School Board Work Session

001Bailey and I think a two bedroom and we got that 12 to 15 in of snow looked up yesterday. This is taking a long time to get rid of because we have everything going but we needed the moisture. So yeah, this will be a nice way to just slow down pretty encyclopedias. Our horse is in good shape. Jen was saying she raised her kids on encyclopedias. Yep. I can carry these. They hate it, but they've used it. They have used it. Well, I know your terms, especially lately because they're like, whatever. And I'm like, they just say the word says, "Why? Why do you have to change two of my kids who don't contest?" Teenagers do. It's super annoying, isn't it? And you're like, "What are you talking about?" Well, I'm like, "I don't even

002know what you're saying. Like, what what are you telling me? What buses?" That's one. I'm like, "What to like are you taking the bus today?" Like, what? What is happening? They say that when they get to college level and they start using that context or texting terms, their papers are not going to be appropriate. Right. Exactly. Speak English. Well, you know when you learn a language and you have to learn all the slang so you know how to speak in the language. So what's our language going to be in 20 years? Big difference. These kids sucking tons. I tell you what, it's been nice. Yeah. It's nice. Ladies and gentlemen, like to call this meeting to order and start with roll call. Jade here, Susan here, Marge here, Jen here, Sarah here, and myself present.

003I'll move on to 13. All right. Rise for the uh pledge of allegiance, please. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. Nothing in old business. So we'll move to section 3 new business 3.1 and a visit from Dr. Shots today. Board consultation. So I'd like to introduce everyone to Dr. Shots. He's currently a consultant and works for nonprofits. He our consultant during our strategic planning. Um I've known Dr. Schwz for quite a few years. Former administrator at multiple levels and last was superintendent public schools. Yeah, that little district just down the road. This sleepy little town of Fargo. All right. Well, uh, thanks for asking me to come in and

004visit with you a little bit tonight. Um, I think we're going to try and get Yeah, I've got this is a good presenter. You know, I've got a PowerPoint here. So, isn't that impressive? I'm on Medicare and I have a PowerPoint. That's pretty good, isn't it? That's pretty good. Technology savvy at this age. What do you think of that, Marge? Huh? I won't even do a power. So you like to introduce ourselves. First of all, we'll go around do that. Uh Dr. Shots has known March for little my wife more so than me. Yeah. Horsew world. So Katie and Green, right? Yeah. And my name is Susan Delique. And what do you do and how long? I am an early childhood profess professional. I run my own family child care out of town. I teach

005preschool within it and I wear a couple additional hats for the state of Minnesota for early childhood and I'm a board member, five children. And how long have you been on the board? Two years. Okay. Do you enjoy it? Most of the time. Yeah, most of the time. Okay. Jade Carlson. Yeah. On the board since uh the first of the year. Okay. Uh own a couple businesses. What do you do? Contracting. Okay. design center started from scratch been in the corporate world was in the corporate world for 18 years and kids have I'm alone from parkan okay kids uh got one graduated one graduating another one a few years so okay and so you do home building mostly home building we got a full complete retail design center so we we carry everything from top

006to bottom and then we're contractor on top of it so yeah out of self we also sell fuel A little bit of everything that was temporary and everything people have to get fuel. You got to stop and wonder what we're doing. So yeah, it's worked a couple times. Yeah. And your and your your performance evaluation's pretty good each year. You you do it for yourself. For yourself? Uh I don't You run your business? Well, my wife and I run my business. So you know, she does my performance evaluation. LLC. Yeah. When I started when I started this little business uh doing consulting, so LLC. Yeah. Uh called Shots and Associates. Sure. Sure. Yeah. It's just me. Y Gretchen helps every now and then. So, but yeah, she does the performance development. Yeah. Well, I'm always

007evaluating because you can always do better. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, every job we do, I always look back and see what we could have done different. Absolutely. It's just part of it. In my previous career, I ran a five state area at 31 different sites and I was trying to squeeze a lot on turnups. Yeah. Yeah. So, we had a lot of responsibility for overhead and transportation, how employee, but it's just good to kind of be in your own charge, right? That's why I did it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Got one fixed and you thought you could sit back and relax a little bit, then you got another one and that went on for about 15 years. So, yeah. Yep. Perfect. I'm Jennifer Hastrap. I am local from the area. I graduate from Devil's Lake, North

008Dakota. I am retired military. I currently work with children who have ASD and TBI. I have three children. One graduated at UND, one eighth grader who is in the cities right now with a band choir and a seventh grade or sorry, sixth grade little girl. Yeah, soon to be seventh grade. Uh my husband's also retired military and he is an IT director for Financial. Okay. And and again, how long have you been on the board here? Oh, sorry. Since November. Oh, okay. My term just started in January. So, new to this. She was appointed. Yeah. Then uh one election. Okay. And uh military retired. Did you have anything to do with the air base up in Grand Force? You from Devil's Lake. Okay. So, it's different. Okay. Don't remember. That's Air Force. Yeah, I was

009Army Guard. You were where? Army Guard. Oh, okay. I actually work for a living. Well, I spent the reason I asked. I spent 21 years as uh up in Grand Fork school system. 15 years I was the principal at Central High School up there. Okay. And all the military kids came to Central High School at the time. We had over 350 high school kids that came from the base every day. So, I got to know the military and the folks and the leadership pretty well. They're talking about building a a school on Yes. Boy, has that been this over the years? Yeah. Because when I was there, they had two schools there that both had 800 kids each of them and it was huge. And then they decommissioned the base and everything went away and

010they still had the two schools and down to 200 kids, twining and now they're talking about bringing things down, ramping it back up again. So, it's it's interesting how that goes over the years, but government, they like to spend money. Yeah. Yeah. Good old government. Hi. Hi. I'm Sarah Hill. I just got sworn in last month. Okay. So, very new, very opposite side for me. I am the executive director for Becker County DAC. Uh, we provide services to adults with disabilities. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Good. All right. Great. And how long have you been doing that as the executive? Um almost two years. Uh did nursing for 16 prior to that and project management prior to that. So yeah, very happy with where I am though. All right. I'm Paul Danda. I grew up in

011a small town in North Dakota, Michigan on Highway 2. So you sound like you're familiar with that area. Absolutely. I also retired from the military. The Air Force were you somehow touched with the only thing I had to do with Grand Forks Air Force Base was a high school job in the summer and then I took some classes there. But you weren't like on the base and all that. I was not stationed there. Okay. Uh, so what I retired from the Air Force and in the railroad at the NSF station out of Dill work now and have two freshman daughters in the school and a 5-year-old in preK school. Okay. Board, you're elected in 22 two years. So I was brought on with Susan and Brian and Lyn. Lyn. So, all four of us were

012brought on at the same time. Okay. So, you have, you know, I mean, years of experience on your board is pretty small, you know. I mean, I I I've worked with boards that have people that have been on for 20 years and, you know, that kind of stuff. And, um, so you're you're pretty young from a board standpoint, years of experience. Um, very aware of it. Yeah. Well, and it's hard. And it's hard because when you come on a board and you're a board member, you know, where's the training for that? I mean, what what university did you go to for that? You know, where did you get that schooling, that experience, that um that historical perspective that older board members can bring to the table on a board? Uh I know Marge, you've been

013around the district for many, many years. I mean, you're the historian, right? I mean, you know the district, but being a board member versus being a teacher or being a community member is a whole different bucket. And so how do you know what that role is and those roles and responsibilities? So that that's a it's a big challenge. And so you got a lot in front of you and what you find out when you get on a board like this is it's a lot bigger than I ever thought it was typically is when you really get into it. And so um so what Tim's asked me to do is come in and talk to you a little bit about that about um being on a board about governance. Um just to give you a little

014bit more of a background on me. I spent 32 years in public education. Um I my last time was in Fargo and I built Davies High School then became superintendent. Did that for six years and then and then uh retired. uh last seven years I've spent my time uh working with organizations of all types from nonprofits to forprofits to labor unions to city municipalities to almost 60 school districts in the state of North Dakota and I have traveled every road in North Dakota now growing up here in Fargo as a kid never thought I'd ever see all those places out in North Dakota but I've been there now um and I'm still fairly active in in doing role work work with groups Um, I worked with the Metro Flood Diversion Authority over over on the

015uh Minnesota, North Dakota. Uh, all those elected officials. Um, I have spent 32 hours with the Fargo City Commission and we still can't figure it out. Um, so so I've had this opportunity to see um boards functioning in all sorts of different arenas. And so when I come to you and I talk about boards, I'm not coming to you as a school guy only. I'm telling you, I've seen a lot of different boards. And um it comes down to um a couple different things or my are my walkaways with all of this as I as I've been doing this. And that is when it comes to board governance, the basic tenants of board governance is the same. Whether you're nonprofit, for-profit, whether you're uh um elected officials like you are, um there are basic tenants

016of governance that transcend across all of them. And when you understand the roles and responsibilities of you as board members and the roles and responsibilities of the person you hire to run the organization, in this case your superintendent, um when there's a when there's a really good understanding of those roles and responsibilities, then we tend to have a pretty pretty good environment. Um, if I were to write a book about all of this and all that I've learned, what I would what I would call the book is um, meet me on the bridge. Because here's what I find is you have the board and you have the executive, you have superintendent, CEO, whoever you want. And a lot of times we're standing on each side of the bridge and the question becomes how do we

017get to the middle so that we can work together and we understand each other and we support each other because the bottom line is is that the mission that you carry forward is the same. What's the mission of schools? What would you say? Why are you here? It's all about kids. It's all about students, right? But what what gets in the way of that? Politics. Politics. day-to-day things, difference of opinions, all these things get in the way of that. And a lot of times then all the things that are going on are up here. Yet we still got this thing going on down here. And that's called day-to-day. That's school. That's what's going on. How do we stay focused on that? That's the key. And how do we understand that our roles and our responsibilities?

