00124th meeting of the Avenue School Board to order. Begin with the pledge of allegiance. 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. Roll call, please. Mr. Aaron Schultz here. Mr. Brad Olsson present. Mr. Dwayne here. Dr. Borton here. Kevin, Mr. Mark here. All right, we have some good news items tonight. We do have a couple good news items. Uh, Coach Conda is back and coach George is here. Seems you can come up here and someone she knows very well, but we have a state debate champion in our midst tonight. So, Mr. K, let us hear all about it. Excellent. Uh, on the first weekend in March, we went down to Brookings to
002uh go over state debate. Team wise, we took second place, which is awesome. We were really excited about that. That was the team goal heading in uh with it because we knew St. Paul's Jefferson who won were really really stacked and looking at this year we had a lot of individual goals. Uh one for Omno was that we wanted to win the elusive uh inform state championship. Uh we won it the original year that we first had it with Ellie Joerger and then we won with Caleb Waltman, but ever since then we like win all the time in the season, but then when we get to the state event we usually end up in fifth or sixth or something horrible along those lines. Um, but on the way into that final round, she was ranked
003first going in. She ended up being first at the end of it. Um, super awesome about it was is like super she was super nervous going in. I was like, "Look, you beat everybody that's in that round. Like everyone that's been there, we we beat them at FallFire. We beat them in the prelims. So, all we needed to do is just take care of business in the last round." And that's exactly what she did. Um her topic is definitely a labor of love of the different times that we wrote about it and different boards that we went through and different rewrites. Tons and tons of rewrites. Oh, there talk. You want to talk about the topic? Uh yeah. So the event that I do in debate is called um informative speaking and my topic this
004year was um war rape and how like rape is used as a war tool and most people don't know don't know about it and I'm really happy that I got to do this talk because I wanted to bring awareness to it and I appreciate all my coaches for helping me um throughout the whole season. How far how far Oh, go ahead. How far back researching that topic? Um like October. Are you like talking historically? How far back did you go? Oh, I went from like um the Hammurabi's code to like um present day. Okay. Yeah. Other questions? Yeah. Um, you said you'd seen every one of your competitors before. And now is this, correct me if I'm wrong, but the debate, do you come with both both sides of a debate and you have to
005argue either one or that's not this round or Okay. Not this type of Okay. Okay. So, 10 minutes fully memorized with visual aids. Okay. Which is where our big plot printer comes into play a lot. All right. Are they allowed to ask questions then afterwards? The judges? No. You're done. You're done. Y Okay. Do the judges critique you on your after every performance say what your strengths or what you need to improve on all the time? Yeah. They write on their ballots like what I should improve on, what and what I did good on. Okay. Are there certain judges you like to see? I'm just asking. you've seen them all. So I just I will take a historical like someone that likes history any day of the week for her topic in the back. So
006it's like I will take that judge is definitely one that I want. Now I'll ask this only uh in athletics on occasion down in the southeast corner of the state. They have shuffled around and moved school to school to get a better team. Have you noticed any debaters sliding from one school to another to team up with somebody? You have I I'm just saying is that happening? Jefferson is the draw right now. Okay. I just wondering if that was possible. We got a brand new school. It's very nice. Okay. Still very nice. But one of the unique parts like so we so you like start writing it. I mean you think about the topic like it's massive. So like one of the unique parts that we have are research studies that talk about the the
007male side of it on it. So like you don't really hear a lot about that such as in the um was it where the camp's at? Um, oh, I haven't practiced in a long time. Um, in Sievo, there's like 80% of males were raped in their camps and most people don't know about that. And I have a whole like section talking about males and how they are raped. And uh because when we think about war rape, we usually only talk about women and I wanted to shine light on that part too. And this is a national topic chosen uh any any topic. They can choose any topic. You can choose any topic. Okay. We think that this thing has legs to do very very well at nationals. The national people. Yeah. As for people like
008the national circuit likes likes to hear from the research studies that we got in the different take that we have on it. I think it has hopefully legs very very well. That was going to be my next question is if you qualify for nationals with this as well when so after you do well in nationals when do you start that process of your next top because you're a junior correct? Yeah. So, you got next year to Yeah. come back. When do you start the process of figuring out that next topic? I'll probably think about my next topic during summer and then start researching it like August and September and then start writing it October when debate season starts again. A great topic. So, what do you think the future holds for us versus like the
009Sou Falls teams? Um, I hope I can continue to be like the state champion next year too and qualify for nationals next year also. And I hope to do good at nationals. It's mostly like the Mitchell school that does good at Mitchell. They all graduated though. Yeah, that's true. Um, how do we stay competitive? Yeah. You keep doing what you guys have been doing, which is supporting our team with the travel budget, with the coaching budget. I mean, that's huge. we have enough when we have the staff to give dedicated time to each individual student. That's huge. When we have the ability to go to places and compete, that's huge. When we have the technology to get us online to go and do the online tournaments that we do nationalize, um that that gives us
010the leg up. And like our boards are better than everyone else's boards. Why? Because we have an in-house printer that we can use. Um compared to having to go and spend $300 per inform printing that you'd have to down at like Staples or somewhere. Yeah. So like having those resources available to us is is what keeps our program competitive. Good. And having good coaches, consistently coaches. What are your future plans? What do you think you might do post high school? Right now I'm thinking into going to nursing school and becoming a nurse. Yes, [Laughter] we need nurses. Good nurses. Yeah. So, what's it like having a sister as your coach? Um, she actually doesn't coach me, so that's good. Yeah. I mean, she's cool. She also sends lots of research your way. Oh, yeah. That's
011true. She helps me with research, but she doesn't like um watch me speak cuz she gets nervous when I talk. So, it's mainly uh coach and Alli that coach me this year. Great. Congratulations. Congratulations. Yes. The tra tradition continues, right? Congratulations. Very good job. We have another topic. Correct. Have another bit of good news. Hello. Hello. Hey, young man. This is our South Dakota Special Education Teacher of the Year, Mr. Peterson. He is a teacher at Central High School. Um, the award that Mr. Peterson received, um, you are required to be nominated by a parent or guardian of a student in the program, which is always a higher honor when a parent or guardian nominates you. And Eric received a tremendous nomination and was won the award just last week. So, Eric, do you want
012to tell them a little bit about yourself and the award that you won? Yeah. Um, so I teach in the Strives classroom at Central High School. Um, they told me that there was, um, early on I kind of found out about the award. Um, I'd never I didn't really know that there was a special ed staff of the year, but uh, Stacy Holes from the state sent me an email and said, um, you know, you've kind of been chosen as one of the five finalists. Would you like to come out to Rapid City and, uh, you'll be recognized. Come up on stage. Uh, we'll read a little thing about you. So I was like, "Yeah, absolutely. That'd be awesome." Um, so I didn't really, you know, kind of went out there thinking like, "Oh, wow.
