001foreign i've had that problem okay right yes okay we're ready to begin okay welcome to our regular board meeting december 13. [Music] our district mission is to reach out and teach all our vision is that we will be a school district that brings burns life for everyone even though is a national leader counts endeavoring endeavoring at all times to promote and model those principles of trustworthiness respect responsibility sharing citizens caring fairness caring and citizenship and conducting tonight's meeting we expect that all participants will act in a respectful manner consistently thanks so we'll open with the public hearing regarding the sale of our save bonds open for public comment we'll be taking action on this later in the meeting i'm seeing no comment so we'll close the public hearing at this point so i'm calling the
002regular board meeting to order and uh have a roll call here here houser here here anderson here here okay motion improvement agenda thank you thank you okay all in favor aye aye opposed same sign okay so that's unanimous we will move now into the um audit presentation by our fine jeff and manon and pella i just wanted to say thank you for first of all for letting us do the audit for the school we always enjoy doing that we really appreciate mary beth and her staff they do a great job and they're always very helpful wait for the copy i thought i'd just go through some highlights over the audit report start on page two that's the actual independent auditors report and there you can see the second paragraph now says management's responsibility for the
003financial statements that would be your responsibility and then the auditor's responsibility and then at the bottom is the opinion on the financial statements and it gives a clean opinion for the district then on to page four uh management discussion and analysis uh this is actually written by mary beth so it gives a lot of good information based on the audited numbers that first one under financial highlights is always an interesting one general fund revenues were up compared to the prior year expenditures also up but overall the finances of the district were much improved over the year before and um the revenues were substantially compared to the year before so at the bottom there or towards the middle of the page it says in march of 2020 it talks about the covid uh the effect of
004covet on the finances of the district i thought that was also very interesting and helpful but anyway that's a if you read the management discussion analysis that's a really helpful report gives a lot of valuable information on to page 8 that was interesting also gives you a comparison of their balance sheet compared to 2020 2021 compared to 2020. you can see in the bottom right hand corner it says that the net position of the district increased by 15.1 so that's really strong growth and it shows that the school is in good shape financially page 9 is a comparison of revenue and expenditures for the district between 2020 and 2021. you can see down like the third line where it says operating grants contributions and restricted interests um revenues were up from 90 from 7.7 million
005last year to 9 million this year so a big increase a lot of that is due to the government assistance with kobe page 11 gives you a picture of the solvency ratio of the district often recommended that you be between 5 and 15 percent the district is at 12 so it's really strong solvency ratios then on to the financial statements exhibit a it's on page 17 and 18. this gives you a picture of the assets and the liabilities of the district and not only cash those assets but also your capital assets your property equipment and it also lists all your long-term debt so it gives a accrual basis picture of the district [Music] you can see the total net position on page 18 was 47 million dollars very strong position exhibit b revenue and expenditures
006again you can see on page 19 of course about on the page it shows an increase in the net position of 6 million 270 000 for the year again that's that 15.1 percent increase over the year before exhibit c on page 20 and exhibit e on page 22 or more of a modified cash basis picture of the district does not include property and equipment does not include debts but he gives more of a cash position for the district g is the financial statement for the proprietary type fund which is for the district is nutrition child care and community ed so it gives you a financial position of those funds those are the business type activities so they are presented in a separate place exhibit h on page 25 gives you the operating revenue for the
007proprietary funds and then also the expenditures down below it gives you the resources from state and federal government that helped assist in those funds exhibits j k is the custodial funds that the district um takes care of in a fiduciary manner and that just gives you a report of the additions and deductions for the custodial type accounts on page 29 pages 29 through 50 actually there's footnotes to the financial statements just a lot of good information in there if you want to get into more details gives more explanation of the various financial statements and various type of funds within the district i'm not going to go over all those but that's a good if you like page 36 [Music] page 36 gives you more detail of the property and equipment of the district uh shows
008the total cost and then also takes depreciation into account um and then on page 37 gives a picture of the long-term debt of the district pages 52 and 57. supplementary information required supplementary information gives you a comparison of the actual activity of the governmental fund and proprietary funds compared to the budget this year you were your expenditures did not exceed the budgeted amounts which is really good you didn't have to comment on that this year so it was a good position page 67. look at this one just gives you a 10-year history of revenues and expenditures of the district kind of a small print that gives you just interesting to see the growth of the district page 68 this gives you a picture of the financial assistance that was received from the federal government it
009shows the expenditures for each of these type of funds that were received by the district from the federal government it just gives you a report shows at the bottom that 4 million 325 000 was spent on federal funds let's see page 74 schedule findings just gives you some comments about what we looked at as far as federal funds and the controls of the just forwarded federal funds by industry and then on page 75 is other findings which is related to statutory requirements of the state and so the only ones there that had anything to comment on was certified enrollment there's a slight variance there that we had to comment about and then on page 76 the very last comment is deficit balance in the child care fund at the end of the year any questions
010on i know kind um just procedural recommendations on accounting practices that might not have to um might not maybe just more procedural so not mentioned and i think last year we implemented over the past two years we've implemented them pretty strainlessly and were there any this year any changes in procedures yes just recommended recommendations uh no not really because you yeah segregation duties and staff you've done a lot of goods nutrition fund and this is just for clarification um the fund that allows for students to have free lunch that was expanded is that still under the title of summer assistance well the government stepped in and they basically extended what they were doing in the fall so they started in the summer then they took a brief stop of it in august i think or
011september then they started it up again and it's continuing to go so i believe that we follow some of your federal programs right jeff on and stage it is under the summer program that's what they are and that's just because that's what they title it yeah yeah but just for clarification that is what is [Music] in on page 43 where it's talking about leases it talks about the administrative building and our lease runs out 2026. and then it has metro west there and there's no narrative on that to say why that peace is it's a plain for 2025 and 2026 because because our release so we'll have to do a new lease is that what happens at that time dr slater thank you okay so um first i'd like to thank my team for being
012flexible we were going to do an introduction for them closer to the new board members being appointed but time and long agendas got in the way and i appreciate you guys being flexible many of the team you see here in the board meetings but i wanted to take an opportunity just to give you a quick introduction um you're going to see them throughout the year you're going to see some of them more than others but i wanted you to at least be able to put a name with the face you have a slide deck now so you can always go back to that and refer to it so i'm going to just call your name and kind of give a general i won't read every single thing that's on the slide i think you guys
