001when we get here. Okay. Are they warning or there is no way to put it on mute? Yeah, I guess I I don't know what you're all comfortable with. I'd like to kind of wait. I mean, unless everybody has something that they're comfortable taking their own. You guys have any concern? Well, I'm asking if we're if you're comfortable staying here, we can sit here. just the message say the warning 7:45 you want to stay if you're comfortable staying in the room we can go shelter or we'll pause the start of the meeting and we'll go in the other room and we'll wait until it's pass but you're going to say I want standing in here nothing actually touchdown or anything just there was a touchdown up by courtly But what's that? I said to you
002guys. I mean, whatever. Are you all comfortable staying here? Yep. We'll start again. Make sure we're out. Okay, we're going to call this uh F public school regular board meeting to to order uh Monday, June 16, 2025 at 7 p.m. We are call to order and our welcome. First item on the agenda, adoption of the agenda. Any revisions changes to the agenda? Make a motion to approve the agenda or adopt the agenda. Made a motion to adopt the agenda as presented. Second discussion. All in favor say I. I mean comments. Uh each board meeting we allowed comment. We ask that each speaker limit themselves to three minutes per speaker feature and no more than 15 minutes per subject topic. Is there any comments at this time? Um I'm returning since I had to leave early
003from the last meeting. My name is Annie Hiller. I guess you guys are probably lucky tonight because my computer froze up so I could not print off my letter. Is everybody's phone shut off this time? Thank you. I don't know why you're staring at me like that. Anyway, um I do have com concerns because I was able to listen to the last meeting and I I don't know why you're not concerned. I sent all of the school board members an email asking to meet with just the board members. I feel that there's a little bit of intimidation maybe going on and maybe I'm wrong, but I did not hear from anyone. I'm not shocked. I'm not surprised. Um I'm not upset about it. It's kind of what I anticipated would happen. But after listening to
004some of the things I heard in LA in that last board meeting, I was shocked. I was heartbroke. I was saddened. It's not the school that I thought this was. I I'm on the city council. I wasn't hired by the city. I was elected by the community. You were not hired by the school. You were elected by the community. I guess maybe the things that I heard were saddening because I have grandchildren in this school. I asked my grandson, "How do you like your kindergarten teacher? She's rude, Nana. She don't like us. She don't smile. She hates us." That's coming from a 5-year-old. I spoke with Mrs. Elias. After her students learned that she would not be returning, her students wanted to know how to protest. These are fourth graders. That's not the world they
005should be living in, learning how to protest. I told Jordan, I said, "They don't need to protest. Have them write letters to the administration saying what they liked, what they didn't like. let the student speak for the teacher that they don't want to see go. She had tears in her eyes, a weak little smile, and she said, "I will not put my students in that position." H I thought that was very mature of her and very bold to still protect your students. Um, after I did not hear back from any of the board members, oh wait, I got to backtrack. After listening to some of the comments that Mrs. Kern brought forward of what Dustin said to Rich about why he's no longer employed. I'm shocked that that is what we want as our representative
006for our school. Um insulting, degrading comments to student athletes. I'm so angry I could punch you in the face. I could have cried hearing those things because my grandchildren are here. If anyone said anything like that to my grandchildren, I'd come unblooed as I would think. This would not be good. You wouldn't want them to say that to your children. I would hope you wouldn't want that said to your children. So, when I did not hear back from my email, I did what anyone would do. I contacted people at the state. They said the path that you need to follow is you need to have a meeting with the superintendent. After hearing other comments of refusing to meet with people, how they were treated when they did get a meeting, I knew it was effortless.
