001I'll call the meeting to order. It is 7:02 a.m. Tuesday, February 24th, 2026. Um we are in the books at the office. This is a special school board meeting. Um first item on the agenda is accept Jaden Hill's resignation effective at the conclusion of the 2526 school year. Um we appreciate her sending that so we can start advertising. with a motion to accept that piece. Make a move for second. Second, all opposite. Motion passes with Kelly. Moving on to our facility survey results presentation. Mrs. Um, so I'm just going to hand it over to school perceptions. He's going to run it and just let people in as they pop off. So, perfect. You can wait, sir. >> Hey, great. Good morning everyone. Uh my name is Darren Severs and I'm a project manager with School
002Perceptions. Um I I co-led this project on behalf of the company and we'll have my colleague Scott introduce himself in a minute. My background is I'm in my fourth year with the company and prior to uh working for school perceptions. I was actually a customer of school perceptions born and raised in Minnesota. I worked for a school district near Milwaukee, Wisconsin for 27 years, the last nine as superintendent. And we used this survey tool uh ourselves in in an effort to update our schools with secure entrances and a variety of other needs uh high highly efficient lighting etc. roofs and so I believe in the process because I've used the process as a superintendent and I ended up getting an opportunity to work on the other side of the table with school boards like yours
003uh and and highly skilled architects like Travis and Kyle to try to meet your needs. So, um, I'm excited to present our findings today and I'll let Scott introduce himself. He has an exciting background that's a real asset to our company. >> Thanks, Darren. And good morning, uh, board members. My name is Scott Gerard. I'm in my third year with school perceptions. Uh, and prior to that, I spent a decade as an education reporter, so writing about schools, uh, on a different side of things. And I actually a few times covered, uh, districts using school perception surveys. Um, so got to really see how effective they can be for making decisions and uh now I spend most of my time uh using that writing skill to tell the story to your community and then uh
004helping Darren and our team uh analyze the data on the back end once we get the results in. So excited for you all to see uh what Darren's going to show you this morning. So without further ado, I'm going to share my screen um and then share your report. I can't stress to you how uh nice of a process this has been for us. Is this showing up? Okay, Anna, and everybody. >> Yes. Yes, it's good. >> Great. >> So, Anna has been a critical part of this for us. Um just giving insight locally as to what you're experiencing in your buildings, what your district needs are, and and I can't say enough about about her voice on behalf of you as a board. And then obviously Tra Travis and Kyle from Icon um are
005an incredible uh asset to this process because we can't test the different options you have for your buildings unless they bring to us uh design options and costing options. That's the ultimate test is what is it going to cost and what does this mean to your taxpayers. So here is your report that we refreshed last night. uh because as much as we have a survey deadline, we we really never do other than we're trying to get you data so you can get this on the ballot if you have enough support to do so. So we um we had some last minute surveys come in Friday and one more came in yesterday and we added that to your report. So it's February 24th. This is the table of contents for the presentation which will be less
006than 15 minutes this morning because we really try to summarize the data that we compiled and then I want to take as many questions as you have. Um we're going to get right into we're going to tell you the background of our company get right into uh the survey who took it and then what's our what our results and analysis is and then we'll wrap up today with a recommendation and any questions you have. So again we're school perceptions. This company has been in existence for 24 years. Um, we've conducted over 3 million staff, parent, student, and community surveys in all 50 states and five foreign countries. And we've now topped the the four, 1400 district total as far as districts we've helped with referendum planning and strategic planning just like this process that we
007are supporting you with. So, your survey uh had a deadline of of February 2nd. Again, while we say deadline, um we we really never shut the survey off because some people when they get that paper survey in the mail, um they think that they've met the deadline if if they mail it on February 2nd. So, our team continues to input each and every survey we can because it went to every household in the district and we want to honor their feedback whether they met the deadline or not. Uh and that'll align much better with what the consensus is across your community. As of this morning, you have 338 respondents, which gives this project a 23% response rate. So, we'll pause right there. And I'm sure you're probably wondering, hey, is that a good response rate?
