001What? It's just a suggestion. We're going to call the meeting to order. Please rise for the pledge of >> allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the standy. >> Good evening. Deian, do you have a good news report? >> You are soon going to be part of that report, >> right? >> Yeah. >> Well, I'll start off with uh two bits of good news. Uh first, I'll introduce you uh to the first portion. Tonight's good news uh good news report though is going to require you to put yourself in a bit of a struggle for a minute. Let's just say you had a presentation all ready to go for tonight's board meeting and the power went out or you couldn't access your PowerPoint for some reason. So, are you starting
002to feel a little nervous? Maybe you have a test to study for, but the book you need is locked away behind a wall of glass. You can see it there, but you you just can't get there. Makes you a little bit nervous. right now. Imagine living dayto-day where information is there and you just can't access it. Well, thanks to a group of a small group of creative members of the Sou Falls School District special services department, we have 2,000 students who don't have to experience that struggle. Tonight's good report, good news report introduces you to the assistive tech team. And so we will have the members of the assistant tech team come forward and they are going to share with you some of the ways that our students access their education. So we'll have some
003demonstration tonight. All right. I always say that I am at not it. So if we have any glitches here, I'm gonna lean on Andrew back there. But oh, see we're started right away. There we go. So, like she said, we're with the Sou Falls School District's assistant tech team. All four of us make up the team, and we're not even all full members on that team, but my name is Heather Hers. I've been with the district for 22 years. And my role on the team as an at integrationist is really to help those classrooms to use these tools to integrate them in and get them access to that education across all of the assisted tech. I'm Chris Smith and I'm an occupational therapist for the district. This is my 25th year and I think um
00417th year on the AT team. So, my name is Beth Carlson. Uh I'm a speech language pathologist. Um this is my third year on the AT team and my 21st year as a speech therapist. My name is Shannon Miles and I'm teacher of the visually impaired. I've been in this position for seven years and in those seven years I've been a part of the assistant tech team. So just a few oh see at versus here just a few things to learn about what we do and who we impact in the district. Like Deian had said we serve about 2,000 students across the district. students that are on either a 504 plan or an IEP plan. And we support students all the way from birth to age 21. We often forget about those littles that aren't
005quite into early childhood yet and those older students that are transitioning out. Um we do a variety of consults and evaluations to help support teachers and staff and teams to learn what tools can help those students to overcome some of those barriers that they face within the school day. And those are across a variety of different needs, whether that be physical motor access, fine motor, gross motor, learning, vision, hearing, all of those different areas we help to support. Um, we also do a lot of training for parents, staff, um, children to be able to learn how to use those supports because just putting a support in place is not enough to help those needs. as well as we do do some support for families to help connect them to community resources to be able to
006have access to these things beyond the school day because we know that these barriers don't stop just here when they leave the building. Okay, so these are some of the AT tools that you might see for communication access. Um, at for communication is often caused called AAC or augmentative and alternative communication. And really those are tools that are just meant to support students in understanding um, language and also being able to express themselves and share what they want to say and express their understanding or their learning. So some of the tools you might see are a simple switch like this. >> Hi. [laughter] that they are able to communicate. Um there might be a communication board that's simply a piece of paper where teachers are able to point to pictures, students are able to point
007to pictures um to demonstrate to um to clarify directions. Uh there also might be um a communication book that has lots and lots of words um to be able to share more complex message. And then we have the high-tech tools. This is the most robust vocabulary option that we use in the district and this can be a comprehensive communication system um that can share all kinds of language and support communications communication in a lot of ways. >> This is an augmentative communication device and I'm using it to help me speak. So those are just some of the tools that we use for AT for communication and we do a lot of training um for staff and families especially when it comes to robust AAC. >> All right. So for my piece is um motor and
008you can see on the slide up here we do different types of mounts for communication devices and switches. So that top corner those are two different types of mounts. There's several available um commercially. We have a we have one up here too. Um and then different types of access for um iPads and computers and keyboards and adaptive joysticks. Also look at um adapting writing tools and different styluses. Um that's a switch adapted scissors uh for one of my little guys. You'll see a picture of him later in the video. Um, and then cause and effect we can do with switches. Either we find a point of access that a student is able to move. It could be their foot, it could be their head, their hand, their knee. Right now I have a little guy
009using that scissors and he uses his um foot to hit the switch and then he's able to um hold the paper with his hands. And then what else is up there? like an iPad stylus that's been adapted. Um um a functional hand that helps hold markers and different tools. So, it's just kind of a tip of an iceberg. So, lots of problem solving in these gals here. Um we love to bounce ideas off each other and we like to create and solder and hot glue and whatever we need to do. The next area we're going to talk about is assist of technology for reading and writing access. If we think about reading and writing, it doesn't just happen during ELA time. It really happens across all curriculum areas out in the community. Think of all
010the reading and writing that you do across your day and what these students are going to experience. Um, and we just look for ways to help them overcome those barriers. So while they're still learning those skills of reading and writing that are barriers right now, they can actually still access the rest of the curriculum and not get further behind. So we use things such as text to speech where that text is going to be read aloud on their computer or we have reading pens that they can take and they can scan along the printed text to have that read aloud to them into their earbuds. We have iPad accessibility pieces. They can snap a picture of a worksheet and select the text that they need it to read aloud. different ways that we can put
011worksheets up into the computer for them to access it that way using some of those tools. Also, um we also use headphones with microphones because you know those classrooms are loud so that they can speak into there and still get their own authentic ideas out without having to have someone being there to rely on and a variety of other things that they can utilize. and assist of tech for the blind and visually impaired. We have students in our district that are blind, are deafb blind, and have low vision. So, how does a student access their curriculum and their environment um with a visual impairment? Um on this screen uh one of the examples I have a student with low vision who is in orchestra and he uses a large screen iPad and a foot pedal
012and he uses an app called fourscore and he can scan his music into um the iPad with the fours score app and then um he's strings he plays strings so then he can um you know touch his foot pedal and advance the music but it can be set up totally of uh you know what part of the page he needs um that he's scanned in. Um, there's also magnifiers and not just a handheld like the old handheld magnifiers. There are digital magnifiers. And it doesn't just magnify. You can record, you can um, you know, Bluetooth it. You can do um you can um take pictures around the room and you can download a file and just about anything you can think of you can do with a different type of handheld magnifier. Um and then
013um students who are blind, a print can be put into braille and vice versa using this is called a smart brailer. Um and you can do um lift weights with that. It's very heavy [laughter] and so get a workout with that. But that will speak. It will also show print for um the teachers if they don't obviously know Braille and so um they can see what he's typing and that also you can re um you can keep um a file in there and then turn it into the teacher. And then also um there's those are high-tech options. But then um there are also up in the corner you'll see there's the light box where Heather is. Um these are for my students who or our students who have what's called cortical visual impairment. This is