013um you've captured what you do in a nutshell um i also say i'm very lucky to come here and have such a strong team so i'm going to take this opportunity to publicly thank you guys again we'll start with mary beth fast and this is as much for people that are just now starting to tune into board meetings as well as our new board members mary beth is our chief operating or chief financial officer and board secretary so pretty much everything to do with money and everything to do with uh helping to run the board and keep the board running smoothly our budgets you just heard from mr van almond that we are in a good financial position and i i attribute that to mary beth's knowledge so thank you mary beth next is dr
014christa carlisle in the front row there krista is our head of all of our curriculum and instructions she supervises some principals as well as our curriculum facilitators math specialists and she is also part of the superintendent's cabinet lauren de crife is director of human resources and operations so everything that is on the hiring end of the scale are all the different positions that are in the district uh coordinates the district emergency operations plan which you're going to hear a little bit more about in a few minutes and he is also a member of the superintendent's cabinet denise wood denise is over here on our on my right he's the director of quality and continual improvement and denise is the one that coordinates all of our new teacher onboarding facilitates projects through the district supervises our
015instructional coaches and keeps everything aligned helps us all to remember what we're working on the system or working in the system where we should be so i know that denise and i will be bringing some presentations to you in the future so we're looking forward to that next we have dr kerry i say it ron schlatter schleeter my apologies and carrie is the coordinator of student services and that includes at-risk programming our el students oversight of powerschool and our data management under educamer leadership over our el students as well and you can see a number of other things on hers shawna didn't make it right shauna had a sick child so shawna is unfortunately not here with us she is the coordinator of special education and oversees all of the programming in the district she's
016our resident expert on behavior she works with both our gen ed and our special education she also runs the special education plc's and the leadership team and the new cohort new teacher cohort we have ryan williamson he's in the front row right here and he is our coordinator of equity inclusion i believe was hired in july of 2020 so he's almost as new as i am he's our title ix coordinator and he works on everything with diversity equity and inclusion he supports our ffos which are family outreach positions with family facilitating family outreach okay i gotta get these acronyms down um scbmh is a social emotional behavior management mental health mental health different acronyms in wisconsin mythologies um our counselors and our elp program which is our program for our accelerated learners they have dina
017claire that you probably all know because dina keeps us on tv and keeps everything going dean also helps manage whenever the media contact us and want to do a story and also is co-leading with mr decrypt on our crisis management team and she works on all of our integrated and online campaigns mr tim simon nope tim can't join us tonight he's right there where are we oh you're behind sorry you're buying tim carver i couldn't see you i apologize tim is the buildings and ground supervisor new position to tim as well is doing a fantastic job with our maintaining our district facilities he handles the bids he works as a great liaison between stall construction and myself on the building of olmsted as well as valerius and every other different project that we have and
018he service serves as well on our district crisis team leslie oh mine's out of order oh you must flip the slice my apologies i'm going on the one that was on them okay um did mark make it back there you are thank you i hope you had a good vacation mark was on vacation and we're kind enough to come to make sure that he could be here tonight and mark is our custodial supervisor who oversees the cleaning in our health initiatives make sure that we're following the local state and federal laws and board policies helps us with new equipment and policies and collaborates to determine what our needs are and in this time of covid we really appreciate the work that you do mark in keeping everything going is this josh josh whitber over here
019on my right as well is the manager of information systems and josh is the one that keeps all these computers going and connected and updated and he's the one that has come before you i think a couple times already to seek permission to purchase new materials he leads the it team which is composed of the assistant manager technology specialist full-time techs as well as seasonal student workers jessie sadler back over here again thank you for the cookies jesse jesse is the director of nutrition services so everything to do with our breakfast and our lunch benefit issues for our iowa eligibility income income applications she manages the farm to school breakfast in the classroom breakfast after the bell the school garden i think some very creative things that you wouldn't see in another district that didn't
020have somebody with that talent so we definitely appreciate those innovative creative ideas dr william watson over here is our director of activities and community education who is surprisingly available tonight because mr watson is always at an event of some kind in the district so i think he spends his time mostly in our schools so his oversight of the 26 programs and the community education program he also oversees um the manages the director of adventure time and facilities the facilities external facility use i don't know how you keep it all straight dr watson and our final team members ashley myers that actually make it tonight there she is ashley is the director of adventure time in preschool so she oversees all of the before and after school and all day preschool programming which includes the associates
021as well as our certified teachers she oversees early childhood special education programming as well as the preschool registration billing and payment process that's quite a lengthy list of things so as you can see these people work very hard to keep our district functioning and they work together very well to make sure that everybody is aligned and understands what the work is i do appreciate you guys coming to the board meetings i know some of you have small kids at home and if you wanted to scoot out unless the board had any questions i would not have any problem with that i want to make sure you have that opportunity because i know it's been a long day any questions from the board thank you all for so much so the second thing gina are you
022going to come up and go through this one so good evening my name is dina claire and as dr jack mentioned i support communications in the district um as we know our urbandale community has a proud history of honoring our past while we're building our future and this was really evidenced in the passage of the 2018 bond referendum which really gave us the opportunity to build and subsequently name our facilities um julia might have you go to maybe that next one perfect um so what we're going to be looking at tonight um are some naming protocols that we can use as guidelines going forward for how we're going to name various facilities in our district if those protocols are approved we would then incorporate them into war policy which deals with naming facilities and events
023so how this proposal came to be um we had a an internal naming committee that met in july and the initial intention of that meeting was to talk about our approach for naming elementary school number two and as that conversation continued we actually realized that we are not um just going to be tasked with naming es number two um but we have all of these various upcoming um naming um areas that need to get confirmed um in terms of how our facilities are changing and how different facilities are going to support different groups of students and staff moving forward as well as of course naming our second elementary school so we know that over the next five years we are going to need to determine what are the protocols that we're going to use to
024name these facilities and so this proposal really helps to outline those various scenarios so there are six different scenarios um that we will just quickly walk through i know this was on assembly so we won't spend too much time talking through it but our first scenario um this would be when a new building is constructed on a new site and the district would then move into more of a formal naming process and this could be when we would seek input from community stakeholders so again this first scenario is about constructing a new building on a new site so the second scenario when a retired building is torn down and a new building is constructed in its place the name of the former building shall remain in place if both buildings share a similar purpose so
