RPS School Board Meeting - 09/21/21

001this regular meeting of independence school district 535 school board is called order at 5 30 p.m tuesday september 21st 2021 in room 137 of the edison building we continue to provide time for comments to the board this is a comment from the board we welcome all of you who are present or who are watching from home because you believe in the importance of quality education for all children that is the focus and the work of this school board and the reason these board meetings are held anything that happens during these meetings that draws attention away from that focus is taking attention away from children and their education our kids and their futures are just too important for us to let that continue we have implemented a policy that is very easy to understand if you

002want to be in this building you need to wear an appropriate effective mask if you don't want to wear that kind of mask don't be here watch the meeting from home and email your thoughts to board members or call or write letters we will respond starting tonight if you choose not to wear an appropriate mask while you're in this building and when approached by an administrator you refuse to comply you will be trespassed that means you will be prohibited from setting foot on rps school property for one year a police officer may escort you out of the building if needed we may choose to recess the meeting in order to have you trespassed we're ready to do that that's the comment from the board the board acknowledges this site and all rps sites are situated

003on the ancestral land of the dakota people and we honor the dakota nations and the sacred land of all indigenous peoples present at this meeting our school board members superintendent kent pacquel a non-voting ex official member and assistant board clerk miss michelle severson ms severson will you please call the role thank you rick arminson here director barlow director garcia vice chair nathan here chair marvin here director mclaughlin here and treasurer workman here thank you at this time we offer the opportunity to say the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united for which it states one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you 2.0 approval of the agenda are there any changes to the agenda that's the cal matter which i'd like to provide and board

004the board uh with an update on our um efforts to mitigate the spread of the covet 19 virus in our schools all right that will be agenda item 4.04 thank you it's been moved and seconded to approve the agenda as amended on favor say aye opposed agenda is approved next we will have comments to the board i've already read the statement about masking if you have signed up to be a speaker each speaker will have three minutes we ask you to respect this limit so others may have their opportunity ms severson will take tr track keep track of the time when your name is called please have a site in front of them a microphone state your name and whether you are resident of this school district and our first speaker is cornell meyer i'm

005john carlson our executive director of finance up up to introduce some people who we appreciate very very greatly um so um ultimately the funds will probably end up being granted um to the school district at some point through various initiatives so if i could have you guys come up and then let's have our rpsf board members come up also and i didn't ask you if you guys wanted to say any words but if you would like to say anything on why you're giving the donation or say anything to the board that'd be just fine sure yeah thanks for uh thanks for being a good corporate citizen on behalf of marco um our community foundation gift of ten thousand dollars we'd like to present present to you thank you could we do a picture we're gonna

006pause real quick and have a picture opportunity here do you want me in there do you want to yeah thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] um superintendent um board members um thank you for having us oh thanks thank you for uh superintendent board members thank you for having us tonight uh we are um here and if this happens if there we have two student reps who might be joining us they as many students are busy with other things and if they can make it they will join us lawyers i'm jenny amundson and i am president of rochester public school foundation and justin cook is also here with us here tonight and he is our grant committee co-chair so um rpsf is a foundation where nonprofit community foundation connects the community and our schools to

007advance and inspire educational opportunities for all students um one of our main actually our main activity is awarding grants to support innovative enhancements to curriculum that may not otherwise occur due to limited resources our psf has awarded over 550 000 in grants since 1988. now our funds as come from a lot of different sources we have personal and business donations including school district payroll deductions we have fundraisers um we typically would do boo fest this year we will not be able to do that so we will be having some movie nights and the other fundraisers and then one of our biggest we are really appreciative of established memorial funds so here are our funds that we have and as you can see different people have over the years donated different amounts some of their funds

008are established to promote like for the jacqueline goodyear fund fine arts and some of them um like the katherine k geitzenhauer memorial fund is for general use and we appreciate both of them we have a lot of them are you know affiliated some way with the school district some have been like a principal or teachers in the past and some are just have been involved with the schools we also have things like the stem fund to promote science technology engineering and math an athletics and fine arts award and the chance fund again is to promote activities for students who would otherwise not be able to participate and our students are not here um so our spring and summer grant cycle oh we are here okay great yay okay so um so um last our the

009last grand cycle that we were able to do we did award 9 639 to fund six innovative projects at six different um public school district sites um these were we had 12 applications from district staff that um because again with the school year it was a little strange we usually get more than that but we were looking at that and we have a group of committee that reviews our projects and then when we have criteria then we have things like they have to have a positive long-term impact that aligns with the mission of our psf and we emphasize projects that benefit historically underrepresented communities and so we selected six projects from the 12 and part of what our projects are required to do is to provide a brief report to show how the project went

010and have photos whenever possible and we are going to quickly show one of these how they did that so so this is a spotlight on the jefferson thinkers space which was a project at jefferson elementary school with the grant money they were able to purchase a mobile lego wall art supplies and a collaborative sticker mural so throughout jefferson elementary school teachers were able to check out these materials and some students were even able to use the thinker space materials to create movies using special effects so essentially the thinker space encouraged a lot of collaboration and creative freedom okay yeah and and we just love this that uh one of the lessons learned is that you keep the project simple let the kids play and they're going to be creative and have fun together at school

011these were some of the the lessons learned from that one so now this way there we go so now we're going to highlight the winners or the the grant recipients from the the current spring summer 2021 grant cycle our first grant recipient is amy ewey who present who proposed book clubs for second grade students um i don't believe she's here right okay so um the this project is to provide a platform for students to work on their reading skills while also connect drawing connections from the text to themselves their peers in the world her proposal was to select a set of diverse books that represented the diversity of her classroom and a broad range of different reading levels so that she could group students together and let them just have fun reading and embrace the

012the love of learning that will set them up to be successful members of society as amy noted and we agree the next project to highlight here is m is for minnesota um from jenna dare jenna are you here could you come up and just um you can read this or you can just describe in your own words your exciting project here okay thanks my name is jenna dare i am an rps teacher but my site is corey hill nature center i'm really thankful to the rochester public school foundation for selecting this opportunity also to rochester public schools and to the friends of corey hill nature center who provided additional support so that we could make this a reality for the 2021-22 school year you can see what's on the screen but you probably can't grasp

013the excitement that we have as a team of naturalists at the nature center to provide this opportunity to the newcomer students at riverside kindergarten through fifth graders that are in their earliest proficiency of learning the english language we're excited to provide activities like canoeing on the pond and tapping maple trees for maple syruping um discovering our local and migratory birds and banding them together bringing those students and their families alongside the work that we do in a community sense at the nature center bridging that relationship between school and community but also that relationship between learners as we're always learning alongside our students so we're just thankful for that opportunity and super excited to get started in november so thank you and also to highlight that this um this grant award was made possible through the

