PLCS Board of Education Meeting September 11, 2023

001I'd like to call to order the Brooklyn Lavista Community Schools Board of Education meeting we'll start off tonight first with our budget hearing so before we start item one call to order please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance of the United States of America all right thank you roll call please here and can I get a motion to excuse uh Miss Fisher make a motion to excuse Val Fisher from the meeting tonight second all right could we get a roll call for that please to approve that yes yes all right thank you very much all right with that I will say please uh call your attention to the open meetings act that's on the wall there at the post at the entrance to the room we do have one individual that would like to make

002public comments we will start with that tonight for this budget hearing the same rules apply as always three minutes once I call your name please come up state your name and address for the record and then we will start the timer and at 2 15 it'll go off the first time in three minutes that'll be the total amount that you have so um with that I'll call Mr Edward wenninger please Edward winegar my address is on the form so I wanted to talk about the budget I there's from my from what I could tell online just looking at what had been printed or released it seems like there's continually going up the the numbers continue to go up and so uh I print I went to the Nebraska Department of Education website and I was

003looking at some of the Nebraska student-centered assessment system scores for these were from playing La Vista from what the website stated so English language arts in 2017-2018 we were at a 60 proficiency 20 21 2022 was 57 proficiency and then for uh math that was English language arts math was uh 57 back in 2018. Now 51 for 21 22. and science was 77 for 2018 and 76 percent for uh 21 22 school year so I guess my question is you know where's the money going or why are we continuing to spend more and um I'm sure you can blame it on covet all you want or or talk about building new buildings but at the end of the day it seems that the salary increases or more teachers or excuse me increase teacher pay um

004we can't find teachers at the same time so if we're increasing Teachers Pay then you know there seems to be a disconnect between are we going to spend more money or we're going to pay teachers when we can hire them right so trying to connect all the dots um plus the fact that tendons has flatlined so if we're again if we're if we're not seeing is you know if the attendance charts we're going up to at the same time the budget charts are going up that there's some correlation there but that doesn't seem to be the case either um so we're gonna have uh students potentially going to private schools with the successful passage of the lb 73 so that's something else to take into account as we're looking to uh the future and then

005finally there's just no disincentive to spend money right like if you spend less money then you potentially get less in the future from the state or have um if you're spending less money than you it's harder to justify uh what we're doing here and so just questioning when will we at some point see some savings or decrease in budget so that we can stop taxing the taxpayers and the citizens of the county so those are all my thoughts thank you but this obviously the purpose of this hearing is the air support opposition criticism suggestions or observations of taxpayers related to this proposed 2023-24 budget and to consider amendments relative there too so obviously we've uh heard that from Mr winegar and with that Mr Richards so thank you I'll get started here just by reviewing

006our budget timeline here for the month uh kind of where we're at tonight with our budget hearing September 20th our tax request information will be published in the Sarpy times September 21st there's that Sarpy County tax hearing last year's held a pavilion the Vista South High School and this year it's going to be at Bellevue East High School auditorium we are not required to attend this year due to our lower asking of property taxes than last year due to the governor pillan's plan to get more money into special ed reimbursements for the districts out there so we we're not required to attend this year and I'll kind of go through some of that tonight September 25th is our tax hearing that'll be our next board meeting night and then we'll ask the board to adopt

007the budget that night as well September 26 the next day we'll submit that budget to the Nebraska Department of Education County Clerk and state auditor and then on October 9th that tax request resolution will be asked out of the board and then we'll submit that as well the next day so just starting with funds within a our budget uh for the year we have a general fund which is kind of your main operations for the district it's your your biggest budget it's the one with all the statutes that limit your authority to spend as well as gain revenue nowadays so that's the one we'll spend the most Time on tonight we also have a depreciation fund budget that money can only come from the general fund so anytime we spend money out of the general

008fund to go to our depreciation fund it does counter as an expenditure we do that about a million a year for the last three or four years to keep up with our technology cycle the bond fund can only be used to pay back principal and interest within a school district so you have a budget for that each year special building is where all your building activities come in so any proceeds we get for our bond funds they go into the special building fund so we can spend it on building within the district so that we kind of call that our special building slash construction fund because all of our improvements for the district facility wise go into that like that that building fund budget activities so that's more of an in and out account each

009year for the mostly high schools they have to have their own budget we have to have their own budget Authority for them to spend out of so we kind of look at the previous year how much we've spent in that activities fund and then we kind of increase it so they're able to do their Gates all their Gates or come in through there the referees are paid for out of their coach I mean all the equipment that they buy for their athletic programs or inactivity programs or go through the activity fund so that's all like its own little special budget over there school nutrition same thing has their own budget for the year all the Personnel all the food are all paid out of that fund so we have to have a budget to spend

010keeping in mind you'll probably hear me say this more than once in government accounting to spend money you have to have a budget for it is the easy way to think about it if you don't have a budget for it or you go over that budget then that's a problem you'll get written up on your audit if you do that so we always try to budget more in some of those funds that aren't statutorily regulated than we're going to spend because we don't want to go over it in case we have a you know a lot more people showing up at activities than we normally do or whatever the case may be to have that budget Authority during the year is important uh Cooperative fund um is our Cooperative English language learner program with Ralston

011public schools that we share costs on and then student fee account all our student fees in the district go into this one account and get spent out of the same account so think of it like an in and out account there as well general fund highlights we're going to ask for a three percent budget increase we start out with a two and a half percent in any additional enrollment growth that we have allows us by formula to gain on that two and a half percent so if if we're growing by 100 students a year we might get up to 2.8 percent budget Authority the state takes that of consideration as they look at your budget ability to budget increase anything in special education spending or state grants or Federal grant spending takes that budget up

012from that point on too that's not regulated by the state because you have a budget all those are grants that come in you either get them through the state or the federal government to take that up higher so our federal budget remains higher due to that great grand expenditures we still have some things hanging out there from the yeser funds we have a couple more that Dr Debbie Anderson's applied for to have to do with mental health we still haven't found out if we've received those yet but we have the budget Authority there in case we need to if we don't get it Nothing Hurt nothing gained we won't spend it includes pay increases in board approved areas of certified and classified staff includes that technology sustainability I talked about so we can transfer a

013million dollars out of the general fund into the depreciation fund includes that one last stipend payment for staff of one thousand dollars in December for retention we've already paid out each staff member two thousand that has stayed with us back in I think February and may were the two months we did that and then revenues expenditures expected to be right around 144 million for 23.24 within the 160 one million dollar budget so I'm going to kind of get into that a little bit yes we're going to ask for 161 million budget and I'm going to get to that page here and show you kind of line item by line item what that means within our district so we're going to highlight it anything over three percent that we're going to ask for uh in budget

014expenditure authorities you can see instruction area that 0.5 percent is mostly due to that stipend okay and then whatever salaries and benefits teachers and peras and things of that all our support instructional people work under the instructional category so that takes us up to that 3.5 percent increase we take it most of them are right around three some of them we haven't didn't spend near to our budget so we'll keep those at a lower uh increase for example if you look at maintenance and operations we're keeping that at 2.7 percent because we didn't come close to the spending on that 15.2 from last year Federal programs and grants is another big expense you're 4.2 percent District legal services our district legal services this year more than doubled our expenses from last year's budget so we're

015going to adjust the boarding budget accordingly overall down at the bottom you see our budget last year was 156 million 519 or 500 16 000 it's 171 my eyes are getting worse as I age here but we're taking that asking for a three percent increase there really important I and I didn't follow through on that but so the 161 million includes that third from the bottom short-term debt services that's 10 million dollars in our budget we haven't used that since I've been here Doug never used it either before me it's there available within our budget Authority in case we need it if we were to come up short in taxes uh usually around February or March we'd more than likely have to take out a line of credit with the bank and you have to

016have the authority to do that prior to doing it so you can actually spend that money it's kind of a weird thing so if let's say we took out 8 million we had to pay some bills in the spring well we're going to spend that 8 million because we needed it right that's an expenditure even though we're going to pay it right back with our money later in the year it still counts as an expenditure even though you're probably not spending and you were going to spend that money anyway whether it be your own or you had to borrow it if that makes any sense to you but we have that available within our budget so that really takes us down right off the bat to 151 million in budget Authority and and some of