008Is that a bad response rate? It's a it's an excellent response rate compared to other projects. Our company average on a survey like this is 18%. So for you to be above that 18% average threshold is is commendable and and exciting for us because the higher the response rate the higher the reliability which brings us to the next uh bullet point on this slide the statistical margin for error. So that is all based on the number of surveys that we process for you. So we at the end we'll give you a projection of voter support. And when we look at that number, we'll all need to pause and come back to our thoughts about this number, the 5.44% margin rare. When we give you a projection of voter support, know that within a small district
009like yours where we only have 338 respondents, but you're also a small district in general, that number we give you is going to be plus or minus five, basically 5.5%. And that just comes with the small the small size. Smaller districts have a vulnerable projection because there's so few uh voters. In a district like we Scott and I did this summer with a Rapid City, South Dakota, we processed well, we sent out uh 50,000 surveys and processed 6,000 surveys. Well, their margin for error is 1 and a.5%. Because again, we the higher the volume, the the more reliable the data. So, there any questions about how we how we look at this data? Okay, then we'll continue here. So, as we do our highly anonymous process, know that every survey uh the surveys went to
010every household in your school district, but it's highly confidential. We have Scott and I have no way of knowing who took the survey. There's only one kind of gatekeeper at our company that knows what um what address that went to and or what email address was used. uh we really pride ourselves on it being confidential, but we do ask the respondents to tell us their age um so that we can study the demographic information and this was the distribution of the age groups that took the survey. It is not a surprise to us that the the largest respondent group um was the 65 plus population in your district. That is almost always the case with every community survey that he and I do together. And that is because they're your retirees and your senior citizens
011who are on a fixed income and they're they're more sensitive to a tax increase. Um and so they they tend to be um those that respond at a higher rate. Um but we like that uh because we need to know how they feel because they're also uh passionate voters and and and typically turn out at a higher rate at the polls as well. So, the fact that we know how they feel, we can take that into account with whatever resolution you as a board decide to write and put on the ballot. Another question on the survey is, is your primary residence in the Oaks School District? Oftentimes we get asked, well, how could anyone that is not a resident take the survey? Well, there's a couple of ways within that 3% that said they're not.
012Uh we did send the survey to every staff member because we want staff to weigh in on the future of their work place. Um it's a very important factor in retaining employees is hey the district has a plan to make sure the facilities are safe and current and and and suitable for you to do your job. Another way is uh sometimes uh we have property owners in a school district that maybe own a second property um and they don't reside in there but the survey went to their their secondary resident. And so in the end, the only results we're going to process within the projection of voter support are the 96% that said they reside in your district because we were really trying to gauge for you voter support. It's nice to know how these
013other folks feel about the projects, but in the end, we're going to um give you a voter projection so you know whether you can put this on the ballot. Another way that we ask them within our anonymous approach is which municipality they live in. And this is just to make sure that we give individual municipalities some autonomy to weigh in on the project. What Scott and I have found is we've had projects where uh within a school district there are other tax impactful things being considered. For example, he and I had a project in central Wisconsin where the city was considering a tax for a new ambulance center. At the same time, the school was weighing in on the needs for a new middle school. And so, you had dueling tax increments um being asked
014of the taxpayer at the same time. That was something that the school district very thoughtfully took into account before they decided what they were going to put on the ballot. We're not aware of anything like that going on in your school district, but as we talked to Anna, she did say that this was a a representative uh distribution of the population, Oaks being the the largest, then Gulf, Luen, Glover, etc. And it was nice to see that we had voices from every one of the municipalities within our survey process. This next slide um is a very important one for you to understand. So as we process surveys the surveys 338 17% of the respondents um within the 338 were resident employees. Now it is not surprising to see that the staff responded at a high
015rate. What we'll have to do though is correct that because they they're over represented as far as where they stand as in terms of the percent of eligible voters. staff are less than 1% of eligible voters in a community, but they were 17% that the surveys we processed. So, we need to we'll need to correct that and weight that more appropriately because they can't show up at the polls at 17% of eligible voters um and vote at that at that clip. So, we'll correct that when we give you a a projection of voter support. The next pie chart asking are they parents? Do they have children in the school district? 33% of the third 338 we processed identified themselves as being parents with kids in the school. That was more closely aligned with your data.
