001- Good evening on this lovely and warm March day. This regular meeting of March 9th, 2026 of the Dubuque Community School District Board of Education is called to order. Our mission is to develop world class learners and citizens of character in a safe and inclusive learning community. Roll call please. - Bradley. - Here. - Hamel. - Here. - Hingtgen. Jacobitz-Kizzier. - Here. - Parks. - Here. - Sainci. - Here. - Wittman. - Here. - We are so happy to welcome students from Sageville Elementary to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. - (indistinct). Kindergarten. - Ria Doyle, Sageville. First grade. - Hi, I'm Macy Schmidt, and I go to Sageville School, and I'm in the fifth grade. - Tessa Siegers, third grade, Sageville. - Michael Jaeger, second grade, Sageville School. - Grant Goronson, third grade,
002Sageville School. - [All] I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. - Great job. - Thank you. - Great job. - The names are always quiet, but then they rally. (everyone laughs) - I move the Board of Education approve the agenda as submitted. - Second. - It's been moved and seconded that the Board of Education approve the agenda as submitted. Is there any discussion? Seeing none. All those in favor say aye. - [All] Aye. - Any opposed? That motion carries. - I move the Board of Education approve the minutes of the regular meeting on February 9th and the special meeting on February 23rd as submitted. - Second. - It's been moved and
003seconded that the Board of Education approve the minutes of the regular meeting on February 9th and the special meeting on February 23rd as submitted. Any discussion? Seeing none. All in favor say aye. - [All] Aye. - Any opposed? That motion carries. That brings us to a number of board salutes around the table and we're starting with Mr. Sainci. - Thank you. A board salute goes to the entire cast, musicians, crew, and the directors of the Hempstead High School production of "Tarzan" this past weekend. From the music and set design to costumes and lighting, "Tarzan" was an outstanding display of theater excellence in the Dubuque Community School District. Kudos to all those involved in this performance. - [Parks] That was a good one. Ms. Bradley. - I'm happy to give a board salute on our behalf
004to Dubuque Senior High School's Zach Wulcall who finished as the Class 3A individual runner up at the Iowa High School Athletic Association Boys State Bowling Championship. Both of our high school teams also had great showings from the team level as well. Hempstead finished seventh. Dubuque senior finished eighth. So congratulations to all of our bowlers, to their coach or coaches, and to having an outstanding season and performance at state. - [Parks] Wonderful. State bowling. I love to hear about it. - Go, bowlers. - [Parks] Fantastic. - And I'm gonna talk about boys wrestling. A board salute goes to Hempstead High School student Cam Smith who was crowned the Iowa Class 3A boys wrestling state runner up in the 215 pound weight class this past weekend. Congratulation also goes to other Hempstead boys wrestling state place winners.
005Abe Heisinger who finished fourth in the 106 pound weight class, Elia Hyatt who finished fourth in the 132 pound class, and Landon Gotts-Chock who finished seventh in the 120 pound class. Also congratulations goes to other state qualifiers from Dubuque senior Zion Day, Cam Dukes, Calvin McCavin, and from Hempstead Parker Jones, or Johns. Parker Johns. So we're proud of your accomplishments and thankful for your outstanding representation in the district. Congratulations, wrestlers. - And I have a salute. Congratulations to the Dubuque Senior High School large group speech team. They participated in the Allstate Group Speech Festival and won the E Wayne Cooley sweepstakes trophy, which is awarded to the school with the most performing Allstate nominations and making them the 2026 large group state champions. This is the ninth championship in school history and the seventh in
006the last 13 years. Senior had a total of 24 entries named Allstate honorees. In the category of television newscasting, the WFMB group took home the Critics Choice Award. This is the third time Senior has received the Critics Choice in this category. Congratulations to everyone involved in Senior's powerhouse speech program. - Amazing. So many good things happening in our district. We love to hear about that. All right, well that brings us to a public hearing related to the Dalzell South Retaining Wall Repairs project. And I believe we're starting with an overview of the project from Mr. Mark Lang. So we'll welcome him to the podium. - This is Mark's first trip to the podium. - Welcome, Mark. - Don't, don't, don't. - Good evening. This project will repair a section of that retaining wall that has
