December 11, 2023 School Board Meeting

001one Board of Education to order uh we will begin with the uh roll call please J it Kevin Bo here Michelle Breen here DJ donlinger here Randy Hyman here Sarah spear here John Ward five of the six present thank you and now rise for the P Pledge of Allegiance [Music] please I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands Nation God indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right as we move along to the approval of the agenda as amended for tonight board members um just a couple of quick changes to the agenda under the consent calendar we have a new field trip request in there to approve under new business on the approval of the reading of msba policy 720 actually a

002second reading I think what do we have that listed as first reading in the original draft of the agenda and why was I thinking there was a third thing I think that was it okay great so those are the only changes to the published agenda from last week I'll make a motion to approve the agenda as amended second all right we have a motion from director spear with second from director Heyman to approve the amended agenda as presented any discussion hearing none all in favor signify by saying I please I oppose same sign motion carries all right let's leap right in with the solistica Lord yes it's very our public hearing for truth and Taxation for 2023 payable 2024 tax levy yes good evening uh this presentation is very uh broad if you guys have

003questions as I go through please let me know so the first slide is just going through what the state law requirements are tonight's agenda basically covers all of those requirements for meeting within the time frame um we do have a a time for public comment and then we will adopt the final Levy after the public comment um also being presented will be the current year budget and then the proposed tax levy so the agenda is we'll go through some of the background information the district's budget and then the tax levy and then we'll allow for those public comments so the Minnesota Legislature sets funding for Minnesota Public Schools I'm sure you all were aware of that but that is um something that we do like to point out it's not something that brainer Public Schools

004sets it's set by the legislature so they set formulas which determine our Revenue uh the formul allowance right now for 2324 is 7,138 and it's going up to 7,281 in 2425 the state also um sets the tax policy and then the maximum Authority that we can Levy um I should touch briefly the state also allows School boards to submit referendums for operating and capital needs which require voter approval the Gen Ed formula um legs behind inflation so we did ceive a 4% and 2% increase in 23 24 and 24 25 um if we had kept up with inflation over the years we would actually need another increase of $1,356 and then this graph just depicts that difference so the red or orange dotted line is how the formula has been adjusted throughout the past years

005and then the blue line is if it had been injust adjusted for inflation what the rate would be so quite a bit of difference there they've tried to make adjustments as we've gone throughout but um it is still behind um so this one there's underfunding and special ed and you've heard me say this at previous some of you have heard me say this at previous presentations we did get uh cross subsidy Aid this last legislative round and went from um 5.1 million we did get an additional 2.7 million to help with that 5.1 million cross subsidy um but we still are underfunded so the projections are that we would be underfunded by 48 million even at the end of fiscal year 27 with what the state allocated us just an FYI on that um changes

006in the tax ta Levy does not determine a change in the budget um there are a number of factors in there so there the changes in the levy can be due to those formulas um it can be due to uh changes in in by the funds and it could also be changes due to an increase um excuse me um to levies and and related fund balance so there's multiple factors in there it doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to have a change in the budget though so differences in Levy Cycles cities and counties they're currently levying for their next fiscal year they're January 1 they're levying for 2024 we are actually a year behind so what we're leving for is for 2425 it's kind of confusing but that's how it works for school districts and

007the budget that we are levying for would be adopted in June of 24 so the budget that we're going to share with you tonight is actually the 2324 budget it has no impact on the levy uh um that would have been last year's presentation but we do have to present it that's one of the requirements of the statute and it's broken out by funds General Food Service community service building construction Debt Service internal service OPB trust and OPB Debt Service so the blue column is our current uh 23 24 budget it's broken out by revenues and expenditures and then the estimated fund balance at the end of the year and then the gray column is how we ended the year for 2223 actuals fund balances in total are projected to decrease compared to last year

008with the largest changes in general construction and Debt Service funds [Applause] so this is a uh graph of our revenues and transfers in for 23 24 you can see the majority of our revenues are in the general fund um the levy accounts for 22.2% of all of our revenues budgeted in 2324 and the 4.5 1% increase that's being presented tonight represents a 1% of all our revenues budgeted so it's very very small small percent this is the general fund Revenue specifically Broken Out by state federal local and other um with this Levy there would be a slight decrease in the local for 2425 uh because in the general fund it's actually going down and I'll show that in a uh following slide so this is general fund expenditures by object um you can see the

009bulk of our expenses 80.1% are salary and benefits uh Capital dropped from 5% to 2% compared to last year which is mainly due to blueprint 181 as you know we're winding down on that project and then this is general fund expenditures by program so the state we report data to the state that's broken out by the C uh General categories um 84.1% of that is in instructional and support services so a large chunk of that um on the upcoming slides we'll talk about the determination of the levy comparing 23 to 24 uh reasons for changes in tax levy and then the impact on taxpayers so the property tax background uh there's various jurisdictions when you get your tax statement there's going to be City County um School District each taxing jurisdiction ass sets their own

010um Levy and then the taxes are collected by the county and remitted to jurisdictions and then there's a a visual of what the tax statement normally looks like that you get mailed uh mid November normally and it Compares last year to this year and also um has on there the it's broken out by jurisdictions and then when their public meeting is so the maximums for school districts are set by state law and then also there's the option as previously mentioned to do referendums which require voter approval um the property tax process we'll talk about in this next slide there's six steps step one the county sends out valuation notices that's normally in the spring and the only um Step that the school board plays into is that step five so in September you guys approved

011a proposed Levy and then we'll do the public hearing tonight and adopt the final Levy this tonight as well and then after that the county auditor will um send out the final statements for remittance so this is the district specific tax levy timeline so September 8th mde shared a draft Levy limit uh the 11th the school board approved that proposed Levy at the maximum so if there were any changes um made until September 30th those would be in that and then uh tonight will be the public hearing and proposed Levy the proposed was set at 3.6% uh the changes due to the Cal change in calculations which is can be from um MD finding errors in their maximums um schools that kind of thing so that's why why there's a change and this is just

012a summary of so we're looking at a 4.5% increase and then the changes by Levy category I will be putting it or describing in the following slides so this is a summary of the levy by fund the general fund's going to be going down about 0.9% community service fund is going to be down 1.3% and then The Debt Service fund is going to be down 8 % and the primary increase in The Debt Service fund is due to um issuing bonds related to blueprint 181 so in the general fund there was an increase in the local optional Revenue that's based on the property tax values so as the property tax values go up we will see an increase in that revenue and and then on the uh general fund as well ltfm or long-term facilities

013maintenance is going down um it's offsetting the increase we have for Debt Service so we issue debt uh to help cover our long-term facility maintenance needs and that is why it's less in the general fund than and increasing in The Debt Service fund so factors impacting the individuals um taxpayers school taxes changes in property value um there could be a change in the total value in the district uh a lot of times people will assume that because their taxes are going up that so tonight I'm presenting 4.51% my taxes are going up eight why is there a difference it's generally because their property tax value is going up not because of you know we're we're levying more than what we said so I I encourage people generally to look look at that market value to

014see if there's a change there if they question that so um this is just kind of a a a visual for those that like visuals the levy amount does not change even though a taxpayer's piece of the pie may change with market value changes so higher market value increase they're going to pay a bigger piece of the pie if they have a lower market value then they're going to pay a smaller pip slice and here's another example of how that plays out so if two properties are valued at $100,000 um they each pay $250 for a $500 Levy the orange House's value goes up 10% the blue House's value goes up 25% the school district is still collecting $500 we're not collecting any more Revenue the orange house um is going to pay less and

015the blue house is going to end up paying more uh this is a the following slides are examples of taxes with no change and then a 51.6% increase in property values and the property values um this is broken out by by category so there's residential commercial egg Homestead and you can see on there that the estimated taxes payable if there were no change in values would actually be going down but as you know we do have generally every year there's a change in market value and these amounts on the examples are what was used when we um did blueprint 181 so that 156,00 residential Homestead Property is the value used when we were um presenting at throughout the district on the blueprint 181 so if no changes in property value the the taxes would have

016went down for both of these examples and then same with the egg Homestead and the seasonal wreck this is based on a 51.6% c cumulative change um this is more likely what some homeowners or um businesses have seen you can see that that that's the change on the value of those homes um as I mentioned uh you can go out for referendum and this is like districts that we generally compare ourselves to so buiji Morehead Alec um they have similar demographics they have operating referendums that range from10 to almost $1,000 St Cloud does not have an operating reference them but they do have um alternative facilities funding which is another way to um get funds for their buildings so just want to note that on that slide and then the state property tax refunds and

017deferrals uh this is just available for homesteads and senior citizens it's another thing that they can uh file for so next steps would be the board accepts public comments on the oos Levy and then certifies the 2024 property tax levy are there any questions off easy that I guess hearing uh no further questions for Marcy then I would invite any members of the public that have public comment specific to the tax levy being discussed in this portion of the meeting you're welcome to come forward at this point okay in which case then I'm prepared to accept a motion for approval I'll make a motion for approval I'll second we have a motion from director spear with a second from director Breen to approve the resolution for the final tax levy for the 2023 taxes payable

018in 2024 as presented by Marcy is there any further discussion hearing none I believe this is a roll call Vote Yes Janet uh Michelle Breen yes EJ Don yes Randy Hyman yes Sarah spear yes uh Kevin Bo yes all present in favor all right thank you motion carries and uh then we move on from that portion of the meeting and we'll move on to uh recognitions I believe Dr Han you've got uh some folks lined up to Yes um Harrison the names of our students of the month are listed uh principal Conrad unfortunately is home ill this evening so we'll take note of those names um Depending on time I believe principal Stell mock here she [Applause] comes hi good evening I have student of the trimester names to announce for Baxter Elementary School we

019do a theme at Baxter and our theme this year is Together We Grow trimester one we were putting down Roots so the following students demonstrated Above and Beyond in that category from the fourth grade Elsie Breen Finley duffney David Exton Millie Franzen Garrett Gunderson Luna Mady Ellie McAllister Max twilliger and Josie zahar from third grade Annabelle Anderson LJ ker Johnson Arya Fugate Devin Hansen Connor Keepers Lennox Miller McKenna orline Logan Summers Jackson watasic from second grade Isabelle Bard Isa Khan Brena debel Axel Peterson Rosie sanduski Autumn schafhauser Reed sharp first grade Harvey Hall Molly Hansen Tucker Holton Noah Cal finnean keepers arah madzima Sydney McMillan and valoria perin that looks like they were listed in there twice so just scratch first grade repeated and then kindergarten Rivers castleberg Ren Freeman Austin Lasher Reese smens Colton

020Meyer Kendall Romans Greta Swanson and Liam swo so each teacher certified staff is allowed to choose just one and then we do that three times a year at the end of each trimester thank you thanks principal stach and I believe I do not know if principal Rusk so we have a choir concert at BHS tonight um but we had our swimmers um had a a wonderful showing at State um you can see our state participants but we had some record Breakers uh my child just set a new school record um in the 503e and I believe she also set another SCH we had a new school record in the hunter butterfly um and another New School record that was set 45 years ago in the 100 free again by myal just so some exciting um

021finishes and lots of great representation at State very good thank you so much all right then we'll move along to public input uh so at this time a member of the public can address the board comments will be limited to 3 minutes complaints or allegations against students or employees may not be discussed due to data privacy complaints or allegations must be submitted in writing to superintendent Han and the Board of Education and superintendent will not converse with to address the topics discussed at this time so that said Chris Wyman is first up I know we have some people in the back room so we may have a delay while people come up from in there hi I'd like to introduce myself I'm Chris Wyman I'm a teacher at Baxter School I teach second grade and

022I just would like to extend an open invitation to all of you to come into my classroom and see what a second grade classroom is like I will send you my contact information and would look forward to hearing from you cool thank you thanks thanks Chris uh next up uh Tom coet good evening members of the school board this is uh my name's Tom K I live up in Nisa Minnesota I fish the same Lake as uh director uh John so I was going to give him a little harass assment tonight but no I can't do that um this is my third school board meeting the last four months and I want to share with you some concerns I have about what I've seen and heard it seems that a considerable amount of time has

023been spent assessing the appropriateness of the books found in the school library now based on a brainer Dispatch newspaper article I read There were there was a unanimous approval from a 12ers evaluation panel on the book Empire of storms according to the dispatch the following are some comments by the reviewers and I'll redact the name so we don't have to hear that there were four passages in the book redacted said he felt were controversial and he and he went on to say I also hope that we collectively would have the wisdom to leave certain decisions to family structure in that when it's ambiguous or gray that we ER on the side of the family's right to choose for itself what their children are exposed to second one the the sexual encounters depicted an Empire of

024storms are loving and consensual and could help initiate conversations between students and their Guardians and help the students grow and mature other committee members spoke of students and parents right to choose for themselves and their families redacted said he was uncomfortable reading the book and does not think the district needs to provide that kind of resource for students based on some of the scenes especially because it is readily available in other places redacted stated the book was checked out three times since it was purchased in 2018 so my question is what are we doing here we spent a lot of time reviewing these books and these are comments by those who approved the book being in the school library in a real world business environment based on the arguments from both sides of this issue

