April 21, 2026 at 6:30 PM - Regular School Board Meeting

001When the closet comes open, >> we're good. >> Great. >> Nope. >> Good afternoon and welcome to the A April regular school board meeting. I'd like to call this meeting to order and turn it over to our clerk for roll call. >> Member Banks >> here. Chair Der present. Member Laughler Kemp >> here. >> Vice Chair Lul here. I'm Clerk Mixel. I am here. Treasurer Sidowski >> here. Member Williams >> here. >> Superintendent Maggus >> here. >> Assistant Superintendent Bonds >> present. >> Deputy Clerk Zunich is excused. Uh board secretary Pquette >> here. >> And our student rep um Garcia Henderson is excused. Our student rep Bulls is excused. and student rep. Medala >> here. >> Roll call is complete. >> Thank you, clerk. Now we can, if you're willing and able to stand for

002the um pledge of allegiance. We have our flag in the back of the room. I pledge algiance 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. >> Thank you. Next on the agenda, I'm looking for an approval of the agenda. >> So moved. We have a um motion from member Loal. Do we have a second? >> Member Laughler Camp has seconded it. Do we have any discussion around the agenda? Seeing no discussion around the agenda. All those in favor of the agenda, please say I. >> I. >> Opposed. We have an approved agenda. Next, I'll turn it over to Assistant Superintendent Bonds for our school and community recognition. >> Perfect. Perfect. Thank you. Good evening board.

003Dear school members, tonight I am incredibly honored to recognize a remarkable Duth public school student and alumnist that is Blake Eaton. Blake a 2022 Denfeld graduate was born with spinobipida. But he never let that define him. He began skiing at the young age of four and that early love for the sport combined with his fierce determination landed him on the world stage this winter. Blake represented duth our community and team USA in the 2026 winter parolympics in Italy. Specializing in parah alpine skiing, Blake competed against the very best on the slopes and he finished 20th in the world. His journey from our local hills to the international stage and arena is a testament to the perseverance and excellence we strive to instill in all of our students. Blake's success brings immense honor to the community,

004to his family, to himself, and he deserves all of the recognition. He is a powerful inspiration for future generations of athletes. We couldn't be prouder of his work, his bravery, and his unwavering spirit. Please join me in congratulating Blake Eaton on his outstanding achievements and thanking him for representing the Hunter Spirit on the world stage. Congratulations. Um first of all, thank you for the kind words. Um yeah little about obviously a little bit about me began scheme here went to school grew grow growing up in the district uh started out in MacArthur went to Stow then Lincoln and then Denfeld following my brothers and my dad all graduates of Denfeld so it was really cool to be able to represent um the Duth community uh the Duth school districtfeld and put awareness in um adaptive

005sports in the parolympics and more eyes on that we can get the better and So, I want to say thank you for recognizing that and me and it just means a lot to hopefully represent everyone here and hopefully I can continue to do it and uh show everyone what DUTH is all about. >> Congratulations. >> Board members would like to make uh any comments and or um as you uh like you can also step up and um shake hands of course. Congratulations. >> Thank you. >> What's your favorite? >> You know, as we um congratulate Blake too, I just want to um you know, really support the the unified classes that we are now really embracing stronger in our district and and I I get to see that in choir and fed in our high

006schools and middle schools. So, thanks for for sharing that, Blake. >> Do you want to go back? Yeah, I want to go back. I want to travel over Europe. >> Thank you so much. >> It's an honor to meet you. >> Congratulations. Congratulations. And thank you for being here. >> Thank you. >> Congratulations, Hunter as well. >> Oh, yes. >> Congratulations. >> You know, if I couldn't have gotten you on the speech team. At least I at least you you went to the Olympics, right? So, congratulations. >> Congratulations. Roger says, "Congratulations, we watched you. I think you were up really late. I went to stay way into the morning like three in the morning. I know. I appreciate your commitment. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks. >> Congratulations. >> Thank you again. Thank

007you very much. It's been sort of a joyful meeting and time thus far today. So, thank you for continuing that joy today. Um once member Loal comes back we will move on to the next our next agenda item which is the report of the superintendent. >> Let me just pull up my um my presentation. All right. Thank you. So, we'll start with my superintendence report. Uh again, when we focus on our student superintendent report, we also want to make sure that we're focusing on our mission, our vision, and our core values. Our mission is that every student every day will be empowered with learning opportunities for growth, creativity, and curiosity, and preparation for their future in a global community. And our vision is that DUTH public schools provides an academically engaging, safe and inclusive environment

008with high expectation, high expectations and responsible use of resources. And our core values are learning, excellence, equity, collaboration, and belonging. Tonight we have several topics and we start off we we enjoy the best part first and we start off with our student uh representative reports and uh we'll start off with uh Colleen Mala in just a moment from East uh and then we'll go into some budget reduction updates legislative update an update regarding our federal litigation and then a piece on education equity advisory committee and an update related to our area learning center. So, uh, Miss Meline, would you like to begin? >> Good afternoon, everyone. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to gather as much information from students since our April Pause Day is next week. Our swing into spring community service event last Sunday

009was a tremendous success. Since October, student government has been working very hard to create this event, and we were thrilled with the turnout. We raised over $1,500 for four nonprofit organizations. The League of Women Voters Duth, the Domiano Center, Animal Allies, and the Depot Foundation. We were very thankful that Hounds, Taylor Swift Club, and Key Club contributed. Attendees enjoy cookies, lemonade, and a variety of activities including face painting, rock painting, gaga ball, bracelet making, creating cards for ecumen, tie blanket making for Life House, spike ball, and bean bag toss. Additionally, Girl Scouts were there selling cookies, and we held a successful clothing and food drive. We are hoping to do this event again next year with even more activities and nonprofits. Next Wednesday, Student Point of View will finally be meeting with Denfeld's Gold Group.

010Unfortunately, I had my ACT during that time, so I will not be able to attend, but I'm excited to hear from the other students about how that goes. Climate Club and Key Club have organized events focused on environmental cleanup around the school for Earth Day. It is great to see multiple clubs and organizations working together on this initiative. Speaking of Climate Club, they have created a new innovative project called the pilot project. This month-long trial aims to introduce reusable utensils and composting during breakfast. Various other clubs will be volunteering to support this project, and I anticipate sharing more about this at our next meeting. The History Day State competition was held last weekend. I heard very positive feedback from students, and we even had two national finalists from East. Bian Martin, Gabby McDonald, Jupiter Saddowski,

011Katie Kadel, Llaya Walkin, Joselyn Morris are headed to state this weekend for speech. We have another dog run set for this Thursday to congratulate them. Our spring athletic teams, including track, boys tennis, baseball, softball, and boys and girls lacrosse, have all been staying busy with many practices and games. Our school play, The Little Prince, will be performed on May 7th, 8th, and 9th at 700 p.m. in the auditorium. I encourage you to attend and support our talented students. Student government will be hosting another tailgate on May 15th right after school before the boys lacrosse game. Numerous clubs will contribute with games and treats. There will also be another hot dog eating contest. Prom has been meeting since January to plan our night in Aiza themed prom that is scheduled for May 2nd. We also have

012a unified prom scheduled an hour before. I want to mention that I'm very interested in learning more about the citywide student council. I think collaborating with Denfeld and ALC will be very beneficial. So, let me know how I can help with that. As always, thank you for this opportunity and your time. >> Thank you so much. And I know that um I know that director Larva has uh some things planned for I believe the May paw pause day that that she was going to be gathering people and be having next meetings on that. Uh Assistant Superintendent Bonds might have more information, but I think that's that was the date, wasn't it? May. >> Yes. Ask questions. >> Yeah. Um do you want to ask you any board member questions for our student representative? >> I

013do. May I? So, I thought I heard you mention Taylor Swift Club. So, she's one of my favorite people. Can you share just a little bit more about the club? I'm very interested in knowing a little bit more. >> Thank you. >> Can Can board members try? >> It's a very great question. I know that they go over a lot of trivia and it seems to be very fun for a lot of different students to join. >> Excellent. So, um, it's hard to go from something so positive to something that is very serious and has impact, but we're, uh, going to talk a little bit about our budget reductions. As you know, uh, we've been focusing on the $4 million gap that is caused by our special education uh, costs and the the 60% cross