014mike ladden memorial fund um who established the fund in 1994 to further creative educational opportunities uh while providing assistance for students who might not otherwise be able to participate our next grant recipient comes from aaron schwartz who proposed all the world's a stage targeting the roots of social learning and communication erin are you oh wonderful did i ask you to come up sure hi i'm erin schwartz i'm the speech pathologist with the jefferson autism program my project is attempting to do a comprehensive and dynamic social communication program with our students with autism we're going to incorporate fun characters that represent different emotions with interactive experiences that culminates in dramatic play and we're aiming to develop social emotional communication skills that will hopefully benefit our students for their lifetime i'm happy to report we've already started

015this and we've introduced them to many of the emotions and i've learned that happiness can be anything from petting a cat to a fidget to mario kart one even invited me to play mario kart at my house anytime if i wanted to make him happy and for me happiness is being able to introduce these new things to my students so thank you very much [Applause] so that project is made possible through the jaclyn b goodyear fund for fine arts that was established to promote exposure of rps students to the fine arts next we have a project from don nordin rail home living skills using tools at home to help live independently don are you here oh wonderful so come on up we'll hear from don and this this grant we just wanted to highlight is

016made possible through contributions from payroll deductions from employees of rochester public public schools and ibm we continue to be grateful for that partnership thank you for the opportunity for these funds i'm don nardin i teach home uh living skills at rail which helps students who are on an iep up until age 21 learn transition skills to to live independently and and while i was helping out on the other side in the in the shop class last year um and i had just just got the uh job um for rail for this year i thought hey this is maybe something we could do at rail and so i wrote the grant i'm hoping that we can get basic household tools take some time learn how to use those tools to help people who are living independently

017maybe they can use the tools in a hobby or maybe fix minor things around the house so i just want to thank rochester public schools foundation for this money because it's sometimes hard to add just that little bit and i know school boards and legislatures and principals and everyone tries to fund the best they can but it's really nice to have this foundation to take the next one next step so buying something like tools will last you know 20 years so that's a it's a little bit of money but it really means a lot thank you i'm grateful for the proposal and this is not that we aren't excited about all these proposals but this is probably my personal favorite the gator news network if alyssa wilhelm and thomas brown are here like to invite

018you to come up this grant was made possible through the joseph stannis memorial fund that was established in 2009 to enhance and enrich classroom opportunities uh mr standards was a long time middle school teacher in rps come on up and you can just describe in your own words or feel free to use the language i have there to characterize it good evening um so we wrote this grant for a weekly broadcast we started at gage last year and we found out the hard way that sometimes equipment is really hard to get especially the legit equipment where you can actually hear people um so we decided to write this grant so that we can get that legit equipment um and what we do is we work with um more fourth graders right now but we're trying

019to get fifth graders in as well as third graders um for them to start producing and writing their own scripts for broadcasting um these are sent out weekly to the school and it's just to share like what's happening the fun stuff what's for lunch what's the weather like outside um but also giving them an opportunity to share their voice and their thoughts and just to see faces on the screen because it's been kind of hard lately seeing everyone and interacting with everyone um and as alyssa said we are in our we second year we started this last year i just have to say that it has been absolutely wonderful to see the students embrace this to get excited about something and to really put themselves out there so this has been a wonderful opportunity thank

020you to rpsf the committee contributors and i have to say special thanks to that gauge staff that's been wonderful and with embracing this inspiring them to try and getting just as excited as we are about this [Music] and then our i think this is our last project here we're going to hear about the milling machine for robotics and stem education from tim alexander and steven um rose rose okay yeah come on up and and just to highlight this grant was made possible through the stem fund established in 2011 to promote the interests of our youth in the educational areas of science technology engineering and math and this one as you'll hear fits just perfectly with that yeah thank you justin good evening everyone my name is steve moroz and with tim alexander we represent we

021coached high school robotics team 2530 which is comprised of students from all three of our rochester public school high schools as well as eighth grade students from our middle school so we bring all these different schools together on one cohesive team to design develop build and test and maybe have to rebuild and test depending on the tesco um competition worthy robots that are over 125 pounds in weight to go against to compete with and against teams from around the world thanks to the rochester public schools foundation grant we're able to procure as as justin mentioned this milling machine and what it does is it gives us ability to now create and machine different parts that we didn't have the capability to before along with machining those parts and much more efficient machining of those parts

022our students are also able to have the ability to design parts for this capability and our students design using computer-aided design tools which actually are state-of-the-art and are very marketable skills in the industry as they want to pursue careers in engineering in design and drafting and our programming team also then with this milling machine gives us parts earlier so our programming team has some time to actually test it out on the robot so once again thank you very much to the rochester public schools foundation for their donation towards this machine for our team sure there was a comment earlier about tools and and the longevity of tools and i'm i'm actually returning to the kellogg workspace i was a student there in the late 70s and we're using tools in there that were old when

023i was a student so you know but we've repurposed them we've we've cleaned them up and made them go so hopefully this is something that will last us a long time you know i don't know if it'll be that long but but it is cool that we're able to keep using these these valuable resources over and over again and and thank you for the use of the space it's been really great for us [Applause] um and then just to just to note that uh we that was the spring and summer 2021 grant cycle that means fall and winter 2021 grant cycle is coming shortly so watch your email rps staff those should be hitting your your inboxes soon start thinking about your good ideas for next year and also as a as a general awareness

024we're always looking for help in scoring grant submissions particularly from rps staff get in touch you can do that on our website at rpsf.org and we will be hosting a drive-in movie series in lieu of bufest this year and view of the pandemic that one just didn't make sense so look out for that as well in october any questions jenny or i would be happy to address those and then also to the to the recipients if we could meet just following this um somewhere out in the hallway out of the way so we could take a couple pictures that would be wonderful and yes this is ayalua come on out you did such a great job and you did not get the applause you deserve so thank you thank you and other questions mr barlow

025what's your question but uh i certainly wanted to commend jenny the work you've done over the years the foundation itself and i appreciate the tonight's presentation of the five years i've been on the board i think this may the fir be the first time uh that i recall that something to this degree was presented and uh it it so has impacted me to where i think i'm going to well i'm going to write a check to the foundation myself to support this great work you're doing well all right directly to more grants and so the more money we raise the more grants we can give and we have never been able to give as many as we would like so thank you and yes and this just casual i mean we do come and present

026this but it is nice to actually have the visual to really make that impact thank you so much we really appreciate it thank you thank you we'll move on to 4.02 rps online the recognition continues board members this is a very brief but important item it's in keeping with the spirit of what we're trying to bring to all aspects of our work which is continuous improvement as you'll remember at the last board meeting i did a brief overview of the launch of our new online school and mentioned a group of people who have been heroic in putting incredible effort into bringing that school to life we are completely full with a wait list of more than 500 students which is quite an accomplishment and after that brief recognition i found out there's two people that

027i missed and i said i don't want to let that go so i want to acknowledge lynn robleski who actually works in transportation but who provided indispensable help in adding and dropping students as they registered for rps online which happened a lot outside my office for weeks and weeks and weeks and so i know that lynn was critical to that and in human resources tammy barrett was heroic in recruiting staff some of whom are not even in minnesota teaching that work and so i want to um thank lynn and tammy and apologize for not having had them on the list last time but i didn't want to let it go and we look forward to providing the board with a full overview of rps online and where we are with that exciting new offering sometime