016Scott does a deep dive into your census data and he found that 30% of your eligible voters are parents in Oaks. Um and so that's real close. we didn't have to tweak that much in order for it to align with the percent of parents that can go to the polls and say yes to the whatever projects you you consider. So that's an important background for you to understand. So as I walked you through that data, less than 1% of voters are staff. Roughly 30% of your your voters are parents. That acknowledges then that the other 70ish% in your community are non-parents, non- staff. And that is the group that we will we will definitely need to have the support from for anything to pass at a supermajority rate of 60% plus one vote. Now, as
017we looked at the next slide, this is a very important slide for Anna and for you as a board to consider once you decide what you're going to do next. We asked a question, how do you like to receive information from the school? And this is what we found. And we broke it out by the two biggest groups, parents represented in the blue bar, non-parents, non-staff, that 70% of voters in your community with the purple bar graph. Parents have said, "Hey, you can contact me via email. I can look on social media. I'll go to the website paper newsletter. Oaks Times gets a lot of readership from your parents and newsletters online via email. So, there's a variety of ways that your parents are looking to hear from the school district and liking hearing from
018you. But when it comes to that 70% group, the non-parents, non- staff, the data speaks a little bit more clearly to a mailed newsletter. The Oaks Times is a huge source of school news for your non-parents, non-staff. And then they also look to social media and the website. So whenever it comes time to announce, hey, we're not going to go to referendum or to a bond yet or we are going to and this is what it's going to entail, this is your guiding principles. But it's also good data for you and for Anna on a day-to-day basis as far as just how to reach these people. How do they want to be communicated with? Whether it's about a referendum or just about school news, um things that are going on at the school district, we
019are finding that mailed communications um is making a comeback and your data bears that out that they they like getting a a mailed they like the idea of getting a mailed newsletter um from the school and uh we are finding that e-news uh links, emails, those kinds of things are are still desired by parents, but uh folks are liking getting something that they can grip and page through uh when they have time. Often times something gets emailed to them and they'll that it'll get buried amongst their Kohl's coupons and the Target ads and all the different other things that end up landing in their inbox as well. So let's talk about the survey results. Uh within the survey that you approved, uh we outlined the facility challenges that the community task force was studying in
020order to address the most pressing needs for the school district. And our first survey in the in the surve in the survey tool survey question in the survey tool was would you support the district pursuing a less expensive bond referendum knowing you've already asked this question previously. And this first question was opposed without a dollar amount on purpose. We asked this without a dollar amount because we want to gauge are they going to say no to anything we put on the table or is it just that the last thing that they said no to was too expensive and we had very clear data supporting they're willing to consider something they just they just said no to the last project because it was too much money. This is a good sign. We've had projects and Scott
021and I have paired up on a few projects recently where we've asked this question and there wasn't support for anything. you can make it $500,000 and they're going to say no. They're just taxed to the max or they're just not supportive of their schools doing anything. We were thrilled to see, hey, your your staff, your parents, and your non-parents, non-staff all exceeded 60% when it came to, yeah, we we'd be supportive of the district pursuing something as long as it's less expensive than last time. So, we move forward with the survey and we use the language assuming that folks are supportive. Here's our recommended base plan. And the community task force identified a 6.3 million dollar base plan that would here are the bullet points that you prioritize is what it would address. And we
022outlined what it would cost them on their on their uh tax bill if they're a resident or if they're egg commercial property owner. We really pride ourselves on transparency on what the annual cost would be for on their tax bill. So now we break out the support by those three groups one more time. Um staff 92% said they would probably or definitely vote yes. Only 6% undecided and 2% no. Nice to see the staff are fully behind this. And we can't assume that's always the case. So, but when we see the staff at this high of a rate, we know that the project priorities resonate with them as far as their working conditions. When it comes to parents, 62% said definitely yes, probably yes. 16% undecided and 22% no. And know that our company average