014subsidy rather than 100% funding. Our health insurance has gone up by 15%, which is another $2 million. and then transportation unfilled mandates uh unfunded mandates that represents uh several hundred,000 total. So the bottom line is that basically we need to reduce our spending and when we have 85% of our budget is staff and um staff salaries and benefits. Uh it's very hard after three years of reduction in a row to not have impact on people. We really try to avoid impact on people but sometimes there are those impacts. So uh really when we think about things and I just want to remind folks that we put together a guiding change which is a grounding document that talks about what are our key premises that we look at and really we wanted to make sure that

015we were we were focusing on being well principled in what we did did as opposed to just letting politics drive things and we wanted to make sure that we were very transparent in the way that we did things. Uh we tried to make our our decision-m student f uh student first focused. So again trying to prioritize the educational development needs of every learner. We also focused on mental health needs. Uh and through our work with uh the thought exchange we we saw that administrative overhead was an area of significant uh concern by the public and by staff and others. And so we we uh made larger reductions there. We also wanted to make sure that we keep our referendum promises. I think that's really important as we move forward as a community as we establish

016greater trust that if we've made a promise that we continue to support that promise. Uh and that we also wanted to make sure that we had a very inclusive process. So engaging diverse perspectives in uh every part of the decision-making was very important to us. Uh again the the reductions are out of the general fund. The general fund is u basically all of our nonrestricted funds. And through this process, our primary goal was to keep the reductions uh as far away from the classroom as possible. Uh and to achieve that, to keep it as far away as possible, but still there was impact, we made uh very significant reductions at the district administrative level of nearly 16% compared to the uh 6% or 4% from secondary and elementary. Uh but there were still impacts, right?

017And and even the the reductions at district level impact our students. We heard about that this morning in a meeting that you know we might be reducing a particular district level position but that position serves people in our our elementary schools and there's going to be impact through through reduction of all those those services even our operational aspects when we reduce um bus drivers or we reduce people in facilities those have impact on our systems and structures as well as uh the environments that we have for our our students. So the finalized plan includes a total of about uh four well it is 4,296,7 or 67 uh dollars in estimated savings in the general fund budget. It's important to note that these changes involve uh two significant district actions. One is reductions and reductions are

018hard but we need to eliminate certain positions or software contracts to save general fund dollars. We also are doing reallocation. So it's about reductions and reallocation. Reallocation is when we use restricted funds such as title or u special grants to keep essential essential positions. Other examples of reallocation would be when we're shifting resource to keep certain positions even if it's not through title. For instance, we uh at Denfeld we wanted to make sure we're keeping a number of our check and connect mentors. And so we found other reductions and uh made sure that we were keeping some of our check and connect mentors because we realized what an impact that's had on our graduation rates. So we are currently uh in the final phase of notifying uh dozens of educators and support staff regarding displacements.

019While we're working diligently uh to place as many individuals as possible into alternative roles for this next year, these conf these conversations, we want to make sure that we were emphasizing the human impact. So, we didn't just send out letters. We made sure that each supervisor talked with each person who was impacted before we sent letters. We also held meetings. Uh there was a meeting uh last night at the Duth Federation of Teachers. It was run by the uh the teachers union as well as other uh staff and and administrators from the district to make sure that people felt well supported in what we were doing. And then there's a link to the identified reductions that we sent out uh earlier today. And I'm going to just change my my viewing to that for a

020minute. And I'm not going to go through everything because it's uh in great detail. But uh I will just do a high level overview. So the first table talk it shows where the different reductions were at the different uh sites in different areas. So for example you see uh there was nearly a million dollars worth of reductions at district office and then the uh various areas overall. Uh but then there was also at the district contracted services there was another 600,000. Uh then looking at the sites you can see that in general at the elementary level there's uh usually um two or three positions that were impacted and at our high schools and middle schools there were more positions three to four uh positions in general that were reduced. So you see here uh the

021the impact on FTE which is full-time employee and then the estimated cost savings for each of the schools. So it talks about which positions were reduced, how much it saves the district and uh what that what that impact was. So those are our um various impacts uh throughout the district. Uh we we uh tried to again keep the impacts out of the classroom as much as possible. But this gives a full list of those uh impacted positions and programs and expenditures. Uh those were were all of the uh reductions that we made over time. Just come back here. So our legislative updates. I think the having these two items juxtaposed against each other is very important because I think our legislative advocacy needs to be as strong now as it has ever been because again

022I mentioned the c the special education cross subsidy when the state and federal government don't pay their full amount for special education it means that the needs of the students that we absolutely need and and want to fund uh that we we take have to take that money out out of our general fund. So, it's important that the state and federal government upheld uphold their moral and ethical responsibility to fund uh for our students and uh other things too. We're we're thinking about our duth promise funding. We're thinking about safety. Safety is a pretty significant issue right now. We're seeing a lot of different uh legislative platform ideas from uh the Republicans and Democrats. They differ somewhat, but there's still some hope that there will be some some additional funding for safety. Uh but in

023alignment with the legislative platform that we have as a district, I testified before the House Education Finance Committee earlier last week in support of uh House Finance Bill 4114, which basically was set to repeal the 200 mandated $250 million contingency reduction in special education aid. The governor, as you know, recently increased that saying that we would find 300 million of efficiencies. that uh bill passed out of the U. House Education Finance Committee with a unanimous vote. So that was positive. Uh but we're also hearing behind the scenes that while there's support for it, there's no money to support it. So So there isn't a a means of finding another $300 million. So it's not necessarily likely that when it goes to the Ways and Means Committee that it'll actually receive funding and move on. Uh

024but during my testimony I I I talked about how DUTH like almost all districts was was facing a systemic math math problem which uh basically I meant to have 60% uh driven by oh I'm sorry. So our 4.2 million about half of that is driven by the cross subsidy. So um I wasn't going with this as I've talked about cross subsidy is 60%. So that when I saw 50% that threw me. But 50% of our budget deficit is basically because of special education uh costs going up. Uh but we'll continue to uh advocate as strongly as possible. Next Wednesday, uh was Jeff Anderson, our lobbyist, is working to set up some uh opportunities for me to meet with uh different um representatives and senators uh talking about our needs and talking about uh the funding

025um funding needs that we have for PE per people, but also uh expressing gratitude for our our DUTH promise funds and some other things that we've received from the u from previous legislation. Uh as far as litigation, uh there's little picture. We're outside of the federal courthouse. That was on May 8th or I'm sorry, April 8th. Uh and as you know, we entered into a lawsuit as plaintiffs with Fidley School District and Education MOT Minnesota uh seeking uh to return to the protected status for schools related to immigration enforcement. Again, I want to reiterate that this was a pro bono case. There there were no funds from the school district spent on on litigation for this. Uh but really we're hoping that that we'll return to that protected status uh so that there's there's less

026chaos for our schools. So that court hearing was on on the 8th and we're awaiting the judge's findings. Usually uh the findings come out, you know, two to four weeks afterwards. And if there was a what they call a stay granted uh by the judge, that would mean that that would reverse the um the uh presidential order that allows for for immigration in schools for the entire country. So there's possibility that this would have nationwide impact and positive impact for our for our students and families. And I'd like to say a special thanks to um Superintendent Brenda Lewis. She from Fidley. has been really leading the cause uh on this and has has done a lot of advocacy in that area. We also have uh some some things related to our education equity advisory committee

027uh their bylaws and uh assistant assistant superintendent bonds is here but also uh director um Marica Guerrero uh sorry I'm little tired. So um our EAC history we have our bylaws uh started in in 2003 uh basically the work existed prior to that. Uh the EAC went under a revitalization process that began around December 2021. This process involved approximately 30 education equity partners who collaborated to develop new bylaws for the school board to approve. Several subcommittees were formed starting around the summer of uh 2022. And the most recent update of bylaws was in 2022. So the process for the bylaws update was that they uh held three meetings over the past four months and the challenge was that they identified a structural mismatch. The group operated the group operated as a committee but the uh