025it would be a no-brainer to pull the book this is a protection I believe we owe families in our community now in closing at the October board meeting we were presented with academic statistics ranking students with their grade level with Minnesota state averages and we might all agree that there is room for improvement I also understand that there are issues that might prevent kids from attending school on a regular basis we can't solve all those issues but we can't focus like a laser beam on fundamentals such as Reading Writing and Mathematics so that they have a better chance to succeed when they graduate a better educated Workforce would also help us compete in a challenging Global Market I a lot of other things I'd like to share with you but I only have three minutes

026and my time's almost up but I I thank you for your service to our community thank you Jeff wig please my name is Jeff wig and I'm a lifelong member of the Brainard community and I'm lucky enough to know most of you at this table personally and I want to thank you for the service you're providing to our community's kids and to our future by taking the tremendous responsibility of leading our schools Mr Hyman I don't think you and I have had the chance to meet but I hope to have that opportunity soon uh I'm especially grateful to each and every one of you because it feels to me like there's never been a tougher time to be an educational leader whether you're a staff member you're a teacher an administrator or a board member

027remember the forces that impact how you do your job are stronger and honestly feel more divisive than they've ever been and one force that just seems like it accelerates faster and faster is change families politics and Faith are all undergoing significant stresses and Technology puts vast amounts of both useful information and divisive and harmful disinformation right in the hands of any kid who owns a smartphone the stuff of the web comes at kids unfiltered and it seems to me like nobody in charge of the internet feels any responsibility for making sure kids get the guidance and the context to critically assess what they're seeing and reading and that to me is why the schools have such an important role some kids are lucky they have families or faith communities where they can ask hard questions

028and they can have thoughtful conversations with adults but for many kids school is the only place where they can read about different perspectives they can read about different ways of life in a place that's safe and where caring adults are there to give them guidance and context and that's why I urge you as a board of education to exercise Extreme Caution when it comes to calls to remove books and materials from our libraries and classrooms I would much rather my child have the opportunity to learn about topics of controversy in the safety of the school where access to controversial material is controlled and there are teachers and Librarians there to help them make meaning of it thank you Mr chair board members and superintendent Han for this opportunity to speak and kudos for the work

029you do and the responsibility you've taken on for our kids thank you thanks Amy AO please I couldn't let you get away with not hearing from one Ward tonight good evening my name is Amy AO and I'm a speech language pathologist at Garfield Elementary School I work with with students in kindergarten through fourth grade and have worked in the brainer district for 23 years I am also a brainer alumni and I have two children who are also brainer alumni Garfield Elementary has two speech language pathologists and between the two of us we work with around 70 students who have been identified as having a communication disorder in speech intervention we work on a variety of skills including but not limited to language vocabulary grammar literacy figurative language following directions articulation stuttering social skills and speech

030intelligibility I went into this profession to help students gain confidence in their communication skills and help them develop tools to increase their success in the regular education classroom room as well as outside of the school setting I love my profession and I love my job it brings me joy to work with students and to advocate for them unfortunately this position as well as um as well as special education teaching positions comes with a heavy burden of paperwork these paperwork demands have created an impossible workload for speech language Pathologists and special Educators in order to Pro provide our students with the service time necessary to make progress toward for their educational goals we are forced to spend time during the evenings and weekends working on paperwork this takes time away from our families and ourselves these

031challenges create difficulty in maintaining a healthy work life balance and often leave us feeling depleted and burned out workload needs to be addressed in our contract this is one way brainer can attract and retain the quality professionals who work in the Brainard School District we need to ensure Educators have the time they need in their daily schedules to complete their required paperwork in addition to providing them time to plan quality lessons and deliver these lessons to our students I invite you all to come to visit my classroom I have a great job and fantastic students who I care deeply about you are welcome to come in and see the hard work they do to help them achieve their communication goals I also welcome you to reach out anytime I have a really fun job so

032I really encourage you to reach out to me I know at times being a public servant can be a thankless job I offer you a sincere thank you to all of you for serving on the board and advocating for our district Educators employees and the students in our district thank you thanks thanks Amy next up is uh Tammy sand Benson please thank you excuse me thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak and thank you also for what you do my name is Tammy sand Benson I live in Baxter and had two boys graduate from BHS I was also the librarian at Baxter Elementary from 2018 to 2023 mirrors windows and doors people including children should be able to see themselves and their reality in books mirrors people including children should be able to

033see and learn about others in books including people that are different from them windows people including children should be able to venture out into new worlds having some knowledge of what they are stepping into doors isn't the public school meant to teach schools have become a schools have become a place where so much more than Reading Writing and arithmetic needs to be taught yes it's very important don't get me wrong but whether you like it or not more and more subjects need to be addressed life skills are just as important as the three Rs how to treat a friend or a not friend how to control your body how to exercise your body how to think critically library books are a huge part of that learning as an elementary librarian I was with kid kids

034that had impulse issues we'd read my mouth is a volcano it drew attention to the issue not only for the kiddo that could not stopped talking but also helped kids that were troubled by this I was with kids that had not learned or been taught manners we'd read do want to Otter a book about manners they wouldn't grasp all of it but maybe one or two things I was with kid I was with kids from split families Blended fames am Foster families black and brown families families with two moms or two dads kids from abusive families kids that are questioning their gender identity we must have books for all these children I understand this doesn't sit well with everyone age appropriateness must be taken into consideration but please remember kids are not a one-size fits

035all there are kids that are very sheltered and kids that have witnessed or experienced much more distressing reality maybe a book gives them an escape maybe a book G makes them feel normal maybe a book helps them learn a skill taking that away is unfair for those of you that want to protect book for our kids access for kids access to books you have to show up show up speak up take up oxygen if the only thing our school board and administrators and teachers here is this book is inappropriate or my child can't read this book they are left with no choice but to believe that is what the majority wants I always told oh thank you Tammy good place to stop uh next up is Lisa drez please my name is Lisa dreitz I

036am a lifelong resident of this community community and a product of the Brainard school system my children are also brainer alumni I am a warrior and most definitely Bleed Blue this is my 32nd year as a mathematics teacher in the brainer District I have taught at various buildings over the years Franklin Junior High Brainard High School Washington Middle School and Baxter Elementary currently I teach 8ighth grade algebra at Forest View Middle School I've been teaching without a contract for approximately 6 months I feel defeated I feel like I am no longer a priority and that my efforts in the classroom are no longer valued tonight I am here to invite each of you into my classroom it is an open invitation come at any time no need to email or call in advance the signage

037on my classroom Windows read come in in we are awesome thank you for your time and consideration thank you Misty chob please good evening thank you for allowing me to address the board today uh my name is Misty job I am an educator of 20 years teaching English to middle and high school students in this District I am also the parent of two alumni who each received an excellent education in Brainard Public Schools I'm also the president of Education Minnesota Brainard the job I'm doing today Bears little resemblance to the one I accepted nearly 20 years ago most of the long list of acronyms that will be used uh throughout the evening did not exist when my career began mtss acmp TDN to name just a few each of these new initiatives have added responsibilities

038and requirements to my daily role with no additional time added to the day to complete them stud student needs have also increased exponentially with rates of behavior issues and mental and emotional health disorders that are unprecedented and just continue to grow my concerns no longer begin with academic achievement but the well-being of the human beings both big and small walking into our buildings every day the impact on our teachers has been profound burnout I fear is becoming the norm as people who genuinely love and care about their students are unable to meet their ever growing needs without sacrif icing their own time mental and emotional well-being and financial resources to do so there are no easy answers or solutions to these issues but reaching out to the Educators who are in classrooms every day would

039be an excellent place to start as decisions made in isolation from experience typically have little chance of success the board has had many discussions about hiring and retaining quality teachers settling a fair contract that recognizes the profound demands of this profession is a beginning following followed by meeting with and listening with open ears and an open mind to those doing the important work of caring for and educating the wonderful students of our community teachers who feel heard and respected are the district's best resources for finding realistic solutions to the issues facing us like many of my colleagues tonight I would like to invite you to join my classroom anytime you would like I'm currently teaching at the brainer Learning Center in the alternative program and I'm happy to welcome you to walk through those doors

040anytime that is convenient for you thank you thank you Miss Beth Bastion please hello and thank you for allowing me this opportunity to speak to you tonight my name is Beth basan I'm an educator of 32 years with 25 of those years as a public servant for ISD 181 at brard High School in my 25 years here I have served in both special education and regular education I've served students with disabilities as a case manager I've taught basic level social studies and a recognized social skills program for students with autism I have served students in both regular and advanced placement American history regular online and advanced placement government advanced placement geography soci ology and psychology I've served as a professional Learning Community leader a district trainer for new teachers a peer coach and I'm currently

041a curriculum leader I'm now also working to facilitate a site team council meeting of teacher teachers counselors administrative and support professionals who collectively work to address Behavior communication procedure and process issues in our site I'm providing you with just a snapshot of my long res resume so that you have an introduction into my work my public service to say that I take my vocation lightly is a heavy heavy heavy understatement please check with my husband and my family let me also share that I'm the parent of two recent graduates who over the course of 13 years benefited from the work of other public servants in the Brainard school system that did not and do not take their job lightly and I thank them as well as you for their service the field of education has

042gone from chalkboards to overheads to computers to one-on-one devices to Google classrooms to purposeful and creative online learning the teacher toolbox of 2023 requires a mental physical Technical and emotional depth and breadth that was not present when I began my journey of Public Service the classroom of 2023 and the teacher grit determination and resiliency to sustain it are not the same as even the classroom of 2019 we are in different times as a collective staff we live those different times daily it's in this spirit that I am inviting Schoolboard members as many of my fellow teachers into my classroom to witness these times and the work that is being poured out into our students please feel free to contact me and set up an appointment to come and watch my classroom and work with me

043in my efforts to serve our students of the community every day thank thank you for your time thank you B uh Rachel Cohen please good evening thanks for serving and thanks for everyone behind me of that is ALS that are also serving and caring for kids I'm going to just talk really quick about school policy IES as they relate to the appeal of the book challenge Empire of storms so as you know policy 66 is the resource selection policy under the objetive objectives it says strong effort will be made to provide resources that provides that will support and enrich the curriculum It also says strong effort will be made to place principal above personal opinion isn't it a principle to ensure the school is free of pornog gy and obscene materials the policy goes on

044to say to select resources of the highest quality to assure a comprehensive collection then it finishes the objectives by saying few works are totally perfect and may contain one or more flaws but that doesn't make them poor quality that's what it says in the policy but does it make them high quality apparently you can still accept them if they're flawed and and only use the good parts that might work with curriculum but not with a library book when a student chooses to read a book they don't skip the pages that are flawed or Sensational the school needs to stay focused on the highest quality not flawed quality another policy is 504 student dress and appearance policy says in part student clothing may not include the following clothing including words bearing a message that is lewd

045vulgar or obscene communicating a message that is racist sexist or otherwise derogatory the intention of this policy is not to reduce the rights of the students such messages are acceptable as long as they are not lwd vulgar obscene racist Etc so the words taken from the book Empire of storm storms if written on my t-shirt would violate the dress code policy 504 and this book if it was a movie would not be allowed in school I challenge you to be consistent thanks thanks Rachel Kern please first of all I just want to say thank you for addressing the uh the two policies or the the book Challenge and the the policy you're going to be looking at tonight um like she was just saying if if my what I see is that if you can't

046read something in public like down at the state legislature it shouldn't be in our schools um we are I I was talking to a former Congressman not too long ago uh the congressman that we had here and he said to me he said we have to take the children and I corrected him and said they're not your children we have to remember whose children they are um you know we got to talk about the I heard about the four RS you know there's the three Rs the Reading Writing arithmetic rubber should not be the fourth R um the children they belong to the parents and what I see in the community is that we all want our children to be educated you know we all want them to have a good solid education and these

047people that that work so hard with our kids we want to back them up uh we're not trying to tear down anything we're trying to have our children have good quality education I've heard it said that they can get this material anywhere well it should be anywhere but in the schools and with that thank you thank you Doug and Shirley Jager please good evening tonight the school board is going to vote on the appeal of the ad hoc committee's decision to retain the book Empire of storms one of the criteria the committee used to make their decision is stated in the guidelines of policy 606 it says to weigh the values and form opin I on the resource as a whole rather than on passages or sections taken out of context well I contend that

048doing that is actually impossible and goes against all known methods of rating when you look at a movie take James Bond for example you can talk about a car chase or a gun battle or maybe bombs exploding and these are all parts of the story they will cause the movie to be R-rated because of violence each of these things are separate incidences within the whole story there will be times when the agent is just talking and that's not violent but it is a part of the whole story and there will be moments when he meets a woman and they end up having sex this too will cause the movie to be R-rated for sexual content you can focus on any one of these scenes and talk about it but that doesn't mean you are taking

049it out of context they are just parts of the whole story when we talk about the explicit sexual incum in the book Empire of storms we are not taking it out of context we are talking about a part of the total context it's a piece of the whole story you cannot isolate it and ignore it just like when you rate a movie it's never the total movie that gives it the rating the rating is based on the content not as a whole but whether it contains elements of violence sex nudity or language Empire of storms contains descriptive sexual intercourse both oral and vaginal it's very descriptive and it is woven into the story it's there as a part of the whole that makes it equivalent to being R-rated the school doesn't allow R-rated material to