018So I'll walk you through a few things here tonight um and talk about some things. Originally when Tim had called me he had talked about you know uh board self- evaluation you know performance of of our own selves as board members what I tell people is that well first of all if I were to ask you this we let's think about that for a second what would you call your governance model governance being the way that you operate as a board would you say that you have a structured governance model or is it what I think we're still learning it I think we're learning we're trying to figure know what we're going to be right. I think we get along well like pretty level headed amongst us. It's more informal. We we try the Robert's

019rules as much as possible. It's more across the table dialogue. Yeah. More of a collaboration. Yeah. And so there I look at and I do I look up a lot of policies in legislation. Yeah. Yep. And I've taken the lot of the trainings. Yeah. And I came into it so I have a bachelor's in early childhood and I've put a lot of kids in the school district. Yeah. So, but I I'm a policy and legislation person. Yeah. So, policy governance is is a governance model. Policy governance is a governance model. Then there's something called coherent governance. Okay. There's there's two things there. Um and there are about eight different models of governance that organizations can can engage in. um policy governance and coherent governance hybrided together, melded together is where I'm at. That's that's where

020I land. And I believe in policy. Policyy's it for me. Uh as superintendent of the far schools, something goes on, what's the first question comes out of my mouth? I want to know the policy. What's policy say? That's what I do every time I look it up. What's policy say? You know, what should we be doing on this? So, here's what I tell people. If you're a board and you have you have you're you're in charge of the governance of your school district, but you don't really have a model with policies that drive that model. Where are the policies you need to go to? You don't have them. Okay. um school boards, associations, the Minnesota League, all of those policies. They have policies for school boards, but the majority of the policies they have are

021what I call administrative policies. They're the day-to-day stuff. This happened in a classroom. Here's the policy. This how we follow that. This happened there. This how we follow that. When it comes to governance, it's usually pretty shallow, my experience. And so policy governance, coherent governance, those two things when you bring them together very specifically outline sets of policies that are basically in three groups of which I'll talk a little bit here tonight. But one of those groups is policies about us as a board. How do we operate as a board and what are the kind of the agreements we have of us as board members and as a board? And so that's a whole set of policies and that that set of policies then governs you as a board. Another set of policies is the

022policies that you have um that dictate the relationship between the board and your executive. Who has the power when I call it? Who has the power to make decisions at different times and where do we meet on the bridge? Okay. So that's what I call um um board superintendent or executive relationship policies. The last one is that you'll typically find are what I call um operational expectations. So if in fact we hire a superintendent to run our school district and if as a board member my role is at the policy level, their role is to execute and run the school like it should be. um then we're going to if we're going to give that power to our executive then we're going to have expectations of that and those are called operational expectations or executive

023limitations. So the board collectively comes up with these broad-based types of policies that say these are the expectations we have in these different categories. The role of your executive then is to execute that and to carry that out. Okay. So when I worked for the part of schools, I give you the quick story of the department of schools and and and where this really became an important part of my life. Policy governance has been throughout the superintendent in Grand Forest that I worked for was a big policy governance guy. That's when I first got into it. Um and I was a big believer in it. Then I came to Fargo and actually worked in it. In 1999, Dave Flowers was a superintendent. He put a policy governance model in place in the Fargo public schools.

024All these years later, they're going to be going on to their fifth superintendent since that was put put in place and many board members, the same framework of policies still runs the school district. Many different paces at the table over the years, but the policies that are set forth um all of these types of guardrails is what runs the school district ultimately. So, if you're a new superintendent, you come in, these are the policies. If you're a new board member, this is what your orientation is into. and it's very clear as to your role and responsibility and those types of things. There's there's extensive orientation that goes on. Um, how many of you got orientation and how long was it? Well, I took the first two classes when I first got on the board along

025with negotiation training because I'm with the state uh with MSBA schoolboard association. Yeah. So phase one, phase two, and then I took my negotiation training immediately and I just took officer training being the treasurer orientation to your school district. Mhm. Did you go through an orientation? No. Okay. That's where I'm at. That's the problem is it when you come in as a new board member, uh, for example, I'll use Fargo and I use other districts. I'll use other organizations. Um, I I I was on the board of trustees for United Way and Fargo. big organization. When you're a new board member to that board, you go through a full day orientation to the organization. Um, and then there's subsequent followup. Uh when you come into a school district as a board member, there should be

026some kind of orientation that you get that is pretty extensive to give you a full understanding of the policies, the way we work, the departments, leadership, principles, roles, responsibilities, who does what, what do you do, how do you do it, all of those things. And and so when you don't have that, what happens to boards is you come on as new. How was your first meeting? Little nervous. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You're sitting there going like, "Well, what's my role? What do I do? How do I So, what are you doing?" You're watching everybody else and see how and the way they're behaving is what how they learned how to be a board member and they didn't have orientation. So, they're doing whatever they do. My point is is that everybody's kind of doing different things

027and we're getting lost. We're getting lost in the prey, right, of how we operate as a group. So governance policies give you the guidance in the guardrails on how to govern and that becomes your main set of policies. The other policies are administrative policies and those policies are important too but those policies are administrative administrative policies and so as a board member people say well what's my role? Your role is to ensure that those policies are current, that those policies are what you use, that those policies have a a review cycle and all of those things, but as far as you developing those policies and reviewing all those copious levels of policies, that's not your role or it shouldn't be. And um so that's laid out in expectations, who does what when and who oversees

028what. So um I mean what I'm going to cover here in about an hour should be I used to teach for the universities should be a whole course on governance. So you're just getting a very top top level piece here tonight. So when you asked if we got orientated and you your followup was is that is the problem. What do you mean by that? It the problem is is that board members come on the boards without an orientation and they they don't know what to do. they're lost initially. And so rather than focusing on the work at hand of being a board member, your brain is racing on on all these things that you're not aware of or or unsure of. And so you're not focused. You come on immediately. You're trying to pass policies

029for this and your free time. You're looking up, you're getting calls, you're looking up this policy and this. Yes, I can. Somebody call like when you become a new board member, what do you do if a constituent calls you or a patron calls you? Where does that go? Who do you talk to? Where should it be directed? I do a lot of right directly to I want to say on call Dr. Godfrey. Becky was pretty good at say saying a lot of the stuff. Yeah, I agree. But not really an orientation. I No, not an orientation at all. We talked about that since I was here that we were going to develop that orientation mentorship, but we've had especially recently such a turnover of board members. Yeah. That um and so you've got all these

030new folks coming on. And so there's my my point is is that you you know when when you have to kind of learn by just showing up and then eventually over a series of meetings you're starting to get it. The question becomes is do you have it right? Mhm. You still may not and what did you lose? We do have a school board and I'll share it with you. Yeah. We do have a schoolboard handbook that we developed through MSBA schoolboard association the board and a committee. A lot of the answers are in there, but what you're talking about is more of a personal understanding and learning of how you get elected on board. Do you put your new board together here in Minnesota in July? No, it's January. Yeah. See, North Dakota, it's July.

031When you get elected as a new board member, typically you get elected and then there's period of time before the first board me that you go to. Um, you should have orientation before the first meeting. Yeah, makes sense. by the school district, this level where you actually meet with the superintendent, president of the board, and then other people from the district and leadership team are introduced to you. There's a section or a session during that day of orientation where they tell you what they do and how they work it and all that kind of stuff. So, where's that responsibility fall at? And as you know, we're the board. Yeah. But I mean where should that have originated from? Uh in in a board that has governance policies. It would be in the governance policies that

032the for the board the first set of policies because the board's in charge of its own governance. But you don't have that. So where should it fall? Well, you'd say, well, it should have been past board members or the superintendent or somebody. But there's nobody at fault here because there hasn't been there hasn't been that detailed kind of system put in place. And so Tim's doing all he can. He brings you on. He's pulling you aside. He's saying here's how it goes and this is what we do. But it's it's got to be um so in a governance model for example in the first set of policies they're called governance culture. Those are the policies that pertain to the board and how you operate as a board. Um there's something called an annual work plan.

033And in that annual work plan, you lay out for the year all of your board meetings, your committee meetings, and anything else that is a board duty. Well, one of them is orientation. So, and it's the month kind of table that you put together. So, in this month, we do this. This month, this it's all laid out. And you improve your annual calendar at your first organizational meeting of the year. That's how we roll in for the rest of the year. This is how we do. But orientation is typically in that January box for any new board member. So now in the case that you have to um appoint somebody because somebody left, well obviously it's going to happen after that appointment, but typically speaking that's that's the the rotation of it. Um and so

034like in my situation, I had nine board members and so we'd have five come on and then we'd have four come on. So it was always five and four. So, you know, it's you're bringing four people in and you got myself, the board president, the board chair, the board president typically is in charge of the orientation meeting. Okay. I'm there as a superintendent to provide support and to help with all the details, right? So, now that's a union. That's a that's meet me at the bridge. New board members are there. We're going through orientation. Now, if there's principal groups, so then during the day sometime principles are in, you meet who they are and By the end of the day, you should be able to walk away and go, "Okay, I got I got I

035got a good orientation of what's going on." Um, and an understanding of where I need to go next if I have questions. And then you'll learn the role. I mean, it takes time. It It takes a whole year really in the school business to get through it all. So, I kind of jumped on the orientation thing. It's not the only thing. So, and we're spending a lot of time on that, but I think it's critical. No, I think it's good because super critical when we were asked to do the self-evaluation. I mean, um, I got two meetings in I mean, yeah, what are we to evaluate? And that's what we brought it up as a board. It's like we don't really know if this pertains to our where we're at with where we So, yeah.

036And I've got something tonight I'm going to share with you on some questions that are more basic. Um, I looked at the one Minnesota uses. The one North Dakota uses is awful. the one in Minnesota. There's terms in there and I'm going like I have my doctorate. I'm going like I got to go get a the source out and figure that one out. I mean, you know, it's not written in lay terms and and and you know, when you when you look at public school boards, um you are representation from the community and some don't have a real extensive background or an education background that get on boards. And so you've got to come to people in language in which people can understand. And we we love this in education. We kill people with education

037e we call it just like doctors in the medical field does it with all their acronyms and all their other language. We do that in education. So you'll be sitting at meeting if I said MTSS to you would you know what I mean? Okay. One of the most critical structures you have in your in your system multi-tered system of supports. It's a framework of standardsbased education. You know that I do now. See, see, you know, I could just start going, right? And you'd be going. So, superintendent comes in with their staff and they say, "Well, our strategic initiative is to ensure that we have a standardsbased education um using a MTSS framework, and this is how we're going to measure student achievement by doing this, that, and this." you're going to be sitting there going

038like don't know what you're talking about yet you're being asked to make the most critical decisions of the district approve the overall budget make decisions about curriculum u assessment all the other things you do and if you don't understand it and you're making those decisions then how are those decisions being made this is common for every single board I work with that's where questions come in I've been known to ask a lot of questions Yeah. Here's here's here's where the calm to the storm comes. When when you're a superintendent and uh you get a system in place and you got a board who's being good orientation, they understand their roles and responsibilities. We're all meeting on the bridge, the questions start to slow down because now you know, you don't have to ask many questions.