028later in the year thank you 4.03 board member committee updates all board members serve on a number of committees that meet throughout the week are there any reports about work you've been doing you'd like to share with the board and the community well the community engagement committee has something to share all of us received a letter that was written by some of the most prominent groups in public education they represent school boards superintendents administrators school business officials principals special ed administrators teachers and other educators from across the state they've issued a joint statement in support of increasing education equity including in race and gender and mr barlow and ms nathan and i would like to read this it begins nearly all minnesotans agree every student deserves an education that encourages them to understand and value

029who they are and where they came from so they can reach their full potential no matter their skin color background gender or zip code too often we have fallen short of this goal especially for our students of color lgbtq plus students students living in poverty and students who are special physical with special physical or emotional needs we are committed to reversing this trend with programs and policies that meet students where they are academically emotionally physically and lift them up so every student has an excellent chance at academic success for us this is the definition of education equity we've seen progress but have no doubt that more needs to be done to make our schools safe welcoming and effective for all students if nothing else demography demands we quicken our pace more than a third of

030our students statewide are students of color and our state becomes more racially and culturally diverse every year unfortunately many communities throughout minnesota are feeling the effects of a well-organized national campaign pushing an agenda that misrepresents the vital work of racial and gender equity in our schools and then mislabels it as critical race theory this deceptive campaign pushes the idea that educational equity is a zero-sum proposition that it is necessary for some students to lose opportunities to help other students succeed nothing could be further from the truth educational equity is giving all students a world-class education to be clear every student white black brown or indigenous benefits from learning a deeper respect and understanding for their neighbors through an honest education in social studies language arts and all the other subjects taught in our schools as

031representatives of classroom educators administrators and school boards throughout minnesota we value students for who they are today and our organizations are committed to developing all of them into informed citizens good neighbors and critical thinkers who can live in and someday lead in a multicultural multi-racial minnesota our kids deserve nothing less thank you a 4.04 is a culvert update dr piquel madam chair and director marvin and director barlow i'm going to remove my mask because there's some numbers i want to share that i have to get right and my glasses will fog over in a problematic way as we've had several uh speakers point out tonight uh mitigating the spread of covet in our schools is very much on everybody's mind and literally this afternoon we got some data that we've been waiting for to inform

032the next wave of those mitigation efforts and so i want to share it with the board and those of you gathered here um tonight at a macro level and we'll be sharing it at a somewhere somewhat more detailed level later in the week that data is actual vaccination status from the minnesota immunization information connection or mick as it's called it's a statewide repository of covington vaccine status and the reason that we felt this data was so important is that making decisions based upon not the perceived or assumed vaccine status of our students and our staff but the actual or as close to actual data as we can get is really critical in having a smart strategy going forward we have for a long time had data on olmsted county as a whole but we know

033that rochester is different than the county and rochester public schools is different than rochester so what have we learned literally this afternoon and i want to thank the members of our team who worked diligently to pull this data together i believe we're the first school district in the state that has even done this we're certainly the first that's released it and before i do i want to make really clear that the the vaccination status of our district and our schools and programs in it is not necessarily the primary responsibility of those schools and programs that these are decisions that individuals make and that parents are making and that our students as they are high school and middle school students in many cases are making so this is not something that should be seen as simply

034the responsibility of the school of the district it's a shared responsibility because we know the best path out of this pandemic is vaccination so for students age 12 and over the key thing and many of you know i used to work for a research organization so i won't nerd out here too much but the key thing is when you send a data file off you need to get a match so that the the person you send the record off for is actually verified to be the person that you're seeking and that might sound simple but it can be very complex for the students in rochester public schools we got a records match rate of 95 percent which is extraordinarily high so we know that the kids are the kids who attend rochester public schools we

035saw a range of vaccination rates among our students from a low of 39 percent to a high of 75 percent and those were both at the high school level so we have a range of uh progress to make as we look at our student vaccination rates the rest were all in between the middle schools were obviously in the middle because they also include younger students below age 12 who cannot yet be vaccinated so the broad range was from 39 percent one school to 75 percent overall in rochester public schools 58 of our students have had one dose and 53 percent have had two doses so that's where we are with students we also were able to pull together um vaccination rates for staff that we are very much confident enough to release but that do

036need to have an important asterisk by them the match rate for the staff data file was 63 percent and that could be due to things like people getting a vaccine shot out of state which doesn't record in the minnesota immunization information connection it's also critical to note that these data were anonymized we never knew that mr grayler did or didn't get a covet shot we sent the data off and we got back anonymized percentages and so it is completely blind to us as to the individual decisions that staff members have made so here's where we stand the this includes not just schools but also programs and central office departments our schools and uh programs in central office departments with the lowest vaccination rates were between 70 and 75 percent vaccinated and the ones with the

037highest uh vaccination rates were at 95 percent overall for staff in rochester public schools 90 of our staff have had one dose and 88 of our staff have had two doses for olmsted county um as many of you may know the overall vaccination rates are 84 at one dose and 80.8 percent at two doses and so we're doing a bit better than the county which is doing a bit better than many other places so what are we going to be doing with this data we'll be sharing the individual school program data with principals and school program leaders tomorrow and we'll release it on thursday and with apologies to board members i did have this written down for you but having been a classroom teacher i didn't give it to you because you would have just

038read it and not listen to me and we have a copy for the press as well that you have it available we'll be sharing it with schools and programs on wednesday and then we'll be releasing it publicly on thursday what this data will allow us to do is to begin to make decisions about some of the issues that have come up tonight vaccination requirements have come up before we might require people to do something like that which obviously would come before the board we want to know what our actual rates are i will i will stress i wanted actual data as opposed to self-reported data or extrapolated data we also have some really big other issues going on quarantine in particular is a concern our spread of the virus is increasing but it looks better

039than in other places but because the spread of the virus increases which we expected the delta variant is twice as transmissible at least as the original variant of the chronovirus we also see quarantine increasing and we have gotten a lot of concern from parents who really want their kids in our schools and so we'll be looking at that issue vaccination requirements and a whole array of other aspects of our mitigation strategy using these data that we think are very important including continuing to partner with the county um and potentially others in opening more vaccination clinics so that we can actually make it very easy for students and staff to do that so in some ways i apologize for adding this to the agenda at the last minute but i wanted to be sharing it with

040the board and by extension with the community as soon as we have it and we'll be continuing this dialogue in the days ahead thank you dr pikel any questions just it's not on the match rate of 63 for staff does that mean we don't know the vac status of the other percentage of the staff madam chair members of the board yes we got that 63 included some we know you're not vaccinated and it included many we obviously know you're vaccinated the vast majority of our staff are vaccinated i know that the out-of-state piece could be big for us because we've had a lot of folks get vaccinated in wisconsin and iowa so that's one issue this is also as with any data set subject to coding problems and other things so we'll be looking at

