Rockford Area Schools - School Board Meeting - June 16, 2025

001Okay. Good evening everybody. It is 5:30 on June 16th, 2025 in the Rockford Area School District boardroom. I would like to call tonight's meeting to order and we will start with the pledge of allegiance. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Uh, Madame Clerk, would you please call roll here? Here. Eric Gordy here. Jessica Johnson here. Chris Morgan here. Jamie Hilstrom here. We are all present. We are all present. Join us at the board table. Crystal Larson and Jeff Ryle Hoover. Thank you guys for joining us as well. Uh item number two is the approval of the agenda. Dr. Ridle Hoover, everything is in order for tonight's agenda. It

002is Jared. Thank you very much. So with that, I would appreciate a motion to approve. Approve. Thank you, Mr. Shadine. Can I have a second? Thank you, Miss Johnson. There's a first and a second. Any discussion? Seeing the none, all those in favor signify by I. I. Oppos. Tonight's agenda does carry unanimously. One point of order on that. I will say that we may need to move some of our celebration until the students do show up. So, just for watching the weather understanding, watch the weather right now. Oh, there's a warning. Tornado. Understanding of the um Well, we're in a shelter. It's a warning right now. Yeah, warnings are okay. Watches are bad. No, watches are bad. Warnings are like it's happening now. Yeah, warnings are bad, watches are good. So, we need to continue

003on with the order of business, please. Pardon? Thank you. Um, so public comments, any public comments this evening? No public comments. That item is closed. Consent agenda is presented for you. This was up for review uh previously. In there is ourou, which we had talked about at one of our previous uh work sessions and and a previous board meeting. I would appreciate a motion to approve tonight's consent. I'll make a motion. Thank you, Miss Pasca. There is a first. Can I have a second? Second. Thank you, Miss Hilstrom. There's a first and a second. Any further discussion? All those in favor of tonight's consent agenda. Signify by I. I. Opposed. That does carry unanimously. Thank you so much. Moving on to number five, superintendent report. Dr. Ridenberg. Thank you, Chair Gordy. Uh this past school

004year has been a wonderful one in Rockberry schools and now that it has officially concluded, we move our attention to making the 2526 school year our best one yet. Uh this evening um eventually we are excited to be joined by um both Rockford High School principal Mr. Paul Manard along with activities director Dan Pratt and a contingent of incredibly uh incredible activity participants to share a little about the sensational spring at the high school level. Uh before we move on to with the high school group, I'll take a few moments to share a little bit about the happenings at both uh Reams and Rockford Middle School and a few notes about some district happenings. Um at the elementary school, many students in grades 1 through four um recently participated in annual spelling be. Our fourth

005grade students participated in their annual track and field day. And there were several opportunities for students to participate in end ofear field trips which included second grade at the zoo. Second grade also went to Rebecca Park. Uh, grade four was at the Capitol and also the Orway. Kindergarten went to Komo Zoo, one of my favorites. Grade three was at Riverside Park and the library and grade one also went to Riverside Park. Uh, on June 6th, our teachers, and I really do appreciate this, they spent their first day of summer vacation um actually training in our new reading curriculum, CKLA. Uh, that went really, really well. Uh, summer school also has started. um that it was started effective June the 9th and today our ESY summer school began. Um at the middle level um as we

006close out another year, Principal Warzeka has asked me to extend gratitude to both myself and also members of this board for your continued support in a year marked by intentional instructional growth, strengthening of our systems, rooting our magnet identity, and moving towards continuous improvement. a few updates as they close out the year and transition into next year. Uh an improved system con connectivity. Uh collaboration continues to build connections amongst our students and systems. One example being a shift in grading practices to align our fifth and sixth grade with our high school. And a big thanks to Mr. Manard and his team for also helping with that process. I'm evaluating progress both learning innovation and building administration. We've gone through all of the maps, the instructional maps and identified uh students um and staff that are

007finding success in certain areas and reviewing our student connectedness survey data. Although our students averaged an agree level on those questions that they were asked, uh they identified areas how they can improve and from the students perspective created action steps going into next year. So regardless of whether it is in student connectedness or academic growth, um staff and students are mindful and plan to maintain a perspective on the overall student experience. Super excited at the expansion of the ADS services that will be occurring at the uh middle school next year and they're working on their staffing process there. also with scheduling and student experience, ever changing staffing dynamics. They've rethought some of their work around quarter classes and offers the next year a focus on um embodies the magnet identity by building skills to improve

008academic outcomes and course work. Also, principal Warzeka is energized about the upcoming work related to instructional design that fosters datadriven student supports. Um and then moving on to uh district news. Um, as the public knows, uh, Rockberry Schools focuses on two very important things. Uh, first is we talk about caring for our students, staff, and families. And the second is a laser focus on teaching and learning. While it is always our practice to avoid political rhetoric and the arena of non-winable social political conversations, uh, it's important to mention tonight the deep sadness we feel as members of the Minnesota legislature were targeted and murdered this weekend. Our hearts go out to all involved, especially the Hortman and Hoffman families. All of this said, um um the legislature themselves did some um some work this last

009session ending in a special session and perhaps no other entities were affected as much by what happens there as our E12 education system. Uh this year it did take longer than anticipated. Um but after they completed their work via the special session um the governor and house leadership along with the senate drafted bills that were finalized recently. We are still sifting through the language in the bills but preliminary some things appear to be certain. Uh first we are relieved that the legislature kept their promise and for this two-year bum anyway utilized the inflationary index passed in law during the 2023 session to fund our perial allocation at the indexed formula. As a reminder, uh this inflationary formula does have a cap, but this amounts to 2.74% next year and around 3.2% in fiscal year 27.

010While this is really good news, district rollup costs amount to between 3.5 and 4% annually. So, our financial picture will continue to show a deficit until such time that revenues are increased or expenditures are decreased. As always, the board and administration will work closely with our CFO Bridget Peterson to ensure the fiscal solveny of our district. Again, while the formula will be indexed to inflation for the next bending, the legislature does plan to make some cuts next year with 250 be being cut in special education transportation if other cuts in the years are not found in special ed via their working group. In addition, 420 million is earmarked to be cut from the E12 budget in the tales of school years 28 and 29. Uh student support personnel aid has been capped. School library has

011been cut by 50%. Um and compensatory aid bill for the next two years is basically a stop gap holdless but is being studied by a blue ribbon panel um that essentially is looking at ways to reduce funding in that area. Um the part of the one-year hold harmless bill for us is relatively uh benign. Um but wanted to share that in terms of things such as also unemployment insurance. Um the legislature did allocate 1 million to assist this next year and a half. The dollars to fund come from a cancellation of a 2023 appropriation of a light rail line from Minneapolis to Duth. In addition to those fiscal changes, some policy provisions have been passed, including roof replacements that can now be levied by board authority as long as the total cost of the roofs

012is over $100,000. Outside of the legislative happenings, our team has been very busy preparing for next school year. Instructionally, we completed and submitted our plans uh to MD and local literacy that actually happened today and the American Indian education work that we are um involved with. Uh we've started training and professional development as mentioned to the new literacy curriculum at res and it's exciting time for our teachers that they'll now have the tools to match their science of reading uh training through instructional pedigogy. The high schools also move forward with their innovative work related to our launch your future early college and career program that will be highlighted throughout the district as we move into the fall. Operationally, our summer projects have gotten underway, uh, with the larger projects being the res parking lot, reservicing

013of the high school track, and the replacement of some worn out flooring at both Reams and here at the district office. I'd also like to share that our community education director, Melissa Joseph, will now be assuming student advisory sponsors all buildings and grounds effective July 1st. Um, also work specific to our district operational plan or DOP has been completed and is being shared with the board for their consideration later this evening. And as I do so every month, I attend meetings of our educational partners at EMSD, Masiko, Northwest Suburban, SAP, and the Superintendent Institute. Closer to home, I've been blessed to attend the end of the year stride program, an incredible graduation ceremony um with our special education students and of course the Rockford High School commencement that was held on May 30th. In closing,

014I once again like to thank everyone for a trip close to this past school year and all the efforts that are in motion for welcoming our students and families back in September. And that concludes the June superintendent report. Thank you very much. Does anyone have any questions for Dr. Radhar? Dr. Radver, I appreciate your words also for tragedy that occurred. So I know that you have connections with many. So, thank you so much for I will add um Melissa Orman was instrumental on the the SRO work that took place here last year and I was um fortunate enough to work with her on that and it's a big loss. Yes. Thank you. Moving on to number six. I will be pushing uh 6A down until some of our children may be joining and I believe

015uh Mr. Manard is is taking uh Mr. Pratt's place uh for that item. So, we'll be able to move that out. Just swap those two later. We will just slide that down. We'll just postpone that one till later. Um so, hopefully some kids show up in about 45 minutes. Then we'll move on to number 6B uh with the principal's report. Mr. Manard, good evening everyone. It's my pleasure to join you and talk about uh kind of a retrospective look at the 242 year at Rockford High School. Just some general updates. Uh recently we had our NHS induction ceremony for incoming juniors and seniors who will be a part of that tradition next year. We completed our 108th commencement exercises. We've been doing a lot of work finalizing our curriculum mapping and our curriculum instructional framework

