to stem the tide of students leaving and looking elsewhere and saying we offer that here because we do offer it. We've just had them on a waiting list. So we just need to increase uh the ability for students to have access to that. Um today there's also a number of um tier 2 and OFP staff. We have to follow the statute which means
019every year and tier 2 every other year um we have to let them go. We have to post the job for 60 days um if there's any tier three or tier 4 applications in there. We have to um see if their application matches what we need. We can do an interview if they're a good fit for the district. we're expected to hire tier three and four. If they're not a good fit for the district and that's a decision of the hiring committee, um then they can start to look again at OFP and tier one and two individuals. But we have to follow the the statute. Those tier 2, tier one and tier 2 and OFP individuals can only apply after July 1. We can only offer those jobs July 1 to the start of school.
020So it it leaves a little gap there. Um but generally we're working with those individuals so that they know uh the timelines and and what we're sitting on. So um when we get to the April board meeting, you're going to see additional cuts coming forward where we're reducing and finding efficiencies in the administrative and the non-certified levels and that's under empowerment and systems. Um again I I run numbers, I rerun numbers, I double check numbers, I check where people are paid out of. Um Paul and I and Ashley and everybody in the district um we double check everything. We've had numerous meetings with administration, principles, building administration, uh to make sure that um everything we're doing is what what's lining up um to move forward. Cuts are not a positive thing, but we know we
021need to move the district forward. next year. We know we're going to get a district task force recommendations soon. We're going to take those recommendations. We'll discuss them. The board will discuss them. They'll give me feedback on where to go. Um I'm assuming I'll be doing a lot of uh community meetings and parent meetings as we move forward. We're going to have to vet those recommendations forward at the beginning of the year. We're going to have to start to take some of those recommendations, move forward with them so that we can look for more efficiencies. Um, will there be additional cuts in future years? The only answer is yes. We're still declining enrollment and we're going to be declining enrollment because that that middle grade bubble's got to get through. The incoming kindergarten class is
022still under 200 students. So, it's making us a little nervous. So, I'm having I'm having admin assistants and other people reach out to families that we know could have kindergarteners um to try to get their final answers so that we can we can re we can have a better idea of what we're doing. That's not that's not abnormal for March. Um but generally uh by April we have a pretty good idea. So, we're kind of getting close to that timeline of what we should know. Okay, here's the bottom line. We must remain focused on the priorities that have the greatest impact on student learning. We have to strengthen the literacy through initiatives such as Whiten wisdom and really great reading. We have to improve our mathematics instruction. We're evaluating new math standards and potential curricular
023resources. And we need to advance strong academic programming at the secondary level. Yes, today marks the first day. This is going to be hard. It's not fun to do. Okay. I didn't sign on to be a superintendent to come in and do this stuff, but I signed on knowing that at times we have to do this stuff. You all as board members did not run on the school board to do these things. But we all know that the business part of the district is we need to keep it as as fluent and effective as possible. So this this is an important phase for the district as we move forward with the restructure and the right sizing of our school district. It's unfortunate, but I know we can come out stronger. I know we can. I
024wouldn't be here today if I didn't think we couldn't do it. So, any questions? >> Um, I might add something I was considering uh discussing in my report, but it fits into to what you've presented. Um, it has been the policy of the school board for as long as I've been involved to have a 12% surplus, budget surplus, which there's a huge mis misconception about that, which goes way back to when I was on the other side of the negotiations table because the board at that time had a surplus, budget surplus built into the system every year. The reason for that is it is not uncommon for the state of Minnesota have fi to have financial difficulties and the way they solve their difficulties is to withhold payments to school districts during those times of
025the year that they can't meet their expenses. If we have a budget surplus, then we do not have to go out and borrow money and pay interest on that money so that we can pay our bills. That's why we have a 12% surplus. The misconception is, well, why don't we just dip into that 12% surplus? let's say spend 2% of us to to help us, you know, smooth over the difficult financial times we're in, which seems like a good solution, but it isn't because if we if we uh accept a budget which results in 2% spending more than we take in and then finance that with uh chipping away at our surplus, say let's have a 10% surplus instead of a 12% surplus. So we can spend 2% more than we take in in given
026year. Problem with that is that level of expenses which we have established for that year funded by our surplus is carried over to the next year. In other words, we're still spending 2% more than we took in. So it compounds and in order to balance our budget the next year we'd have to we we before the school year even started we'd have to cut 2% from the budget because we overspent the year before. So if you did nothing you would whittle away at that surplus and uh and in six years it'd be zero and in the seventh year you'd be in statutory operating debt. In other words, you're just kicking a problem down the road and uh digging yourself into a hole. So that that that 12% surplus is not an extravagance. It's it's it