014just one of the leading causes of blindness. And this is a brain paced um visual impairment meaning they can see you but they can't interpret it. So how do we get them to interpret what they're looking at? And that takes a long time to build their visual visual pathway. And so eventually being able to um you know the number one goal is being able to have give them access because we are looking at access for independence not just here at school but when they graduate or leave us when they're 21. Thank you. So this next part here, we just have a short little video that we want to share with you that has students in our Sou Falls School District that we were able to gather over the last few weeks of them using AT
015and why that AT matters. >> [music] [music] >> Thank you for your time. Do you have any questions? If not, that's okay. >> Well, thank you for coming. And I do have a question. Um, just with more of the kids being in the mainstream classroom. How are you working with the teacher or the or do you work with the teacher in the EA to allow this access to happen? Are you bringing the devices in um or what does that look like? Or maybe you all are going in the classroom. I'm just thinking how quickly curriculum goes and >> what falls into that for the for the teacher in the classroom. >> So, we're not technically a member of that IEP team specifically. And so, whenever an IEP team wants to know what tools they should
016use, those sort of things, we have a format that they can work through to request support. And then we come out and do a consult or an evaluation if needed and kind of put together recommendations and provide training to that team. So then that team can then continue that and keep that going on a daily basis within there. With us being a small team and there being 2,000 students out there, there's no way we could reach there. But we've really worked hard on building that capacity of our teachers that are out in the buildings and as they get students with new challenges helping to provide that training. Yeah, I was able to go to U Ben Rifle's Rise holiday party >> and I observed students um using that that device with their peers. They came
017in to do like crafts with them and it was really cool to see their interaction with each other and how excited each person got to talk back and forth and talk about how hot the hot chocolate was cuz they made it too hot. And like it was just cool to see them get the chance to be a kid to talk to other kids in their classroom and the fact that this stuff exists and how creative you guys have. You guys are like balling on a budget and getting crafty with this solder and taping stuff up. Like it's just amazing what you've come up with to get kids to feel and own this part of their lives. So, thank you for what you do. Appreciate it. >> I want to say thank you as well. And
018um I'm curious, you know, I I really think that this is uh this shows the heart of public education, right? And it really it really gets to it. you guys kind of hit me hard. So, um, [sighs] yeah, there's a lot to think about here, but I am wondering if there's just with the advances in technology, I'm sure there's new things all the time and you guys probably stay, you know, up to speed on all of that. Is there something that you're like, if we could have this, it would be just a game changer or just amazing. Is there something that you think about? >> We've done different grants and all of those pieces over the year. Really the big thing out there right now is watching what AI is doing. AI is starting to
019change some of our communication apps starting to change just the way that we access everything across the board, not just for us, but for everybody. So, it's really kind of watching those pieces. Um, we were able to purchase through a grant a 3D printer a few years ago. We have not gotten quite techy enough to get that going as much. So, if you have any people that love to do those type of things, we'd take the help on that part. But you know otherwise most the things we've been able to access through companies that partner with the families to get those pieces across home and school or to be looking at grants and that piece. So right now we're actually sitting in a good spot for creativity wise and figuring out how to make things
020work >> more more bodies. I mean, every staff by staff is always a big piece and just being able to get everywhere that it's needed to really get people up to speed is probably our biggest challenge. >> I think we're we're probably about 450 requests this year. And that's not emails and all those other little pieces that we're working on. That's just specific requests or specific students to either do a consult or an evaluation or come out and help train this team and do these additional pieces. >> Is that typical or is that um escalating? >> It's similar to where we were last year. It's a big escalation from years prior. >> Okay. >> And then do you all service when something breaks down? >> Absolutely. >> Where does that go? >> Absolutely. We do
021it all from start to finish and was admirable. >> Yeah. >> A note for next year's legislative, you know, walkthroughs is to have this presentation >> for our legislators to see the work you're doing and how we need to be better to support you. Just a thought, >> right? >> Thank you. >> It is a it's truly indicative of public education. We educate all children and and every single child. And this team does an incredible job of making sure those kids uh that have, you know, additional needs that another child may not or have something that may hinder them if they didn't have that to get their education, they make sure that they have it to overcome that piece of it so that they can receive their education. And we always talk about growth. Growth
022is always dependent on the individual child. Where do they start and where are we going to grow them to? And that's different for every single child. And so to be able to compare that and and put a voucher on that or something of that nature, you just cannot do because we have educate every single child and not every child needs the same thing to make sure that it's equal. And so that's what our assistive tech team does is to make sure those kids have what they need to be in our public schools. And I will tell you that our our student bodies accept them incredibly well. Uh you talk about the best buddy program uh where they read with them and the warrior reads or the the teddies reads and and each of those different
023programs and the unified games and unified arts and and incredible programs that are out there to help and make sure every kid is accepted. >> Yeah, incredible stuff. >> Yeah, Dr. Null kind of stole some of the things I was going to say. So, you know, mind meld mind. But I want to thank you for everything you do for our students. And that is such a wonderful thing about being a public school is that our doors are open for all. And you level the playing field. It's going to get me too. You level the playing field for those kids. And isn't that great? >> Thank you. >> Oh, the whole table goes [laughter] We do have a second part of the good news report and so that second part of it I will I will
024deliver. Um we did have Mr. Conrad deliver this part of the good news report earlier in our work session. Uh this evening's part of it is is really the kickoff and the call for people from our community to be part of our community task force. And if you recall back to 2018 when we went through the community task force then uh it was to go through and look at what priorities would our district have to go out and and have a vote on the bond and the the community approved $190 million bond that included some cornerstone pieces to our our school district which would be like Jefferson High School, Ben Rifle Middle School, Marcelo Labau was the last project that was completed plus so many other things that happened across our entire district uh through
025that that CIP capital improvement planning process and that committee that came together that was truly uh made up of community members. Well, we're starting that process again and we are looking for individuals to be part of that th 30 person committee, that task force. Uh they would be committed to four meetings that we would have on Wednesday nights in in April and May. Uh and it's truly our belief that our schools belong to our community and our community is invested in our schools, but truly our schools belong to our community. So we're asking people to make sure that they they make that effort if they want to be part of it. You can go to the Sufal School District website and that website is sf.k12k12.sd. us. And if you click on our district and then