013Like fifth place, that's pretty cool." So, you know, I got out there and, uh, basically the setup was like we went they they called each of the five of us up on stage. There was somebody from Sou Falls, Cicetin, Ogalala, um, and Duel School District. Um, so it was nice to talk to those people as well and hear about their things. Um, yeah. So, we went up and we stood and we they they gave a little thing about us and then um presented us with another thing and then we sat down um and they read the rest of the nomination. Um but yeah, it was really cool to hear the the things that had been written about me because I mean, you know, that's ultimately why we're here is for stuff like that. So, pretty
014neat. Like I said, I thought fifth place was pretty cool. I was crying by the time I got Yeah. So, um, this is my fourth year here at, uh, in the school district and, um, I've worked in Strives the entire time. I think it's really, you know, um, I did an interview with Kellan this morning and that was pretty cool. I told her, you know, it's it's really humbling to work in this position and and feel like you're making a difference, you know, when students come to you and say, you know, I'm so glad that you support me for my goals and things like that. So, really pretty neat. I hope that answered your question. questions from the board. Uh, when did you develop your passion for special ed? When I was younger, um, so
015when I was when I was in second, third grade, I had my own ADHD diagnosis. Um, I never received special ed services, but I kind of always had a soft spot there for the people who helped me out with certain things. Um, and you know, I I kind of saw that in myself as I got older in terms of uh, you know, I really would like to be that type of a person for someone else. Um, so I felt special education was one of the ways that I could do that. Um, when I was in high school, um, uh, I had a couple teachers that said, you know, like you have a they they helped me kind of channel that ADHD into like a leadership role as far as some stuff was concerned. Um, so
016they they set me up with some other students that had disabilities of of my same age group and uh I worked with them and and helped them out with some art projects and stuff. Uh, and I was like, "Hey, you know, like this is kind of cool. I I think this is something I'd like to do going forward." So, um, that was kind of the original. My mom was a teacher at SDSU, so where did you go to school? High school or college? High school. Brookings. Okay. But we won't talk about that. I'm proud to wear uh blue and gold. Yeah. Yeah. And then I I came to Northern up here. So, um really wonderful teachers at Northern. I I I thank them for all the things that they were able to, you know, get
017me in the experiences and stuff here. So, it's been super rewarding. It's great. Yeah. Questions? You're also actively involved in other elements of with the school district. You want to talk a little bit about that? Yeah, I'm the girls cross country head coach. Um, and I coach track and field. Um, I also teach ESY, uh, extended school year for students that have disabilities. Um, so I think all of those roles as far as things are concerned, it's it's really kind of um, like I said, you know, rewarding. And I'm I'm very humbled to be in the positions that I'm in and you know it's cool to be rewarded for this but ultimately at the same point in time like to hear like I said the words that the nomination were for me and you know
018that that really kind of hits home because that really resonates as far as like I said the goal is to make as much of an impact as you can and and to me that that's speaking volumes there. So I really appreciate that. I'd like to congratulate you on your willingness to keep parents informed. uh they're it's they're anxious anyway uh with certain situations that their children may be in and your willingness to keep them constantly in tune with what's happening. Really appreciate that. Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, that's that's often something too that I think about as far as things go in terms of how I can keep parents involved and things like that because it's such a I mean, I I I often try to put myself in the the shoes as
019as the parents of my students and think about, you know, how would I be feeling every day when my kid goes to school and there's a certain level of uncertainty about things. Um, so for me, that kind of is is the drive as far as that goes. I'm I'm 26. I'm not a parent myself. So, um, you know, I do the best I can for that, but as far as that goes, I hope that my communication with them is enough. So, well, congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. All right. After that, we have the agenda in front of us. I'd ask for a motion for approval. Moved by Ellison, second by Alm. All those in favor of tonight's agenda signify by saying I. Oppose. Same sign. Person wishing to address the board. I have none. Board
020remarks. Mr. Alm. Um just a couple of things from ASBSD. Uh we have a new chief financial officer and director of our protective trust and she is Roxanne Heen. Roxanne Heen. She was comes to us from the city council of Fort Pier. She has also um been uh working with as an analyst with the state department of the bureau of finance management and financial services and she was there for several years. So she comes to us as a very experienced uh chief officer that we will have and uh we do welcome Roxan to ASPSD and we all look forward to working with Roxan. So I wanted to pass that along to you. Um last night we started our board engagement uh series that we're going to have three more and the last night one we
021had on Sunday evenings for about an hour. They usually last an hour. We went over all the education bills and had a review just uh so that members could uh ask any questions about little details of a certain bill. It was a very helpful and very good session. Uh we will have three more in the upcoming uh weeks of the month of April. Um, for example, I think the next one's going to be celebrating the successes of public schools and we'll have another one about uh mental and physical health for staff and students. So, those will be two of the three. I forget what the other one was, but they will occur on different evenings uh coming up here in the month of April. So, and remember uh for taking one of these courses which
022are free, you do get 20 all points and you need to keep uh that in mind. So, if you have some free time, don't be afraid to hook on and uh earn some all points. We're going for it again, you know, platinum. Thank you. That's it. All right. Thank you, Mr. Any further board remarks? Mr. I wasn't going to say anything but after Mr. Peterson talked I I just think I want to say you know nationally the public school systems get a lot of criticism about poor performance kids are not performing well 40th out of I don't know 40 in the country or national whatever it is and um I don't think they look at South Dakota specifically or our school district specifically it's all generality and stuff like that. And I I think what
023people need to know at home is um a lot of the private schools might offer a good education, but they don't have to deal with what we do with the special ed people, special ed children and stuff like that. And I think Eric was the prime example of what we do versus what they don't do as far as dealing with those types of children. And without public schools taking care of kids with special needs, special issues, I think they they'd be lost in the the shuffle. So, um I want to thank him, what he does, our district for what we do, for taking care of those kids because the private schools don't do that. And I think people at home need to know that. Yeah, you can hear all this stuff and on the news
024and stuff like that, but you know, public schools do a service for those children who really need education. I think we educate our children very well. Just go look at all the good news reports that we've had forever and um we do a great job. So, just want to toot our horn, I guess, for what we do. Thank you very much, Mr. Olson. Any further comments? All right. Thank you for those. We do have the consent agenda in front of us. Uh would anyone like anything pulled from the consent agenda for further discussion? Seeing none, I'll ask for a motion for approval. So move by Sharp. Second by Dr. Borton. All those in favor of the consent agenda signify by saying I oppose. Same sign. Thank you. Reports of the superintendent. Dr. Guffin. Thank you.