016which you'll see laid out in uh some of our goal progress in a little bit. We've been doing uh some intervention work at the tier one and tier 2 level that ties in with some of the AVID work that we've been doing. Um bringing professional development and stretching that across the entire staff. Um so not just our aid elected teachers but trying to make some of those key strategies um a cornerstone in each and every classroom. Recent events that we can celebrate uh three of our major spring sports all won conference championships. So, baseball, softball, and track had a really successful season. And again, as mentioned, if uh some of those kids can come, we'd love to hear a little bit more about their thoughts on how the season went. Um, all the teams played

017deep into the playoffs. We had some state representation and a champion in our track and field team. We had a rocket block kickball tournament among uh freshman and sophomores, and our juniors and seniors were busy IB testing at that time. Um, several several students took exams. I think there were about 65 students that took over about 160 exams. So, we're looking forward to uh the report out on that. Typically, you receive exam scores right around the 4th of July. So, looking to see how those students did on those exams. And finally, uh we were able to spend down uh the entirety of our resource training and solutions CTE innovation grant, which funded four new welding machines, suppliers, and some safety equipment for the welding shop. will be wellappointed for our new egg teacher who will

018join us in the fall. So, our first goal that centered around student achievement and growth, um we kind of went in with a narrow scope uh and just making sure that our assessment practices were aligned with what our common syllabus said it would be, but we realized it was so much more than that. And so, the conversation kind of spiderweb into a lot of different things about instruction and intervention. And so this is where we've tried to kind of push the airline hanger um down the road of making sure that the students that are struggling in classes have a way to reach a passing grade. And that of course, as you can imagine, can be uh riddled with different philosophies of education and um uh lack of strategy or a lack of time to discuss

019appropriate strategies. And so um that's been a really really um key in terms of pushing the envelope in helping our students achieve and we'll continue that work. Um, so the reason I mentioned that is we were going to wrap up the year talking about that last pillar in that AVID college and career readiness framework, which is um, insisting on rigor and uh, we're going to define rigor and how to push that out. But we believe that's going to be more appropriate for a fall conversation because we wanted to make sure we got some kids across the finish line. I've got some data on how we were able um, with healthy and supportive environment. uh we were going to make sure that every student felt connected and that they belong at Rockford High School. And we

020have some metrics that we were able to pull last week. And so when I came to in the winter time, um there were about 89% of our students who responded to the survey saying that they identify a trusted adult in the school. Our new data uh from May indicates that 95.2% believe that they have an uh trusted adult that they can go to in the school. What's interesting about that survey and what I want to kind of maybe tweak it for next year is there's a question about I feel comfortable going to an adult and then there's another question about I feel comfortable sharing my issues with an adult and so the the data is um very different in those two questions and it's lower for actually sharing concerns and it's higher for I can

021go to this adult and have a conversation but maybe I'm guarded and I'm not willing to share a real problem. So, we want to dig into the that a little bit more next year. Um, our what I'm proud to say is that our student leadership team has grown a lot and I want to thank uh both of our counselors at the high school for doing some shoulder tapping and getting some students involved who maybe don't have a leadership role but are a little bit more outgoing and so um getting their names out there and getting some of the challenges that we do out there to try to boost um morale in the school. We also um kind of part of a uh ongoing effort to define what it means to be a rocket. We partnered

022with Justin's Renaissance on that as well. And we had a meeting and there were some buzzwords about, you know, what it means to be a rocket and we were all just kind of this feels a little empty. And so we we had a really earnest conversation about the survey data that came back and there were students that filled out the survey, staff filled out the survey. And then I reached out to actually the the president of RAW, the area athletic association, and he shared it with um parents in the community who may not have a high schooler yet. And so looking at that data, it really uh allowed us to kind of name what we believe it means to be a rocket. So you might see this in some of the high school um marketing

023in the future. Um, so it's engage in learning, ignite curiosity, and launch your future, which will dovtail directly into some of the um the ways that we're going to capture how students can be prepared for college and career readiness in the district. And so that we'll talk about a little bit when we talk about our career clusters, but um to be able to put language around what it feels like to be at Rockford High School is difficult. And so, um, we wanted to be able to share our story in a in a very succinct way and in a way that demonstrates this is what we expect of you. And then also this is who we're all about and this is our approach to learning. Whatever classroom we're in or whatever activity we're on, whatever field

024we're on, that's what we're doing. Yeah. Question. Um, just looking at the data from November, the number of pe the number of students and there's like a big change. Yes. uh we had a very low participation rate. I suspect that's because of the time of year that we pushed it out. I think we got it out there a little bit too late. Um so I think we had particularly our senior class were kind of on the way out and it's going to be what it's going to be. So we didn't see a lot of participation there but it was a significant drop from our fall. Is there a way do you think in the future to like get the responses more so like like at this time everybody click on this and let's fill this

025out or I I'm not trying to say how to do it. No, it's that's a good question. certainly valid and I think that we talk about this in a lot of different things that we kind of put into rocket block where it's not tied to anything and we can't necessarily hold a classroom accountable for you know pushing the importance of filling out this survey. We have the same conversation about fast testing three times a year, right? Like where can we put this so that we can ensure validity and fidelity to everyone doing it. And so in order to do that, we probably say, "All right, it's 8:05. Um, everybody in your English class today, you're going to be taking this survey or you're going to be doing this fast test." And so we've done that

026a little bit with some of the localized testing that we've done. And that's probably we'll have to do especially in the spring when it comes to that. I mean, the numbers I I like seeing those numbers. It just would be, you know, nice to see a little bit closer to like the number of kids, but it it is good to see. Yeah, it's it's of 126 120 field. That's pretty good. Yeah. And and yeah, certainly reaching out to students. Uh had we had another week or two, I'm sure we would have pushed out the notice a little bit more. Hey, you haven't seen the link to the survey. Um and so yeah, we'll just need a bit longer runway in the spring for that. um possibly even before IV testing because that's when it starts

027to just really ramp up. So probably like early early to mid April. I can about imagine after the IV testing. One more survey. Exact. So both are statistically. Yes. Thank you. Based on Good. Uh our next goal had to do with community school and family partnerships. Uh we really had kind of a watershed moment a couple of weeks ago when we were talking about our CP or career pathway program at the high school which is one of the three arms of IB. Um and we want to create an opportunity for every student to feel prepared going into a career whether that requires additional learning or not. We want to know what you're interested in applying this learning toward and we want to be able to have some sort of external acknowledgement. That might be a

028c certification, that might be a test, that might be college credit through some of our diploma program courses. And so what we hadn't done is thought about the relationship between our diploma courses and that that in fact is external validation for certain career pathways, which you're about to find out. Um, and we're going to package this and we're going to have it ready for you in our fall report when we talk about the Launch Your Future campaign and how each and every student at every desk at Rockford High School will be given the opportunity to prepare for a career field of their interest. And I'm super passionate about that. And again, we're saying career preparation aside from any sort of collegiate requirement because everybody's got to do something when they graduate. And so when I

029go toward the career clusters, so this is from uh MDE. Um there are six career clusters. And I'll just briefly walk you through some of the current and proposed pathways. So when we started this school year, we had four career pathways. I'm going to share with you 11 today that are either right at the soil or we just dug the hole or it's a big oak tree. And so in arts, communication and information systems, we are going to propose a communication arts um career pathway and they will be certified if they take the diploma program laying lit course. Uh we want to talk about film production and that is actually a project in our IB film course. Uh graphic design leading to a Photoshop certification, theater production and performance. Um, we hope to gain a

030little bit more interest in our theater electives to be able to run the IB theater course. We don't currently run that, but if we get enough interest, I would love to do that. And then partner with the Henipin Arts Trust, which does a lot of amazing thing for uh, youth in theater in Minnesota. And music production through IB music. Again, a capstone project in the IB music course is to produce your own music. So why wouldn't we find some sort of a certification that leads students to demonstrate to a potential employer, I can mix sounds, I know audio, I can do these things, and then perhaps get a production job right out of high school. And so even those five bullets right there, we're already doing some of these things. It's just intentionally pointing kids

031towards the career that the course is setting them up for. It's not just an empty exercise and gaining academic knowledge. It's leading to something and it's very purposeful. And so even this fall and I kind of scratch my heads as having an incoming sixth and seventh grader, but this fall we're going to talk to nth graders and they're going to pick one of these clusters and that will sort of naturally lead them to a path of electives that we believe will best prepare them for that career cluster. The second cluster is engineering, manufacturing, technology. We're talking about leadership and organizational management leading to a Google certification. I'll come to you in the fall and we're going to try to phase out a course called computer applications which taught you how to copy and paste in