026facility planning, you can apply there if you'd like to be part of that 30 person committee. We're going to make sure we take people across our entire city because every school is impacted in some way or every area is impacted in some way and they'll look through this and they're truly going to help the board and carry out the Sup School District mission in seeing what we can do to keep our facilities up to that top level for every single kid regardless of where they go to school. And obviously one of the things we'll look at at this time was something that was brought up in 2018 uh when Miss Kelly you were part of that as a chair of that committee uh to look at Whittier and Whittier is our oldest building. It's over
027100 years old and obviously it's hard to put a investment back into that building and get the return out of it and part of the recommendation of the committee in 2018 was to look in 10 years to rebuild Whitier. That'll be a cornerstone of this committee and what they will do. So, if you feel motivated to do so, we would greatly appreciate you applying and we'll select 30 people from across the district and try to get a good variety of individuals to represent our whole community. So, that is the other part of the good news is we're seeking input from our community uh that'll kick off now. You can apply now over the next here uh several weeks and then we'll go through that list to narrow it down. >> Yeah, that's excellent. The other
028good news part of it is it's an opportunity for anybody interested to make a big impact in a child's life. So go to our website and there's an application and we want to get a broad range of interests so that out of that we can select a diverse group of citizens um across the hall school district. So that is a good news. Thank you Dr. Null. Um, we do not have any persons wishing to address the school board. So, we will move down to item six, approval of the minute meeting or the minutes of the meeting held 1-12-26. >> Can I get a motion? Some move. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> I >> opposed. Approval of the agenda. Can I get a motion to approve? >> So move. >> Second. >> All in
029favor? I >> I >> opposed. >> We have an agenda for tonight. I do not see any conflicts of interest. Seeing none, we will move down to the approval of the consent agenda items, items 9 A through E. >> So move. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> I opposed. >> Those are approved. Now we're already to reports of the superintendent. Dr. Nol, back to you. >> Thank you. We do have two reports of the superintendent's office this evening. Uh our first one will be given by Molly Sadder who oversees our our district health services uh programming throughout the su school district and provide services truly to those a little over 24,000 K12 but well beyond that as well with our early childhood and and our students that are here beyond the age of of
030normally 18. And so with approximately 25,000 students uh you know providing those health services. So Molly Sadder will provide us the the report on the district health services. >> Excellent. >> Good evening everyone. Thanks for having me here. Um as Dr. Nol said, uh I am the health services coordinator and I'm here this evening to present an update on student health services across our district. Um the priority areas for health services are academic success, well-being, community engagement, and effective use of resources. And our school nurses support student success by keeping students healthy, safe in school, and ready to learn. Nurses minimize health related barriers to learning through health interventions, education, and communication. Um, and it is said that students with a full-time school nurse have about half the illness or injury related early releases from
031school compared to those with no school nurse present. So, they truly do help to keep students in school. Um, our school nurses provide specialized nursing care. Um, and health services are related to a student's health impairment or disability are necessary when students cannot access their education unless health services are provided. Um, health services may be part of a 504 plan or an IEP. Um, nurses provide specialized care for students with a variety of health needs, including medication administration, ventilate, ventilator or tracheosttomy care, catheterization, tube feeding, seizure care, diabetic care, respiratory care, as well as other unique medical needs. Our nurses help with daily health needs and emergency responses. Um, so in addition to those specialized cares, um, they're providing nursing assessment, first aid, treatments for injuries and illnesses that arise during the school day. Uh,
032nurses provide preventative care, including routine hearing, vision, health, and dental screenings, and flu shots. Um, our nurses take part in attendance meetings, IEP, and 504 meetings. They provide teams with important medical information and help them understand that information. Uh nurses develop care plans that are critical in outlining students health needs so staff can appropriately respond. And our nurses created approximately uh 2550 uh care plans this past year. Uh they also help with behavioral health concerns. So our nurses are often identifying and addressing student health concerns and they can serve as an early warning system for uh students and families in crisis. uh nurses can identify if a stomach ache or a headache is truly that or if there's something more going on. Um nurses do feel or excuse me, students feel comfortable visiting with nurses
033about mental health concerns. So our nurses play a critical role in identifying those concerns and then connecting those students with a school counselor or other assistants. Um, and then at the secondary level, our nurses provide interventions related to those high-risisk behaviors such as drinking, smoking, vaping, drug use, and overdose and teen pregnancy. So, some of our families um have barriers to care. So, our nurses provide health education to those families. They refer them to health care providers as needed. They provide care coordination by helping families enroll in public health insurance programs, finding medical homes, or arranging for transportation to those appointments. Um last in the pra past year the school nurses made approximately 18,430 parent contacts to communicate health needs, provide health education and assist with healthcare provider referrals. A variety of barriers may impact
034a student's ability to receive medical care and sometimes the school nurse is the only healthcare provider a student has access to. So, quickly taking a look at some numbers here at a glance, we have 33.5 FTE of school nurses who provide services in 38 buildings across the district. Um, the number of diabetics we currently have is 95. That number has increased by 34 students in the past six years. Um, those students are being diagnosed at a younger age and they require a great deal of assistance as you can imagine. And there's an example of a daily diabetic schedule there. So, it can easily be eight different check-in points with a nurse to help um with their blood sugar checks, insulin, and all of those kind of things. We have approximately 266 students with seizures uh
035or a seizure disorder, and that number has increased by 56 students in the past six years. We have uh about 408 students with life-threatening allergies and 1,334 students with asthma. Few more numbers here. 322 daily scheduled nursing treatments. And those are the things that I mentioned like catheterization, tube feedings, respiratory treatments. That does not include the daily medications that we give or intermittent treatments that can come up as needed. Um we provide medication to students or we may provide the medication administration oversight and can delegate some of that to our medtrained staff. um during the school day. Uh we also can respond to staff health concerns and we've responded to 2790 of those in the past year. We gave 689 staff flu shots this past year, 39 hept staff he B shots and 445 uh
036student flu shots. We also partner with uh community um organizations such as the Sertoma Club and Lions to provide hearing and vision screens for roughly 5,525 first, third, and fifth grade students. And then any additional students as needed if there's a parent or a teacher that comes and says, "Hey, I have a concern that this, you know, my student isn't able to see." We're able to jump in in there and provide that screening as well. couple community partner changes I wanted to highlight because they've been long-standing partners of the district. Um the first is going to be the city of Sou Falls Community Health. Um we have partnered with them uh since 2008 to provide increased health opportunities for the underserved in our community. Um and we have done that through our school-based health clinics
037at Hawthorne, Terry Redlin, and Hayward Elementary. We have clinic space that was designed in each school including space for dental care. Uh so with parental consent a student can be seen by a health care provider for wellch child checks, chronic health conditions, immunizations, acute health needs as well as preventative dental care exams and treatment. Uh so last summer we were informed that decreased funding at the city level due to state law change in property taxation would decrease the medical clinic operating hours. So, T Hawthorne and Terry Redland decreased to one day per month and Hayward was decreased to one day per week. Um, our dental clinic hours and services remain the same currently. Um, and then falls continues to have a school-based health clinic liaison um who can assist our staff and families with determining