025The first item on the agenda tonight is our ATH report. Mr. Pudwell is here to share some great things happening at a tech. Good evening. Well, good evening. Thank you for uh having me come visit. Um I'll have a couple people uh with me uh teacher and student. I'll talk about them here in a sec. But uh I was excited to talk about ATH and all the great things that we've got going on. Um we've been a hot spot lately for uh tours and things. Uh last Wednesday we just hosted the governor and his group. So that was that was exciting. Had a had a great tour. Lasted about an hour and uh took them through the building and he seemed uh pretty impressed with what we have going on. So it was it was
026good. Anyway, um going on uh the demand for uh CT classes at Tech continues to be strong. Uh the numbers of uh students rotating through a tech this year uh was about425 students. Um that is down a little bit from last year but there is a reason for it and that is uh Mr. Brian because of the EMT EMR stuff uh cannot take as many freshman health classes which I count in the numbers. Uh so that wipes out a couple of sections of big big groups. So again um classes remain very popular. Uh uh the most popular programs are egg, auto, and television and media production and the non-food fax classes. Um our child uh development courses have really taken off the last couple years. Uh Miss Ketleene does a great job with those. So
027we've seen a ton of growth in that program. um for the upcoming school year. Um things that uh we're looking at uh um looking forward to growing and and the preliminary numbers of student sign up kind of reflects that. But uh welding and robotics um and cyber security have grown or will grow and the EMR and EMT classes um are continuing to add numbers as well. Um, for this school year, uh, we had nine students from Frederick taking classes at a tech and we had 10 students from Ron College taking, uh, classes, um, as well. And, uh, that, uh, that number has stayed pretty consistent the last few years. Uh, new things and changes for ATCH, uh, for this year included uh, receiving new welding equipment. That was part of the innovative equipment grant which
028is part of the Perkins grant which was uh administered by the state and through that we received uh 19 new welders uh three virtual welding kits and one robotic welder um and this equipment uh showed up um in about October and we integrated it into the uh into the program. It's already up and running. Um it's already increased uh the learning opportunities in that program because we're able to do uh several different things with that equipment that we weren't able to do. Obviously the robotic welding um component is something that's uh um really making inroads in industry. And so tonight uh I have Mr. Lilis, the welding and machine tool instructor. and uh one of his students, Cole Dunlevy, uh will um show a video and talk about some of the things that they're doing
029with that equipment. So hopefully that uh that is interesting. Um another area that we continue to build and refine is the EMR EMT program, which we started last year. uh we've uh really established a good classroom curriculum with that and then this year we've really enhanced that uh with the uh working with the Aberdine Fire Department to create an opportunity for students uh this year they are able to do 10 hours of ride alongs and that's 10 hours minimum they want to do more they can um along with those ride alongs um they have to do um 10 patient assessments so this is like on an actual all. And then on those patient assessments, they're evaluated. And um out of those 10, they have to do three accurate sets of vitals um that match up
030with with their evaluation that they're doing. So um um again, that that's enhancing more of the hands-on approach that you know, we started it last year. It was a lot of it was classroom based and you know now we're refining it and getting into um more of a you know getting them out and getting them working on it. So um Mr. Brian anticipates that six students out of the group this year will take the national exam to become certified. So that'll be a good number. Um this past fall uh in October ATCH hosted a career fair uh that was uh sponsored by the Aberdine uh Chamber of Commerce. Uh we had 10 local industries set up and the students were able to rotate through all the uh 10 industries and learn more about what they
031have to offer. It was a a very popular event and it was so popular that this Friday we're hosting an egg day career fair. Uh we have six different groups uh signed up for that. It will be set up the same way. We we create a schedule and the students rotate through that. Uh they get to listen to the uh the business or the whatever they are uh their pitch and um interact with the different groups and the students seem to enjoy it. Um again it it offers more exposure for a tech and the programs that we have going on. um when people come in, they're always always amazed by, you know, uh the the programs that we have. Um so again, it's it's another another way to work on that. Um this year, for
032the first time in a while, um on April 10th and 11th, we'll have eight students competing in Skills USA competition. Uh that's a state event that'll be in Mitchell Tech this year. uh we'll have students participate in construction skills uh auto maintenance and repair and welding. So they basically uh they go through a contest uh that uh evaluates their skills um and they can receive awards uh a um some of them uh their scholarship opportunities if they do really well. So it again it's good exposure for the students that uh we have in the building. Uh Mr. Sumner is in charge of that group. So, he'll be taking them down this year. Uh they'll be there overnight. Um and uh it's a Thursday, Friday event. Um the building trades project this year again was two
033uh cabins that we constructed for WY Park uh through the Aberdine Parks and Wreck. Uh those will be uh completed by the end of the school year. They're they're on track to be done. Um these will be the last cabins that we build for a while. Uh so we're going to we're going to be looking for uh new opportunities for the building trades program as far as a major project. Um uh last several years we've been lucky because these cabins have been a great fit. Um they're about the right size. They involve everything that we want to expose the students to which is obviously structural building but then uh the electrical part and the plumbing piece. Um, so, uh, we're basically just bouncing some ideas around right now. Um, I don't foresee the district wanting
034to get back into the house business. Um, if someone approaches us with an opportunity, we'll listen, but, um, you know, with the cost of materials and everything that's that's happened with any building project, um, I don't see that as a as a good fit for us or our budget. So, we're going to be looking uh to get creative on that um and come up with some things. So, uh just stay tuned for that, I guess. Uh for the upcoming school year, um I don't anticipate any new classes. Uh the classes we currently have really match our staff and our areas of strength. Um you know, with some of the budget things looming, um you know, the goal is just to keep what we have and refine it and make it better. And I think we're