027it's just a number. And if we spend more than we take in, then the surplus goes down and it will continue to go down. So I thought I'd add that to your Any other comments? >> I just I don't know if I would have an answer tonight, but one of our we have a private school in Albertly that's adding a sixth grade section. Do we have any sense of the history of that and the impact that that might have on our enrollments? I probably not, but I just think it's another area to anticipate. >> And is that 10 students? is at 20 students. We can do the math on what the impact might be if that contributes to our decline. Um I value the I value the option for families. Um so I don't want
028to be heard as saying I'm opposed to it, but I think we just want to anticipate what that uh addition may do. >> Yeah. And I haven't gotten all the I haven't heard except for I had to drop my car my wife's car off uh today um and uh was talking with a community member who said, "Oh, hey, you're the superintendent." Yeah. She said, "Well, whatever it is with Southwest because my daughter has said that that's where she wants to go. So, I know there's one that's coming from that that's cool, the Southwest." So, we're one positive there. But, um, no, it's it's, um, you know, I've talked with a lot of parents on that and, uh, it's nice to have choice. It's nice to have school if you're looking for, uh, theology in your
029learning. It's good to have that choice. Um, but it does it does make it tough on on financing. So, so >> I mean one thing that we've been able to do over many years, I don't know exactly where it goes back to, but uh at least with our athletic fees, we haven't uh charged anything for a number of years again to try to bring our participation up. Uh we've also um allowed other like some of these I don't know about the private school but uh you know I know we have with some other schools um if they don't have a specific extracurricular then if they're members of our district they can come in and participate in our district um online students we don't have a lot of them uh uh Otana and speaking to them
030last week they've got 680 in their online school. And of those, a lot of them are from Baiji and some of these other schools where they're able to do online school at home and basically participate. Maybe we need to start looking at some fees for these kind of things to equalize out because if we don't charge anything, we as a district are still paying for the coaches, for the transportation, for the referees, the umpires, you name the expenses and we're not getting anything back. So, I don't know. These are small numbers. They're not millions of dollars, but maybe that's as we look for efficiencies, we've got to start um looking at some of these areas. And then I'll just mention too the er funds you mentioned too. Um and you'd mentioned you could basically have
031invested that money into supplies and equipment or you can invest it into people. We chose invested into people and as now we're seeing some of those positions are getting cut back. But anytime you put it into people, that is a compounding effect each time the um each time we have a new contract, each time we have a have a raise, too. So again, we're battling against some of those funds that uh were nice to have, but they were all kind of like the historic funding we had at our last um three years ago, four years ago that was literally uh one-time funding as we all knew, but we invested it else wise. So just some thoughts on like you said, some of the efficiencies we might be looking at. >> Yeah. And part of that
032is is been working with Sean at the high school about the our online program, getting that getting kids off the waiting list. Um, and like I said, we've had a number of families indicate that they will be in our school system online. They want to be in our school system online and they were they're simply using another online system simply because we couldn't get them into ours. And so I'm concerned about that, you know, because that's not that's not the story that gets told everywhere. The story is my kid didn't fit in that system, so I took him elsewhere. Right. And that's not what we want out there. >> All right. Any other questions? Uh if not, let's uh Kim, I'll start with you on schoolboard reports. >> Sure. Thank you. Um I had the
033opportunity to read to uh a kindergarten class at Lake View, Miss Nelson's class, Mrs. Nelson's class. A fun story. both of my children had her as a teacher. And so when I went to um read there, it was a it was nice to for us to connect and and show the quality and and uh education is still there. Um I uh today participate in the policy committee. We had a nice uh committee meeting um very organized and we have some ideas on presentations for the next couple of months. So um lots of policies to look at. Um some of them are um statute changes are just reference changes but some of them um need more eyes. So, and then um I did have the opportunity to meet with Steve and Davey about budget and just
034helping taking that extra time to kind of go through each item and so appreciate that. Um that's all I have. >> Neil, hold on one second. Mike, they changed the order on my uh agenda here and I did not mean to jump over you. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to come right back to you and give our teacher report. Sorry, Mike. Go ahead. All right. Thanks, Dave. I won't take that personally yet. Um, so, um, so some of the reports I've got from some of the teachers that the high school, the student council wrapped up kindness week. So, we did a kindness week instead of Winterfest. And, um, that was nice and felt like it, you know, meant more than just having a having a fun week where we dress up.