038how a student may be seen at their at their downtown clinic if need be. Um, but that was that was a pretty big change and they've been in place for a long time. So, I just wanted to mention that. Um the other is our partnership with Delta Dental um and the Delta Dental Mobile and we have partnered with them since 2004. And last year um they provided care to 343 students with an estimated cost of about $396,000 in direct dental services. Uh with that program, the parents provided one consent. They came in for one week and they saw the student provided preventative care and treatment if needed um and moved on to the next school for the next week. Um we learned that as of January 2026 the Delta Dental Mobile would discontinue services in
039Sou Falls. So we wanted to keep that going if at all possible. So, we continued conversations with the city of Sou Falls, um, Falls Community Dental, uh, and Delta Dental, and we developed a plan for Falls Community Dental to take over the dental mobile clinical operations as of February of 2026. So, we're right in the middle of transition right now. Um and so Delta Dental is going to maintain the mechanics of the bus, provide a bus driver and a dental liaison, but um the dental bus will officially become uh one of Falls Community Health uh clinic sites. Um and so that means it must be run in accordance with guidelines for federally qualified health centers. So it has to look a little bit different and that includes payment and sliding scale fees. So what will
040look different for our family is there will be a cost for services. Um Medicaid will cover all costs. Private insurance will be accepted. Um but patients may be eligible for a sliding scale fee discount um which is based on income verification. So then our staff, our social workers, liaison, nurses will work with families to obtain the consents and proof of income. They will also now uh require two consents, one for the initial exam and then one for treatment. Um so that'll be some additional paperwork that our staff will work with families on. Um and then in the past the dental mobile was there for one week it will now be there for two weeks. So those are a couple of the highlighted changes uh for that partnership. So in summary our school nurses maxim or
041minimize health related barriers to learning through health interventions, education and communication. Our school nurses partner with community agencies to meet the needs of students and community and with that community resources have changed um and services have decreased. In the face of these changes, school nurses continue to provide vital services that support students success by keeping students healthy, safe in school and ready to learn. And with that, I would ask you to acknowledge the update on district health services. And I would stand by for questions. Can I get a motion to acknowledge the report? >> Second. Second. >> Questions, observations. Gail, >> thank you for that report. I was very saddened when the school-based health clinics um way reduced their time. And I'm just wondering, and this is probably not a fair question just to throw
042out at you, but I'm just wondering if anecdotally you would have any sense of numbers or or impact that that's had in terms of school student attendance. And you know, if you can't go to the clinic in your school and your parents aren't able to get you someplace else, I mean, are kids missing more school? Is there more sickness in the schools? I mean, what's your sense of that? >> Right. Um I don't have specific numbers for you at this moment, but I can tell you anecdotally those services are not there where they were before. One of the reasons um these clinics came to be years ago was to connect students that were using like emergency services instead of, you know, going to a clinic during the day, they'd go to the ER at night.
043And so I don't have numbers on you know how much that is happening but um you know if if they aren't if they don't have access to care during the day um we have reason to believe that they can be seeking that care in other ways. So um we definitely have used our time when we do have the one day per month or one day per week. They're u the schools are filling those up with student vaccination appointments and other just checkups for different things. So, we do know they're utilizing the time that they do get. >> Are you hearing from school principles or your nurses that uh you know it's impacting attendance and sickness more widespread? I I know you don't have numbers. I'm just what your sense is. >> Um I don't have
044anything specific right now as far as hearing that it's impacting attendance, but that's something I can look into some more. I mean, we we just know students don't have access to that care like they have um in the past. >> Two questions. Um thank you. I have two questions. Wondering if because it's so awesome that nurses are doing the behavior identification help too. Are they ACES trained at all? We have done we have done training pieces training in the past and actually um Kim Sharping and I were just discussing that the other day because sometimes we join join forces with our counselors and social workers and nurses because our um the things that we work with overlap and that's actually one that we were talking about. Hey, it's been a little while. We should maybe
045bring something back. Awesome. >> You bet. And then the other question was if um teachers, staff, anybody in the school if they're trained in identifying seizures or maybe diabetic shock just because of the increase. >> Yes. So that's the care plans that I mentioned that we outlined. So our nurses put those together. Um and that uh outlines symptoms, what to watch for, and then how to respond. Um and those are written with just that in mind. And we do training um at the beginning of the year with different things that um staff might need to do. Give an EpiPen um you know knowing where the AED is uh just all of that kind of basic first aid training. Our nurses are doing that and then making sure that they have access to a plan that's
046specific to that student because seizures can look different for different students or you know things like that. So that's why it's important to have that care plan specific to the student. Yeah, probably another unfair question, but like do we know why these numbers are just skyrocketing? >> No, it's we don't >> nutrition. >> Well, I was just gonna say that our food in the school district is not c causing that. I mean, we follow the guidelines with the American Academy guidelines. >> I was definitely not asking that. And type one is an autoimmune. So, it's not really related. >> Add clarity to that. Dry, right? just like worldly like >> well is it is any of it that we have students who have you know medical needs coming to Sou Falls >> yes there's a
047great that's a great point and we do know that to be true as well so we have wonderful community partners and medical um clinics with a veron Sanford here and we we know of families that come here seeking that care um so we do have um maybe a higher concentration of folks with um certain conditions due to access to care. >> And these are definitely I mean highly skilled nurses. Um I mean this is this is no joke, you know, this this is this is a lot. And I think um I think again it goes back to us being a public school system and we take every kid and we meet them where they're at and we help them um in every possible way and that we do take in, you know, a lot of
048the kids that wouldn't get that kind of care elsewhere. And just the scale that we do it in Sou Falls, it's just so different than anywhere else. So, I mean, I just think I mean, kudos to your your team of nurses for everything that they do and the the level of care that they give our students. Um, and the saving the dental services, that was huge. U So, >> good job. >> Yeah, thank you. We're very excited to keep that going because and we've had to talk to our staff about it's going to look different, but what remains the same is that we bring care into kids where they might not be able to access it otherwise. So, we're um grateful for that and excited to be moving ahead with that. Definitely dealing with some
049fragile students who feeding tubes, TRA care, um caization care, um the fragile students with uh diabetic needs. Um, so the work that you did is g going recognized and and and we appreciate your report so we can spread that out to the larger community and give recognition to all the various students that we serve in our district. >> So, excellent. Thank you. I just would like to acknowledge our school nurses and all that they do because it is a specialty just like an oncology nurse or ICU nurse or anything like that is school nurse is a specialty and they do an amazing job. So, I'm I'm grateful to be able to share the work that they all do with you guys. >> My sister's a school nurse, so I have a little [laughter] extra fondness