025an example of this of course could be um present day so hilarious was torn down we are building a new structure in its place and so that is why we would recommend then that it retained its name of hilarious elementary our third scenario when an existing building temporarily moves students staff to an unoccupied building the name of the retired building would be incorporated into the name of the building while occupied so again present day example of this we know that we have our hilarious students at jensen on the jensen site and so we are terming that valerius at jensen in our fourth scenario um so when a building is being used for the same purpose but with new occupants it would retain his current name and then we would honor the name of the um
026the occupants who came over from a different building um in a significant way so an example of this would be when rolling green would move to karen akers so karen acres would retain its name and then we would honor and recognize the rolling green name in a significant way within the neighbors building and our fifth scenario when a retired building is remodeled for a new purpose the former name of the building shall be honored in a significant way should i just do that no sorry when a retired building is remodeled for a new purpose the former name of the building shall be honored in a significant way within the building if it's not recognized elsewhere so this one actually has to do with a decision that is going to be up for discussion um very
027soon which is regarding um possibly moving our administration office into rolling green or potentially jensen buildings those are certainly decisions that are going to have much discussion to come from them but this is how we would propose that we would handle this scenario and the final scenario when a retired building is torn down and there's no new structure built on the um the name of the former building shall be honored in a significant way elsewhere in the district or at the actual site depending on property ownership so this would be say for example if jensen elementary were to be torn down and there was not another building built in its place um and if you know depending on ownership of that site um that's really what would determine um how that would be named so
028if the district were to still own that property then we would consider um naming that site something that honors um isabelle jensen and um of course if that property would be turned over to a new owner um then that would kind of take the naming rights out of the district's hands so those are our six scenarios and we thought it would be helpful to just take a look at what the timing of all of this is because there are quite a few moving parts coming up so um as we know elementary school number two construction is taking place now and it's scheduled through 2023. next year is when we are forecasting the conversations would begin regarding determining that the usage of jensen and rolling crane and again possibly that might be a location for the
029district administration office in 2023 rolling green students and staff would move into karen acres and then both karen akers and valeria students and staff will be moving into the new valerius elementary school that is being constructed right now and these these next two time notations are really to be determined um the relocation of our administration office while it's top of mind it's um certainly not the highest priority in the mix although we do want to make sure that we have it noted here and then you know forecasting perhaps in 2026 is when we would open um the remodeled administration office space wherever that may be so what questions might you have so dina can you clarify we would put this into an updated board policy to bring to the board for consideration correct correct so
030our existing board policy 921 um really has a lot of detail in there in terms of naming and what an appropriate name if you are looking to name a facility after an individual but what it what it doesn't do is it doesn't outline all of these various scenarios that we are really confronted with over the next five or six years and so we wanted to just make it very clear in that word policy exactly how we're going to approach each one of these scenarios so these would then be updated in that policy for for future use so this would just be an amendment to that the foreign policy 921 would stay what it is for future use of other mating facilities but this these scenarios would just be added into what's currently there correct okay
031so we would incorporate these scenarios into that existing policy okay yeah i have two questions yes somewhere does there exist a history of why our buildings are named what they are you know we went through um you know in some of our research regarding our first initial naming process which of course was for olmstead and we um dug through a really fantastic document that i know dr greg robinson had a hand in creating and that actually exists on our website of all of our names of our buildings and actually the really special stories that they tell about how each building not only was named but the critical role that each person for whom that building is named played in the community so we do have that that's wonderful because i was thinking her future boards
032that referencing that somehow in this so they can look to that yes um sorry my second last question is just because we've experienced this a lot over the past decade or so in humans we learn more in the future um and i'm not referencing any of the individuals our buildings are named after but if you were to build a new building on new ground and we have a new name is there a mechanism in the policy where that could be changed in case time calls upon that to be changed or the community called upon that to be changed because of a scenario this is a rare thing but it happens sure let me make sure i'm understanding what you're asking so if we were to have a new building built on a new site and
033um we came to an approval of what that name would be could it be changed in the future yes you know i don't think there's necessarily anything that i'm recalling in word policy right now that states specifically that so that could be something that we you know even decide if we as we're editing this policy if we want to incorporate um something with that clause it it feels like it could be a little um sticky in terms of in terms of how that process could unfold but you know i think one of the things that we're tasked with is to think about some of those things that could be a little bit sticky and figure out what would that look like and um certainly if we can build that into our policy we want to
034try and do that theoretically the board in that situation could come together and just change the policy to allow for that to happen so if that doesn't have to fit into this that makes sense but just a clause that would um that that's my last question i'll make a note of that so we can maybe have a little bit more discussion on that too so and i think i would i would be as broad as possible because the situation you're talking about is very political right now so i'm not and then when isis came out you know there were there were things about baby so that just as a scenario should cover more than one absolutely yeah i do appreciate all the work that you have put into this given our experience naming homestead this
035is a great step in the right direction so thank you to whoever helped with this yes good we had a good committee meeting on it so yeah so dina for clarification you mentioned the document that um superintendent robertson i think put together on the history of reach the building so karen acres and rolling green in particular were those named because of the plants that they were located on when they were purchased or is there a deeper community tie other than just this is where we're building it this is what we're going to call it you know i would i would need to go back and probably read through that document one more time in terms of um exactly how those were named i want to say that karen akers is named after the um the
036neighborhood area um and i believe rolling green but i also know that there is a connection with um an individual especially on the career side okay the last um piece that i wanted to provide an update on um unfortunately we all know what happened in oxford michigan i guess it's two weeks now um after that happened there was a rise across the country of calls and threats and things like that and i felt like it was prudent to advise the board and the community that urbandale is not sitting here waiting for something to happen prior to covid in 1819 that reunification planning started meeting covet obviously interrupted that when i started here this summer lauren decrypt and dina started this back up again with the administrative team there's some representatives from school buildings as well
037so we kind of have two teams going a district level team and then a team that incorporates individuals including nurses um from the uh various buildings in the district we want you to know that we are partnering with heartland aea the polk county emergency management we have the urbandale police department has been to our meetings wescom which is the dispatch agency to the police department has been to our meetings the gentlemen who program our radios have been this is a process that i think if you imagine playing the what if game you you you might as well just sit a spell because you're going to be there a really long time and this group has done an amazing job kind of trying to play that what-if game figuring out the scenarios coming back get another