017that's for some cushion if we get to 151 million if we're spending 141 44 million supposedly this year the board decided they wanted to do another stipend or something of that nature we have the budget authority to do those things it's just like happened last year we decided to do something within our budget Authority we didn't plan on that spending but we did okay so that's what it's there for that Authority if you don't budget your budget Authority you lose it and in growing districts you do not want to lose your budget Authority because even though we're in a slow growth mode right now at some point we're going to start growing again when mortgage rates come down inflation comes down and those those types of things are cyclical so we'll need that budget authority

018to handle growth to open new schools those types of things it's all there to do that just kind of summary of general fund Revenue changes there are changes this year to take note of more so than other years the top two bullets value valuation increase of 12 on the district due to new commercial properties residential development continued strong home sales in the area that takes state aid down every year so valuation goes up the state says you've got enough resources to do your thing we're going to take some of our stuff back to help you okay that's a typical thing that happens this board is very well aware of that what's different this year and why we're going to be able to lower our tax levy rate more is because the state of Nebraska said

019we're going to put some more money into public education and we're going to do it through special education expenses so those are those are special education expenses are going to be reimbursed at 80 percent from the state of Nebraska so the district we've been spending those anyway right we've just been paying it out of our own money property taxes more than likely now the state says we're going to pick up 47 more percent here or 37 more percent of what you've been paying right so that's additional revenue from the state we're estimating that to be anywhere from six to seven million dollars in additional Revenue we don't know that for sure we've tried to keep our Revenue conservative on that amount on making sure we get enough in to cover what we're going to do

020with the tax decrease this will allow us to decrease our overall property tax rate of more than 11 cents almost 11.5 cents change just a little bit from the last preliminary budget information but not much I'll go through the budget and then I'll come back to the taxes because we have a tax hearing for that but I do want to mention the general tax what we're planning on doing on that tonight as well depreciation funds so typically with that appreciation fund we'll budget what we have available resources again not because we're going to spend 2.6 million dollars of that depreciation fund but because we have the money and if something came up during the year who knows flood whatever and we lost a bunch of Technology we have the authority of at least 2.7 million

021almost to spend and Technology through the appreciation fund my guess is we'll probably spend less than a million we typically do and we'll report that during the audit here this fall of what we spent in 2223 bond fund used for paying principal interest and fees okay it's associated with bonding annual payments not for building projects so don't we don't spend any money out of this account other than to pay for principal and interest our anticipated payments for principal and interest this year 18 million 261 167 dollars Bond three isn't hopefully this will be the last year that you see anything on your taxes for Bond three and we're not planning on putting any taxes in in 2024. special building fund um we have a budget of 32 million five hundred fifty thousand dollars we've the

022board approved 25 million and bond proceeds for the 2023 Bond we still have uh probably about after tonight's payments um probably about 4.5 million left to spend there in the 2018 Bond so we've we've kind of put it up near just a little bit over 30 to handle the spending in the building fund this year other funds and budgets the activities were 3.6 million we probably spend right around three 3.2 million a year in activity account we budget about 3.6 in case the spending goes a little higher in those areas they're bringing in more and spending more school nutrition 8.6 million you know with food prices rising I'd probably take this up a little higher than I normally would because of food costs to give us room in case that happens to us but we

023will probably be right around the 8 million dollars seven eight seven point eight eight million dollar market spending Cooperative fund we typically spend uh you know in the 100 to 125 000 range in that area it's there in case we had to add a teacher or something of that nature available in case that happens student fees we spent almost a million 50 000 this year so just took that up 200 000 to make sure we're covered on the student fee side back to the taxes we're expecting a tax levy decrease of 11.47 cents last time I reported 11.5 I was .03 off when we got it all figured out but it's pretty close general fund you can see a big drop there about eight cents um I mean yeah is that he yeah about eight

024cents uh bond fund we took that down under 20 cents so that's the three percent or three cent plus drop special building fund we took that down a little bit to um just about a third of a cent on the special building fund side total you can kind of see how it Stacks up to the previous years on this next slide so if you look at the trend of what how the state aid formula Works compared to property taxes you can kind of see how that works now back in 1718 that dollar 30 same with 1819 dropped that Ascent the next year kept at the same in 2021 and then we we dropped it about a half a cent in 2122 and then almost two cents and 22.23 and with this new formula for one

025year only I want to emphasize that we get this increase in special ed funds they'll continue with that but it set us kind of at a new Foundation level of that dollar 15 or so so I I expect this unless there's some changes the legislature could probably be on that same pathway where we have to we get to lower to half cent scent per year until and there's a lot of a lot of momentum initiative whatever you want to call it down in Lincoln to try to look at this tiosa formula but there has been for quite a few many years and they haven't changed it we've been advocates for it because our taxpayers seem to get the brunt of it with the valuation increases so much and we don't get the drop the levy

026like a district that is unequalized us so we're in equal High School Districts which means we get to state aid okay an unequalized District doesn't get tiosa okay so this year they do they get Foundation Aid they're calling it fifteen hundred dollars a kid so they but any evaluation increases any extra money that comes in they can drop their Levy dollar for dollar almost okay take their three percent increase drop a dollar for dollar uh the bigger districts that are tiosa dependent state aid dependent um we tend to have to fill back in our evaluation increases with our property taxes because they drop so much the state aid out from underneath us so we continually work uh Dr rickley and I met with a senator last week as a matter of fact and explain that

027to him so there he he gets it I think others are starting to get it down there a little bit on how that works and hopefully we'll see some changes to where that helps our taxpayers out a little bit more in the future to where we can drop the property tax levy because we don't lose so much data that's the Hope in the future and I with that I would be glad to take any questions at this time anyone have any questions Mr Richards uh sure a couple notes written uh thanks for going through the budget and on the levy side I know as you were talking about the foundational Aid and um the tiosa formulas and the new special ed funding this year some of the larger districts have been having the conversation and

028maybe some healthy conversation on do they drop their Levy as much as you know was weird dropping it because then it is setting that new Baseline for if they need to increase in future years it's going to be harder for them to get back up to what they need um so we know that this year the new special ed funny is is there and we have it for three years or can you walk through uh if we drop it how confident you feel that if we need to increase it in future years or if there are any changes in this new uh law that was passed that that gives us the special ed funding that we wouldn't be hurting ourselves by dropping it low now and not being able to get it back later yeah

029that's a great question and and in this funding formula as I just talked about every school district is so different you know a fast-growing District I would I would definitely be recommending that we ask for the additional Authority um because they don't have enough within that three percent right off the bat to handle the growth that they're going to have so they need to keep their their property tax Authority so as high as possible and I know it gets very complicated with the bills that just came out with the new statutory limits on I mean we've got statutory limits for years on our budget Authority already right now we have a property tax Authority limit okay I don't see an issue with us at this point uh and even before I got here under under

030a time when this District was growing a lot more Doug very really got went above that three percent between state aid and property taxes asking say that's an important thing to think about those two pots of money are biggest Revenue state aid property taxes and I don't see us in the next several years having to go above that three percent uh between stating and property Texas so if I thought that we'd be in a position where we needed to ask for additional Levy Authority even though I think the legislature is gonna put their hammer down on that anyway for districts that do that we don't need it we won't need it I'm just clarifying that you did have up there budget Authority for the in and out accounts doesn't mean that the money's coming from

031the taxpayer that's the in and out from activity fees and lunch fees and things like that so even though that shows a budget Authority that is not funds that come from taxpayers correct that's a great point I'm glad you brought that up I should have mentioned that during uh yeah um the depreciation fund is all their money's coming from the general fund which was taxpayer originated bond fund is coming from the taxpayers as a separate Levy you'll see that in the taxing hearing next week special building fund same thing we're asking for .023 cents there but the rest of them you're right activity School nutrition Cooperative student fees they're all paid for by our parents or the federal or state government on the school nutrition doesn't come from our taxpayers no and just a clarification