050be worn on clothing and it doesn't allow R-rated movies to be shown in the classroom so why would you consider keeping a book in the library that is equiv to being R-rated it doesn't make sense and it doesn't support other school policies so I challenge you tonight to be consistent thank you thank you Shirley I believe that concludes our public comment for this evening we will move on to the approval of the minutes from our November 13th board meeting pleas motion second I have a a motion from director Dinger with a second from director spear to approve the regular board meeting minutes from November 13th any discussion hearing none all in favor signify by saying I please oppose same sign motion carries next up is the consent calendar uh this is one of the amended

051agenda items we have the fourth bullet down field trip request I believe it's from the Nordic ski team do I have that right correct otherwise everything else is as it was in your board packets that were released last week um as to the policy 501 502 and 526 we looked at these on the last consent calendar too I believe these are stock msba language we didn't really have any redlines or changes to those and what changes there were were director m is around driven by Statute um where they were so I don't believe there were any comments the last time we read these so that's why we moved them to the consent agenda any questions about those okay I'll make a motion to approve the consent thank you director Spear and I'll second all right

052we have a motion from director spear with a second from director Breen to approve the consent calendar as presented any further discussion hearing none those in favor signify by saying I I I oppose same sign motion carries all right next we move up to presentation of the center plant WAP sale update by deian Barry and Kathy Tusa hi hello hi hi I am Kathy Tusa um I've been involved in the plant sale so I've been at the board many times but some of you are new so it's nice to meet you it's time for us to start planning our sale is in May and I know it's time because I've got the first catalog of the season um our plant sale is sort of a community event mainly because we get to use the greenhouse

053at the old high school Farm but also uh the little wild bird store uh gives us some uh seeds and other businesses save boxes for us so that our Shoppers have something to carry their plants in and Brainard floral gives us plastic pots that they used to just recycle and crowing power's operation Roundup helps us out with expenses for other uh things that we have like potting soil and so forth we start planting our seeds in February at the center and by mid-march we're ready to move out to the greenhouse with the seedlings uh last year we had 17 varieties of herbs 15 of tomatoes eight of peppers 15 coal crops which is a term I never knew before includes squashes cucumbers pumpkins that sort of thing and we plant flowers lots of flowers everything

054from alysum to Zenia and in addition to individual plants we put together flower gardens tomato and herb gardens and many many floral baskets last year um one of our board members and also a a plant crew person Nick came up with this idea we called it the colus project sounds like some underground spy but um we started chus some people had them in their homes and they were kind of unique kind of different if you're familiar with chus it almost looks like a flower without being one it's very beautiful and colorful and different varieties so we picked maybe four or five and we did cuting and we had some big enough to use for prizes at a Christmas party December our plant sale is the next May um we had colus growing and the ends

055of hallways and cuting growing at the greenhouse by the time the plant sale came in may we probably had over 200 different varieties um sold them at our plant sale um did beautiful garden Baskets at the entrances of all of our buildings um was a wonderful project so it went so well they're now our mother plants at the ends of our hallways and cuting are being done we had 14 we used for prizes at last Friday's Christmas party so if you're a fan of colus I'm sure we'll have a couple hundred at this maze P plant sale as well um so the colus project has continued um we're very thankful for you the support we received from you and our intent we always do kind of a wrap up usually in August and this year

056we were busy doing other things I'm not certain what happened but we felt it was good to give you a followup and um we're hoping to have use of the greenhouse once that is all filtered through your process again this year but um we we really appreciate it and when you're ready and uh we have a decision we'll let you know you can either come and see the baby classrooms that we have at the center when we start them under the grow light or when um they're bigger and and out at the greenhouse we'd like to have you check out the process because it is pretty phenomenal and I can be very proud of what they do because I don't have anything to do with it my benefit is purchasing plants and seeing things grow

057in my own home because of it it's a fabulous Community project thank you all very much for you thank you thank you all right we we move into our new business action items and we will start with the uh approval of the second reading of msba policy 631 Library materials So based on the first reading uh the information that was discussed at the board table those adjustments have been made within the policy and are reflected um in red uh once we made those adjustments I sent it back to our policy committee which is director Bo and director he um they had two actually three additional suggestions you will find those suggestions highlighted in yellow um I don't think the yellow highlight came through on this one did on this one on page seven though um

058we actually did it backwards did we do it backwards yeah we want the word decision to carry through instead of the word report gotcha we had it decision in one sentence in report the other and we just wanted to make it consistent so we want report not decision no we want decision not report right now reports highlighted in yellow okay this one says decision so this one might not you have the highlighted changes I have the final we're not all singing off that same him no I got to go back to this one got that's all right um beyond that there were no other director Heyman that's you and I kick that around right the idea was that what we're trying to do is we're trying to make the statement that the the ad hoc

059committee when they come to a decision it is a decision so it should be communicated as a decision not as a report gotta because the only board action from that point forward would be what we're doing tonight which is to rule on an appeal of that decision and um and decision is the term that's used correct correct and we're going to leave it as that that that's my understanding correct I agree so on page four you're removing that highlighted no one of the things was talking about doing the creation process um what was highlighted in yellow and and director Hyman you might be able to speak to this more was when you're looking at the only sentence that was there before was that are in poor physical condition however they're removed because they're outdated inaccurate

060no longer useful for curricular support or reading enrichment or have not been utilized for an extended period of time was one of the recommendations that came from committee um beyond that there's been no other public input that I have received or that was given to me by um any of the board members from the first reading no and this particular section pertains only to the curation process director Hyman clared provided clarification right we're on the same page on that one too yeah I just we're not talking about an appeal or or let's say our resource is removed through an appeal process that this has nothing to do with that that's later in this document because there is something stated that an appeal cannot be made until 5 years has passed on a book this has

061this is the curation procedure and process and I just wanted to make sure that it applied to both sentences of paragraph C because at the time uh it appear that it only applied to the last sentence y makes sense it was a good change thank you sides of the book's incorrect what does that mean if it's inaccurate well so so I think that's that's because the science changed or they think about planets so depending on how outd n to eight I mean gotcha so some of those things may make the material no longer applicable you're talking about paragraph C now M DJ I don't know it's par it is but it's page four uh it's the Cur the curation procedure oh yeah yeah okay okay yeah was that the question you're asking what would determine

062that I was just curious what what makes it inaccurate there's been a trend across the country to kind of rewrite history a lot of the books and change the wording in some of our classical books and I just was just wondering who gets to decide what's accurate but I understand you find a new planet you can't be teaching people that there's eight of them there's n of them well I'm still team Mercury just for the record it's a planet to me and it's always going to be that way that was the first example that came to mind sorry it's a good example okay so under um 11 would be let's see you still on page four I am on Page four number 11 and then um B um are we giving the disc permission to

063use whatever resource they choose to assist with selections of books basically yes okay in other words we were trying to L um based on community feedback based on board discussion um it doesn't preclude them from using the American Library Association necessarily but it doesn't name it as a specified resource that is the dictated resource to be used can I go back to page three uh paragraph four uh um I think uh director donlinger had raised the issue at the last meeting what is the definition of atypical student and I can't remember what I think the the previous the previous uh uh it was in our previous policy had uh students and atypical students I think and I I guess what I would propose is to have and the needs and interests of all students for

064whom the materials were selected and eliminate including atypical in other words treating all students it does seem unusual to me to just call it the atypical students they're students can we just make it for all the students I agree it's just kind of a and I don't remember was this referring to like books that are Braille yeah I summoned director Mera to the sorry I told you we W going to bring you up but I'm bringing you up right add it to the list the long list of Lies I've told you the intent of the language of atypical from the original policy as I read it is intended to ensure that we're conscious that there are small parts of the community or even individuals who think differently who are different who still need to see

065themselves in the Holdings of the library we had a a speaker earlier uh in public comment address that very piece and so it's about being intentional about doing that the the all language I'm a little concerned that if we use all tonight where we all agree that we're concerned about the individuals 5 years from now when it's not all of us is that language going to be equally interpreted that way so if we're not comfortable with a typical perhaps we would change all to each to make sure that we're conscious of individual needs in the library as well as collective needs and then my understanding uh on that particular red line that was not part of the msba boiler plate we added that somewhere along the way no it was part of it's in our

066original policy it's in our original policy and and so I'm I'm offering that that's what our interpretation of what the intent of original policy was because you're right it was not an msba I that sure I think it makes easier to understand I so you'd insert that in the interests of each student instead of the students yeah it needs an interest of each student For Whom the materials were selected is how I would Redline it I can get on board with that I can too I know it's hard to word Smith at the table but I think what we're collectively trying to do is preserve that some students have different experiences different values different worldviews different histories different stories and they need to be able to find themselves in the library even if it's not

067something I personally be interested in or I agree with yeah I think each I think each that's cool yeah I don't really like the word atypical anyway I either I wouldn't want to be called atypical I wouldn't want to be the atypical one myself I found it to be interesting language but I do want to honor that they were attempting too to be inclusive in what they were attempting and they wrote that clear yeah most definitely right I think we have broad consensus on making that slight change thank you thanks yeah otherwise everything else in red like I said unless it's highlighted in yellow it's the same thing we saw last time well no it's the from what you've seen from I sent out the revision based on what was discussed at the bo table

068there were changes correct so page page seven paragraph 5 it's going to be uh decision not report correct correct because in the following sentence where is it or the previous sentence where is it uh it's up two sentences above that one yeah so it's same thing it's just making it consistent with the prior one okay I I need some help understanding the um um reconsider not the reconsideration of specific Library material to then um appealing that decision so in paragraph 3 no in paragraph D the second paragraph of D1 formal request for for reconsideration okay if a specific Library material is the subject of a formal request for reconsideration and a final decision is made to retain that is made to retain that specific Library material then the specific Library material shall not be subject

069to additional requests for reconsideration for 5 years I get that where does the appeal part come into this well that that's part of like so when a decision's made so let's say it does they can appeal it if it's changed then it's still held for five years I mean I think what you're saying is there's some vaguery here right like in terms of tonight for example okay right so as of right now Empire of storms stands as retained MH pending the board vote on the appeal in a few minutes so what you're saying is how's that cut right because mine is whatever the final determination is because some of the ad hoc committee's decisions aren't going to be appealed to the school board so if they're not appeal to the school board it would be

070whatever the final determination is based on how far it goes through that process okay what I'm what I'm struggling with is the whole appeal process okay um so you have 12 people and I think we had 14 but you had 12 people with Empire of the storms and those 12 people unanimously decided to retain that book where does is that's not a decision that somebody can appeal that decision correct do we need any qualifying factors for being able to appeal a decision go to you know I think the mere fact that they disagree with the ad hoc committee's vote of in this example 12 12 to nothing that yeah I mean you only sentence it that to your point the only thing that says it is the decision may be appealed to the school board

071that's the only language we have in there that talks about that and it doesn't say anything specific that calls that out as a final decision yeah and that's what because if you're looking at well I want to challenge this in five years but it was never appealed but we do have a statute of limitations if you will on the appeal process right somebody can't appeal in ad hoc because 606 was vague on that what we tried to do with 631 was say it once once there's a committee ruling on a resource you have X number I don't remember what the term 14 days or something to appeal it to the school board yeah I think my concern is that you have a com a committee of 12 people from the community making a decision and

072which takes a lot of time and resources and then a person can fill out a paragraph and appeal that whole process all over again in five years in five years but that's not what happened this time it happened immediately no the the parameter of five years basically means let's say a book is removed all right so that book will remain removed and F like five years past that removal date somebody can challenge and say I want that book reviewed because I want it to be retained so the decision and recommendation from MSB is that you put a window in so it's not indefinitely retained or indefinitely removed because right now it's indefinitely retained or removed like forever so some of that clarification right okay and they figured out five years was a good cycle of

073you typically will see a group of students or age of students move through you might see a different and it might be challenged for different reasons right some people might challenge sexual content some people might challenge the violent content so 5 years that's where that term five years came put in okay um and then through the process they still recommended because it's been in place that you allow an appeal some some policies don't they make the decision final at the committee some people some policies have made the decision final with the superintendent so why do we say that they have to wait five years if they can appeal it's the immediate appeal it's the complainant whoever filed to have the book retained or removed is the complainant so they have to be the one to

074appeal okay so think of it like a court case yeah like if if you got a guilty verdict if you will right you can either accept the verdict and the sentencing that goes with it or you can appeal it to an appeals court and go to an appeals court we're the appeals court and then if we may if it never comes to us then the decision made below us was Final if it comes to us the decision we make is final and then that fiveyear clock starts ticking from that point whether it's retained or removed that make any sense it does make sense I I'm I'm still struggling with it because I can't imagine I would reverse a decision that a committee of 12 people would make based on their due diligence to make a

075decision about a resource but I guess I I guess maybe somebody would well director joh so my opinion on that is and I'm not saying you're wrong but I think that's why there's a school board because is it's our job to people elect us to get done what they want in a this big machine and if uh that's what our job is is to kind of help steer the ship at a high level not day-to-day stuff but that's what they elected us for and um you know whenever organizations da without oversight they can get going a certain direction and you know a a few people could change the direction of our schools and I think it's our job to make sure it stays in Lanes so I think it's important that people can get to