007settled due to a broken storm drain. That portion of the wall will be removed, new foundation will be installed, and then the wall will be rebuilt. They will also relocate that storm drain to prevent this from happening again. - Any questions, board members, at this point? All right, thank you. Nice job. - I move the Board of Education receive and file proof of publication of notice of public hearing on the Senior Dalzell Retaining Wall project and authorize payment of the legal notice publication costs to the Telegraph Herald. - [Member] Second. - It's been moved and seconded that the Board of Education receive and file proof of publication of notice of public hearing on the Senior Dalzell Field Retaining Wall project and authorize payment of the legal notice publication costs to the Telegraph Herald. Is there
008any discussion? Seeing none. All those in favor say aye. - [All] Aye. - Any opposed? That motion carries. - I move the Board of Education open the public hearing to allow public comments. - [Member] Second. - It's been moved and seconded that the Board of Education open the public hearing to allow public comments. Is there any discussion? Seeing none. All those in favor say aye. - [All] Aye. - Any opposed? That motion carries. At this time, we would welcome public comments that are related to this project. If you'd like to make comments to the board related to the project, please come to the podium. State your name, your connection to the district, and to limit your remarks to three minutes. - Seeing none. I move the Board of Education close the public hearing and return
009to regular session. - Second. - It's been moved and seconded that the Board of Education close the public hearing and return to regular session. Discussion? Seeing none. All in favor say aye. - [All] Aye. - Any opposed? That motion carries. - I move the Board of Education approve the authorizing resolution as submitted, adopting the plan, specifications, form of contract, and estimated total cost of the Senior Dalzell Retaining Wall project. - [Member] Second. - It's been moved and seconded that the Board of Education approve the authorizing resolution as submitted, adopting the plans, specifications, form of contract, and estimated total cost of the Senior Dalzell Retaining Wall project. Any further discussion? Seeing none. All in favor say aye. - [All] Aye. - Any opposed? That motion passes. So that brings us to reporting of bids. And Mark
010again. - Bids for the Dalzell South Retaining Wall project were received, open, and read aloud on February 11th shortly after 2:00 PM. Eight bids were received. The bids appear to be complete, competitive, and well prepared. The bids range from $125,505 to $247,056.50. Buildings and grounds and origin design are recommending that Portzen Construction be awarded the contract in the amount of $125,505. - Any questions about the bids? Thank you, Mark. - You're welcome. - I move that the Board of Education approve and award the bid for the Senior Dalzell Retaining Wall project as recommended and further outlined in the authorizing resolution to Portzen Construction Inc. in the amount of $125,505. - Second. - It's been moved and seconded that the Board of Education approve and award the bid for the Senior Dalzell Retaining Wall project as
011recommended and further outlined in the authorizing resolution to Portzen Construction Incorporated in the amount of $125,505. Any discussion? Seeing none. All in favor say aye. - [All] Aye. - Any opposed? That motion carries. So get the wall repaired, which is great. (everyone chuckles) That brings us to the visitors and open forum. - I move... - Oh. - I move the Board of Education suspend the rules of order and go into open forum. - [Member] Second. - It's been moved and seconded that the Board of Education suspend the rules of order and go into open forum. Any discussion? Seeing none. All in favor say aye. - [All] Aye. - Any opposed? That motion carries. We're happy to start our public forum, open forum with a report from Principal Kathleen Walech-Haas about what is going well at
012Sageville Elementary. - Hello. Good evening, board members. As I stand before you this evening, I'm reminded of my last visit here in May of last year when I was wrapping up the closing of Hoover School. And what I can say positively is the best part of endings is new beginnings. So I feel very privileged to be able to be a part of the amazing Sageville community. So what's going well at Sageville? Let me tell you. First and foremost, I think it's the people and their relationships. So the students at Sageville, as you could see, they're smart, they're hardworking, they're kind. Every day one of the students tells me something to make me laugh or smile or teaches me something new. On Hundred Day, it's the kindergarten at Sageville dresses up as if they're 100 years
013old. That wasn't my past practice. I did not wear something to make me look older. So when I was in kindergarten for the activities, one of the students said, "Why didn't you dress up like for Hundred Day?" I said, "Well, I had a meeting, "and I didn't know that I should do that." And another one of the kids said, "Duh 'cause she's already old." (everyone laughs) Fair enough. So anyway. And I also have a pre-K student who calls me Alexa because he hears my voice over the intercom. (everyone laughs) So, you know, kids will say the darnedest thing. So I will tell you the families at Sageville are very supportive, and they show up for the students and the staff at Sageville in small and large ways every day. There's an extremely dedicated staff at