028bylaws outlined a community forum. So really trying to make sure that there was um alignment there. So the decision was that after careful deliberation we they agreed that they were going to officially commit to a functioning as a formal committee. So that they formed a dedicated sub they formed a dedicated subcommittee and engaged in an intensive collaborative process to rewrite the bylaws and those bylaws are coming before the board tonight for u for approval. I also have an update from the area learning center. the Minnesota Department of Education uh basically just this year, just just recently, they changed the procedures for approval of 4day school weeks. As you know, our AEO, ALC, and uh programs there have a 4-day school week. They've had them for uh over a nearly a decade and a half. And

029previously, there was no need to submit for a variance for such programs, but that has changed for the coming year. So basically when you hear about school districts moving to go to a four period day, they're now asking that our alternative schools go through a similar uh process. So basically um we are we are needing to to um submit that application. So we're submitting that application, but it's it's they will allow allow for significant flexibility right now. Um but the process next year will be more robust. So basically they they they want us to follow a process to ask for approval. Um but next year we're going to have to really go deeper and and uh really have a lot more dialogue around what is the impact of a four period day to think about

030uh how that is going to function. >> 4 day week not period. >> Did I say what? Sorry >> just clarify that you're saying four period day. I believe you because we keep talking about sixth period day six period day six period day but four day week. My apologies. So the 4-day week is what we need to focus on. Uh but given that the board so basically they need some proof that the board has had some communication about uh the 4-day week. So really um the the the school board has approved previous duth federation of teacher contracts with 4day week language since 2011. And we only need uh documentation in our minutes from tonight's meeting that we have taken previous action uh that has approved this. So that that's going to be reflected. But in

031the next the next year, I think it's important for us to dive more deeply into uh the needs of our ALC students and really think about how does how does that 4-day week impact so that we can think about how that that moves forward or doesn't move forward. questions. >> Member Laughler Kemp, >> thank you for uh a very robust um uh updates. Um just a question on the legislative session uh which ends on May 18th. So, um is will there be other opportunities uh for um that our lobbyists would like us to be down in the capital to uh meet? >> Mhm. Yes. I think so. I've asked him to um put together a schedule for us and think about different opportunities. This particular next Wednesday, there were there were a couple of people

032he wanted me to meet with and so he suggested that I that I come down on Wednesday. So, I plan on doing that. Um, but I think it's important for us to to really think about what other opportunities do we have because I think it's been very powerful to have our board members down there. We've been down there a lot and I think that it's been been quite powerful. We also um I received some uh thanks from uh several of our teachers basically with our our um district update. Uh they were advocating for very similar things. Education Minnesota, the DFT really thinking about that House Bill um 4114 and the special education subsidy. They were advocating for very similar things. But it's important for us to uh have our board members down. It's important for

033us to also think about getting staff down as well. And then a followup just uh just for the community uh if you were to encourage them to contact our local legislators on one or two things, what would you recommend our parents? Uh we have some students sitting out here today. We have community uh activist out here today. So um yeah. >> Yes. So I would recommend that people contact their lo local representatives and urge them uh to do several things. One would be to repeal the blue ribbon commission um mandate that we have to find $250 to $300 million of special education efficiencies because the as we know we've we've tried to find efficiencies and and it's it's very very challenging to find any places to reduce in special education because of the high needs.

034That would be the first point. I would also say that uh just in general funding for on the GE general formula is important. And then I think when we think about things related to safety uh that that's really an important area and I think that there's potential for some bi bipartisan support related to safety needs. One place that we talked about is maybe greater flexibility with long-term facilities needs so that those could be used for upgrading systems like our 20-year-old or probably now 22-year-old camera systems that we have. Uh, one other thing that I just going back in in the presentation to the budget. Um, I know that there were some some questions earlier around technology and how how the impacts of technology are impacting. I think it's important to note that we um of

035our of our huge um budget which is well well into the uh six figures of or I'm sorry the um well over $100,000 or sorry well over hund00 million closer to $200 million that we spend about $1.3 million on technology. So it's less than 1% is spent on technology hardware. Uh so that is is something that we need to think about. Uh but there are technology needs and when we think about technology needs sometimes technology can be actually a cost savings because when we consider the cost of textbooks those add up over time as well. And then also uh when we think about the way that we want to make sure that our our materials are updated on a regular basis. Sometimes subscription services and things like that can uh change based on what we're

036seeing. You know you think about the the Aremis uh missions to the moon recently. Wouldn't we want those in our our science textbooks? You know, we think about the um the the hardcovered books that we had with pardon >> smartboards. >> Smart Smartboards. Sorry. Yeah. We think about smartboards. We think about um our social studies US history books that that used to end with the Bill Clinton era. Uh and making sure that we keep things updated when we don't have the money to buy new textbooks. Being able to have updated subscriptions is a great resource and ability for us to to use, but it's important for us to think about use of technology, making sure that we're not um when it comes to screen time. We heard at our district advisory committee last night that

037um parents have a lot of concerns particularly related to artificial intelligence and they don't want a replacement of learning. They want to make sure that we're using artificial intelligence and technology to support learning rather than replace learning. So I think that's something for us to think about as we move forward. >> Can you also just touch on um the importance of uh kind of protections around cyber security and things like that please? >> Actually when I saw your light go on I was thinking that very thing uh that basically uh when we think about technology expenditures it's not just devices for students. It's not just smartboards. It's not just those those items. It's also our safety systems, our camera systems, our cyber security that we have to keep data safe. All of those safety measures

038are are quite costly. Uh also thinking about cyber security insurance. So making sure that we have those protections to keep our kids safe. They do cost a bit, but we want to make sure that we we put face safety as our top priority. >> You get to call it, not me. for any lights. I don't uh Okay. Sorry. Chair Durk Eater. >> I um have more of a comment than a question. Um I just wanted to remind our community if you go to Duth Public Schools isd79.org and then you look at the little tabs. We have a budget tab there where you can go in and see the budget, you can see what our spending looks like for the year for both revenue and expenses. And you can also find that guiding change document and

039look through how we walked through all of this um the budget process for every year. So that's a great um tool for our community to use because what we really want to emphasize at the Duth Public Schools is that we're doing this in a transparent and open manner. We don't have anything to hide from our community. We invite our community in um to have conversations with us around what our budget is and how we spend that money um on our community's kids. So, I really just wanted to remind our community, you can go to that great feature and find out all sorts of information. >> Thanks. That's a a really important point. I think another thing u just to make sure that we emphasize transparency um when we think about the we had some people

040ask recently about referenda and are we considering referenda. Uh, I think it's important for us to what most most districts do is they wait and see what the legislative uh what the legislative budget process looks like and if we end up with additional funding. Doesn't look like we're going to end up with much funding. So, I think we have to consider what our options are. Um but usually uh districts wait until the end of May to uh see what those results are. But we are having conversations behind the scenes of what what could it like look like? What what might it look like? But we also want to be very thoughtful knowing that uh it's challenging for people that with their their taxes and we want to be responsible stewards. Yet at the same time

041when we we reduce and cut year after year after year that there are impacts on our students. There's impacts on our programming. And also um unfortunately because of the mathematics involved in in our budgeting process not just here in duth but across the state we're going to see reductions every year of millions of dollars from different districts. And so unless the state changes their math and how we we fund schools uh we're going to have to consider do we need to go to our community because we're a lot of the things that we said oh my gosh no we can't do that for this next year. we have to take a closer look for next year because if we have to reduce by by several more million dollars, it's going to have uh going to

042continue to have impact. So, it's important for us to have a very transparent engagement process with the board and with the public around what our what our needs are. Doesn't look like there are any other questions. Concludes my superintendent report. That's me now. Okay. Next, um, we have, excuse me, following the superintendent report, um, on our board book, we have a schedule of a meeting and events that are loaded up for our community to look at. And then next, we'll move on to a report of our standing committee, and we'll turn it over to Assistant Superintendent Bonds to report on the committee of the whole meeting for April. >> Thank you. And that meeting was held on April 7th. And I want to thank uh the team and our presenters uh for all of their