076us um myself okay I think I do I was going to explain to Michelle that it could be overturned tonight I'm not saying it's going to be I think where the fiveyear comes in is that we just don't want people coming back every year appealing a book that a 12 Committee Member you're more broadly questioning the concept of the appeal the five year part I don't have any any issue with concern about it's the whole appeal process if the if the committee makes a decision to retain a book well if you read how the policies written now if you go to page seven item number five um the complaintant May appeal the review committee's decision to the school board by submitting a written appeal to the superintendent within 14 days of submission of the review

077committee's decision decision the school board shall respond to the appellant a written decision on the appellant's request within 6 weeks of receiving the submitted form so to me this is a lot like a vote of non-c concurrence where you have to give a written response back so it's putting the burden back on a school board so the the committee of 12 had the burden of reading the book discussing the book then it's going to come you have one School Board member who sits on that it's going to put basically like the voted nonc concurrence you the school board are going to have to then weigh in and give a written response how you you know and I think you know to your point Michelle if we as a board have written this policy to delegate

078that work to this Committee of 12 and then we say it doesn't matter what you think anyway why wouldn't we just take on the work of being that committee and why would we delegate it out to to have a committee of made up of community members and professionals and students and so forth I if we're not going to uphold or honor what they've come up with I mean then it's on us to do that same due diligence to read that book to go through the criteria to understand um what's being asked of us and and I I will take that on um gladly but I I do think the community should be part of that through that delegation to the to the committee well I think that's what's happening when it comes to again so

079you had to look at there's a curriculum process now we're specifically to library materials really what's happening when how this appeal process is written now in the new policy that's exactly what the school board would be assuming he would be repeating the process of the committee to give a response back and writing to the appellant within 14 days no you have uh six weeks okay the uh complainant has 14 days after the decision six weeks is by design meant for us to do what we're to so let's say I that d uh Dr Dr Han gets the the document the appeal and she tells us about it right we have to get it on this agenda and that gives six weeks gives us time to get it worked into an agenda with board members individual

080board members to have as much time to do whatever due diligence they want to do um I submit my own opinion on it is that I don't I don't know that it's incumbent on specific board members to do due diligence if they have specific concerns um that are being brought to them by the community um and then the other thing I would say is I would maybe be a little bit more on board with that if the if the ad hoc committee representation was heavier weighted to community members um but right now it's extraordinarily heavy on District staff that's what I was going to say so if you look at it Sarah one member of the administration one member of the school board two principles two teachers and a library media specialist you're already at

081seven or eight so this one's 12 nothing but who's to say the next one's not 75 so I just think the people should and then you know two members of the DAC you know I mean I mean that's literally your community representation right there that's all you got so I mean I don't think it invalidates anything don't get me wrong the staff are closer to it and they they're the professionals I don't want to take anything away from that but I want I'm saying that there's any Mal intent but if you're on the other side you'd be looking at the deal going it's a stacked deck you know that's how I would look at it I mean it's like why would I even waste my time because they obviously think it's okay I don't it's

082a differing of opinions and that's the nice thing about America is that you can have a different opinion and you can say what it is um you know so I think that I think we got plenty of represent I think that if I was on the other side um if I was trying to do one of these book deals I'd feel defeated before the first meeting of the deal I'd be like yeah guys don't need to read the book you can just vote because you're all in the C you all work together you're going to be like what do you think about the book you know that's how I would feel I'm not saying that's what happened but I think it's important that they have the opportunity but to director spear if you have an

083Avenue that every single one of these can be appealed I mean what are the odds somebody's not going to appeal them what do you mean everyone be like you're you know you're you're Harrison Smith and you get fined for hitting somebody you're not going to and you you're not going to not appeal it to the league office you're going to take your shot and see if you can true get away out of the fine right so now you're staring down the barrel of 17 appeals I get I get the I get the logic behind it well and then we're just negating the work of you know the committee and I I would rather if we're going to have that committee and have them make a recommendation and do that due diligence to make it feel

084like it's whatever it needs to be that people feel it's represented rather than us having to see every one of those as an appeal so the so are you suggesting Sarah that the committee makeup may be changed I'm open to we should change it I'm open to that idea I don't have a recommendation tonight on what that would look like no you're raising a very good point well I brought a point up that you guys didn't like was that I don't think the students should be on there and if I was a parent I wouldn't understand why we'd have students on this committee students are young they they're easily influenced we all know that we were they're just normal but why would they get a vote on something that if I was bringing this appeal

085or whatever you call it why would why would they get a vote some of them don't even have driver's licenses like why would they get to decide what books get to stay in the school it's like I said you know if you ask them what we got we don't let them pick the menu you know we don't let them pick out the textbooks in the classroom so why would we allow them to vote on something like this if he had a absent parent you know we're elected and the people that run the school are hired or you know work there yes I understand they're professionals and they've worked hard and not saying they're bad people I'm just saying that we're the elected one so we're supposed to set these policies that make sense and so

086I'm with you I think we should change the makeup of the of the board and who picks the people that's another thing do you pick them Heidi or who picks it so what H well a lot of it's been by who responded first so we took him an order to email so like Michelle Breen responded first you was the first board member uh director Hyman resped second he's the second board member I'm sure you're all going to get a chance to serve um one of the concerns that came to us from msba is when you do a Community member how do you ensure equal representation right so that was some of the concern the the student voice again also um with the work of msba um students are the ones who have the free choice

087with a book the student Representatives that sit on this committee have to have Guardian permission um and examples the Guardians are working alongside those students uh to be prepared for that ad hoc committee um so they're not operating in isolation they're working with a a parent or Guardian because otherwise they wouldn't be approved to sit on that committee I'm not saying that they're bad kids I'm not saying there's that certainly has nothing to do with the kids it's more on my side of the way I think about the deal is I don't understand they can't vote they can't I mean they can't do this they can't do that they can't sign a contract why would they to pick what books are in the school they're not makes absolutely zero sense to me but I think

088they're the consumers of that right and if our goal by having books in the library is to get them to read more to use their imagination to use their critical thinking skills I want it to be something that they're interested in and so I think having students on that committee as consumers of what we have in the library and reflecting their experiences is really important and I do think it's insulting to think that somebody on this committee doesn't make their own decisions I mean I I wasn't influenced by anybody else on this committee I made my decisions based on Through My Lens what I felt was reasonable and right and I think everybody else does the same thing I mean to assume that because they're all professional Educators that they can't think for themselves is

089not really fair I would just ask you Sarah in this case the students don't get to pick the book The B's the book's been chosen for them so I I am I agree with you that that that students you know they're they're going to gravitate towards books that they they like etc etc here they don't have that option they they're told you need to read this I guess for the committee for the committee yeah just just for the committee yeah just for the committee yep yep yep yep and actually volunteers were sought just like from the the district advisory parents and community members volunteers were sought and again then you have the elected official from the community so it is trying to find that balance um this committee makeup is very similar to any process

090throughout the entire State that's why msba um has recommended and researched it the interesting thing is Brainard had this process in place for curriculum well before the outline recommended policy yeah I don't think this is going to be something we're going to solve tonight and I'm sorry that I brought it up but knowing that we've got another reading could we move on the the items that we've decided on tonight and send it back to committee to figure out what we and bring a recommendation for um what we do next we might have to have a special committee meeting then so just so I'm reflective the two challenges or the two things that require further thinking you're looking at the ad hoc committee makeup would be one and the second would be um having an opportunity

091to appeal or not appeal is that what I hear or I don't want to I don't want that's what I'm saying but I if we're comfortable with that well I have one more okay I think it's ridiculous to make people read the whole book so I don't need to read the whole book I think it's an insult you said I was insulting those other people I think you're insulting my intelligence I can read say insting me I was just saying I can read a couple sentences out of some of these books and know that I don't want my kids see in that crap and I don't know why we'd have our tax dollars tied up we have all these teachers in here with a purpose tonight and we don't have any money to pay them

092and their working conditions are don't sell them too great from what I heard from a couple of them today because all these behavioral issues and here we are wasting our time on this you know I mean it's like I don't know why on Earth you have to read the whole book it just it's it's it's it's just crazy to me you know it's kind of like the t-shirts whoever talked about the t-shirts I can't remember who talked about the t-shirts you can't write it on the T-shirt you can't have in the movie The newspaper can't print it is this the person making the appeal I don't know making I don't remember there's 20 people I I don't know wrong with me I don't feel the Review Committee oh when you read the policy it's uh

093page seven item for the Review Committee examine the specific I'm talking about page take that out yeah talking about page six page six C3 the complainant must the test to have right I mean technically they have to attest to it having read the book they don't have to read the book what what page page six uh C3 C3 right above D very last sentence I read the whole book I need to read the whole book pictures yeah I had asked this question at a at a previous board meeting what does read or viewed is is there a difference between those two words I mean to me there are we discussed one is you could just sit there and Page through that whole it's a graphic novel or something that has photographic or or visual stuff

094in it okay I'm just the only thing we had also talked about was the idea of adding uh verbiage in here for listened in case somebody was doing an audio version of it like you had a visually disabled person or something and we forgot to I think address that list good idea my only concern really with putting this back to the committee without just making a definitive directional choice is we're going to prolong this and I don't I think there are few people no outside this body that would love to see this drag out into March no I don't think any of us want it to drag out into March so if we go back to the drawing board at the policy committee level then what happens is director Hyman and I go back in

095there we Wrangle around a little bit then we come back and we go and then so our third reading of this would be at best February meeting I can live with the makeup of the of the ad hoc committee as long as you let them continue to appeal to us and then like the thing I just going ask about the kids you guys say no that's okay fine I can live with that um the read the whole book thing is just a sentence you could just find out if your committee is okay with it and just strike it kind of like we did with the the first big paragraph that was on this got that's smoked I don't think you can really evaluate an entire book by reading a couple of sentences though I'm not

096on board with that I think if we're going to be a learning institution and you're looking at a literary experience you're not going to Garner from it what you need to Garner from it into two sentences well I I will speak more to that when we get to the actual appeal because I think it's Germaine to the appeal itself that we're going to hear tonight or that we're going to discuss tonight I guess I could go one of two ways on this one would be I would be fine with getting rid of that attestation all together um because the reality is the complaintant must we're going to we're going to do like a we're going to do a Jeopardy quiz we can ask them 20 questions to see if they read the book I we

097have no way to validate that we read the book it's an honor System situation anyway yeah can I take it as a sign of respect so we're taking 12 individuals and telling them that they need to read how many pages let's get them the CLI uh 800 800 pages so we because we told the committee they have to read that book to understood but I to me it's the same as when you said that only a parent could chall when one of the drafts that we had early on said only parents not community members could challenge a book and my point was if there are people out there that have a problem with the book they're going to find a parent to front the challenge for them we we just went through our Levy and

098they're paying for what's going on in these schools they have kids in the school oh yeah no I mean we we already solved that one I'm just using it as another example where who are we to judge whether some if they you know we want them to sign a form that says I read the book right it's it's I mean that's my thing I would prefer that people read it so that they can judge it in their in its totality unless there are certain things again where there may be a very specific instance within a publication that somebody has a very specific I it was mentioned during public comment tonight where uh you know you have there's something one individual scene for lack of a better word in a work that is problematic for you

099you need to know what else is in the book right because you as an individual if you're concerned about it for your children or the district's children probably you know don't care if 99% of the of the content is um non- objectionable if there's an objectionable piece in there so to me you know I kind of go both ways on it I don't I don't I guess I I sort of don't care whether they read the book or not I get why we would want them to because we want them to make an informed choice on why they're challenging the book and have the ability and I guess the way you could do that we could we could kill two birds with one stone by automatically including the the complainant as a Committee Member on

100the ad hoc committee they me always have one vote going the other way I would take care of the unanimous votes um so what are we arguing about or what are we discussing we're trying to decide whether whether well I again I think think what we decided is everybody's back to comfortable with the makeup we we've we've come to what I call compromise on the make by the way I think it's way better than what we had before so good job well I appreciate that thank you yeah it really comes down to the two questions that are still on the table is what is the board consensus or prevailing thought on whether there should be an appeal process to the school board available or not which is this is the first time this has come

101up by the way I haven't heard this concerned voice prior to tonight I that because I was confused you know and it like on number seven on page 8 number seven says further appeal may be pursued to the courts only as applicable under federal and state law so you've got the review You've Got the appeal and then you've got the the next appeal can be goes to the courts is that how the if somebody was going to take it that far right but that I I'm trying figure out how this I would too process what this process looks like so um for the reasons that were stated by a coup other board members I'm in favor of retaining personally in favor of retaining an appeal process I just think again I if the elected if

102the elected people aren't the back stop for something that's going on then what purpose are we serving I guess I'm not I don't get me wrong I'm not relishing the idea of reading all those books because I will read them before I rule on them um but so we as the board you're it it would be if they appeal to the board right now it states the school board shall respond to the appellant a written decision on the appellant's request within six weeks of receiving the submitted form so now that puts that into question because if you're a person that wants to read an 800 pound or 800 page sorry they probably are about 800 pound Sarah M one's only weighing about three pounds I've read all of them um the you know then we