014Sageville that really want to do what's best for students and are willing to do what it takes to make it happen. Part of the supportive community at Sageville is the parent-teacher group. They plan events to engage families and bring them together. For example, there was a bingo night in the fall. Fun was had by all. And I will tell you, bingo can be way more competitive than I thought it could, especially if there's a jumbo container of cheese balls on the line. So they have also, they planned and coordinated our annual Sassy Stampede, which is Sageville's version of the walkathon. And they raised over $13,000. As a result of meeting our goal, I had my first experience being silly stringed by an entire class. So, you know, I've been pied, I've been dunked, silly string.
015So Mrs. Fryburger's fourth grade class won that privilege by having the most donations. We've had two out of our three vocal music concerts this year. We have our K-1 concert yet to come in April. But at each of these concerts we've had amazing turnout. We have all the folding chairs up, the bleachers down, and it's no exaggeration when I say every seat is filled and it's still standing room only. So again, the Sageville community shows up. As a staff, we're working on collective efficacy, we're working on the power of our entire team working together for each student. Sageville has well established CLC groups, and this year we've added grade level data digs. We've had professional development focusing on pre-assessment and common formative assessments and utilizing those to create and plan differentiated instruction for our students.
016We also continue to work on our social, emotional, and behavioral health with an SEBH team. We're creating some new protocols and procedures to help support behavior in the building. Part of our SEBH work is also celebrating with each other and having fun because, you know, every family, you gotta do lots of things together, but you need to have fun. So each month we have an assembly to recognize the accomplishments of our students. We also include some friendly competition with the student versus staff game. And recently as the culmination of afterschool volleyball, students played a game, students versus staff in the dark with glow in the dark necklaces and things. So lots of fun to be had as well. So again, it's the season of conferences. We have very great attendance for conferences, over 95% all
017the time. So again, the community showing up for students and staff. We have our very first ever therapy dog at Sageville this year, Danny. I don't think it's an understatement to say she is the most popular staff member in the building. (everyone laughs) If anybody comes looking for somebody, it's usually Danny. So overall things are going really well at Sageville. It's a vibrant, close-knit community and I feel very honored to be a part of it. So do any of you have any questions about Sageville? - It just sounds like you fit in very well, Kathleen. - I'm very happy. - Your new home at Sageville, and we're happy that you're happy. - Thank you. Yep. It's a great place. - Thank you. - All right, well thank you very much. - Thank you. - Have
018a good evening. - Thank you. - At this time if anyone else would like to address the board, you may do so. Please come to the podium, state your full name, your connection to the district, and limit your remarks to three minutes using our timer. Please know that Iowa law prevents us from responding, but we are listening. - Good evening. Clark Slows, 2925 Arlington Street. Just a taxpayer. Now that the levee rates are fairly well known for all the taxing entities that are going to public hearing, kind of did a comparison. I was kind of surprised at what I found. What was the first thing I looked at? The funding that schools face when you look at, you know, how should we say, the school voucher system. Basically if you have a $612,000 assessed home
019value, if you look at the rollback, the homestead credit, you are getting your exact total tax bill back from the state to use it to spend on private education. If your home is less than $612,000 assessed, you are getting more than your total tax bill. Now I think there's a problem with that. If I had a choice with my total tax bill, would I rather write out to all the governmental entities or give it to, you know, the public schools. Think there might be a little better value if the public schools got it. There's something wrong with the system if you're getting more back from the school vouchers than what you're paying in your total tax bill. I mean, you still write that check out to the treasurer. But basically the net effect is if