007Don't bother. The next was then you need to have a meeting with the school board. I said, I've already sent an email. I got nothing. So then they said then you need to contact BOSA board of superintendent administration. I'm preparing a letter. I I I just want to know that's all I'm asking. I'm not threatening. I'm not being mean. I'm sad. This is a community that I joined 19 years ago. Most of you, some of you know me and you you know that I am that person. I am that mom. I am that nana that will be the first one to say, "What can I help you with? What can I do for you?" We in a We are in a farming community. I live in town. I have people that walk past my house
008and complain about corn stalks, complain about bean dust. They complain. And I said, "You know what you need to do? You need to go to a board meeting. You need to go to a city council meeting. If you don't like it, you can find a new zip code." So, I'm pretty transparent, but when I hear words toxic, arrogant, disrespectful, that's not what I want for my grandchildren. I don't think it's what should be representing our school. So, Thank you. I'll just piggy back off of that slightly in the fact that my son is now going into the fifth grade with the teacher who her child just described. Hold on. I don't know your name. Yeah. Jenny Cordom. Can you say who that teacher is? Mrs. Whipperly. Sorry. Sorry. I guess I I disagree. I think
009miss that. But I don't know. I is is she not teaching fifth grade like I got in the letter that my son is going into her class? Is that true or not? I mean, that's what I got. So, so my son is supposed to go into the fifth grade with this teacher who's rude and mean and never smiles. Not going to happen. It's not going to happen. Number two, I haven't heard back from any of the school board members when I submitted my complaint to the Department of Education and I CCed Mr. Bossart and I CCed the school board. Nothing. Not one person reached out to me to say, "I'm sorry, this has happened. We need to work through this issue. Let's work on mediation." Nothing. Zero. Zip zilch. The investigation is underway. you had
010till today to submit your paperwork and we'll see how that goes. I guess I apologize that to both of you that someone didn't respond from our email at least acknowledging what you sent in. Y I think with yours we had felt that it was you action you need to take and we can't do anything with that when you let the MVD deal with that one. So that was I think a misstep that we should have acknowledged that it's there. That's the process and that's that would be the steps for that's it's been um very disheartening. I'm an alumni. I'm from this town. I graduated from Cleveland. I also have learning disabilities just like my son does. Nobody's here identifying kids who need help. You're not following the law and child find to identify kids who
011need special education services. It's against the law what Cleveland is doing with their special education kits. Mr. Sink told me he destroyed Max's 504 evaluation. That's against the law. You have to keep record of those things. you can't destroy an evaluation. The reason he said that is because one was never done. Cleveland's not following any of the recommendations of section 504 and identifying students who have disabilities and getting them the help and the services that they need. I was one of those students myself who was not identified and did not get the help that I needed. I had parents with money in the bank which is why I got into college. no help from Cleveland. Mrs. Brown told me I wasn't college material and I have a master's degree. So, what we're doing is we're
012limiting children's potential by not giving them the accommodations that they need to learn. Our whole society suffers when we don't accommodate kids' learning differences. They're taught that they're stupid, that they're less than, and they don't grow up to meet their full potential, which we all suffer from. I care about this community. I care about kids. I know kids with disability. I came in to this 504 and this I was driving it. I should have never been driving it. I'm the parent. School should have been driving it, not me. That's all I got. Uh Joe Kern, uh parent, uh I was here last month as a brother. I'm currently just here as a father of two kids. One that's currently here and one that'll be here for the next 15 years. And it's part of my
013profession. It's part of just listening to everybody. I appreciate the comments I do on both sides. I just want to make sure that you guys are the leaders of the kids moving forward. We can brighten and complain all we want, but it stops with you guys. So, I just want to know, not so much to know, I just want you guys to realize that your decisions affect all of us moving forward. Um, yeah, I I'm just disappointed somewhat with some of the comments I hear from people around the county and the city. And like I said, I live in an area where I could actually send my kid to four different schools. And I grew up in an area where I thought the biggest schools were the best places to be. And I went to
014a bigger school and I thought that was the end all beall of like how to get success in life. And like I said, I'm not going to look at the past about what happened uh with family, with my brother. Obviously, most of you guys know that. Um I want you guys to do better. I want whatever decisions you make to hopefully turn out right and prove people wrong, but I just I haven't seen it yet. And um I just frustrated with some of the comments I get going back to the last meeting. Um you could look at, like I said, in my profession, it's my job to take both sides of every argument. take both sides of everything and and and not be biased and I I can pick that. I think I can be
015nonbiased. So, I'm not trying to I'm not trying to dwell on that. But what I am looking at is not even the people part of family that complain about stuff. I look at a student that complained about certain things that are happening. And if my kids are going here and and a kid's brave enough to say that, that concerns me. So, you know, maybe some things got overlooked, maybe some things are being passed on, but like I said, I'm I'm not pointing fingers, but we got to do better. You know, I'm I got 15 years left. I mean, if you haven't known me yet, you'll know me for the next 15 years because I'm committed to making this school the way it was when a lot of you guys went here. But something happened in
016the last few years that I don't know what's going on. And like I said, you know, you awoke the beast and now I'm going to be a part of it. So, I'm encouraging. I want to encourage you. I want to help out where I can if you guys need something, but at the same time, I don't want have to be up here griping every time. So, I hope things can change. Um, once again, going back to normal profession, I I have paid attention to the last few recordings in the last couple years since COVID. We record certain things here. I'm not trying to wake up a sleeping giant from last meeting, but at the same time, there was things that were said more so from the students that were here and maybe from the family.