103would probably want a protracted timeline there to allow us time to do our own due diligence as individual board members before we rule on appeal right so six weeks doesn't feel great you're probably going to want to take that out to like 12 I think we we spent time on the six weeks thinking that gave us time between board meetings yeah that was just to try to get scheduling figured out well we give the committee four weeks and I I'm fine with that from front to back I'm fine with the six weeks yeah well then six is fine with me I guess I'm fine with that too that but I I I think the expectation before if we're going to not honor that committee that ad hoc committee's um ruling then we probably need to

104the board well and then we'll speak to that again during the appeal itself when it comes up in a minute um because there's a couple different ways that you could come at that in terms of motions and approaches right it's not just the book it could be a board determination on the validity of the process that the committee followed did they follow the process as prescribed in what we know is a fairly not well written policy 606 which is unfortunately the the tracks we have to run that train on until this is finalized so um I guess can I just ask another question on page eight number six what is a Minority Report is made I didn't understand what that meant so the written report shall be signed by all members um blah blah blah

105then this shall be the official record of the case if a Minority Report is made it shall be included with the official report Minority Report would be uh let's say um the recent board decision was 11 to one committee the committee coming out at ad hoc that one person could write a minority dissenting opinion in a cour opinion basically okay okay so what's the deal well I if we're going to do this in committee uh we need to set up a I can work on that I just want to make sure when I bring it back to committee I'm understanding what we're going to read review so the notes I have because we we've all gone back and forth like you've said one and then negated it so I'm just okay trying to track um

106review the appeal process so number five on page seven um you said we need to do that do we remove it do we keep it you've gone back and forth the process yep so number five like uh director Breen questioned does it St at ad hoc what I hear you saying is really your now you're all in agreement that that should stay it should have I know that we're in agreement but there's probably a plurality so is there any so I'm looking at what I need to do with lines and ink well I think the big thing Heidi is the committee the makeup of the committe make committee review the makeup of the committee because that may in our discussion within policy we might sit back and say well if we can if this committee

107is made up of a lot more community members then it becomes I guess in the eye of the beholder a little bit more of a Community Committee as well then we might sit back and say yeah you know then then that committee uh with the makeup of it that we've decided we don't think it should be appealed or it can still be I mean but I mean right now it's just I don't that's why I prefer director dellinger's approach I if you try to start playing with the chemistry or the makeup of that committee what you're doing is now you're putting a focus on how the committee is selected um if you start to get these you know like okay I don't I think it invites a lot of things that create a lot of

108ambiguity where as elected officials again I was going to say it later I'll say it now if these books that are coming up that are going to go through the committee process if you're out there in the committee and you know it's going to be appealed or you feel it would be appealed to the board you're better than filling out one of these and coming up and talking to us at this microphone you're way better off reaching out to the six of us individually through email and explaining your case Pro or anti because hey you're going to get more FaceTime and a more ability to articulate your position and your rationale behind your stance and and be you're going to get a one-on-one response from a board member usually on on what they sit uh

109where they sit on those different things so I think Community voice then if you have that during the appeal process everybody literally every taxpayer in this community has access comment to their elected officials on that issue and then that becomes representative in the appeal process which that's not existent in that room when the ad hoc committee is meeting that is a committee that's selected by District staff through a volunteer process I'm not saying that they stack the deck and I know you didn't say that either I'm not trying to put those words back in your mouth it create the perception of that for sure so from my perspective the idea of tweaking that makeup of the committee you're just inviting more more public concern about how that that committee's put together especially if you have

110a split decision on it I think there is power and again we have an appeal to talk about tonight when you get a 12 nothing from a group of professionals with a couple of community members and a board member on there pretty powerful to me kids yeah yeah so don't forget about them so for me I guess unless unless somebody's still voicing concern and uh director bre and I'm talking to you here I I'm in favor of retaining the appeal and not playing with the makeup of the ad hoc committee I can live with that I can live with that yeah I more than anything I was confused it says you can't appeal it goes to a court of law and then there is this little paragraph where you can we might be able to

111play with the language a little bit on that so why don't we why don't we we don't have to wait for a full committee meeting um director Mera and Dr Han and and and director Hyman and myself can work on that a little bit and get that a get a little more clarity in there all right then I'm going to make a motion does that work for you Sarah we have one more thing we have to solve before we get a motion though okay we now that we got to decide on the requirement for the attestation of reading the book or not that's the other outstanding item we haven't really as from the board members perspective from the people making no as written in 631 the draft policy says that the complainant will attest to

112having read the the entire book that's kind of insulting but if I read the first three chapters and I that's enough I don't need to read anymore I would I yeah I would like them to read the book well I think they probably will but I think it's kind of insulting to tell you that you have to read the book if you're going to challenge it I think you should have read it it's pretty phasing to challenge a book that you haven't read well good enough well do we say anything in here about decide what's I don't think we need to be the horse is dead like we can we can and and and I think I've got a a fair sense of so if we think of it it's as written coming from committee

113so do we have if we if we would count director Ward right and let's say director Ward just I have no idea where he would be on it but let's just say let's let's just leave his vote sitting to the side because I I feel bad doing this but I mean right now I'm in favor of leaving the policy as written um if and if people want to just attest to having read the book let them read you know attest to reading the book I can't I can't follow them home and find out if they read the book or not so they could lie yeah oh that's a great that's hell of a policy great idea but the idea being that at least you've taken the time if you're going to take the time to

114make 12 people take all this time out of their lives to go through all these processes let's not forget one thing let's not forget one thing that the building principal could make the decision and we wouldn't have wasted the last six months of Our Lives on this well let's not forget the second thing that happens a lot already great I heard it happen in one of our schools at some of these books were challenged under the opes or the preconception that they were sitting in Forest View and in fact they were not but the challenges were not repealed pull back once they knew they were in the high school which to me are two entirely different things right well the books were coded wrong correct no what happens is the books are ordered because our

115district uh media specialist is housed at Forest View most of those resources are ordered and shipped to Forest View so when there was a data request done the people doing the data request requested the invoices and got the invoices that showed the shipping addresses Forest View director Mera said that some of them were quoted improperly I'm sure there are some cases of that that the work on getting it cleaned up and there's some there's some when the books come in they review them they determine nope we're moving this book up right so the res I just want you know call it Devil's Advocate but we can make all these deals and all you're not going to read the book you're not g you know simple decisions how many books are in the school 5,000 10,000

1161,000 one less is really going to make too big of a difference this all could have been handled a long time ago so in defense of the people that are bringing in these concerns you know there are two sides to every coin and you know so anyways I mean I this is an unreasonable thought it's not the first one that I've ever had in my life but if we're going to allow the school district Personnel to order books based upon reviews that they've read why can't an ad hoc Committee Member do the same thing pull a bunch of reviews and read the reviews and not read the whole book now I understand that it wouldn't be fair to the librarian think we order a thousand books to read them all it's it's impossible it's it's

117an unreasonable request but yet the same in the same breath I mean you could argue that hey you know like maybe just you know view it or look at different uh other types of of websites that uh I mean I'm on the committee for the next next book I've read the whole damn thing uh it isn't that difficult I'm retired though too so I I got plenty of time but uh I I would think you know the attestation to the fact that they read it to me is good enough I'm not going to question like you said Kevin I'm not going to follow home well then for for count noses we've got enough to move forward with keeping keeping that language as written and that satisfies the other outstanding item that we had premotion okay

118I will make a motion to approve the second reading of policy 631 with three changes one to the word um report replace it with decision one to the word or the paragraph Yes for each and then also adding listening um to reading they can also listen to to it as an option good point because it's not it's not in there now that's correct I'll second that right so we have a motion from director spear with a second from director Hyman to approve the second reading of msba policy 631 with the three changes highlighted uh by director spear any further discussion what are we voting on we're voting on going forward with the Third meting with those changes that we just highlighted so this doesn't really still be discussed it can still be discussed at the

119next board meeting there some something that comes up okay any further discussion hearing none in uh those in favor signify by saying I please I I opposed same sign motion carries we'll put it up for a third reading hopefully in January all right moving on to the next item would be the approval of the new Earth and space science curriculum as presented oh I'm sorry I got to go to the next policy I'm sorry I hope this is the amended agenda um second reading of msba policy 720 on vending machines um and I didn't get a chance to set my my changes to this but um I got to go to the city council I want all Pepsi machines removed from brainer and I'll replace with Coca-Cola my anti- Pepsi campaign continues I don't think

120I have that kind of power but you can look into it I think the superintendent would have to leave no Mountain Dew well Mountain Dew would be missing we did not receive any public input or feedback from the first reading in this policy I make a motion I'll second have a motion from director doninger with the uh second from uh director Breen any further discussion yeah I have some questions uh and maybe what I can do instead of asking all these questions is uh uh to get together with Heidi after the end of the meeting and give you the name of two individuals was that spearheaded the last time that there were vending machines in our school district uh and they've got some I think they've got some good points to make because you know

121everything's everything's cash uh you know who's going to take care of the machines when they break down uh there was just a lot of I mean you know I think in fact it was a a uh econ class that was involved I believe with the vending machines maybe some of the teachers that are sitting here can uh uh they they took care of it so I'll talk to you about it but uh uh I don't feel none of that would directly go right into policy per se right it would be more about vendor selection I don't know how in depth we want to get with okay you know that I'll let we should R just to see if I mean there's a lot second reading so same thing right you guys can confer on it

122and something's funky then we can we can tackle it at policy you and I can Randy yep yep well there be a third reading yes for because you know back then uh from what I was told uh there were some pretty decent revenues made off these vending machines U kids took trips that were involved with the vending machines they went to Europe they went to China I mean there was a lot of neat stuff that was happening inside that glass so okay good point Thank you m any further discussion right was i p did we get a motion on this one I didn't yep I made the motion I'm sorry so yeah I got it I'm sorry I just had it written in the wrong place because I'm running one item ahead all night tonight

123for some reason Al we have a motion from director donlinger with a second from director Breen to approve msba policy second reading of 720 vending machines any further discussion hearing none all in favor signify by saying I I I post same sign motion carries Now Kevin yes sir can we take a five minute break sure I thought you okay session please cool it's excellent we will get underway with the uh approval of the new Earth and space science curriculum as presented so uh Tim Mera Nikki harmer and mine Anderson please thank you we got do you guys hear me yeah yeah all right um I'd like to introduce M harmer and Miss Anderson they're here to share with you tonight uh progress that's being made on a project that started before the uh co uh

124pandemic around restructuring our high school science curriculum and restructuring the pathway students take through the curriculum towards graduation in fulfillment of all the state science standard standards in order to do that there are two courses we need to create to make sure that we have adequate Pathways for students so they have both choice and they're able to fulfill each of the Earth and space and Earth and climate standards that are identified in the Minnesota state science standards so I'll let them present both the project and where they're at in it we're going to ask for the approval of two courses to be created out of this so they can continue their work thank you okay thank you very much um let me just move this here there we are okay so I'm Nicole harmer and

125I'm going to provide you with a little bit of background and overview proposing um as to what our proposal is and why and then mateline Anderson will give some more specifics about those two courses so as mentioned this has been something that's been GGO for several years um to develop uh a sequence and a courses that will actually help us to meet all Minnesota state science standards since they've just been newly adopted and have to be implemented in 20242 so the next coming school year um we have some different science program uh goals and oops here we go this isn't going to work there there we go um science goals in terms of developing our sequence and one of them is that number one that we want to build the capacity to deliver all the

126Minnesota Science standards for all students utilizing common instructional models and then I'm also going to skip down to number five um what that flexibility that was mentioned by Mr Mera to deliver the required standards to all students while still allowing multiple Pathways for career and College college readiness as well as to be able to access um Advanced coursework at the high school the other items in between are more specific to curriculum which we'll look for approval on specific curriculum later um this is more about the course sequence so as we continue on past the curriculum um our rationale again is that we have to deliver a curriculum that all high school graduates will be required to complete three credits and according to the state of Minnesota Credit is a year of science so six semesters

127of science that satisfy all of the 912 academic standards in science this includes um one credit or one year of Life Science Biology one credit or in other words one year of courses that deliver the Earth and space science standards and also one credit or year of science that delivers either the chemistry or the physics standards and those are the minimums for graduation we wanted to be able to do that but all still um be able to provide flexible options for students so that they weren't locked in to three required courses that they still had some options based on their interest and skill levels um within not only that three years but big Beyond I think we're struggling with some there we go I might have to do this yeah I think you're going to

128have to because it's not working very well okay thank you um so just quickly looking at this and this seems a little odd that we're talking about curriculum when we're talking about course proposals but we knew that in order to develop our course sequence that we also had to have a plan for how everything was going to fit together like a puzzle and so in our quest to do that we had evaluated some different curriculum um that would then determine what courses not only we currently offer but which ones we may need to fill the gaps in terms of curriculum and so we um are planning to Pilot test uh open side curriculum for the coming uh school year 24 25 because we believe that that was going to be the best way for us