023for undecideds is roughly around 12%. So, we are happy to see that we exceeded the 60% mark here. And finally, when it comes to the non-parents, non- staff, that that most populated group of your voters that we really need to be behind any project, they landed at 58% yes, 14% undecided, and 28% no. So, this brings us to the next slide. And before I reveal the next slide where we give our projection of voter support, this is where we need to keep in mind the waiting exercise where we weighted parents accurately uh relative to the percent of voters and then the non-parents non-staff but we also need to keep in mind that margin for error of plus or minus 5.44%. So using our weighted approach and keeping in mind that margin for error, we when
024we ask when we studied your data, we project that if the vote were held today, you'd be right around 59.2% of people voting yes for this project, plus or minus the 5.44%. So, we were excited to see this because what this gives you is permission to ask the question because plus or minus 5.44% means a pessimist would say, well, there's a chance it could go it could fail again. But also, an optimist would say, hey, if some of those margin for error votes tip to the side of of of yes, we could pass this and pass this by a few percent. So when we see numbers like this, this is kind of your permission slip to put it on the ballot because it's within the margin of error of our statistical process. We'll come back
025to this, but we did ask some remaining questions on the survey and then we can have a nice dialogue about where this leaves you. While we are interacting with your community, we did want to gauge is there any support beyond the base plan? And so we itemized some some different project scope that we could add to the project beyond the 6.3 million. And these were the projects that you um allowed us to test for you. Um building roof and exterior, window replacement, fire safety um elements, and then ADA accessible bathrooms. And in computing there the prioritization exercise that we did for you. Is it a high three points, medium, two points or low one point? Where did these different projects land? And to the right we summarized on our scale uh which had were of
026highest priority and which were of lowest priority. And you can say people uh had the biggest support for the the roof project. But then the key is will they back it with with their tax dollars. So we also did that exercise. We outlined for them kind of a menu, a project scope. And then we put increments above the base plan of 6.3 million ranging from 7 million, 7.5 million, 8 million, and 8.6 million. And what we would do is once we gauge whether they would spend that much, we would bring you back to this list and say, "Okay, these are the projects you can add to the ballot and these are the projects we have to save for the future." Unfortunately, when we took the votes that people cast within these four additional increments, we'll
027we're showing you on this screen. It's a lot of data, but the big takeaway is the dotted line. That's the 60% plus one vote that would be needed to pass. And then across the bottom, the color coding represents where people landed within the different increments we gave them. 8.6 million, 8 million across the bottom, 7.5, 7, and then something smaller than 7 million is the yellow. And as you can see, your dotted line for the biggest groups that we're we're measuring here, the non-parents, non- staff, landed in the yellow, smaller than 7 million um choice. Parents also landed in the smaller than 7 million um choice. staff. Again, they they actually landed in the upper end of the $8 million choice, but unfortunately, there's not enough of them for this to have momentum and to
028pass at the polls because they're less than 1% of eligible voters. So, using that same waiting exercise, we're going to simplify this for you. And this summary slide show you shows you our compiled results for all of those increments. If you were to put a $8.6 6 million question on the ballot, it would only have 32.2% of the voters. Again, plus or minus that 5.4% margin of error. 8 million landed at 37. And as each dollar amount went down, you can see support grew. Get down to 7.5 million, 43.5%. The one I really want to pause, add, and study is 7 million. You can see, okay, now we're at 52.9%. That's plus or minus that 5.4% margin of error. Not quite there. But then when it comes to smaller than 7 million, support landed at