039You're understanding Yeah. you know, the process. But, you know, when you're first new and and so it's it's a big change when you step into the shoes of being a um being a schoolboard um member. Um Margie, even walking out of the classroom, you had to walk in and go. I'm sure there's been times when you're going like, "Okay, that's something that Yeah. Although I feel it's a positive." Yes. Because I had been in education. Yeah. And now I'm just on the other side. Yeah. So I can bring some expertise. Give experience. You bring experience to the table. Um and I had been a mini Yeah. through the many board meetings too. So you at least understand the basic tenants and the framework of that. But there's still as now that you become a board

040member, there's a different responsibility there. It's a different Yeah. A different role that you're playing. Okay. Okay. All right. So yeah. Go ahead. If we can go back to the governing policies that you were referring to. Yeah. Is there a set of bylaws that are a part of that or is it just policies that are in place for the board? Yeah. Um nonprofit person, not the bylaws. I love it. Uh there's no operating agreement. There's no bylaws. Okay. Okay. They're they're basically policies, right? So governance policies and then you have administrative policies. Uh the school boards associations love those, right? That's what they have and they do a good job. They they keep up on legislation, the law. They make sure you have the right policies that from a legal standpoint, you have the policies

041supposed to have. They watch the legislature. The legislature changes anything with education and all that. So, they're they're great with all that. But what they what what I have found is that the specivity of your school district is what's missing is what's missing because you guys are your own school district. Um and there are uniqueness uh things that are unique to you as a school district that maybe don't happen down the road. And so your governance policies are more that is you're making sure that these are governance policies that help us govern ourselves. So it's just not a standard template that everybody just does. Um and so I think that's the beauty of it is when you can create governance models like that. Yeah. So we have no school board governance policies. Is that what

042we're saying? We have an administrative policy. We have no school board in our schoolboard policy. We do um I'm going to if you don't mind Dr. We have a handbook, but that doesn't necessarily the handbook doesn't necessarily say create policy. So once once Dr. shot shows you what he means by the governance policies for the schoolboard. You're going it's going to look different. Um but in our policy manual here, level 100 are district policies. Level 200 school policies. Yeah. So they're they're more vague than Yeah. And then MSBA, that's what we covered. And these are all this kind of state down and then we need to adapt adop adapt them to fit our district. Yeah. And so what they're doing is they give you a template of policies here. So legal status of the school

043board. Well, that's important. That's a legal that's a state of Minnesota thing. That's a legal status. That would be at that that level. Schoolboard officers. What should your schoolboard officers be? President of the board, vice president, those kinds of things. Operation of the school board, governing rules. I'd have to look at that one and see what they all have in it. But schoolboard procedures, rules of order. So, Robert's rule of order, order of the regular schoolboard meeting. These are suggested formats. They don't mean that they have to be exactly this way. So, what they're doing is they're giving you guidance. What I'm saying is that when you write your own governance policies, what I do when I work with districts on this is I take these and I reference them into their governance policies, but

044their governance policy has additional information that's more to the school district's level. So these are reference reference every one of those. Yeah, these are these are included in there. But now Tim, if you go to the 300s, the 400s, the 500s. Let's go there once and just show you this real quick. Um administration. Yeah. So this gets into the whole administration thing. Um I also take in the governance policies in this case and cross references because in the um superintendent and board relationship policies, some of this stuff would be in there. But again, like this thing, contract, duties, evaluation, there's some legal things in there that um the school board's association or the Minnesota League is going to give you guidance in. So, those policies are good for that. Go to 400 once, see what

045you have there. That's staff. Okay, this is all staff stuff. This is not stuff that you should have to worry about. This is stuff that the superintendent ensures with his leadership team are being reviewed, kept up to date and all of those things. And the school boards association gives you, they monitor all of these. So if any of them change with some kind of legislation out in Minneapolis, they're going to make those adjustments. Then you come back to your policies. But I'm assuming that a lot of these policies, Tim, are just adopted right from the state. Absolutely. So when we do Yeah. a policy committee will review and we do change but mostly word for word. So here's where I'll go with this is and and I'm just giving you guys examples here. So this

046is not a I'm not here to say you should be doing this or that. What this is just um governance policies that you monitor as a board are different than these. Okay? They're the policies you've designed to govern yourself and the work that you do. These policies are important and they're administrative, but board members shouldn't be wasting their time on a policy review committee that spends copious amounts of hours of looking at all these different policies. What your expectation policy is is that your superintendent has a process in place for doing that and that they're ensuring that those policies are kept up. That's the expectation. So, you're not wasting your time on that. You're wasting your time on the stuff that matters. Okay? That's the difference. That's the difference. Um, do you need to know

047about these policies? Yeah. And when something happens uh in in the school or in the community that pertains to the school, you're going to want to know which policy is aligned to that issue, right? No question about it. But that's that again. And so as a board member aware but not, you know, diving head first in and having to be that intimately involved in that, that's a lot of time that you're spending on policy review that you don't need to have. Well, if administration's doing that part of it, yeah, we shouldn't have to worry about it. Well, and we So your expectation is that they have a process. Their evidence of doing it Yeah. comes with some with with some expectations. Um, I'm going to give you evidence that I'm doing it because here's my

048cycle. So, we do the 300s and the 400s every other year kind of thing. Um, if there's no significant change, I'll make that change and you don't have to do anything. If there's any kind of significant change, your expectation, I'm bringing that to you to inform you. So, now you're aware. So I'm saying, hey, there was a significant change here and this one or we had this incident happen in our school district and we didn't have a policy. So we're creating a policy. Here it is for your examination, right? And your feedback, but you're not sitting on a committee getting together and going through this month after month after month after month. I see boards doing this. It just it's crazy work. So I have a question there is Marge and I are on the

049policy committee. So that would mean if there's a significant change to one of our policies, we would not just say we passed these policies and the the policy board recommends them, we would tell the whole board about the significant Yeah. Yeah. And and what would happen um is that uh if there was a significant change to a policy review and you've given let's say you no longer have the policy committee, let's Yep. let's quit doing that. Let's quit running around doing that. And you're in charge of that along with your administrative team, however you put that together. Um, and there's going to be a significant change. I'm bringing that to you in an official board meeting as an agenda item. Okay? And I'm saying there was sign so under whatever agenda item um that you

050have that under that there was a significant change tonight. We're bringing that to you. Now, if you have committee structure, I forget what your committee structure is. Yeah. How many committees? policy building and grounds finance and uh I'm just saying we don't talk about it. We don't just pass the policy and it right in a in a governance model um typically you have three or four committees as a board. Okay, one committee is called governance. Pretty simple. Anything to do with policies, anything to do with your superintendent, performance review, all that kind of stuff, that's governance. That's that committee. So you do have people assigned to that. So when I'm reviewing policies as administrator, I'm coming to my governance committee and I'm saying um here are the policies that we've reviewed. There's no significant change.

051I'm informing you and as a committee you say okay no big deal. When you go back to the full board the report is is that policies were reviewed and then we do a significant we do a first and second read. Yeah. Everybody does that. So if it's a new one or if it's a significant change, but that first or second reading um is more of an informational opportunity then at the board meeting to get feedback. Somebody says, "Well, you know, I've got a question about this or that." Take it back. Bring it back. Final. Okay. So, but my my whole point in this is that you're not spending your time doing um that kind of work when you should be spending your time doing other work as board members. That's your administration and your expectation

052is set up with regard to how that's reviewed. It's very typical for school boards to have um to have um policy committees. In the Fargo public schools, I do not have a policy committee. school board members, none. If there was an I had to develop a few new policies, I had to make some pretty significant changes, some policies because some things had happened. I took that to my governance committee. My governance committee looked at it. We all talked about it. We forwarded it on to the full board and um full board then would approve that and move forward but we didn't have them sitting there for hours and hours and hours developing a policy and going through it all and everything else. We brought it to them. So the governance committee covered administration legislation everything.

053Yes. All of that. That's what it's called. And so anything going on in vis in Bismar in Minneapolis um in St. Paul um you know all those things. And so you define that in your governance policies. Here's the role of a governance committee. Planning committee was all the other planning stuff. Facilities, strategic planning, long range financial plans, the budget, that's in your planning committee. So that committee does that. Uh governance committees, anything to do with governance, and then typically there's there can be two other committees. Communications committee, sometimes boards like that. Um and then your negotiations. and and how you do the negotiations. So, typically four committees, no more than that. I've worked with school boards that have had 10 committees and they're like, I don't know when you meet 10 times, 10 committees. Oh,

054yeah. And they just said silly stuff like they had a bus committee and I'm like, oh, bus committee. What was the third one you listed? Uh, communications. Okay. So that's the committee structure that you typically will see in a governance model. How did our committees become? Yeah. Where do they is it just always met the recommended? So those are recommended committees from MSBA. So basically you could have committee structures any way you want them. MSBA just recommends these. So that's the way I mean basically in historical practice and things like that. Okay. So you know what I'm talking about here is a different way of doing business and and I'm not proposing that at all. So this is a suggestion probably got into it too far about the structure of of of governance here for

055you. Um because governance is still about your role and responsibility as board members. Okay. So let's go back to that and see. So I there's a there's a couple slides that I put together that but I always talk about why plan for the future. I'm a big planner, right? And I believe that everything that we do as a school district, I'm a systems thinker, you know, so there should be systems in place to make our jobs um systematic, if you will, that all connect. And so, um, when you talk about planning for the future, and we did this with the strategic planning with your district a couple years ago, yeah, you kind of take a stop, you look at what you're doing and you you you re-evaluate and then you come up with a plan

056and that's what you guys have done. So, you've got that piece and so I think that's really important. It keeps you current, you have inevitable change and and sets a course for the future. Um where you're probably challenged as a school district is the youth of your board experience and the roles responsibilities knowing what you should do and how we should do it and how we work together. You don't from what I'm understanding don't have a lot of structure to that. Okay. And so that's just where you are. Um so when you have a systems types of thinking that goes on uh within your school district you end up with generally some pretty high level academic performance students first mindsets and that is that's how we that that's what drives us right that's what we

057want we want high levels of academic performance students come first in every decision we make and all the other noise has to kind of step aside the time because there's a lot of noise that goes along with being in a school system. Okay. Um there should be a comprehensive strategic plan driven by a vision. You've got that and and Dr. Godfrieded brought that to the table when he came here and uh I met with your committees and Mar you remember that process. We went through a pretty good process, pretty long process, came up with the strategic plan that should be reviewed annually. It should be what drives your work and it's those big buckets. Uh when you do that, you have what I call vertical alignment throughout the school district. In other words, we're aligning