032and for the public activities cannot supplant general fund or vice versa those funds have to stay separate and you do have to create a budget for them but they cannot feed each other correct um the Activity one yes you can because you're going to have uh you know general fund money going to the activity budget each year but at a limited rate I think last year we transferred 150 000 but that would not be things like clubs no like the science club would have its own fund that would be separate from right this okay it used to be a time when activities could be fairly self-sustaining uh as far as the amount of people that were coming into games and those types of things with the covid that changed uh we hope to get back

033to a point where we're bringing in enough Revenue not to have to sustain some of those programs from a general funds perspective yeah thank you for I have a question can you go back to the slide where you showed um the dollar amount next to like School nutrition please next to school nutrition yes yes okay yes so um is that what we have in there currently or is that like what we're asking for with this budget that's what we're asking for in budget Authority so um School nutrition is it's their own entity over here so any money they bring in we're bringing in money of course parents are paying for lunch we're getting money from the state and federal government for lunches that pays for everything okay we and this district is so well run

034with our school nutrition program we don't supplement that at all with the general fund so it's all money coming in and out from different entities from state federal grants to parents buying lunch okay okay so does that sorry if this is silly and there's School nutrition did you say that pays out the like the uh Staffing okay it does okay so if we have like in the future some schools that go to like all free and reduced lunch where what happens to that money that we were using for that yeah that's a good question um we're when we go to all free and like we've done for five schools this year all free and reduced lunches uh all school lunches are free actually in those five elementary schools because we qualified through the federal government

035they're reimbursed at a rate that pays for all our services still so we don't lose any money uh under that situation so our school there's districts out there that it's not as well managed is what we're what ours is and they lose money in their school new position program um even with higher lunch prices and things uh we're just not in that situation it's been so well run for here for years we have a cash Reserve in there so we this money you serve that dollar amount you see up there is just to allow us to spend um during the year but no taxpayer money is involved hopefully Brett one more thing I think that might be useful for our community and for the board thank you for the report it was outstanding by the

036way we sometimes get the question as a school district and as a taxing jurisdiction why if there's minimal growth in the school district from an enrollment standpoint for example why would the budget continue to grow we got a few emails on it this weekend it was kind of alluded to with public comment tonight my response and please if you have other thoughts on this please chime in you have to understand what the main drivers on our budget are very typically for a public school district at least in the state of Nebraska 85 percent of our operating costs are directly tied up and staff salaries and benefits the biggest bulk of those costs for our teachers of our 1800 employees approximately 920 of them are teachers they expect and want and deserve frankly arrays so when

037you hand out a modest pay increase of say three percent on salary alone that's going to cause upward pressure on your budget medical insurance also causes upward pressure on our budget 85 86 percent of your budget is tied up in people the remaining 15 14 is tied up in the same thing that's tied up in your household budget things like fuel like utilities like uh incidental costs for you there's certain things for us or things like textbooks and laptops if you've been watching inflation it peaked at over nine percent as recently as a year ago when the cost of business goes up for your household budget the cost of business goes up for your school district so I think it's really important that we all have to be willing to tighten our belts when times

038get tough we certainly understand that we know you're all doing that as taxpayers but even though we may not be growing very much we'll get to that later on with Dr settles if she gives us an update on student enrollment our costs don't go backwards our costs don't even say stagnant our costs continue to go up because people expect and want and deserve a cost of living increase and when we've got teachers working really really hard frankly it's something they deserve so just want to provide that clarification all right anything else all right thank you very much Mr Richards I appreciate that all right with that I will adjourn the budget hearing at 6 31 pm and we will move into our regularly scheduled Board of Education meeting we've already done item one the call

039to order item two we'll start with Communications and first is our student council report from playing Lewis to South High School Gigi is it said LASIK or said LASIK oh well I went even close dang it and Cameron Cameron exner I hope that I got that one right that was kind of cool I should have just gone with what Brian said just use your first name so sorry great to have you welcome ladies okay um thank you so much for having the both of us here tonight um I am like was stated Gigi Savage I am the President of the student council at Papio South and next to me is um I'm Cameron exor I'm also a senior and I'm the vice president of student council um so to start with our athletic events our

040football is currently off to a two and two record we just had our Titan Monarch game and it was a really good shot with um just a lot of Titan Spirit we're currently at the halfway point of our football season and we have a game against Burke this upcoming week and then our homecoming game which takes place on the 29th and then for our boys and girls cross country team we just raced in the Titan classic and the Platte River Rumble which were two of two really big races um boys placed um top two and girls were in the top five so overall we've been doing pretty good um softball our Varsity Softball has a record of eight and seven and our team has been just very consistent and has has been battling at a

041highly competitive level and they're ranked in the top ten and they're competing in the Monarch invite this weekend at the Landing our volleyball team has a record of 12-0 they're ranked number one in the state and then I believe they're ranked somewhere in the top ten in the nation this week they're on the road at the Lincoln Public Schools invite our boys tennis has been doing pretty well over the season they just got third out of 10 teams in the recent invite and they're making great progress and finally our girls golf they just finished 10 they've been finishing top 10 in all of their meets and they're currently ranked eighth in the state and they have three invites left for their regular season um moving on from Athletics when we get to activities um all

042the clubs and activities are in full swing and the big thing to talk about right now is that our hope Squad which is moving on to their third year just had a yellow out on Friday um and they're doing a chalk it up competition in Titan time to further spread positivity um and then at the end of October they will also be headed to the Kim Foundation um conference again like they were last year the drama department is putting on the production of rumors this weekend so Thursday Friday and Sunday it'll be a fun show tons of talent um the band has performed well at home football games their first competition is this coming weekend and then the weekend after that we host the Titan marching band invitation on September 23rd and then I think

043they go to two out of town which is Minnesota and I want to say South Dakota is the other one um and then events the ninth graders just had their team day on Friday um this is a fun event that encourages them to all work together and there are senior alumni from the different teams that lead them um and it challenges them to develop cooperation trust and resilience um the student council uh put on Street Fest at the beginning of the school year which had an awesome turnout um and then it also gave a ton of students the opportunity to broaden their circle of friends and meet new people um and then coming up is homecoming on September 30th the theme is white tie affair the tickets went on sale today and then there will

044also be a homecoming parade following an outdoor pep rally on the 29th um and that is all the things that we have to report for the day so thank you for having both of us here and we are excited to see you for the next meeting any questions will Dr Steele be leading the parade in his convertible with the fight and Titan in the back seat do we have any inside information ladies you it's almost too much to hope for at this point but perhaps Dr Steele and Carla more importantly we will be piloting the vehicle we're at great report ladies thank you thank you very much all right our next item on the agenda public comment for items not on the agenda as always each person come up and state their name and address

045for the record and then they'll have three minutes to speak and just as we had in the uh our hearing before that you'll hear that two minutes and 15 seconds it'll beep the first time and then you'll have three minutes to be asked to be uh to finish and with that I will call up we've got a number here and I'm going to continue my streak of mispronouncing last names and I'll say Corey mcconnelly got one good evening um I wasn't surprised to learn that Georgia name please oh I'm so sorry no problem this is my resume here Corey McConaughey um okay good evening I wasn't surprised to learn that George M Johnson's all boys are in blue was almost removed from the high school libraries delighted as I am that the board chose wisely

046to keep a book about growing up black and Queer on the shelves history shows book bands are nothing new the Nazi book burnings began the 1930s with Dr Magnus hirschfeld's Institute of sex research which included an estimated 20 000 records on the existence of gay trans and intersex people States in his book the German dictatorship that quotes the exclusion of left Democratic and Jewish literature took precedence over everything else end quote in fact scapegoating was the foundation of Nazi rhetoric and the scapegoating of queer people was the only reason this book was ever brought to a vote under the guise of pornography it's unfathomable to how much artificial Force effort is taken to diminish awareness or support for query people their social invisibility has long required genocidal violence and historical Erasure historians themselves have dismissed

