001all [Music] right stands Nation indivisible andice okay roll call Derek is absent Julie here Lee is absent Melissa here Mike's here Spencer here here here here here Edie and Sammy here all right adoption of agenda Mo Spencer moves it I'll second seconds everybody in favor say I I I'll oppos say no okay motion carries 4 z uh no Warrior Pride today no board showcase today uh 7 The Other scho Board so Juniors took the act on the 11th and we started spring break today we're off all week um boys and girls they went up to state for basketball nobody won but they did Place spretty well I believe for the girls Y and then BPA and knowledgeable they're both making it up to State PP is making it we got about six going to Nationals
002um robotics is starting their competitions soon and I believe that's it cool good deal so if the boys win tomorrow they play Friday is that true Friday do you what time if they win they play if they win what if they lose I mean exuse me yes 8:00 on Wednesday if they would lose get the seed I thought I four they're playing mini haa Academy which is who our girls played in the first round as well so let's get a little them last we got Bragg right all right so tomorrow Friday at 6 all right cool um thank Sammy no public comment today consent agenda any discussion on the consent agenda okay in that case I would like to move the consent agenda have second have second the seconds all in favor say I I
003all oppos say no motion carries 4 z uh action items action item a will be a nomination to fill the bacon school board uh or the school board member vacancy we had three candidates submit letters of interest Chad harms John coochi and Carol Nelson the board reviewed the submissions and went through a selection process Chad harms was selected so action item B would be a resolution to appoint Chad harms to fill the vacancy and serve the remainder of the unex unexpired term um I'll make that motion second seconds okay so this then has to be a roll call vote again this would be a resolution adopting the uh nomination of Chad harms to fill the vacancy and we'll just take from the top Derek is absent uh just say yes or no Julie yeah Lee
004is absent Melissa yes Mike CS Spencer yes okay that resolution was declared duly adopted by a vote of four to zero or I guess it' be four yeses no Nays and two absent and then just so everybody knows that there's a 30-day period so April meeting U Chad can start serving are you going to inform do you inform him then or yep I can do that all right and and I'll inform the others if hopefully we can get that Financial retreat in before the next meeting if would he be able to attend that yeah because there wouldn't be any board action being taken all right okay sounds good um action item C is the revised budget any discussions or anybody like to move that Melissa moves it jie seconds all in favor say I I
005all opposed say no motion carries four to zero action item B is the Staffing changes uh any discussion on that okay would anybody like to move that okay Spencer moves it a j seconds right uh all in favor say I I all opposed say no this carries four to zero this will be the FTE changes for the 20 this is actually FTE changes for 2025 526 school year I'll move it second what seconds all in favor say I I all oppos say no motion carries four to zero administrative reports Mr bowler we'll kind of pck you back off Addie a little bit we had a great what Sammy sorry sorry um Sammy I mean we had a great winter season anything even from um gymnastics had a great year saw a lot of improvement I
006got to watch them participa one of their last matches of the Year couple wrestlers what's that one play one I play we had a couple wrestlers I made the state tournament obviously girls and um boys basketball like you mentioned knowledge bow six going to Orlando Florida for BPA so we got a lot of really exciting things that are going on just uh for my end of things we're really focused on between now and the end of the year and all the things that go with it I know you probably hear me talk about this all the time but anything from eighth grade graduation award tonights we're working on graduation getting graduation speeches put together scholarships are in full swing so we're doing all those things for this year we obviously have MCA testing that's coming
007up we Matt trying to look at some ways that we can hopefully motivate our students and and see some improvements in there just naturally through that want to do well we brain sorbed a bunch of ideas uh actually last Friday we need to put those into action um I'm still digging through them anything from a traveling trophy to you know some sort of incentive for them but any anytime you can add a little competition to it people generally will give it that little extra so lots going on yet this year and then uh we have registered our next year's seniors Juniors and sophomores for classes we're working on the schedule and having to make some changes then based on what students registered for we're already looking at numbers and what we are not going to
008be able to offer based on registration um numbers and trying to make those changes as well so that we try to balance our classes as much as we can we don't have classes that are too small and one thing that's really hard um even today we are looking at numbers I'll just use an example because I remember from today our ninth grade class is split up into three sections of science one class had 14 one had 28 one had 23 and it seems odd but it's all based on what do those students want to take as electives and where does that then force them to take a science class so for instance I don't know this to be true but if they said I want to take Spanish as an elective well that might automatically