043presentations and the information that they shared. And we had some student presentations. Uh first we had uh students from Denfield, a dash um committee. um they presented on uh chronic absenteeism and a proposal or concept that they are exploring which is to uh increase the number of mentors uh that will be available for our students at Denfield. So I just want to thank uh that team for that information that they shared today. Another pres uh presentation was provided by Barbara Eberg our early childhood and head start director. Um she provided information related to uh Head Start programming and also information for uh seeking a waiver. Uh information related to our graduation rates was provided by our directors, Director Larva and Director Sparts. Uh shared information again um I want to thank them for all of

044the data that they gathered and shared with the community. that really gave some insight on uh some encouraging data that we have related to our students um performance and graduation rates. So, I want to again thank all of our teachers uh publicly and our staff for everything they do for our students. It it really takes uh efforts on everyone's part to get our students across the stage and uh it's not just one program or one group of individuals. It takes uh a commitment by everyone especially our families and also our students. So just um really appreciate the data that was provided by our directors. Uh under improving systems, we had um Sheila Oaks, our director of child nutrition, provide an update related to the uh child nutrition supper meal audit. Um that was uh again

045given some indication of how many meals that are served and what are some of the opportunities for summer. And of course uh our executive director Zunich um uh provided an update related to our budget and just want to thank her and her team for all of the work that she's been doing um with providing us really accurate information. I also want to thank Adele Wellins and others who um as you shared a chair with keeping the website up to date and providing a lot of useful information um and that transparency that we want with our community. And so we do encourage individuals in the community to go to our district website to look at that budget information. So uh it's a a well done website and very comprehensive. So thank you to Adele and and

046others who helped her with that. And that was the call presentation. Chair, >> do we have any questions for assistant superintendent bonds? >> Member Saddowski. >> Thank you. I would just um kind of second your appreciation for Director Zunich and the work of our finance team here. Um you know, Superintendent Magus obviously went over um our budget reductions and a lot of the reasons for that. Um but I really appreciate the way that Director Zunich has kept us in the loop all along. Um we can go back and look at all the different budget updates that we've gotten. Um we review it every month in our HR uh committee as well. Um these just you know it's been a lot of hard hard cuts to make but I do appreciate her work on that with

047helping us try to forecast as much as we can and yeah just wanted to echo that. Chair Derk Eater. >> And um I would also just like to lift up some information that we found out during that committee of the whole meeting is our graduation rates. So while we continually talk about um cuts that we have to make across the district, our teachers and our um employees are still leaning in and doing great work work with our students and we all want to um acknowledge the challenges that we have in Duth when it comes to making sure every single one of our students has access to a free and fair education. But we are making strides every single year in improving experiences and getting our students to walk across the stage. So I also want

048to lift that up that our graduation rates are improving while we are making cuts um in the classrooms. So we are looking at legacy practices. We're trying to use our money in the best way possible to make sure that at the end of the day we see kids um getting their degrees and going on and doing important things for our community. So I just wanted to lift that up along with some of the difficult decisions that we have to make every year. >> Thank you. Member Laughler. >> Yeah, I I just wanted to follow up on that. Thank you, Chair Eer. Um uh we uh I encourage I I was talking to the two students who are here from uh east tonight and just to go to our committee of the whole meetings um where

049we get the presentations on the uh different um uh things that we're doing the changes that we're making um our curriculum on just so many topics. Uh so then when we get um the results of say the graduation rates or or other uh assessments and things that that we hear from uh you can really learn uh of all the different things that we've uh invested in um uh to to make changes to make sure we're meeting the needs of all of our students or we're striving to meet the needs. Of course, there's a lot of work yet to be done. Um but um so just for the public, uh that's the committee of the whole meeting that's being reported on right now is where we hear from our staff and uh hear um about the

050work and the changes and the investments that we've made um over the years. So just wanted to kind of tailgate that with the uh committee of the whole uh Great. Thank you for that report, um, Assistant Superintendent Bonds. And next, we will move on to our where we at? We are at our human resources and business services. I'll turn that over to the chair of that committee, member Saddowski. >> Great. Thank you. Um, yep. We had our HR business services committee meeting on uh, Monday, April 13th um, at 4:30 here. Um so I will start with our HR report. Um I say this every month but you can find just like you can find our committee the whole uh meetings on YouTube you can also find all of our committee meetings. So our HR and

051our policy. Um and so we we spent uh well over an hour going over the hundreds of pages in here. So at this meeting I just kind of give an overview of the highlights from each of the um kind of department reports. So I'll start with the HR. Um for the HR report, a few things that I would lift up and highlight is that our human resources department is working with special services department on the next round of cohorts for the 2026 um nextgen teach apprenticeship program. Um they're also working with sites and leadership or have been on the budget reductions which we really appreciate. Um, you'll also note kind of related to that in our HR uh update is that our insurance premiums went up by 15%. For example, and I know um that

052we do a really good job of trying to um address those costs and keep them down, but nonetheless they did go up 15%. So that contributes to kind of the situation of where we're at with our some of our budget reductions. Um we're also starting a para mentorship program at each site which is exciting. And then um you'll see at the bottom of the report we have um all of our open positions um teachers both certified and then non-certified. Seeing no lights on, I'll kind of continue with my uh overview. So, for our enrollment report, sorry, lots of pages here. Um, so our total enrollment right now is sitting at 8,138 students and is still trending up, which is um really fun to see. I like looking at the bar graph in that report um

053because you can kind of see where we're at over time and you can see that we're up um you know this time last year compared to this time right now we're still up now. And then I will move on to our child nutrition report. Um I guess I would add too just about our enrollment. it's been going up um over the last few years and um part of the you know budget that we haven't talked about is that our um ADM is based on where we were at two years ago and we have gone up by many many students over the last two years. So that also contributes to kind of our shortfall of where we're at. So I just wanted to point that out. That's just how it's set up is that we're uh

054we get reimbured based on our enrollment two years ago as you as you guys know, but I wanted to share that with the public as well. Seeing no lights on, I'll continue on. So, for our uh child nutrition report, um our child nutrition department held a staff development day for child nutrition employees. And they went over a lot of different things, including um how to uh process produce in the best way, knife skills, handwashing, all those um things that we would hope that they would be kind of working on given the work that they're doing. And we really appreciate their work. Um they completed 30 health department reviews um and no infractions were noted. And then we have job openings at East Lincoln Park, Pedmont, Congden and Denfeld. For our facilities report, um I guess

055I would just say that our first street buildout is still on time and on budget, which is great to see. Uh our facilities department is also working on lighting replacement at Lowel and Lincoln Park Middle School and um they hired a supervisor of operations and an assistant facilities manager. One of those was a promotion from within which is really great to see and one of them was actually a returning staff member uh who returned to the district for a safety committee. Uh that is on page 12. Uh oh yeah it's you guys don't have the page numbers but um at any rate I would highlight from the safety committee that the total case injury report was 2.19 in March um which was an improvement from last month and of the 26 reports of injury only

056two were um OSHA recordable and the highest I think the highest injury uh category is injured by student um and so when When I kind of think about that and I think about um kind of some of our struggles with special ed funding, I mean, it's just really important that we have these programs staffed fully. And it's really unfortunate that we've been in this boat in public education for a long time where we're only being reimbursed 60 cents on the dollar and now we're looking at, like Superintendent Mega said, another $300 million of cut to special ed. And we we I know all feel it's very very important to make sure that we're fully staffed, adequately staffed, and we're we're going to make sure that happens. But these are um some of the struggles. And

057when we see this number here, I can't help but kind of draw that correlation, which maybe it's I don't know. Superintendent Magus, do you have something to add? >> Um sure. And I think uh we have significant needs going up as as has been pointed out. And I think it's important for us to really think about the the uh degree of need that we're seeing with through our IEP process. And I process we can't we don't go into AP processes saying let's see how much money we can save or let's we have to look at what are the actual needs of each and every student. And what we've seen o over the the past um year is that we we added we added 17 paraprofessional positions and eight teacher positions. So even we hear quite