032Microsoft Word. I think our students are well ahead of that when they come in the nth grade and so we wanted to lead to uh again that certification probably a Google level one level two certification. Engineering fundamentals, our students already take IB physics and so they're learning about engineering fundamentals. Might as well get them a certificate. health science. We already have uh our most successful pathway I would say is the certified nursing assistant program leading to certification through a successful exam. And then um coming on board next year is our athletic trainer. Um, we're going to give her a year of just elective teaching, getting used to the classroom. And if it is a natural and appropriate fit, we'd like to offer an athletic training and sports officiating uh career path where they will get

033CPR and first aid certified. Human services, we're looking at educational foundations. Uh, we just landed a partnership with St. Cloud State for CIS intro to ed and, uh, that will lead towards a parapro exam. What I like, again, I'm just going to kind of pause here. What I like about these pathways is you can choose to have a foundational start to your major in a four-year university, or you can choose that to be the entry point to your career. So, I think about our CNA students. We have students in there that will only go to two-year colleges, and they will leave this high school with their CNA license, and they will go be a CNA while they get their associates degree. We have others that are going to very competitive four-year universities that you need

034to have your CNA license by your sophomore year of college or you don't get to be a nurse. And so our kids are already walking on to university and imagining that life transition and they have some key thing that they don't have to worry about. And that's what we're after is both of those markets. Um we're looking at a little bit uh Spanish interpreter services. Uh I've been having fun looking into this actually because it goes many different ways. Um, and so I've looked at kind of a health interpreter where our students could possibly be um, a Spanish interpreter for like a hospital or clinic business management administration. We have our business management pathway through IB business management. But I'm super excited because they're adding a hospitality and tourism management pathway um through uh uh

035industry in the Twin Cities and that's funded through ProSource and they take an exam and then they receive certification for that. Agriculture, food and natural resources. We have our veterinary assistant uh pathway that they can take an exam and become certified in that. Our craftsmanship pathway is well underway and undergurtded with a lot of updated equipment that will lead toward OSHA safety certification. And then down the road uh again once we uh get our staff kind of used to Rockford area schools uh we're going to be looking at the culinary arts program. Um again leading towards uh the ProStart exam and being able to potentially lead kind of catering services. Dr. Thank you. You know, I want to first of all just say thank you to Principal Lonard and his team at the high school.

036You know, I came to them. I said, "Hey, I'd like to do some work around this." This is right when I first arrived here two years ago and they said, "Look what we're doing." And I was blown away. Um, and we have since expanded this and I've been able to work closely with them, but they're carrying the water on this. um principal and his team for a school a high school less than 500 students to offer these things is extraordinary and I'm incredibly proud of the work that's taking place there and the creativity and the innovation that uh the faculty there has been involved with um for for several years. You're going to be seeing this uh Mr. Bernard and his team coming back to the board here in the fall um with the um

037college degree prep launch your future um program that we're going to be touting um it's going to be u marketed. It's going to be talked about um quite a bit here in our system through social media and other other ways. But the work that's happening at that high school is above and beyond any other high school of of our size and including much many high schools that are far bigger. Um so again, I want to thank you for your leadership on this because this is a big deal. So thank you. Speaking of IB, um again I mentioned kind of those three different branches of IB. Our middle year's program which everybody is involved in in the nth and tth grade level. 144 of our 10th graders completed personal projects and they were showcased at our

038March conferences. Uh the students explored the DP and CP options for next year and registered for DP courses and elective courses accordingly. And again, as I mentioned, now coming into nth grade in the fall, we're going to be exposing them to these career clusters and help them kind of dial down their options for electives. And of course, they'll be able to switch, right? So, if I take if I believe that I want to be a hospitality and tourism manager in 10th grade, but then I want to be an engineer, uh, I can switch and and that's totally fine. And so just like a university where you could switch a major, we intend that they're going to be able to fluidly pass through these different pathways by intentionally making them shorter than they could be if

039we designed it any other way. So a pathway can be as easy as two courses and an exam. So they can kind of dip in and out and maybe explore multiple pathways um by design for that. Um, in our diploma program, two of our full diploma candidates uh graduated and we'll get the results in July. 65 students took 125 external exams, which has the potential of saving our families $200,000 in tuition. 125 of the exams uh lasted through May 21st. Seven of our full diploma candidates in the junior class have begun planning for their extended essays. We have a really high octane um senior class coming up in terms of academics where in our most advanced English course that we offer, they said, "Can we start our extended essay early so we have the summer

040to research?" And thank goodness Julie Marlo was sitting down and said yes. And so they have already begun planning their extended essays and their essential questions for kind of the mini thesis that they'll be writing. I'm excited. uh all 10th and 11th grade full DP candidates have had individual meetings with IB coordinator. So we are again cultivating those conversations in 10th grade so that they know what their junior and senior year needs to look like. And again I'll say it's easier to start and then peel away if you can't handle the academic pressure of IB than it is to say I wish I would have done that in the spring of your senior year. Uh in our CP uh career pathway we had six candidates. Uh the new career pathway curriculum uh begins in the

041fall. So IB completely restructured the career pathway which is why you're also seeing a restructure and a build out here at Rockford. Um so it's allowing us at the same time we have some state mandates in different uh courses that are required. We're actually folding them in with some of the new CP mandates so that it doesn't have any any additional requirements for the kids and it's not convoluted in terms of this is the one way you could do this and get out in four years. So again trying to fluidly balance that especially given the size of our high school. Um we'll continue the IB state grant next year. So that will be um another $25,000 that we'll spend to support that programming um sponsored by the state of Minnesota and the conceptual design has

042begun for launch your future which you heard about a little bit earlier in the presentation and you'll see that fully formed in the fall. our culture for collective purpose. Again, we started kind of a laser focus in uh notetaking in the in the fall. And it sounds, you know, if you just kind of gloss over what I'm saying, well, yeah, kids should know how to take notes. What we discovered is kids don't know how to take notes. And so, we're teaching them at the 9th and 10th and 11th grade level. Sometimes, this is how I want you to take notes. This is how it's beneficial for this discipline. Um, and then by their senior year, they can pick and choose the types of notes that they take. And that is going to be such an

043advantage heading into college um for those students that continue their learning there. Yeah. A question. Do they take the notes handwritten or on a computer? It's probably 80% handwritten. They actually prefer the handwritten notes. That aligns the research. So, Yep. Yeah. And uh that's been that's been really neat to see, especially again as we've taken the cell phones away. Um and and just seeing their interaction with technology in an educational setting that has changed. And so it's it is a tool um one of the many tools they use to learn. And if they're using it too much, they're probably not learning. And so that's been interesting to see kind of a change in dynamic in terms of classroom management, too. Um so we worked on these 90-day plans. Um, up next, we're going to be

044looking at additional 90-day plans for next year, um, as time and competing initiatives allow in order to further operationalize the AVID college and career readiness framework at Rockford High School. Um, there'll be 17 of us from the district headed to a regional path training for AVID at Inenver Heights in early August. So, we hope to learn more about how uh, we can incorporate some of those AVID strategies districtwide, but certainly at the high school as we move towards our yearly authorization. And that again is just a quick image of the college and career readiness framework. Underneath it all there's relational capacity making relationship with students. Um and then um supported by the collective educator agency. Then we have student agency rigorous academic preparedness and opportunity knowledge set against the district instruction systems leadership and culture

045frameworks. Our stewardship of resources. my uh secretary, my principal secretary at the high school, has done a lot of work in kind of cleaning up budgets, tracking them down. Um has uh worked extensively with Bridget Peterson about understanding the budget and how to uh correctly monitor those budgets as the year goes on and how to coach our teachers in understanding um deadlines and paperwork and processes. Um and so we're really excited that now we kind of have full access to everything. So, we'll be able to keep um an even closer eye on expenses for next year um which will be increasingly important um as we look at our budgets for our CP roll out um the grant accesses that we have and using up those funds first before we touch our district funds. In our

046school improvement plan, um we looked at our uh learning targets, standards, and assessments, and that really led uh us into a district conversation about the instructional roadmap, which you'll hear more about next year. Um and so this slide is just kind of indicating that our teachers at Rockford High School have learned by doing a lot more this year in terms of standards from an understanding of about a 1.4 4 and a four point scale to a 2.38 and incorporating learning targets from a 1.36 to a 2.43 and assessments from 1.52 to 2.57. So in each of those categories that we intentionally spent time and efforts coordinating both at the site level and the district level for professional development, we I believe got our money's worth in terms of teacher growth and teacher understanding about how

047to apply those three things into their daily practice. Um this is just a quick image of the actual grid that we use for standards, learning targets, and assessments. going from not using it, not linked, not practicable to daily referenced um throughout the lesson and aligned, documented and implemented effectively. Student connectedness, we talked a little bit about that uh also um that over 95.2% that responded showed a positive response and our q comp site goal was met statistically. Um we have a couple of notes on that. So 30 students did show growth by decreasing their risk level uh in reading and 20 students did show growth by reducing their risk level in math. So we got there. Um but there is some concern with stagnant scores or students falling backwards. So the real meat of the