009pigeon them into a different class and so even when we have numbers that are they seem like oh yeah split those in half it doesn't always work that smoothly so we're looking at all those things trying to make sure that we create the best outcomes and opportunities for our kids but um I know Angie was working on it again today of trying to see if we can flip some things around where we had a couple of really high classes in certain areas but then didn't have anyone really in a different class I'm just trying to balance those out it's it's a big Balancing Act there's a ton of work that goes into it um our eighth graders will register on Monday when we get back from spring break because this is exactly what we do
010every year we kind of manipulate the schedule see what's available to them and then we'll also meet with our um 7th graders the following Monday so trying to get everything buttoned up and with that obviously then we're also looking at Staffing changes for next year as far as um you know people that leave that we're not prepared for or maybe that we are prepared for retirements things like that so just really trying to get out in front of things you'll also notice I think Craig put it in an update we have a number of positions that are posted right now in order to apply for those out of field um positions they have to be posted for a minimum of 60 days in order to qualify for an AI commiss so that's where you'll see
011some of those jobs that are currently posted so thank you Nate anything else or by all means get old me if you have questions sounds good Mr W um yeah biggest thing going on at the elementary right now is MCAS um it's it'll it'll be going on here for a little while and definitely it seems like at all times there's some grade level doing some form of testing for a little while here um the two things I really wanted to bring up are about the Strategic plan so the um community outreach goal in our PD day on Friday our staff created a spreadsheet with each grade level outlining the things that were done this year the community outreach projects by grade level that will be done next year and then there's a column in that
012spreadsheet that shows um new ideas things that we haven't done but that we'd like to the plan is every spring to do the same thing for the upcoming year so um we didn't have a strategic planning meeting today we had one scheduled but we canceled it because of some illness and people not able to make it so wanted to give that update and then also one thing to keep on the lookout I don't know if the staff survey results for one of our other strategic goals the staff morale collecting feedback from staff um that should be available next month if not the following month so those surveys I'll be sending out to everybody the elementary teachers did receive it on Friday because we had that PD day and it was a good time to do
013it but looking forward to see the results and I will bring the results as soon as we get them cool thank you John yep Mrs June formerly known as she married a hispan um still kindy of hire for an open position in the daycare struggling to find someone who can commit to the position it's been it's been a struggle um we're still accepting enrollment for preschool for the fall hoping to get a few more in um in the next few weeks so we can get our classes ready to go um I've mentioned before we've been working with first children's Finance to look into um the Caps care finances and now we're going to start working with them to look into sack and throughout here to see what changes we can make in those two programs
014as well um we have men and women self-defense coming up on April 12th we have 55 and older driving coming up on April 14th and we just added a your land your legacy seminar for April 28th um of course to help farmers plan for their and their families futures um so I'm just going to get um advertising out for that since it just got added into our um programming so excited I I have a question forr do you have to be 55 to take that because I will turn 55 shortly after you have to you have to check in your insurance if they'll take it prior as an insurance get a discount right you get a discount it gets like 10% for years and you only have to take the four hour course now it
015used to be eight hours but now they just shortened four so okay I guess I just aged myself there um yeah a lot of good things going on and this one of the benefits of going towards the end is you know Sammy already brought up the basketball uh girls did a great job I was able to attend two of the games up there and uh both the games I attended they won I don't know what happened first one yeah I know I should have been all um they looked really good it was a the the fifth place game was phenomenal and uh um not going to mention any individual names but there were some individuals that's that really stepped up and um it was awesome it was very exciting um boys was already mentioned got
016Tuesday's game and we'll see what happens there uh BPA knowledge bow robotics again everybody one act play gymnastics wrestling I want to thank everybody for their efforts and coaches and and uh students participating in those activities as well um April 5th we have the 299 Foundation event coming up um hope people can attend that and uh it's a it's a fun event and it raises a lot of money that comes back and supports the school so it's a good one um another uh staff morale booster coming up I think we have about 30 or more teachers signed up to attend a comedy event in Lacrosse on Saturday Saturday um so tell what it's called it's it's a stand up yeah stand up thing it's called board teachers Comedy Tour so funny stuff so yeah that's