017I obviously wouldn't want to hear my comments again, but at the same time, there's a couple hundred people that listen to our board meetings every month. And it it disturbs me that ironically that one wasn't working. Fortunately, just like tonight, if I got to be here, I don't know who to present it to, but I uh have a jump drive of community comments from last board meeting for 30 some minutes. They're not pleasant. They're not great. But if we as a community aren't transparent to the people that can't be here, then we're just in a closed four-wall room that just talks amongst ourselves. So, I I'd like to give that to whomever to to put it on there. And I'd like to see community comments be posted going forward. And I'm not saying that I
018get it. I'm not the most techy guy either. And I'm not making accusations that it didn't work because of that, but people approached me after the meeting or days after and wanted to know what was going on. And and if we can't talk about what the public talks about, then then it's just going to raise too much speculation. So, I appreciate your time. Like I said, I'm here for years to come and I want it to be great. And I just will do what I can to help you guys out and I just want to move forward and yeah, you're going to hear from some people moving forward, but you know, we got to get it back to what it was and we're not that far off, but we got some improvement to make. So,
019thanks for your time and pass this off to whoever wants it. I appreciate that. Thanks. We used the camera so third meeting. So it was very unfortunate that it went off last meeting and that's kind of why I have to get to look at the screen because I get I get we had people on the meeting the prior one so it didn't turn off and we realized I would take the if you're okay with me I'll take it I want to check with MSBA to make sure what protocols are in that situation if you get a half meetings to do. Yeah, I'm just it's just all community comments. So, it's nothing to do with agenda stuff. So, I'm not trying to present that it's a whole meeting that I interpreted just like we're recording now
020and someone commented before we started that, you know, in case something happens, record it with your phone. So, I just, you know, part of the public stuff in my profession. If something turns off at the wrong time, people are going to question it and and then you got a whole ball of wax line. So, I just want to put that forward and and hope that it gets posted, shows the best and worst of us, but everybody's got to know what's going on and and hopefully move forward in a better aspect. So, thank you. I wasn't planning to speak, but I'll share a few things too, Michelle. Um, and I did send an email. I haven't received a response back from my last one. I'm not sure if that just means everything is not going to
021be discussed. Um, but I did hear back from Minnesota Department of Education at Deb Meyer, um, uh, Molly Wiggle or Mary Wiggle, excuse me, Mary Cop, and had some discussions about the things that I raised concerns about in my letter to just validate, am I off base? Is this what, you know, the information that I'm sharing? Is this accurate? And they did confirm mine was. Um, so I would appreciate you taking another look at that and getting back to me. I would be happy to walk through my thoughts on how things went. Um, I'm not looking to um cause issues. I value everything that parents do, the community does, the school board does, but I think we are really sideways right now on some things. And I know you guys are getting inundated with concerns,
022but they're valid and I hope that you'll take some of these things seriously. Um I I would love to have discussions with you and talk through this and walk through it. Um but based on the information that they're saying and I guess others are taking if you prefer that we go through the state. I guess I'm happy to do that if that's the preference. But if you could let me know in the next week or so that would be great. We can respond to your followup email. We've been going back and forth a little bit. So yeah. Okay. because I mean I have documented everything and I'm sitting at like 50 pages of stuff that tying it to whatever policies, laws, statutes that I think it ties to. Um, obviously not all of them are
023valid. I don't have a lot a degree or anything like that, but there are absolute concerns there. Thanks. I think I'll address one specific thing. So your your point about the slow reaction to your emails from us. So technically as a board we can't confer with each other all at the same time because of state rules because that looks like a board meeting. Sure. If we all six jump on the same six and and us and seven jump on the same call that's technically a board meeting. So we I I will admit us as a board of six, we we have talked that we need to work through our our procedure of how we respond to these serious events because we'd like to confirm with each other to make sure we all have our facts
024straight with whoever's going to do the responding. We haven't figured out how we do that appropriately yet without doing a six phone call long change of talking to one another to get the facts to respond to whoever's email it is whether it's any anybody's email. So, I guess that's one thing I wanted to say because I I wondered if it wouldn't come up tonight that we have been a little slow at responding to emails and honestly that's what in my way is we do need to work on our procedures internally as a school board on how we respond to these more serious ones to make sure that we're doing appropriate. I appreciate the transparency and honestly I would prefer you take time and think about it and look into things versus a next day response
025dismissing. That's what was disheartening. Um, and even just, hey, we got it. Um, we'll meet on next month on the 15th and you'll hear back from us after, I think is totally acceptable. But thank you for being transparent about that. One thing to figure that back transparency. We're not the only school in the state, so I'm not I don't know your guys's job, and I won't be the first to say I know it. But all that leads to is guys like myself and her going, I'm going to call some other school board and see how they do it. So it's I feel like the answer that you need to get is is out there a thousand times within the state. So I mean there's a ton of other schools that do a certain way and
026that are abiding by it. So I get on it and you got to piggy back someone else's policies and it's the best way to to be upfront. Otherwise it just leads to speculation on why things aren't getting done. So the answer's there. It's it's not something that needs to be talked about amongst the board. It's you know talk to the other school district and you'll probably find answers. So All right. Appreciate the involvement and everybody being respectful and you know I guess we'll continue with the agenda. Um we have our consent agenda items. Got approval of regular board minutes, approval of bills and payments, approval of contracts. Those are the three items agenda items. Those were all provided via the link being prepaid main report bills contractors motion made a motion to approve the consent
027agenda items. Is there a second? Second. Any discussion on any of those specifically? Okay. Vote. All in favor say I. I motion carries. All right. Presentation. We have none tonight. All business. We got resolution for non renewal. Um is a resolution. So will be roll. [Music] Uh this is included in the the board packet resolution relating to the termination and now renewal of contract for activities director athletics community coordination and site manager. Um I believe we actually addressed part of this at a prior meeting. Um but what was not included was the community heads site manager portion of original contract putting the resolution forward in its entirety. Um, I will make a motion resolution made a motion second. Okay. Any any discussion? Clarifications for the last portion of the retirement going to be a coordinator.