058often during listening sessions and and and labor management meetings about the need that's there and and about um you know the the needs of the the students, their academic needs, their safety needs, but also the the safety needs of staff sometimes in challenging situations. And so, uh, we want to make sure that we have that funding, but I think when you think about the scope of need, I I don't think most people realize that we're talking about, uh, tens of people that we've had to add because of the the growing needs that we have. So, we want to make sure that we're continuing to look at all best practices so that we can be as fiscally responsible as we can be. Yet at the same time when the needs increase and that we see that

059not just here in Duth but around the state uh we have to think about what is the uh ratio of of increase that we're seeing. >> Great. Thank you for um expanding on that. Appreciate that. Seeing no other lights on um I'll continue. I'm going to move on to our technology report. Um we're our technology team has been evaluating um options for Chromebooks and uh smart smartboards or flat screen devices. And then our um technology manager, Greg Krueger, went to um the Minnesota Chief Technology Officers Clinic that was put on by the Minnesota Association of School Administrators. Um and one of the things that they talked about there was, you know, concerns that families, some families have about technology and just trying to um kind of listening to some of those concerns. And then um

060they also Greg also got to connect with several vendors um to discuss potential um purchases on projects as well. Um I think um yeah, anything to add to that? I lost my train of thought. I was going to make some other comments just about technology in general, but I um I know we've been we got a few emails today on on technology. Um and I would just say um you know I think that it's it's you can um support outdoor education and recognize I guess just my my thoughts um that some technology is important. I've seen it be um really good. Chromebooks have been a really good tool for my student my students in Duth public schools whether it's you know learning how to email the teacher uh to ask for extra help or extra

061documents whether it's um looking in the Google Drive to look at different assignments again um and so um I think it's important to kind of think about um you know how much we're using technology but also kind of recognize that it's a nuanced issue especially when we take into account some of the things Superintendent Maggus was talking about earlier too about um costs of textbooks textbooks getting outdated really quickly. Um so um yeah, very nuanced issue. Um but we really appreciate the feedback from our community and um I appreciate being able to look at uh kind of the cost um the cost of these things versus um what other things cost. So seeing no lights on or other comments, um I will move on to our next report which is our transportation report. Um the

062transportation department is continuing to look for efficiencies um whether it's ongoing routes adjustments um you know for efficiency or you know identifying other cost savings initiatives um always ongoing um just updating the the routes. Um, you know, again, I would add since it's a topic on the budget is that we've we've already had to add an extra $75,000 into our budget next year, as many of you know, but that's that's just due to the increase in gasoline prices right now. And we don't that, as far as I know, um, it's that's a lot of money to add in $75,000 just for gasoline. Um, and that's a very conservative amount. So, all of these things kind of contribute to kind of where we're at. Um, just really appreciate our transportation department for the work that they

063do. And then seeing no lights on, I would kind of go over >> one transportation. Sorry. >> I just want to commend uh the transportation department and uh particularly Jeremy Caspipes and all the drivers. when we had uh the waterman main main break at Denfeld and we had to close down school for the day within an hour uh we had students all picked up and and heading home. So I think that was a very impressive uh turnaround time to get people people came in from their day off and they they rushed in to to help our students and we had uh the students out of the building in less than an hour. So I think when we think about transportation that was that was a a uh very impressive feat. >> Very impressive. Thanks for

064bringing that up. Um well I will move away from our department reports and um go into our recommended resolutions. We have two resolutions um coming forth through our committee this month. We have the acceptance of donations to Duth Public Schools and then we have the resolution establishing the school forest site for Mayors Wilkins Elementary. On our consent agenda um you'll see our HR staffing report and then also of course we have our financial report and our fundraisers. So, Director Zunich is not here today. She couldn't be here. How So, if you have super specific questions, um we could um see if Superintendent Maggus can answer them or or direct them to Director Zunich in a sure >> um email. However, I guess I would just point out that we've been tracking >> this obviously every

065month. And in the general fund, one thing that I've been really looking at is um on the right you'll see kind of the percent of where we're spent down and we're at 75%. Whereas really we would love to be at 66.5 at this point in the year. So we keep trending above budget for all the reasons um that we've talked about tonight. And then also um I would direct your attention to the top of the page where you'll see um that this is a revised budget. This happens every year where we kind of take into account our special education cross subsidy um and then our revised revenue for ADM. I talked about how um we're increasing our enrollment and so you will see that kind of reflected at the bottom. Superintendent Magus. >> Sure. Um

066I know we're not to bids and quotes, but I do have a comment on bids and quotes when we get there. So I didn't I didn't mean to jump on so quickly. >> Sounds good. We're excited about our bids, RFPs, and quotes. Um, yeah. So, our next item is our is our fundraisers. We just really appreciate our community. Um, there's a lot of uh really great fundraisers that happened within the school. So, thank you to teachers, parents, and then we will move on to our bids, RFPs, and quotes. We have um quite a few. So, we have bids. The first two bids is um 1345 and 1347 um for Lel Elementary Parking lot improvements and Laura MacArthur tennis courts respectively. Um these are part of our long-term facilities maintenance plan. And then we have um

067bid 1349 for uh full districtwide area network services um including the first street building. So that's uh I believe internet. And then we have uh bid 1350 for the Wi-Fi licensing and support. And then 1351 is for our dairy services. And we had a conversation about that that that's a we we haven't had anyone else bid on the dairy. So we're we're renewing that. Superintendent Magus. Yeah, just a clarification on bid number uh 1347, the Laura MacArthur Elementary Tennis Courts uh piece. Uh I just wanted to clarify for the the public because I did ask a couple and for the board I did ask a couple questions during that meeting uh related to the um potential of we we've been working with with a variety of community members on exploring the possibility of like a

068Spirit Valley Wellness Center. You've probably heard about that in the news and other places. Uh and and I know occasionally we've talked about do we want it uh right next to the school and in on that side or would we consider maybe trading some land for with the city for park space and and doing something where the tennis courts are. But that um that um desire to have that that that community center in that area, it hasn't yet come to fruition. And so, uh, from a facilities perspective, it's still important for us to continue through and do that maintenance work on those tennis courts because they're in pretty significant disrepair and disrepair to the point where, uh, we become worried about liability and people, you know, hurting themselves, uh, trying to play tennis. It's it's

069a it's a it's a very vital immediate need for safety factor. And so, we're going to need to move forward with that anyway, even though I asked the question about that during our committee meeting. Great. Thank you for um for that update, Superintendent Magus. I thought it was a good question, but um that totally makes sense. Um Chair Derk Eater, >> I'll um be speaking on this topic as a Denfeld boys tennis, Denfeld mom. Denfeld boys tennis mom, however, and that is very true. It it's getting to the point where it's it's gets nerve-wracking around watching those kids run around the tennis court and and using it. So, and it also um when we play tennis and have schools come in and play tennis on those courts, it's I think I'm I'm thrilled to hear

070that that court is going to be resurfaced because it really is a it's a need because it does get used quite a bit. Great. Thank you for that perspective. Seeing no other lights on, I will move to our miscellaneousformational items. So, uh, um, item A, we had our district properties update. So, um, a lot of information about the First Street project. Carpet is going in and, um, I think, you know, if any of us would like to get another tour of the First Street building, we can reach out to Brian Brown, our facilities manager. And then we have our expenditure contracts. Um, a couple that we talked about um, at the meeting. There's a lot of them in there and we reviewed them all, but I would highlight some of the um the frontline education.