047records of openly queer people because they shared the same bias as the people they grew up around students need to hear and know marginalized voices and stories because the people who cry woke don't want any more sympathy for or acceptance of said groups and when there's greater visibility there's greater acceptance by society and institutions like plcs such as left-handed people after they were no longer punished or demonized students should learn the raw history otherwise they're doomed to repeat the cycle of hate and students especially need to speak up for themselves and not let orgs like protect Nebraska children or moms for Liberty use them as an excuse to erase in genocide queer people if their existence is too hard for kids to learn early on then why do these orgs cry grooming when kids learn

048about consent and how to identify signs of child sexual abuse and if they don't use children as mere window dressing then why are they silent about the ongoing defunding of public schools in favor of private ones the attempt to ban on all boys aren't blue was never about protecting kids only censoring speech and art to shelter them from diversity and stop some from discovering their identities and capabilities in an interview with NPR George M John oh okay thank you in an interview with NPR George M Johnson's shared quote students have publicly said on record that works like mine have saved their lives works like mine have helped them name their abusers works like mine have helped them come to terms with who they are and feel validated in the fact that there is somebody else

049that exists in the world like them and you want to remove that from them I just think it's sad end quote as a gay man and a survivor of suicide attempts and child abuse myself one less Outlet or person of for vulnerable students to access is one more nail in the coffin thank you all right thank you nothing scared me all right next up Mr Daryl lechner my name is Daryl lechner I y'all I remember me a few times I apologize and my address is on the sheet if you need it um I got a few things I need to cover I need to kind of give you an update on a variety of things without going into too many details I did go down to our state capitol uh this last Friday and I

050testified at our educational hearings down there I was not able to go to our department or state Educational Department that because that was at the same time at another location so I apologize for that I worked with Senator merman his legal advice his staff plus with Senator slam the staff and Senator arches staff we have a variety of concerns coming up and I made them very aware of just this last Labor Day weekend we had a three-day conference in Chicago by a socialist organization which is run by marxists and socialist and it's pretty intense we had a member actually get within the group and go through approximately 15 of the different sections that happen the majority of the attendance this is well over 400 people were major the majority of these were teachers these were

051teachers throughout the Midwest we actually have uh recordings of a teacher stating how they were proud they violated Florida state law because they're from Seattle Washington and they were able to do Zoom teaching with in this classrooms of Florida State High School which was highly inappropriate this really bothered me and concerned me that they were and this was also brought up in the mark in this in these meetings in Chicago that they were attempting to work around the system go around principles go around the staff and the school boards I am highly recommending to protect our children that we get cameras in the classroom not tomorrow not next year I mean now teachers unions I understand you want to protect the teachers but you're here to protect our children first bottom line a lot of

052you have children grandchildren and so forth and if you need evidence of it I will give you links for this there are recordings on record and they don't want this getting out we had people go in there we also established a secret meeting from the American Library Association where the president had confirmed that there was actually more than one Marxist besides her in charge of the Marxist or in charge of the American Library Association this is very concerning during also this convention in Chicago they expressly stated that they are thrilled to sexualize our children and introduce queer Marxist ideology to our children this is something that's highly disturbing and I'm seeing this being pushed by a variety of teachers unions throughout our country not just here this is very damaging I've seen some of this

053years ago but I blew it off because I didn't recognize it studying it for over gosh 14 months now has really opened my eyes I suggest you dig deep and learn because this is affecting our kids and they don't care about kids they don't care about teachers they are here to disrupt our country and that's it okay thank you and be safe please all right next up is uh Ms Lorraine renante good evening Laureen renate 1108 Park Drive in Papillion on February 27 2023 the plcs board held an American Civics hearing followed by a regular scheduled board meeting the hearing agenda stated that the purpose of the annual hearing is to allow public comment on the district's compliance to Nebraska statuary statute 79-724 regarding American Civics curriculum relative to the 2022-2023 school year according to

054the hearing minutes and video recording a presentation on Civics curriculum was given followed by brief discussion on the board no public comment was offered at the hearing the hearing was adjourned at approximately 6 10 pm immediately thereafter skip bayley president called the meeting to order and the regular Board of Education meeting proceeded from the meeting agenda I was denied to speak at that particular meeting of the regular board meeting I completed my pink form to speak before during the American Civics hearing I then filed a complaint with my kilgers the Nebraska State Attorney General the argument presented by the plcs district was that the meeting is one in two parts very similar to tonight however there were two separate agendas two separate called orders and two separate adjournments published by two separate minutes a single

055meeting does not publish two Public Notices two agendas and two sets of recorded minutes the Nebraska Attorney General concluded that there were two separate meetings American Civics and the regular Board of Education meeting the Nebraska Attorney General finds that the board did not adhere to its own policy of 8420 the Nebraska Attorney General does conclude that the board misapplied its own policy but not violated the Nebraska open meetings Act because the policy 8420 was misapplied where is the accountability when board policies are not followed it breaks the trust with the people who elected them and the rest of the community that is my statement there is no more trust thank you all right next up Mr Ralph Tate foreign good evening my name is Ralph Tate at last board's meeting you as a board made

056the decision to approve the book all boys aren't blue and to keep it in the school libraries you have the authority to make that decision but I would ask you to consider the following during the discussion a comment was made that the board would not bow to the moral standards of a single parent and yet you've done the same thing by what moral standard did you make your decision you may not have thought you were making a moral judgment but you were you have now established that there are certain that there is a certain amount of sexuality sexually explicit material that is acceptable to make available to minors how do you determine when it is too much and on what basis would you make that decision I believe you have fallen into the familiar cultural

057trap of relative morality you are not the first and you certainly won't be the last but now that you're on this slippery slope there's nowhere you can stand and say Beyond here we will not go you have no Foundation to stand on and for that I am saddened another comment made was that although there were passages of the book that he had to struggle to get through yet he found there were underlying values he thought were important to keep did you even consider that there may be alternative books espousing those same values that did not contain objectionable sexually explicit language would not the same objective have been achieved to Simply replace the book yet another comment was made that if parents object they can always put a hold on the book for their own children

058and yet how are parents informed these books or even in the libraries do you send out notices to parents to say hey here's a list of books we think you may find objectionable since the Librarians don't find these books objectionable in the first place how would they even begin to compile the list and what standard would they use to compile that list words have meaning words also have the power to deceive tobacco companies don't sell cigarettes based upon the number of lung cancer victims they sell the image of someone who's sophisticated or rugged or something else alcoholic beverages are not sold based upon the number of drunk drivers one more lap drunk drivers or alcoholics again it's an image a segment of the adult population now calls themselves minor attracted which sounds so much better

059than a pedophile as long as we can present some level of cultural image it's amazing what we will learn to tolerate we are currently dealing with cultural sexual issues which not only for centuries but for millennia were considered detrimental to societies now that we have opened this Pandora's Box do not be deceived and thinking that this is the end of the sexual issues you will be facing no you didn't start this you have just helped it along and for that I am deeply saddened thank you all right next up Mr Michael Elkins Michael Elkins my address is on the Forum uh I too would like to discuss the book that all boys are not aren't blue uh and the boards vote to allow kids to have unfiltered access to it with the exception of one

060board member you all voted yes to keep this book and let it have let our kids have access to it in a public forum maybe just as a reminder some of the words and phrases in this book are including but not limited to Dick give me head favorite porn star we dry humped he reached in my pants and pulled out my dick quote I got him up on his knees and I began to slide into him from behind end quote also quote I finally came and let out a loud moan end quote this isn't about Free Speech or Banning books or burning books this is about protecting children minor children if you as adults want to go out and read this book I don't care that's your prerogative as a community we do protect our

061kids in many different ways we also let their parents do what's best for their kids there are times things that are perfectly legal however we don't tell them are we don't allow our children to actually do those things until they reach a certain age we don't let kids buy cigarettes buy alcohol or buy guns if a 15 year old that has a learner's permit wants to drive in the state of Nebraska they have to have somebody an adult 21 years or age or older if you want to buy spray paint in Nebraska you have to be at least 18. maybe another good example is rated R movies children under 17 may not attend rated R rated movies without their parent or guardian or adult Guardian this is because there is usually instances of inappropriate inappropriate