050towards it. >> Doesn't make you an expert. >> Does not make me an expert at Right. She's the expert. You're the expert. >> Yeah. >> Okay. All in favor? >> I opposed. >> Okay. We have acknowledged your report. Thank you. >> Thank you so much. Thank you, Miss Satder. And and I agree with the conversation. It has because of the services in Sou Falls as a whole, it has lended to have more students that do need some of the assisted tech or the nursing needs and and some of that care. Uh obviously incredible across the whole spectrum of of AP students and dual credit and college credit and all those things. We provide so much that so many do move here specifically for those features. So, we're greatly appreciative of the work that the nurses
051do as well. uh we've continued to try to bring forward to the the board many and the community many of the things that maybe sometimes do not always are not always seen or recognized in our school systems. And we continue now with this second report uh community relations uh overview report. Some of you may think this is only brought about to to create very funny good videos of the superintendent. Um, but outside of that, uh, there's a lot of things that they do that is incredibly important to our community. Even as we go through this last, uh, weekend with the weather and just the information there or uh, getting information out to families as far as what they do for for the virtual learning and uh, a child that was in need of help and
052support and things that we have in our district that we are able to do, the mass communication plus so much more. So Deian Conrad uh oversees that department and she will give that report to us this evening. >> Thank you Dr. Nold. Appreciate that. Um here to just share with you some of the strategic work that we do. Um sometimes as as parents and community members u you might get that phone call or you might see that social media post. We do those things and we do a whole lot more. And uh I'd like to acknowledge our staff. I had invited them here and uh we had two when the meeting started, but apparently um Megan Daly, our web developer and uh designer, has two very active kids at home and uh they're probably doing
053something around the district. But Kelly Fay has joined us. She is uh the youth program specialist with community education. And then of course uh Tori Stolen is running the video process in the back. So he's um at every one of these board meetings, so you never actually get to see him. So want to acknowledge uh their attendance here tonight as well. Um really want to share with you community relations. We play a central role in connecting schools, families, staff, and the broader community. And we do that primarily in two ways. Uh we do it through community ed through communication and then also through community education. And then a little known fun fact is uh we also work on the school facilities that are used by our community groups as well. So I'll be sharing some
054information with you first of all about our communications work. Um we do manage both the internal and external communication and public relations services for the district. There is a list of the uh types of work that we do putting out all kinds of um social media as well as other messaging um for our community. Our main piece is our website. The Sou Falls School District website serves as an anchor for our district communication resources. Um you can find anything and everything there. Uh we launched the website in 2022. We refreshed it last year. Um we have been looking at specific areas that get high traffic and trying to determine how we can better provide customer service through um rearranging information. Um we refresh our content daily. We look at page analytics. Um, recently one of
055the large projects we did for our website, again, credit to Megan Daly, was um, revamping the high school course guide so that it was more organized and searchable so that students and parents together could sit down and look at the course offerings available to them. I know this afternoon in your extended board work session, you heard about the many CTE courses available out there and um what our counselors do to support career development and career education. Um and a piece of that, a component of that is organizing and getting our high school course book from a paper copy into an online copy and then not just online but then searchable. So if I wanted to search a particular area of interest that um as parents and students they could sit down together and do some
056of that work and understand a little bit more the pathways that could happen. You could take this at your home high school then you could go to the CTE Academy. So we've had great work and dialogue along with um Kim Sharping's department and our curriculum department um in order to improve that. Uh, additionally, Kim talked today about our high school counseling websites that have a great deal of information on them. Um, we're currently following and, um, doing work to improve ADA compliance with our website. There are some, uh, largecale deadlines coming up, April 2026. And so we have some work to do because those sites were built out on Google and Google sites themselves are not inherently ADA compliant. So now we need to bring that information over to the district website um again to
057provide better access to all families. And so um that'll be something we're working on um throughout uh the next several months. Our app, our Souf Falls School District app has about 11,000 downloads. Um that any information on the app can be translated into 130 languages. Um so we're grateful for that. Not every language we have in the Sou Falls School District uh is actually a written language. So, some of them can't be translated, but this is an opportunity for our families who speak a different language to see information uh and understand information um in a language that is familiar to them. People can go ahead and select their schools, so you don't have to receive all the information on the app. You can choose which schools your children attend. If you're maybe a neighbor living
058across the street and you're curious, why are all those cars at Robert Frost, you know what? download our app and and select Robert Frost and you too can find out uh things that are going on at the school that maybe you'd like to participate in, whether that's a a concert or some other community event as well. Um the very the most popular item on our app is a lunch menu or a breakfast menu because that's important, right? uh families before they get get going in the morning, they might want to check their um their menu to determine uh what they're having for lunch or breakfast that day. So, that's very popular along with our bound tickets are available uh to any of our fine arts and athletic events um through bound. Our mass communication system
059is another important tool that we use and in 2025 we sent nearly 25,000 messages using our mass communication system. Um we send text, phone calls, emails and we do those for routine information and emergency communications as well. And so that is a tool that we really could not do without. um it has become a very um reliable resource for our families and for us to be able to communicate uh largely with them. Our social media uh we do work on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. Um, I do want to draw special attention um to the letter that you all collectively wrote um back in December regarding uh Governor Larry Rhoden's uh proposed 0% funding increase. And I want you to know you took the lead in all of our social media in 2025. um you this
060post here nearly doubled the engagement of our second highest post engagement. So what does that mean? Well, this post netted 209,574 views, 3,786 reactions, 144 interactions, and it was shared 500 times. So those stats indicate that you all went viral, right? [laughter] Okay. So um you you and uh this this communication created a high visibility and demonstrated that the content on our social media platforms is viewed and it is read and considered. And the fact that it was shared 500 times meant readers not only read it, but they felt very strongly um enough to share it to their own social media channels. So that just spreads um it it out even further. So I want to commend you for uh taking the action to write that social media post and allowing us then to share
061that out with our broader community. Um, as mentioned, posts about the annual festival of bands, um, Jefferson High School student that was named as a Voyager Scholar. Uh, those ranked second and third in engagement for us. And again, your post uh, doubled up our second um, our second place finisher. And then last but not least, of course, of course, Dr. Null. [laughter] This is fourth. Dr. 's post of him serving school lunch over the summer um came in fourth in our highest uh engagements. We had 66,000 um views on that and Dr. Nold has been a very good sport in doing some social media with us um to help the community learn about him as a person and to see uh the other side of of the suit and tie. and uh he's been a