071These this is uh financial planning analytics and we kind of talked about how um obviously these have been really good resources for um director Zunich, but with her retirement um on the horizon um it's really good that we're continuing this so that when we hire someone new, there's going to be that continuity moving forward to help that new person on board. And then you'll see that we talked about some parking options for at the first street building. >> Just while you were discussing u executive director Zunich in the vacancy, I know that uh director um Johnson is going to be posting for the CFO position in the next couple of days. So, if we see people that are uh really good candidates, and also uh Brett is going to be down with Simone at uh

072the um Mazbo conference, which is the the business officials, and he's going to be wearing a placard that says, "Do you want to be my boss?" So, we're we're we're going to really do everything. Not not I I actually think he's half serious that he might do that because we want to make sure that we get uh somebody really high quality because uh director Zunich, executive director Zunich leaves really big shoes to fill. So thanks. >> Okay, thank you. Um so yes, lots of expenditure contracts. Um then we have our no cost contracts. So we see some um you know student teacher placement agreements. We see some some other umus in there. And then um we have our revenue contracts. Um and then we had our grant applications which is page 2011. Let me look

073at that. Again, just you know, gratitude for our staff who apply for a lot of these grants. Um when we look at our budget cuts, we know that a lot of these grants can kind of fill some of the gaps for some important initiatives. Um member Lel, >> I was I was just preparing. You can finish the I was going to I'm going to talk about I just have a question about grants or a an over overview of it. Just I'd like all the grants and we're appreciative of grants and I really feel like um our district has taken a lot of measures to make that grant form pretty visible. I know I see it. I see it though because I think I know we've struggled in the past. So then I see it. But

074you know in working with colleagues especially when I'm so um often in the Denfeld community um with our teachers that for for whatever reason we're we're still not not getting every everybody on board as far as who's filling out grants when they need to. And I think um and it's sometimes I mean and and some push back I get from people because now of course I'm on the school board and I want everybody to fill those forms out because it's so important. Um it's like well you know that's just one more extra hurdle or you know I don't know where the form is and you know and I tell them there's there's only about five questions on the form you know it's not it's not extensive. You're not you're not rewriting your grant. So, I'm

075I'm trying to be our voice too to get those grants because the other thing I think struggles too is one we do want to recognize those um organizations um whether they're local organizations, I think of the Irving Community Center, I think of the Packle Foundation, you know, there's some local Rotary clubs that that give money and we want to make sure that that they're getting the thank yous because I know once the grants get recognized, I think we still send thank yous. I know that I've seen the people I get thank yous from. But the other thing is is it helps the finance department know where those grant monies go. The grant check comes and sometimes it doesn't come to the person who writes the grant. It comes to the district and then there if

076if we didn't fill out the grant form, I don't think we have a really good pl understanding of where the where that money is supposed to go to. And that's my bigger point is that I think that there's always been confusion about about where did that grant where did my grant money go to? And if you didn't fill out the grant form, we don't we don't know that you f that you got a grant. My observation. >> Yeah. And these are our applications. So not grants we've received quite yet, but these are grants that are being applied for. Um >> but many of them we do get >> speak to the >> Okay. All right. Great. Thank you, Member Loel. And then um we have our change orders signed. We reviewed those. Um those seem

077within the scope. And then we had our last item was letter G and that was our experience modification uh factor rating, our mod rating. And I could turn to that page. Remember Mike cell, did you have anything to add on that? I'm not trying to put you on the spot. I have to turn to the page. >> I can say that you have done a wonderful job summarizing our meeting thus far. while you find your page. >> I could add more about grants. >> I I think our I mean our mod rating was good. That's a workers comp kind of valuation and there's nothing to be concerned is what I would say. So thank you. >> I have a question >> and I apologize. >> I should have asked it. uh in in the section

078before this, but um uh I I I listened to the um HR business meeting like I always do and um there was a question about some of the bids uh if they were union shops and I I didn't I don't know if all of that was answered. Uh so I just wanted to kind of verify. Yeah, I think the questions actually came about uh for the bids uh 1345 and 1347 and I believe member Mikeell and member banks can help me remember but I believe that they're both union shops and I think the question centered around that. >> Yeah, we received information from the facilities director that they were both union >> Oh, you did? It might be helpful um if you're asking a question in committee that might be important for all of us

079to hear if we got that answer if someone's going to follow up with an email. So, thank you for that feedback. Um when we if it's not sent to everyone, we'll make sure that it gets forwarded to the board. >> Okay, great. Thank you. And then just uh uh member Loel did talk about the uh grant process and I know a few years back when we made some changes in the great grant process we had a an update on it and and so we better understood the process um uh if we get questions and so maybe that would be something for the committee of the whole meeting or something. Yes, I will be happy to come back and give the board another update related to the grant um writing process and the committee that we

080have that reviews all of the grants and so forth. So, I'll be happy to bring that uh to the board um in the future. >> Great. Thank you. Thank you. Great report. Um member Saddowski, >> can I just jump on um member Laughler Kemp's um reflection on grants too? And you're right, we don't these are grants that are being requested and of course we want them to come before um the the administration first and then for board approval because some of those grants might cost us installation costs or m maintenance costs eight years from there. But the other thing is is is I really would like another document that tells us that the grants were received. And so I know that's just more paperwork and when we're reducing and reallocating, you know, especially at the

081administration level, I don't want to make more of a job. But we don't often hear if those grants um actually were approved. I think that's what we hear about in our resolution of acceptance to grants to DUTH public schools. We just didn't have any this time, but normally we have our resolution of accept. We accept every grant that we see come through. So we do see that every month that there are grants because we have the resolution for acceptance of donations and then the resolutions for acceptance of grants. >> Great. >> Yep. Seeing no further question. Seeing no further questions for the HR business services committee. Thank you, member Saddowski. And then we will move on um to the policy committee and listen to um the chair of that committee committee, member Laughler Camp. >>

082Great. Thank you. Um we had our policy committee on Thursday, April 9th. And as uh member Saddowski said, it's also on uh YouTube. Uh and um everything I'm going to bring up is on our consent agenda. Uh this month uh we did not have any policies for first or second reading. So we just had policies for review. So uh as I always do, I'll do just a quick um name of the policy and the purpose. Um and uh again be they're for review just because they're many of them are either legislative changes or or kind of minor changes on the policy. So our first one is policy 208 development adoption and implementation of policies or as we like to call it the policy on the policies. Uh and the purpose of this policy is to

083emphasize the importance of the policymaking role of the school board and provide the means for it to be an ongoing effort. And uh we last uh updated it in 2022 and um so it it's up for review and as I was sharing with the the east students that ma uh policies are one of our key roles as a school board member uh and so uh this policy is an important policy on policies. Uh the second policy we reviewed was policy 302. Um the uh superintendent. The purpose of this policy is to recognize the importance of the role of the superintendent and overall responsibility of that position within the school district. And um this was last reviewed in 2017. And um again um it's it's not a required NSBA policy. So that's kind of the change

084at the back as well as um uh under responsibilities um uh there's an additional e uh in terms of informing and making available to all schoolboard members perspective or other legal suits filed by or against the school district offers to purchase school property and petitions received by the school district. And um uh another key role of the schoolboard member students is hiring an excellent superintendent and working with them. So thank you superintendent Magus. Uh >> next time >> yeah the next um uh policy uh for review is 211 criminal or civic uh civil action against school district schoolboard member employee or student. Uh and the purpose of this policy is to provide guidance about the school district's position, rights, and responsibilities when a civil or criminal action is pending against the school district or a

085schoolboard member, school district employee or student. And uh this was uh last passed in 2024. And again um there was just an addition in terms of the cross references um uh interviews of students by outside agencies uh which we passed that in March. Uh policy 404 equal opportunity employment opportunity. The purpose of this policy is to provide equal employment opportunity for all applicants for school district employment and school district employees. And again, you can read through uh some of the changes. There was um some definition changes was the main thing. Uh and then uh um including uh uh our new district office and Anthony Bonds as the uh person that uh complaints are brought to. Uh and that's policy 401 uh equal employment opportunity. and we last reviewed that in August of 2024. Uh the