038fresh voice there more questions are asked so this has been a very long process dr kerry schlater will be streeter will be leading uh the team with ryan wilson williamson as her backup and we're using a template that polk county had in place where you color code you determine roles and responsibilities and so far i think the feedback that we've gotten is that urbandale is a bit ahead of the game when you start looking at some of the surrounding school districts this is a very very monumental task right now one of the biggest things that we're doing is upgrading our radio and communication system there's actually four different um designations of radios depending on the position that the person's in and which 911 channels they can get and what they have to tune to so
039we're in the process of having our radios that are existing being upgraded over the holidays i believe they'll all be done by the end of uh the holidays so when we come back in january i know lauren has done some work with josh whitford to make sure that our repeaters on the top of the buildings are working so that if a team had to move they would still be able to communicate with these radios we've tested those on all the reunification sites each building has a specific site that they should that building have to evacuate they have a specific location um what we're trying to determine now and this is where i think the complexity starts to get more is what if there was a district level emergency that we had to evacuate multiple buildings
040and if you are looking at the geography of our district minus webster everything is right down aurora avenue so it just takes one one gas main one one issue in that area and all the schools that are right off of aurora would all of a sudden have to be evacuated so we're working with the city of urbandale as well because you can imagine how many people that is going to entail and what location what singular location can we get all of those people too working with durham our bus company they're going to be coming out and meeting with the senior leadership team in january to talk about their readiness and how fast they could get buses together i've also asked the city to determine the feasibility of using dart buses should we need to evacuate
041that many people at one time so all of those kind of balls in there are turning right now there was threat assessment training done in august of 2019 for our building leaders counselors nurses ffos and a refresher this fall we do have emergency response guides in each of our building that cover a building level shelter in place secure locker rooms social secure classrooms lockdowns severe weather evacuation evacuation off-site bomb threats a reverse evacuation room clear and medical emergencies and those are that's pretty comprehensive so i'm confident in the building level administration working with their teams to make sure that they're trained and then the district level ability to support those schools so although we we can't present you with a paper copy of what that looks like right this second other than a draft i
042wanted everyone to be sure that we are in the process of finalizing that so it's it's good to know that we are i think a step ahead of a lot of districts so that that work is good i don't know lauren or dina if there's anything you guys want to add to that um no i think one significant upgrade will be our ability to uh get to 9-1-1 quickly with our radio system so that beyond the normal communications that we have the ability to do that and communicate with if necessary is probably one of the biggest upgrades that we're looking to do so that means that if you see any of my team in the buildings we'll be wearing our radios somewhere in the backpack or somewhere in in a on our person because we
043have to be able to at a moment's notice with the crisis be able to communicate so you start seeing that you'll you'll know why and some of this information will not be published correct yeah i actually had a parent ask me some information and i wanted them to understand too we don't want to tell everybody what our plan is so that they can avert that plan so there there will be minimal details of that published and i know that's hard as a parent because you want to know that we know what we're doing but at some point there does have to be that level of trust and confidentiality so how how will we go about communicating that with like subs in the building or somebody who's teaching in a different room is there will there
044be district-wide understanding of where that information is for teachers to know if they're not in their home room or that'll all be part of the building level plan so mr carver for example knows that today there's x number of subs in the building and where they are so those are all those fine details that we'll be building levels okay anyways oh this is just um based on my personal experience used to working there but have you reached out to living history minds at all in this planning just thinking they're the largest property owner apart from us with those 500 acres if they could be a resource or help in the middle of urbandale um i'm sure that they would be pulling to help in any way now there's not interior space yeah we're not going
045into a lot of detail we're considering a lot of different spaces that are close to urban now but hard like if we want to get away a little bit that would be one of them and there are many others as well but part of the consideration too is to be building size and the ability to get kids inside and knowing that there's a thousand kids so there's just a lot of aspects i think another thing to point out only because i've seen this on social media a lot you know families families have their plan for their kids and we would ask that families say let the schools take the lead because we don't want to have families showing up if they hear something is happening because that's going to complicate it and that's going to
046make our processes a little bit more difficult to put into place so we're going to have to make sure that we work cooperatively with the families and that they just trust that we do have a process in place and to help us follow it opportunity time this is tim oswald he's going to visit with us about our bonding update which is facilitating our ability to build the new elementary two years early yeah so if i say something you want to talk about just interrupt this is just just an update there's no action so property values of the district actual value and then taxable value i gave you five years of history there some of you may realize this and others i recognize are relatively new in we you don't pay taxes on 100 of the
047assessed value of your residence we have what we call a rollback function and that links residential to ag land complicated story i can bore you if you'd like but it just links the two together so the taxable value is lower than the actual value and the taxable value is the value used to build your budget and the value we use when we sell bonds the rollback factors then are kind of at the bottom of that page for this upcoming school year so now think about july 1 of 22 to june 30th of 23. so the tax bill you and i will pay in september 22 and then again in march of 23 we will pay taxes on 54 of the assessed value of our home and then and you have a modest amount of ag
048land farmers will pay taxes on 89 percent of the assessed value of their property make sense confusing i realized so you have sold all of the bonds um from the 2018 election um and um i'm a numbers guy but i recognize most people prefer charts so i gave you both and you have 89 million of i'm sorry 86 million of debt outstanding and you pay between three and a half to four million each year off on on those bonds and they represent um bonds from the high school a little bit left maybe from webster and then um of course the two elementaries so um you don't have any plans sell any more bonds and and i'm not suggesting that you should but keep that in mind but your tax rate next year in the debt
049service levy at the current property value so the next chart next page on the chart the current property value your tax rate is going to drop from four dollars five cents roughly to three dollars and eighty cents if the property value grows which it seems likely that it will that number will be even lower because remember in iowa you tax for the payments you have scheduled to make on your bonds for that year so um here we are what five budget years after the election four budget years after the election and we're already talking about not levying the tax that we asked the voters for permission to levy because values have grown that fast congratulations if you were to choose to go back to the voters and ask for permission to do another bond issue
050and you did it right now you could vote about 18 million and still fit that within the levy limit uh if your values grew at three percent that number would jump to 21 million again i'm not advocating you consider any of that i just want to make sure you knew that you actually do have some capacity there so then um what's next um if you as we discussed if you uh uh do nothing the love you really will probably drop to 3.80 or so um many of our school clients choose instead to keep the levy rate up at the four dollars and five cents and pay their bonds early collect that 25 cents differential keep keep collecting it and pay their bonds early um if you were to do that at current property values you