062a good sport in doing many of those things. So, we're grateful for that. Klearn TV is a strategic storytelling uh tool that we have that's probably most visible in the district. It's been around the longest for sure. Um we first established it in the late 1960s. The education access channel allows for live broadcasts such as the schoolboard meeting uh we are at here tonight along with a lot of original programming and staff features celebrations of fine arts, athletics, musicals and a variety of other um interesting items as well. In 2015, 419 new shows were added to the KLearn programming schedule. 419 Uh that's sports, concerts, music, um school board meetings, classroom projects, staff, student recognitions, the AA family forums that were so uh grateful to partner with uh A Vera experts um to bring information
063to our families. And each of those programs then requires um production, capturing it, going out and videoing it, producing it, uh cataloging it for playback and and then getting it going on on Klearn as well um as our our many other social medias as well. So those programs um 419 shows were viewed 5,601 times in uh only on our Klearn website and our app and our Klearn website would take you here and it can tell you what the programming schedule is for the night. it. You can also go and look at playback and so um we have a lot of views that take place uh from those who are interested and and go to our Klearn uh website. In addition, um we do such things as teacher of the year which will be coming up
064here shortly, retirement and recognition banquet, theater productions, talent shows, uh training videos. We did training videos for custodians, child nutrition, special education, um, PBIS. We do a lot of hype videos that you might see at the start when they're introducing our our athletes who are, you know, starters for the evening. Um, we do a lot of demonstrations for instructional coaching. Um, I I wasn't aware of this one, but Ben tells me he's been doing French and Spanish uh semester tests where the teacher will record, you know, the verbal uh test and then that's how the student is taking that French or semester test. So, we get we get um in on a lot of interesting things and we're grateful to be able to do it. Um, let's see. Our YouTube channel. Also, I should mention,
065um, we started our YouTube channel in 2010 and there are more than 2100 videos out there for on demand viewing. Um, we've had 12,100 subscribers to those. Uh my favorite story is that one of our special education uh videos that we did, I received a phone call from um out of state, somebody saying, "Hey, I saw this video. It's really well done. We're doing the same thing in our building. Do you mind if we use this?" Well, it's out on YouTube, so anyone can use it. Um, but what a feather in a ca our cap for our staff um who were featured in that and then for our own um district Kaylor learn folks who who created that video as well. So um we think that's pretty great. [snorts] Um we have our let's talk
066platform that is online that you often speak about uh when our community has questions or u comments they want to make on something. Let's talk is the portal by which they can do that. Uh there is a flag on the right hand side of every page of our website and folks are invited to ask their questions there. Our goal is to respond within 48 hours. We do have a chat bot. Um we're still training it as you do with AI. Um but in 2025 we had 2,179 dialogues that started uh through Let's Talk. So, we know that our community has questions and we want to be able to answer those questions. So, this is another lay layer of transparency. Um, that breaks down to about 182 per month. And our top our questions um in
067the top categories come in about enrollment and transportation. Go figure. Where do my kids go to school? How do they get there? [laughter] So, those are our high volume um topics. We also uh work with our schools on uh their e newswsletters using a product we call and that organizes and helps organize and and develop um electronic newsletters that are interesting to view and accessible again through ADA compliance and also multiple languages as well. Um, additionally, we do an all staff e newswsletter weekly. We get about 3,700 views from that weekly newsletter and we're sharing information from the superintendent, the reports that you're hearing along with policy updates, HR information, and staff celebrations as well. And so, um, each week our staff can rely on having the latest information in that way. And then we
068have a podcast um where we feature programs and people um available out where you can get your your podcasts and uh since we've started that for about a year and a half now we've had about a,085 listens. So we're happy to be in that space as well. Second part of what we do in our department is community education. We provide uh classes, enrichment classes for our greater community to improve community life and the lives of individuals by providing positive experiences and learning opportunities. And uh we do two cataloges each year. In fact, our current catalog is in the printing process right now. And you are getting a sneak peek at the cover. We will launch this. It will end up in um in mailboxes in mid early to mid November and registration opens for our
069community education classes on February 18th. We have literally hundreds of classes. Last um in 2025, we offered 5,000 or we took 5,497 registrations for those classes. um everything from fitness, yoga, um stained glass is a very popular class, some woodworking and um just everything under the sun. And we really develop those those classes based on trends happening in our community and what our customers are interested in. So, we pride ourselves on customer service and uh we look forward to registering uh lots of people for our spring classes come February 18th. Additionally, driver's ed falls underneath community education because why not, right? Um driver's ed is something Kelly works her tail off on. Um, we are a certified driver's ed instructor program, which means students receive 30 hours of classroom instruction and 12 hours of behind
070the wheel training by a certified instructor um, so that they can become safer on the road. Last year, 797 students took driver's education. 800 students in the last year are better equipped to understand what it's like to drive in winter weather, what it's like to be in merging traffic as you get on the interstate. And God bless our instructors who are riding with those students. Um we have a fleet of vehicles and sometimes they're in the shop because it doesn't quite go right. Uh but our drivers ed instructors do their very best to uh keep students um on the straight and narrow and so we're we're very proud to have the only certified driver's ed program in Sou Falls. Again, community education. Uh, this is something Kelly also takes a lot of great pride in
071is we offer um high school music or I'm sorry, elementary music lessons. We do high school summer school. Her counterpart Melanie does the high school summer school uh and the adult classes. Those high school summer school classes are available for credit. You heard Dr. or you heard Mr. Hall talking about that earlier today. Um, music, we offer piano, guitar, uh, some specialty, uh, instruments like clarinet, that type of thing. After school in our building so that, uh, students can have one-on-one music lessons. Um, additionally, our summer band and orchestra is very popular and they provide three uh, community concerts in the summer months as well. We have chess and a sports camp. Um, so we're trying to be in in a lot of different spaces and service our community uh in a variety of different
072ways. And then almost done, the final program I draw your attention to is our gold card events. Um, the stakeholders who are 60 years old and above are important to us. We know um that many in our community don't have a direct connection to a public school. at any one time and yet they are taxpayers and they want to know what's going on inside the walls of the buildings in their neighborhoods. So we offer the gold card events. All residents um over age 60 are invited to be a gold card member and it's free. You just have to give us your email. Um, we send special invitations to school events and you can get discounted tickets to fine arts and athletic events as well. And then we offer specialty classes, community education classes for just
073the over 60 population. Um, so we really encourage folks to um, sign up for that and let us know if you're interested. We'd love to grow our our group of people. And I tell you what, those those folks become friends of ours. They are loyal to the core and we love to to host them. And then finally, as I mentioned, oh, I didn't do a slide on this, but uh we have the distinct ability uh to work with our community organizations, uh youth serving organizations mostly who are using our school facilities and um they might be wanting to have a practice, hold a practice there or a particular event there. Um and we know that our schools belong to the communities. So that's a significant investment that we asked ask of our taxpayers to fund