058ourselves from administration to staff, schoolboard, administration, staff, and we're all on the same page because we're all believing in the same strategic vision. Okay? Uh what's our mission statement? What's our vision statement? Those things are important. That's what defines you and talks about who you are as a school district. That gives you your uniqueness. Um and then um the other types of out and I just talked about that re-energize the overall mission and vision of the school district. So we're talking a common language. So all of these things are outcomes that we hope for but if we don't have systems in place then it's then it's hard to get it done. Strategic plan then would that be something would be part of our orientation? So Yep. Here's our mission. Here's our vision. This is our

059value statement. These are the strategic initiatives. Yeah. Jeff, did you did you say made a comment that it should be reviewed each year? Yeah. But not changed each year. Well, here's here's the thing about strategic planning that people um kind of misunderstand at times and that is um strategic plans are dynamic. They are not static. You don't create a strategic plan for 5 years and then it never changes. uh the world moves too fast and things go too fast. A strategic plan should be reviewed every year and if adjustments are needed they're they're made they're made. Um so once you have a strategic plan in place the administration then working with your planning committee would come to your planning committee and say we reviewed our strategic plan internally for the year. Here's what we believe

060we've accomplished and made reasonable progress on. here are some things we're still working on. And what we found is that we need to shift a little bit and we're looking to add another goal or another something here or adjust something because it's not working. And so we're making the adjustments. So now I'm coming back to full board and I'm saying board I need you to renew and and reapprove our strategic plan for the new year. I did it in Fargo every year and came to the board and said these are the adjustments we made as a team. Here's what we're coming to. We vetted it at the planning committee. No surprises. Came to the full board. Board said, "Yeah, looks good." What's the board's expectation? That I have a vision in place and that I'm

061driving a strategic plan. Well, my evidence as I come to them and show them that is that I'm doing that. You as a board member, check done. I don't need to get into the gory details as a board member because my superintendent is doing it and here's the evidence and I see it. Um, so that's the difference where I see schoolboard members getting into is they start digging in and they get into all of that and they start pulling little pieces here and there and then it becomes just this huge mess. Okay. But understanding roles and responsibilities once I understand it. No. And and here's the other thing about meeting on the bridge. Confidence in the person that you have leading your district. I have level of trust. I have confidence in the person that's

062leading the district. They're showing me evidence that they're doing it. They're meeting the expectations we had. I don't need to go further as a board member. Why would I? Okay. So, things to think about. I always like showing this because a lot of time and I ask people, you know, between proactive and reactive, where do you find yourself as a school district? You know, reactive on the bottom. You know, everything is is always happening. We're trying to find solutions. We eventually do it goes away. the next thing comes, the next thing and we're always reacting to everything. Proactive models when things happen, it's a small blip and we're back to equilibrium and we're on our way because we have systems in place, good policy governance, we have good administrative policies, all that's being kept up.

063We have an operational expectation policies of our superintendent. Um, we've got a good working relationship set of policies between our executive. We're moving towards proactivity because we've got systems in place that are working. Um, so if I were to ask you guys between the bottom red and the gray up top, if you were to put your finger between that moving up or down, where would you say you guys are at on that scale right here? So, let me be the measure. Where would you say you are? Are you way down here reactive? More up here proactive in the middle? What would you say? I'm going to say we're reactive. I don't think we're anywhere near near proactive. And the reason I say that I mean we don't have the orientation in place, our policies, we

064don't have the governance policies obviously in place. So we're set up not set up, right? I mean I don't I mean not knowing what I don't know, I would say we're going to be on the bottom side of it. One teenagers. What would you say you've been on a while? Honestly, we trend on the bottom half, but I do feel that because of people that have been in place and helped to guide us to where we are at this point, there has been some proactiveness. Yeah, we just like you alluded to, we haven't had the whole package together. So, we kind of take two steps up the hill, maybe slide back one, but we're not far from getting over that. Yeah. So, I mean, you can you can you can be generous enough to put

065you maybe about right here, you know, I mean, you know, somewhere in there. I want to say I think we're probably determined because a lot of it comes from, you know, personal determination to want to be proactive. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And then you know and so here I'm I'm I'm going to be your superintendent for a second. You know how hard it is for a superintendent to work with new board members all the time. Yeah. Right. Ask him shortly. Put yourself What's that? Ask him in a few months. Yeah. But I mean put yourself in that role. Mhm. And every time you turn around you've got a new board member and you know you got a new board member and you know how to run the district. You know how to do things. but

066how do I get them to understand that I know how to do that, trust me, have confidence in me, and that kind of stuff. So, we're constantly building this relationship thing that's always changing. And so, it's hard. Um, I can tell you from experience, um, I don't know of a harder position. It's easier to be a mayor. It's easier to be a CEO of a for-profit company. Public school superintendents are becoming a rare commodity and they're under fire everywhere and everybody's thinking, "Oh, let's get rid of our superintendent. There's a better one out there." And no one shows up. No one shows up because they're not. And so an executive that I work with in Fargo at the uh Dakota Medical Foundation, Pat Trainer, when he does board trainings, one of the first things he

067says to boards when he goes in to meet with the boards is he says, "What have you done today to support your executive versus tell them?" That's a whole different train of thinking. What have you done to support them? Because they need your support to do the job that they're being asked to do. Um job's hard enough already. And so, so that's why I talk about that relationship is how do we cultivate that relationship? So, you know, we can all have differences and we can understand that we're not going to always agree, but we're all working towards the same mission and we're all capable people. So, you guys have a really important role and that is to provide guidance to the school district and the confidence of the public that the district's being run well

068and and that's what they want. The public doesn't care about the infighting and all the other stuff that goes on. They could care less. Take your fight to the street, you lose every time. What they want to know is that when you are all sitting here at the table, superintendent, board, that you're doing your best to try to provide the best way, possible experience for kids when they show up at your doorstep. And here's the problem and the hardest thing about it is that it's an imperfect science. Because the most imperfect thing you work with, and you know this in working with human beings, anybody who works with human beings for a living knows that it's an imperfect model. It does a lot of bad things sometimes and it doesn't go well sometimes. And so

069we're that's the business we're in. Our product is what? Human beings. in what we produce once they graduate, right? Under prepared, they went through, they did all the things. Um, that is a hard hard business. And so, as a superintendent, you're navigating that, trying to provide the best guidance you can. When there's disagreement, we're coming to the table. We're working it out. We're understanding each other. We know and sometimes we win, sometimes we lose. And so, we go with the majority. That's the way we rule. and then we move forward and we support each other. No one's going to support you as a board member more than your other board members because out there you're leaving that up to whoever. You know what I'm saying? You got to support each other. And so that's really

070important. And so getting from a reactive model to a proactive model is that policies in place, systems in place, things in place that help guide our work. understanding that we need to meet on the bridge, we need to work together, we have confidence in our leader, uh we work with our leader, um they work with us and keep us informed so that we can work together. So all of these things I think are just critical. Um I talk about this a lot of times too because you can have a strategic plan, you can have governance and all of that, but how do you make decisions as a board? What do you do and how do you think about that? Right? I believe it comes down to these four things. And so as a superintendent myself,

071um anytime uh we were considering anything uh that where we had to make fairly decent big decisions on these were the questions we had to ask ourselves. Does it align? Is there programmatic programmatic? I like that alignment strategic plan. Does it align with our strategic plan? What we're saying we're going to do or what we want to do and we have to make decisions about it. Does it align? If it doesn't, then we have to rethink it because right now it's not then the focus of the work we're doing. Resources. Do we have the human resources and the dollars to do it? If we have these two things, can we sustain it both short-term and long term? What happened with COVID monies for a lot of districts? They got all that CO money from the

072federal government. What happened? It went away, right? spend on sustain things that need to be sustained. Yeah. They spend on things that need to be sustained. Now the money's not there and they're going, "What are we going to do?" It's discipline. Yeah. And so what's happened is is we can't sustain it. So we made a bad decision. So we have to ask the question, can we sustain it short-term, long term? And then in the end, are we going to get our return on investment? You know what we do really well as school districts? We invest in things and never check back and we keep them for 30 years. They've given us no return on investment. No. Right. And the reason that we never change is why somebody owns the program. It's my program. You're not

073taking my program, right? Well, what about your program? Is your program aligned to our strategic focus? Are we able to sustain the resources that we have for it? And has it given us the return on investment? And if it's not, then why do we keep doing it? We have to be bold enough to say we got to stop. Okay. So, if you can live within this realm of making decisions, then you're usually making fairly decent decisions. It's never perfect, but you're you're getting there. So, that that is something I think is really important. So, as I see it, it's governance. It's a strategic direction, and it's laying out the operational plan to succeed um and do the things to um accomplish the strategic plan and to stay within the uh guardrails that we've laid out

074in our governance model. These are the three tenants I believe of vertical alignment in a school district. And so I want to cut that slide really quick. I go back here. I can give you this to Tim and he can give it to you guys too if you want. Um so these three things and then I want to go here real quick and talk about this because I think this is imperative. I think every school district should have these five things. They should have a long-term facility plan. that lays out where we're current currently at with our facilities. And then also talks about the second one, long-term operational maintenance. What about the upkeep and all the things that we have to do? Where's the budget for that? Have we considered that? Long-term facility plans, looking

075out what types of facilities, all that kind of stuff. long-term operational maintenance plans, long-term financial plans that are beyond just the spreadsheet from last year to this year. Long-term financial plans that consider our strategic initiatives, consider um all of the different assumptions that are going on with regard to our funding. What are the basic assumptions like taxable value taxes, local property taxes? What are the assumptions we can make? are we how much we're going to get potentially next year, the following year, and the following year. What if it isn't the percentage of increase that we thought it would be? Well, let's model that in three different percentage groups. When I went to the board in Fargo, we gave them uh three different models of assumed taxable value increase on local property tax. If it's 3%,

076this is what it'll be. If it's 5%, it'll be this. If it's 7%, it's this. We think making the assumptions out of what we know it's going to land somewhere around five. But I'm coming to you as a board and saying those are the assumptions we're using to build our budget. Now you guys get to weigh in. Well, let's shoot for five cuz what do we know? It's never for sure. Okay. Till it's all said and done. State funding, same thing. All those types of things. Long-term financial plans, consider all of that. I believe in long-term technology. Tim knows this because tech technology is a big thing for Tim. Um is what about the technology that we have? Uh it used to be years ago we were just piecing together technology then it became all

077about the machines and and all of that. We've got all that stuff now. Okay. Um so what is the obsolescence plan to replace that and to make sure that we keep that up? Most people have that. The question I have for people is where's the plan about how you're using the technology in the classroom for instruction curriculum all those things. Most people don't have that. There's something called ISTY standards and those ISTY standards provide some really great guidance on how technology can be used in curriculum and those types of things. Districts that have really good technology plans have laid all that out so it's right in front of you. And then of course with AI and social media and all the other stuff that's going on, what about all those things? So it's a huge

078driver of what we do. Would you agree? And it's even so more so all the time. Um and then the last one is I believe we should do a standard of effort report. What that is, it's a comparative report where you look at the revenues and the expenditures of your school district as compared to two or three other like-siz school districts. So you categorize it and you say, "Okay, if we were to compare ourselves with this district, that district, and this district, how are they spending their money? How are we spending our money? Where's the differences? And are we about in the same ballpark?" And here's I'll give you an example. When when I first started Superintendent Fargo, I was always told like, "Oh, board members, we have way too many administrators. We're administratively heavy."