086next policy for review is policy 420, communicable diseases and infectionist conditions. The purpose of this policy is to ensure the health and safety of all students, staff, and contractors within our school district. The school board is committed to implementing measures that prevent the spread of serious communicable and infectious diseases. This policy aims to balance the need to protect public health with the rights of all individuals including those who may be affected infected. By adopting these measures, we can create a safe and welcoming learning environment for everyone. And again, there's uh further information uh in a number of different categories. And the main thing was um uh a new uh under resources um um additional resource with the Minnesota Department of Health. Um and again we adopted that in 2024. Uh policy 604 instructional curriculum. The

087purpose of this policy is to provide for the development of course offerings for students. And again uh you can go through uh and review it. Uh the major change was a legal reference an addition at the end of a legal reference and I just spent a lot of time on that and so if you want to know more about th those changes uh in that uh court case I will be glad to share it with you. I was just interested in that. Um uh so uh we last adopted this policy in March of 2024. And that was our very short and sweet uh policy committee meeting. And did I miss anything? Uh member LoD or member Williams. Okay. Okay. So, uh thank you again and thank you again to Patty Pquette who is the keeper

088of our policies and provides a lot of the background work on the updates. So, thank you. If I could uh add something to since we're talking about Patty, tomorrow is uh administrative professionals day and I think we should definitely recognize because uh I recognize her as my executive assistant but also I'm sure the board because she serves as as uh the executive assistant to the board as well. I just like to say thank you Patty for everything you do for Duth Public Schools. Thank you for adding that. Of course, we love her and all she accomplishes. Thank you. >> I I just wanted to say I always I've told Patty this, but I really wish I had a Patty in other areas of my life, work, personal. So, thank you for everything you do. Uh,

089seeing no other questions around the policy committee, we'll open this time up for any general board committee updates. Anything anybody on the board would like to share, now is the time. Member Saddowski. Um, well, we had a good intergovernmental meeting last week, was it? U member Mike Cell and member Loofald and I along with um we meet with county commissioners and or county commissioner representatives as well as city councelor representatives and we kind of talk about issues that are related across those kind of three areas of government. And um I guess you know one topic that came up was some um funding streams that are going to be available uh through the county and just um it was a really productive meeting because we were able to kind of talk about how that may be

090a good fit for some of our check-in connect coordinators. So just had a really good discussion there. Um and I would let I don't know if if members Mike Salald wanted to add anything on to that. Um, as far as I can't think of any other committee updates at this point. I I'm I'm really glad member Laughler Cam could go to the Head Start Policy Committee. I really appreciated that. And um I know member Ether, you went to the APEC >> um which we both serve on and I appreciate that as well. I was able to go to Denfeld's along with member Mikeell and member Loel. Denfeld has had their um play this last weekend uh Taming of a Shrew. >> Kiss Me Kate. >> Oh, Kiss Me Kate. >> Based on that though, based

091on the Shakespeare, sorry, Kiss Me Kate, it was very well done and uh not necessarily committee update, but it was a great time to spend some time in community and really support the uh Denfeld Theater. member um Laughler camp. >> Okay. So, I I had a busy month this month uh on some of the committees. Um but the one that member um Sidowski mentioned was the Head Start Policy Council met on the 9th. I know we all had a great um update in our committee of the whole meeting on Head Start this month uh as well. Uh but I guess two things out I I love going to that committee with parents. Um but uh last week was the week of the young child. Uh and so they just really wanted that highlighted. So uh

092and the governor sent a proclamation of um April 11th through the 17th being the week of the young child. And then the other thing is May 20th. Put it on your calendar. We don't have a schoolboard meeting, but that's the end of the year celebration that Head Start uh does each year. It's going to be at LOL where they meet and they're going to have a uh like a DJ and uh some fun. So, I know I've attended in the past and some other board members have, so they're going to send a more formal invitation, but I thought if you wanted to put it on your calendar, May 20th. Uh and then uh I uh on behalf of uh Amber Sidowski, I attended the um monthly parent advisory council on special ed and um uh

093as uh they're doing a series of at their meetings of trainings and um the one I had a chance to attend with some of the parents on that committee as well as our staff was on uh the background and overview and history of IDEA uh which as I think you know is the Individuals with Disability Education Act at the federal level. Um that was passed back in 1975. So a lot of good information on there. We've uh been focused a lot on special ed uh tonight and and that act uh is important um because it's been underfunded the whole time it's been there and um I know when I was uh with the PTA for about 10 years had many opportunities to lobby on it in the 80s and 90s and I we were looking

094for more funds back then. So, um I I really appreciate that they're doing the these series of u trainings. Um and and so thank you for have giving me that opportunity to attend for you uh uh Amber. And then the last thing I won't say too much about because I think I'm going to be reading the resolution on but um on the acceptance of grants from the Duth Public Schools Endowment Fund and so I can kind of highlight a couple things on that when I do the resolution. Uh and um and then lastly, the safe routes to schools had their meeting. I serve on that and right now they're assessing kind of morning and afternoon times um at a number of schools across the district and that's happening this week. So uh and next week.

095So I and I talked to Superintendent Magus about this. I went to drop Camden off and there were a bunch of safe routes to schools checking when we came in and checking. So I was like that has to be safe routes to school. So >> So that's happening. Yep. This week and next week. >> Yeah, it was great. They had people um at all the different places where we came in and went out and they were paying attention to us and it was great. That's awesome, Rosie. Thank you for that. >> Thank you. >> Do we have any other updates? Member Mike. >> Yeah. Um I attended intergovernmental with member Saddowski and member Loalt. um which is again good to um be talking with our community partner, our intergovernmental partners about the issues that are

096facing all of us and how we can be working together. Um also on Monday, um I attended the district advisory committee on behalf of member Saddowski and myself. Um and I just want to lift up the work of our volunteers in that committee as well as our staff who are forced to be there. Um but for a committee that was just um implemented by policies 603 and 616 just last year um amazing things happen in this committee where we have teachers, we have um administrators, we have parents coming together and talking about the different issues that are affecting our school district in really positive ways. Um we had really engaging conversations around a variety of issues. Our social studies um curriculum, um upcoming changes to health standards, um here in our district, um in our

097state, um the use of AI, um budgets, you know, so many things and a vast um variety of opinions um were shared in really collaborative um ways. And you can see how having those conversations is making a direct impact on the work of our district. Um people are being listened to. Um adjustments are being made and we're really making things better I feel like in our district because of this committee. So I just want to again lift up those who are having to do that heavy work of um organizing this committee and making sure that our community members know that there is room for many more people on this committee. you know, representatives from parents and staff from every site, um, from business leaders, you know, all those um, like heads in those conversations bring

098um, important perspectives and help us deliver the message, you know, of the good things that are happening in Duth Public Schools and finding the challenges and figuring out how we can work together to overcome. So, um, it's a it's a fabulous committee. Hopefully all of us um on the board have an opportunity to serve on this um you know during our tenurs. Um but again also inviting our community to really be a really important voice um and using it in a in a very effective way. >> Member Laughler Kemp and then member Saddowski. And this is more of a followup to member Saddowski and I I've asked this every time this committee comes up is I just want to again for the public to know that if you are interested in serving on it, you

099should reach out to assistant superintendent um uh bonds and um with your interest. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Member Saddowski. And I just had uh I just wanted to clarify too member myself you were naming a lot of um groups stakeholder groups there and I I didn't catch a few named it but students are also a part of that. Um and it's a really I know we have some students out there. So we really appreciate everyone involved in it and I just wanted to make sure that any students who are listening knew that they could also be a part of that group. >> Thank you. They meet four times. So it's and the dates are planned out, right? So >> we've met a couple more times this year and um the uh goal is to

100determine the uh frequency for next year at our last uh DAC meeting. So, um I anticipate we're going to probably be meeting uh every other month, I would imagine, because there's a lot of great dialogue, a lot of uh input that we're trying to seek from our uh community and that the the DAC I'm I'm I'm agreeing that um it's evolved and I think it's going to continue to build uh to evolve and be a really good place to, you know, garner some really good solid feedback from um from our community. So, I'm really pleased with it so far. So, contact me. >> All right. Great. So, I see no other general board committee updates and we'll move on to our consent agenda. Do I have a motion to uh approve our consent agenda? >>