028Right. Since the resolution, we will do a roll call vote. Um so in favor say I. Andy. I hi. Scott. Hi. Brian. Hi. Kevin. Hi. Molly is okay motion. Okay. Um item 6B, approval of one to one Chromebook plan and fees. I believe we discussed this one at the last meeting too and actually in the work session or Cavish had presented actually the last meeting um on the plan um had a lot of information since then in in the meeting about parent tips on you know how the plan looks how the rollout goes device maintenance plan and the agreement that'll go with each each plan um and this is 7 through 12 uh is what we're at um moving towards having a one to on a Chromebook. So, very positive thing, right? Uh that'll help
029us kind of transition if we need to to electronic educational courses where they're appropriate, where they're best suited. Um any other kind of comments on Tab presentation last last meeting, but I think Tavish did a nice job of putting this together. We had mentioned several times that we're trying to get away from the hard copy textbooks. I get the digital correct online best try to level the playing field for all students. So they're all using a similar device. Sometimes that takes a burden off the family having to go purchase someone or think that they have to purchase it because some things got to be done online. So I think did a great job putting that sign together. I don't think this was asked before but any thoughts or seen approaches? I mean I feel like
030most kids have regular internet access and that's not really necessarily let into too much. Um or is it mostly used here and so the majority of us that I can also be done? I think the majority of it will be used here. Um those at home chances are they they have a phone or or a hot spot that they can get to. If not, we can always look into getting some hot starts that we can state another state to cover something like that. We can tie it in maybe my memory on this from the presentation. How does this impact the budget? Where does it fall or how does it get straight? It uh it doesn't it has minimal impact on the budget because it's replacing the money that's set aside for textbooks that other questions
031or comments of what looks like I would look for a motion to approve the the plan and fees. I'll make a motion approve the Chromebooks. Motion a second with any other discussion is any kind of requirement. I mean there's no obviously requirement to take the take the equipment. No, no, no family has to take the Chromebook. Although we won't allow outside devices on our network security that some So you're saying some things are personal. There are extras in the building that we could check out. Any other discussion? All in favor say I. I. I. Okay. New business items arcc contract which is related to support for infinite campus. That is correct. The portfolio we do annually right. Was there an annual contract? Yeah. Training support, right? Incident response issues, right? Um, that kind of stuff.
032I think I heard positive feedback on campuses. like a great tool for their students. It's so much I mean all the students all that stuff is easily accessible to everybody. for this Accent campus or they just support we should we have based on our last couple months of conversations that you talked about what it's going to take to get automatically on these babies whatever things that happened after so double items. So contract, for the year. [Music] I don't know if it's possible to get it out of two to three years other provide the same service or not. I'm not sure. But as we go, I remember last time they benefited this one. It was last year. But you talking student information system? Well, no, just I don't know if others service that system as well
033or if it's a private Okay. All right. Um we will look for a motion on approval of this contract. Make a motion approve the contract. submit a motion and second more discussion. All in favor say I. I motion 7.27B 202526 Minnesota State High School League membership resolution. This is an annual resolution that we do to be a part of state high school league which allows for sure all the postseason activities um repping into the membership all that all your final week or trap shooting and ching It's option of the high school, but they kind of control that. Basically, if you don't become a member of the high school league, you have no opportunity to train playoffs. I mean, I'm tech high school just to give us access to the insurance, right? You expanded that. extended
034that down to the next page. Okay, this this one didn't have the fee outlined in it. It's just the membership there. Yeah, it'll be a separate school, which I think later. Okay, I'll make a motion to approve the high schooling membership resolution. Uh, R made a motion. Second. This is not a formal board resolution. No follow. Okay. You see? Yep. Okay. So, we'll need discussion. Right. Seeing none, we can do roll call votes. Andy. Hi. Nancy. Hi. Scott. Hi. Ryan. Hi. Darren. Okay. 7.7C uh approval of preliminary 2025 2026 budget have that in in online um on your board book. We do have to have at least a preliminary budget approved by the end of the fiscal year which is the end of June. starting to approve a preliminary budget, but as we've done in
035prior years, they can bring it back then afterwards. Um, any general comments about starting point and where we're at with it? You know, these numbers can with deceiving it at times. Department of is still working on getting everything into the formula out there. So, we're taking what they have post it at this point and putting those numbers in. So your general fund which is kind of your savings account that is appearing very well here take closer look at food service where where we're taking a big hit in that fun. However, that's not unusual in most districts to fluctuate with your food service. and they did add supervision and custodial and money taken out of service to pay it for those but it's if it's not taken out of there it's taken out of the demo
036function. So um we'll be doing some adjusting there and simply the the main reason for the the negative is things are a lot more expensive and you're not getting your reimbursement. That's we need to go upset that the ad student activity fees those are much better than what they they were last year. And then another deceiving point here is building construction. I kind of have to zero that out every year which means necessarily spend that much but it has to look like you spent the money and we will eventually but that kind of offsets here your overall amount looks more negative than what it really should. Yeah, I guess I would separate it into operating on the top four lines, right? Which is close to close to break even and then you've got building construction
037which potentially the revenue on the prior year too. When Brian presented it in the past, I think it was just the top four. The auditors said that we got deemed by the auditors and we need to the last two also. Okay. So that that fund six building construction just to clarify for myself and whoever else that building construction is not paying down the building that we built. No, that's that's money left over from that. Okay. That's what I thought it was. I just want to clarify. We'll we'll spend some of that this summer doing a couple projects that could be done around the building. That old window in there too. There was some discussion about food service and the legislative update. Uh, so I know you talked about reallocating costs to food service, which would