129to be able to deliver those standards so we did some in-house evaluations and based on those determined that that was the best curriculum uh for all of our students so you can go ahead and go forward thank you um so whether it's biology chemistry or physics Ops curriculum came to the top what's unique about opsed curriculum is that not only does it meet What's called the Next Generation science standards which was really the the basis for the Minnesota Science standards um it's also about Equitable learning for all students in addition um they only offer biology chemistry and physics but Minnesota Science standards includes the Earth and space science standards as well this curriculum actually embeds the Earth and space science standards within those three EX ing cour courses which gives us some flexible options for

130all students so looking at this yep right there thank you so looking at this map this shows you that previously I think it was about a year ago we had approval for all students in nth grade to take our biology courses part of their required course sequence um we are going to continue with that path where all students will take biology but then in grades 10 through 12 they have flexible options to meet all of their other credit and um standards requirements before graduation notice here that in blue both biology um and chemistry and as well as physics are showing with a plus ESS which means that they're embedding the Earth and space science standards however students are only required by the requirements of Minnesota um graduation rules to have to take only chemistry or

131physics so a student conceivably could take one or the other but then still would need to fill some gaps with some earth science coursework so in green where other curricula we are proposing to create two new earth science uh courses called Earth and space and the other one will be called Earth and clim CL in addition we will sorry we will maintain some additional semester options and year-long options in advanced coursework as well so from there um we are going to highlight what those two Earth and space science classes are and how they kind of fill that Gap what the open side curriculum does not meet and I'll have um mat mateline Anderson start with that for you all right so you got kind of the overview of um why we need the Earth in

132space and so I'm going to talk to you specifically speically about what what courses we're looking at um four sections to this presentation so our descriptions what would go into the course catalog that students would see um what why the rationale which Nikki already addressed to some extent and then kind of a general curriculum overview there's only one lesson or one unit that's already written so it doesn't have anything to do with a specific curriculum but just that um to kind of go forward with the development of these courses and then finally I'll just give a quick overview of the professional development that I've been going through and then some of my colleagues as well so these are the two uh courses that we're proposing so Earth in space and Earth and climate so you'll

133notice each one is one credit at brard high school that would be one semester and so combined that would be the one credit of the Earth in space as required by the the state um they are non-sequential so they can be taken in either order and you'll kind of see when we talk about enrollment options why this is important um I'd also eventually like to offer them concurrently so a kid could sign up for either Earth in space or Earth in climate no matter if it's spring semester or fall semester um yeah this is so this is the the description you would see in the course catalog this is the forward facing to our students and parents of what they'd be signing up for okay so just to continue on with some of the rationale

134I don't know why you have the Magic Touch I don't but anyway um so as mentioned those 2019 Minnesota Science standards that all students have to complete one full year in other words two semesters of Earth and space science to meet the the requirements and we don't currently have a course at the high school um previously um Earth Earth and space science was uh more developed at the middle school and so we've had to develop a 912 offering in addition according to a document that came out from the Minnesota Department of Education with the 2023 legislative impacts they do give some local control as to how students can actually meet those standards so what we're proposing is is that with flexibility that there's three different Pathways that students can meet their Earth and space science

135standards and credit requirements again all students as a reminder will take biology in nth grade they'll have to take a year of either chemistry or physics sometime in grades 10 through 12 and those courses do embed some Earth and space science standards so one option for students to be able to meet their Earth um and space science standards is to take the entire two course sequence that we are going to propose as two semester courses that would be the simplest way to receive not only their third year of science their their last credits but also all of their science standards um however for students who maybe want to attain uh additional electives because of interests or career um or to be able to attain additional Advanced course work they have a couple of other options

136as well one is for them to take um say a year of chemistry which embeds about half of the Earth and space science standards and then to backfill in other words take one semester of a course called Earth and space that that'll provide the other um standards that they would be missing so essentially within 2 and a half years they'll have not only their standards met but the requirements from the state of Minnesota and they would still have one semester left that they could meet um by taking any course that they'd like to to get their last credit that's required for graduation and we offer many electives to be able to do that that would be very parallel to what a student that would take a year of physics they would also get about half

137of the Earth and space science standards and as a result they would take the other um Earth and space science class called Earth and climate to backfill on the other standards that they um have not yet attained still giving them another semester to be able to make some Choice as to what they would take for science of course we're going Toc going to encourage that all students try to take more science than just three years um but there is a potentially then a student would be able to also take uh it's not shown here as another pathway but they could take biology chemistry and physics and still meet all of the standards and actually not take any of the new Earth in space science classes at all but they would have all of those standards

138delivered to them within that sequence and they could also then attain a fourth year of Science of any choice that they would like to as far as the curriculum and the materials because meline will just quickly highlight like how these courses are going to be developed um that is De developed on a concept called three-dimensional instruction which is based on the Next Generation science standards which have been out for roughly about 10 years and it's just now that Minnesota is fully adopting very similar types of Standards into our um science standards that have been approved these are phenomenon-driven meaning that rather than back ending with examples after students learn about Concepts we actually use a phenomenon like a real world experience or observations where students will be doing a lot of the investigation and discovery

139of how the science Works to explain that particular item something like an earthquake or ski jumping or a forest fire from there as students are going through the process of understanding those phenomenon they are going to be working through three dimensions which means that they're developing their skills which we call science and engineering practices things like asking questions and developing investigations and working on mathematical computations they'll also be developing their core ideas which is typically called content of earth science so things about learning about plague tectonics and the different geological formations and last they will also be learning and using what's called cross cutting Concepts which are the ways of thinking that cross across um different disciplines so whether it's physics chemistry or science things like structure and function and stability and change so utilizing

140all of those different things are actually part of the Minnesota standard as an example here's one of the earth science standards where students are asked to ask questions which is the practice or the skill to clarify how seismic energy traveling through Earth's interior which is the core idea or the content can provide evidence for Earth's internal structure which is a crosscutting concept so not only will the lessons be developed around those but also assessments so a single assessment is is n't just going to ask them to spit back the content they have to actually practice the skill and demonstrate understanding of the Cross cutting concept now for the fun stuff all right so units of study we were looking at you know these two courses and each uh each course is going to have three

141core units and then a final three-week open investigation um the open investigation is going to be using the scientific principles that they've learned during that course and um then as a small group they'd be conducting presenting analyzing their own data and sharing it with their classmates um then so if I can show you kind of the general overview of of what uh this could look like and kind of what the ask is is uh the lab materials and simulations are for for um Earth and space science tend to be a little bit more kitchen grade so this is an example of one that I've already built into the weather and climate unit so this is a um a lab conducting like how could we explore ocean circulation currents and um so this is like a

142cooking oil with um like herbs mixed in and then with a heat Source you can start to build convection currents and so that's like the base model but then you know kids know that there's such thing as wind and there's um like the polar ice caps and there's land forms and so what can how can they modify this lab to to make this seem a little bit more like real world and so they'll have an opportunity to modify things like that but again this is all kitchen grade materials um I'm estimating less than 2500 for startup costs and then annual costs I would guess less than 500 for consumables um there is a possibility of looking at like a paid Subs uh subscription but that's kind of beyond the scope of what I've figured out

143right now um some other things students are going to need access to is our government and professional organizations and the data that they collect as Professionals in the field so locally it could be like our Crowing County Soil and Water Conservation District Statewide we could look at something like the Minnesota Pollution Control agency or the department Department of Natural res resources and then nationally groups like NASA Noah you know the National Weather Service like I want students to be able to access these materials and analyze them like in the context of Brainard and um and these topics and then uh I know a textbook is always a question so I'm looking at a couple of Oar textbooks but I also want to build into students the ability to look at online resources and determine if

144that's a credible source and and if we should use them or not so that would be part of the course as well what is Oe stand for open educational resources yes open yeah you're welcome um and so finally just a quick overview of the professional development um I'm super excited to offer these courses with your approval at brard high school and um I'd like to talk to you a little bit about why I should um why I'm a credible person to write the courses and um and just knowing that we're not actually adopting a curriculum it'll be something written in house so it's specific to brainer um looking at topics that we're concerned about locally and some of the training I've done is through the Minnesota Science Teachers Association and they've done a really good

145job of doing Minnesota focused training and there's been boot camps I've gone to Moree head State and then I've taken a couple of online courses uh to prepare myself and then as um as your group of science teachers steps one two and three we've done um like on contract time during meetings and uh the fourth one is where I'm going to need your support going forward is training you know hopefully if we have another Earth and space science teacher board eventually and then also um writing the curriculum and then maintaining that curriculum so I believe that's it and I do just want to Quick say too that we're very lucky to have Miss Anderson she's like one of 38 um licensed High School earth science teachers in the State uh it's a very low licensed

146area and this curriculum generally does not exist so this is why needing to write it to fill the Gap um the the extensive amount of work that she needs to put in to develop it there's not nothing that's ready to go like there is with the other curriculum so we're very lucky to have her so do you like do you have like five classes a day of that course in particular or or one of the two or we have no idea yet what enrollment will look like yeah no it'll be yeah several sections and so we usually build our schedule in the science department based on requests during registration um so we do anticipate several sections of each question even starting next year because this year was the year that we had to make up

147that that little blip of where all ninth grade students were taking biology but we still have 10th grade students taking biology we have 39 sections of biology this semester and we are going a little bit different than many other high schools in the state where they just did the easy thing which was to replace their ninth grade outgoing physical science class with an earth science class which meant though that in those schools their students are locked into Earth Science 9th grade biology 10th grade chemistry or physics junior year with no choice and we just didn't want to develop a system where there was no choice so we anticipate some of those ninth graders will um take Earth and space science next year but some will be able to go into either chemistry or physics and

148they have flexible options grades 10 through 12 they're not pige and hold into a specific grade having to take a specific course and we're ready um to differentiate to make that possible so every kid's got take chemistry or physics I mean isn't physics like just the beauty in college if you want to get rid of some of the freshmen you just make them all take physics and about half of them Funk out isn't that kind of yeah you're right because the beauty is the the old physics was very math heavy and required really some extensive knowledge to be able to attain it the beauty of the open sad curriculum is it is literally designed for all students and they have tons of modifications it's More Concept based um and you allow kids to go to

149the level that they are ready for so um we're going to have a variety of students that are coming up with questions and investigations and doing their little labs and they aren't necessarily all going to report it out the exact same way which is just fine because of how it's scored they have to demonstrate their growth and understanding with the skill and the concept and as well as the content and it's not just content based so it's not just regular good old physics fig The Arc and the velocity right but they do show according to research that students that do this type of um learning in terms of acting like scientists their interest in science is a lot greater and they actually do continue on very often into college level high school you know beyond

150high school for their chemistry and physics because it hooks them in and they see how it's related to the real world versus just I'm writing down some numbers and doing some math a good idea to me Sarah and I have the privilege of sitting on deck and when when you guys made your presentation I thought wow that would get me me excited about sign it's a lot of Hands-On stuff and that pretty fun it's going to be cool I really think it's going to be cool thank you we're extremely excited about this going forward and I know that um Robin behind me here is has kind of been our wingman helping us out but when she speaks to people across the state with our program because we're thinking of it a little bit differently a

151lot of times we get some real interest in what we're doing so I feel like we're really leading the way to do something a little bit different that's going to give kids not only interest but lot of choice and I wanted to make mention of that because I think it's really a celebration of the professionals and the Acumen that this group has a couple of years I don't know if it was last year a couple years ago when you brought forward the research you had done on scope and sequence and and how to set students up for not only having opportunity but the optimal course you know moving biology to 9th grade and the reasoning behind that I I thought it was incredible and and I love how this has progressed since then and what

152we can offer students it's amazing thank you are there asking for your approval creation of two courses okay so we start with um the first one which is the Earth and space science curriculum yeah do them separate you can do them together so we'll bundle those together all right so I'm seeking a motion for the approval of the new Earth and space science curriculum and the approval of the new Earth and climate climate science curriculum so moved second all right I have uh a motion from director Hyman with a second from director spear for approval of both curriculum as presented any further discussion hearing none those in favor signify by saying I I I oppose same sign fun fun fun those are classes I would take I would physics be like oh this this would

153just be a blast to be if you're using your hands you know all right uh Marcy lard coming up with a real quick update on for the approval excuse me of The Proposal notice for the BHS Building Trades home so we went out for bids bids were due November 17th we received zero bids we've since had some interest in the trades house so we are redefining the um request we're changing it to a proposal so that there's no deadline date it's basically just whoever can get their proposal in first and then that would be presented at the following board meeting if we get no proposals after January 31st we would have to then discuss what the next game plan would be but hopeful hopefully we will get a proposal submitted by someone so this will

154be put out same as last time we'll put it out on Facebook we'll put it in the paper um try to get it out there was it priced before yep it was so we think that was overpriced maybe so we talked about that um you know the calculations he came up with he thought was fair so we didn't want to lower it so that we lose money right so we we left it at the 105 you're trying to break even and the labor free so it shouldn't be that tough right yeah makes sense is there a template for the proposal or there like a floor plan um for the proposal like do oh somebody wants to make a proposal do they have to create that it literally so like last last year we got a