017probably why we got so many people to sign up looking forward to that and it should be a good time for everybody um we got our adsis grant submitted last week or the week before and uh it's always tough to put that together and we uh it lasts for two years and this is the year that you have to submit it and I always kind of hold my breath um we always seem to get it so I'm hoping that'll be the case but I still cross my fingers until we get notified that we received it um the other thing I wanted to mention is uh the um federal government avoided the shutdown the other day and um looks like Title One idea title 4 are all in that and funded um title two was not
018in that not specifically named but we're hoping that that will still get funded we get about $113,000 this year for that so hopefully that'll come true previously it was $22,000 um there was some interesting math that happened with the census last year year not that there was a census but every year we get a report of poverty um and we've always been around 6% in our district with of students 0 to 18 and 23 24 it was reported that we were at 0% which is statistically impossible almost um I pointed that out to somebody at the Department of Education who looked into Barb's been dog in this for a while um and didn't hasn't received any straight answers and and we got somebody that looked into it for us a little bit and all that
019told us that probably was a mistake made somewhere and uh the funding should return next year but uh so then but we don't know if we're getting the money funded we don't know yeah if we're getting anything funded and there might have even been a typo yeah a mistake so it is a big deal it is a big deal it cost us about $65,000 last year um so we'll see what happens there and anyway I want to give you an update on that um I presented to the uh teaching staff the elementary teaching staff last Friday at their staff meeting and talked about uh and this I I sent out to the board uh as an update but the short-term Surplus is shrinking from the November forecast from $616 million down to $456 million which
020a lot of that my guess would be as tied to the universal free meals um long-term deficit seems to be growing from the November forecast and has increased from 5.1 billion to 6.0 billion deficit both the short-term and long-term deficit are going in the wrong direction obviously um inflation is obviously something that can cause that uh legislators are advising school districts to find areas that can be reduced um in the update I sent to the board last week I have a list of schools that uh are are looking to cut significantly um and one of those of note is Canon Falls um cutting 565,000 they went out for a referendum last fall that did not pass and said well it doesn't pass that's that's what's going to happen and uh so they're cutting over half
021a million dollars a bunch of other schools in there too I won't bore you with that but some data just for public knowledge um that's impacting school districts unemployment reimbursement Aid u a lot of the things that were mandated come with one time Aid and $135 million was allocated to the state uh to use through fiscal year 27 um they're in fiscal year 23 40 million when you was used in fiscal year 24 56 million was used and in fiscal year 25 there's only $39 million left and uh that tells me that when June rolls around some of that's going to fall back onto the school districts I think there is a a bill proposed to put out another $100 million uh for that but again it's one-time funding and eventually that unemployment reimbursement Aid
022is going to fall on onto the schools and that'll be a huge hit um I think uh I think I have it in here last [Music] year it cost us $22,000 um in in fiscal year 2425 that number will be higher than $222,000 um also in fiscal year 2526 we our district is going to receive $43,000 less compensatory Aid unless something changes there um one that really has me kind of shaken in my boots is the paid family medical leave that's scheduled to start in January of 26 um will'll allow employees to take up 20 weeks off and the original cost was was supposed it's supposed to be split between um the employer and the employee um originally they thought it would be a 7% increase to both the employer and the employee um but
023now they're they're saying it's going to be 88% um and so that would be uh 37.4 $4 million 30 if it is they're they're estimating that $ 74.8 million total and a 37.4 million of that obviously half of that would fall onto the school districts um Barb pencil this out cost is approximately $30,000 for our district what's not factored in there is the price of substitutes however so that's just for for the employee cost and obviously school districts um will have to fund or pay for substitutes and that's not in there and I don't know how you do the math on that to figure that out I think a conservative estimate would be about a $50,000 cost that's going to fall right back on onto us that's unfunded so just depends how many babies we