062language violence and nudity an R rating does not make a movie porn however because most of the movie is related to other stuff but it doesn't make it okay for kids to see just a little bit of sexually explicit material portions of this book have already been called pornography by Susan Witt in a public board meeting superintendent rickley stated in the last meeting there are excerpts that are explicit he also said and I quote when I read that book there were parts of that book that made me squirm I'd like to offer you guys something you kept using totality as a whole on the book and that's why you voted yes however if I make you a big casserole dish and I put some rat poop in there and say hey would you like to

063eat this I'm guessing that you guys probably would not like to eat that even though most of the casserole is fine this stuff is rat poop this stuff is not beneficial to our children all right our last one for tonight is Mr Edward weniger Edward winegar my address is on the form I just want to clear up some misinformation that's been stated here and has also stated uh for the Press by the school district which is that uh most of or the books those submitting books uh for review are not parents of paponia Vista Community Schools students I know this is not true because I've submitted most of those books and I have children in the school district so I just want to clear that up since it was implied otherwise and I want to

064comment on some of the board discussion from last meeting during the approval of the pornographic all boys are not or not blue uh book um the it keeps being repeated that parents should not let their kids read it if they don't want them to but that the problem with that is as we've talked about previously is that all almost all of the policies and procedures inside of the school district are reactive there's nothing really proactively being done there's an app supposedly that gets referenced every once in a while but to my knowledge I don't know what communication has gone out or training has gone out and as we've talked about before you know during the bond uh you know there's all sorts of communication that goes everywhere all over the district right but something as

065important as not being able to allow your kid to read a book that is sexually uh inappropriate seems to be something that we should also be communicating equally with our parents so I would like to see that done getting the word out better about um about the how to do that for a parent and then ultimately again if a student is in the library there's no need to check it out if they can read it in the library so that logic is uh seems to be doesn't really make sense and then finally there was a talk about Dr rickley and Mr Bailey kept saying that they had apologize that they claimed it was on this not on the shelves when it actually was but I don't I think Mrs holmeyer was trying to get at

066the fact that nobody had ever apologized for calling pornography and so I guess this is Miss Wood and Mr rickley had both called it pornography I guess are you guys apologizing for calling it pornography um during the series 6000 review I had one of the suggestions I had submitted was to have a list of books published monthly of the a list of the books that are coming into the district to be put on the shelves published monthly before they're actually put on their shelves so the parents can see what is uh what their kids have access to so I just wanted to I think that would be a very helpful proactive measure that could be taken and give parents some insight into what's going on so I just want to reiterate that thank you all

067right next up on the agenda is item C superintendents report Dr rickley thank you very much Mr Bailey members of the board for our community that is with us this evening thank you for joining your board of education for those that are watching online thank you as always for remaining engaged with your school district and your Board of Education First off just wanted to wish our staff and our families and our students I hope you had an enjoyable Labor Day break I think for two consecutive years now we have done that back to back where the traditional Monday off uh for Labor Day in addition to the second day which is usually later in September for professional development some of the feedback we've gotten from families is they like to have that long long day

068four day weekend coming right out of shoot so hopefully everybody had a chance to enjoy the last gasp of Summer I also wanted to spend a minute congratulating coach Todd Peterson at the Plano Vista High School we will formally recognize Coach Peterson at a future meeting but we didn't want people to think that we passed this very significant Milestone bless you Mr madler uh without some type of recognition Coach Peterson long-time varsity girls softball coach at the Plano Vista High School recently posted his 500th victory now that doesn't strictly meet our criteria for State title National recognition but I think we can probably all agree that 500 wins in a Varsity Sport of any variety is nothing short of amazing so Coach Peterson if you're watching congratulations we'll get you in here after the girls

069wrap up what promises to be another awesome season we also had the opportunity to meet with a number of policy makers and state level leaders Mr Richards and I met with Senator holdcroft just last week we talked about a variety of issues on everything from the book policy we talked about state aid we talked about lb 753 Senator holdcroft has a very small part of the school district Senator Arch is our main state senator uh his legislative district encompasses most of the papaya Vista Community Schools but we're always grateful when a state senator even if they have just a portion of the school district comes in and talks to us likewise we had a follow-up conversation with new commissioner of Education Brian Maher and followed that up with a conversation with our own Governor pillan

070talking about some of the budget issues that Mr Richards talked about earlier during his presentation of the budget lastly we spoke with Colonel khalisiak now this board is well familiar with Colonel khaleesiak he's an o6 he's a full bird colonel he took over as our military liaison we had a good conversation just on Friday talking a little bit about where the base and stratcom and the 55th Air Wing and the school district could collaborate on even greater terms we've for a number of years we've done a whole bunch of things on everything ranging from bad weather day closures for the base in the school district to packing backpacks for our kids and and helping out with some of our vulnerable families but obviously Colonel khalisiak is wanting to expand that partnership and we're definitely grateful

071for that and it's hard to believe but we've already got kids at Outdoor Ed we've got a kids enjoying this gorgeous fall weather we started last week which means that parent-teacher conferences are just around the corner it's unbelievable how fast the fall term goes and then lastly before I close up Mr Bailey I just wanted to share with the board and our community a long time board member Valerie Fisher recently lost her mother Carol Swain her health deteriorated very quickly over the weekend and the funeral services this Thursday for those of us that know Val that have worked with Val she's just a class lady she cares deeply about this board about this community about the school district about our kids and our families she's hurting right now please keep Val and the Carol Swaim

072family in your thoughts and prayers and with that Mr bailad conclude the superintendent comments all right thank you very much next up board reports I want to thank the I don't know if they're still here probably not if I were them I wouldn't be here uh the student council reports uh hopefully they uh bolted out of here um which I was in their position 20 years ago I just checked 20 years ago I was on the student council for the monarchs and I had to come to the school board and give these presentations so I thank them for signing up for this role uh and coming this year but they said there I mean the fall sports are almost halfway done or halfway done with someone which is uh shocking to think that the fall

073sports are already halfway done I need to get out to some uh more of the events I did go to the Monarch Titan game uh we were absolutely perfect weather and pack Stadium which was great to see one of the Titans uh home game against Elkhorn South on on Friday uh again at least on the on the Titan side a lot of people there uh great to see the community coming out and supporting those activities and events and those those students that are out there but I do need to get out to more of the events here knowing that some of them are halfway done um I also went to the football game it was nice to see um my family comes from both sides so it was nice just to see all of my

074old teachers and just friends that I haven't seen and got to talk to for a while um and it was perfect weather but I wanted to I wanted to address something that at the last board meeting there was friction in the audience and I know that we were we going over this tonight as well for the um policies in the audience and I personally do not condone the booing foul language and negative comments being made towards other community members while up here we cannot hear and see everything it was brought to our attention by a concerned Community member who was here at in attendance last board meeting we do have children who do attend and they watch online everyone in attendance including us up here should feel safe in and out of this building so

075going forward I would just like to see such abrupt Behavior has to stop so thank you all right um first of all we haven't said it but we have to embarrass her happy birthday uh 2029 I was told to think of a little birdie said yeah getting better with the last names better with the guessing but no I just wanted to say a very happy birthday to you um yeah the football game like I said I know we saw a bunch of people there for the Titan Monarch game it was a lot of fun to see a lot of people out there even though I'm not from here still know a lot of folks and on both sides walking back and forth it was a lot of fun I wanted to bring up one other

076thing obviously everybody knows my military background on today's holds a very special place it's a very tough day for me I probably have a hard time getting through this but obviously 911 22 years ago today so this is it that 9 11 happened I had something I was going to read but I don't think I can read it but my biggest thing I want to make sure and I put this out every year at least on my Facebook and other places is let's not forget never forget what happened we try you know we do our best to educate the next Generation on things such as you know World War II and the greatest generation and those sorts of things it was the Deadliest Terrorist activity that happened on our shore tours and where I was