051could lobby about an additional 405 000 or so um and that would that would cut the future interest costs by about 180 000 so about 50 cents on the dollar roughly um does that make sense or did i lose people our thinking is that let's pay the bonds faster the value growth is happening let's get our debts paid off that much quicker yeah we cut the interest bust as well that all works great um you don't have to decide this today it's not first off it's not on for voting anyway but we don't know values for next year's budget yet we'll know those probably january-ish and once mary beth has a chance to kind of work through the levy worksheet then we'll have that conversation and talk about should we uh ask the board for
052permission and probably i would think we'll be back to you in february or or march with a recommendation but um i would be curious to know if anybody uh likes or dislikes the idea of paying early it's your opinion and you're welcome to have it i'd love to know if you do either way um but we only take those up on a year by year basis something may come up two years from now where you need to levy more in a different fund or you need to do something else and so whatever action you would take with just used to that fiscal year and then the last thing that i have is is the debt limit um the debt limit is calculated off of the actual value so that before the rollback number actual value
053in the district in the current year is 2.5 billion for the debt limits 126 million you've got 86 million of go's outstanding so you're at 68 of your debt limit i apologize in advance for the double negatives that are forthcoming sales tax bonds the law says sales tax debt is not statutory debt it's written right into the code there's a supreme court case on another matter which says doesn't matter what the code says it's a tax therefore it's debt i'm paraphrasing if you didn't realize it so what we like to say about sales tax is we don't know it's not debt didn't say it was debt we don't know that it is so we reserve capacity in case we were never let's say get sued or whatever and have to defend ourselves well if it
054is debt we're fine we're still at 97 million and you know just over 75 percent of our debt limit either way we're fine now we talked last meeting or last week i was at um then you need to borrow what six to 10 million something like that to finish off the elementary he held the hearing on it seasoning that's not going to really change these numbers very much yeah it'll weigh in uh by the time we you're ready to sell that debt we'll have new property values for next year chances are they'll be higher and you'll have made one more payment on your prior bonds june 22 payment will be made just lowers your debt so all things being equal you're going to end up this time next year about where you are right now
055even with the new sales tax i tried to go through it quickly are there questions that you have well then i'll be back probably in february have a good hour nice concise thank you thank yeah okay and bill the honorable bill parker for saul and you guys should have a handout that he provided us earlier so bill herger snow construction i'll give you an update on olmstead and the new hilarious site one thing i did want to point out that brian norton i know a few people have met him he's uh so homestead uh learning stairs all the woods on there we opted to not finish those based on a conversation with tim until christmas break so they'll get out sanded and finish down uh we're working on some polish mock-ups and the machine was
056thrown off dust so they ordered a new one so we're gonna do that this week so we have a plan going in the break to finish that up uh s landscape is done they do need to come back in the spring just some sprinkler heads than that because it didn't really have much water on it based on temperatures this year and then the fencing we finally got that plant get some trees out of the way and alignment of that so he's going to start tomorrow and it was kind of a deal we talked to a lot of the owners there's some televisions other issues we've got to work through there but we've got a plan as far as punchless mike hornsworth's working on that at nights he's there tonight fact checking everything and working on
057the finals there uh his goals to be done with that after holiday break we'll use that week when you guys aren't around to try to get everything through there and then tomorrow just meeting with dr daca and tim the walkthrough can i ask a question about the fence [Music] for those of you who are picturing it it's the one that separates all those houses from the building and i know that there were sections slowed down in the last windstorm and given what's going to happen wednesday afternoon with those winds are we going to be done with the fence by then should we wait until that i don't think you'll have it all done but we'll reassure what if whatever we have okay it's it's been a challenge with some of those neighbors the trees alignment
058of that is actually one gigantic tree in there that's not going to go away so it'll be a step in that chance i just hate to see put it up and then wednesday with 75 mile an hour winds again have it fall well i hope it doesn't fall over i mean in two months from now once it's in places should be there but mother nature has a way of undoing things uh so hilarious urbandale number two i did kind of a sheet just so that i'll talk about stuff on there just so that starts to take shape in your mind what we're talking about uh beside demolition i talked about before it's done minus 90th street comes off of boston on stem we're actually using that for access right now to the site continuing that
059through the wire and then the plan will be to replace that next year there's a new utility that actually is a it's a piece of an extension of the city street that has to be built to the city standards so it will have a wider profile curves things that it does not right now uh earthwork they are pretty much buttoned up for the winter we did find under that green section on the west road there's a poor cell condition that the engineer look at it it won't support a truck panel so you'd never want to pour on that other pavement so there is an item in your layer of gin here that addresses that with essentially removing that dirt and putting the rocks up based on that uh side concrete so the yellow area we're
060going to start on that last week with the temperatures they started pouring today so they'll finish that yellow area this week and he's got three four schedules to get that done which will give us place and it'll be just for a blade employee parking if you know that area in that site i don't know that the neighbors appreciate us with 20 30 people around there now so it'll give a place to put those people into a parking lot so that's getting in place the good news is with the weather it makes everything a lot more efficient uh utilities all the site utilities are done except for water and sewer along 90 street again there's still all those tie-ins to do up to boston happenings that will happen when that street gets replaced as far as
061building work so they've done the exterior footings around area c which is the gym mechanical room and kitchen those are all complete core constructions actually installing footings at area a on market as a storm shelter so that's the hardened shelter for kids in case of a tornadic event uh the plan to be done with that area this week and then midwest masonry is mobilizing them they'll start getting his layout start laying national walls next week the other major thing right now is manny cyrus mechanical plumbing contractor is doing underground utility for underground plumbing work within the building pad uh and then degrees electrics doing their underground with having the outside perimeter around the mechanic that's where a lot of that stuff is weather's been good uh digging is not a problem so that's all thoughts
062any questions on that on the area of poor soil i'm looking on the map it looks like it wraps up and around into the area that's scheduled for paving later this week yes so there will be that's probably not a hundred percent correct upon that uh we know where that area stops and we'll pour to that point okay and then the rest of that will come out it's so if you remember that side anybody has been there before when we removed that paving that it was like mud so kind of the analysis by the engineering what we looked at was all those years of water running down 90 seconds there was storm intakes there but it just saturated that area so there's a limit in there probably not exactly like it is okay so we
063won't pour on anything that's not stable yes yes okay uh we'll move to the new action items first one is a dropout prevention at risk oh i was looking around do we have anyone okay i didn't see alien faces so no okay good go ahead kerry good evening um so included in tonight's report is an overview and outcome of much of our at-risk programming and it is i'm going to go through a couple of definitions because at risk is a little bit of a sprawling endeavor most everything we do is with the intent of having students be successful and not at risk of not completing our program successfully so um there are other things that are not included in this so for instance um our littles are supported through title one with some reading support