041it i think 64 percent is sufficiently high and the numbers track broadly enough with our county uh information that i was confident enough to release it i i think it's going to be representative broadly of what we see as we potentially can add additional data to that director mclaughlin so important it's eligible students so you're 12 or over um we heard some encouraging news today about um ll the last couple days about um one vaccine potentially being approved by um the end of october which would be for younger students which would be very exciting and so but yeah that's for kids 12 and over it's one reason why when we release them the middle school numbers that we all have to take that into consideration that there's kids in those schools that can't be vaccinated

042which as everyone in one of our middle schools knows creates particular challenges for mitigation in those settings thank you um 5.0 consent agenda board members are there any items you want removed for separate consideration seeing none move approval it's been moved and seconded all in favor say aye aye opposed consent agenda is approved 7.01 this is under safe and welcoming environment an overview of school-based efforts to help students transition back to school this is an information item dr raquel thank you board members as we have uh four of our really fantastic leaders um join us we're so excited we're let me just frame why we wanted to take a brief moment to highlight this issue of helping students transition back to school it's always critical but it's especially critical right now as many of our

043students really are transitioning back to learning from an extended period of not being fully engaged in learning and um one of my favorite examples from research of the importance of starting out right involves a very classic famous study called the pygmalion study that i can't believe they got approved but where they lied to teachers and told them that certain of their students had taken a test which they called the harvard test of inflected intelligence and that these students were going to be high performers even though they might start out struggling it was a complete lie that the researchers were authorized to tell to the teachers i don't think you could ever get that approved today but what happened and has been repeated multiple times is those students did far better than they historically would have

044done or that a control group of their peers did so the beginning and the expectation really mattered what is relevant from that study for our topic here today is they've replicated that study but not telling the teachers the lie before they meet the students telling them the lie in the middle of the year and giving them this false information once they had already met the kids what they found when they did the pygmalion experiment for students after teachers and students had already met each other is it had no effect the perceptions had already been formed but when we begin right it begins to uh impact all of the things that we do and so it is really exciting and we'll just kind of go in order we have um jared grayler from uh bishop we've

045got amy adams from longfellow we have angie mcandrews from kellogg and we have troy priggy from mayo and we'll just invite them to share a snapshot of the ways that they have sought to help kids maybe also educators transition back into school this year so thank you all for taking time i know how crazy busy you are and if i messed up your order and you've rearranged it differently you can awesome awesome thank you so much and we'll give board members uh for sure at the conclusion a chance but i think madam sheriff board members have a particular question or observation maybe you can also just jump in as we as we go sure we're kind of segmented based on elementary middle school and high school as well i'm dr brooke marvin board thank you

046so much for letting us share a little bit about my start to the year again i'm jared grayer principal at harriet bishop elementary and amy adams and i are going to share about our step into learning at the elementary level for us at bishop this was not a new system for us it was not a new start to the year just to kind of review what step into learning is and what that what that means we take the first two days of the school year in this case it was august 30th and august 31st where we set up 30-minute individual conferences with students and their families we schedule those through our onward skyward scheduler we reach out multiple times in multiple different ways to ensure that everyone has access including accessing our bilingual supports reaching

047out personally to families that have not signed up yet home visits and all the other pieces necessary to make sure that it's a successful start that everyone feels welcome and invited into our building at the start of the year during these conferences it's not only that opportunity to meet with the individual teacher but it's also that opportunity to connect with building wide resources with our ptsa in some cases get school pictures and some of those other fun things at the beginning of the year taking care of meet with the nurse and all those other things that kind of just have to happen before the first day of school to make sure that it's successful all of our bishop staff were on duty during those two days including our paraprofessional staff so all of our students

048and families had the chance to see all of our staff around the building on those days and the why of this and and why this started and why it continues to in my perspective be very successful in an important way to start the year is that it provides just that individual time if you're familiar with maybe what our typical meet the teacher night would be it might be a couple hours where everyone is coming into the building at one time the teacher is frantically bopping around trying to connect with everyone and make them feel so that they're welcome and they're important but it's just not as individual and just not as special as as i feel this is it also just expands those opportunities to connect with the school to connect with school resources to

049actually have time for families to ask questions and feel as though that their their questions are heard and validated during that time you know for us especially being in a new building this year this just allowed for a smooth transition into a brand new space many of our students and families had questions about where's the bus gonna drop them off what where's their classroom at all those other pieces that were especially essential for us being in a new building as well as for students coming into a new classroom into a new grade level and just getting to to meet that teacher and have that teacher there at the door just for themselves um during that time another part of this that happens at this time aside from that relationship buildings it does give us a

050chance to do some pre-assessments so that way we can see where students are at before the hustle and the bustle of the beginning days of school so we have a little bit of idea of of what sort of academic skills students are coming in with and it just allows us to begin some of that instruction that much earlier as well so amy is going to talk about how it went at longfellow well thank you for for having us i appreciate the opportunity to share i i'd like to share a little bit of our journey at longfellow as to how we came in to step into learning we had heard about second to learning in other schools and i had the opportunity to go and walk alongside jared and see it in action and it was

051really exciting to see the families connecting with each other and with the staff members and just a really calm environment and so we started the conversation at longfellow historically we had done that meet the teacher of two hours everyone coming on campus being able to do a quick check-in with the teacher and it was great to connect but we did feel like there were pieces missing we felt that it was rushed and we really wanted more time and then july of 2019 came in with covid and so we had to adapt and adjust with our meet the teacher evening which really turned out to be in our mind that adjustment was a blessing in disguise we scheduled one-on-one conferences with our families and overwhelmingly the response from families and teachers was how much they enjoyed

052that one-on-one opportunity to start to build that positive relationship and really get to know our children and our families and make that connection so that really sparked an interest in attempting to jump on border step into learning so we're really appreciative of the board support and longfellow joining the ranks so we did implement step into learning for the first time this past summer july of 2021 and we were able to survey our families and our staff afterwards and again much of what jared described is what happened at longfellow as well um was starting in july we too had the opportunity to offer school photos as well which was a very big hit with everyone that they had the chance to come in and take their school pictures so we had 58 families that were able

053to provide us feedback which represented 73 students and 95 percent of those that responded to our survey said that they would like to have that step into learning format again next year they really appreciated the time and five percent did mention that they would like to go back to the meet the teacher um at evening some of the things and themes that family shared with us was that they really appreciated that one-on-one time with the teacher they had time to thoughtfully ask questions their child reported feeling really comfortable that first day of school they had the chance to really talk about procedures and routines where do i pick my child up where can i pick them up after school too and just again our philosophy of going into it was really how can we start

054to welcome them back and begin to build that positive relationship uh another uh family reported to me that i really appreciate is that their child felt more than just a number they felt valued and part of the community just from that first initial meeting too which i thought was really valuable feedback and again parents appreciated that the school photo wasn't done after recess so they had the opportunity to tidy them up a little bit before the picture was taken which is good staff members felt that the atmosphere was really calm their students just noticed a much calmer entry into the first day of school some teachers were able to complete some baseline data too and get to know their students academic skills but again the main focus was positive relationships we do utilize the app