077actually living in New Jersey I have to tell you this and I was literally halfway between the Pentagon and the Twin Towers when they were down and I was not at home my my wife and I had two four-year-olds and a one-year-old were at home by themselves and I was out trying to get back home coming in from a trip and obviously I didn't get to fly that day so I got stuck out and eventually ended up a long ways away for a long time as part of the two Wars that happened after that if you want to call them an outer conflicts or whatever but I think the greatest thing that we can do as a school district as a country is to make sure that we educate our kids about what happened and

078how to keep it from happening again a lot of things changed that day like I said for for a lot of us and those that are younger and don't remember it I understand that you know I'm the same way when it comes to World War II but you know we need to make sure that we keep remembering that so I just wanted to bring that up like I said it means a lot to me it's a hard day for me but so please never forget all right anyone else happy with that all right we'll move on to our next item which is item e committee reports buildings grounds and finance uh we have Minot meds since the last meeting we have a meeting scheduled for this Friday right thank you very much human resources and

079student services of the agenda item coming up and our next meeting is next week thank you very much and finally curriculum and americanism yeah I was just going to say we haven't met so I don't think we have anything yet we're missing our our leader so all right thank you very much next we'll move to section three action items first up action by consent I'll make the motion to approve the action by consent second okay thank you motion by Mr madler in a second by Mr Lotus any comments all right roll call please yes all right thank you very much the uh second item on here is policy 8000 board organization operation uh Dr Settles thank you very much uh yes you have in front of you the 8 000 policies and the changes recommended

080from our last meeting we have not made any changes to those uh there may be some items in there that we do bring back to the board at a future date but as of right now those changes are as we're proposed to you I'll make a motion to accept the changes to policy 8100 8202 8310 8311 83 20 8420 and 844 as discussed sorry all right a motion by Ms Whitt and a second by Mr madler any comments or discussion all right roll call please yes yes yes all right thank you very much that's it for our action items next up under discussion and information items a is the Papillion Lavista schools Foundation yearly update Mr danker foreign well good evening we are just happy to be here and do our annual uh school this

081is not the right presentation keep going forward we're good I'm not talking budget folks well I'm going backwards no there we go we do not want to reload the event talk about budget some more if you'd like is this is good well hi everybody my name is Lee Denker and I'm just really happy to be here with you tonight as executive director of the schools Foundation I was invited our foundation was invited to give our uh brief report about some of the things that the foundation is doing to strengthen opportunities for students here in the district can I have with me tonight uh Terry Dodds who's the director of our kids club program which is uh without question the most visible program that the foundation operates so before we go any further I just wanted

082to share a little bit about us so you can kind of get a sense of who we are as a foundation our mission is to enhance educational opportunities for Papillion Lavista Community School students that would not otherwise be possible and we have a vision for the with the future where the circumstances of our students and families are improved a little bit more about us we were established back in 1986 completely by community volunteers we are a charitable 501c3 organization and we are governed by an elected board of directors I'm going to stop right there and let you know we have a number of board members who have joined us tonight in the back of the room if you guys are here staff or board will you please stand so that the board can see the

083support that our foundation has so thank you guys all for being here we sure appreciate that I truly do appreciate there's some of you around the table too I really wanted to make take a moment to acknowledge those folks because this is a community Endeavor folks come together to help our students and that's truly what the foundation is and you'll see here at the very bottom that we are separate from the school district I'm not an employee of the school district and our staff are not employees of the school district but we are completely supportive of this school district everything we do is for the students and staff here at Illinois Vista Community Schools so let's talk kids club and let's hear from our expert the program director Terry Dodds you're up thank you everybody

084for having us um we had thank you I got numbers yeah um as you all may or may not know we have a kids club program and all 16 of our elementaries um we currently just bucked up to about 1300 already enrolled for this school year we had a record-breaking summer of oh just about 851 students it was a very busy summer oh it's that's huge it almost doubled what we were seeing so that's crazy um we also like to point out that we also increased our employment over the summer we have about 100 Kids Club employees a majority of which are our own students so we're teaching them as we teach all the all the children it's the very that's one of the things that we teach our staff as well is that we're

085also teaching them about their first job and what they should expect from an employer so kids club has been very busy and um all very good lots of children so certainly a reflection of our leader Carrie does a great job leading kids club and has done this for a number of years so thank you Terry for your work any questions about kids club a quick one I was just writing it down I was going to wait till the end but you said you got so many of those high school students they continue to work during the year are they mainly summer employees we have both we have some that just work summer [Music] yeah that's that's why I was wondering because it obviously the amount goes up during school years they can get early release

086or late start that's also very helpful principles [Laughter] thanks I just wanted to ask that I appreciate it all right we just completed two very uh widely attended and recognized Community engagement events this summary summer was our foundation event cycle the first one was our swing for kids golf outing which occurred on June 13th uh out at Tiburon had great participation in fact it was our largest one our foundation has ever had and then we had our back to school as far a on August 19 2023 and I heard many of you comment on that at the last board meeting so thank you for those here around this table and in our community who who attended your your uh we'll be back again next year to celebrate the great things of our district and continue

087to raise money for the students and staff here a lot of folks ask us about alumni and so I like to throw this in when people uh think about the district we do have two high schools now and we're we're inching up toward 30 000 alumni uh both high schools when you add all the graduates from both high schools over 100 years that's a significant number uh and then they say what is the foundation Foundation do to help our alumni uh with their alumni engagement the primary thing we do is support them with class reunions however many class reunions uh plan them the officers plan their own get-togethers in fact I have one in two weeks and our officers did it all themselves and promoted the whole thing on Facebook but there are some alumni

088who contact us and ask for some class lists or some information that we can help them with and we're happy to do so and last year we did launch something in support of the high schools so that our alumni can be involved in helping to grow the Excellence at each high school and you'll see those coins on the on the slide the pl fund for Monarch High School and the T fund for uh yourself that is our uh that's our request for alumni to support their schools through those annual fund programs some examples of the student support that our foundation is known for are listed here on on this sheet Elementary arts program vehicle day greatness Awards which you just heard about a few weeks ago too with the start back to school graduate breakfast

089up at Monarch and post prom up at South Media Academy AP exam fees so students and parents don't have to pay for those there's Middle School tutoring there's pioneer days there's Career Academy and so many other things that we could talk about but I know our time is limited but we put a photo of something on there that is very special to this district and this is the outdoor education program that was started Years Ago by miss Ann Danner who still continues to operate out every fall out at the outdoor education and she invites us as a staff to come out and watch her and the teachers in action and we do we have our dates scheduled for this year already but we're pleased as a foundation and I hear it every every year from

090our board let's keep paying for outdoor education so our students can keep going to outdoor education and we don't ask parents for anything so we're thrilled as a foundation to be able to continue offering that for every sixth grader across this District uh we also have found ourselves as a foundation supporting more and more basic needs of students and staff this is something that continues to be an issue I think for school districts around the country and so we do have some funds in place to help our students with those basic needs Anders food fund and the student emergency fund are two that I did want to point out you'll also see there the plcs family fund that's a fund that was established about a decade ago to help with staff here at the district

091and I know it's very important to Dr rickley to make sure that the staff and the students frankly are all very well cared for the community closet is an initiative that everyone supports as a district program it's not a Foundation program however if the community does want to support the community closet they can make Financial gifts through the foundation and we're happy to facilitate those we did put a picture up there of just a few weeks ago thanks to the anders food fund we loaded up our cars and we brought snacks to all the nurses stations and all the social workstations at all of our schools around the district so that any kid with a tummy ache or who happens to be hungry has something that they can snack on until they uh until they

092start feeling better something else we're quite well recognized for is the teacher grant program we wanted to highlight that as well the teacher grant program is a I don't I can't even tell you how many years it's been going but it's been a long time the foundation puts money forward for our teachers to apply for grants that encourage innovative ideas to enhance the educational experience for students Grant recipients are chosen completely by a volunteer committee they review sometimes over a hundred requests and come up with a list that is often very very difficult to to whittle down to the budget that's available and we're really proud that funding impacts all students at all grade levels every year the ability of our student our teachers to come up with creative ideas is pretty remarkable and I