064we have title four money that comes in and helps with some of the connectedness and sel types of things and so what we're going to talk about today the pieces that i bring to you um are really specific to students that have been identified as not making the progress that we would expect them to make and specifically those that we consider dropouts for potential requests which are identified by the state with four categories focusing on [Music] absenteeism lack of connectedness or failing grades and standardized assessments and in terms of supervising and implementing these programs again it's really a shared responsibility so um a piece that you'll see after this is from mary beth who is responsible for our budget and then if the programs are conducted by teachers those are typically supervised by the building
065principle the ffos that you heard about earlier this evening are supervised by mr williamson and uh metro west lineman academy which was brought up earlier this evening is um surprised by me i'm mr moran supervisor and so it really is a collective effort but what i bring to you once a year in conjunction with the budget is some information about those programs in terms of who we serve how students are selected to be a part of that programming and what each of those programs is meant to address so some of them are specifically meant to address attendance concerns others are more geared towards connectedness or the academic piece and so each program has a little bit of a different focus and desired outcome and so that's what you're seeing we collect that information so that
066um every year we can ask is this program still needed is it doing what we hope that it will do and is there anything that we're missing is there something that um you know maybe we need to swap out or change or increase something or decrease something else we know that we are limited in the funds they're not um you know we have a set amount that we can have so we always want to make sure that we are using them um in a way that makes the greatest impact and continues to allow us to have the low dropout rates and high graduation rates but that we have had over the years a couple more and so everything in terms of um at risk graduation rates those types of things tend to be about a
067year behind so the information that we're reporting out on are all the things that happened last year and um so one of the things that we did is that we added an additional elementary ffo and our at-risk staff were depended on greatly throughout all of the [Music] struggles the barriers maintaining contact with students as we were going in and out of different learning models i cannot hold them up high enough in terms of the work that they did to keep our students connected and continuing to progress throughout just all of the different things that we were going through with that we did maintain our low levels of dropouts our submission is actually two days from now we certify um the students who were dropouts and our levels will be at four again we know who
068those students are why you know they weren't able to complete with us and know that our staff put in a lot of effort to try to connect them and get them to re-engage and um and we also have continued to maintain our high levels of graduates and it may seem weird that i talk about the two of them differently but we look at those in two different ways so a dropout is a student who on october 1st of one year they were involved with us they were on our account but september 30th of the next year they were no longer enrolled with us and they hadn't graduated and they have not enrolled in a different district so typically our dropouts are juniors or seniors but they could be at any grade level versus a graduate
069is somebody that the state tracks is starting with us as a freshman and either graduated with us in four years or with another school so in some way that student either did complete high school graduation within that four years or there's a couple of other scenarios that they might have fallen in um but there's two different calculations for those and so we always look at both of those rates um is the second for graduates so if someone transfers here and graduates from us they're counted as a graduate for us as well correct okay they provided that they completed in four years um they are they would be considered a graduate for us and not held um i don't i don't know things i don't like the word dings not ding the district that they started
070with okay so um and the other thing that we started last year that was incredibly helpful to our students is we started credit recovery at the high school level during second semester so our teachers work with students after school to recover credits from first semester instead of waiting until summer school typically you've only done that during summer school um and so some things that we've already started to work on either this year or you will see coming up for next year are that we um you'll hear more about this but we're adjusting our school the work staff in order to be able to provide that experience for any of our students right now it is only available to a student who meets those at-risk criteria and so that is an improvement that we're planning on
071making a little bit later tonight you're going to hear about ijab which also will support our students in terms of career exploration and making sure that they are life college and career ready which you heard about last week and um we will be examining the changes made for uhs summer school to determine the future structure we added additional in-person teachers last year for that in the past that mostly has been done via odysseyware and so we'll need to make decisions about that and we do want to continue all of our current programming so there's not anything at this point that we would be wanting to make significant changes to or just continue unless there are questions um all of the details are attached in a separate document that was there for you to review um
072i have a can you tell me the difference between what what a j-hop diploma what exactly does that mean i know it says they've earned 39 credits but is that does that look different does that present different does it tell me what that means exactly you bet um so it is a few less credits than our standard diploma okay and typically students who earn that um will have fewer elective credits all of the standard requirements are still in place but like as far as if they're seeking a job would it matter if they would later down the road decide to go to college would that have any bearing not necessarily because they're going to look at their you know look [Music] you know there are some differences but the key pieces that they've graduated okay
073thank you dropout prevention atmos uh msa application i'll second unanimous um so do we have any discussion about i think we've covered this the last meeting didn't we pretty extensively the vehicle purchased the vehicle uh this is a new vehicle yes but again same thing we're running into quite a way for your example so we've been find these vehicles this was a little bit and it has all the features okay you have a motion i'll move second all in favor all right oppose same sign that's unanimous um and we're looking at a fee increase possibly for next year for adventure time all right so mary beth and i have uh worked a couple times in the last month discussing um our current state uh financially this year of the venture time uh most of the
074floor that's been around for the last couple years know that we struggled a lot with uh maintaining like a sustainable financial state with the closures and having staff on board and then reducing enrollment and hours this year our our enrollment still has been a concern we are working right now on getting um or getting that enrollment to increase our biggest problem this year has been staffing we can't add staff and our students um off the waitlist until we have enough staff to supervise them um but i think that we're gonna be able to get to a better place second semester and so this past week we've contacted all families that are on the waitlist to get an idea are they still interested how they found other options are they planning on not going back this
075year or if if we ask them um or are they still interested in next year trying to get that data to see what we really need not only with the staffing in general and other pieces of this fall our absence rate has been really high so even when i look like we're getting close like that we can add some then i've had we sent out a memo earlier this fall giving parents a head up heads up that if we have high staff gone we could possibly not be able to offer programming and we had we didn't have to do it um and uh things have improved greatly but we were having days where we're 15 plus staff gone and so whenever we have staff gone that's that's impacting our ratio requirements for dhs so we've