0297 72.5%. So what that tells us is contrasting all these additional projects with something smaller. folks overwhelmingly are saying, "Hey, it's got to be smaller than 7 million seven uh million dollars," which thankfully the base plan falls into that category. And now you're at 72.5% of the of the respondents said that's where we need to be with how much we're spending. Couple more data points for you that are important to your survey um and important to your school district. We did ask them while we're interacting with them beyond tax increases and project elements just how are we doing as a school district and we do this for two reasons. It's just healthy to ask about things other than tax impact questions when as long as we're having this nice interaction with your community through the
030survey. But we also found that the higher the scores are on these satisfaction metrics, the higher likelihood of passage rates because the happier they are, uh, the more likely they're going to vote yes. Um, and we have a research department that studies this after every project and that continues to be the case. If they're satisfied, they're more inclined to vote yes. And if they're angry about something, they're maybe going to be more reluctant to to uh spend more on the district. So we broke this out by the three groups. Four being great, three being good, two being fair, and one poor on the four questions. Delivering a high quality education, keeping the public informed, managing funds appropriately, and building pride in the community. On this rating scale, the the median is a 2.5. So for
031easy skimming, you can see all the staff ratings were above the 2.5. So they're feeling they're feeling very good about how things are going at the district. When it comes to parents, you had two areas that dipped below that 2.5 threshold. Delivering a high quality education and managing funds appropriately. And then in the non-staff non-parents, three of the four were above the 2.5, but it was again the managing funds appropriately where they scored you below the median score. So what we did is we compiled all three groups just like we did compiling all the voters uh choices for the the the bond referendum. We compiled their satisfaction scores into a summary slide. The percent that gave you a three or a four and then the composite score with all of their opinions averaged together. And
032again three of the four areas are below above that median score of 2.5 except managing funds appropriately. um which is not entirely surprising. We just got done asking them several tax impact questions about uh facility needs and oftentimes as taxpayers read through, oh my goodness, you might be raising my taxes, um their mindset is, well, they must not be managing the funds very well if they need to come asking for more, which is we know is not the case. We just know that it's hard for your operational budget and maintenance budget to keep up with these big ticket needs at the school. So finally, our closing question on every survey we've done in our 24 year history is on a scale of 0 to 10, how likely would you be to recommend the district or
033friend or family member? And and this one definitely correlates with with uh passage rates. The higher this score, the more likely and the more confident we are that your your question will pass if put on a ballot. So on a scale of 0 to 10, your score averaged out came in at a 6.14. What hurts that score a bit is that we do offer a neutral score where they really don't have an opinion. That was your highest scoring area right there at neutral at a five. Um but what is is hopeful for us is there's some topheaviness to your rating scale. You see 13% of your parents gave you a perfect 10. Um 22% gave you a nine or a 10. And um 39% of your respondents have you in the 8 n and 10
034category. And those eight, nine, and 10 folks, they tend to be your biggest biggest fans and your most vocal fans when it comes to having conversation in your community about should I vote yes or not. So, this is an encouraging slide from the the percent that are in that upper range for you. And finally, our closing slide because you hired us to get guidance um on on behalf of what to do next. So, we have a what did we learn slide. Well, what we learned is there's not enough support based on our weighted analysis for a bond referendum at $7 million or more. So, we can't expand the scope beyond the base question. However, the support based on our weighted analysis for the $6.3 million base plan is within the margin for error, which is
035challenging in North Dakota. Uh we we have supermajority circumstances for you in North Dakota. We also do projects in Iowa where they're they're at 60%. That's a very very high threshold to get support for. In doing projects in our other states, Minnesota, Wisconsin, they only have to be at 50% plus one vote. So, we were encouraged by the fact that your data shows that there's support for for the $6.3 million plan being on the ballot and then letting the voters decide. So our closing comment is therefore the board could consider putting the bond referendum on the ballot in June and letting Oaks area voters decide for themselves. And we have had projects where we've had to say no. Um you don't have enough support to even put it on the ballot because you're 9 10