048conversation wasn't did we meet our goal, it was what's this child's story? You know they've got a 235 in the fall, winter, and spring and that alone will eliminate you from the cut score at the end of the year because it goes up by a couple points in the winter and then up by a couple more points in the spring. So, why are we not why is that student not keeping up with the normed growth that FastBridge expects? And so, we're going to be digging into that a little bit. Um, and then incentivizing students who demonstrate on track by allowing them not to test in future sessions. I mentioned this a little bit when we talked about the student connectedness survey and not a lot of responses. This is a reality at the high school

049level where if it doesn't matter to the kids, you'll find out the results. And so, um, we want to incentivize the students. So, if you take this test seriously and you demonstrate that you're on track, maybe you don't have to take the test in the winter or spring. Um, so that they can bring their best foot forward in those assessments. So, we have accurate data. And these are the actual numbers. So, we did have 31 move up. This is winter to spring. And so we had 31 move up in reading, 35 move down, and 194 stayed the same. 33 moved up, 33 moved down, and 183 remain the same. So we're kind of, you know, we're we're trading students, I think, among those three levels. So what's the first column there? The 35, 28, and

050the 186. Those are our winter scores. Winter scores. Yeah. And so what I really think we need to do is actually tie the individual students and see what the movement is from level to level. And so that's what we'll be working on for next year when when we set this goal for Q. Yeah. Is do you triangulate it with other data also so that you get a full picture like this is one snapshot and then have conversations looking at other like classroom work and everything so that you're able to paint a picture. We do and we dig down to the individuals. So, it's also incredibly important that we have our grade level IT team meetings which occur on Thursday mornings and that's where we actually put the names up there and we say, "Okay, these

051kids moved up." And I can tell because Sally over here has been trying really hard and they've been working in our ADS cysts reading program and that's why her score went up and that's why she's on track. um it's the move downs and the stay the same where you have to almost understand the individual story and like what's going on there and what's been happening in this particular discipline over the course of the year and so that's where the conversations happen but in terms of systematizing we haven't found a way to do that effectively yet do you have an opportunity to have conversations with the students so they can look at that growth trend line we started this winter so uh and uh that middle column is the winter scores and it kind of occurred

052occurred to us like we're making them test three times a year but don't really talk about it. And so we had our again our English teachers um kind of uh took the helm and we gave them all the scores and they explained this is what on track means, this is what um you know uh risk category means. This is what not on track means and this is what your score has been. And they were blown away and they wanted to know everything about all the data points. And I was like well this is an actual conversation about student performance that I didn't expect to find today. And so that was really really good. Again, especially at that level, once they understand the why, they're going to put in a little bit more effort, right? And

053then as you think about those conversations and the students know, okay, like if I go from a 200 to 210, my growth will go up, but also what what what does that mean? Like instructionally, I need to learn, yes, whatever. So that they're not just thinking of a number, you're looking at because it's even if you just learn some of those things, it'll impact that overall score. Yeah. And that's going to be important to continue those conversations because again at the high school level the test for the first 11 questions or so is the exact same every time three times a year. And so they have a poor attitude when they learn that it's fast testing day. Oh yeah. Until we can frame it as no, we're using this data to populate these uh level

054two interventions and we're using the data to help you understand this is how you're doing in reading a map. I mean, I could come in and say, "Well, the state requires that I have a reading test for you every year, so you have to take it." Well, that's not very motivating. No. So, I have to teach them the value of seeing the test, seeing their performance over time, and responding to that. Thank you, Mr. Any questions for Mr. Yes, Mstrom. Thank you. So, you mentioned possibly allowing them to not take the test. Um, and I'm sure you've considered this, but just how we how we would be able to view the aggregate data and see, you know, where the ups and downs have happened if if someone flatlined, so they actually went down, but they

055did well enough in the fall that then we didn't test them, so we don't we miss it, you know. Yeah. So, and I'm sure I'm sure you've had that conversation. That's just something that I was thinking that is a concern. Um, obviously it would be motivating to try hard if you get to skip the test. Yeah. And that's that's one of many incentives we've discussed, but I I don't know. I I think that you know, we are required to screen them once a year for reading now with the React. Um but just thinking of ways that we can help them through it. Dr. Roover, thank you. And to that question, which I think is is excellent, um I would assume that cut score would be quite high. Yes. And so if you've already demonstrated this

056something here, you're you're you're sort of like being um fluent in a language, you don't take the next class because you still got it. So I I think that that would be a good motivation. Um we have the part that I really appreciate about this is the conversation that took place about drilling down to individualized students. So this whole idea of personalized learning and and what kids need and knowing their story um that is that is the trajectory of of Rockeria schools right now and I'm really excited about this. So not only are we offering the right things, we're supporting kids with the right things and you know I we can all infer and I because I did you know about the data that we saw there and I'm like yeah we met we met

057a goal but and then I I I I was saying there's probably reasons why these things are happening and it wasn't there were necessarily dropped. they didn't they didn't grow at the rate in which they were um expected to grow. And sometimes if you have kids up here, they're not going to grow. I mean, statistically, that's what we'll see. But um either way, when I talk with our staff, I say, you know, we we can't always control um you know, the students when they arrive and their circumstances they're in, but we can control them from one part of the school year to the next in terms of making sure they're learning. And that needs to be our goal. um maybe control is not the word we can influence and have have a positive impact on

058our kids. So um I love where this is going because in the past we just we met our goal and and that would be that or we didn't meet the goal. So let's start continue that conversation of of what does this child need to be successful at the next level in all areas and kind of wrap our arms around them. So thank you. Yeah, Mr. and the who tells your story is important, right? touch district telling people that Rockford doesn't do a good job supporting their kids in their college direction. Right? Rockford High School is poor at college credit, college, whatever. But just looking at the IB information, right, on average, doing the numbers, it's about $3,100 in tuition savings, almost eight credits per student that took that those tests. So that propaganda I guess

059from another district which touches us saying that we're one of the worst in the area for college preparedness. This directly disproves that. Correct. So I appreciate that. Yep. We're telling the real story. Yeah. And it's something that our we should tell our story and shout that greatly because that's not just that's just the I component because we also have the college and schools component which then inflates that more. right? Having one of those children that got some good stuff out of your school. So, thank you. Appreciate that. Any other questions? I just appreciate this whole report because it really lets me know where you're at and every So, thank you. Did Did you want to say my name first? Did I talk to her? Yes. We're supposed to be recognized at the regular meeting. Sorry.

060Okay. Thank you. Sorry about that. Um, I echo that. I I really look forward to your presentations. They're always full of great information. I feel like I'm understanding what's happening at our high school. Um, added to that after the end of year, I was able to come and visit and I visited even with some of your staff up at the school and I just overwhelmingly impressed over and over and over. So thank you for your leadership in that building. Our students are so extremely fortunate for the leadership. So thank you. Thank you Mr. Um is any other questions or comments? Very good. Is everyone okay if we if we pause postpone 7A sorry 6A until after uh 7A? Is anyone having that issue? I think the kids are here now. They are here. Okay. Uh

061so can we take a a fivem minute recess at this time and and we will bring those kids in. So we will adjourn at 6:17 and we will come in back to session at 6:23. Nope. I can do that as board. So there you go. We're at recess for five minutes. Giving Chris to the practice start. All right, it is 6:22 and we have completed our recess. Thank you board for allowing that to happen. Um, at this time we would like to move on to item number 6A, which is our spring activity celebration. And Mr. Pratt isn't able to join us tonight. So, Mr. Manard, you drew the straw. Yes, I did. Uh, we had a wonderful spring activities season and we brought some of our stellar athletes and competitors and participants here today to

062tell you firsthand about their experiences. So, we'll just kind of start on the far end of the room and if you want to say who you are, your activity and uh how the year went from your from your perspective. My name is Patrick Bibos. I played baseball and did another solid season. Four of our six seniors play college baseball and two of us made all conference all state with me and cos. Uh Max Edwards also baseball. Uh this year, like you said, solid season. We were 18 and five. Um we won our conference and we had five allconerence players as well as two all section. Um I'm Evelyn. I'm with softball. We had a really successful season this year. Um made it to our sections championship game. I'm Josephine. I'm with six of our students.