038sound like you said was included here. I mean, legislative changes on food service. Um, is so this is the biggest discrepancy on here. Is that something we make up through like charging fees for lunch or do we have any guidance on what the state's covering versus how we're supposed to approach? So, we'll we'll have to take a look at what we're charging for second one to a second birthday for all your free and reduced or free breakfast, free lunch picking up. I don't think they're picking up all of it, but they're picking up a gram portion of it. The reimbursement that we do get from this case was like 12 and a half cents. Now, we're cutting it up to six cents. the pupil which you can put through the math a lot of reimbursement
039and we still have to meet the the federal guidelines of portions and so forth and we don't get to set the price on what we're paying for the commodity units and so forth. Well, it's it's a like I said, you look at pretty much any district. Some districts will will create a aloc cart something, you know, outside of the main meal that kids can buy, make at go to bigger schools and they have a McDonald's or a pizza, you know, right in their cafeteria. I don't think we're in that neighborhood. So, you know, we'll we'll sit with Monica and see what we do. Can we So, if like if our lunch is for easy numbers, it's $5 and they reimburse us four, can we charge that extra dollar to break even on that lunch? We
040we can charge any amount that we on that first on the first lunch. No, we we can't charge anything. Can't charge anything on that. Even just free. Yeah. The first lunch and then first breakfast. There are three. If they choose to have second lunch or second breakfast, you can charge in my uh superintendent. I'll uh talk a little bit more about some of the better forms. Okay. So, um preliminary budget in front of us that operating fund shows $3,900 um positive, which is I guess I would characterize a break even. And then when you include building construction and debt redemption total budget shows $310,000 loss separate from an accounting perspective to address those those things. Okay. Obviously we've made a lot of changes over the past year. a lot of them I I felt like
041they hurt um to try to get us to a breaking of the budget. I know we've got a resolution on the agenda. Um in the next item about operating referendum there's still a lot lot happening a lot of unknowns. So, I think that's kind of a backdrop for how we got to where we're at and what we see going forward. It's tough to see the changes that we result in a break even, but we also kind of knew that going into it. And and keep in mind that we've already inserted the percentage of increases all the staff salaries. We don't know where that's going to fall. So, we hopefully went to the high side rather than underestimate that. So that's all faced in here too, right? So depending on how that goes, we we have
042to pay out some severance packages to the employment [Music] on this fiscal year at this point. I know audit's not for a handful of months yet, but we have a feel for where we're where we're trying to operate. Okay. Okay. budget that we have quarterly I think has been gone. So for a motion to approve the preliminary budget probably got to have it by the end of the month. So we look for a motion to approve preliminary budget today so we have it approved then I'll make a motion to approve the preliminary budget of 256 there. Any more discussion? Right. Seeing none vote. All in favor say I. I. Opposed. All right. 7D. Anders food service contract. I work through updating this. we have here is through the summer we got pretty recently on it.
043I guess any updates since that meeting and what the future looks like this this one we have negotiations met with Anders and our recommendation is to to bump it to 375. We we decided that September 1st we'll bump it to 375 and open summer will go at maybe 45 and that allows for a little cushion and time to absorb the dramatic increase. Even with that increase, we're still below recommended recommended price points for girls that contract has indicated that the 375 that's a break that that was the number that you're shooting for. That's not okay. All right. Um, so question again. I'll hand over the negotiations. I appreciate it. It was a constructive conversation. I feel like, you know, we probably look at revisiting that sometime halfway through the fiscal year for the future saying,
044you know, here's what things are trending. Maybe costs go down. unique on my feet, but we can start having those conversations and a little bit extra probably gives adequate times a better. [Music] Uh so you anticipate approving a separate contract for like uh September through the end of the fiscal year or this the end of the summer? Um it should go till the end of school then we'll align with the fiscal year we'll take another motion to accept the June July August 10 school service contract. Okay. Motion second. No discussion. All right. See none. Make the vote. All in favor say I. I 70 resolution. This is the one I mentioned earlier. Proposed increase in operating current. Um well I guess we we did the question last year. I guess if we do a little
045history um had meetings failed the question but part of what we've done over the last three or four months was the community survey and some we got the results that represented two meetings ago. I think two minutes ago um with basically I think it was 80% plus you know said don't increase what you ask for but don't decrease what you ask for ask again and do more that so I guess what you have in front of you today is is the resolution to to do that um we can delete it officially but Um there is a deadline to doing this which as you said is within between 70 and 80 days before the election to actually have the question approved. So when you're on the ballot um we've done quite a bit of work in
046reviewing that survey and feedback. Um but once we approve we should also get together with the finance committee I think managed kind of the question last time and helps connect with the community about the question and we got to start that back up as soon as we can continue or ask so that maybe I'll read the questions resolution relating to the general education revenue of the school district. The following election there on question reads, I believe very similar to last time. The school board of independent school district 391, Cleveland public school has proposed to increase its general education revenue by $750 per pupil. Close referendum revenue authorization would be applicable for 10 years beginning with taxes payable in 2026 and increase each year at a rate of inflation beginning unless otherwise revoked reduced as provided
047by law to vote to fill those. Yes. shall increase the revenue proposed that the board of principal one approved or no below that like we talk about pass there's the bold text by voting yes on ballot question you are voting for tax increase just like to note that there is a typist district number 194 question I think I read understand I forget how does that compare to our last question. It's pretty much real similar. You're pretty limited on what you questions and they make it confusing but that's lawyers and that's solicitation and all that fun stuff. That's you know bottom line is I know I know the communities there was members that wanted more clarification on their taxes grades each year based on enrollment numbers and so forth. Yes, it fluctuates what the enrollment numbers.