036percentage points away from a projection that would pass. Um, we're we're excited to see that that your voters are saying, "Okay, there's enough people here that want to see this on the ballot and then we can hope that they all show up and vote vote yes in June." So, that being said, um, that is your report from our school perceptions team. What questions do you have for Scott and and for me? And I'll go back to those most important questions in case there's anything you want to unpack or ask more specifically about our our projections and our findings. I'm going to take it back to the that very first question where we where we landed with the specifically asking them about the base question. Um so based on this question historically have you how accurate
037have you seen this projection come out to be if it were to go to a vote? >> Yeah so our so our data is is highly reliable. I would tell you this that when it comes to margin for error our use of margin for error is 94% accurate. That means if we confidently say it's going to pass, we've been right 94% of the time. And if we say it's going to fail, which is just as important, we have been right 94% of the time. So the the good news is you fall in that middle gray area because that that accuracy rate is based on that margin for error part. So if for example if this number that I'm showing you right now were 66%. We would say with 94% confidence hey this is going to
038pass. Our our history has shown that it is going to pass. Also if this number were at 50 let's say 53%. We would also say our projections our research department has shown that this is not going to pass. So do not put it on the ballot. Your voters have spoken. They're not ready. it's not the right time. Where you fall is kind of in that clumsy middle part. There's enough support to say that it could pass and there's enough support there to put it on the ballot, but it's also a more vulnerable number because the because the number of surveys we process because of the size of your community. it wouldn't take much for it to tip to the side of yes as far as momentum positively, but also if between now and June people
039get negative, something else happens um where they're they're unhappy with taxes based on something else um within the state or within the community where it could be vulnerable to not passing. So, that's a lot of words to say. It has enough support to be voted on right now, but that margin for error is tricky for us to predict. It it's it's it's hard to know to the plus side or the negative side where voters are going to land between now and in and when um they vote in June. If this margin for error were like the one I referenced in Rapid City where it's 1%, we'd feel far more confident because you're only 8/10en away from passing. Um, and we would feel like that there's a that there there's a good chance that it's going
040to pass. We still feel like it's got all the authority and permission to be put on the ballot. We just now the work kind of starts. um you would have permission, write the resolution, put on the ballot, and then you can have an information campaign and and and community meetings leading up to the vote where you say, "Hey, this is what we've learned. There's momentum for this, folks. Let's get this across the finish line." Um so, I guess the answer is there's enough enough to put it on the ballot and let your voters decide, but we wouldn't say with 94% confidence that it absolutely is going to pass. we we're not we're not outside the margin of error which makes us a little little cautious I guess is the the big thing but I would
041also tell you as I show you your data and I'm going to go back to a couple slides here know that when we study your data we count the 14% as nos so within that big group the 70% of voters we are counting all 14% of those as nos with the parents we're counting all 16 the percent of parents that said I'm undecided as nos. So this is a very conservative projection of where they will ultimately land. They're the key to this whole thing is moving those undecideds to the side of yes within the non-parent non-staff and the 16% of parents that were undecided to the side of yes. We don't see a lot of movement from the nos to yes, but we do see some movement from the undecideds to yes. Does that make
042sense? >> Yes. Thanks. >> You bet. >> Oh, and again, the 23% response rate is considered excellent. >> Yeah, it sure is. >> I just want that's just strange to me that 23% seems so low, but I guess >> I was a skeptic, too. Um I Scott's tired of me telling this story because we've done so many projects in our couple of years working together, but when I was a superintendent, I didn't believe our owner. Um our owner and the founder of this company was a parent of mine in my school district. And so we would talk all the time about my survey because I was scared and nervous to ask for 42 million in my community. And he said, "Hey, once you get to 10%, your data doesn't really change that much." And I