079And I'd say, "Well, how do you know that?" It's a, well, look at how many administrators we have. But how do you know that? So when I did my standard effort report with eight other school districts throughout the state of North Dakota comparing us Fargo uh we were number six in administrative load. We were not overly administratively staffed. Matter of fact out of eight we were six. And so a standard of effort report gives you that kind of information. So now you as board members when you have that somebody out in the public is saying that you can say well actually Here's what what it is. So, a standard of effort report gives you that kind of data, that good information to carry with you, right, to make decisions. Center of effort report, long-term facilities,

080operational, financial, and technology plans. These are are critical and I call those the operational categories. Um, the strategic plan of course is your other one up here. It's the bigger one. Okay. Any thoughts about that? I'd share the slideshow so I'll stop writing down and you'll share it with Tim and we can have it later. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Great idea of of sharing this with you. Oh, yeah. No, I'll give it to you. No, I was just wondering if you had any questions with this kind of stuff, these kind of points. No, it makes complete sense. Wouldn't that be great as a board member effort when constituents call? That would really be That's a huge That's a huge thing right there because we get that a lot especially like right now. see like and so

081I'm so used to the North Dakota calendar um being this, you know, July is our first month of the new year. So, but in January, February, that's when I would come to the board with um our updated facility plan, our updated financial plan, uh updated technology, a new standard of effort report, um and and and so all these things were laid out in front of them because then we started our budget talks. Sure. But now you had all this great information. Great. So that's when the questions quit. Yeah. For me, the board members quit asking so many questions because why? They were educated. They have it. They have in front of them. And what a beautiful thing for you as board members. If you have that kind of information, again, you're small community, so you're

082out. Everybody knows everybody. Everybody sees everybody. Somebody comes up to you and says blah blah blah blah blah, right? in your mind you're going like okay but actually right but it gives you a way to respond that's thoughtful and it's it's accurate um the biggest thing that I see um organizations not just school districts fail at is having good data right here at their fingertips good information quality information rather than just kind of peacem stuff this puts it systematically in place for you so I think it's really important myself. Uh here were those policies that I talked about. I'm I'm going to I'm getting towards my hour here, so I'm going to be done. Um u you know, the relationship policies, the expectation, the governance policies. I didn't even want to go here because that's

083a whole another thing if you get there. But the ends of results are what they call results policies. How you're measuring yourself and whether or not you're achieving the goals that you have. That's a whole another thing though. So we don't even want to complicate it more. Um, let me get through this. So, I do believe that as a board, how do you maximize your effectiveness? Quality statements, strategic focus with results, um, annuals, and I'm talking about just the board now, not the school district. Annual self evaluation, I think, is really important. You should do one where you reflect on your own experience as a board member. And the questions I have that I'm I'll leave with you to look at um are more generic in in in scope than what you saw from the

084Minnesota League. And so you can look at them and if you guys decide you want to do some kind of um evaluation or at least something to get started about how you feel about your board experience and where you're at right now with your board experience. I think that'd be a good starting point for you guys because each one of you individually has a different perspective. Um, you could do something like that and we could always take that survey and do something with it to make it more that way. Okay. And then plan professional development. You're going you're taking courses. That's great, you know, through the league. I think that's great. You should be doing that. But there should be professional development for you as a board. You should engage in that as a board

085member. Um, board you don't become a good board member without learning how to be a good board member. It's a whole different ball game. So I I just think these are so to maximize your effectiveness these things I think are critical uh and I have the handout but um so your next steps well I I you know before our conversation here tonight but take survey re uh review results create board goals using feedback from the survey that's where you would go if you did get into a survey situation um here's what I think your conversation and your thinking has to be uh superintendent, you as a board and and where you're at as a board is what kind of governance do we want to have? How should we govern ourselves and should we invest some

086time in developing some basic guidelines for our relationship? Okay. um what are some of the plans and things we need to be better informed and how would we get that done because it's again a relationship with your superintendent it's not just well Tim do all this stuff you know give it to us right okay um and then and then thinking about I want to go here this right here how do we get here so that we can be here. Okay. So, questions, anything? I dumped a lot on you there in an hour. So, if I had to do a quiz, how would we do about how we are on this model? We appreciate your time though. Yes. Thank you. Absolutely. I want you to think about it and um you know we can do some

087follow-up things like you know if you have questions and things and work through some things but as I leave you here tonight here's what I would tell you is that I'm going to reiterate this. The public out there they're wanting what? Results. They want results. I want my child drop them off at the door and I want to know by the end of the day they had a good day. Yeah. And they learn something. That's what I want. I want I want my kid to have a good experience. All the other stuff I don't care about. Absolutely. And what do we worry about sometimes all the time? All the other stuff. So we lose sight of the focus. Right. So in our frustrations that we have and in those moments of, you know, where do

088we go next? Um the strongest unit that you have to solve that problem is you as a group. And then the last thing I'll tell you this is that when constituents come to you and other people in the community and they're telling you stuff, not everything is an emergency, right? Not everything has to be dealt with right now. And um a lot of times letting it sit a little bit is good because it's usually comes with some kind of emotion, right? But the bottom line is is that not one of you as a board member individually can solve that problem. Collectively as a board working with your superintendent, you can probably solve that problem. But individually, I never see it happen. I see it get what happens? They make a big mess out of it.

089Now it's got to be fixed. And now what are you asking your superintendent to? Fix the mess I made, would you please? Okay. So now they're doing work that you didn't want them to originally do. Okay. And then the last thing I'm going to say is this. If somebody comes to you with concern, a question, those types of things, the number one person that you go through in order to get direction on how to deal with that is who? Superintendent, not an assistant principal, not a teacher, not a somebody. You've hired a person to run your district. That's the person you should be communicating to. Not that you don't talk to other people, but on the issue that should be coming to your executive. That's a basic tenant of governance, policy governance. Yeah. Jeff, do

090you mind if I I I beat to a different drum. They all know that. But I just had a comment when you were talking about the bridge. And I was glad you talked about that because through the years, this is not uh when I was born there, but as a teacher, we tried to get uh Lake Park and Ottabon together consolidated and it was a tough job. Okay. And I always said to that superintendent, I said, you know, I feel bad you're kind of on an island. Yeah. And then the next one was trying to get a school d. And I said to superintendent, I said, "You're on an island." Now, when you're talking about the bridge though, I'm glad because that has to be met. Yeah. Not the only the superintendent, but us or

091the other people. Have you ever been felt like you're on an island when you were a superintendent in Fargo? I was really blessed. I really was with the board that I had. And I and I give the credit to the governance model that was in place. I had the board president tell me as I already he said Jeff follow your eels. That's what just carried those with me. I and we monitored them. They monitored them all year long. So I was held accountable. So when my performance evaluation is done at the end of the year, it was based on whether I was compliant with those expectations or not. And um did I have a couple board members sometimes that got to be pretty challenging? Yeah. Because they wanted to go a different direction, right? Um

092did we always agree? No. But for the most part, I was lucky I was able to be on the bridge. Yeah. And and it wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but I think sometimes they have so much responsibility that, you know, they are on an island, you know, they really are. And that's why I I would tell you and I and and I mean this seriously about the superintendency. Um people talk about all all other sorts of things, but um teacher shortages and everything else. I have never seen an executive role to be in such jeopardy as a superintendency in all my life. CEOs, mayors, other people and other organizations, nonprofit leaders, not even close to what I've seen going on with superintendents. And here's what I find is that when something doesn't go right right

093away in our society, for some reason, somebody has to say, "Somebody should be fired." I'm going, "What? fired for this? No, the question should be is why did it go wrong? What are we doing about it? And how do we meet on the bridge to work this out so that we move forward? And what I see is we we're just quick to fire, quick to get rid of somebody. And I go, okay, in lie of who? I'm working with the Wilson school district. Been working with them for five years. Three superintendents been run out during the school year in my five years working with them. I'm their outside consultant trying to help them. three superintendents in five years. Have you heard anything? I know in my field uh child care is a shortage. So I

094hear about the Have you heard anything why there's a shortage of superintendence? I mean obviously other in our case of the job the job's impossible. You can't succeed. The average tenure of a superintendent in the United States is two years. Wow. Two years. It's a very high-risisk position. you put your behind on the line that I'm gonna be fired. How do I raise a family? Uh settle into a community, become part of a community when I'm constantly um in jeopardy of losing my job constantly. And it happens on a flip of a diamond. Um the superintendent Grand Forest, I don't know if you guys read the paper and keep up on it, but Grand Forest, I know him personally, outstanding individual, one of the greatest human beings you could ever know. He's been under constant

095fire to be constant to be fired. And I'm going, why? Because somebody didn't like a decision. I'm like, wow. But he still does everything with a smile on his face. Yeah. Terry Briner. He hangs in there and, you know, and his board um has been supporting him, but he's got a few that are don't. But I'm just going like, why are we so quick to fire somebody like that? Who do you think's going to replace them? just aren't out there. So, superintendents are in tough roles. Um, they need to be held accountable, high expectations for their performance, but you got to work with them. And so, lots of different personalities come to the table. All right. Anything else I can help you out with tonight? I'm living over by Rohog now. You know, Gretch and