055called cson which we connect with our families throughout the year and we had the opportunity to set families up for success in getting on to csa and connecting with their teacher and throughout the one-on-one conferences they had individual bilingual specialist support for those families that needed and benefited from that support so we felt really grateful that they were really able to walk alongside those families individually to provide that support as well our health office also reported the amazing opportunity to really get to know the health concerns to keep their children safe as they came to school and get to know the unique needs of each child as well we as as we reflect upon each experience there's things that we want to take a look at a little bit differently we need to look at

056scheduling i think a little more carefully especially for families that have multiple children in our school we want to make sure that we use their time efficiently and effectively to make sure that they're able to come in at the same time and we again want to make sure that we utilize our bilingual specialist talents and efficiently and effectively so that we block out some time for them to make sure that it's a little bit more um fluid and also just again tidying up of some communications with families to unsign it as they enter the building and as you know we'll be opening up a new building next july so we're hopeful that we can continue a step into learning as we welcome our families there too and as i reflect on our highlights at bishop

057you know as i said this we've been doing this for a few years we didn't survey our families this year but it consistently has been between 97 98 of our families that feel this is the way to start the school year and now that we're a few years into it um continue to get positive feedback around this is the way to go we can we can plan for this as a family we anticipate this is how the year is going to start as well in terms of just you know as we're coming back off of the year that was last year and entering into this school year it was such an important part to be able to connect individually as many of our families returned to school where they were in distance learning all of

058last year just to get reacclimated back into a building again especially for us being in a new space you know this started off as a pilot program at bishop as part of a grant and and the the focus at that time was really on academics although academics in this setting are still very important we can't lose sight of the relationships and in the formation of the relationships and you know as amy talked about people feeling comfortable in the building and easing in as well so that that's been something as we continue to to learn and grow and refine that continues to be at the top of our priorities as well so thank you for letting us share about step into learning thank you all right i'll speak to the program that we ran it um

059the middle a lot of middle school organizations report that our goal should be maybe three times an opportunity for students to be in the building before the school year starts to help ease their transition and so that's kind of always been our goal we have a few things that we put in place along the way we typically have spring visits and we weren't allowed those this year and so our students weren't able to see the building prior to the end of their fifth grade year we have offered sixth grade seminar in middle school prep in the past that there were some hurdles with that being a little cost prohibitive and so we were really trying to look at ways that we could help our students get familiar without without creating obstacles for families making sure

060that this was accessible to all families at kellogg we ended up hosting an event six times this summer called popsicles with the principles where it was just a free drop-in opportunity for families to come walk through the building and then we met outside had popsicles and had q and a out on our front steps and that was incredibly successful um so much so that we had to buy popsicles two more times after the initial purchase but it was great and then um we also had our open house that we typically have in the evenings um but we had we limited teacher access because of um covid and so um the meet me in the middle became a really critical piece of our transition for students we had hosted something similar last spring when we transitioned

061back to in-person learning so we had a little bit of a trial run and an idea of what we were getting into for incoming sixth graders we offered a slower pace and allowed first and strong relationship building within the advisory program and for seventh and eighth graders they really got a glimpse of others that are other students that are new and a smaller setting in which they could ask their questions to become familiar with things that were happening that would be happening at kellogg but we modeled our program similarly across middle schools and so our sixth grade we had about 300 students that attended meet me in the middle and seventh and eighth grade we had about a hundred students in seventh grade in about 30 and eighth grade that joined us um we also

062have a group of mentors called comet crew they're eighth graders that are familiar with the building they apply to be mentors and they joined us on that day also to help mentor our sixth grade students and so our advice our comic crew kids broke up and joined our sixth grade classrooms and they spent the morning with their advisory during that advisory time they had a general overview of the building and our expectations they had tours they did quite a few advisory activities to help build relationships in that smaller group they did the dreaded task of learning how to open lockers um they learned how to read a secondary schedule for sixth graders and then even new to seventh and eighth grade students that was important for them also we also found time during the day

063for them to be introduced to counselors and social workers so that they knew what they did and how to find them our sixth graders had a special introduction to our musical director since that's something that we do right away in the fall as a production and then sixth graders were able to distribute their devices and get them logged into google classroom for the first time so that we were prepared in the event of any kids being quarantined right out of the gate they followed the lunch schedule in a normal routine which is also kind of overwhelming in a building of 1100 students it's important to make sure we have those routines down and then in the afternoon um after everybody was through with lunch we walked through an abbreviated schedule so about 15 minutes in

064each of their classes so that they could meet each other teachers get a feel for the building and then a send-off in our regular bus routine which is also um a busy time of day um the feedback was the like i said popsicles with the principals had a great turnout open house um we extended it to two days instead of one extended our hours and um the feedback was awesome from parents lots of them said we should do it this way every year which we'll see we'll see if we're able to continue that but i think the feedback was really good um the meet me in the middle we had lots of great support we actually had one parent who um emailed before even the end of the day and she said my sixth grader

065called me during his recess and said i already love this place and i'm already proud to be a comet and i was like that is a really a really um great outcome for something that we were on trial run with so next your intention is probably to reduce the day for seventh and eighth grade because we won't have as many we'll have a smaller amount of those kids and i think in some cases they were one or two kids with a teacher for 15 or 20 minutes that got to be a little bit awkward and uncomfortable um and so i think we'll probably reduce the day for seventh and eighth grade but stick to the full day for sixth grade the sixth graders being able to explore the building without the volume that we typically

066have in the building made such a difference for them there was definitely a calmer sense on on the first full day of school and we're hoping that maybe it'll flow a little bit more smoothly without covid but we wanted to say thank you for giving us the opportunity to try this program out this year and helping us to find better ways to just transition kids to the middle school experience madam chair members of the board superintendent pakel and district cabinet i first off i want to thank you so much for allowing us the opportunity to have our first day with just the ninth graders in the building and speak on behalf of all three high schools we we really uh value that opportunity to have with our ninth graders uh each day i know i

067don't know if it benefits the ninth graders more or the parents more knowing that they're they're not walking through the hallways with fifteen hundred to two thousand other students um the anxiety level is certainly lowered uh when we have that opportunity and i kind of want to plant the seed right now hopefully we can talk about this more later about just having ninth graders just for the full day and then bringing the upperclassmen and some of the feedback we receive from our upperclassmen when they come in for that second half of the day it just doesn't seem like it's enough time to get acclimated with their classes and run through syllabus and do all the meet the great things so we'll kind of table that to a later later time but all three principals at

068the high schools are are interested in talking about that a little more so i think we can all look back when our we took our first couple steps into high school what that was like and that kind of the feeling that you have when you do that and and our ninth graders received a video from our spartan 300 students who are our students that are our upperclassmen um that want to give back and make sure that each of our our ninth graders have the opportunity to to have a good first impression of male high school build that school spirit do some um get to know you activities and do some fun things and and they certainly came up with some creative ideas along the way but when our students showed up on that first day