043didn't believe it because I was so nervous. I was in my third year as superintendent scared to ask for the tax increase. Well, I tracked it. Um and um and the reality of was the across he he showed me a report that showed once we hit 10% the data really didn't move. There was an equal number of yeses, nos, and undecideds at 10% as there was all the way up. And ironically, we got to 22.5% in my district, too. So, he's like, "Oh, that's excellent." And I was like, "Excellent. What about the other 77.5%? He said, "No, the just in the survey world, 18%'s the average and you were above the average." So, Oaks, you too. Um, it it's hard to believe, but within the that percent, there's an equal percent of yeses, nos, and
044undecideds that will will be make this an accurate projection. People just um don't respond at a high rate, but there was enough for it to be reliable data to guide your decision-making. And one other nugget that that I I guess I could share about those undecideds. There was a day precoid when our company would count on and actually you so on this slide we would have had an extra data point. We would have projected how many undecideds would come to the side of yes and that was 33%. Onethird So if you take one/ird of those undecideds to the side of yes here and one/ird of those undecideds here that really helps your number here. But postco that formula got destroyed. Uh we used it a few times and it didn't hold true. Um postco people
045came back angry about the shutdown. They came back frustrated with the ESSER funds and some of the national media stories about what the ESSER funds were used for and that there's a stimulus dollars and all these kinds of things. And so people came back very very sensitive to their tax bill postco. So we adopted the philosophy we are not going to inflate your numbers in a way that can't be counted on. So we're only that's why we decided we're only going to count the definitely and probable yeses in our formulas. Now I guess my only closing comment what we have seen with our projects when you say how reliable is this it's not going to be reliable if this is all you do. If you just survey, put in the ballot and step back, that's
046where we've seen the data um can can regress where we've seen it very successfully and we've had several projects in western Minnesota just not that far from you quite honestly where they've had numbers like this and then the board superintendent communications folks in the community positive parents continued to get the word out about how pressing this project is for the safety of kids and to provide a quality educ educational experience um for families and to have good working conditions for the staff. As districts have stayed intentional about getting the message out about how important the vote is, we have seen momentum build all the way up to vote and have a a higher likelihood of overriding that margin of error and turning that into a successful campaign. Particularly with a super majority state like yours,
047it's going to be important for you to continue to keep this in front of your taxpayers, not just survey and walk away. districts that survey walk away and count on the survey to be the only tool. Um that's that that hasn't gone well because people move on to something else and then they come back and then they maybe sometimes change their mind because they kind of forgotten what was on the survey. So communication in the months ahead will be important to build to build momentum and to remind folks how how important this is. So this PowerPoint is yours. Um I in my district what I did is I used the data to report back to people and say hey this is what we learned. This is what we're thinking about and this is what the
048school board has decided they're going to do. All this data is very transparent. You can communicate to people that hey this is what you told us. Particularly tell them hey you told us very clearly we're not going to spend any more than the base plan. These other increments didn't have support. So, that's a good message that this board is responding to the data and being stewards of your taxes based on what the community communicated. That's a really healthy message. We're not going to ask for 88 86. We're not even going to ask for seven because you told us you wouldn't spend it. And then align yourself to that $6.3 million base plan and let's hope that they turn out in June and say yes. Again, any any other questions from any other members of the
049board as I talk here? surprising. >> That was a question for me. I'm sorry I didn't hear it. Or maybe that was >> No, I I just said it wasn't real surprising the data. >> Okay. So, I mean that that's good on our end. >> Okay. And know this, you're Scott and I say this all the time. You're never done with us. If there's something that you're wondering or support you need after today. This is just our summary report. Sometimes uh districts have come back and said, "Hey, could you study a little more deeply where why support in this municipality was as opposed to that? Maybe we'll go to that town council meeting and talk to those voters. you're pretty heavy, awfully uh heavy populated for Oaks, so you don't quite have that. But sometimes