035we're doing that. Um something new for next year uh on the state level the the the CT classes um at the state level and the department of ed will be up for evaluation. Um I think the biggest change there will we will see um some changes in the career clusters and how they are put together. Um so we'll have to go through and update some of the information that we have and that we put out. Um and things will move around and how they fit. Some things will be renamed u but I don't you know it's not going to be a major major drastic overhaul. Um it just you know um trying to make things better I guess at the state level. So that's what we'll be working on um next year especially in the
036fall. Uh we'll have to get on that because we we have to have that stuff organized and ready for the gold book and all the information that we put out when students sign up. So um that's that's what I've got with my report tonight. Any questions or comments? Mr. Strong. Well, first of all, uh, Mr. Pudwell, thank you for your leadership there. It definitely shows through. Wondering since you've been there, has there been anyone very impacting, something that's happened that you've noted that made a bigger difference? I know you've had a lot of them, but uh, is there any particular one that stands out in your mind? you know, all of our programs um have have experienced growth and and done great things. um probably the biggest impact um I've noticed in my time there
037is um you know for whatever reason and and and there are several but students that seem to struggle academically um in some of those classes at Central uh they walk into our building and they do really well in uh a lot of our classes and the great thing about that is I see the carry be over then um and the other classes once they do go back over to Central. Um especially once, you know, we don't have a a lot of classes for freshmen. We have some and we've intentionally tried to create more and we've done a good job with that. But I've really seen the the change from that freshman year which is difficult for a lot of students. Uh going forward um as they get in especially into their sophomore and junior year
038um a lot of the things we're doing seem to resonate with those students. So for me per on a personal level that's that's that's been the best thing to to witness comments. Sure. Scott, do do the kids still or the students still have the opportunity to take the career readiness exam? Well, um that's a good point. I actually should include that my in my report. So the state um next year will not be paying for it. Um, and that's something we will have to decide. Uh, the way it appears right now, um, the cost of the test is it's it's not prohibitive for the student. I've seen it's going to be about right around $10, I think. Um, we were able to provide it to every student before and we kind of made it mandatory,
039I guess, to capture all of the seniors. I envision it now moving forward, it'll be more of a voluntary test for the students that uh are on that um you know the two-year um track as far as a tech school goes. I see it becoming more of that. Um some schools uh that I know of are doing away with it. They're just not going to offer it. So, but uh for our sake, I would like to see it at least on the voluntary level where we we still ad offer it and administrate it. Um you know, are we going to capture all of our seniors like we were trying to do? No. But, uh there are definitely students that will need that test and want that test. Uh it was before uh a requirement of
040the Bill Dakota scholarship. Now, it's becoming um it won't be that anymore. or it'll just be recommended is how they're rephrasing it. Mr. Couple comments taking off on that. You know, we have the foundation school foundation. Maybe there's somewhere in there that they can find the funds to help those students that might may want to take that test. The state's not paying for that again, but there's, you know, there's all kinds of opportunities. I think if you request an opportunity from the foundation. Um secondly, when you talk about the um EMR students taking the skills and they have to do blood pressure and stuff like that, is that automatic or is that manual because I'm an old school guy, you know? I I I want to know so many people I think these days, new
041new students, they would have a clue manual blood pressure or those types of things. So, I'm just curious. Scott hasn't been a patient. He does. Um, well, I I do know this. I I do know they they are learning to do the manual because I've I've been in the classroom and witnessed that. When they're out in the field and doing this ride along, I I don't have the answer for that. I would assume that's fairly automated, but maybe not. I don't know. I'm just curious because I think most don't know how to do that anymore. But anyway, and the third thing is since the governor was just here, we talked about the cabins you're building for for locally here, but is there any chance of partnering with the state at the state um camps like
042Mina or something like that? There's not that many cabins out there in those places yet. There's all kinds of camp grounds. Maybe there's an opportunity talking to the governor about we build them some cabins, put them out in those locations. Good idea. Again, we're open to to any to any new angle there. Um I'd like to keep them on that scale again because that works great for us. But uh yeah, that that might be an opportunity. That'd be great. Throw it by him and see, you know, because we got Richmond and mine up. So yeah, the the uh tiny home thing's been kind of a kind of a kind of a niche thing that's you know on some of those we thought about maybe um you know basically advertising that we would build one for
043someone if they wanted to provide the materials. Um but yeah, I mean we've kicked around several different ideas. Just something to think about maybe since he was here and saw what we do. Good idea. A good uh PR thing. Have you ever And for us, have you ever looked into the metal storage containers down south? I saw homes actually made out of those bizarre, but uh you know, different things that they can create out of those. I don't Yeah, I again I No, we haven't talked about those specifically, but I mean, if somebody comes with an idea um and we can make it work and it it fits with the scale that we want to do, um we'd definitely be open to anything. I see you brought some uh participants with you here, too. Yes,
044I did. So, uh Mike Lilis is our welding machine tool instructor. He's in his second year. He's doing a great job with the program. Um really doing some innovative things. Uh kids really like to be in his area. And then, um I have uh Cole with us. Uh Cole is uh a sophomore. I think he's been in our building quite a bit. um taken a lot of our classes. Uh I assume you like being there, right? So um anyway, they're going to visit about some of the things that uh we talked about with the welding and the machine tool stuff, especially the robotic welding. So I think first we have a a video to watch. Um we've been working with this piece of equipment now for a couple of months. This uh was a part