063Yes. And also with Deco, we also had a lot of success at state prior to nationals with um I I placed top eight in my event which was the sales demonstration hardline and then we also had all the national qualifiers as well. So just great overall success this year. Although the chapter did kind of um decrease in member number like we still had a lot of great success overall throughout the year. So we're very proud of our members. Yeah. I'm Ava. I'm an officer of the FFA chapter. We had a very successful year overall with over 30 um of our members attending the state convention and with our middle school marketing team placing second in a high school competition. So, they did very well. Along with that, we have two of our students um one

064of them is me um who will be going to the national FFA um uh convention competing in aggra science and it's a project on evocative labeling. Um, and so overall, yeah, we had a great year. Oh, hang on one second. Casey, did you want to share anything for softball? Um, we had a good season, like conference season. Um, we went further in sections than normal this year, so that was nice. Um, yeah, for golf and I think we had a really strong season. Uh, I feel like everyone improved really well. Um, I'm Divia West and with girls golf. I feel like the varsity team improved a lot over the season and we finished out strong. My name is Isaac and I'm part of the rock and track team and I'm one of the captains on

065the team in total. We have 39 kids this year, four girls and one of our shooters is going qualified for all state is going to states this Friday and we had a lot of people in group this season. So I think our season was good. I'm Lucas St. I'm with boys golf and we I'd say we had a really nice season. We started off with only a couple recurring members and a super young squad and we improved definitely a whole lot and end up having a lot of fun. Couple all conference kids and Benson right here made it to state and one two kids made it to sections day two and we had one that cut by one stroke. I'm Ben Blanch. I'd say we had a pretty successful season even though we didn't really

066know what we were going to be like at the start of the season. But as we grew, we kind of found our varsity members and kind of grew within that group and we kind of all had fun together and we all uh played our best. Kale Bartell's and I'd say we had a successful season and I'd like to credit some of that to our coach Marty Johnson who always believed in us. I'm Cole Miller with golf team. Uh, I feel like we all really well. Last year we had like eight people come out and I had like 26. I feel like So, if you think about it, um, all of these people had a whole school day. Um, spring sports can be wildly unpredictable with weather and travel. um and they did it all and

067uh my hats go off to all of them for accomplishing just that but also the success that they found on and off the field. So well done congratulations Mr. Blanchard you are the second person ever from Rockford to qualify for state. Correct. Congratulations. And Casey, you forgot to mention you participated in the uh took second team or second team all state and participated in the state all-star game in Mano. Awesome. And Don got 400 wins. Yeah. Early in the season. So super successful. Excellent. Thank you guys. You can do it like anybody. And that's what you remember. No, thank you, Mr. Appreciate it. All right. Thank you, board, for allowing us to transition and shift that around a little bit so we could honor our kids. Um and and we'll move on. So to 7A

068uh stewardship of resources uh CFO Miss Peterson, if you would please join us. Hi. Good evening. Hopefully you have as good a news as our athletics and activities today. That pressure's on. That was really good. Okay. All right. I'm here this evening going to present to you uh the FY2526 budget for approval. I'm going to first walk through um the timeline of this. And the biggest thing I want to say about um putting together a budget for the school district, this process takes a lot of time and a lot of work by a lot of people. So um we've had many meetings regarding this budget both at the board level uh as well as administrative level and with that I just want to thank all of you for your help all of administration principles uh

069staff of Rockford area schools because I could do this alone so I put a lot of pressure on people uh with deadlines and such. So um I just want to thank many members of area schools for their help. So, uh, as you can see here, this process started, you know, in January and if not sooner or earlier than that. So, uh, it's taken us a good seven months to put this all together. So, um, moving into the summary of all funds, um, all of you have with you this evening the the budget, um, packet. I won't go through every single number. We we we don't have three weeks to do that. Um, and what they all mean, but you can see high level here. I have included a high level summary of all the funds

070that Rockford does operate. Uh we do operate as you can see uh one two three four five funds um with uh the biggest thing I want to highlight here as I say we operate five funds uh soon to be four um that building construction fund it looks kind of funny $5,000 of revenue with $2.2 million of expense. My little note too says down there that bond reserve funds will provide the resources for this. So we're basically using our old bond proceeds and everything. I have to pay for all of that. So that's the one that probably looks the most weird is you pick up this summary page. Um, so moving on from the highle fund summary right into the general fund where I will spend the majority of my evening talking to you about uh

071highlevel assumptions here. Um, in summary, um, how did I get here to build this? Well, it started with enrollment. And so you can see here in the chart, we're uh projecting 1,531 kids for the 2526 school year. Um and then moving into the revenue side of this budget. Uh you can see I have them kind of underlined on the screen for you. But just quickly, uh taxes, remember that revenue or was approved with the levy back in December of 24. State aids. Um I did use the uh as you heard Mr. right over in his report the 2.74% increase on gen ed formula increasing that per pupil amount to $7,481 so up $200 per pupil from 25 and then all other um state aid funding streams that Rockford receives were all based on statewide formulas

072or pre per pupil amounts or however um the state comes up with um those formulas and then federal revenue venue uh that was pretty flat. Unfortunately, we don't know a lot about what's going to happen at the federal level. We do know that our bigger federal programming or federal program streams that we do receive are safe. Uh that being title one and special education. So those two we know for sure there is some or there are some grumblings about whether title two and title three will remain um at play but for the sake of this budget they are included in there but they're not the bulk of Rockford's federal revenue by any means and then the fourth revenue stream that's in this general fund is the local revenue. remember um local revenue is based on

073participation and ad admissions and fees and um you know lovely interest earnings lots of things that are volatile and or depend on choice by someone. So those revenues were really budgeted conservatively and you you'll see those as we get in more depth in here. And then moving on to expenses. Um all expense assumptions um were based on current collective bargaining group or agreements as it relates to salary and benefits. Um and then all other line items I did use uh either an inflationary increase an average of you know a number of years think utilities because of course weather fluctuates we don't know. So I average some things and then other areas um I put in the exact contract that we have. So think like transportation, we have a signed contract agreement with a transportation provider.

074So I know those increases for those. So many of the expense lines have had, you know, a number of different ways that I' I've got to um the number that's built into the budget. The one thing um that we as finance people like to do once we put all these assumptions together is I like to high level say okay if I continue with these same kind of assumptions knowing what I know about what our legislature may or may not do um and what as it relates to revenue um what will our taxes do um remember a lot of property taxes are dived on our enrollment that's how we get that levy. Um, others are, you know, bond approved, but that's in other areas of this, not necessarily in the general fund. So, that's what I

075have in front of you here. The thing that I want to highlight for you on this, we've talked about this last month um, at the works or at the Mayboard meeting and some of the numbers have changed slightly slightly this current year 26 that we're projecting slightly about 180,000. it changed unfortunately um to a deficit. And so why why did that happen? A lot of that was more work um than I stated at that meeting that I needed to do. So for instance, I put some ASIS expenses in here. Remember ADS is only reimbured at 56%. Um I've done a lot more work with negotiations and uh teacher contract and why teacher contract because their contract is up this year. They are our biggest driver of salaries and benefits. So, I put a lot of

076work into really projecting that. So, that's the bulk of um that change in the 26 school year that you're seeing. And then when I push that out two more years, I have made some assumptions on those two years as well. The biggest thing I want to highlight there is you'll see at the top there is that flat enrollment. Um, and then I did, um, keep a state aid increase. So, I did keep about a 2% increase. So, I don't know if that's too aggressive or too, you know, if I am too aggressive, what that means, if I'm too aggressive on the revenue side. Um, and then the tax levy projections are flat. They're based on, you know, current numbers, but no increase. And then um expenses again same approach inflationary increases. And so you can

077see what happens. The biggest thing to know here is that this compounds, right? So we have a $582,000 loss right now projected for 26. That gets pushed forward into 27, right? Because we didn't make any changes in 26. And then it compounds again, you know, with more inflationary increases. And then the same thing happens in 28. So this is a worst case scenario presentation. This is a do nothing. Um don't make cuts, don't change anything. Just keep doing what you're doing. And this is where you look up. Pause on those kind of projections. Any questions? Any concerns with those? Do you guys want to know more about, you know, what I did do? What I didn't do? There isn't much that I didn't do. I promise. Dr. Hoover. Yeah. I I think one thing that

078I think since your arrival and I think my arrival working together, we we have really tried hard to um to very conservatively um budget the school district. And that did result in a you know, obviously a a revenue generator, if you will, for this current school year of over half a million dollars. Um and so again looking at worst case scenario clearly this will not be our scenario um it will be different in one way shape or form whether there's increased revenue less expenditures more kids show up you know that kind of thing. So um I I appreciate that. I I would rather see what is what is our worst case scenario knowing that we're going to make corrections to that versus somebody saying we're going to get there. So thank you for doing that.

079You're welcome. Our policy for cost containment that we just put in place was it two meetings ago we increased that to 10% 10 to 12 it was 12 to 15% 12 to 15 okay but that's for question that's for unrestricted it's just for our typical fund for the fund balance just fund balance I thought that was for our unrestricted Straight fund balance. All fund balances I believe. So this projection is all fund balanc. So for the 78 school year, we would be in cost containment area. Then for if that's if this current trajectory would move forward. Yes. Correct. At a $1.9 million variance from the fund balance. Okay. Just getting in my head. Thank you. Any questions on you all? Good. Okay. Thank you. All right. And then moving on to page eight, I believe

080seven. Um here you can see the general fund uh revenues and expenses side by side of where we are today in 2425 our amended or revised budget and then sideby-side comparison to what I'm proposing to you this evening. Um the biggest thing I think I want to highlight here is that overall our revenues are going down about a half a percent from the 25 school year to the 26 school year. And why why is that? The bulk of it is uh the the levy, the decrease in enrollment there at about 5 and a half%. State aid is going up about 2.74 or 2.7% like we talked about. Uh federal revenue is going down slightly. But the biggest driver of this decrease you guys can see there is on interest earnings. That's going down about 300,000.