035like we actually accomplished something and the kids learned something that week. Um, student council and NHS are gearing up to host a student leadership conference day in April at Crossroads Church. Alton Conger in Austin are going to be joining them. Um, the NHS and student council are also teaming up for a Earth Day cleanup at the high school in April. um from Brookside ALC, the 18 to 21 transitions program. One student graduated. Um they took a field trip to the Minnesota History Center. Um a student has started working on a substitute working as a substitute parah in the early learning program and is and it has been a great has been great for both programs. In the ALC, nine students will graduate this year. Uh, Mapstar's leadership class secured grant funding and worked with local
036community local company Morris Furniture to get more comfortable comfortable seating for ALC students in an effort to encourage them to lock in and earn more credits. At early childhood on March 5th, they had a guest presenter magician uh who came in to present to the students about respect and sharing and also did an evening show for the EC FE about being a good neighbor, Mr. Rogers tribute show. Then at the high school, um they the vet science class was busy doing examinations of some chickens. Then I had some I did did give uh send Darcy some photos to share of a few projects we've been doing at the high school. Um, so we a couple years ago we maybe just two years ago we got a Perkins grant and we were able to get a
037laser engraver. Um, so that tiger is five layers of cast acrylic, each one a different color. The hardest part, the software is easy once you figure that out, but the hardest part is getting that all glued together with all the things lining up there. Um, this is just another thing we can do with a with a laser engraver that is 3 millimeter plywood. So, we can cut out the plywood in whatever shape and then we can engrave an image on there, too. Um, this year and and last year, um, my department helped the students build all of the trophies for the robotics tournament. Um the the blue metal that was cut out in the metal shop with the plasma table. Um, students worked on shaping the bases and then I helped them build a jig
038to get all that put together and they used the CNC router in the wood shop to make the slot that the metal is sitting in and they used the laser engraver to put the uh the category of the award on there too. So, and then I also that one wasn't finished, but there is some 3D printing involved in getting the the year up for the trophy, too. So, we got to teach our students lots of things on with robots. >> Yeah, you're welcome. Thank you, Mike. Any questions for before we move on? No, thanks for exposing those students to that that those technical opportunities and engaging in in what they can do and touch and feel. So, thank you. I had one more thing on my um so sorry I'm stealing your Yeah. >> I
039know you're really upset. Um so, I did I'm a member of the Noon Kuanas and Mocktrial came and presented some students from Mocktrial came and presented after the competition. just want to share how impressed I am with the students and I was trying to remember of the the gentleman's name. He's a junior and he was the lawyer and he just he told us about being not really good at public speaking and this mock trial has changed his view on that and he feels comfortable in in uh in front of people and it's just been great to watch those students um do so well and uh their um advisor show told us that um it had been 13 years since they had been to state. So, um, and she was that's when she was in it.