155um letter that said the amount that they wanted and then had the escrow deposit okay so that was it it's pretty simple not too complicated okay the letters from the bank with their financing okay how many how many proposals have we gotten none that's why we're doing this yeah I think things are going to open up a little bit in 24 hopefully hopefully yeah this is last year's house well there's a lot of last year's houses right now it's being built yeah good shape election year the feds will drop the rates why don't you might move it out South Dakota why don't you just run your railroad okay I'll run mine I'll make a motion to approve the proposal notice I'll second I have a proposal from director Spear and a second from director or

156excuse me a motion from director Spear and a second from director Breen to approve the proposal notice for BHS tra building trade home any further discussion hearing none all in favor signified by saying I I oppose same sign motion carries thank you thanks Marcy thanks Marc all right our final action item for the evening would be the uh aforementioned Appeal on Empire of storms so um couple of ways to go about this the board obviously all of you have been supplied the appeal documentation all of you have had um ample time I believe to review the committee notes and and all that I'm actually going to kick it to um director Breen to just summarize the committee um findings just a little bit if you don't mind and and um just that the committee unanimously

157found that the book should be retained okay that's eloquent in its brevity it works for me it's not my skill set but all right I'll um so there's a couple of ways from a motion perspective that we could tackle this I mean uh d uh Dr Han and I talked about this a little bit one would be if a board member has concerns about the validity of the process in terms of if it followed 606 as we understand it today in theory one could could say that we that the committee didn't follow its Charter under that policy to do that second would be to U make a motion either direction that the committee did follow its Charter came forward with its decision and either a motion to um vote in favor of the appeal or

158against the appeal that seems to me to be the three options that would be available to us as to whether we discuss first and then make the motion um that's I'll leave that up to whoever feels compelled to make a motion feel like we should have like big bucks no whammies buttons so you can get in fast enough but every nobody's rushing into this I I I think that myself we we've everybody knows where everybody stands that's sitting here tonight so what's their talk about they've been talking about it and talking about it and talking about it we have a difference of opinion I don't think it's going to surprise anybody how anybody votes on this and so you know if we on I can make a motion that we overturn the decision by the

159committee okay then we can just go to the vote it's going to be the same how matter how you word it so I don't know I mean follow the policy um I think that we should just get out of it is that a formal motion or sure and what was the motion again that be overturned the ad hoc committee motion was to approve the appeal remove the the resource I'll second that okay so we have a motion from dor Doner with a second from director Hyman to uphold the appeal and remove Empire of storms further discussion I imagine there'll be a little yeah I'll go ahead director I'll open it up um first of all um I totally respect the time and effort that this committee has put in um I'm going to be involved

160with the next one and I I know there's there's time involved and reading reading the book and reviewing it Etc and I don't make this decision lightly I've thought about it I've read articles I've reviewed the transcript of the ad hoc committee and there's a lot of things in here that you could say just the opposite you know people you know families should make their decision what their kids should read agree with you 100% then go out and buy it we don't need to be buying the stuff so I just want to make that point that a lot of stuff in the committee can just flip it on its head uh my reasons for removal this book since 2018 has been checked out three times it could be argued that the book could be removed

161under Library curation policy Bo it hasn't been read very often and I know we don't have it in 606 but we're going to have it in 631 what can happen you know uh if if it's not red enough if it's not you know uh if it's damaged etc etc but one of them is reading the book well it's only been read three times um if it was made into a movie without screen modifications I believe at best it would be rated an r and at worst it would be nc17 and I've asked this question numerous times and I've never never received an answer who's going to be harmed if the Empire of storms is removed from our library and if we can prevent if we can prevent just one person from going down the road

162of sexual deviancy isn't it worth it this book has been removed from Forest View Middle School and we say well let's just move it to the high school problem is there's no guardrails at the high school none and that's right in the transcript of the committee reports I'm not going to read it I mean if you want me to I will but uh she has heard a lot about forestfield middle school checkout policy parent signature required for mature books but we have not heard about Brainard high school checkout policy someone is going to inquire into that policy uh br High School does not have a mature reader section remember we got ninth graders at the high school no one no parent is permission is needed at the high school so we must assume that these

163children uh and they are children yet they're teens um are capable of of making decisions for themselves and uh I just read an article today I just verified it and you can believe everything on the internet I read an article from the University of Rochester Medical Center a research article called understanding the teen brain in part it states and I quote it doesn't matter how smart teens are or how well they score on the SAT or act good judgment isn't something they excel in at least right now the rational part of a teen's brain isn't fully developed and won't be until age 25 or so in fact Recent research has found that adult and teen brains work differently adults think with pref prefrontal cortex the brain's rational part and this is the part of the

164brain that responds to situations with good judgment and an awareness of long-term consequences teens process information with the emotional part of their brain end quote that's all I have Mr chair thank you director yes further discussion I'm not interested in limiting what kids read at high school and this book is target age is 13 to 17 that's that's the age group that this book was written for and those kids are exposed to these kinds of things whether they're reading reading them in a book or not if they're not seeing these experiences if they're not developing a lens if they don't have perspectives that aren't their own they're going to do these things and and develop a perspective why wouldn't you want them to have access to that I I I want my kids to have

165access to every book there is and we're going to talk about it and we're going to understand it but I'm not going to tell you what your kids can or can't have access to in in the school I I think there are kids that appreciate this genre it's not my favorite genre but for those that do there are not a lot of great options and this is a very popular series this is a very um popular author among that grp so a question and Randy I'm not trying to correct you but I read the notes on the committee Michelle you were on and director Mera said that book had been checked out one or two two times in five years so it's not a very popular book it's not affecting very many kids I'll give

166you that we don't know who looks at it in the library because we don't keep track of that obviously and there's no way to do that but you know whether it's three times or one or two times like d mura said in the notes of the meetings it's obviously not a very popular thing which I go back to my point before that for 6 months this is has been our biggest thing that we can't get along on and that we sit and talk about all the time for a book that was checked out once or twice it just seems to me like such a simple decision let's just eliminate the problem but I mean I get it that's why there's that's why we were elected like I was talking about before we're the back stop

167so we got to kind of stick to what we all believe and uh and I respect everyone's beliefs but it's hasn't been checked out very many times I have something to add I wrote some notes down so I would be able to get through this um with some kind of organization when I first made the decision to run for the District 81 School Board I firmly believed I could use my professional experience as a school social worker to ensure all Learners had access to compassionate inclusive evidence-based educ ational opportunities I wanted to continue to support initiatives and programs that encourage a positive School climate teach positive behavioral expectations and digital citizenship and promote students emotional behavioral and academic successes that was and currently is my why I've become increasingly disappointed in the time attention and

168District resources that are being consumed defend ending access to a variety of independent Choice reading materials across the United States we are experiencing a wave of book challenges and banning because some parents want to Shield children from people who are different than they are or protect children from certain topics books are tools for understanding complex issues limiting young people's access to books does not protect them from life's difficult and challenging issues young people deserve to see themselves reflected in a library book students deserve the chance to understand their world and everyone in it one of the primary fundamental fun functions of education is to teach children how to think for themselves by building empathy critical thinking and decisionmaking skills removing books undermines this effort book bands and challenge es overwhelming overwhelmingly target books about race

169racism gender and sexuality unfortunately people of color and members of the LGT lgbtqia Community are significantly impacted by book challenges as books about them are disproportionately challenged books are challenged and banned under the guise of trying to protect children but these actions can have devastating consequences when children's literature is banned for depicting life events it results in young people feeling excluded shamed and marginalized parents have the right to guide their children's reading but parents should not be making decisions for other parents' children any restriction or removal of books from our school libraries also sabotages the right of every other parent in this school district to make a choice about what's right for their child from the League of Women Voters um website on the um dangers of book b Banning this quote was on there

170removing and banning books from libraries is a slippery slope to government censorship and the subsequent erosion of our country's commitment to freedom of expression now we as a district need to continue to exercise due diligence to ensure students have access to age appropriate reading materials will always respect a parents request to exclude their children from reading books and materials however I am not in favor of rest restricting access to age appropriate Choice reading materials School Educators Librarians and media Specialists are professionals who are trained to not impose their own thoughts and opinions on which ideas they believe believe are right but to make knowledge and ideas available so people have the freedom to choose what to read and how to think I put my trust in our highly trained and educated media Specialists to select

171a wide variety of resources for our students lastly I believe in the First Amendment which allows citizens to express and be exposed to a wide range of opinions and Views the first amendment was in intended to ensure a free exchange of ideas even if those ideas are unpopular or controversial and I also firmly believe in intellectual Freedom the right of every individual young or old to both seek and receive information from All Points of View without restriction you any further discussion so a couple of things um one director doning I think he bring up a good point as it relates to the book specifically the one book you know three checkout instances in five years but if you consider it a point of entry for any book right I mean if we look at it

172from a Content perspective how we go with this book would determine how we go with other books that are checked out more often I think you know it's it's uh I'm more interested in getting to the heart of content um so for my own for my own part um I'm against this motion primarily for two reasons um there are two reasons I'm not in favor of the appeal the first one is that the Crux of the appeal as written uh invokes um essentially Minnesota state statute on obscenity um but only pieces of it so I'll get to that in a second and the second one is just the nature of subjectivity of all these things so uh director Breen used the term age appropriate and if our illustrious colleague uh director Ward was here tonight

173I'm sure he would probably talk about that some cu he talked about it at some length very passionately a few board meetings ago um age appropriate I that's that resonates with me age appropriate does if this book was at Forest View I'm not sure how I would be thinking about this appeal right now I might have a different mindset around it but for me since it's at the high school we've now discovered where one person draws his line but my standard doesn't necessarily apply to everybody across the school district right so how do you grapple with the subjectivity of how we view something like age appropriate or more to the point something like objectionable what's objectionable to you may not be objectionable to me but of course there are certain absolutes that exist out there

174that we all have to adhere to I think we all would agree murder is objectionable and if you don't should probably keep it to yourself so what do we do about that what we do about that is we have statute and we have government regulation that covers those situations and in this particular case we have uh the Minnesota state statute which is verbatim on obscenity from Miller V California which is a 50y old Landmark Supreme Court case so this was not a Supreme Court ruling on something during an era of woke people that are off the chain these are people in the early 70s that were determining what the definition of obscenity was in written form and in order for something to qualify as obscenity under that thing it had to meet three very stringent

175uh uh qualifications it had to meet all three of them in their entirety um and and the first one would be that the work taken as a whole meaning every page in that work would have to appeal to the pant interest insects which means there isn't even a pizza delivery guy it's just nothing but basically verbal pornography which don't get me going on the use of words too on that we'll get into that later on subsequent um challenges so in the end the appeal seeks to invoke a statute a state of Minnesota statute but unfortunately in invoking the statute it forces me to look at the work and say I read the work the work as a whole is not appealing to I don't even have to get to the other two qualifiers I don't

176even have to get that far I can invalidate on the first one so that's point one point two goes back to that subjective nature so since things are subjective who am I to dictate that what I feel is objectionable to me and my family should be denied other families to director Spears Point unless it meets those standards I have those standards to fall back on those statutes and those laws so that's where I fall on this um I'm not in you know like I said if it was in Forest View I would be having a very uh a much more interesting internal debate and I actually read um not only that series I read her other uh series the court of thorns or whatever series it is I can't remember I can tell you I

177do like that genre and I find these books to be incredibly poorly written um but unfortunately there's no statute that says uh you know badly written books are are there so um now with that said just because I'm voting against this does not mean that I don't respect the deeply held convictions and concerns that these community members that are bringing these challenges forth have I totally get where they're coming from um but I fall back to the thing again where I was involved in a book challenge that really had nothing to do with sexual content um almost 10 years ago now where this was curriculum based so it was a little bit different but this was another parent attempting to alter what was made available in the school system for my child to read and

178I'm a big believer in you do you and so as long as those things are subjective in my opinion it just comes down to again I think you kind of referred to it earlier director donlinger and that's why we're elected we're elected devote our consciences to listen to our constituents um of all stripes and to to kind of you know Soul search and figure out what's important to us and I think that everybody on the Sixers board has done that and just because we've come to different conclusions on it makes nobody right and it makes nobody wrong it's just a representation of what we're forced to deal with as people and as community members and as a collective Society that's just how it works so uh for me um that that's kind of my those

179are my thoughts on it for tonight uh so with that said uh is there any further discussion think we just have a roll call vote okay roll call vote so the motion on the table by director dondlinger uh with a second from director Hyman is to uphold the appeal of Empire of Storms and remove it from the Brainard High School library isn't upholding it agreeing with it uphold the appeal that's the it well the appeal is to reverse the committee decision oh I see so you could make a motion to reverse the committee decision y I was thinking semantics to a certain extent yep yep yep yep all right so we'll do a roll call vote on the motion please Janet uh DJ donlinger yes Randy Hyman yes Sarah spear no Kevin Bo no Michelle

180Breen no uh vote of three to two do we have an alternate motion do one I guess we don't if the appeal is not upheld then it just dies right think so yeah I don't think we need another I think you're correct actually I should probably read my Roberts Rules of Order yeah actually I believe that's correct I don't think we have to vote to uphold it because the committee decision stands by lack of support for the appeal yep yep and we just have to Supply right so well technically under 606 we don't that's not prescri prescribed in there but um in the interest of uh in the interest of trying to keep with the spirit of what we're trying to do with 631 um I would I would be very comfortable with um essentially