048So if you have 600 kids that's what you're getting getting you know based on peril and then next year you have 580 you're going to lose one. Next year you go up to 620. So, and that's out of our control, but it is based on other questions or comments about process. What's next? No. I mean, we we'll have to have right to do our they provided materials in the past saying this amount of money per pupil equates to x number of dollars for the district that changes based on property values and all that they would update that I'm assuming they will they use the the old numbers in the survey because that just means they don't have any new tax numbers but they'll get that after they get this resolution Okay. Comments, questions, motion toward
049resolution. The question as stated made a motion. I'll second. [Music] Any more discussion? Right. See now I can do a roll call vote uh for the resolution relating to increasing the general education revenue of the school district and calling election zeroy. Hi Nancy. Hi I'm sorry. Hi Ryan. Motion passes. Um do we sure do we also maybe want to take a minute to establish a finance committee meeting or at least the general timeline of within the next 30 days the committee can have some time to get together for some reason. Probably it was We do have budget work, right? Make sure that's all heard yet. Okay. Whatever. Okay. 7F 125 226 activity fees looking at proposed increases. The sheet is in the in the packet as well. Um, I think over the last couple years
050with the financial picture, we've tried to at least bring these back to a point where it's I would say line with other districts our size as well. It's not fun or easy thing to do. Um, but again, the activity budget is getting closer to break even. I think the goal we were striving for kind of from all all angles, some things that go into that budget. um specifically that you wanted to talk about? Yeah, there there's a couple items on here. Um trap team B has not been said. I called the track trap coaches to get their input on it. That's kind of the new tax in itself. He was going to talk to the rest of the coaches and other coaches at the the state meet. He hasn't gotten back to me on that.
051I called him on the day of the state meet. So I'll get that short up. Um driver's ed classroom behind the wheel. Do not want any increase or over according to those individuals were charging more than what private schools try to drag the school. or they wanted to be alone. Said they had a lot less kids this year up Mr. said he pretty much drove through June and July and his son was pretty much at the end of July. Well, I think that's a function of cost or it could be um $100 difference. That's what you said. I haven't seen the numbers or anything and I'm not sure why that one got brought up last year when you increased the number they signed off on. Okay. So, um and then uh the family maps where
052do you want to message? If you recall last year, we we decided to we wanted to double the activities cost almost all our decided to go afford 25%. So I guess we want to be at the family. Last year was at 500. If you go 25% and then you're looking at six point is that too much is that not enough. See lots of I think it should increase. I mean I yeah it is what it is. Um, so what would once we get to that? What would the max be once we get to the maxes that we're planning on? Are you looking at looking at the double what it was in 202? So that's our goal. So I would say it needs to go up so that we're closer to that. I would say $100
053by 25%. Yeah, if I'm on track with that and I guess it's probably where we're maybe leaking money in that hill and a lot of the family lives, right? Yeah. 25% based off increase. Yeah, I think people we've talked about it, you know, in the context of budget too. It's like in that survey, people said try to increase activity fees to, you know, to start, you know, we're that's not really popular, but you know, it's a place that way you can ask for a little more, you know, it's it's a choice to do. Okay. Um, I'll make a motion to approve the 2025 2025 26 activities. caveat on the track that the caveat to change but also including pushing family max. Okay, you heard the motion. Is there a second? A second. Any more discussion?
054Right. See now we can vote. All in favor say I. I got if I can put this in for thread. The preliminary budget last year had revenue for student activity fund at 65,000. The reality of it was 105,000. So that was some changes though too. Activity fees stack fees. Yeah. that although expenditures are also quite high and that will be perfectly. Yes. Okay. That puts us to item eight or information discussion. Uh board member reports. I just said my end of meeting tonight. Um, um, Dr. John Graph, who is now the new superintendent of St. Peter Schools, is our supervising superintendent for EMBED. Uh, we met him tonight. He's technically doesn't start for another four and a half days. According to Dr. Olsen, he's coming down to his third retirement of his career, I think.