040So, it was a it was a great presentation. So, I was happy to be able to be witness to that. >> All right, Neil, go ahead. Sorry to I figured we could go from a teacher to a teacher and back and forth. So, >> nice transition. >> Yeah. Um, I may have to have a chat with you because it appears that uh our students have the capability of designing and producing the equivalent of plaques that we, the education foundation presents to distinguished alumni and distinguished educators every year, eight of them at an exorbitant price. And we would be willing to pay not an exorbitant price, but somewhat less than we currently are. I'd be very interested in pursuing that. It's a there are other opportunities. Uh, one of the things that we haven't been able
041to do at the education foundation for quite some time is publish a newsletter and our journalism department could could uh could work on that, but u we haven't quite got around to establishing that connection yet. In any event, um the uh Paul mentioned some donations that the education foundation had made and we're very happy. I uh we love working with with teachers and staff from from the school district to assist whenever we can. We are not going to solve the financial wos of the district. uh would love to but uh we just don't have those kind of finances unless some fabulously wealth p wealthy person wants to give us a couple million dollars which we could endow and generate an income that would assist even more than we currently do. So please if if you
042if you are in a position to do that that go ahead and do it. um met with um I'm I'm on the bargaining uh team and uh we uh had a pretty good I thought a pretty productive session meeting with an extended group of of uh representatives from the teachers as we extended our representative including Dr. Hile and uh had a sort of informative session and um um hopefully hopefully we'll we'll work on some resolution there in the future. Uh that's it. >> All right. Very good. Um the CEO board met that's creating entrepreneurial opportunities and we focus mainly on discussing facilitator. Dr. Hy was with us. uh policy committee. Again, always invigorating uh to be on that committee. They don't feel the same as I do. Uh robotics presented at our Lions Club when
043we gave them a check for $500. I believe we have a par Olympian among our student body. I want everybody to know that the coach, Coach Hoff from Batnau, North Dakota, was one of my students when I taught in Batnau. So, I couldn't be happier for that student. That's it for me. >> Thank you. >> All right. I can always be pretty quick. Um, last Monday I met with Superintendent Hy and Neil to talk about the uh cuts that are on the agenda tonight and it was just a informative, productive conversation. Otherwise, I sat in on uh one of the teacher of the year committee meetings. It was a meeting where the finalists were chosen and that's always kind of a heartwarming conversation just to listen to all the all the good stories that everybody
044shares about the the candidates. Um and then I sat in on the policy committee meeting with Kim and Gary ahead of this and there'll be quite a few uh policies coming up in the next couple of business meetings. So that's that's it. >> Thank you. >> Well, I'll call on uh Mary Joe. Do you have you you've been gone so I didn't know. Do you have anything that you'd want to report on? >> Uh, I met with Dr. Hy. We we did phone meetings um just to discuss budget uh concerns, you know, getting calls from staff and concerns where we're going with the district. So, we talked a lot about the transition and writing the ship and um kind of the challenges we're going through now. You know, we talked a lot about the yes
045for funds and two years ago we didn't cut staff. who knew they were in a three-year position with COVID funds. And we kept staff on um six six or seven, I can't remember the exact number. And so when we didn't make those reductions, that also just compounded everything to where we are with this deficit. So we talked a lot about, you know, responsible management and and following the enrollment numbers and and so it's it's not fun, but it's the right thing to do. Um, and so yeah, that's my update. >> Thank you, Davey. Anything uh special you'd like to report on? >> Uh, just I had a chance to also meet with Dr. Hy last week uh to go over the budgets with him and Kim. It was kind of nice to sit in and
046get a good view of all that. That was written out real nicely. Um, other than that, I didn't have any other meetings uh lately. >> Okay. Thank you. Uh, just a couple. I'll make it mine pretty quick. I did have a couple uh budget meetings with Dr. Hy and had that opportunity to visit about some of the things that uh we're going to be uh talking about tonight voting on tonight. Um also uh last Monday I did uh go up with the MSBA at the day of the capital. Had an opportunity to sit down with uh Senator Dornak and Representative Bennett. uh listen to them speak in some group committees and also talk to them about some of the issues that are going on across the state um that we are working on as a