074those schools. And so when you see lights on in the evening, it may be for a school event or it may be for a community event. And uh since July 2025, which is we we switched over to a new system. So all I can tell you is in 6 months time we coordinated hours of use of school facilities in one half of the year. So, if you want to double that, 5,000 hours of community use. Um, nearly all of this use happens between 6:30 p.m. and 10 p.m. and is free to nonprofit organizations to have um insurance and that nonprofit status because if they're doing things for our kids in our community, then our part is showing up and and making this space available. So, um, we work with YMCA, the city of Sou Falls,
075MB, the Scouts, uh, just a variety of other youth serving organizations as well. So, uh, that encompasses the work done in the community relations department and we would ask that you acknowledge the overview of that work and let me know if you have any questions. Can I get a motion to acknowledge the community relations report? >> Second. >> Questions, observations. Mark, it looks like you're hot to say a few things. You have some thoughts. >> I'm just going to relax. >> Okay. >> Um, I guess what wasn't highlighted was how often you get to do all the media things for us, too. and um you do such a fantastic job mitigating some of the tougher conversations that I can't imagine how we would function without you and your team like you >> well it clearly
076is a a unified team um it's I'm six steps away from Dr. 's office and in there more often than he'd like, I'm sure. >> Um, but really what it is is a coordination of uh, you know, information that he's putting out and being able to share that out in a way that is um, good for our community to understand. Some topics are are difficult and um, but they they know that uh, when they have a question, we're going to do our very best to answer. And so we have um a lot of dialogue with our media folks throughout a year and we have good working relationships with them. So >> that was a compliment just for you. >> Thank you. >> There you go. >> Thank you. >> Good job. Good job. >> Appreciate
077that. >> Y >> Well, first of all, I got tired just listening to all the work that you guys do, so I can't imagine how you get it all done. >> Sorry. I hope I didn't bore you. No, no, no, no, no. I was just worn out thinking, man, alive. But I want to thank you and your team for the great public face you give this great district and what you put out there highlights fantastic work that our staff does and all the wonderful things and I want to thank you for that. and um the media piece is huge and so that's a big part of your job and I want to thank you for that too. So no question just thank you very much. >> Thanks. >> Thank you for getting us to go
078viral. [laughter] >> Hey it was it was your words your work. Now, we've got a report from Todd coming up, so we may um consider our next publication depending on what Todd has to say with legislative agenda. Any other thoughts? Okay. All in favor? >> I >> opposed. We have acknowledge your report. >> Thank you. Well, and our last report is an update, legislative update. Okay, thank you. Um, we have a few bills to go through. It's going to be a lot more next time, but uh, kind of in the interest of time, I was thinking about um, for every uh, bill that we've reviewed so far, give the title and, you know, basically what it does, which is usually in the title, and then uh, and then our position on that. And if it's
079if you I'll move to the next one then. If you want to talk about it further, stop me, please. If you want to question the position, stop me, please. And if it's key bill, and I think there's five of them, we'll just maybe spend just a little bit more time on those, but not a lot. And uh if it's already dead, let's not waste time talking about it because the House has done a pretty good job of killing those. So, I'm just going to just acknowledge that that bill was we looked at it, but I'm not even going to talk about it. So, if we're good with that, I'll go. Uh, House Bill 10,03 um amends provisions pertaining to required criminal background investigation checks. We're neutral on that bill. 10:08 has died. 1017 permits the
080board of a school district to require that certain students receive instruction in alternative settings. Uh, we're neutral on that. 1025 is dead. 1036 is dead. 1039 is dead. 1051 re uh it revises the property tax levies and sets uh the school increase at zero. That's obviously a key bill for us. That's one of the biggest bills every year. We have an amend and an amend on that to uh set the levies. Yes. But uh increase that what we should be going up which is about 2.54%. Last year we were supposed to go up three. We went up one and a quarter. So, if this passes, we're going to be two short for the last two years, and it's going to be um a fairly significant number that we're short. House Bill 1061 is dead. 1073
081provides for the creation of a cardiac emergency plan in every school. Uh we oppose that because it's going to cost it's going to cost us about 70 or $80,000 a year to to do that. um with a 0% increase. 1076 revises restrictions on residents within a community safety zone and declare an emergency. We support that. 1078 directs the amendment of the administrative schools uh ARCD for high school graduation. We're neutral on that. 1082 requires schools to provide free meals to students who qualify for reduced price meals. We already do that here. We support that. Um 1091 requires that corrected information be posted at least 24 hours prior to a meeting of a political subdivision. We oppose that. Um updates provisions pertaining to open records. It appears that it's a small change to list of sensitivity
082safety information, but we do oppose that. Um 1095. Oh, shoot. I was gonna I was going to say if you want if you're on at home you can follow along just go to this QR code and uh I meant to have this up for the people here that can try to read this here but um yeah >> I noticed on the 1092 because I'm following we're pose we might want to just add that we don't have a status >> oh on uh you don't have it on that >> just for that one otherwise >> yeah that's yeah it shows opposing online but uh yeah okay we'll get that fixed um so where was I 1095 >> yep >> 1095 >> modify the proc the provisions pertaining to the submission of a nominating position for elections
083neutral 1097 makes an appropriation providing a grant to a nonprofit that del delivers diversion programming we support that 1098 amends certain provisions pertaining to special education funding. We asked that be amended. It was amended to what we wanted most I mean what we mostly wanted and it's it failed in the House ED committee but it still was referred to appropriations. So the bill isn't quite dead but I'd say it's on its last legs kind of. Um >> so is our new status support then since >> yeah it would be support. Yeah, we would we would support it now because it's what was a case the the special ed directors in the state asked for that bill and it's and it's uh kind of in that form now. So we would be support on that. Good
084point. Um HB 1110 would amend provisions relating to an individual status as a voter for a municipal or school district elections. Basically, they have to live in the in the district or the city for 30 consecutive days in the last year to continue to be registered and we support that. 11:30 amends permissible uses of school districts capital outlay fund and expands it. We support it, but honestly it wouldn't do much for our district. Um, but it's good for probably other districts. House Bill 1131 amends the process by which certain school districts calculates the general fund base percentage. It uh it's has to do with calculating a maximum fund balance for neutral and that wouldn't affect us. It affects smaller districts. So that's the house bills. Any questions or comments in addition to President Kelly's on
085those? They're I think the last four maybe are not or I wasn't able to access some off the QR code on the bottom. >> Oh yeah. Well, those are put on I put those on today. Okay. Very late. Yeah. Sorry. So, we'll go we'll we'll get those out there. They'll be out there tonight. Yeah, that's a good point. >> You want to update? >> I was doing those during the sorry during the work the work the work session earlier. >> It's been a busy day. >> I'm sorry. Do you want to update on the action that happened in pure today? the sped bill 1082, the lunch bill. What happened with those? >> I don't have an update. >> I know one I know one bill 10:08 uh died today. >> That >> 1082 came out
086of house 131 with one excused with a do pass to House Appropriations. >> Yeah, it did. >> That's a great but yeah, but and the other one went out with a do not pass. That's a new thing they've got going this year. They didn't used to >> do do up do pass and do not pass appropriations, but I guess change is good. So, um I'll go on to the Senate bill. Here's the Senate bills here. So, uh Senate Bill 8 permits a school district to administer epinephrine using a naval nasal spray. We support that bill. Senate Bill 34 amends provisions pertaining to conducting a municipal municipal or school election and just kind of cleans up some language that they didn't quite get right last year when they significantly revised that. So, we're neutral on that.