096I live there full time now. Grandma and Grandpa's. Well, her mom and dad's place. Yeah. So, got the two horses and dog living the dream. He's uh I wear overalls when I'm not there. His office has a big picture window behind his desk and we were we were leaning virtually and I couldn't pay attention just because the view outside the window. Beautiful. That's beautiful. Yeah. We have a client sale. Oh jeez. When I let Valerie out in the morning from her stall, her hind end is right here. I'm going like, "All right, have a good day." All right, you guys. Have a good night. Say hi to Gretch. I will. [Music] Yeah. It'd be good if you took a break right now up and let some blood flow into your legs. So just suggesting that

097at this age sometimes the legs don't go straight yet we can get back up to the board. You got take five. I mean I lost. Yeah, we can take five. Take five. Okay. We had that rule. No more an hour. So Jeff, we have you for next month and then maybe after discussing with the board, I can see a possibility of you helping us a few more times after that. Sure. Yeah. You know, when you're done here tonight or whatever, you can just hand off these. Sure. So, I'll take a look for discussion types of questions. I appreciate a good PowerPoint. I'll tell you that right now. I'll send it to Jim and he can share it with you and then when it's movie night here in Lake Park or Ottoman they can put it

098up on the big screen too. So yeah many I would be very interested in having a conversation with you outside obviously of my school board position. Yeah, that would be fantastic. Okay. Well, um you have a pen there. I could give you my email. Your your other position? Yes. Obviously, I'm on the other side of I'm more on your side with that and it can be difficult sometimes. And you know, I'm the I'm the president of the Lakes Country or Lakes Crisis and Resource Center. And uh I'm I'm happy that they elected me for that position because our executive director who's been there forever, phenomenal. She's been there for 20 years and they were paying her this much money. Um and I come to the table I'm like why are we asking our executive director

099to get approval of everything you know and we really operational board instead of a governing board that's why yeah we changed a lot of that because she needed the freedom to make decisions and that's where the trust and the relationship really come into play between the executive and your board and when you lose some of that I mean there's you still microscope in my my my experience on this now I'm working I worked with the village family service center on complete mess when I started working with them they had 17 board members volunteer board members uh we restructured their whole board put a governance policy system in place plus a strategic plan they have nine board members now they asked me to come in do a refresher with their new board their new set board

100and a new executive director it's beautiful the system's working they're loving it. Um the staff is happy. Again, um Boys and Girls Club in Fargo, you know, these are some of the bigger ones I've worked with. Um everywhere I go, it comes down to that is that the boards are are are not understanding how to be a board and the executives not understanding how to be an executive with the board. And so we got to get all that align, right? Yeah. And and it's just a mess. So tell me again what you asked me for. Sorry for the interruption. Yeah. What's that? You asked me for something and I already have my email if you want to get a hold of me or Yes, that would be fantastic. Can you do that? Share with me.

101Perfect. Thank you. Okay, guys. Nice meeting you. Thank you for your time. Yeah. Ton of water before I even came. I peed before he left. Thank you. you guys look through that and give me feedback um over this next month and Dr. Sh will come in our next work session for me and we can kind of review and see what you think. It's definitely different than the other one. Okay. What did you say was uh what did you what was your second sentence? You said he's going to just review this for the month and you said he's coming back. He's coming back for me. um work session. A May work session. Yes. All right. We'll move on to 3.2 business management proposals. So, our RFP expired March 31st. Gotten two proposals. Um I tried to

102work with um our current business manager um to no avail to retain her. Um, but I'm going to show you both of these, but I'll say up front, the Freshwater would be the one I recommend. And you'll see it's more detailed. It's more affordable. They're in Wadina, so they're close. Um, I've got high recommendations for the individual that is leading their business department. There are So, what they'll just remind you, Freshwater is a consortium. So, we have educational consortiums. Ours is likes country service co-op. Okay. Freshwater started doing these different services for their co-op members. The districts in their co-op and then they became very successful at it. So they started expanding that. Um I was given their name by my colleague who's the Verndale superintendent. Then when uh I was contacted by um I

103Bailey who does our audits and they said well I see that you have an RFPI for business management services. explain the situation with Brady Mars. I Bailey has been our auditor forever except for the one year when we had to see elsewhere and it was a disaster. Um once they found out that it was Freshwater and the individual in particular, they were very comfortable with continuing with us because um the individual in charge of business management services used to work for them. So just just kind of a caveat. I'm going to show you fresh water real quick and then I'll I'll explain um kind of why I feel this is the more efficient way to go. So basically um tells you exactly what their responsibilities are. So their responsibilities are basically what we're getting now.

104Um accounts receivable and payable at this time is managed by Sherry. Um so she basically pays the bills and she basically logs that in. So they'll be doing budget, they'll be available for negotiations, which we need. So we need to know dollar amounts. Um the month end receivables, the audit, which is a huge thing, and that audit will be starting this summer, of course. Um and that audits take our last audit took about three to four months. Work with us with levies, journal entries, which is important, too. That's a daily thing at times. And then reporting to the state, regulars retention, we handle that. that actually Susie does that. Um approvals for purchase X. It goes up the train of command. I am the approval second to last. Sherry does the final approval because she

105has to review, make sure account codes are correct. She does accounts payable and receivable. She does HR payroll. Um we do all of our own grant applications. I submit a lot of those. Then at the state I do our consolidated app, which is our title one application. So we do all of the grant applications ourselves. And then you can see down here at the bottom other items, special education, time and effort, etc. Quarter risk services. So the CedRA is our special ed reporting um of expenses. We do that in conjunction with Lake Agassy. So they'll um they'll work with Lake Agassy or special co-op. Um when we come down to it, they'll provide 0.5 or 3FT business manager support to the district offsite. They will participate on site. um on occasion probably won't be once

106a week but they will be here when needed. Um I did talk with uh Jordan is his name. He said that he will spend time here because he wants to know get to know the staff, the business manager um the business office personnel and so forth. So it'll be $70,000 invoice monthly. Um we're paying right now 78,000. And there are other things that they would contract with. um down here they talk about it, but we actually handle those services ourselves. You said monthly. Yep. No, it's $70,000 in this invoice. $70,000 annual monthly. Just want to clear uh Mr. Chair, uh Dr. Godfrey, would it be five days a week full-time? They all three. It's the.3 FTE. So when we had Brady Mars before, that's relatively the time they spent. Okay. um on our business management

107services and the one we had this last prior year she was she worked on it full-time. That's part of one. Yeah. That's part of the reason why Brady Mars dropped us. They she did so much work correcting budget and different things that it was a full-time job. We weren't contracted for full-time. So I can I can let you know what is encompassed in this proposal is what our district needs. Okay. Um so what they've said that their role is that's what we need from them and that's what we receive now from our business management services what shows district that's basically what we do now um ourselves. Okay. Excuse me. Um clarify that again. So before Lisa worked one day a week in our school. Yes. How about the other four days? Uh she served other

108districts too. So she would do some things. Um and they and they made 78,000. That's this year. This year 78,000. Okay. Did she work? Oh, this year she worked five days full time. Okay, that's what I'm asking. Yes. I thought she had the contract before. So it would be less time working on our school district. Less time working on our school district um for this fresh water. Correct. Well, but I think we need to clarify something. When Brady March when we signed the contract with him last year, the intention was not to work five days a week. The intention was to give us that type of service, that 3 FD service. They came in after that audit with Whitmer. There were so many things that need to be corrected. It was a full-time job to

109correct that. And how does she feel as she's leaving this year that she's in standing with correcting everything that was in that office? Good. Very confident. So, not any not of any task left or minimal amount? Minimal. Right now, we're working on the the new budget. We're working at two things at the same time. We're working towards gradually closing out this year's budget, but we're starting to budget for fiscal year 26. Okay. We've been working on that. We met today and talked about a few things. Um, so we'll have the budget ready for the the board to review and approve in June. Um, but we're in the stage of beginning that now. And I noticed this one has three days. If you want to go up, it has Oh, no. Go all the way up

110up to the No, no, not down. Sorry about that. No, not all the way up there. Second, second page. No, no, no. Second page now. It says that they will do three board meetings per year and the other one says four board meetings per year. So, do you feel that we would be okay having them only come to three board meetings per year? I I think so because the board reports will be in there. You'll have the board reports ahead of time. So if there's any question about that, you just let me know and I'll contact them to be part of that. Okay. So then I have a question for you as the treasurer because when I took all that treasurer training, it said it showed me like that our last we had an exercise.

111Well, let's go through this and decipher this. And ours is very minimal compared to my exercise. Um I would say you mean the board reports? No. in my treasurer training, okay, my super fun day, uh that ended by, okay, here's this. I want you to decipher this. Why? What do you see here? What do you see here? And it was like a bunch of us and we were all going um at one point of time if as a treasure I'm like because I'm thinking ahead right now and we have the uh the bright wheel and I'm and you said we're going to uh look at raising the fees to hopefully cause cost cover more of our expenditures. So if we want to have more information in that are they going to be a who is

112the person that's going to be able to provide me that? And I know I'll have to ask you Yeah. Whoever whoever they whoever they are they going to be forthcoming with that information. Yep. Whoever they hire for that. So and then we can I can ask them for those meetings too. I mean we can sit down with finance committee with they haven't gave me an ECF meeting yet this year. Have I have no meetings. When I started I was told four was mandatory. I do not have one. So from our ECF? Not one. I check. You had them before though? I did. I had three last year and I had four the year prior. Interesting. Yeah. So, because then I would want to ask on that information so I could hand some report to the

113board. I've got and I at first I was thinking and one time I woke at one time I didn't check during the day because I'm very busy with kids and then all of a sudden I got done later on and I missed the meeting and I told her I said you cannot email me during the day. It's not going to be I'm going to be training somebody to potty train or doing something else, but it's not going to be hey, let's check the computer for the day. But no, so I but I was thinking ahead because I just that bright wheel uh being so high bothers me and I just want to be proactive and trying to fix it. That's normal. So I know I know I know before bright wheel before we broke Bright

114Wheel on just an easier way for payment. Before that I think it was even worse. But in the context of it, we did hire that additional third grade teacher. So we made um one of our employees a full-time which would increase our cost. So she said teacher halftime career. Yes. Okay. But I'm just saying if we I know preschool costs and we're very very low. Oh, we're very low. I was just maybe 25 a day and I was just talking to somebody the other day who their preschool's fairly new and they charge 40 on the low end. But but at the same time, once we get to that point, and this is kind of sidetracking the conversation, we can't do something unreasonable. No, we can't. We don't want to do that to our So, we're