045of the grant program and through um the Perkins grant and uh this is a really beautiful piece of equipment. Robotic welding is a big huge part of the industry. So this is what we have to give the students an opportunity to play with this kind of piece of equipment. Um so I indicate right here. I hit a start here button on the kiosk and um then I I go up. I look for a blue button at the top. Soon as I push that blue button, that indicates that green light right there indicates that every move that I make after this is going to be part of the weld process. So now I hit this button again and that'll indicate to the computer that this is where I want the weld to start. I move down
046the line. Next thing I do is I hold the green button and that'll tell me where that weld is going to end. Now I'm going to dry run that weld before I actually burn. So it's just showing me what I recorded in my program. It's going to go right down that line for my burn. That'll hit the end of the burn. And it'll go back into that neutral position. I put a long weld on it. And now I'm out. Um, why don't I go ahead and burn one? All right. Eyes and ears. And we will be live. [Music] What I will do now is I'll give Cole an opportunity to go ahead and run one. So, first thing, hit start. There you go. Now, what I want you to do though, will you do me
047a favor and show them how it can move around an obstacle and then come out here and burn another weld? Okay, so yeah, push your button. Okay, now you can move your welder. Which button do you push? Push the blue button. There you go. Now you have your welder in action. So now it's just showing you how it would simulate an obstacle of any kind of jigging that may be in the way. There you go. That's a pretty good angle of attack. Really? Let's pull it up a little bit. Hang on a second. I'm going to adjust the stick out. Lift it. Yeah, there we go. I'm going to adjust the stick out a little bit. How's that look? About 3/4 of an inch. Okay, cool. Now, go ahead and adjust the tip off of
048the plate. Okay, that's good. So, just push the green button and that'll tell us that we have a starting position. Now, you can go ahead and move into the other side. Nice and easy. There you go. Good enough. It doesn't have to be as long as the last one. Well done. Now, hold the button. It'll give us our our end point. Okay. Now, push her up into a neutral position. And that will tell us that we're done. I'm going to go ahead and do a dry run. Yeah. Yep. So now all we're going to do is make sure that we don't have any obstacles or we're not hitting anything. That we're going to see the path that we want the weld to be on without the welding engaged. So there we go. Now it's going
049to walk back into what Cole just told it to do around the obstacle. And there's our well. Ah, it's me, huh? Okay. My name's Mike Lilis. Um, I have been at Aberdine for 2 years now. Um, quite frankly, I'm honored to be given the opportunity to um, teach what I've been doing for 30 years. um there's not a lot of us left that know it from the scratch and um I had a lot of really good mentors in my life and so be able to do that in turn for gentlemen like this um has been a real it's been a really really really pleasurable thing for me. I've had a lot of gratitude and I and I and I get a lot of motivation out of it every day. Um, like Scott said that there
050are individuals that don't feel like they quite fit in the academic field that we have when we're what I refer to in the mothership. And at the satellite office, the A Techch building, they get to come over and hang out and they get to be well, I try to treat them all like adults and they really respond. Um, I ask them to conduct themselves like ladies and gentlemen. I treat them like it's a job. And that's the career part of the CTE, you know, uh learn how to shake hands, lift your chin, speak, have a good question, engage, you know, it's been a real pleasure for me. And um so, you know, Cole's here as you see. Um it's funny because he told me today he's like, "I'm not even in a welding class right
051now." And the best part of that story is he is in my uh in my um machine tool. and um you know, he's just where he wants to be and constantly absorbing more and more information. And um so it was kind of an easy go-to move because I'd already kind of given him the pass when they asked us to go ahead and go through the video, put that together. It was an easy move for me to have Cole invite Cole into it and play through it because he's got the experience now. And that's what we're all about, you know, making sure they have any experience at all. You You have anything you want to talk about? Okay, might as well take advantage of it. So, uh, my name is Colon Levy and I am a
052sophomore at Central, but uh, this the A Techch program has basically changed my life in a way because art school in Warner and if you've ever seen their their shop there, there ain't much to it. So, uh, it has opened like changed my perspective on a lot of different things that I'm able to do. I learned a lot of different things, too. I never once thought I would touch a welder. I mean, my grew up on a farm, do all that, but you know, weld every day. And it's something that I've become very great at and uh always have a appreciation for it and learn from somebody who knows what they're talking about. So, I guess it's question time. You guys have questions from the board. How did you get into welding? High school. It
053was Yeah. No, but it was back in the day, you know. Um I'm a little long in the tooth. Um but we had uh we had tombstone welders. I learned stick. Um again, let's go on one thing that I should probably add with regards to what's going on with it. You talked about the equipment that we have in our class. Uh we have beautiful equipment. It's a pleasure to be in that shop. And back in the day, stick was the only thing that we really had. MIG was out there, but it wasn't as, you know, common in every shop. And now you see it a lot more. So, um, keeping an eye on the state curriculum and what they want us to teach. I usually start individuals with the make. It's a little more forgiving.
054It gives them the opportunity to at least learn what the puddle looks like, how to manipulate it. And then I move them into stick welding. And um so it's been a good kind of back and forth program. Um but yeah, that there's no um I started in in high school. In fact, I think the first time I ever worked was welding. I was I was welding um I was welding a squirt gun. Yeah. I was running a MIG and um and I was still in high school and I met the guy. He pulled into the gas station I was working at. He had a rig on the back of the truck. You know, of course, you crack wise because you're a little kid. You're like, "Hey, man, you're a welder. Right on. I weld, too."