020you have a home at $612,000 or less, you're at least getting your money back or even more than your money back. And there's something wrong with that. I'd love to have your financial people check my numbers. I've had discussions with them over the, you know, the last year. They're very good at what they do. In fact, they need a raise based on the last time we had a discussion when we were kind of just talking. It's kinda like we need some pencil and paper here to kind of, I'll say, draw out what was going on and we're using the whiteboard. It looked like John Madden's telestrator. (everyone laughs) It made it easier to understand what their point of view was. I understood it. Did I necessarily agree with all of it? No, but I understood
021it. And school funding should be taught in our schools at least be a semester long class just on school funding alone. Think you need a PhD to understand. (everyone laughs) - [Member] I have a PhD and I don't understand. (everyone laughs) - I might have to go back and take that class. (everyone laughs) - Any other comments at this time? - Seeing none. I move that the Board of Education reinstate the rules of order and return to regular session. - [Sainci] Second. - It's been moved and seconded that the Board of Education reinstate the rules of order and return to regular session. Is there any discussion? Seeing none. All in favor say aye. - [All] Aye. - Any opposed? That motion carries. - I move the Board of Education approve those items listed in the
022consent agenda. - Second. - It's been moved and seconded that the Board of Education approve those items listed in the consent agenda. Any board member wishing to have an item pulled? Seeing none. All in favor say aye. - [All] Aye. - Any opposed? That motion carries. All right. Well, it looks like we're moving to the Facilities and Support Services Committee report at this time. - That is right. - Dr. Jacobitz-Kizzier, take it away. - Thank you very much. So this meeting was held on March 2nd, 2026, and the Facilities and Support Services Committee has been hardworking, productive, and efficient. So let's talk about what all we're doing. We spoke at length with Nick, our architect with Origin Design, about a multitude of projects the district is currently working on. First, which was the Eisenhower Gym
023Edition project. And in the month prior, the roof installation was installed. And next they will be moving on to some of the classroom pods. Second and related, we talked about the Eisenhower Keller Roof Replacement project, and that is waiting for a little bit better weather, possibly today. But as we have more consistent good weather, we will move ahead with that. Next, moving on to all that's going on at Irving Elementary School regarding the Irving Mechanical Remodeling project. And we learned that on the first floor that the windows in the courtyard were completed as well as the duct work, and that overall this project continues to be on track. Mark Lang jumped in, and as you heard tonight, gave us a very detailed presentation about the Sageville Fuel Oil Tank Replacement project. He is our manager
024of buildings and grounds. This is an area where I admit I don't have a lot of expertise on the management of the exact pieces of equipment and the way that our district utilizes our energy sources. And it's been a good area for me to learn more about. So the scope of this project includes but is not limited to removing some of the current structures onsite at Sageville and replacing them with LP gas systems. So we will instead be doing something that is more efficient, more desirable for the building that will also involve having three 1,000 gallon above ground tanks. So this will be a good investment for our community for the long term. So again, this is an area where I'm trying to learn and to understand and rely on the people in our district
025that have content expertise to guide us for both good financial stewardship and good planning for the years ahead. So we talked about the bids that were received. There were eight of them wide ranging, and we supported and moved ahead with that project. We also talked about the Senior Dalzell Field Retaining Wall project. And so that appears like it will be something that we can get done this year. In addition to Irving, we talked before about the mechanical remodel project. We also had a pre-bid meeting regarding the Irving roof on February 13th. This will be reviewed again on site. Hopefully that work can start around June 8th and be done before school starts in mid-August. As we continue to try to get as much done as possible, at Irving, it is also their turn for playground
026replacement. So we had a guest speaker named Chris Wand of FEH Architect Firm, and he is helping us to design the scope of the project at Irving. And so this will be open to any competitive bid process as our other projects are. But it's good to have someone familiar with the outline of the plans so that we can make a more specific ask of the contracting companies. Does anybody have any questions about that? Okay. So our budget for the Irving Playground Replacement project is $350,000. We have used a company in the past called Park Planet, and so we will continue to plan on proceeding with our usual bid process. We did get an update from Superintendent Hawkins a little bit about what's going on with working, thinking about what we need to consider in the