055Um, says it's going to be his final, but we'll see. Um budget is we came we went over our budget as well um with the remodel our um fund balance is down to 145,000 which is 2% which for an education um district is acceptable. We don't want to go much lower than that. Um but so far we're sitting good on that fund balance. Um, speaking of the remodel, it is it came in under budget and it will be done ahead of schedule. So, it's in the contract that it needs to be done by August 7th, which is 3 weeks earlier than what was planned. It's supposed to be like 3 days before school started. Um, the um, Burger Flooring and Interiors out of St. Peter came in and took $25,000 off of their flooring bid.
056Um, which obviously brought the cost down under budget. So, that was very nice. Um, our state auditing monitoring, um, we did not, our district did not get the indepth monitoring, which is good. So they are just randomly pulling um picking students from each district and um assessing the progress reports making sure that progress is being reported and and done at a time manner. Um our assistant director um took a job with Minnesota Department of Education. So we are now looking for another assistant director. She was also um or she was the invaded principal and assistant director. So um Allison she was yeah she was there. Yeah. Yep. Yep. She was um um she kind of knew she knew her to the position but she Yeah. So um she took a job at um Minnesota or
057Yeah. Minnesota Department of Education more in her goals of her career. Um, so her last day is by June 30th. Um, our assistant principal is now admitted to a principal position. We're looking for this somebody to fill in the assistant principal. Um, Dr. Olsen talked about the um all the legislative changes in wording um and really reiterated to watch the fine print on all that stuff. um you know like spend education transportation is down 5%. You know just there's little there's unique things in the bills and as you've been reading I was just noticed a couple things that um stuck out. So um this one thing is dyslexia screening is now required to be through through four um which has not been the requirement as far as previous. So it's all subject and then there
058are certain requirements as far as um how that needs to be handled as well. That was it. So, uh once the building is done, um we'll do another board walk through and see what changes negotiations we ended in May. Um got most of the wording wording language bridges fixed and um agreed upon. Um and once school starts back, we will do um on salaries and benefits, things like that. Okay. Okay. I know other committees are a little bit light at the beginning of the summer. So if anybody else is down doing you guys helped with something right now the preschool playground there I don't know if that's in your report or not but facilities and grounds had the preschool playground that they had purchased um last fall or winter I guess it was after having
059a number of bids come in. like it's up and pretty well functional or going to be functional in single tech you want to send something be an additional cost um I think you were the only one on the committee that met with Anders have you guys reset up a meeting to go over different ideas on that stuff that previous meeting that you hadn't heard. I haven't show any that was discussed because I know at one point it was meeting ended that way. Yeah. Yeah. We do need to probably re-engage that as we go and we haven't met the topic since then either. We can maybe between the three of us that were there, we can chat about next steps. Yeah, we can do that before session. Speaking of that, one more thing. Did everybody get
060the email from Anders on their birthday party? Wednesday. Yes. Like anything in the community, if we get something in the community, I think it's nice if we could support. Anybody else? as we can jump to principal's report. So just winding down the year and starting up the next. So just kind of going to be short and sweet. Right now we got credit recovery. Mr. Dietrich has 14 kids. He started last week and he's going to end this Friday. 40hour weeks for the kids. So it's it's intense and they're getting through it. Targeted services for elementary looks a little different this year. We're going to have it July 14th through 17th. July 21st through 25th, August 11th through 14th, and August 18th through 21st. Um, and just working on things for the next couple months. Uh,
061proposed handbook changes, e-learning, schedule changes. Um, we took some things from confer levels first. So, things like that is what we're working on. It's time consuming, but it's actually kind of fun to put those together. That's about all I have. Thanks. Maybe question for Scott. How did the how did the year end up referral standpoint based on kind of put forth at the end of the previous year for you know you ask one of these and this how you feeling how it you know I I'll say we had kids that we asked kids here about two months ago and they said it was great. Um I will back that up. It's when you walk around the hallways and their kids are well behaved. They're where they're where they're supposed to be. Next year, we're actually
062going to open up. We got all the kids go down to the nurse's office, stop vaping and so on. We know about one um bathroom because of that. But definitely um I saw a lot of change for the good if that makes sense. I remember when do we do like when do we do updates that kind of policy is that next? Yeah. Yeah. Right. In the next two months we'll start kind of give me a next month work session probably. Sure. Then be able to vote on anything major that you're seeing coming down or No, not not too much. um we're talking seventh and eighth grade just um a retention policy because we just keep passing kids when they're not doing great. So, we're going to talk about that next time. Um another thing that
063you might hear is budget. We have to look at some of our supplementary programs. Like today, I just looked at I don't know $25,000 worth of supplementary programs. So, how do you mainstream that and make it more feasible? So, I I don't know anything else on that desk that I know been helping you with that stuff. You know, I think part of it is a little price algae by some companies because they know that with the redux they have to do certain things. So, those companies have been approved and all of a sudden their prices go up a little bit. You spend 100,000 on curriculum and spend another 25,000 on supplementary which we're going to have to make decision. We just can't continue doing it. They're good programs and and they're helpful for the kids.