093know a number of you have sat on that committee and I'm sure you could speak about how meaningful that is to you to to see those applications come through oh I should mention that picture there we after the teachers are selected of course we let them know and then we do spend a couple days traveling the district bringing them congratulations gifts and taking pictures of them receiving their their teacher grants so it's fun for us to go out and do that and celebrate in the schools and then we are another one that folks recognize us for is our senior scholarships uh just this last year thanks to the generosity of the community we were able to award 81 scholarships to graduating seniors that's that's a pretty significant number uh that's just to the class of

0942023 so we're in the process of paying those scholarships out now as students tell us where they're going to school and we're preparing for the cycle for 2024. Believe It or Not these graduates are thinking about scholarships when they go to college next year once once again just like the T the teacher grant program it is chosen all of our scholarships are chosen by a volunteer committee through review applications carefully and then make their choices we award scholarships to students from both high schools and they're attending many different colleges all across the nation so finally just some points of Pride that we hope you're proud of too we really are proud of our staff uh Terry and the kids club staff do an amazing job taking care of 1300 kids that's a hard job and

095I'm really proud of you and your team for the work that you do and certainly the the foundation office staff as well who help who helped owners try to make a difference for students here in our district uh are I'm really thankful and proud of our board as well and a number of you who are also on our board uh thank you for the work that our board does we're proud of you and it just truly is a reflection of the giving community that we all call home uh we're really proud of our engagement events as we've seen those grow not only in participation but also in dollars raised those have an impact and we hope that they're going to continue to grow through hard work and and some Community Support we also received a

096positive financial review from our external auditor once again that's that's very important to foundations and so we're pleased with that and then finally we just had to throw this on here I think we'd all agree that our our biggest point of pride is this school district we are so thankful to support you as a district we want to thank you board members for the work that you do to keep us strong uh we we really feel fortunate to work for a foundation that supports Nebraska's finest school districts so you are truly our point of pride so with that I conclude my uh report and Terry's report and I'll open it up to any questions if anybody has them uh thank you both for coming and presenting um I was thinking back is uh I remember

097I did get a scholarship from the foundation 20 years ago so there's a delayed thank you um they uh I got it I don't know who paid it but I remember getting into one of them so I appreciate that from the foundation and again all the scholarships that that you guys provide to the students then I started getting involved about 10 years ago with foundation with scholarships and planned giving back then and then I think I've been on the board the actual board for the last seven years for the foundation with the one stint as the treasurer there um and so I know all the great work that the staff does the teams do the board does all the board members sitting back there uh coming up with new ideas innovative ideas um and it's

098just great for the community you were talking about the the teacher grants I've stated it before in this meeting after we have our reviews but that is probably the favorite my uh favorite thing about the uh Foundation or the yeah being on the board is going through those hundred uh Grant requests which can be tedious at times but it's great seeing all the ideas that our teachers are spending their time coming up with these innovative ideas some of them are just asking for a few hundred bucks to try something in the classroom others I remember you know 20 20 20 000 plus dollars depending on you know it can be expensive equipment and some of those classrooms or instruments or or whatever and but just even the small ones uh just across the board it's

099great seeing from our teachers taking uh advantage of the of the foundation grants I know the foundation's up the dollar amount that they're now giving out which is great but it's still very competitive uh so if you're a teacher out there you don't get that Grant filled get some feedback on it and you can always try again because it is hard to dwindle that list down you get a request of for 200 000 and you try to get that down to 120 but I appreciate all the work you do and and I I don't think the community knows all of the services that you guys provide and all that you guys do for the community so I thank you for coming and and sharing a little piece of that so thank you um Brittany hi

100I just wanted to say I'm so sorry I missed the gala I do senior pictures and it was like 120 degrees that day so I think I got one in but it was sold out so maybe next year um we'll invite you back next year right I might actually do the golf thing I'm not a golfer but I'll try it um but no I I wanted to say at the um back to school event that was my first one and I thought that was amazing like the checks and like surprising teachers and just doing that for them um seeing them so surprised so I appreciated that um and another thing for the for the fund um where you guys donate the food to the T to the staff how does somebody get involved with something

101like that like do we go out and purchase that kind of stuff or how to how do I get involved with helping with that thank you guys for asking uh so we do accept Financial gifts uh year round at any point so if you want to support that we uh we'll accept the gift we'll invest it into that fund and then we work with our school staff to find out the food needs uh that are that are required to be paid for from that fund and we work with them throughout the year so it's not necessarily a donation of food or perishables but a financial gift would would help out a great deal you bet Lee and Terry thank you for being here tonight terrific report I always look forward to this and uh maybe

102the the highest compliment I could give these two is that um never have we approached Lee and his team and the foundation the foundation board with an ask that was just dismissed out of hand they always take the time to listen to carefully evaluate we don't always get what we want but more often than not they find a way to make make really great things happen for our families and our our students it's of no surprise to anyone in here who's been paying attention that two very important projects to my family personally the family fund which goes to support our staff when when life happens when they they they hit in the rough times and then the community closet which obviously is supporting some of our most vulnerable families across the School District Two labors

103of love for me personally and they do not happen without the two people seated in front of us so just grateful for your support grateful for your leadership and really lucky to have you thank you thank you no he's going to steal steal my thunder no I just I have to commend the the kids club program I've had three kids go through it I still have one technically enrolled in one probably when it gets colder um what they do is is beyond exceptional uh there's a reason the summer numbers are through the roof because if you see what they have planned and the amount of effort and planning for the entire summer I mean there are two field trips a week they've got swimming they've got activities uh I know my kids always looked forward

104to the Summers so it's it's great that they find a way to get the kids engaged where they want to go to kids club for the summer and not just sit around and play on their you know Xbox and their iPads and and whatnot so I know how much seeing it firsthand how much effort goes into not only the summer but throughout the entire year you will not find a better service for your dollars that then in turn go back through the foundation and then support uh you know the rest of the programs and things that the foundation do so again as a proud parent of kids club parents if you don't know about it reach out to the foundation and inquire uh I would start if you have kindergartners next year you should start

105planning now as you can tell the numbers are very high and they we do max out at certain schools so I just recommend you plan and then one thing that uh lee that you didn't give yourself enough credit for uh that in my I business life outside of the board that is very important to me and my industry is uh the support the foundation has put forth for skilled and Technical traits we expand when both high schools expanded and we expanded our our stem rooms and our our wall building rooms and engine rebuilding and everything else the foundation led a tremendous effort to ensure that those programs are funded for years to come and they are just fly by the night programs that when the money runs out we're done so I want to commend

106the foundation there are not enough skilled and Technical workers coming through the pipeline electricians welders you name it I mean truck drivers we hear about it all day and I live it so again huge support from the foundation to ensure that our students have the opportunity to see something different that we kind of got away from over the past a couple of decades that that college isn't for everyone and there are other opportunities to make a good living by doing something that wasn't a priority for this country for a little bit so appreciate the the support and getting all of our partners in the community to get behind those skilled and Technical trade programs well thank you Brian and I just will mention that as an ongoing funding priority for us so if anybody is

107listening or here uh give uh give Terry a call for kids club give me a call if you want to support the skilled and Technical trades because we we would love to visit with you so we the the ask is always open all right I get to have my two cents first of all all the board members back there and staff thanks for coming appreciate it I joined the foundation board about a year ago as part of this and you've all been wonderful really appreciate it appreciate everything you all do do I'm glad to join that Leah can't say enough about you Terry I don't even know where to begin with kids club but uh lee I've known you for a number of years and and just watching what everything everything that goes on with

108the foundation it's amazing uh last weekend I my wife and I got together with uh Ray Keller Ray and Jenny Keller so Ray was very excited because Millie uh you know their dog passed her a test so she's still going strong with that one of the grants that we gave yeah so I was they were pretty excited about that so anyway I just wanted to say just one more thank you very much for everything you do the foundation is just it's it's incredible it's amazing it just adds to what this district is in this community so thank you all very much thank you all very much in the back appreciate it anyone else all right thank you for taking your time out of your evening we appreciate it all right looks like you've got the