069of school they walked into a staff gauntlet kind of the kobet style of a staff gauntlet this year where there wasn't the high fives and the fist bumps but the staff were away from the students and they walked through and there were clapping for them and they kind of come in and they're like whoa i mean we could see their eyes i couldn't see the anxiousness on their face but um with the mass but and then they they traveled into the gymnasium where they met their spartan 300 leaders and there were two to four leaders that would be with 10 to 12 9th graders and you you meet them for the first time and then they went on tours they walked around they went through the lunch line they if they wanted a locker there

070you know they showed them how to open the locker and uh so they did a bunch of activities for the first part of the morning and then the second part of the morning they ran through a mock schedule where they had the opportunity to go in to their classrooms uh and meet their ninth grade teachers and so we felt that that was an important thing to add this year which we really had some great feedback about that having that opportunity so when you walk into that classroom you can recognize a a face and a teacher uh when you get there and then uh the second half of the day when the big kids came to school um we ran a modified schedule eight period day and they they sort of get the feel of um

071being in a in a hallway that's crowded and walking through and then trying to find their classes uh you know it our track reader record is pretty good we've not lost a high schooler yet so we want to continue to do that and with about 2 000 students at mail there a lot of them were outnumbered and and i'm just so grateful for our spartan 300 uh our upperclassmen that are taking these students under their wings and helping them you know be a spartan and um you know our our our culture at our school is i put it at the top of of any school and we we are proud of that and um we're so grateful to have the opportunity to to just bring those ninth graders in and get them going off on

072the right foot thank you so much any questions or comments about mr barlow uh excellent presentation from each of you uh principal jared uh just a quick question regarding the pre-assessments that you undertake uh how does that relate to ultimately a student achievement or capacity and then a follow-up in regards to some families may not have uh transportation and or ability to take off from work to participate so how uh can you explain or share how you uh serve uh serve them um we we run one night later so we're trying to kind of open it up or one day is from 8 a.m to 7 p.m so we're trying to kind of hit multiple schedules during that time but i appreciate you bringing up the transportation issue that that's one that um you know

073luckily we haven't had to cross yet but i'm sure colleagues have had to you know to partner with as well i know another you know we've been creative in some of those aspects before we're fortunate to have some district transportation vehicles as well as you know work with uber or ride share any of those sort of things as well um and then to the the achievement piece you know kindergarten it might be some of those pre-assessment skills you know do you know your letters you know your numbers you know your name and and um and at the upper grade levels we do a lot of our focus on our reading um the independent reading leveling assessment the erla um with our action 100 which just helps us be able to start instructions sooner so the

074direct tie i don't know if there's a direct tie to student achievement but i think if we're able to have some of those pre-skills or to know where students are at coming in just allows us to begin instruction that much sooner as we look at doing some of our guided reading groups for instance or even in kindergarten just to get a better sense of who might need more support in other areas who's ready to continue to to go and grow in areas as well okay thank you um particularly to the step into learning uh did you get any information about um being able to do this for a couple years versus new year the level of participation were all the families able to participate or has it particularly the multiple years has it varied whether

075that's where their parents weren't able to attend at all that's a good question um so yes there are some that were not able to participate but in general that's a much lower percentage than what my experience has been at some of those meet the teacher those larger events i would say this year there was probably 15 or so families that we weren't able to connect with out of our 475 students so you know a fairly high percentage of our families were able to come to that and those those that weren't able to come that conversation might have happened virtually as well or that might have been a phone call or that sort of connection as well i think there's very few of any that we at least didn't know kind of how they were doing

076and and where they were at at the beginning of the school year i think we found the same thing because we started communicating fairly early about our process and our dates and families reached out to us and said we had a vacation plan we might be running late so we tried to find any way that we could to connect with them we did have some teachers that connected with the families the monday before or even the first day of school brought them in early if they weren't able to connect with that step in the learning time to just to adapt and adjust to what the family needs as well i appreciate that flexibility that's really good i was expecting the opposite actually so that's really great to hear that you're getting a better better response

077anything else board members and one additional question uh so as it relates to transitioning back to school and the um reported uh learning loss um how how are things going all right well we're almost a full quarter in at longfellow i'm grateful we're coming up on our fall break so we are in week eight of instruction so i would say uh our teachers shared that they were quite surprised at the levels coming in and you know concerned because they knew that this the students needed a lot of support academically but also socially and emotionally to support their needs and reacclimate them back to the regular start to the school year as well but i feel like together they they work together to really uh hit the ground running and i feel that the students are

078gaining ground fast you know with that step into learning we did get to north students in a one-on-one situation where we could find those areas of growth and those of areas that we could celebrate and push further as well so that provided kind of a fast track to start those interventions and also the other supports that students might need as well one thing i think about with distance learning last year that was such a challenge with students and not having them in the school but what we did see across from most of our elementary colleagues and secondary as well is teachers really came together and collaborated and shared ideas and that's one thing we feel that cabinet and school board has really continued to celebrate and encourage is continue that collaboration keep that going and

079i feel that teachers have really they've always valued that collaboration but they've found new ways to connect and collaborate together to meet the needs of students as well so although it was a slow start i feel like we're really picking up speed as we've moved through our quarter as well i would say um i would say that um our data would have indicated at the end of the year that our students were not starting this year in the same place that we were expecting students to start it in years past so that was something that we spoke with staff about right away just to be familiar with present levels of performance to make sure that we're prepared for the differences we also have collaboration time built in for our staff every other day so that

080they can connect and work together on planning i think that over the last week one of our hurdles has been the number of students that we've had quarantined that presents challenges for students and also presents challenges for our staff to try to make those connections while still being really present for the kids that are in the building so um i would say it doesn't feel normal yet i would say that that is um that would be a good way to describe what we're feeling right now i would second that what angie said about being normal uh you know if you look back at uh our underclassmen our ninth and tenth graders they really haven't had a full year of high school yet so socially it's been a pretty active start for us uh academically you

081know we're we're really focusing in on equity and breaking down the barriers for kids and and starting out the year by building relationships so i i think it's really too early to tell with that um i couldn't give you any any data on on that i know that teachers really do a great job of going back and doing some review to start the year and just getting kids feeling good about being back in school and and taking it slow and whoever did the calendar and put the four day weeks for the first couple as a genius it was really nice the kids were tired at the end of the week and the teachers were also but more to come on that i think as we get going and you know this is our first full

082week of of school um our second full week of school we'll be able to tell more as we go along and be happy to report back and to build on that comment which was perfect i would like to see if we could build this kind of feedback from our buildings into our calendar um throughout the year just to see how it's going because we we do love to hear from you directly i don't think our community has the chance to see outside their own building and those people who don't have students in schools don't get to see not only all the hard work you're doing but all the results that you're getting and and just your enthusiasm about building these relationships and doing everything for students that you can to make them successful everybody needs