055And he was like, "You want to go to work?" And I was like, "Yeah, I do." And uh so that's where it started. Um but I've been in the construction industry for a long time. And um so I've done a lot of things. I've gotten to do a lot of really cool and unique things in welding and structural steel and any facet of construction. So yeah. Any other questions? Mike, do you I'm gl I'm glad to see you still teach stick welding. Yeah, absolutely. Do you do any brazing? You know what? We played a little bit with it. It's not as You know, it's almost like saying soldering. I know. You know, um we're getting so far away from copper. Yep. So that everything's PEX, you know, we start moving into these different things and
056the industry is changing. So we did we play with it? Yeah. There was a couple of uh tin bangers, if you will. HVAC guys and they wanted to get in there and they wanted to play around with it. So, um, we leaned into it, gave them the opportunity to do it. And, you know, again, it goes back to playing with the puddle. Right now I'm teaching, but you know, it's just what you know, but that's the truth. Playing with the puddle and then we have a um young lady who um has been coming in and she's going to do the Skills USA competition. And I know it's gonna be MIG and she doesn't have a lot of time on stick, but I put her on stick because I want her to struggle with that. It's
057a little more cumbersome. It's not as forgiving. Then it gets easier. Yeah. And then you pull her off the stick, put her back on the mag, and I know her wells be great. So yeah, it's But if you think about most of what I did in the field, it was all stick. We don't have the ability to live in a shop now. anything anything that I fabricated or any aspect of that certainly it was made but when you're hanging on the steel up there there's too many other elements you got a generator downstairs you ground out you're throwing stick at it so yeah it's a very important that's never going anywhere stick is always going to be in the game so one more on that on that robot manually moving it is is there a
058is there a CAD portion of that can you program it from computer and tell it to do. Yeah, they have this they have the old school computer that they they gave us, you know, that came with the package and they gave us the um tablet and man, it's just touch and play. Everything that you could possibly do. There is a manual on the tablet, so it looks just like the old, you know, computer, handheld computer. So, if you wanted to pull that up or if you were an old school guy and somebody handed that to you, you could open up the tablet and play around on the um old computer on the tablet, but the tablets just these guys pick it up. They're walking around with phones in their pockets all the time. So, they
059adapt to it in a way that I just don't have the ability. I'm just not that they only have one way to look at it and that's the way that tablet was designed. So, dropping it into their hands, it flows really easily. In fact, the plasma table's the same way, you know, and yeah, you're correct. CAD, um, CAM, CNC, those are the processes in trying to get it from the drawing into the computer render rendition and then dropping that into, you know, the CNC, which is where the robot takes over and actually does all the cutting. So, yeah, it's pretty neat. It's like I telling you guys, the A Techch building is an incredible facility and we are super super honored to have it. Really are. I don't know if I have a question or
060not, but talking about the mothership, sorry, a tech. What I have seen, and I was going to ask you about robotic welding at the future, but what I've seen is there's a correlation. It seems like what they learned at a tech, they apply to what they learned at the mothership, and they all go back and forth because when you start talking about Yes. robotic computerization, those types of things. And we heard that, I think, before in other things. And in the egg program, they go back and they apply that to other classes they learned traditionally. Um because they the two tie together anymore. You know, you you just can't farm without knowing how to program a tractor and plow the field and stuff like that. So, I really like the correlation or the the compatibility
061between the mothership and a tech because I think it teaches you both and it helps learn both of those skills. Now, tell me if I'm wrong, but you know, my my background is healthcare and that's why I said don't patch a blood pressure machine and and and blood pressure take and stuff like that is is tells me, you know, that that was important. now is just flap a cup on them and push the button. But the important thing is what does it mean? You know, so maybe you can talk a little bit about those things maybe. I don't know. No, it definitely does. There's there's a lot of things that I've learned in the classroom that I can go back to uh mothership and apply. I mean, really thing is effort. I've always I've always
062struggled a little bit with effort in my my normal classes, you could say. And um he's always said, "If you're going to put the effort in here, you might as well go back there and put the effort in." Exactly. Might as well make it balance out because there's there's no reason not to. If you can put the effort in in my classroom, then why can't you go do it in the other classroom? It's the same thing at the end of the day. Yeah. And I would suspect that the employment opportunities upon graduation are about 100%. Or are you guys? Yes. You know, it's funny. You're not aware of things until you're actually placed in the situation. Okay, now you're going to teach. Now, you know what you're in the middle of, right? And I know
063it was hard when I was out there running and looking for help. That's why I'm so hard on being on 16s. Do you know how to read a tape measure? Right? you want to come out, you want to start making some money, but you can't read a tape. So, I drill it so they learn their 16s and they know I'm down and then I make sure they know how to read a tape measure because out of all of the things that I use on a regular basis, the tape measure is probably the key ingredient. Yeah. You know, um so you start exposing yourself to all of these things that are available to you because now I'm a CTE teacher. Yeah. And so they go, "Hey, do you realize that um there's only a 20% replacement
064rate?" So for every five men that are graduating, pardon me, five men or women that are graduating from the industry or leaving the industry to retire or they've gotten injured or whatever, there's only one person replacing them. That's a no lie statistic and that's an old one. When I found that in some of the documentation that was in my classroom, like it was 18, you know, and their projection was, you know, the boomers and the exes are starting to get to the point where they're moving out of the industry and we only have one person replacing every five that leave. So, the importance of what's going on in the industry and it looks like the leadership that we have right now is trying to bring back industry into our country. So that puts the emphasis
065on what we got going over there even more importantly because we need the young men and women who have some common sense and some ability to play and they're made of stern stuff because I tell them, you know, this is not my industry is not easy, you know, you got to lean into this. You got to want to do it, you know. So, um I I hope that answered the question, but yeah, the the replacement rate is like one in five. It's really bad. So, their ability to go out, we're making, you know, um associations with several others. I'm not going to name anybody, right? Just open-ended, but we've got the um Bill Dakota, right? And so there are um individuals who are running companies right now willing to pay for the other half of