047group and you could call us a a lobby group to uh try to help with some of these things happening with our school districts and funding. I'm not going to spend a lot of time. I'm just going to mention that we've got the the one of the bills out both the House and the Senate is to uh repeal um the cuts in special education and basically hold harmless our budget and special education in 2028. if we don't cut out $250 million and they're going to start taking it off at each district level. And as I did a little research on that, it's about 2 and a half million to uh Austin and I believe about six million here. So kind of an important thing. Um we're again hoping to be able to uh bridge that
048gap before 2028. But uh that's on the docket. Uh a lot of different other things on here. Just one thing I'm going to mention that I hadn't spent a lot of time paying attention to, but we do have uh established back in 1898, we have a state permanent fund. And out of this permanent fund, there's I forget how many uh $990 million or something into it. But it's like a a f it's it's it's it's an endowment style fund where you can kind of like our um here at the school where you can take off so much that they contribute each year and that's in the couple hundred million dollar range to the state of Minnesota budget and that's only paying out 2 and a half% and what they're trying to do now is kind
049of modernize that fund to where they're not just taking dividends and interest off which a lot of times you think about in your own private but uh checking, savings, uh investment accounts, but trying to get um uh another um part of the fund where they would basically look at the value of the fund. So add that in um at at 2% plus the dividends and interest. So probably get around 4 and a half% which is kind of a national average when it comes to um money out of like maybe even retirement funds and that. Long story short, that would be uh you know, a couple hundred more million and we're hoping that the state passes that because this fund continues to grow. It's kind of like when we talk about our general reserve fund, you
050know, it's there for specific reasons. This fund is there to educate our kids and as it continues to grow, they're not using the money wisely. So anyway, that's just a couple of the different things. So I will drop it at that point. Uh >> Dave, can I just ask a followup? So what what would you recommend um regarding that last comment? Like who would we talk to about our support of that or wanting to be engaged with that? Because I feel like that's a great answer to the um funding problems at the state level for education as we never caught up to inflation after the early 2000s borrowing from us. So this would be a great answer cuz that's about the percentage we're about 2 to 4% below. Right. >> Right. >> Yeah. >> See
051the biggest problem the reason they haven't done anything with over the years it takes a constitutional amendment. So right now what they're working on is so uh to answer your question uh Senator Dornack, Representative U. Bennett, I will tell you I talked to both of them about it and they're both on board, very excited about it, but it's kind of interesting when you ask some people up there. It wasn't those two and they weren't really familiar with it. They're like permanent fund, you know, and they look at you kind of funny. Well, it's a constitution. And so, basically what we're trying to do is get it on the ballot this year. If it does get on the ballot this year, and that has to happen within probably a month or so. If it doesn't happen,
052same old 2 and a half%. If it does happen, then we all will get to vote for that. And I would highly recommend if that gets on the ballot with a permanent school funding, check with someone or vote yes. Okay, maybe we'll put signs that vote yes. But yeah, great question. And again, kind of interesting being constitutional amendment and how we can approach that from our level too at the MSBA. And I think the messaging could be this is why we schools have to go out for referendum. That's why we're having to make cuts. That's I mean yes declining enrollment, but if would we have had declining enrollment if we could have kept up kept our funding up and offered different opportunities that we maybe hadn't or whatever. Um, I feel like this is the
053time to be actively involved in this kind of conversation because we don't talk. This is like the big elephant in the room that we never talk about this funding gap that's happened since the early 2000s. And we continue to have to, you know, tread water and try to make up for it. And I think um our we owe it to our district and to students and the state to make to make sense of this for them. >> Yep. and and the interesting >> I don't I don't >> we had talked I think a couple meetings ago about the uh compensatory funds and I'm not going to go into what they're talking about the state but I will tell you I believe it was around 2002 was the last time that we were fully funded with