115not going to talk about doubling. No, it'll be a gradual increase. I super agree with that. Absolutely not to because we have parents that rely on it and parents that probably don't have the income for And I was going to ask you on it other than I didn't have time. Some little girl wanted to pee her pants twice today, but she went in the bathroom the other part. uh if they don't have the board meetings to get the if I don't have the committee meetings to get the information then I'm only reliant on you and this and which one do you feel I can get the most information from? You're thinking this one. Well, you should go to you should be invited to ECF. I don't think they're having them. One of my very good

116friends actually the lady that subbed for me was on them and then um I did child care for Marie Nelson. She is on the committee with me. I'll find out what's going on. I was going to ask you to. I only can deal with so many things in a week. So, can we go back to the freshwater? Um, one. So, this young man or older man or woman just once a week he will be here or he? He won't. He's going to come in the beginning to get to know you and then he is going to work a.3 FTE and the same thing with their other one. Our other one won't be on site which probably has to be a increase in it due to people not wanting to take the job. You said correct

117not that many people do this job anymore. So more people are more virtual. I So Verndale they don't they don't do on-site service for Verndale or their other co-op people. They may come to the building if needed or if asked. Everything they do is virtual and like Verndale, I'm just going to use Verndale as an example because I know the superintendent and we've talked at depth, they do everything for Verndale. They do the HR and everything. Um, and she told me for them it's kind of like a it's a no stress situation for the superintendent because they don't have to follow up. So, Freshwater is very good at what they do. the superintendent doesn't have to follow up and worry about it. Like Lisa and I meet and Lisa was here today and she and

118I meet as needed, but we don't necessarily meet every time she's on on site. Now, if I need to meet with her virtually, we do that, too. Or it's a phone call or email. Um, so she's available for me when I need her, but when it runs efficiently, I don't need to intervene as much or I don't need to leave for information as much. question is that.3 flexible at all? So like let's just say during the audit because it takes so much time. If if he is working at point4 to get our audit done, do we there have an increased cost for his pay or we shouldn't because he does have audit would be one of their responsibilities and that's audit um preparation. So the way we do audits is we don't they don't meet

119with the auditor and sit down and you know we used to do that. What they do is they provide there's a shared drive. They provide all the documents and that shared drive the auditor goes through all the documents and then we're available if they need some other you know questions. I this is the first time I have not met with the auditor as a superintendent. Didn't have to. All the documents were there. Everything was organized in that share drive and then just reported us when they were done. But since the audit services are under and basically when we're talking about the audit so freshwater won't doesn't do the audit. Freshwater provides information for the auditor. So contractors I bailey for the audit. Oh that makes so your business service or your business manager it's it's

120a can't do the audit at the same time because they're auditing their own financial records which we'd look great every year we did that. So it's basically a salaried position whether he works a 0.25 or 35 it's still at 70,000. That's our now we could add on to that for other things but it's.3 at 70,000 to cover these services. Mr. Chair, Dr. God, I have a question then. So if we find that our needs aren't being met when you're in day-to-day operations and in the administration they think they need more time, is it something where we could look at that and getting more time obviously for an increased fee? I'm sure. Yeah. Yeah. because there are other services they have outlined under there that they would do for a you know for add-ons. Okay. No,

121I do remember seeing and having this one presented before. Yeah. What's the contract terms? How long? One year. Um renegotiate annually. Yes. And I would like a multi-year contract. So maybe after the first contract contract year, we look at multi-year. But I think that would weigh on what they feel their capacity is to fill our needs and how we feel our needs are being fulfilled. So I think the starting off with a one year is great just so we can gauge that relationship with them. Any question? We're going to look at the other one. Yes. I will shoot that now. pretty cover page. Again, these are in the cities. So, um did you say the cities? What's that? Did you say they're in the cities? Yes. Okay. So, this I'm gonna They reached out and

122contacted me. This um CESO, they are a broader um service provider. They not only do business management, they do building and grounds management, they do transportation management. So, they do all these and they walk work nationally. So they're in Minnesota. They started in Minnesota. They work with a lot of Minnesota districts, but they also work nationally. Um when I talked to the gentleman, whoever is responsible for whatever sector they provide, like business management services, they have former school business managers doing that work. Um so you can look down here, they provide a lot of the same things, but it's much excuse me much more vague. Um they'll do four board meetings a year. They'll do more at an added cost. Um they'll come on site but they'll we'll pay expenses for that um because they

123are coming from the city. Um but basically they're doing they're often the same services as freshwater. Two reasons freshwater to me is more appealing. Um the cost difference. This is 80,000. Come to that. And Wina is a lot closer. So if I do need somebody to come, I know I could probably get them here quicker. This is Yeah. Hold on. Is there any way to look at the current schools that they're working with to see how those schools are performing on their budget overall? On what? On this one or both? Both of them? Um, we could I like I said, I was going off of um I was going off of the recommendations I got who I talked to that are actually being served by Freshwater. When I mentioned this particular one, I was told

124that not bad things, but I was told that other people know districts that have used them and weren't necessarily satisfied with that. I think it's probably because of the distance more than anything else. Well, I'd say they're probably impersonal because you said that they're they're nationalwide. So then that's not really a close net personal relationship that you're building. Yes. So with the first company, would we have one account manager that you would be dealing with? And would this one be have multiple account managers? That's it's possible. We will have one that's dedicated to our school. That person will be dedicated to other school districts, too. But we'll have one dedicated to our school district. and he even told me that, you know, they they'll probably hire so that they have somebody specific for our district.

125Um, but I don't from my understanding through the contract proposal and my discussion with them, I it will be multiple. So, whoever is available at that time, that might not necessarily be a bad thing. If the budget is if the budget's smoothed out, for lack of a better term, which it is now, um it's not a lot of work to go in do journal entries to um to do end of the month accounts receivable and things like that. It's not difficult to do that. It's just systematic. That's a lost chair. Yeah. I'm just looking at it. Lisa was working five days a week for us. Correct. One here and four back there. Yes. Now, he's only going to go.3. Yes. And wasn't she bogged down some? I mean, I'm sure she had a lot to

126do and initially. Yes. So, the but would you say the past year then she really only had to work one day a week? I mean, I'm I'm just looking. You know what I'm saying? I understand. Three. Y to go from a full-time job to.3 and and and work just on us. He's not going to work just on us, right? No, she doesn't either. She I thought you told me that she was 5 days a week for us initially and another and did work for another district, too. Yeah. But she So, basically, she was doing overtime. Now that's pulled back. Now that she's corrected our budget after the audit and fixed a lot of the issues on the the audit, she's been able to scale back her support for us. When we first started with her

127in Brady Marks, I think it was February of last year, it was full-time. It was full-time until the audit was done because there were a lot of corrections she made need to make, a lot of journal entries, a lot of moving things and the correct account codes. Now that's so so two weeks ago she only was down to one day a week I would say two two days a week I don't know people I'm just saying wow well a lot of it is because they don't genius they don't do payroll so we take care of our own payroll our HR so business managers in small districts often do all of that they often do the business manager part which is journal entries deposits things like that and then they also do HR Here we have

128a separate HR person, right? You know, so that takes a big and plus our HR person does accounts payable and receivable. That's a big So what's going to happen with her job? Sherry, she's going to continue. She's going to do those. I thought you said that the No, they So we're responsible for accounts payable and receivable and HR. Let me bring that back up because she was doing it for Brady Marts. She was doing it for another district. No, no, no. I'm talking about she was doing it while Sherry Mhm. Sherry's been She was doing it this last year. Yeah, Sherry's You have enough for Brady Mars? No, but no. Saying that while Brady Mars was operating. So Sherry, I'll let you know what Sherry's been doing since she's been hired. Um she does all

129HR. So she does all payroll. She monitors subs leave and she does um our accounts payroll receivable. Right. I maybe I'm misunderstood. So, she's still going to do that? Yes, she is. And she has been since actually that's good. That's good. I thought she was going to lose that one time. How is he going to do everything? No, she will still be contained. Okay. But still, you know, I think overthink things. I I know. And I you and I have the the same philosophy when it comes to business management. We've talked about that. Mhm. Um, unfortunately, finding that person is impossible. That's where we got into some issues before. Do we know what kind of uh I mean, it sounds like we kind of know that personnel we might get with freshwater, but then it

130sounds like they might hire somebody in. So, do we know if we're going to get somebody with any experience or could we end up with somebody that comes in fresh out of school? They hire. They only hire people who go to school with management experience. They're meeting three times a year. It's virtual again. Tell them they want, you know, we want them here three times. We could probably we could probably do that. Get a little bit out of the negotiation. It's nice to see a name and face instead of always on the screen. I mean, we're only asking three times, but three times called you get a copy of it. Get a picture. All right. So, do we have any other questions? One versus the other. you guys having a really like basic understanding of

131what these companies are going to provide and the place for the loss of breaking marks. Is there any gaps or anything that you can and it's only one year so we can make a decision. Yes. Um and this will be on the the um April agenda for the decision. Okay. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Both of the both of these will be on there so people can choose which service they want to use. Yeah. So you got some time to think about ask questions but like while it's fresh you know ultimately it's going to be the relationship that we can have with them and it's it's you. Yes. I mean so you're going to have to tell us who we're going to be able to I mean we can't have a budgetary issue because of coding issues

132and stuff like that. That's embarrassing. So we need to be on top of it. I feel more comfortable working with Freshwater. They're not local, but they're more local. Um I' I've talked with Jason Jordan at ex at length and I'm very comfortable working with them. Um the rapport he's had with his other districts that and and the references I've got, they're outstanding. I'd love to see what schools are doing. How have they done with budget since they've been working with them? that should be somewhat that available that um I can find out I can I'll talk to my my colleague um she already says you know she's already very pro freshwater I mean as far as their budget deficits or you know revenue coming in strong and their income balances that would be dependent on

133enrollment funding all so that wouldn't be a bud business management issue but yeah I I hear what you're saying Um what kind of staff how large staff does freshwater have? It's pretty big. Okay. So they're cons they're a consortium basically. So what we have we have these um these cooperatives throughout the state. I think there's eight and those cooperatives have several districts under them and they they do different services for them like Lakes Country Service Qu. They have a level four special ed um placement that we use at times. They provide training for us. They provide a variety of different things. So Freshwater is a co-op for their area. Source well is another Source Well is one of the bigger co-ops. So Freshwater is a co-op. So they have several districts that fall on there