027coming year to increase efficiencies within. There's a building leadership team that's been formed to collect feedback, and Superintendent Hawkins is working extensively with her cabinet to try to make some plans that she will then meet with the board and with community members to figure out what best can serve our district. There's other things that we do in Facilities that I'll be brief about. We have to review investment quotes so that our money that's being held in certificate of deposits continues to get the highest rate of return for the district. And so we reviewed this as scheduled. We also had to talk a little bit about some fees and some fines. So unfortunately our equipment is sometimes destroyed by the students, and so there is already a system in place for accidental damage, especially of the
028technology services and equipment that our students use. But we did have to talk a little bit more about fines because sometimes these are not accidental problems, and we need to take care of the stuff that we have and make it last as long as possible. We talked about rental fees for our facilities and the different buildings. So that pretty much sums up all the work we got done in just one committee meeting alone. I have many statements to make, so please listen ahead carefully as I read through each of these proposals. I move that the Board of Education tentatively approve the plan, specifications, form of contract, and estimate of total cost for Sageville Fuel Oil Tank Replacement project and set the date, time, and location as April 13th, 2026 at 5:30 PM at the Dubuque
029Community School District, 2300 Chaney Road, Dubuque, Iowa for a hearing thereon and further authorize the advertisement for competitive bids. - [Member] Second. - It's been moved and seconded that the Board of Education tentatively approve the plan, specifications, form of contract, and estimate of total cost for Sageville Fuel Oil Tank Replacement project and set the date, time, and location as April 13th, 2026 at 5:30 PM at the Dubuque Community School District, 2300 Chaney Road in Dubuque, Iowa for a hearing thereon and further authorize the advertisement for competitive bids. Is there any discussion? Seeing none. All in favor say aye. - [All] Aye. - Any opposed? That motion carries. - I move that the Board of Education tentatively approve the plans, specifications, form of contract, and estimate of total cost for the Irving Elementary School Playground Replacement
030project and set the date, time, and location as April 13th, 2026 at 5:30 PM at the Dubuque Community School District, 2300 Chaney Road, Dubuque, Iowa for a hearing thereon and further authorize the advertisement for competitive bids. - [Member] Second. - It's been moved and seconded that the Board of Education tentatively approve the plans, specifications, form of contract, and estimate of total cost for the Irving Elementary School Playground Replacement project and set the date, time, and location as April 13th, 2026 at 5:30 PM at the Dubuque Community School District, 2300 Cheney Road, Dubuque, Iowa for a hearing thereon and further authorize the advertisement for competitive bids. Any discussion? Seeing none. All in favor say aye. - [All] Aye. - Any opposed? That motion carries. - I move that the Board of Education approve the student fee
031schedule for the 2026-2027 school year. - [Member] Second. - It's been moved and seconded that the Board of Education approve the student fee schedule for the 2026-2027 school year. Is there any discussion? - I would just like to add on that, that most of our student fees did not change. Most of them stayed exactly the same. There were just a few things that we did talk about as far as fines and things go that you talked about. But I just wanted to make note that many of our fees stayed the same. - Thank you, Superintendent Hawkins. Thank you very much. All in favor say aye. - [All] Aye. - Any opposed? That motion carries. - I move the Board of Education approve the facility rental fee schedule for the 2026-2027 school year. - [Member] Second.
032- It's been moved and seconded that the Board of Education approve the facility rental fee schedule for the 2026-2027 school year. Any discussion? - The only thing I would add is that our facilities are rented almost every single night of every single week. So they're full. And we try to keep those at a reasonable cost so that our students and their families can utilize our buildings in the evenings. And so they're definitely being used, which is wonderful. - That's true. They're really being charged just a nominal amount so that we can make sure that our facilities continue to have supplies in reasonably good condition, such as volleyball nets or other pieces of equipment that you expect to be in working order. So thank you. - All right, all in favor say aye. - [All] Aye.