066their two-year degree if they come back to work for them for two years. Now, I think that says a lot. One, we want you. Two, in that two-year period of time, we're going to prove to you that we're a good company and that you want to stay. That's a big commitment. So, it's a it's a wonderful thing that's taking place. It really is. It's nice to be a part of. You want to say something more? I'm assuming your enrollment's pretty much 100%. In my class right now, I guess it is. Well, that's good. Yeah. No, it is. And then like um there are individuals Scott has come to me and he said, "We're trying to work more and more freshmen in." And so I could see why there's been some reluctance to bring the freshmen
067into my class because it's a higher demand. The safety issues in my class are high. Yeah. Um, but we bring them in and we I I'd like to try to groom that so that the individuals that look man, you cannot replace enthusiasm. If you've got a freshman and all he wants to do is stand on his tippy toes and goes, I just want to weld. I just want to weld. I just want to shove him in the chair. Let's go. You know, I'll drag you along. We'll figure it out. So, yeah, we, you know, that's one thing that Scott has brought up to me that that he'd like to start trying to angle a little bit. Appreciate it. Cole, you got two more years, right? Yep. Yes, I do. I'm assuming you're going to take
068a few more courses uh there. What uh what what courses are you looking forward to? Well, I'm I can't wait for the uh machine tool too next year. We should have enough kits for it. So, that that's come a long ways from where it was. Yeah, we've got a lot of nice equipment with the machine tool, too. I mean, as well. And I don't mean to like number two. I mean literally also are we have a really some of it needs to be fired back up. We're looking at maintenance. We're looking at things that need to be brought back online. And um and you know again with um several of my students, not just Mr. Dunlevy, but several of my students, they come in and they want to hang out and what can I do
069and what are we working on? And they want to they're helping me bring that program back to its intended luster. Let's just put it that way. And it's really fun because I like hanging out with him. You know, the enthusiasm is nice to be around. So, last week when the governor was here, uh Cole was actually in the room working a little overtime. He was one of the last students to leave that day and the governor noticed him. You probably saw some photos of Cole and the governor. But Cole did a fantastic job um communicating with the governor about what we do at a tech. And Cole, you're right. uh this you've done a tremendous improvement and I think a tech has a lot to do with that. So for politics in your future talking
070welding well I feel like you say that you're fortunate to be able to do this but I think we're really really blessed to have you two. So yeah, it's nice equipment's good. Yes. You know, I mean, um talk all light about it. Um I've been doing it a long time, you know, and when Scott and I had the conversation about taking on the position and he we walked into the shop, I was like, we could do you could build anything. You can build anything. You know, imagination is probably my biggest drawback, but I got handfuls of imagination running around me. They come up with stuff, you know, and you just got to kind of what I don't know. I don't want to speak over my head. All right. But if I'm not mistaken, the Latin
071root of teach, right, is draw forth. I think I'm in there. I'm really close. Um, and that is kind of the profile that I've tried to take with it. You know, watch your safety, get your, you know, safety, do what you're supposed to be doing. Stay between the lines. Now, go, let's break something. You know, let's figure it out. Let's not be intimidated by it. Sitting on the bench isn't getting anybody anywhere. So, let's go and mess around with it. So, we have two beautiful CNC machines that are lathes. um or I beg your pardon. We have one that's a mill and we have another one that's a lathe. And these are CNC's. And so they are exactly what you would find at Cardinal Prairie. Um what's the one that we went out to in
072Britain? Uh there we go. Yeah. Which was a great field trip. They were wonderful to us. They just put us on the bus. And as a new teacher, they were like, "Hey, you want to come out here? We're going to take care of everything." And all I had to do was say yes. you know, cuz it's a little bit tricky for some of the hoop for a new guy to jump through to get 50 students on a bus and drag them someplace. And you know, I mean, it was a lot, you know. I mean, I can corral the kids, but there's some legislation stuff that I got. The bureaucracy portion of it can be a little like, what do you want me to do? Yeah, boy. Good luck. You're going to be, you know, and
073it's okay. I don't mind. And so, B has been great. We walk through that whole facility and their equipment is exactly what's sitting in my shop. and Harris Machine Tool came down out of South Dakota and they're here in our town now, you know. So, um, here's the other thing I think is brilliant. Um, giving our students the opportunity to stay here in our town, foster all this beautiful talent, get it going, and then give it a position here in Aberdine and let them keep bucking. That's what we want, you know, because that builds our community. It makes Main Street beautiful. All the other stuff that comes together is wonderful. I mean, it's endless what what the ripples that can come from what's happening over there in the in the facility. So So anyways, talking
074too much, you know, just to feed off something Mr. Olsson was talking about earlier, we had the um special education teacher of the year award winner in here. And I just think of this is just kind of an average school board night and we had the national debate coach of the year talking about the state debate champion standing by her sister who is the state debate champion followed up by the South Dakota Special Education Teacher of the Year, followed up by the strength and the incredible enthusiasm you have for your program and the words that you say about ATC and the things that are happening in public education. That is just incredible. And we get asked all the time, why do you do, you know, why you work do things for the school board. Watch
075the last hour of this uh video. Exactly. It's you make us very proud. Thank you for what you do. By all means. By all means. Call to do it. I had great men that kept me out of trouble. Thank you. Very much. Thank you. Thanks for coming. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you very much for having us. Appreciate it. Well, tear off Europe. And now the audit report. I'm asleep. I feel like every year I get to follow a really good and mine's not going to be all that exciting. Um, you have for 25 years. Yes. So, um, as far as the audit goes, I'm Tara Inquist. For those of you that don't know me, I'm the audit partner here in Everdine that does the school audit. So, I'll just go over the results of
076the audit, but first I want to discuss the timing of the audit. So, the audit is a little later this year than it has been in the past. Um, we did not get the OPED valuation report until the end of February this year and that was a delay I believe on the OPED valuation side which I can't even think of the service who you guys use exactly but that was a delay. So that reports an every other year report. So that did come in late this year. So normally I would say we get that in the middle of January when we do get it and it did come into February this year. So just so you guys know that is a timing delay this year based on that. So to cover the actual thing, I