134and provide service to those districts, training, um administrative support, things like that. So not only do we get an individual that we may work with, but there's a point of collaboration that they would have within theirelves to assist us. I mean, we're not really hiring one individual. We're hiring a whole. We're hiring and hopefully we get the best of it. Right. We're hiring freshwater. Yeah. But according to what he said, he'll give us a designated person. So we don't have different people coming in the budget saying what is this, right? So we have something that's dedicated towards that. It's just that if he ends in a spot like gosh, something's not right here. And he has people to lean on because that's what we're that's what we need. I mean, we could hire somebody, but

135then we got one person and if they don't know what they don't know, there we are. That's another thing is they'll be a team. We have a person dedicated to us, but they have a team. Yes. All right. Put a cap on that then and move forward to 3.3 meal reimbursement. This is another thing I'd like to bring to the board's attention and have on the the April agenda for uh approval. So we have been paying these PDMs per day for for staff that go out of district, bus drivers maybe that are doing activities or if we have people that go to a conference or something. So we pay perdam and travel. I was talking with Sher um about this and this PDM she said it's been in place since she's been here. It's not

136equitable with state pdam. So stay per DM if you look at $15 that might get you something to eat at McDonald's and deal. Well actually that might all so but if you go to a conference in the cities that's not enough $7 for breakfast. Susie and I were talking that's a cup of coffee at Caribou. If we look at the state PDM rate and state PDM is for any state because we do have out of state travel too. It's connected to the zip code. I would like to be able to offer that to people that are traveling so they can afford to have their meals. So we have people that teachers that will go to a conference in the cities and they come back and they submit their travel documentation and they get that 7

1379 and 15 which doesn't pay for a meal anymore. How much is it? 7 7 9 and 10 or 7 9 and 15. Seven Seven for breakfast, nine for lunch and 15 for dinner. Where do you get it? Mr. Chair, I have a question. Would that be this perdeium? Because when after I went down to the schoolboard convention with you, my husband printed this off for me and I found it. The PDM reads for our zip code, but is it under the US General Service Administration? Um, well, we I don't I don't know if that's But that's what he said. He goes, the rates of what you guys have because he had me look at it and he goes, "This is what they use at the city of D." Yeah. That and that's probably the

138same thing. So, it's federal. That's federal and it should that's fantastic. I could be a more supportive pop in a zip code and it'll tell you what the but that's uh when my husband goes on trips and stuff they now completely moved over to this. So more of this stuff is covered. I mean if if you know there's different things that if uh somebody's going out to drink his food's covered but obviously not if he has a drink with it but this is so way we pay for meals is we don't we don't require submission of receipts. Mhm. Because with the pdium there's already set amount they get paid. So if they choose not to eat at all for three days they get that pdeium still. Okay. Yeah. So what is I mean what kind

139of travel are we looking at? What what are we seeing on an annual budget? I mean we got to be fairly consistent I would think. So we is cost or how much travel we I mean travel would kind of equate to the perdm I would guess. So we will see the last I would say the most more frequent perm goes to bus drivers because they'll drive for activities. Oh sure. Um weekend bus driving. Um if they drive to wherever, you know, Red Lake falls and it's dinner time, they have a per game to buy dinner. Yeah, we need to take care of them. Yeah, that happens quite a bit. Then our teachers will there are some conferences our teachers go to throughout the year and then PBIS conference um RTI conference. We have some teachers

140that are planning to go to a math conference that they go to every year. our counselors go to a conference and that the counselors that helps with the relic lensure um so we do we don't have a lot when I go um when I go to a conference I typically don't submit receipts I don't take them forget principles will and they only go to a couple conferences a year they go to their their annual state conferences and we're going to a conference next week for a leadership conference to do some PD for principles But that's minimal. Um, again, you know, if we have a support staff or bus driver and they had to drive to the cities, which we have that coming up for music trip, $15 not going to pay for their meals. Is

141our goal to get closer to 100% paying 100% of what the average meal cost or is there a percentage that we're aiming towards? I think if you just do state pdeium. So basically we go on the website like what Susie has. You type in the zip code it'll tell you what the per mill pdium is. So if you look at Minneapolis the pdium that we projected for Minneapolis it'll cover the bills. I kept it was my husband. You won't eat. So that's right here. So that pdeium is based on the travel location that they're at. Correct. Yes. So that variable every month would be pulled as a state and it would adjust to the state is what we're saying or are we going to set a set of allowance? Didn't used to be that? No.

142What we'll do is they'll when they come back and they get their predium, we'll go to the website and we'll punch a visit to where they were at for the conference. We'll pay them that. So here's for instance, we took a we took a group of teachers to San Diego to visit a school out there, a private based learning school. cost a lot more to eat anything in San Diego than it does in in Ottawa. So when we got back, I told the business manager to pay the PDM because the average meal, the average dinner there was 40 bucks for a burger and fries. Um, so we paid them the pdium for the location so they could afford the meals. Um, so if that's why they resort to this. Yes. Yeah. Because you can type

143that in. My husband like a year ago was explaining. So, if we have somebody going to if we have somebody going to like a basketball conference or something, if somebody's going to Bagley for a training, Yeah. and they have to pay for the mail, you type in the the zip code, it's going to give you a pame specifically for that location. Whereas opposed if you go to Minneapolis, St. Paul or Rochester, Duth, you type in the the zip code, it's going to give you a higher one because matches what the standard cost of food is. Mr. Chair, I have a question. Did I hear you say that we don't make them submit the receipts though? We don't. Okay. I think in my I'd have to go back through my two packets that I keep in

144there from my treasurer training that we're supposed to. They do some trouble. Okay. But for meals we don't because we pay per dam. So you could have you could So there is some different Yeah. You can either submit receipts for meals or you could pay per damn. We just pay per damn. Okay. I have years ago. Yeah. But they told us we had to, but I'm sure it's changed. It is a lot to be here not to have to deal with the receipts. Oh, I would assume so. They're part of the deal having to take care of the receipts and logical teach. Well, I I used to do this for the military. So, let me just tell you, it is a lot easier just to hit the PDM button. So, when I was in the

145military travel, we got paid PDM, right? And we when we switched over, it was so easy. I don't know. The defense travel system is a lot easier. A lot easier than before just to do it. Department of Defense. So, all right. We're all kind of feeling the same way about the the way forward this amount should be adjusted for locality. It's done that many times. It's not really. No. I mean, when I go to May not for 30 days, I get $12. But I'm just saying. Why not though, right? Got to go to Bones Barbecue on that. Yeah. I think it's it's a good way forward to do it via locality versus standard because you have a wide range of trainings and opportunities and bus drivers especially go to very rural areas. Maybe they can

146load up the launch box before they go. There's nothing open at 10:00 in middle of Minnesota. Mr. Chair, I think this per DM increases what we're currently paying them too. So it actually appreciates our staff more. You go from like 30ome dollars to be gone all day or you get like that localities. Yeah. ODM. Well, and then I will tell you and probably not a lot of staff, but some staff won't want to travel because they can't afford those things. All right. That's blame. Well, yeah. I don't This gives them an opportunity to actually afford to do while they're there. And we have, of course, we have district vehicles and they get paid. So, we have when they request professional development, there's a few things on there. It's it's I created the form. that says

147you must use district transportation if it's available because paying mileage costs a lot more than taking district. Unfortunately, there's times when there's not a district vehicle. You know, I'm not going to make them take the mini bus, of course, to wherever. Um, and we do have a few district vehicles if they aren't available who do pay mileage. They have to submit um well, we can we figure out the miles, but they have to submit fuel costs in that. When they take a district vehicle, usually we have a card for them to take. They pay for fuel with our [ __ ] cards. Use the district vehicle. They submit those receipts for us. It's a way to I guess take the stress out of going to an out of district training or conference as far as So what

148does this like look like as far as what we would motion and vote on? So we would just motion and vote on um paying state per dam for travel. Yeah. like pick us the site and policy, right? We have to adopt that as like this is how we're doing it going forward. Interesting thing I asked for where the where this is outlined in policy and I guess it's never been in policy. I would have had it in policy, but they said it's just the way it's always been done. Yeah. Well, that's not the best answer. Right. And sometimes it's just during the day, right? So they won't take away dinner, right? So it's based on the time, too. So if they're gone from 7 till noon, they're not going to get dinner per day. They'll

149they'll get breakfast and lunch per dam. Now there are conferences you go to where lunch is provided, right? We don't pay them per dam for that. So usually in the conference registration, they submit that when they do the PD requests and if lunch is provided, we don't pay those meals. any meal provided we don't pay that if it's breakfast continental breakfast even we don't pay breakfast and who's going to monitor and control this is that Sherry's the one that doesn't know okay all right so that'll stay honesty I don't think she's listening so I'll just go ahead that's the honor system but it's what she she does make sure that gets in the notes she does honor system Sherry yeah no I just I I agree I think things cost more money we need to

150accommodate that just as long as we're not putting ourselves in a position where we're getting too how do I want to say this like we're doing it the right way correct if and that's what I what I feel is when we look at the cost of food over the last 10 years and the way it's the cost of food has gone exorbitantly and what we're paying them per dam it's Not at least they can have almost anything other than eggs. Well, I think that Susan said that it also just shows appreciation for your staff. They're obviously going above and beyond outside of school hours. Absolutely. To take care of these kids and take them wherever they need to go. And we should be appreciative of that because I mean they're taking away from their own

151family and their own personal life to to take care of these kids and take them where they need to go. So it's a small I think token of appreciation. Yeah. So we don't want to be taken out of their pockets too on top of all No. I mean you can't even go to Subway for seven bucks or whatever. Definitely not Subway expensive $5 in foot long for that's the baby mill. Yeah. Okay. So next meeting I guess we'll have a couple of things to act on. Yes. Um, if you have any other questions or comments, um, I would just ask that, um, if you could CC me or direct email me because I'm gone a lot. I, uh, would like to just be in the loop. Yes, that's absolutely do. My request, I guess, going

152forward. Uh any further discussion on heroia? Okay. Well, I'm gonna say that was a good work session. End it there. Our next meeting will be 28th at 5:30 in the high school. Unless maybe keep an eye on your emails. Probably going to have more information. I don't think I have golf create start creating so it's 22 put that on the agenda for the 28th is where do we start put it on the agenda but I I think that should be more certain bet I don't even know that I mean a lot of the wheels pretty well. Put some air in.