033- Any opposed? That motion carries right. Thank you for that report. We move now to the Educational Programs and Policy Committee report from Ms. Bradley. - Thanks, Dr. Parks. Our meeting was held on March 4th. And as we always do, it's divided in, the agenda is divided into four sections. First section is called educational programs, and during that we learn by presentations to the board about a lot of our programming that's going on with and for our students. So that's always a really rich part of our time together. We had a delightful presentation to open our meeting by a young woman whose name is Lily Kroger. She's a student at Dubuque Senior High School, and she was there representing our superintendent's group that she meets with regularly called the Student Academic Support Services Group or
034SASS. How cool is that? - [Hawkins] They're sassy. - They're sassy. (everyone laughs) Lily is a sophomore at Senior, and she shared her experiences with the group, which was really delightful. The group plans activities and community service projects. And I know that they're assisting to help in the middle schools with their students' transition to the high schools. How rich is that to have high school students working with middle school students to prepare for that transition? I know they're all over the district helping in schools and helping in other service projects. When I attended the Prescott Empty Bowls fundraiser in December, the SASS group was there in full force working with students. It's a huge volume of people in the building and lots of coming and going. And the SASS kids were instrumental in helping that
035flow smoothly, so they're everywhere. And how wonderful, Superintendent Hawkins, that you take the time to meet with that group of kids. I think that is wonderful. And what a difference for those kids to experience you. So bravo. Well done. The group has 25 to 30 students and they're from all three high schools, Hempstead, Senior, and the ALC. They meet monthly. So the other thing we heard under the educational program section was about something called ELPA21. If you haven't heard of ELPA21, it's not a mysterious disease. (everyone laughs) It is in fact dealing with students who are receiving special services to help them learn to speak English well and to understand English and to interact in our schools well with the language. So Julie Lang, who's the director of Digital Literacy, and Cassie McDonald, who works
036with our secondary ELML programming, I'll come back to that. And Brooke Ludovacy, who works with the elementary ELML programming, talked about not only the ELPA21 test, which is there to address areas of language-based proficiency, reading, writing, speaking, listening comprehension, and the ELPA21 test, which measures the progress our students make in that. They're receiving services. Those services are provided through funding from the state. And so the state rightly asks us to measure how well do our students progress with that help in learning fluent English. And our kids do very well. And so we were able to peek inside of those test results, and we'll get more towards the end of the school year, and also learn about a special event. If you're a high school student and you're in the ELML program receiving special services, but
037you need to take the test and others don't, do you wanna be pulled out from classes when other students are not? No. So our high school folks did a magnificent job of bringing those students in on a non-school day where they could not only have the test given to them at that time without disrupting their other classes and having to leave them, but they also had open gym and other activities. So it sounded like it was a huge success. And we certainly thank our staff members and the parents and the students who gave from a day off to be there to take the ELPA21 test. So a wonderful opportunity. So we'll get this year's test results in May, and the board will hear a report about that. Third thing, (clears throat) excuse me. The third
038thing is called a grant provider, grant service provider. (clears throat) Excuse me. For the professional service contract. We have a grant called the Elementary Comprehensive Literacy State Development Grant. You get extra points I think if you make a long grant title. (everyone laughs) And that one has a really long title. One of the requirements of the grant is to have, use a little bit of the money from the grant to purchase outside evaluator services. And so the contract that we approved in our consent agenda tonight was to purchase those services from the company that's highly recommended to do that. So we are very pleased. Lisa Feltus, who's our executive director of Elementary Education, brought us that recommendation for the external evaluation services. Lastly, you've already heard from Dr. Jacobitz-Kizzier about the student fees that goes
039to both committees. And as Superintendent Hawkins said, it is essentially no changes except where destruction to and damage to electronic devices is intentional, not accidental. Then we moved on to the second part of our agenda, which is called strategic plan. And in that we reach into the strategic plan of the district and pull out a program or an area of the strategic plan to do a deeper dive into what's going on with that. And so Superintendent Hawkins asked our director of student services, Becky Fellenzer, to come and bring us information about attendance. You may recall we came out of the pandemic, across the nation, maybe the world, I don't know, but certainly across the nation with issues regarding student attendance. Students were out of school for a very long time. And the result was, it