081So with, you know, state aids going up about 489, but interest earnings going down about 300,000, you know, there's our $100,000 swing um that you're seeing in revenue reduction. So we're projected to have less revenue next year than we are this year. Um and like I said, the the bulk of that is because of those interest earnings. We just don't know what what the market will do. Um, I did just recently make some investments. So, I'm I'm crossing my my fingers and and trying to get into something that's more guaranteed u for the district to try to maximize that. But time will tell for us. So, so revenues are going down about half a percent and then you can see here from this summary um or maybe you can't, you can see it on the

082next page in the expense details for sure, our expenses are going up about four and a half%. with the bulk of the increase there in our salaries and benefit area as well as our purchase of service. So what is purchase of service? The biggest increase in there that's driving that that line to go up about 5% is our Transportation is just very costly. Uh utilities are also in that purchase of service area. And so anytime um you know there's a lot of special ed vendors that are in there and stuff like so anytime we involve humans and we purchase service from somebody else um you know my projections are usually about a 5% increase on that in their their costs and their contract to us each year. So um and then again there you can

083see that $582,000 deficit in fund balance. We will talk about fund balance a little bit more in two pages. And then I won't talk you guys in great depth on pages eight and nine here. Uh just because we we talked I think kind of substantially at the board meeting last meeting about um you know the comparison here for you guys. The expenses are laid out by program area um of Rockford area schools. These are this program. How did Bridget pick these programs and how did I get here? These are actual EUARS program codes. What's UFARS? That's the uh accounting code structure that all school districts, charters, anybody that does anything in the state is required to use. So, it's it's you know, if you pick up another school district, a lot of times they'll have

084the same exact information in this kind of similar format. So, you can kind of compare and contrast, but I won't walk you guys through all that. The biggest thing I want to say is on page nine again at the bottom there you can see that four and a half% increase um and the million dollar increase to expenses. Moving on to the next page and so talking more in depth here about fund balances a little bit of the general fund. So on page 10 and I I kind of have it up on the screen here. I want to draw your attention to the middle of this page where I have the rest all the restricted fund balances that we have to calculate for the state of Minnesota or almost all of them. Some of them don't

085apply because we don't have we don't receive revenue and we don't spend any money but the areas where Rockford actually receives revenue and then we have some sort of expense. You'll notice in a handful of these fund balances, uh, in the fund balance buildup parenthesy usage column, it's the second one from the end there. Many of those restricted fund balances, I'm using up fund balance reserves to cover some expenses. So, I'm shifting a lot of expenses to try to maximize revenue and maximize and then keep um our unassigned so the top line lower. So, what am I saying? Of the $582,000 projected deficit, only about 342,000 will actually come out of our unassigned fund balance because I'm really trying to use up some of these fund balance reserve. There's there's not necessarily, you guys, any

086good reason that I can give you why we need a $412,000 reserve in basic skills and or compensatory. Um the only thing I can tell you is we just haven't had a good plan for those resources, but guess what? Going forward, we will. So, um that's why that's happening. Um and the same thing with some of those other areas, staff development and Yep. So, um, all in all, when we get to the end of next year, next June, um, I'm projecting an unassigned fund balance of about 14.44%. So, it's kind of like in the middle in there for you. Um, so that's not quite cost containment rate for the policy. Yeah, I think you guys have probably been talking about that. It is 15% was a new policy unrestricted. So, we'll be slightly unrestricted. We

087will we will be moving into that according to policy unless y cost containment. Y so just Okay. So we did follow just just slightly below. Got it. Okay. Which is one of the higher uh and that's where we want to be because you want to reate that's one of the higher unrestricted you'll find that's where we are. you 12 to 15 and as the policy states because Jessica and I were just coming back and forth and I'm on the policy side, right? It's uh it states maintain uh will endeavor to maintain an unappropriate fund balance of at least 12 to 15% of the district's unobligated general fund. We're in it. So we're in the window. You're in it. Yeah. I'd love to know. We might want to talk about how assigned plays in there too,

088but because that one's not necessarily required by ent but rather assigned can be by management because Rockford as you can see here we do have some assigned fund balances and actually comp next year will move down into the restricted. So why is that? Um, MDE just they moved it on. I don't we've always had the revenue that had to be in a certain code and the expenses in the same kind of just like all these other restricted already pretty much but just um I think however the shell game goes I think what we're finding is that we're going to be right in that sweet spot of of which to be honest I think bridge and I are always in cause containment. We just we just live there. Um, and this year we were able to

089save off cuts, but we're always looking at ways to maximize revenue and and uh cut expenditures. So, we're in that sweet spot. And so, we will be obviously playing all of this out as we go along, but we're we're right there. So, whether it's 14.4, I think 12 point 12.5 to 15, we're we're there. Dr. Pres, if you can ever tell us why the state legislature does something, please. thought maybe there was a secret memo I missed. Well, I just went I just had worked with the program in the past and I'm like what? Thank you. Question. Yes, M. So then that affects our percent in our unrestricted if that's now going to move. It makes our unrestricted have less in it. Nope. It doesn't. I'm only washes anyways. I'm only calculating the the very

090top row for your unassigned okay unreserved fund balance that 3.3 million that's projected and then divide that by your expenses. Okay. Um okay. All right. Moving on to the remainder of the funds. Um I'm not going to spend a ton of time here because not much has changed. But for the sake of formality, the one thing I want to highlight is our food service fund. And you can kind of see that one in the middle. And then um just for the record, you guys, there's all kinds of information in this little packet that I've given you. A lot of information related to the legislature and changes that are impacting each and every one of these funds. Community Ed has some kind of fun stuff based on some of their programs um and so on and

091so forth. So, um, moving back though to this lovely little fund balance summary here. You can see the food service fund. I'm projecting a profit of about $82,000, which will leave the food service fund at about a $900,000 fund balance. Um, we are definitely above some levels there. Um, but there's some waiverss that are in the legislature right now that will allow us to do some things. So um we we have to do some things because we don't want to give that back. Yes. Okay. And so when I say do some things, we need to work with um our food service vendor and maybe do some um fun things in our kitchens. So or you know make some capital investments or some you know need to do some things. Yeah. I mean what was that?

092What was that fun things that you were talking is just buying um fun things can be yeah like um you know oven inre you know invest in the capital there could be new paint with murals or some different things like that that we might be able to um invest the other thing that's happening though is we know our general fund is feeling pressure and our food service fund does utilize some of our general fund resources so what do I mean by that I mean custodial uh utilities trash and currently we're not making our food service fund pay for that. So, one of my recommendations would be to relieve some pressure, you know, fun things. Yes, fun things. So, fun things. Remove some pressure from our general fund um and make that fund sound terrible. Uh

093ask that fund or have that fund uh pay for some of these things that we've always been supporting um that fund with. So, Mr. Morgan. Yes, Chris. Are they just typical chargeback cost sharing? That's how that would happen. Yep. Okay. Um capital improvements or capital investments in, you know, coolers and refrigerators and ovens, the fund can just pay for that itself. But all those other things that the general fund pays for, I can do a charge back to that fund, shift the cost off. So, like if you take a custodian, I might say that 20% of their time is spent in the kitchen in their eight hour day cleaning up after breakfast and lunch and then I get to charge their salary benefits there. It's true. Um, so correct me if I'm wrong, but the

094state only allows you to have so much money in that fund before they take money back. I know uh just from my visits down to the state capital that was a big trying to figure out how if it's a one time where schools can use move some of that money to their general fund. They were asking for it didn't happen whatever but um that's why we need to do this. I just want it on record that we're not just spending money that like we need to or we lose it per state statute like we have to do this. federal stat federal stat participate in the national school lunch program. It's actually the feds that mandate and what they say is we can't base it on a 12 year. So when you take the 1.2 million

095of expenses 12 years 12 months I have to calculate calculate the fund balance limit using nine months only. Okay. So just follow up. So when you're talking about uh the charge back to like garbage custodial, are we still able to do that for this year? We can. Yes. And I will definitely be looking at that as we wrap up. Okay. have a wondering back to Mr. Manard's presentation and that culinary arts added on. Could we use some of this funding to like buy equipment or whatever we would need for that? You cannot use these resources for instructional purposes unfortunately. Even if it's okay even if it's a food type. Okay. Yeah. So there's lots of chatter about these fund balances. Um what I will say is we do know and as I said there's lots