076looked at our data for this year and mary beth and i met and we looked at what our project projections through the forecast will look like for next year um and so our rationale for the four percent increase um there's a four bullet points that i noted on the proposal and that the first one would be we haven't had an increase in a couple years and we usually increase every two years or so um [Music] again i noted that the forecast projections are showing that uh looks like this year we'd be ending the year um pretty even um it's looking okay but for next year there would be a deficit and that's where we we analyzed the four percent and we thought that would be the most appropriate um there's been costs that have are
077also increasing um when we're hiring new staff and the training requirements but then also costs for materials supplies field trips um you know we've been planning all day programs and programs throughout the summer and everything all of our vendor costs are increasing right now and the other thing is that we looked at the details um you know the highest amount with a four percent increase that would impact a family would be thirty four dollars and eight cents a month a dollar seventy per day that's at the highest level so that would be for kiddos that are attending um say preschool from and and have before and after school care and so they might be here from 6 30 in the morning to six at night or have that option whereas so the impact for like
078before and after child care wouldn't typically be that much even because the monthly rate's a lot less do you have any questions so actually to clarify you said that normally we've not added we've not increased these fees on an annual basis it's been every couple years so looking at bullet number one my initial thought was okay we haven't done it for the past two years that's probably covered related that you're this is typically what we is everything this would be that so we increased right before our uh that covered year so this would be the time that we'd be looking at doing this anyways i guess i just wonder if we're looking at increased expenses on a fairly regular basis and i'm just wondering if this is something that the board might want to consider
079reviewing annually as opposed to every couple of years what are the thoughts on that i think we would look at it and you actually we typically meet every october okay and that's what i start looking at because i um we try to get the registration like everything set in november decemberish so that we can start the planning for preschool right away after a winter break and um so that's something that if we felt like that it was that like there was a need or the objections were saying that we need to do that we could there's no reason that we can't do it over here yeah can i ask a really oddball question say there was a parent with a four-year-old who was thinking about preschool versus regular daycare situations outside of the district are
080we comfortable pricing why so that people aren't having to pick and choose between the two yes okay um their potential education for the or centers that offer the preschool with it so it's comparable that are falling i'm trying to think of our families with the least amount of money trying to get what i can what i can say is i've looked at the the neighborhoods and we are in line um also we were quite a bit lower the last proposal and a lot of the centers haven't been doing random monthly increases throughout this time um so yeah yeah i decided that these advantage students can utilize our services and we do offer uh that's one thing is that we we take uh we offer dhs families can use dhs financial assistance we also offer um
081some grant scholarships through our eci funding so we have we're serving a lot of uh at risk thank you from nature that we're the four-year-old programming is still available free of charge for anyone for a minimum of 10 hours yeah that's right the half day four year old student yeah so we do have our four year olds um we have two sections that are fully half day and then the majority of our sections though are the full day sections so those those families they pay fees because they're getting that before um in that full day programming um our three-year-olds have their wrap-around care during the day so it's not appropriate full-day instructional but they we have the three-year-old wrap around that extra um part of the day um so we have lots of different options
082and then those full-day options though families do we we work with them with getting them to see if they can get dhs assistance if not then um we have the our scholarships that we offer if they qualify um and we've been doing that for years i mean okay good thank you yeah thank you do we need a motion uh i move that we approve the recommended four percent increase the tuition for adventure time 2223 split down sign appears to be unanimous um we are looking at three new high school courses i have a relatively new driver in my house so i've been monitoring her to make sure she's getting help so and this is dr carlisle hi i'm director mr carlyle um yeah every year we have a process by which teachers can um choose
083or excuse me propose a new course so this year in the spring i met with the urbandale high school teachers via zoom as an entire staff and offer some follow-up time for them as well in person and to talk through the course proposal process answer any questions they have and again um this fall sent out some reminders about that process in those deadlines three um course proposals emerged as a result of that and so they're listed here for you foundations of english physics and iowa jobs for america's graduates hijack which dr schlier mentioned earlier in her proposal um so just briefly to talk through each one um the foundations of english is intended to fill a very niche gap if you will in some of our offerings namely that's for our students who are newcomers
084so they have been in the united states um a year sometimes even less than that and have extremely limited english skills we have um teachers in our english learner department who are dual certified in both ela english language arts as well as english learning so currently we teach a class a 9th grade english class that's taught in a sheltered way by our el teacher and it offers ela credits so taught by an english language learner teacher that offers english language kind of english credit for students this is intended to be a precursor to that enrollment would be very very limited and based on teacher approval based on the student need again limited to newcomers it's really anticipated that we're only going to have about one section of this and it would be taught by el
085staff who are currently certified in english this proposal was co-developed um by the english learner team with dr schweiter and the credit for that would be english elected credits our next is physics so currently we have a pretty amazing college physics program um it's been in place for a number of years it attracts a large number of students but really um because of that that teacher teaches a lot of other really amazing classes that are highly sought after by students and that is that certification is so um intense to be able to teach a college level class only about 20 of our kids right now are getting physics when they graduate uh so this is intended to be just your your i don't want to say run in the middle so it's going to be
086amazing physics class um on heart was like what we would have for our high school chemistry class so we would then be able to offer two levels of chemistry and two levels of physics um for students that might be interested to expand those courses to a wider audience so currently we have high school chemistry ap chemistry and this would give us an option to take high school physics as well as college physics taught by science staff science credit and then finally ijag is a program that is actually of international program that exists here in iowa there are a number of schools and districts um in our state that have an ijag program um this really came about as dr schlieter mentioned part of that work that we did developing the life career college readiness indicators
087um work experience has been a pretty big um need for our students and so this supports or goes along with i would say the expansion of work experience um to become available to a larger number of our students um ijag is is a program that is endorsed by the state of iowa has lots of support from the private sector and so they are actually able to provide an instructor and pay for two-thirds of the cost of that instructor we provide materials we provide space but they actually provide an instructor for that for us this would be an elective credit and again open to right now juniors and seniors although we have seen some program models that take it down to freshmen and sophomore and that is something we would be looking to do in the
088future um is expanded so that all of our students will have that opportunity so again i already mentioned the process that we use individual teachers or groups of teachers can submit that proposal by october 1st members of the department signed a proposal to indicate that they are supportive of that of that proposal and it's developed collaboratively or at least in collaboration with one another um myself and uhs administration meet first to talk about the proposals assuming that those proposals are approved by myself and mr parver um we go through and meet with the counseling staff um and um ms chavez who is in charge of the course directory to make sure that we're all on the same page with respect to how these courses fit into the program of study and so we can market