050we have a district with 27 different municipalities and they need to get the word out to each of those little councils to get enough momentum. Or maybe you walk away and like, "Oh, I should have asked him this." Just shoot Anna an email um or get my email from Anna and and Scott and I will answer any questions. We want you to have our support all the way up to your vote so that you can push this forward and hopefully get some good work done for kids. >> Thank you. >> Okay. >> So, if you have questions, maybe just send them to me, then I can send them out to all the board members so that they have all that questions. >> I'll just chime in that while you have Darren and Scott here, you
051know, they've seen quite a bit. if there's any oddball questions or anything that you guys are thinking about just to not hesitate. And there's probably no question they haven't heard before. >> Okay. Well, I I've I've talked a lot. I don't want to be a meeting extender. Um just want to make make sure we're we're thorough. So, it has been um great supporting you. we continue to want to support you this whole journey. Um, and uh let's stay in touch. I I know you're in good hands with with uh with your your district leader and Anna and and Kyle and Travis are so so well verssed in in this project. So, we we wish you all the best. It's been fun to partner with you and uh we look forward to hearing what your voters
052decide in June. Hopefully, we can nudge them just a bit more support to the plus side and and get this through. Thank you. >> All right. Have a have a great Tuesday, everybody. >> You too. >> Thanks. >> Take care. >> Um, so Anna and I have discussed this a little bit prior that we knew that this was going to be a lot of information coming as we assume that we would not likely be prepared to make any decisions today. So, um, I think we're all going to take this and take time to, um, think of any questions, submit those. Um what is our our deadline for a referendum if we move that way? It's April 1. April 1. >> So we've got one more board meeting on March 17th and you always have the
053option to do special board meetings in between there once you guys start to digest this and get direction from like Kyle and Travis. >> Correct. And just a reminder that as president I can call a meeting at any time but as you as board members any two of you can call a special meeting at any time. So just um any other questions for Kyle or Travis while we have >> Are you surprised by this Kyle? >> You know I'm I'm not to be honest. uh you know the committee the committee was you know made up of a pretty diverse group and I'd say that this was kind of the committee's recommendation. So, it actually kind of validates Anna's job selecting that committee and and putting that committee together just because uh you know that was
054kind of our our hope was that again you get a good grasp of what everybody's thinking and as as much as it it pains I think a lot of boards to think about you know there are so many other needs that you have um it it's a tricky situation because you're weighed with what you as a board member know which is more than the average person um know is right and needed maybe in in your mind isn't necessarily aligned with what the community perceives. And at the end of the day, you guys have to make a decision of, you know, do you do what you know, you can do nothing and and nobody, you know, there's nobody kind of that's that's um uh missed on that because you know, you're you're not taking, you know,
055any action other than maybe not addressing the issues, which is a thing. But the the other issue is that if you move forward with something beyond that recommendation, is it the right thing for the school? I think that you guys can probably, you know, determine that, you know, are there things that need to be replaced? Absolutely. But you you're in a situation where you might not get anything then if you try to go too far. And I'd say that there's just been several districts, you know, and I think about, you know, Devil's Lake is a perfect example. And I'd say in, you know, Coopertown and Griggs County Central is another example where the survey said something, the board was adamant that they could do something different and the results just didn't didn't move from the
056survey. And and I'd say Devil's Lake, you know, bigger community, Griggs County, you know, similar size community. um you know, same survey process, same sort of questions, and it's just it's um you know, it's unfortunate when you know very clearly what's needed, but at the end of the day, you've got to find a way to pay for it. And if the community can't get there, you know, you got nothing. So, yeah, not not surprised, but you know, it is unfortunate that there's not more support, but also again, it supports all the work that's been done and the hours that have been spent with that committee. Right. Thank you guys. >> Thank you guys. Y >> All right. Special meeting. No further to be added to the agenda. So I will adjourn the meeting at 7:40
057a.m.