064Um, but you've seen a lot of like a accelerated reader. The kids are are reading the books and then going online doing that. It is a real discussion happening about the book, you know, even sitting across from another student having a discussion rather than doing it on the computer type thing. So there we're just going to have to look down where our priorities are looking at and are we utilizing the programs that we bought their tech they got technology components. That's going to be a big we still want the teachers to have things but we got to make sure we're not double dipping their pay twice. Okay. Any questions? Okay. Um, I don't have Nick for a transportation guard's report, so that superintendent's report. Yeah, I'm just going to piggy back on some of the
065things that Nancy was saying legislation compensatory aid has been corrected for, you know, this this time around. had they not you know compensatory aid is your free and reduced um forms that that families used to fill out. They've gone to a direct certification and what they saw with that and if they would have kept it the same our district would have lost $68,000 which we can't afford to lose 68. There's there's districts out there that were losing a million dollars. So they they appropriated 55 million. Um basically you're going to get whichever is greater your 24 number than your 26 number and they're going to try to bring back the paper form and have direct and see see how that works. Um they've created a task force to look at what to do with that
066component and what comes out of that. I would be willing to bet we're not getting $68,000 in extended round that it's going to be lower than that, but who knows? We'll see what they come up with. Um, the ribbon commission was set up for special ed. Um basically they have decided in not these next two years but starting in 27 and 28 school year they're going to cut $250 million out of special 27 28 I think that was how much 250 total So 2829. Yeah. 289. Um and they're going to try to do 125 and 2829 and another 125 and 2930. Um and basically what this is going to amount to all the increases that they've done in cross subsidy to help offset cost of special ed is probably going to go away and we
067may go backwards from where we were when we first started. And so that is very concerning not only for us but every school in the district in the state. But that's what that commission is is designed for. They have cut special ed transportation within 100% reimbursement back to 95%. You throw that in there. That's not a good outlook for special education, which means it's going to fall back into our general fund and we have to backfill all those costs. We don't have the money to do that. Most schools won't have the money. Um, greed act is still kicking around there. For us, it's our two high school staff members, English department that will be trained this year. We're ahead of the curve. Our special ed department did this year. So, a nice thing is long-term
068facilities maintenance revenue. you can now enlarge what projects within that category of 100,000 or more and fall into that category instead of having to take it out of your general fund. So that will help tremendously down the road. Um do we have to for some reason wait to start our project until it it kicks in in 2027 I believe for 26 27 I believe. So we've got a smaller project now big project will yeah the project we're working on now would not but the more major replacement that we're looking at for the next five years that'll fall under this um I have Garland coming in to they created a plan for us they're coming in tomorrow take some core samples throughout the the building and see what state all those rusts are in. Um they
069are starting the small gym or elementary gym tomorrow fixing that issue and then they'll come back and sit down and have a discussion about a plan to put together for longterm children and then we'll work with um Shannon who usually sits down and helps us um student support personal aid Um they're reducing that amount. Typically we get about 40,000. Mzed gets about 40,000 that we can kick in. They're going to reduce that a little bit. Basically we're we use that funding to pay half of Shauna's salary. Um, MBED, we haven't used all the MBED money because it's so strictly tied to certain things and we have nothing that we can use it on. Um, we're exploring on some ideas of how we'll do that. Otherwise, we can give it over the service co-op and South
070Central Co-op, which I would prefer to keep it within our district. [Music] Like I said, school meals meals um the reimbursement is reduced from 12.5 cents to 6 cents. And let's see starting in 26 27 27 28 um we have permission to start before Labor Day on September 1st. The reason being is Labor Day falls real late. So I think uh Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday are the first 1, 2, 3, and 4th in 2026. So you can start after Labor Day, but you you lose that entire week and then you can push it back into further families like that in in the main part of the field to get out. And then there's three days and 27 before Labor Day. That would be Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, two, and three. So we'll have to have that
071discussion at the calendar and what people want. You can also go still that Friday off Labor Day weekend. It's good. What? However, I haven't played around with the calendar yet. So, we'll see how that plays out. Did they say how long how early we could start or September? That is early. Yeah. [Music] And then the final one is u we'll have to create by 26 27 the cardiac emergency rescue plan or response plan. We say it will have a template to to rest follow and so forth. Basically, it's something that, you know, as I said, football coach, I had to do with creating these plans for for practices and games. So, now it's finally getting into the school. So, makes sense that you take care of you have that plan in the building, not just
072your activities. I move that as per me. Okay. All right. Our next uh work session is Tuesday, July 8th, 2025 at 7 p.m. board meeting Monday, July 21st 7 p.m. for a motion to motion. Motion to have a second. I'll f All right. What do you say?