109clicker so I guess we're getting ready for the next one which is the Staffing and student enrollment Dr settles very good yes that might mean I'm up here we go um so just want to stress as we kind of get into this we love to give you just kind of an early look at things and what the Outlook is um very fluid numbers though what we do and the kind of the way this works is in October the beginning of October every year that's when we send our account to the state they clean up some data throughout the month of October and then we come back to you later on as we look into staffing needs and give you kind of the overall big report but like to give you an early report so the

110numbers that you're going to see are compared to last October and truly we watch numbers all year long we're in an area that is very much sees people move in and out even last week the colonel men mentioned that they were had some delays on the pcsing so we are still seeing some of that happen I had done this report and gotten it ready for you last week then I updated it on Friday updated it again today and I saw changes every single day so that is truly where in the place that we live so I just do want to let you know that we watch them all year long and those are fluid so I do expect that the numbers will be slightly different when you see them in October just because of that

111experience even last week um so we'll just kind of start with sharing some of those student numbers with you I'll give you a chance to digest that for a minute the yellow is or gold is what you see as our current numbers as of today and you'll see down the side our elementary middle school high school all the way up to 21 and then our preschool numbers added in down there at the bottom as well so a couple of items on this um first of all those of you that are really quick to soak this in probably already noticed that pretty consistent with what RSP told us to expect from the rrsp study our largest growth being at the elementary middle school going down a touch and then High School being very steady so it's

112good to see that that is correct with what they told us to expect in our planning but um you know with the elementary being some our growth area right now our largest growth as you can probably expect came at Ashbury and Prairie Queen and definitely some of that growth that we saw at Ashbury and Prairie Queen We Know came from other areas of the district so some move-ins from other areas of the district in those growing areas that have a lot of building going on right now um at Middle School our largest growth was at Liberty which was expected it does not hurt that we saw some relief come to La Vista Middle and Papillion middle and liked to see that bounce that we got at Liberty at the high schools were remaining very steady

113at the high schools they currently have a numbers that you're not seeing in here that we always also are watching are kind of our influx numbers so or in the hopper you might call it so some students who we are we waiting on some records for some students that have are moving and we know this is the date that they're coming in some things like that so at the high schools those are currently our largest kind of in the hopper numbers as well we did use a fair amount of the option enrollment spots but not all and you might remember that as we added that in we were very very conservative so it'll be nice to see and have those discussions as we look to what we want to do and continue in those areas

114and that's something that HR subcommittee will be bringing to you in the future um so overall we've got some steady enrollment numbers you can see that currently at this at this moment in time compared to last October we're up a total of 15 students um we look to see our Elementary class sizes stay very near to that 19.8 that we were at last year maybe slightly lower I'll report on that later on but I do think we'll probably get to a very slightly lower as some of that slower growth would allow us to do but that is something we continue to hear from teachers and parents as something that they believe really does set us apart from some others next up Staffing so uh we were able to fill all of our teacher classroom teacher

115positions and however special services teacher positions are our highest needs and those of course serve all classrooms so I am so very proud of our staff we have just and it's hard not to get emotional when you talk about our staff because they are absolutely incredible and the work that they are doing every single day and how deeply they care about meeting the needs of our students is just absolutely incredible you can see that we have a couple of areas we're still currently hiring in and we will be fluidly hiring throughout the year that is the times that we are in we do not see people going into special education as much as in the past there are not enough Behavior coaches out there to go around though they are worth their weight in gold

116and we just do not have enough access to behavior coaches we have some very very talented special education staff that stayed in special education rather than applying for our opening and behavior coaching because they knew their area that they could help the most currently was as their role as a special education teacher so that's something that we're continuing to do and fill those positions we're already currently hiring we made an offer last week for somebody to start in January so we're continuing in those areas in those High meat areas in the area of special services our floater Subs have also been very helpful here at the beginning of the year as you have different needs come up and sometimes fairly late we had a couple of late move outs with some people who had like

117spouses take jobs in other states and things like that and and we want people to be with their family so some of those areas we were very fortunate to have some floater Subs be able to help and then just some staff that were able to step in and help in some very creative ways and we really just appreciate everything that our staff does every single day um I also wanted to share a little bit with you with where we're at currently on our classified Staffing so we still have areas of shortage definitely it's looking a lot better than it has in the last couple of years um you know Nebraska remains at an extremely low unemployment rate I think like second in the nation right now so it is a challenge because there just aren't

118enough people out there seeking employment but we're looking a lot better than we have in the last couple of years so we are continually hiring in those areas of Perez van drivers and Riders custodians food service and we have a plumber opening right now as well those are all areas that we've really done some work on with getting increased salaries and just increased benefits and things like that so we're very hopeful and we always see an uptick in applications right after the Labor Day timeline and we are seeing that again this year and just continually hiring and then lastly I did want to just make a couple of highlights on some of the goal three efforts there's a pretty long list of things that have happened through goal three and that's our goal that focuses

119on recruiting and retaining a highly qualified staff these are just a couple that really kind of fall in line to what this report tonight is about the student teachers so we hired 40 percent of our student teachers 22 of them from last year are now a part of our staff in their first year of teaching and this fall you know we're fortunate to have a lot of really great Partnerships with our universities and colleges around our area and we've welcomed about a hundred practicum in student teachers this fall so that's great many more practicum than student teachers so some of those though like 51 of them from Uno they're in their final practicum so that means next semester they'll student teach and um all of them we were just really excited to get to partner

120with them and welcome them here into the school district our staff are giving them just amazing experiences and really getting them Hands-On and some a lot of great opportunities to learn from the best so I'm very fortunate to have those Partnerships we have a lot of ongoing connections with our education Academy and even following up with those students once they move on and are in college and Beyond so we're really fortunate to have that going so strongly in our school district and then we still have the one more staff retention stipend coming in December that Mr Richards talked about in the budget report we did begin a new staff referral reward program so we're excited about that the first rewards we'll start be giving being given out at 60 days of employment so we're just

121about to reach that point so that'll be exciting and it's a really neat gift that came through our cooperation best program it was sponsored by them and it is a cup that's engraved and it turns into a Bluetooth speaker so it's really exciting and we anticipate that it'll create some fun for those that are receiving those um and then our parent-to-teacher Pathways so we have through Midland where we have two finishing up right now we actually hired both of those on as special education teachers uh because they already had bachelor's degrees so they had the availability to earn a certificate that could allow them to be hired on and they'll finish up and student teach next semester before graduating and then our Peru program just kicked off our Peru State program and that has has

122going great as we've started that out and we've got several Paras that are part of that and that one's a couple of your programs so we look to keep continuing to in those creative areas all of those parent-to-teacher Pathways right now are for special education teachers with that being the highest area of need and in those we're partnering with Millard and Bellevue as well I also wanted to add that we did incorporate a sub-teacher and para incentive program too so which encourages them to work a certain amount of days in order to earn some incentives so we're pleased with so far how that's going in the response that we've had from our para and teacher Subs on that so that's kind of the report for this time of the year but are there any specific

123questions at this time until I have a question and just comment my wife was telling me she um is she has one of the practicum students and she I think the first day today so she was pretty excited uh to have her join her classroom and and so she's she's looking forward to it she's looking forward to working with her and yeah Carriage Hill is one of our host sites so that's great but thank you so much lucky college kid yeah appreciate everything anyone else thank you all right thank you I really appreciate the work and happy birthday yeah no place you'd rather be on your birthday all right um all right to wrap up here in section five our future board calendar uh Wednesday I guess yeah it would be Wednesday in two days

124we have the Uno educational leadership dinner I know there's a number of us in here that are going to that on the 19th the area membership meeting over at the Embassy Suites in La Vista and our next Board of Education meeting on September 25th at 6 PM in the central office unless there's uh any other if I have any other business and I will adjourn the meeting at 7 42 pm thank you very much