054our compensatory and now we're somewhere around a $1,900 deficit. So basically again that's we we've got declining enrollment but we get saddled with all these mandates that we got to pay and and the underfunded mandates I I'm not going to say that they don't give us money. I'm going to say that they don't continue on because it's again one of those almost revolving funds you got to keep putting money in. Long story short, again, that's what we're dealing with. And that is the way for the state of Minnesota to pass educational funding on to the local taxpayer. And again, that's that's quite a bit of money. Again, there's a lot that goes to it. Call me sometime if you like talk. Some reason I like to talk about money, but it's unfortunate that we're getting
055that big of a gap and and it's almost a start over to try to bring it back again together. So, sorry, enough of all of that. Anything else? I don't want to. Okay. All right. So, then we'll move on to 9.1, which is a resolution relating to the termination of non-renewal of the teaching contract of probation area teachers and um Ashley Matson. >> Good evening, Chair Clott, school board members, superintendent Hy. Uh so the following resolution uh notifies probationary staff um of their non-renewal of their teaching contract for the 26 um for the 2627 school year and terminate at the end of this school year June 30th of 2026. Uh so as mentioned by Dr. Hy these are tier 2s tier 3es and fours with autofield permissions um and all probationary. Okay. Any questions for
056Ashley at all or? Okay. Seeing none, I'd look for a motion to um um the termination for the in non-renewal the teaching contracts for probationary teachers. >> So move. >> Okay. Is there a second? >> A second. >> And a second. Is there any discussion? Seeing no discussion. Um all those in favor signify by saying I. >> I. >> Oppose the same sign. >> Okay. So resolution passes and 9.2 place teachers on unrequested leave of absence. Ashley. >> Yes. So, the following resolution proposed is placing teachers who have continuing contract status and rights on unrequested leave of absence effective June 30th of 2026. Uh we do have five elementary education teaching staff um that would receive that notification. Once again, this is precipitated because of declining enrollment. And there's always the possibility that a senior
057uh teacher, for example, may retire. And so those on unrequested leave would be then recalled in the inverse order. >> That is correct. They would file with the uh superintendent's office um that they do wish to be recalled and yes uh to that point in inverse order. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Any other comments or questions? Okay. Seeing none, all those in favor of the um placement of these teachers in ULA signify by saying I. >> I. >> Oppose the same sign. >> Okay. Motion carries. >> All right. Thank you, Ashley. Okay. 9.3 is achievement integration plan. Tanya Franks. Good evening, Chair Clott, Dr. Hyle, school board. I'm here this evening to present the achievement and integration plan for fiscal year 27 through 29. This is a threeyear plan. So, the last time it was
058presented was FY24 and then the budget for FY27. Um, this will be an action item at the end of tonight's presentation. Thank you, Darcy. Achievement and integration, as a reminder, covers Oh, look at my 111 one instead of one, two, three. Um, this covers three areas. Reducing disparities in achievement, academic achievement among all students. It specifically um it does not look at areas of gender disability or EEL. It looks at uh academic achievement in racial and free and reduced. The second one is reducing disparities and equitable access to effective and more diverse teachers among all students. And then the last one is increasing racial and economic integration. Um each district must have one goal in each of these plan requirements. I presented to the school board in November the comprehensive achievement and civic readiness uh
059progress report as well as the ANI progress report. This is just a brief recap of what was already presented. So, our previous goals in the three-year plan were to increase the percentage of students of color enrolling in our early college courses. Looking back in 2324, we were on track for this school. Last year in 2425, we were not on track for this school year. We currently are not on track either. Um what we are finding in looking at this data with principal um Gaston is that we've had a significant increase in our PSO which is a great opportunity for our students but it's negatively impacted our um college and schools and AP enrollment. Uh so those are certainly areas that we've been talking about is how to retain students in CS um CIS and AP.