024have lack of butter term there's been years where we've had three or four in the mid school high school one year alone that's part of having a younger staff is then we got the hip surgeries for the older staff too so yeah I mean I I'm we're joking about it but it's it's no joke it's going to be very expensive and one of those things that uh I'm hoping the legislature can fix but I don't know and I will end this quote and it it's c Doom and Gloom and with with the Elementary staff um what I'm trying to say is we're we're looking for ways to say we're we're already operating you know to the bone with with a lot of things but uh when we get um we're looking we're already talking we
025talked extensively this morning about next year and our staffing for next year and the following and the following year and uh what we can do um but at some point we will need to go and probably in Fall 26 we're going to need to go to the voters and say hey in order to continue to offer this level of programming we're going to need some help from the voters and there's no way around it schools are a tax supported industry and if we're going to continue to operate the way we're operating now we have to uh we have to go to the voters and ask an increase in our operating Levy um the good news is that we currently are one of the lower schools in the state I believe our per student is $461
026per student and U you don't have to go very far you're getting over $1,200 and $1,300 per student so um that's the good news the bad news is we're going to we're going to either need to reduce our programming or increase our funding somewhere so that's my bad news for the day CRA you stood a question I know the substitute bill is pretty high here and I don't know if it would go over here in our school district or not what ke High did this year is they don't hire substitutes unless it's Friday they got three or four gone call somebody but what they did is they had somebody that had their prep out fill in for the pur person that was abs and and they sa $7,000 first trimester know whether our staff would
027buy it or not or we do that quite a bit oh you okay well I know that you and probably John and N have been in the room more than once for so in the way we have it set up right now with teachers on call we pay for a half day or full day so if a teacher's going to be gone two or less and I was talking hours class periods of the middle school high school we fill internally versus higher a sub and then obviously if we can't find a sub then you know we're asking people to do it on their prep and you know I I subed last week again it just whatever it takes right so good what is the price difference internal versus higher in the sub well internally they
028get their hour rade so that's B markish though is it it's got to be close to a it depends on the future r that otherwise it's 706 so might be a little more at the lowest rate than thir the 20 days they bumped up to the 180 that's a we atlc 20 29% increase on the yeah that has some TR and those types of that's the stuff we would pay for a long term sub gets paid more than that too so that's when we're talking about Family Medical leave or those leaves it's significantly High $36 a all right and then I'm I've got some stuff put together but I want to do a community meeting and kind of lay some of this stuff out um too because it's not also not fair to go to
029the voters next year and say oh by the way we need more money I I want to lay out what's going on so heads up for that what's your timeline on that like soon or I would like to do it after we have our board retreat and kind of get everything flushed out and talk about it and then so I would like to do that early summer or I don't know how many people will come in the summer that's that's a year a year out to actually start for sure we we've got to kind of start yeah I almost said campaigning it's not campaigning it's laying out the facts and letting giving letting people have an informed vote when it comes time all right thank you Mr Ry Mr Mayer and just to piggy back
030off what Craig was saying because we're going to be reducing our debt service Levy going out for increase an operating L will still save the taxpayers money so hopefully that'll be about being able to smooth out the whole act um I sent a board report I don't know if anybody has any questions on that inste of me just going over it again would like to set up a finance meeting to go over 2526 um because this is a board's budget and the administration budget not my budget so we need to make assumptions on what even before the legislation is done what we think will happen for next year because we have to have it approved before July 1st so it'll have to be a to lay this um again just to emphasize that there will
031not be a summer food service program this summer I know there's been a couple parents that have come in and asked at the office um whether or not that changes based off any census changes that we find um going through why we had such a reduction in title funds but I guess is probably not because we had five years of offering it even though we didn't need to qualific um there was a new freezer getting installed into the elementary kitchen that's being done over the break here now that should help cut down on the number of borders that they can be placed to Rachel and they'll be able to storm more Commodities and things like that and then turn the old freezer into another refrigerator which will give them more room um I think a