083to see that so thank you thank you so much thank you very much this is exciting naming the new middle school our subcommittee uh julie workman melissa amundson and don barlow i hope you have something ready good uh so just a quick review last spring rochester public school students were invited to submit their ideas for what our news middle school which is currently under construction should be named the criteria were to reflect the school district's values and beliefs to represent the diversity within our community and to instill inspiration in students so the school board received and reviewed hundreds of submissions and a school board subcommittee narrowed the list to the five finalists which were susan b anthony dakota martin luther king jr unity and moxa pay the public was invited to vote for the name

084of the new middle school the voting was from september 8th through the 16th with the winner to be announced at the school board meeting on september 21st i guess that's tonight so the winner that was chosen by the public is dakota any questions i would never approval of the resolution i'll read it and then absolutely thank you be it resolve the school board of independence school district 535 does hereby approve dakota as the name of the new middle school move approval second it's been moved and seconded any discussion all in favor say i i opposed we have a new school name thank you thank you school board thank you community for uh voting and thank you especially to every student who submitted a name for for 8.01 authorization to provide incentive pay for maintenance employees

085for the 2021-2022 school year directors of the board i'd like to ask carl bakken our executive director of human resources to come up as board members know we have like many employers need to be creative to try and find ways to attract talented and dedicated people to do the work in critical parts of our school district and so we've been working with the representatives of our various employee groups to reach agreements on some additional incentives and i want to thank carl for the leadership he's shown in trying to be creative in uh some challenging times to meet the needs of our students carl thank you superintendent good evening board members what you see in front of you is very similar to the resolution that was brought about a month ago on august 17th that was

086for our paraprofessionals one of the differences here is there's quite a few less maintenance workers we have about 120 in the district compared to over 650 paraprofessionals that being said we were encountering the same kind of challenges hiring our maintenance employees we've held several job fairs walk-in interviews uh we've advertised extensively and we are still looking at multiple openings and we uh one additional factor we're running into here is we have other businesses in town that continue to increase their starting salary so we have had this in front of the union for quite some time around the same time i went to the paris it went out to the maintenance union and right right after our last board meeting we got a response saying they would sign on with it so similar to the pera

087agreement it is 500 upon higher and then after 90 working days it would be another payment of a thousand dollars for new employees and then returning employees who returned to us during the 21 22 school year who were with us during the 2021 school year would get 500 split into two payments and the approximate cost is sixty thousand dollars board members questions mr barlow uh yes mr bakken um thank you first of all i'm curious um not that these are representative of dominoes if you will but para's now maintenance workers um from where you said uh do you envision there being other worker shortages potentially and if so do you think a similar approach or strategy will be utilized and then finally um when we enter into the some moas do they change our bargaining

088positions or do they can you perhaps speak to that because most of these uh unions will be their contracts will be coming up soon so could you speak briefly to that as well sure to answer your first question we do uh have a feeling that our food service workers are going to be approaching us they have heard about the hiring incentives we've given to paraprofessionals and uh they have made contact we're in the process of replying them and probably arranging a meeting as far as how this will impact future contract negotiations i think it's poss i think it's very likely it will i think by asking for this and i think it's warranted and i think we need to do things like this in an attempt to fill our positions and and retain our people

089um along the same line we met with the union today and brainstormed other ideas saying what sat across from the table and said what what ideas do you have to maintain our employees and keep our employees here when we have a a business in town that can offer money just without having to do what we have to do um so we'll we need to continue to problem solve we need to continue to be creative and think outside of the conventional um but just to be honest i think they're going to probably have an idea that we we're struggling to hire and i'm sure that will come up during financials but they're just going to shoot really straight on that thank you miss workman yes um was there any negative reaction from long-term maintenance employees because

090i i understand that they also get a bonus but the fact that the newly hired ones were really getting an incentive to stay for those 90 days do you anticipate that we will be losing some of our longer term employees in this area i'm not trying to suggest anything to anybody here but i don't know if we'll lose anybody i think similar to the peras when we proposed this the the returning employees were wondering why they didn't get the same amount we explained the cost that would go along with that and our our goal is to hire new employees and recognize recognize those who those who have stayed at with us um i don't know if there's an exact right amount to land on but in in conversations with um employees who are here they

091they were supportive um and saying you know we eventually it did get approved um we are providing we are providing um a stipend or an incentive payment um just for returning to work and and we're going to have to continue to look at examine the kind of results we get from this and um maybe we'll need to think about continuing to do some do something like this when we get into the new year depending on where we are with hiring and i just think this is a i think hiring is going to be a challenge i know we were talking about that today during our meeting and they were asking us do you think this is going to be something that's just going to is temporary i don't think it is i think this is

092going to be a challenge moving forward and hiring um some of our positions are going to be challenging and we're going to be pushed to continue to innovate garcia thank you mine is sort of in the ballpark of the two previous comments so i'm imagining that this is going to continue to happen and might we i don't i don't even know what would be the appropriate route for this but like study session it and like get ahead of the issue rather than making these people ask their union representatives to then come to us and then we take however many months it's going to take to kind of iron something like this out why don't why can't we just assume that these things might happen and get creative a little bit ahead of not entirely out

093of the curve because obviously the problem is already here um but might we do that and how what would that look like and also i think my my question my second question was you mentioned that you had had these conversations already and it took them a little bit to get to a yes and i'm wondering if you could speak to maybe what some of their concerns were like why did it take so long to get to the space what were they needing additionally they didn't give us a whole a whole list of reasons as to why um one of the things that was that they responded to is that they are a different employee group they've been here the entire time during kovid they were on the front lines as i stated before we did

094have conversations with employees here that were saying they were supportive of it and they were going to continue to discuss it okay as far as the hiring piece i think a number of factors came into play here with our pandemic with the historically low unemployment rate historically high rate of people it's a it's a hiring it's a market for people seeking jobs um in the past quite frankly we've hired people with without having to think outside of the conventional people have tended to come to us and we are um we've been spending a lot of time thinking of things that we're going to need to change and implementing those constantly and i think even this example by the meeting today just having a discussion about things that maybe we could do within the contract that

095just haven't had happen before and some of the things we talked about do we look at flexible work hours do we look at something during the summer where maybe they're working for tens maybe we need to start thinking about things like that just to get creative and we'll be having another meeting a couple of folks weren't able to join us today that were key but we'll be doing that again maybe we can come up with some things that don't require us to change the contractor to come to the board and ask for more funding right because i'm i'm fine of course with giving people financial compensation for the work that they're doing also to retain them i guess i just i don't want to get into a sense of like this is domino like we

096should just say you matter to us and the work you do is appreciated and we're going to compensate you appropriately for that and obviously for whatever reason this right now is not working for you and let's look at these different groups and figure out well if everyone's going to start coming to us we might as well just have a plan of how to respond yeah and these contracts are coming up in this coming june they will expire and then we will be seeking the parameter from you for starting that new negotiation cycle that will be key as well dr kell um board members i just want to really um say i appreciate this my conversation said the biggest issue was the difference in the incentive for new employees versus continuing employees because they under understandably