040sort of broke the habit and the sequence and the normality of attending school regularly. So a whole lot of folks have done extraordinary work, parents, students, schools, staff members, community to come together to address what we call chronic absenteeism. And Dubuque was not immune to having issues of chronic absenteeism. So when Becky brought us the updated information, we were thrilled to see the kind of progress that has been made every year just chipping away at getting back on track. We know that good attendance is essential for effective student learning. And so to have the kids there is what we're after. And it sort of, it takes a village. And this village has come together beautifully. It's a reminder to me of how Dubuque supports education. Kathleen, you addressed it in terms of the community at
041Sageville. We see the same thing. We see that in so many different ways. And I think when it comes to the very positive improvement in attendance that we see, that Becky brought us to show us actual data on that. That's the village at work. And we're grateful for each and every person who's affected that. The next part of our agenda we call the legislative update. We know, if you're paying attention to what's going on in the legislature in Iowa, you've seen how many bills get proposed that relate to education. Some of them positive, some of them very negative quite frankly. And so in order for us to keep ourselves well-informed and active as board members, we now have added this part to the agenda because that says what's going on legislatively? What are the latest
042bills? What came through the first funnel, which we've just now passed, and what's going to be discussed and debated between now and the second and last funnel, which is March 20th? So we were grateful for Superintendent Hawkins' update for the board members in that area. We certainly heard about supplemental aid, which was approved and is now signed by the governor at 2% increase, even though cost of living is at three. So the aggregate effect of that, as the community I think is aware, is that our buying power just keeps going down. 16 of the last 17 years public education in the state of Iowa had an increase in funds one year to the next that's below the cost of living increase. The net aggregate of that is not a positive thing. It decreases what we're
043able to deal with financially. So that's why it behooves us to have the brilliant finance team and superintendent and her team to keep us being efficient, being effective, making the right priorities that matter most for kids and their learning. So one of the things we heard in the legislative update is that the 2% has been approved. Secondly, there's a bill that's out there, and I would personally ask you to stay in tune with it. It is a bill where the governor has asked that 30% of the 1 cent sales tax money that we get be taken away from public education by 30-30 gradually over time. The net result of that could be or would be devastating for public education. So I don't know if you're a letter writer, if you're an emailer, if you're a
044caller, this is a good time to weigh in and say, "Come on, let's support our public schools "and not let that happen." So just a personal appeal to you about that. Last part of our agenda was the policy part. We processed five different categories of policies in our five-year review of all of our policies. So we have lots of good discussions about all of this. If you're interested at all to come and be a part of listening to that and hearing the kinds of conversations that happen, often say we look like bobbleheads up here at board meetings because all of that's been hashed out before in the work groups. So come. You're welcome. Our next meeting will be Wednesday, April 8th, 4:30, and it happens right here in this boardroom. We would welcome having you
045come. - All right, thank you so much Ms. Bradley. Very well- - Welcome. - Well said. - Thank you. - That brings us to board member administrative issues. Anything on the agenda? Looking at you, Superintendent. - I would just say the Dubuque Senior Rams are playing basketball right now. I think I've... Haven't even gotten an update, so that means maybe the game hasn't officially started, but it's supposed to start at 5:30. It was a little bit behind. But we wish the Rams well. They're playing Dowling Catholic tonight in the first round of the state tournament. So down at the, it was Wells Fargo, but I believe it's Casey's Arena now. - [Parks] Yeah, I think it's called the Casey Center. - Casey's Center. Yeah. - All right. - So we're gonna go watch it. -
046[Parks] We might wanna adjourn. - We're gonna go watch it. Yeah. Yeah, we wanna go watch it. Listen to the radio. Yeah. - Well, please know our next board meeting is April 13th, 2026 at 5:30 here in this room. And we are adjourned. Have a great evening. - Thank you. (bright music)