089them appropriately to students that scheduling process starts pretty soon after winter break in fact counselors were meeting with freshmen today um to talk through four-year planning and whatnot so it is really an ongoing process and that's what's driving our timeline so in terms of cost foundation of english is pretty minimal um we guesstimated honestly 500 um curriculum budget would cover these costs um mostly that's that's um potentially some um instructional materials copies things like that for that class very minimal physics it was estimated to be about seven thousand dollars um science classes tend to be a little bit more expensive there's an equipment cost that go along with that but again the circle and budget would be able to absorb those costs certainly the most expensive would be ijag we're estimating around two to three
090thousand dollars for materials again from the existing curriculum budget and um about fifteen to twenty thousand dollars for staff um each year in january february we start meeting and really projecting looking ahead to next year um you know teachers that are leaving teachers that are hiring to figure out what that savings is that can be reinvested into staff and programs so we are anticipating this would not be a problem to cover this cost for that additional step number that's all i got so if you have questions i'd be happy to entertain them can you take ij more than once um that's a great question i think you could it would be an elective full of times but yes yeah yeah so let's say there are there are intentions that about your juniors and ideally you'd
091have kids that would be in their junior year and then the other piece with it is that then they stay with the students one year beyond high school so so that they're doing follow-up and again one of the big corporate partners in our area uh so we've got uh it's a program that's been around most recently i think uh milwaukee northwest just out of the program while he just added a valley a couple years ago so it's it's you know the partnership and the opportunity for internships not just in those specific companies but how they help connect with other area um businesses corporations uh manufacturers it's really it's great it's it's something that we haven't had the network that they're gonna one is there um is there student drive behind some of these like i'm
092thinking of the physics course in particular um the teacher saw that me but is there students that are saying their senior year g i really want to take physics but that seems too hard you know like is there a student need there so there is um one of the components and i've actually got the proposal pulled up in front of me here one of the components is um recommendation and supporting data so in this particular case um she surveyed surveys her students in particular um but also looking at the need for some of the other data is need for um women in science you know bachelor's degrees earned by women in science um and how there's a there's a need to attract and retain more females um i could i could share this with you
093this is probably the most thorough course proposal i've ever seen but um yeah lots of lots of supporting data including students including student boys okay yeah okay other questions thank you are you trying to approve the recommended new high school courses oh second and um we've already heard the audit presentation so i'm assuming we can just entertain a motion okay so do we have any questions or clarifications on anything in the consent agenda it looks pretty straightforward so if not man um in the open enrollment report um what who who determines good cause or no good cause on that ruling i didn't understand that part of it um so the i'm the one that um prepares the shares um so the state gives us a really clear set of guidelines in terms of what is
094good cause and what isn't good for us um so that we make sure what that does is make sure that all districts are [Music] so the main good cause reasons mid-year typically are a move from one district to another district um or if they have a founded bullying or severe health situation that we're not able to if we weren't able to address it appropriately um we would approve it so that they might go somewhere else and have a better experience or be able to have that address okay thank you all in favor of uh adopting or approving the consent agenda opposed same sign it appears that that is unanimously approved under the board reports i don't know if anyone um at this point wants to kind of review some of the you know concisely some
095things that you might have learned okay i'll start off i went to a session it was an interactive session with a gentleman from waterloo charles city clinton district in clinton county and a guy from the board of educational exam or board of education this is on retaining and recruiting teachers which you know we we made some remarkably quick and i think wonderful solutions to our sub issue but that is not going to take care of our issues going forward so they had some very creative jason was there too so correct me if i say something wrong one of them is cooperatively with county and some businesses are giving students with student loans they're reimbursing them like 90 a month apart from the school apart from so that's in clinton county um one of the guy
096the guy from charles city when he came into the district he said we have to make this a a welcoming non-toxic environment and um so they had worked extremely hard to turn out turn the environment around including basically developing kind of small friend groups on the staff which was kind of interesting a very charismatic guy one of them has an employee clinic on site and they've hired a full-time wellness coordinator and they actually facilitate and try to encourage mental health days for teachers waterloo particularly is trying to grow their own people of color so they're they've got a very active career academy and they're actively recruiting their kids and trying to help them uh with uh some of their universes their uh tuition going forward um one of them is giving people a bonus for
097staying for at least two years like they get the bonus at the end i just um it was just fascinating to kind of hear people thinking outside the box and realizing that you know while it's a systemic issue um we were elected to take care of ours so we don't don't want to hurt other districts but we i think we need to really be creative one of the things like to add to that they said you need to keep a teacher for five years to get your return on investment yes was it one that i had started from that yeah including people because of their their student loan repayment are pulling people out of illinois which we obviously don't have that advantage but they're actively recruiting across the river it was their whole county that
098was pulling them out because it wasn't just clinton it was three or four different districts it was in clinton county yeah yeah and they had to live there yeah this car yep well and there was was it clinton that also was giving stipends towards um mortgage payments i can't remember i can't remember it wasn't clinton i don't think but there are a couple of districts might have been islands yeah yeah it was a i thought it was extremely well done compared i mean you know i've been to six of them now i thought it was very very well done so it's worth our time and money [Music] anybody else want to volunteer anything i a different session that i went to i that was probably the one i highlighted the most fun because i took
099the most away from that but i went to best practices for high performing boards and one of the things that stood out to me given just um some of the frustration that i think our community is feeling is that building a community support with forums and focus groups and student advisories and like the work that the science team does and the importance of that to just have that community relationship with um many you know constituents in our in our district yeah no i was in uh one or two different sessions too and i can't remember which one but um there were student board members from other districts in there and there were a lot of compliments and questions about well what does that look like and i think that would absolutely be something of considerable
100value for us to consider taking on a student board number or two and what does that look like and what's their role i think she's on the state board i think and then we made that decision what two years ago yeah do you remember it was it before i think it was before the anyway i mean yeah before the whole world that and then i think the world fell apart and right it was not implemented so um a few members of the high school population that you know maybe there were three and then at least one would be at every board meeting to provide input there was a few scenarios we talked about yeah anyway that would be really great if we could actually do that okay i have a motion to adjourn all in
101favor aye aye supposedly signed so all you seniors