097said wait i've been with you the whole time they also know we need to fill these positions because they have to fill in when the positions are open but so that was part of the tension the other thing i just want to add is as board members know the working groups we're kicking off literally we're announcing uh next week or the week after for the development of our strategic action plan include one on organizational culture and in addition to all these critical questions of compensation and things we want rochester public schools to be a place where people feel valued and like they are using their talents in service of kids and their communities and it's a place where people really feel they can be their whole selves and so even as we're talking about these

098really critical nuts and bolts things we know a lot of people will stay with an organization because they feel that they belong that they are appreciated and they can do good work so i think that's a piece of this as well that i'm really excited is going to be a major emphasis of our of our new plan thank you anything else this is a briefing item and since it's a contract for 2021 2022 i'm assuming it would be a good thing to get it approved soon like tonight that would be wonderful move to action second been moved and seconded to move this to action any discussion on favor say post it's now an action item be it resolved school board of independent school district 535 does hereby approve the memorandum of agreement to provide fifteen

099hundred dollars incentive pay for newly hired maintenance workers and five hundred dollars to maintenance workers who maintain their employment from the 2020 2021 school year into the 2021-2022 school year and who meet conditions in the memorandum of agreement second and moved and seconded all in favor say aye aye opposed motion passes they thank you mr bakken 8.02 policy recommendation second reading board members you have the policies policy committee anything to add nothing to add unless someone has any uh comments or additional edits these have been thoroughly briefed before and i know you're always anxious for more policy information always and they'll come back at the next meeting on the consent agenda okay thank you no more discussion tonight um 8.03 approval of proposed school district property tax levy payable in this is a briefing item

100dr kell members of the board chair marvin once again i'm pleased to recognize um john carlson our executive director of finance to give us an overview of this important item well thank you uh superintendent raquel and uh chair marvin school board members i'm here to talk about the uh preliminary property tax uh levy amounts so just a little brief um talk here about property taxes first what uh where does the money go we put the money into three general buckets there's the general fund and that's for our general operations and certain certain targeted programs like long-term facility maintenance for example we also have the community education fund examples of that would be early childhood and adult programming and then debt service funds so we're making the principal and interest payments on our bonds or our

101loans that we've taken out to excuse me pay for new schools so who determines the amount of property tax well there's a very complex set of laws and rules uh the district has little less flexibility as compared to our partners at the city in the county my understanding is they more come up with an amount they need and that's the amount they can set we follow a whole bunch of rules and laws that um define pretty much to the penny what we are allowed to seek and the only way we can go above that is if we have one of these three types of votes we could have an operating referendum where the community will come together and say yes we're willing to pay more for general operations we could have a building bond referendum

102we last had that in 2019 and that'd be for new facilities we also could do it for remodeling facilities but we've done it for new facilities and then the third category is one that we do not take advantage of right now but we've talked about studying on the appropriateness of that and that would be a capital projects referendum most commonly used for technology so who pays the property taxes so if you own a home or if you are an apartment building owner you're a farmer you're a business you're all are going to contribute into on the property tax levy the amount that each of those properties pays is spread out through state law and the county assessor olmsted county and wabasha county in our case are responsible for doing that based on value of property

103so some good news about our property tax basis has been consistent year over year the property tax base continues to grow it's not just inflation of new properties there is another 200 million dollars of new construction properties in the district and those properties will begin paying in for the first time in 2022. so as the tax base increases and if it increases at a sufficient clip that can offset actually an increase to individual property owners even when our tax amount you know the total amount of levy goes up so tax base increases the taxing rate can actually decrease at the same time so how does it compare out we've taken a look at the report um and where we're at we noticed that there is still one error um hanging out there that we need

104to get final approval sometime in the next nine days by the department of education but once that's corrected we are expecting that the levy will be right about 70 million dollars in total it will be going down in the general fund it will be going up a little bit in the community education fund and then in our debt service this is all part of our bond repayment schedule and our long-term facilities maintenance plans will have a little bit of an increase there as well so why do property taxes in general go up again it goes back to that 39 pages of formulas and calculations that we're provided with the department of education does that for each district there are some things that we know of that are going up because we've intentionally made them happen

105that way through the issuance of our debt and that would be the debt service schedule that includes again the new buildings that we just voted on in november of 2019 as well as the long-term facility maintenance bonds as well as there's one other category of funding in there and this is the error that mde needs to correct on our levy report right now it's the certificates of participation for our technology we're one of about four districts listed in statute that can borrow money for technology if it is within our achievement integration plan so we're waiting for that debt schedule to be loaded into our property tax levy and there are some items that are actually decreasing for example the unemployment insurance were allowed to levy for exact costs of unemployment you have to estimate that

106a year in advance though and we're estimating that there will be very little unemployment that kind of goes right along with what carl was talking about in that we're having trouble filling our positions we're not in this place where we're actually laying off and then incurring unemployment expense so that's going down on the property tax levy so what does a one percent overall increase in our levy mean it actually means it's going to be a decrease for most of our taxpayers so if you have for example a 200 000 home your property tax is probably going to go down about 29 a year so again that's because there's going to be more properties more new businesses paying into the system and we're not changing our levy very much so that means overall in general uh

107your property tax is likely to go down so our timeline of where we're at from here is i want to bring back a corrected report a final report for you on october 5th that be the next school board meeting we have permission from the county auditor to extend our decision until that date so on that date we do need an action and then november 30th we recommend that we have the truth and taxation hearing so we allow the public to come in and speak and then on december 7th is when we would ask you to take final action on the lefty amount and that's basically where we're at as of today and i would be able to entertain any questions uh related to the lobby at this time yeah i think um and maybe i

108missed it but i think taxpayers also need to understand that even though it looks like their property tax will be going down if their property attack if their property has been reassessed at a higher rate then that wouldn't necessarily apply so people really need to pay attention once they get those notices that's a very good point um the county auditor needs to send out each parcel a specific notice about what their proposed tax increase or decrease will be by november 21st so it's in taxpayers hands by the time we have that meeting on november 30th and that will of course they'll take the numbers that you have here and they'll they'll tell everybody specifically with what the city is proposing the county and the school district other questions the resolution before us lays out among

109other things dates that we'll be meeting and making decisions and it would be useful to approve this tonight um actually no i think if 11 if the item just sits there um then it will put those dates in at that point i would say i'll feel free to go now and you can move on thank you thank you i'm good all right this brings us to other business um we will be having a study session beginning at five o'clock on september 28th where we'll be discussing an article a pdf uh by michael fullen board members have a copy of that we will have regular board meeting on october 5th a study session where we will look at the annual calendar on october 12th and another regular board meeting on october 19th ms nathan already suggested

110that we get put on the annual calendar so this could be an item for the study session on october 12th ensuring that we have regular feedback from schools as part of our part of our calendar during the year any other issues that you want to be considered for a future agenda hearing none it is 7 22 and we are adjourned [Music] you