087Uh Senate Bill 46 modifies the requirements for opening me open meeting agendas and provides a penalty. Therefore, we uh support that. It's basically just about following the law. Senate Bill 47 revises the requirements for executive sessions and closed meetings. Um, very little substantive change, so we support that. Uh, Senate Bill 48 clarifies that an official open meeting agenda must be posted online at least 72 hours before the scheduled start of the meeting. We're neutral on that. It only applies to state boards and commissions. That's why we're neutral. 58 has died. 66 um prohibits the use of automatic tabulating equipment and electronic ballot marketing system. We oppose that bill. Um Senate Bill 84 increases thresholds for the value um of it goes up from 82.5 to 100%. Um the student allocation the general funds and the
088eligibility for partners in education program scholarship. So it raises the eligibility for that up to 250. If if you've been in the program, you can be up to now up to 250% of reduced price, not not not not poverty. So that's 100 that's a family of four and 100 about $150,000. They would qualify for that partners and education scholarship. So we oppose that bill. Um Senate Bill 85 requires an election for an excess t tax levy. That bill passed the Senate today to get an update on that. We oppose it. Um it it requires that schools schools no other unit of government government but schools that want to do an opt out will have to have an election. Um and they'll have to do it in an even number of years on uh primary day
089or in odd number years by the first Tuesday following the first Monday in March. kind of a weird time for notation. Um, Senate Bill 94 provides us provisions pertaining to open records. It would uh it would subject public entries to voluminous public records requests from national entities. It would just bog down public public entities. So, we oppose that. Authorize the imposition of a county option gross receipts tax. That's the governor's bill for uh property tax relief. We support that and that is a we consider that a key bill or recommend that it is. Senate bill 97 adjusts a limit on the percentage increase in revenue payable from property taxes i.e. increases the max temporary new construction limit that was imposed last year from 3 to 5%. We support that. creates the uh 99 Senate Bill
09099 creates the property tax local effort replacement fund to reduce certain property taxes. Uh we oppose that. We're supporting the governor's bond um the governor's plan. Senate Bill 106 modifies the amount required to be set aside for extraordinary expenses. It's commonly known as extraordinary cost fund. It has it go from 4 million to 5 million and inflate each year. We support that. It's been stuck at four million for years and it should go up with the with the c the rest of the cost of of sped. Senate bill 114 provides for publication of the ballot images and cast vote record of automatic tabulating equipment. Really don't neutral. We're neutral on that. Create uh Senate Bill 118 creates and deposits certain tax revenues into a homeowner tax reduction fund. Again, there's that's another plan. We oppose
091it. We support the governor's plan. Establish the homeowner tax reduction fund to provide a tax rebate for owner occupied property. Oppose that for the same reason. Uh Senate Bill 126 increases the amount of value exempt from property taxes under a tax release program for disabled veterans and surviving spouses. We're neutral on that. had a probably a good cause and has very minimal effect, you know, on school districts in general and us in particular. And there is a Senate joint resolution that popped up today that would submit to the voters at the next election, an amendment to the Constitution limiting the assessed value of real property and limiting real property taxes. Assessments couldn't go up more than 2% per year based on the 2007 base year. And uh property taxes on any property couldn't be more
092than 1% or that's 10 mills basically 10. You know, Rory, if you live in Sou Falls and you live in Lincoln County and you're in the Sou Falls School District, which isn't a particularly high taxing district, neither are those neither are those other entities, you um houses are already over 10 10 mills. So I don't this this looks like a crazy idea. So, we uh recommend opposing that constitutional amendment. And that is it so far. Thank you. >> I have a question for you. Would you clarify, please, for anybody who doesn't know or people listening when you say we support the governor's plan, what you're talking about, what we're supporting. >> Oh, yeah. So, the governor's plan is a is a county option to raise the sales tax up to a half percent to reduce
093property taxes if it the county feels like it's it's been one of those the five or six counties where the homeowners have uh had their valuations increased at a rapid rate. That is really we have 66 counties in the state. It's really only affected according to BFM about and and do it's really only affected about at most six counties. So why do an expensive property tax relief for all all 66 counties when uh 60 of them have really seen moderate increases and just an expensive cost to get the the sales tax up to do that. So it's a county option. Yeah. Thank you for asking that question. I just want to publicly acknowledge Gail and Elizabeth for being the first set of eyes in quickly being able to look over legislation. Um if we all
094don't have time to do that, they're taking on extra responsibility with that. Just want to thank them >> in addition to of course you Todd, >> not just me, those people over there too. Those people write them. >> Well, yeah. Who you write, you've assigned it to and Dr. Nold and it takes all of us. That's are involved. >> Yep, that's >> they make they make it pretty pretty easy on us. So, I I do appreciate that just the all the descriptions of everything and so we can get through it in a in a timely fashion because there is a lot flying at all of us um all the time. So, it's nice to have the clarity that's provided. >> We have a robust process. Good. I just have a quick comment. I guess just
095looking at the the things that we're opposing, there seems to be a trend on what we're supporting and what we're opposing and who's bringing those forward. So, for anybody listening and watching and paying attention, please pay attention to whose election year it is and who you want to vote for that supports public schools. I'm saying that as politically correct as I possibly can. kindly pay attention to who's putting these forward. That's awesome. >> Okay, agreed. >> So, I guess we would just ask that the board a pro approve the positions that have been taken so far. >> Thank [clears throat] you. >> Uh, yes. Could I please get a motion to approve the positions um that we have chosen in addition to the added >> bills that um Todd is going to put in case
096you're following >> and the change that you you noted the amend to support >> and the changes um that I noted have a motion >> I move as noted >> second >> all in favor I >> opposed that is passed thank you >> thank Um, I will now let's see. Trying to find my agenda here. Okay, we're going to take a a recess. Um, Gail, do you want to make the motion and decide what you want our recess time to be? I move that we go into recess until 7:05. At that time, we'll reconvene in regular session and go immediately into executive session. A second. >> All in favor? >> I opposed. Okay, we will see you all shortly.