032lot of the other things have already been by the other folks um the revised budget anybody had any other questions on that it's kind of the big thing for them time for next year all right thank you bar moving on Old business items this strategic Plan update John gave a little update on that and we had the bu meeting uh V on that to come next month everybody had an opportunity to review the HED project update the new business items is the reciprocity agreement between el school district and ourselves and Greg kind of laid that out in the yeah and I had a a call with MD [Music] again must been Thursday or Friday um we had one of our district patrons again reaching out to them and I think MD is kind of Mis
033reporting things they said well our our attorney is working with their attorney which is the same answer that we've been given for nearly a year um and and I just kind of responded back saying I wouldn't count on it because if they were going to do it I would have thought they would have done it by now I mean it's middle of March and the agreement between the states expires June 30th Windows getting kind of small there that to to have to look for that um I think Al mck school district is is ready to do something should the states um come to an agreement and we would have to rediscussed guardianship option that people have after June 30th well it's an option do you know if it's very complicated I mean is I I
034don't know I do know that there some area districts that that have some of them um that Hall has to go through an attorney and you have to get it done every year yeah every year so you go to courthouse and they have to bring it through court and then whoever say I live in Iowa and I have my sister is my kids Guardian I have to do it every single year my kids's address would technically be Minnesota but like when we have the visit we would still get the funding for those children because they're Minnesota now if you do it the other way of the agreement to Iowa then we don't get that special funding and or the extra Minnesota funding right so I actually was approached by a family that teaches here that
035their kids start in the fall and that's kind of when I reached out to Craig and said you know we should try to figure out they have quite a few kids and if they couldn't do it they would she probably have to quit teaching right just because they're there and so but they're willing to do it I think it's like $75 a year I think is what I was told but yeah it's just a stamp to for houon County so just procedural stuff if you know who to go and talk to yeah be nice if we had like the sheet that was like step by step here's who you call here's what you have to do here's the Fe boom boom boom and I mean Dereck knows a bunch of people he said that have
036been you just go and hand them out to these folks and be like this is how you do it because sometimes um like it's not knowing the process is enough dis you know is enough to dissuade folks from looking into it when if you had to just oh this isn't that bad let's just do it yeah who who would we talk to about that I was just going to speak up and say I I don't know that we can be involved in that I I'm almost certain there's something that school administration isn't supposed to advise or don't don't quote me on that but I feel like I've come across that well then I know after the first year if it's done so this specific family that lives in Iowa and they go to Spring Grove
037um a good friend of mine her kids have a Minnesota address and the guardian gets a letter every after the first year they do it they get a letter every year stating show up for court this date or this is when your court date is and they show up takes two minutes and then they have so it's just that initial set it's the initial paperwork of it and then that Guardian so my sister was my kids Guardian she gets a letter every year of when your court is to renew it for the following year so yeah sounds like it's just the initial yeah set but you guys couldn't go and like build a process like a procedure yeah I think we might get in trouble well I don't I don't know that for sure don't
038quote me out it but for some reason in my mind that I feel like I came across at one point that school administration shouldn't advise that process I don't know why I have that in my head my understand youe that might some oh yeah the family that I spoke to he actually was in my office and he called Mike Murphy on it just because he could walk them through it and the paperwork that needs to be done and they got their information online yeah so if they want to do it they'll do it but I agree if there's a web link you could say hey this is how you do it I think people are just suppos to stay don't know what to do I would imagine I'm sure I mean I'm sure it's it's
039a court ordered document I mean I can dig I mean I can research it that' be that'd be great yeah I'll dig into it and see if there's anything we can yeah because then we'll s d on our be hiring teachers like crazy all right okay so thank you Julie that'd be great you could find some stuff out there um school policies everybody's had an opportunity tow the school policies any discussion on that okay board member reports Melissa you got anything um we just have to find a couple times to go over what we just discussed um and then just a shout out to robotics is in Lacrosse this weekend on Friday and Saturday if you want to check them out so it's fun it's a fun event it's fun it's crazy and fun yeah