060um that also becomes part of our um budget conversation in retaining students within our schools as well. Um so this one we will likely not meet um at our final report which will be next fall. The second goal we had was reducing the achievement gap. You'll recall that we had a very in-depth discussion around using the MCAs as a measurement tool. Uh this goal is not on track for each of the years from 23 24 um or likely this year as well. Uh the district curriculum advisory committee made a decision this past fall to refrain from using the MCA for future Kaker and ANI goals and rather use uh benchmark assessments. So you'll see that in my presentation in moving to the benchmark assessments uh that we decided on. And then the final recap is
061the professional development goal. It was to increase our cultural competency from one event to six events. Um professional development opportunities. Uh that one we're on track and have met that goal. Uh we worked with the Southeast Service Cooperative to uh do a number of events after school as well as opportunities during the day. So this is one that we will meet when we do our end of the year progress report next fall. This is now looking ahead to our new plan. So goal one uh the proposed goal for reducing achievement disparities. Again, following the curriculum committee's recommendation to not use MCAs, we propose moving to um reducing um decreasing racial and economic disparities in reading proficiency rates using our district literacy benchmark assessment. This could be our fast assessments that we use K12. So, A
062reading, e- reading. It can also be the CAPTY which is the read basics assessment that is required by the state and that is given in grades 4 through 12 for students who are not reading at grade level. Um so either of those assessment tools can be used to measure this goal as part of achievement and integration. You also have to make sure that it is aligned to your comprehensive achievement and civic readiness areas. These are also in turn now aligned to each school's um continuous school improvement plans. So this is looking at uh three areas of racial and economic achievement gaps um helping students be successful and graduate from high school and preparing students to be lifelong learners. Within each goal, you're required to have strategies. Um, on each of my goals, you'll see that
063I have the strategies listed on the left. And I had prepared for you a budget to review that I had sent uh ahead of this meeting. What I have recapped here is just a summarization of the budget that I previously sent. So, in the bilingual seals program, we'll continue to do the bilingual seals program. The budget aligned to that is approximately $650. Um, our goal is to continue to have at least 20 students in Spanish. Um, and maintaining the a minimum of one student in Karen uh take the bilingual seals assessment. The bulk of the budget remains in success coaches. Um interpreters are in parenthesis because we do retain some budget for interpreting at parent teacher conferences, family and community engagement events and a small portion is also set aside for us to use our
064tool called um we switched last year from language line to glo global interpreting services um because it was a reduced rate and so that is also built into that. So, our success coaches uh retain the bulk of the budget at at approximately $530,000. A third strategy built in this year is equitable access to effective instruction through data-informed coaching and inclusive practices. Um there's a budget aligned to that to be used for any professional development and coaching opportunities for coaching staff uh or ad andor administrators to look at how do we purposefully review data and then build in coaching and inclusive practices for teachers um to have more effective instruction around each of those demographic areas. And then the final one within goal one is continuing the reach program at the high school. Uh the reach
065program is a full-time position at the high school, but achievement and integration funds 04 of the program. So that's why you notice it doesn't look like a full-time teacher. Uh REACH funds point4 of it. Uh the reach program uh starts in 8th grade and the goal of that is to uh continue to build relationships with students uh work on um credit attainment, work on graduation. Um you'll recall I I reported on attendance and and truency reduction. Um and so we have a really fantastic teacher that is working on that. her goal uh that she contributed to writing in this plan is to work on retention of students within the program. Um because that's one of the things that we noticed is our students are moving um from the high school into our ALC programming. How
066do we retain our students within the REACH program and graduate um from ALHS? So that's what she would like to work on is program retention. um she feels that she's um had great success with reducing suspension rates and reducing truency. Um so next step goal number two is to reduce equitable access disparities. Um this is a goal where we would look at reducing disparities and equitable access to effective and racially ethnically diverse teachers by leveraging instructional coaching and professional development. That's a whole lot of language in there. The reality of southern Minnesota, outstate Minnesota, the likelihood of us um hiring and retaining racially and ethnically diverse teachers um our percent of our teaching population um that is not Caucasian is very low. And so we have to look at other ways to meet this equitable
067access disparity. and that comes through the professional development lens. Um, so we'll continue to work on improving teacher effectiveness and strengthening our our c culturally responsive practices. This one aligns to the racial and economic achievement gap. So you'll notice um that instructional coaching that I already mentioned um that budget was reflected on this previous slide. And then the cultural competency PD. Um, some of the feedback we've received from the cultural competency PD is that it has been really great PD through uh the Southeast Service Cooperative consultant, but the feedback has also been been there done that. And so I have been working to find different cultural competency professional development and I'm starting to con consult with the Department of Education's diversity, equity, and inclusion center. um on developing a six to eight hour series for