096of fun information in here. If you look at one of the first things in my legislative uh there is some lowering of state funding coming where the reimbursement rates are going to go down and when I say down I mean almost half the so there's a there's a potential you know that we need to do our own analysis there some other things but I really want to spend a lot of time this coming year members of this board on this fund um and when I say fun things in the kitchen. I don't really mean the chargebacks. I mean like making them look, can I say more appetizing and more welcoming and you know all those things. So um okay, moving into community really quick. This one I think in May when I first presented it

097to you, it was a deficit. Happy to report um was and team and I have gone back and uh we scrubbed some numbers and she is uh she's got a tiny loss. she or I'm sorry, not a tiny loss, a tiny profit, almost $6,000. She doesn't love it. She wanted me to let all of you know that um her goal is to get this profit to be much much higher, but um she has been making, you know, some investments in programming and she's she's been doing some really good things. But the most important part is if you look under community ed in her far right column, every single one of her required fund balances are in the positive. So, she's doing a great job managing that And I have no concerns. Uh the building, you

098guys heard me talk about the building construction fund. There I am finally projecting zero fund balance. Uh we at Rockford are hoping to spend all those resources here by the end of fall this calendar, year 25. And then debt service is just the normal tax levy with required bond payment schedules. Um we can't do anything with that fund balance, you guys. that just kind of sits there as a cushion in case we start to see delinquent taxes increase. We can still continue to make um our debt service payments. So, that's not really necessarily our money. Um if we never had bonds and debt payments and that went away, we would that money would go back into taxpayers. That concludes the FY2526 budget presentation. here and seek approval of this budget from the board. Excellent. Thank

099you so much. I appreciate the presentation as I'm sure the board. Are there any other questions or followups for M? I actually have a question just on understanding um page seven property tax levy. It goes down for a proposal and you said that is based on students but I noticed our ADM goes down by only one student. So it's it seemed like a big drop for one student. So is there other components in that? There are great great observation. So it's on a delay. It's actually on a 2year. So it's back one more year prior to 25 when we were lower. Now what's going to happen is you're going to see in 27 28 the catchup of that increase. So you know when I present the levy to you guys and you see those adjustments,

100that's exactly what those are. are capturing those enrollment adjustments. Okay, so it's on a leg, which I need to be aware of, by the way, you guys, because big fluctuations in that can really, really have big revenue streams. So, great, great, great question. Any other questions or comments? This is an item for consideration. Yes, absolutely. And thank you. Great work. Um, so I would appreciate a motion to approve the adoption of Rockford School District's fiscal year 2025 2022 budget, please. Motion approved. Thank you, Mr. Morgan. There is a first. Can I have a second, please? I'll second. Thank you, Mr. Shadine. There's a first and a second. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor signify by I. I opposed. And that does carry unanimously. Thank you so much. Appreciate all your work on

101that. Um Dr. Riley Hoover, side question on that. Um takeaway to figure out how we can do some chargeback on the food service side for the 245 school year. I'll be working with you. Thank you. Appreciate that. Uh moving on to 7B then approval of levy question. This is a follow-on conversation from our work session where Aaylor's was in uh attendance last week on Thursday. Yes. Excellent. Dr. Yes. Um I'd like to present something that you all had talked about last week. Um, this is the uh the plan to authorize a ballot question to appear on the general education ballot November 4th, 2025. Through the work session, the board made a decision there to go with two questions. Uh the first question is to increase operating capital and the second one is a capital question

102contingent on question one passing. So this evening um I am looking and asking the board uh for approval to move forward with um making plans with uh counties to move forward with a two question uh general election ballot uh proposal for November 4th of 2025. Excellent. Thank you so much. and and as we did have much conversation um at the work session about revoke and replace continuation different items for um with agreement from administration this was our best path forward for the district I know Miss Johnson had been briefed a little bit on some of our conversations and Mr. Morgan who did join us virtually. Just want to make sure everyone is on uh level with what we will be doing here. Any questions or concern from any member of the board? I I just

103want to cl like if two only gets passed if one gets passed. Correct. Yep. Conditional. Yeah. One must pass in order. If two carries then two would follow or nothing. My question is kind of related. Um, we have uh hard copies here in our folder and there is a part that is highlighted. Is that where it says if school district question one is approved? Is that something that happens on the ballot where it would be highlighted like that to make it clear or is it it's not right? I don't believe so. I think I think that was on there as an ad that we requested that as a conditional because that wasn't on our packet from last week. Okay. So that's just the edit that was shared directly from from Ellers. This isn't the final.

104We're not voting on final. No, this is just that we're going to do the approval to have the question. So we can direct the district to put in according to timeline that we wish to have a fall question on the ballot. Okay. So with that, um I will make a motion to approve uh the levy question that is presented to us. I'll second. Mr. Shadine has seconded. Thank you so much. Any other discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor signify by I I opposed. And that does carry unanimously. Thank you so much. Do you need recess? Just making sure. All right. So, moving on then. Thank you. Uh, moving on to number 7 C, resolution adopting the school district's long-term facilities maintenance plan. Uh, welcome back. Hello. Who's back? This one is pretty fast. Uh,

105so I'm bringing forward to you this evening a res and asking for a resolution approval to adopt our school district's uh long-term facilities maintenance plan. So, this is a 10-year plan. Um and this process is more of a formality um to get funding and approving this plan so that we can get access to these funds. So in your board packet you have the revenue spreadsheet from MDE where Bridget has projected our revenue for the next 10 years. Uh the revenue is essentially our plan and our budget. However, it can change based on our enrollment. Um so it's $380 per kid. And then the second spreadsheet you have is a projection of the expenses. And basically uh they're all the same roughly um for the most part for the next 10 years because we're spending those

106resources on things like electricity and plumbing and in general maintenance of our facilities. Um this is definitely some of our our limits that we're faced with. um because with only $380 per pupil um there's definitely a shortage where we do have to sometimes dip into those general funds. Um there's also the idea with this plan um and this submission to MDE that MDE wants to see that we're being fiscally responsible that we're not driving this long-term, you know, we're not getting $374,000 and then spending 1.2 million and basically driving this fund balance into a deficit. So this is M this is our way of telling MDE no look at we're going to be responsible but if something comes up in like the fire safety area where we all of a sudden need to replace a

107sprinkler or something during the year this is where Bridget with the work of you know maintenance and and superintendent Ry Hoover we we would shift and maybe not decide to paint an area of a school that we were planning to paint or something. So I do work with staff to um every year ask kind of for more in-depth exact specific projects. So all of that goes into this plan. Um you'll also notice attached in there is one other document that is labeled the asurances. So Dr. Hoover and I have reviewed those insuranceances and those asurances tell us what is allowable. So we have reviewed those for you um or we have reviewed those for the district. Um, and so we definitely know what we are allowed to spend these resources on and what we're not.

108And then those assurances as well as those two spreadsheets and the board resolution go to NDE for approval. So this is a one-year one-time thing that we do. Um, you know, some flexibility for sure. I do reporting to MD on, you know, what we spend their money on and how we're doing. So any questions with respect to this 10-year plan? Thank you. So, we have had newer process for you for our district. I appreciate that. And were there any newly identified items that the board should be aware of by our facilities or operations group that were included in this goound? There are none. Okay. Um the one addition is the expense spreadsheet does have a line now for the what the legislature just pass as it relates to roofs. So if we do find oursel

109in a situation where we do and would like to um spend some of these resources on a $100,000 or more roof project, we can do that and we would later identify that. Um you guys have all heard me say sometimes I can't project five weeks from now or five months let alone 10year plan. Um but most definitely uh I want to try to get a capital study done for schools uh so that I can have a better roadmap with respect to this plan. Thank you so much. Any questions about that? Very good. Uh Dr. Ed, I'll just share that I in conversations with you know CFO Peterson that that comprehensive study is something that we'll be talking about with the facilities group and we should be looking at doing. No. Okay. Excellent. Uh with that

110this is a resolution. I would appreciate a motion to approve. I'll make that motion to approve the resolution as stated in the agenda. Thank you, Miss Johnson. There's first. Can I have a second? Second. Thank you, Mr. Morgan. There's a first and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none, Madam Clerk, please call the role. Jessica Johnson, I. Miss Morgan, I. Jamie Hilstrom, I. Kevin, I Thank you very much. That does carry unanimously. Thank you for the information. Then we'll move on to 70, the superintendent Iowa renewal. This is an annual object where we renew Dr. Ridel Hoover's opportunity to access data uh with MDE. Um I don't know if anything more is needed to be said, but I would appreciate a motion to approve the Iowa reauthorization. I'll make a motion to approve the Iowa reauthorization.

111Thank you, Miss Johnson. Eric Gordy will second. There's a first and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none, Madame Clerk, would you please call the role? Jessica Johnson. I hi Kevin. Hi Jamie Hilstrom. I Chris. Hi. Continuing on. Thank you so much to resolution for renewal of Minnesota State High School League uh annual object as well. Um any need for words? Very good. Dr. Idle Hoover. We will move along then for a motion to approve the resolution for membership at MSHSL. I will make a motion to approve the resolution for renewal of MSHL. Thank you very much, Mr. Shadine. A first and a second, please. Second. Thank you, Dr. Pasca. There's a first and a second. Any discussion? And Madame Clerk, call the role, please. Kevin, I Eric Gordy. Hi. Jessica Johnson, I. Miss Morgan, Ian.