077was worried about that. Just kidding. The OPED valuation doesn't mean a whole lot to you guys, but it is under an auditing or an accounting standard. So something we do have to follow. As far as the financial statements go, the opinion this year is an unmodified or or clean opinion. So we do audit all opinion units related to the school district. And then we also include the foundation in the school district audit as well. As far as the internal control findings go, this year we do not have any findings to report. So, we have a clean um findings report to give you guys as well. Last year, we did have two findings to report. So, last year there was a finding for material journal entries and then also a finding for overspending on the capital
078outlay fund. Those were both resolved this year. So, that's a good place to be at for the school district. And we did not have any non-compliance to report this year as well. Way to go. As far as the single audit goes, so the audit under uniform guidance, this is going to be your federal program. So this year we did have to audit special education and title one. Both of those were clean as well. So we did not have any findings to report for those two programs and we did not have any instances of non-compliance to report as well. So overall, what I would say is this was a very clean audit this year. Um, and all the business manager staff and all of the other staff that we get to work with related to the
079programs did an amazing job making sure they were ready for the audit and everybody was good to go for us to audit in a timely manner. Thank you for that. And we also get it involved as well. We do have some more IT stuff that we have to walk through. So they get to also answer questions from us as well. So, we do involve a lot of people within the school district. And then our required communication to those charged with governance. I'm just going to cover some of these, but not all of them. Um, we do have a requirement to be independent of the school district, which we are. Um, our significant risks identified relate to management override of controls, which is a required risk under auditing standards. So that basically is how could management
080override the controls currently in place to actually commit fraud on the financial statements. Normally it's through journal entries. So we do journal entry testing and we did not have any issues with that testing. The second risk is revenue recognition. This is also required risk under auditing standards. And um this basically is is there a way that the school district could overstate the financial statements to make them look better than they actually should. And we test revenues. a lot of your revenues come from the state or the county. So, we test and confirm all those with those um entities to be able to make sure the revenue looks materially correct. The next estimates are going to or the ne next risks relate to estimates and those are going to be related to the pension valuation, the
081op valuation and your self insurance for um estimates of incurred but not reported claims at year end related to your self insurance fund. So those are just basically risks based on the fact that it is an estimate that somebody does have to use different information to be able to come up with that estimate. Those are all determined by outside sources, not by management within the school district. Um we did not have any changes to any policies this year. So this was a year where we had no changes to the financial statements. We do have one change for 2025 that will have a minimal effect to the school district. As far as misstatements go, we did not have any corrected misstatements. So, as I noted before, we did not have any journal entries to report. And
082we do have one past or uncorrected journal entry that we have had for many years. I feel like we've had this entry since I started doing the audit. And that's just basically the um future retirement payments should be present value to what their the present value of those future payments should be. Right now, you just use a blanket gross value of what they are at the date. the um retirement payment is incurred. So that's the adjustment, not a material impact to the financial statements and nothing that the school board needs to be worried about. We did not have any difficulties or disagreements with management and we did did obtain a rep letter at the end of the audit. So that's what I have to go over with you guys and I would take any questions
083that you guys have. Just a couple real quick questions. In your in the handout, it talks about uh due from other governments. Is that just because of the timing of collection of taxes and paid to us? Is that because it hits that that year end for us? Yep. So that's actually going to relate to anything that comes from the state or county that's not taxes. So it's not going to be property taxes. That would be grants. It could be utility taxes. And it could be gross receipts tax. Okay. And that's a lot of times the grant piece is just relating to the timing of the reimbursement request at year end. So sometimes they get in before year end and sometimes they're after year end. Okay. My other quick quick question was talks about general obligation
084bonds, capital certificates and then financing direct. I don't know what that financing direct is basically in essence a lease. Okay. So yep. So I think there's a new one new lease this year. Okay. Perfect. Thank you. Yep. Other questions? Sounds like a pretty clean audit. Yes. Did you find that commonly in most school districts or not? I would say um I work on I don't even know how many school districts I work on to be honest. I would say we normally have journal entries in most all the audits we work on. We might have one audit that's a school district that's a slightly bigger than you guys that maybe was clean like no journal entries, but otherwise I would say it's pretty rare. We normally have kudos to our staff. Congratulations and your staff and
085Josh back there or something. Um, you know, we're kind of preparing as things are changing uh rapidly on on the national level. what happened with Department of Education, how funds will be I'm not asking you to predict the future, but uh will I Bailey be providing guidance moving forward if things do change rapidly and what that means for our state and ultimately how that feeds down to the the schools? Yes, right now we do have a group within our firm that monitors the changes with Department of Ed and what's going on with that. And um we've had someone that's been monitoring all of the grants across all of the different departments, not just Department of Ed. So they are monitoring that stuff as we go. We also do have people that do legislative work in
086Washington that give us updates. And so they mostly update on the tax side. They're probably going to have to expand a little bit into some of the other departments at this point in time because of all the changes that have happening. So if there are stuff that we come aware of, we certainly um will let you guys know. We also do have some webinars, so potentially if those come up, I know Michaela is registered to receive those emails. But if that's something that I can pass along, I can certainly pass something along to her and she can get along to board members. Most all of our webinars that we put on are free to attend and they're just a Zoom call that you log into, so anyone can log into it to be able to
087listen to those updates as well. Well, Columbia's got $40 million they're losing, so maybe we can tie into them. That might stream here. Well, with that, I would ask for an approval for second approval. Motion on the floor by Sharp, second by Mr. Alm. Any further discussion to be had on the audit report presented by I Bailey? All those in favor by saying I I same thing. Thank you. Thanks. We do have a need for executive session. I'd ask for a motion to move into second. Motion by Sharp, second by board. All those in favor signify by saying I. We are in executive session. Thank you very much everybody.