068cultural competency. Um and that will come at a low to no cost um in working with them. The third goal is to increase racial and economic integration. The integration goal is tied to our partnering districts. So our goal will remain to um the percentage of students identifying career pathways related to STEM enrichment activities. However, it is tied to our partnering districts. So our partnering districts, Albert Le is considered a racially isolated district as well as Austin, but then we partner with Hayfield and Southland. And so we have uh worked I've worked together with our adjoining districts. Albert Lee will continue to host the discovered drones program. Um the budget tied to the discovered drones program is for staffing and uh some budget aligned to replacement parts uh those sorts of things or any licenses that
069we need for the drones. Um we would like to uh number of years ago we did what's called uh project ecubed. our district had taken a break from ECU in the last achievement and integration year. Um we have worked out a cooperative agreement with Austin where we do not have a chargeback on student participation. So we're not charging for the drone program. They're not pro um charging for ecubed. What we are doing for ECubed is if we hire an educational assistant um to work the week of the uh project ECubed, then that helps them with staffing the program for their summer camp. Um and then the last one is a robotics program. Um the robotics program is hosted by Southland and that's at $200 a student for up to six students from the Albertly School
070District. The other part of each of these is it covers students in grades fourth through 12. So project E12 covers fourth and fifth graders. Robotics is sixth through 8th graders and discover drones is 9th through 12th graders. So trying to build in those STEM experiences where students can identify career opportunities related to it in grades 4 through 12. Uh transportation you notice wasn't reflected anywhere. that's all reimburseable. Um, so that's not on there. As part of achievement and integration, uh, districts who do not meet their goals, which I have already highlighted is likely for us. I'll report that out in the fall. Um but to plan ahead um we already wrote goals related to improvement strategies and those were the ones that I highlighted um on previous slides. So that equitable access to effective instruction
071through data informed coaching instructional coaching based on the analysis of teacher effectiveness on those student demographics. So being really purposeful about looking at our student demographic data and coaching accordingly. And then cultural competency. Districts can use up to 20% of their budget for improvement strategies. The next slide is just the proposed budget overview. Again, as I shared, uh the bulk of our budget goes to continuing to fund our success coaches, which we do have staffed preK through 12th grade. Um at least two at every site. Southwest has three. The high school currently has four, uh potentially five, and um we do have two now at early childhood as well. uh I highlighted the professional development. Another part of funding for this is you can have uh achievement and integration coordinator me um for a percentage
072of the budget uh no more than 10% of the budget. Um, so just based on kind of what was left over in the budget, um, we kept I kept out the remainder of that to a portion of of my salary to go to that. So that's just a snapshot of the final proposed budget. um all of our dollars that um our actual ANI re revenue is $598,00075987 $716 I have budgeted 598687 so we have $28 of cushion so I will take any questions regarding the proposed achievement and integration plan and the FY27 budget. Um and then it is an action item after questions. >> When I clarified um the reach teacher, are they working with ALC students? Is that part of the >> They are not identified as ALC students. They are still um Albertly
073High School students. Okay. >> Yep. Thank you. >> Are there consequences for schools that don't meet their goals like might happen to us? I would not call them consequences. They just tell you where you have to spend your money. Yeah. So they tell you that you have to have those improvement strategies. So the improvement strategies that you see listed there are not strategies that were in our previous plan. They ask that you designate strategies that were not present previously and then allocate a poor percentage of your budget towards those strategies. Good question. the drone and robotics and um ecubed. >> Yep. Um are those summer opportunities or Yes, they're all summer opportunities. So, the drone camp will be the first week of June. Um we have one for this June. Um that's still wrapping up
074our last three-year achievement and integration plan. Um but in working with our partnering districts, we've aligned it so that um we've got the first week in June for drone camp. Then we've got two weeks in in June for project ecubed and robotics is actually the second week of August in Southland. So we've kind of aligned it all so we're we're not crossing over there. Any other questions? Mary, Joe, and Davey, I didn't ask if you guys have any questions at all or >> Okay. All right. >> None for me. >> Thanks, Tanya, for your work on that. >> Absolutely, >> Chairman Cloud. I'll make a motion to approve the achievement and integration plan as presented. >> Is there We have a motion by Gary and a second by Kim. Is there any other discussion? Seeing
075none, all those in favor signify by saying I. >> I. >> And oppose the same sign. >> Motion carries. >> Thank you. Okay, we've come to 9.4, which is close session persuant to Minnesota statute section 13D.03 for labor negotiations. I look for a motion to go into close session. >> So move. >> Is there a second? >> Second >> and a second. Uh any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying I. >> I oppose the same sign. >> Thank you very much for attending. Mary Joe and Davey. Thank you very much.