112That does carry unanimously. Moving on to approval of school year 2526 district operational plan. Dr. Ry Hoover. Thank you, Chair Gordy. And I'm going to go through this relatively quickly. I think this would have come to your email inboxes here a little over a week ago. And this is year two of our work with a district operational plan or what I affectionately call a DOT. And this is where we collectively partner um from the school board all the way down to each and every employee to chart goals in our course for the upcoming school year. So if you recall about a month ago I came forward and shared the um the doc from the results of the 2425 school year. So this is the initial um draft of the district operational plan for the 2526

113school year. And again um these are the goals that I've worked with my team. All of them are aligned and connected to very intentionally our strategic directions this board has put together. Um we have obviously um all the directions with the rationale for the work, the leaders in charge of this um the goals themselves, the strategies to be to use to accomplish the goals, the indicators to say that here's how we're documenting that we did it versus just coming saying we met everything. Um and then the timeline that is is laid forward in this as well. So um you will see this here. There are very few links outside of the road map itself which I believe Kathy Madson shared with you here also about a month or two ago and uh my um well

114two questions for you is number one is do you have any questions with respect to the goals that we've set out as they are aligning our directions and then if not um I will be asking for your approval of the district operational plan for school year 2526. Excellent. Thank you much, Dr. Idahover. So, this was provided for our review previously. Uh, any questions about the district operational plan for Dr. Idahover? Just making sure. Very good. Uh, a lot of work. Thank you for putting this together and I do appreciate this plan because it does making your evaluation a lot easier. Just saying. That's the goal. It sure does. and and it's nice to have this associated to be able to evaluate um the work of the district. So, I would appreciate a motion then to

115approve the uh 26 school year operational plan. I'll make a motion to approve the 2526 district operational plan. Thank you, Dr. Pasca. There's first. Can I have a second? I'll second. Thank you, Miss Hilstrom. There's a first and a second. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor signify by I. I opposed. And that does carry unanimously. Thank you so much. Moving on to 9A, resolution of acknowledgements of contributions and donations. Dr. Ry Hoover. Once again, this month, I want to thank the generosity of our community uh for providing gifts in kind services and financial um to be used within uh the covenants of Rockberry Schools. and I ask the board to approve those as listed in your packet. Excellent. Thank you so much. That is there for us and I would echo those

116words of of gratitude for our community as well as those seniors that donated back their lunch money which was very nice as well. Just saying. So there is uh out here for an approval please. Can I have a motion to approve? I have a motion to approve. Thank you Mr. Morgan. There's a first. Can I have a second? I'll second. Thank you Mr. Shadine. A first and a second. Any discussion? And we have a record of resolutions tonight. So, Madame Clerk, would you call that again? Chris Martin. Hi. Kevin Jine. Hi. Jamie Hilstrom. I Jessica Johnson. Hi, Eric Gordy. Hi. Betha. Hi. Perfect. That does carry unanimously. Moving on to upcoming meetings. Negotiation meeting Monday, June 23rd, 2 o'clock in the district office boardroom. Tenative Virtual Facilities Committee, Wednesday, July 2, 8:00 a.m. Communications Committee,

117Monday, July 21, 4:00 in the District Office, conference room. Work session, Monday, July 21, 5:30 in the boardroom. Regular meeting immediately following uh July 21, 6:30 in the boardroom. Uh those are upcoming meetings. Miss Johnson, can we add one? Yes, please. Because not enough. We need to add July 14th. Monday, July 14th, um for uh negotiations at 2 PM and Monday, July 20th, 21st or sorry, 21st at 2 p.m. as well for negotiations. Excellent. Thank you so much. So, Julie noted those two negotiations meetings are added to our agenda um as mentioned by Miss Johnson. Any others? We seem to be good. Just making sure. Very good. Then we'll move on to board committee updates. Uh Mr. Shadine, uh had a great time at both graduation and uh this the breakfast program. Uh it's great

118to be able to give awards to our teachers and get in front of them. It was great. Excellent. Thank you much, Dr. Pasca. I graduation was wonderful. Sorry I missed the breakfast. I was not feeling well. And this isn't this is more of a FYI than update. and I've already talked to all the parties. I'm going to be writing a a proposal to present at the national school board meeting and we're I would like I've already got approval to use our district plan and then I'm going to use Paul's report as an exemplar. Nice. That does not mean that I will get accepted because of course it's going to have a how do we support um instruction you know using data to drive instruction but basing it on how you would fit that in. So,

119I just wanted to lift that up and I will let you know how it goes. Thank you so much for that. Uh, Miss Holster, um, I had graduation and the end of the year award or breakfast and, um, a negotiation meeting just before this meeting. Thank you very much, Mr. Morgan. I thought the breakfast was great. Um, my first time attending it. I will be there every year. Thought that was really special. Um, very emotional and all of that, which is great. And then a lot of work with the levy questions and just the financing. So, good work by the team. Thank you, Miss Johnson. Um, let's see here. So, I had my meeting in uh May. At the end of May, we actually traveled out to Lichfield to see the Wings program out there.

120Um, that was really great. Uh, the week prior to that, I went to the STEP graduation. STEPPP is our program for the 18 to 21. Um, what a great graduation ceremony. It was really, really fun to be there. Um, superintendent for Delano gave the commencement speech to the kids center. It was just it was awesome. It was wonderful. Um, I was asked by uh Dan Pratt to attend the softball section final game to present medals to the girls at the end of the game whether they won first or second place. Um, that was quite an honor to be able to be there. Um, really fun to see those girls and see the game and um, just be a part of that. We have a great softball program here. um graduation. Proud to be on this

121board and see the support from our board there for our kids. That was really cool. Um end of year breakfast and awards program again so wonderful and um our staff is incredible. um negotiation prep and meeting today uh board prep meeting earlier this month. Um after our end of year breakfast and awards program, I um had talked to Mr. Menard. I had someone from Wright County Journal Press who's our board paper. Uh I I have a very dear friend who works there and she reached out to me because she had talked to her boss about somehow trying to um connect with the school to be able to have an article here and there from Rockford schools in the paper. They don't have the staffing to do that. How can we connect with the school to

122somehow make that happen? And who do I reach out to? And I said, "Well, I will talk to the principal." So, I reached out to Paul. We met and um we're talking through it all and all a sudden he got this really good idea. Um and he's he's going to look into it and just see how it might work. But um possibly at first thought was maybe yearbook connecting with it. But then he thought, "Wow, what would it be great if we had a CP a career pathway in journalism through this and make a connection that way with our English teachers because of the limitations on editing at Wright County Journal Press? How can we have quality work go to them?" So yeah, it was just it was a great conversation and so we'll see

123if something happens there. But I just wanted to share that after everything he had shared and um that wow gosh I just love seeing all those career paths expand and we get more and more of them. So thought that was pretty neat. Excellent. Thank you Miss Johnson. Um board prep obviously with with Mrs. Johnson. Uh graduation end of year ceremony. Um Thank you for giving me short time to to chat up staff um during that time as well. Um quite a bit of Northwest Suburban work recently. Um but uh it it's going in a direction and uh It's going in a direction. Yes, absolutely. Um, I'm sure there's other things I cannot recall at the top at the time. So, that's about it. Graduation. Yeah, graduation, all that stuff. All good. So, cool. All right.

124So, with that, we will then move along. Does anyone have questions for anyone about their updates? We have other stuff, too. Miss Pras, I'll be interested to hear about your your application process. And if there's anything you need out of any of us, please just reach out so we can help out. Uh, at this time, then we will go to 9E negotiations close session. Uh, the board will hold a closed session discuss negotiations pursuant to Minnesota State Statute 13 DO3 close meeting for labor negotiation strategy. I would like a motion to move to close session. I'll make a motion to Thank you, Miss Johnson. And a second, please. I'll second. Thank you, Mr. Shadine. There's a first and a second. Any discussion? All those in favor signify by I. I. Opposed. And we are going

125to uh go to close session at 7:18. Do we need to stop this or start? You make yourself sad. It is 8:14. We have just finished our closed session on negotiations. Next item is superintendent valuation and I need a motion to go into Thank you, Miss Johnson. Eric Gordy will second. Uh any opposed? No. Very good. 8:14 we are in close session for superintendent evaluation. All right. It is 8:25 on 6:16. We have just finished uh Superintendent Bridal Hoover's evaluation in close session pursuant to 13D.05 subsection 3A. We are at the end of our meeting. An adjournment is necessary. So a motion Miss Johnson a second by Mr. should first and second discussion. All those in favor I opposed and 8:26 we are ajour. All right.