181directing the administration to follow the 631 language and Supply a report on the be the the notification the okay all right we'll move on then committee meeting updates let's go to uh long range planning and community relations uh with director doninger can I just do both of mine at the same absolutely go nuts so in Long Range planning we uh we were going over we met a couple weeks ago and we went through uh a lot of the school districts land and the best uses for it and our future needs and uh nothing big to report there and the finance committee was pretty much uh consumed by Marcy's proposal tonight and there was a the car's audit and so um that turned out well and um there you go I don't think there's much else

182to report okay thank you uh and then uh next up uh director Breen with the uh Equity Task Force update um I think I should probably report on student support services oh oh that's sorry I'm sorry y okay so we met on Wednesday November 29th um a couple of highlights we have nursing staff and the buildings we had representatives for in the state tournament in girls tennis girls cross country boys cross country girls swimming and Diving um there was a fall musical there um for the first time we'll be hosting the site for robotics competition in February and there's a choir tour to Ireland um March 8th through 15th we talked about the policy updates for school weapons hazing and search of lockers um there's also some criteria being developed for adding activities and team

183levels so if people wanted to bring forth adding an additional activity um there's some criteria that they would need to follow um and I think that pretty much sums it up that's great thank you very much director Breen uh then we'll move on to informational with a brainer Public Schools Foundation update from director spear we had the um Bingo event last Monday and it was well attended I think we sold out and so preliminary numbers are around $88,000 raised to that event um to support the mission of the brainer Public Schools Foundation some of that money will go to the school the school food pantries at the elementary and some at the middle school and high school as well so I'm just going to keep saying February 3rd big event if you haven't got your

184tickets they're going to go fast remember to do that and that's it thank you director spear oh now the equity task force director um during our Bo our board working session on the 29th of November Aaron Carl guard came to um give us some information about some of the work that's been done by this committee um there was some findings from surveys focus groups and meetings during the 2020 2122 school year regarding student safety and engagement um students belonging to marginalized groups feel less safe at school than other students marginalized students report bullying based on their identity and all student report safety concerns in less structured supervised places all students reported safety concerns and less supervised places like hallways cafeteria bathrooms and buses some of the recommendations were to review the bullying harassment policies consider

185interruptor training which um the district participated in now it's just figuring out how to take that to the next level and to explore the adoption and implementation of schoolwide restorative practices when she talked about social emotional and behavioral interventions a significant population of our students have experienced one or more Asus which is adverse childhood experiences a significant number of our students have mental health concerns and students of color and students with disabilities are disproportionately representative represented in discipline practices so Rec recommendations is ongoing mental health support and professional development for staff trauma informed practices professional development around differentiation to best meet student needs and districtwide restorative practices our community is currently in the initial stages of assessing how the school district is involving parents community members and students in meaningful ways and that data will

186help us determine how we can best strength strengthen those Community Partnerships thank you I mean I've been on the equity task force for almost two years and seeing her report Consolidated the way that it was was really it helped me because I you're kind of in it and you don't to see it distilled and and condens down like that was really interesting and I think it Dove tailed nice with director Ward's concerns about student safety and mental health Stuff Plus the Strategic plan which we obviously didn't talk about much tonight but that all figures prominently in there too thank you Michelle question um Heidi have we done anything I thought I heard something we had applied for a grant and maybe I'm just dreaming this up we applied for a grant to put cameras outside

187the uh bathrooms so that if there was some stuff that was going on obviously we can't have cameras in the bathrooms but no actually with our upgraded facilities so we have up upgraded cameras throughout our entire uh School District okay through the blueprint 181 um so we have I mean you're right they're not they we have hallway cameras which would be able to to view entrance and exit of restrooms or hallways parking lots they're there they're there okay um a grant we did receive it was pretty uh substantial Grant was about alternative disciplinary practices uh which has been used for some of the restorative uh practice training restorative circles and then just one general question why why why why do we have so much mental health problems I mean we talk about what we're doing

188to help kids but I never hear us talk about the cause I'm not an expert that's for sure do we do do we ever talk about I mean we have experts in our community that can tell us we have why why I mean that's the why is is I would think very significant we know post pandemic a lot of kids lived in isolation um and then you talk about being isolated what it does for depression anxiety yeah talk about a lot of cyber bullying and cyber attacks a lot of that could happen when we were so isolated so you're seeing that ripple effect play out um I think demands on our students are greater than they've ever been before when you talk about rigor and rigor and standards and the expectations to perform high so

189there's a myriad I think a multi-layered um reasoning behind all of that um we've had mental health supports in our build I mean that's how I started 28 years ago so brainard's had mental health in buildings for over 30 years um it's still not enough access I think if you talk to the community or people waiting to get into Mental Health Services there's a significant wait um that hasn't happened before so it's a compounding impact that plays back into the school okay there's a lot of talk in I've been reading a lot of articles about it that education instead of sticking to the basics is kind of branched out so drastically that kids get confused and they kind of feel defeated and overwhelmed um you know though for example when my daughter was in fth

190grade I was driving her basketball practice I was the coach over L my wife signed me up because I missed the meeting but anyways you know what you told me Iceberg polar bears are dying I go really polar bears are dying and she goes yeah because the Earth warming up and you know Dad I hate to tell you but cars are doing it she's ready to crawl on her de seat she's petrified to tell me this right what what's going on that movie said that Miami is going to be underwater by now is Miami underwater ice cap shrinking but Antarctica has drawn more than we've ever seen in history so all this stuff that keeps happening I had a gentleman send me an email to today we'll leave him unnamed this is a message I

191received from my 11th grade son today after the assembly they had about climate change a video was played sorry to the Next Generation so are we trying to make them feel guilty for the Next Generation there's a lot of stuff that's getting creeping it's not like running in it doesn't happen overnight it's creeping into our education I'm not saying it's uh even our administration's fa look at the state how they're over regulating all the schools like it just keeps creeping and creeping and creeping and I've been reading a lot of articles that a lot of kids you know they feel guilty they're embarrassed whether it's their race their their gender whatever you want to call it all these things are kind of overwhelming them at such a young age for some of these decisions should

192be put off and you take the phones um I think I told you this Heidi I used to when I got off that bus everybody was my pal we played kickball we played football we went sliding riding our bikes doing whatever in the neighborhood was all my pals when I got on that boss I was pretty much on defense because of my last name right at least it was over when I got home and then when summer would come around I wouldn't I didn't live in town so I wouldn't see any of my buddies Hardley at all the whole summer I had like a whole different set of friends cuz I wasn't getting a ride to town except to go to work and my point to this is is it was over so all the

193harassment and bullying and all the crap I had to go through was done for the whole summer I remember that this sixth grader was going to pound me when I was in fifth grade and he was going to win let me tell you and uh I mean I couldn't even sleep the night before the first day of school cuz I knew I was going to get her and uh it was tough but today's world this phone's been beeping at me this whole meeting it never stops so you been getting picked on all day because no one likes your jeans or your new haircut or whatever it is or because Randy can jump higher than I am and can throw a ball harder than I can and I'm just getting ridden and ridden and ridden and

194ridden and these poor kids Randy they never get away from it it's 10:30 at night and someone else has giving them another jab and it's another jab and it's another jab it's just kind of ridiculous look what people put on all this social media I mean I just don't play on social media personally but it's like this is a picture of my dinner this is a picture of the beach that I'm on how's the day going for you sucker you know look at me how awesome I am you know it's like it's just crazy isn't it mean I just don't understand but it's pretty easy to understand why a teenager or even younger I'm sure you guys are the experts on this stuff could be messed up and feeling confused and guilted and a hundred

195different deals you know parents and brothers and this just doesn't end mean I don't know if you remember it but as old as you are Randy I don't know may it wasn't like that back then but anyways uh you know in Middle School junior high is what they used to call it it was tough me your feet are too big you're clumsy all these changes in your body it's just weird you know um it was like confusing to us then think if you had all this social stuff going on and all this other stuff to go with it it's just got to be overwhelming and then throw Co in there like Heidi said and isolate them for a couple years I mean it's just wow it's a tough deal and they feel it's a tough

196deal for our teachers it's a tough deal for the administrators it's a tough deal for the kids probably the parents I mean it's just it's a challenge and it's I don't think it's getting much easier maybe hopefully we can make some policies that'll help clean some of it up and make it a little easier for our staff and easier for the kids too because the kids are the real deal you know so I mean like like you said I'm not an expert on mental health either but I've been reading a lot of articles that all these things are combined binding on these kids and they're just feeling overwhelmed and it's kind of sad well and I think the equity task force is doing a great job of understanding our local situation through a lot of

197the the information they've gathered here locally to understand how to respond to that so I'm really proud of that work Marcy Marcy Lord joing us for the business services report all right in your packet sorry on your agenda the financial report the only thing I was going to note is opab expenses are tracking higher than last year but we'll review it in the budget revision so um and then the enrollment report we are down 12 from the beginning of the year the fiveyear averages normally we down 39 so that's that's good any questions I have one question absolutely how did we pick up 30 students last month I mean we're going up every single month where are you looking at well I'm looking at student count those adms the first uh nope this is um

198this is actuals so you look at September we're at 5898 and we pick up 10 and then the next month I guess the next month we went down 17 right I'm looking at the EC through 12 so are we picking up little kids is that what the deal is yeah so that very first row that will grow throughout the year um the problem is we only get about a third of their time for adms so when you see 28 let's just say 300 we get you know three right gotcha any further questions for rcy all right consider yourself released into the wild thank you thanks Mars oh man I closed out the thing again superintendent report from Dr H I just have a couple of things um one I think uh it was very nice

199tonight to see Educators um with us what was um impressive is I don't know if time people took the time to read what building they were from but how many years of experience our teachers had uh but I think that would all be over a thousand years of experience very easily just going down the one row of of staff that I looked at um and talked with in my opinion we have some of the best Educators in the state working with our kids and they're working their tales off and I'm very grateful for them um I think a good Testament of that tonight was listening to uh Nicole harmer and meline Anderson as they talked about the work they're doing on science standards the challenging work and then you look at 350 plus districts in

200the entire State and we have one of 30 of the licensed staff um in those St in that content area so that's an Exemplar and I think sometimes in this meetings like you said we're spending all these time on books and um what I was impressed with tonight is all the Educators invited us into their classrooms to show us what they're doing so I hope you take advantage of that um so speaking of quality years of experience and how uh we come here and we stay here unfortunately uh somebody who's been here for quite a while is leaving um and so Janet horn um made a little noise in the corner this evening whatever um Janet has finally decided to retire so we had a wonderful celebration of Janet um a couple weeks ago but

201her last day with us is going to be uh Friday and so um actually I this is uh an Marie and her staff so at Janet's retirement party we rewrote the words to It's a Wonderful World so as a commemorative and thank you uh those words have now been framed with a lovely so we just want to thank and if you can help me thank Janet for all of her years of service [Applause] she was uh funny today she's like do you want me at the board meeting looked at Kelly going to be taking the new role and Kelly's like like this but she's been very good to me and to um the entire District so thank you for your years of service and congrats on going someplace warmer um but that's all I have

202for tonight superintendent report great thank you uh we'll move on to director updates director Breen I don't have anything more to add director Hyman nothing director dund uh nothing how you like that okay I'm going to roll director spear I'm good thank you might as well keep a good thing going uh other than to say I think we'll address this again in a future board retreat um I think we've tried these updates for a couple of meetings so I'd like to reopen the dialogue around whether we want to keep this as a standing agenda item or not in the future um that said I'll let it go future meetings y'all can read those on December 11th uh today we did the finance committee meeting I stood in for director Ward with director doninger tonight's meeting

203and we closed December 22nd through December 25th and again uh through the 29th and January 1st uh School resumes on January 3rd and then January 8th uh we will kick off a new year of fun with uh our organizational meeting um on the board regular Schoolboard meeting to follow that and then we have the uh the January uh msba conferences down in Minneapolis that will be at between January 10th and 12th and finally uh next regular scheduled uh board meeting on February 12th right here so why don't we take um I do have one thing okay is it okay yes um director Ward is doing uh doing okay uh been there done that it's kind of interesting to hear that he's going to get uh the three uh wires pulled out of his belly that

204was a treat cuz you're awake when you know when they get pulled out you know when they get put in you're W but uh he seems to doing really well and uh he's watching so you know he's been yeah no and uh he's been actively participating in the meeting as much as as law allows him to tonight so if you can hear us John godp get better soon just to continue with your recovery and uh good thank you director so I thought I it's great all right so we do not have to adjourn this one to go into close right we have we need a motion to adjourn I don't think it's on the the list here right a motion to go in to close sess and then to come back out okay so let's

205um I'll make a motion okay so we'll make a motion to go recess for to go to go into Clos session yes sir and we'll take a a five minute break and then we'll come back at second 9 p.m. yeah we'll come back at 9 let's just say 9:02 that's that late already wow okay yeah it's not bad all right uh all in F I'm sorry we have a motion from director doninger was seconded by director Heyman second from director Hyman uh any discussion those in favor signify by saying I I I okay we are recessed to come back and closed session uh pursuant to Minnesota statute 13 do3 for labor negotiations