040it's impressive go down in the pits you go down into the pits that's the best part and you can actually watch them wrench in like they had them meet and or they had a a practice or a qualifying round they come back and they're fixing stuff and they have like x amount of time to fix make adjustments of stay out of the way yeah stay out of the way when they're in there's some fanatic fans too yeah yeah it's crazy it's an experience you're not doing anything Saturday Friday yeah and I took my boys last year that BL so Julie got no I don't yeah and I'll probably save most of it I left hand outs of home but I would recommend to every individual board member I haven't been up for four or five
041years to go up to the day at the capital and they invite all the school board members and it was kind of an eye opener this year and I thought they did a better job because in years past we try to see our legislators and uh you know they they weren't in or they were some other place but this year they had a specific time set for us to meet them and it was good we got to see Greg of course you know and of course he said his success kind of patting himself on back a little bit he passed more legislation than any other Republican I think in State history he said I always go to the other side get a two Democrats to go with me so he he's really bled to visit
042with and stuff of course he wasn't in a good mood it looked like he had to fight with somebody from the other party he had his hand all taken up got a picture of it because what happened he was trying to pull a TI out of the out of the tree there was some kind of thing in there sl's hand he get six or seven stitches in so but he still got his humor then we got to see Jeremy Miller too and that too the one thing they did come out first thing they said actually they had this year they had not only the school boards Association but they had the Minnesota Association of school administrators there too and they spoke a little bit going but the first words have come out of their mouth
043everything's on the table no sacred in this session so got in charge out of that and Craig knows more and I do with this one time compens they're talking about you know how the schools are funed so some of that stuff was way over my head but I've got about five or six different handouts and they have coffee points I'll bring them all in next week but it'd be worth your time to go up I think you know it's just it is it is an eye opener you get to meet them I had a piggyback with the Mary at Houston and the other and there two board members I think were there with them Norland and the other one would have been Swenson I I can't remember Swenson's first name probably our neighbors in the
044valley growing up but there's so many yeah Mark we had kind of good but otherwise I'll try to bring that I mean they're talking about medical funding and something about taking off 4.4% I had talk about the meday medical other stuff there too at our General Session and stuff so about you guys might know too you on the UI or whatever on the Paris were limited on something I don't know unemploy Insurance yeah that was it yeah unemployment insurance yeah UI got it there so started to remember so otherwise there's really no answers yet you know so they were saying but you know like they said to on the inflation I know the one representative said the bill won't get through so and I don't know that no answer compens you know what they're talking
045about what was it compensat compensatory funding yeah they're talking about hold harmless which would revert back to the funding um how do you explain that bar well right now it's based off those people units from so many years back and so now they're just dropping the whole harmless which in our case we dropped that $43,000 they're also talking about legislation bringing back paper applications because right now it's just based off the direct certified and not paper applications like it used to be years ago so that could change things because if the federal government does something with Medicaid that'll change it on the direct certified end if you allow you to bring in the paper application I could change it again too so there's a lot of variables the moving Parts yes the compensatory Revenue but
046as it stands right now we would lose that funding from current year next year otherwise that's pretty much it one note I wrote had something like 2.24 equals 2.74 and a two maybe it's a 2% slight increase and something I think the 2.74% increase is the inflationary uh so that we're guaranteed 2.74% increase um for inflationary costs and then any additional would go on top of okay I see I did have inflation area took some good notes Spence well my memory's not good a week ago but I'll bring in all the paperwork and everybody can look at it no Enjoy hopefully hopefully they'll go up next year whenever to get that opportunity because I know it's hard to take a Monday off because there's one big sign I seen in a barber shop one time
047it says one Monday are one hell of a way to spend 17th of your lifetime I don't know if guys all have good Monday but I have a bad Monday occasionally but I woke up by the time I drove up there that's all I have so all right thank you Spencer I don't have any the as far as the financial Retreat is concerned can we instead of trying to figure out a date tonight people missing could we send out one of those email invite things where people can put in their preferences that possible I'll I'll see if I can ask Karen to do that because I don't know how to do okay so sometime before the April meeting hopefully okay all right great is everybody good all right in that case I'd like to make
048a motion to adjourn the list of seconds all in favor say I all oppos say no motion carries four to zero it is 64