101Uh, Member Williams has made the motion. Do I have a second? Oh god, I'm gonna go member Saddowski there. Do we have any discussion on our consent agenda? Seeing no discussion on our consent agenda. All those in favor of passing the consent agenda, please say I. >> I. >> Opposed, the consent agenda has been accepted. Great. All right. Next, we'll move on for a resolution. So, we have acceptance of donations. I'll um turn that over to member Loal. Got it. Okay. So, this is our resolution B-4-26-4164. So, I move the resolution to accept grants to the Duth Public Schools. Whereas Minnesota statute 4065.03 03 requires a school district to accept grants by resolution expressed in the terms prescribed by the donor in full and whereas are we right whereas acceptance of the grant in accordance

102with the donor's terms. Oh, okay. Okay. I was just on a grant roll. I thought, "Oh, this is so appropriate that I'm reading the grant one." Okay. So, we'll try this again. I move resolution B-4-26-4162, the acceptance of donations to Duth Public Schools. Whereas Minnesota statute 465.03 requires a school district to accept donation by resolution expressed in the terms prescribed by the donor in full. And whereas acceptance of the donations in accordance with the donor's terms is in the best interest of the Duth public schools. Now therefore, be it resolved that the DUTH public schools does accept the below described donations from said organizations in accordance with the terms set forth herein. Be it further resolved that the DUTH public schools wishes to extend its grateful appreciation to these various individuals and organizations. So I

103move resolution B-4-26-4162. And I'm looking for a second. >> Do we have a second? >> Second. Member Saddowski has made the second. Do we have any discussion around our acceptance of donations? Seeing no discussions, all those in favor of accepting the donations to the Duth Public Schools, please say I. >> I. Opposed. Consider the donations accepted. Next, member Saddowski. >> Yep. I'm going to remove um not remove um move resolution B-4-26-4163. And this is the resolution establishing a school forest site for Mayor's Wilkins Elementary School in Duth, Minnesota. Whereas Minnesota statute 89.41 41 subdivision 1 states any school district in the state however organized the University of Minnesota or any branch thereof any state university, community college or other public educational institution or agency of the state all herein referred to as agencies may establish

104and maintain school forests according to this section subject to the approval of the commissioner of natural resources. For the purpose of a school forest, an agency may use land, the agency owns or uses under an agreement or may acquire land by gift or with contributed funds. Now therefore, be it resolved the board of education of Duth Public School District number 709 approves the establishment of the Mayor's Wilkins Elementary School Forest. And then we have a um a lot of coordinates. So I'm going to skip down to the bottom. So, we're we're accepting we're approving the establishment of the school forest and we're supporting the enrollment of said school forest in Minnesota DNR school forest um program for educational purposes. Be it further resolved that the duth public schools wishes to extend its gratitude to the

105Myers Wilkins School Forest Committee for their work to create an engaging outdoor learning environment for Myers Wilkins students. >> Member Saddowski has made the motion. Do we have a second? >> Second. Member Banks has made the second. Do we have any discussion? >> Yes. >> Oh, >> member Williams. Um, I just want to thank I mean I know they're all gone now, but um all of our speakers from earlier today. It was just really great hearing from all the kids and seeing their drawings and hearing their poem and um thank you to member Sidowski for the work that you did behind the scenes as well. So appreciate it. This is going to be great for our kiddos. >> Thank you. Uh member continue member Mikeel. >> Uh yes, just uh echoing member Williams gratitude towards

106um the the uh community that was here tonight speaking in support of this resolution and recognizing the hard work that's gone in over you know years at this point. I think um I was first approached about how do we get the deed paperwork back in January 2025 and so making sure that people are getting we're getting connected and having the support of board members who have done this work prior as well. Um >> again it's it's great for as many of our schools as possible to have dedicated outside um time and in a place to do that in a way that's supportive of our staff so that they can also be making the best use of it. and so happy to be part of this last hurdle to to get everything official. >> Member Laughler

107count. >> Yeah, I just uh you know again echo but also um uh congratulate um um our the students and the the staff and the community and and also our facility staff who they uh worked very closely with as well. Uh, and just um my time on the board, I don't believe we've ever not supported uh one of our uh school forest initiatives um uh before I was on the board uh Lester Park. We brought that forward in 2012 when my daughter who was in fifth grade presented it with her fellow students at the time at um so we I think almost all of our elementary schools have a school a designated school forest like this. I know East High School does as well. And uh I'm not sure about Denfeld, but so we really

108have a a great history uh across the district of supporting uh this DNR uh initiative and and supporting school forest in our schools for all the reasons that the children spoke about tonight as well. So um I just kind of share that history for the public to know this is something that uh has been happening for many years and it's been supported. So, thank you. >> Great. It was joyful during our um earlier Oh, superintendent. >> I like the woods, too. >> Please. >> Yes. No, I think that uh school forests are incredibly important for all the reasons, and I won't won't uh belabor it, but having grown up in a very rural area and spent a lot of time as a as a kid out playing in the woods, I think that it's there's

109uh can be very stimulating and very very grounding. And I'm glad that we're going to offer this opportunity to our students. And I also want to say thanks to member Saddowski because uh you did a lot to help um help raise our awareness around this and make sure that that we're moving things forward and I appreciate your leadership. I know others did too, but uh I know you were you were a um carrier of much of that work and and thank you for your service on that. >> Absolutely. happy to do that on behalf of the board. And um I know that member Mike also went out to the school Myers Wilkins School for us, but I I would just encourage anyone who wants to fill their cup, you know, um our board work is

110um sometimes hard and we're reading hundreds of pages. And for me, like getting to go out uh to the Myers Wilkins School Forest at 7:45 and see the kids run out of the school and into the forest and start climbing in the trees and building forts. And um I know member Laughler camp you were on the board when I was a parent at home and brought that home school forest forward. So it was really uh an honor to pay it forward and I know you were very supportive during that time. So thank you. >> Yes, I didn't mean to neglect um member Mike Seltu. They were very very supportive as well. Thanks to everyone. Well, I'm not very tense about this vote, but we will go ahead and uh all those in favor of supporting

111the formation of this amazing school forest at Myers Wilkins, please say I. I. Those opposed, we now have a school forest at Myers Wilkins. That's amazing. Yay. Let's just take a minute and fill our cups on that one. Excellent. So, now we'll move on to special resolutions and action item. Um, member Laughler Kemp. >> Okay. I have uh acceptance of grant awards to Duth Public Schools. I move resolution B4264164 uh acceptance of grant awards uh to Duth Public Schools. Whereas Minnesota statute 46503 requires a school district to accept grants by resolution expressed in the terms prescribed by the donor in full. And whereas acceptance of the grant in accordance with the donor's terms is in the best interest of the duth public schools. Now therefore it be resolved that the duth public schools does accept

112the below described grant from said organization in accordance with the term set forth herein. Be it further resolved that the duth public schools wishes to extend its grateful appreciation to this organization. And so what you have here is a list of grants u from the Duth Public Schools Endowment Fund uh which I uh am fortunate to serve on and um uh about $33,000 um from um schools all across the district um grants written by teachers uh and by um buildingwide grants and um from elementary to middle and high school. So, a lot of create creative ideas. Many retired teachers serve on this grant committee. So, I bring this forward and um I thank all the uh uh school staff that uh took the time to write these grants as well. So, thank you. >> Member

113Laughler Kemp has also moved this very joyful resolution forward. Do we have a second? >> Member Williams has seconded. Do we have any discussion? Member Lald, >> just a question and I'm sure member Laughler Kim can answer is that there are maybe three or four I see um um organiz you know it looks like grants that were written but they weren't awarded a dollar amount. Is that that they just weren't awarded a dollar amount and you have to list them just to approve that they >> that they submitted >> they that's exactly right and if they are listed at zero they they weren't awarded that a grant. Yeah. >> Do you have a total of how much money we award? >> About $33,000 uh uh with um close to 20 grants. And again, some are

114specific to uh a teacher or a school staff that wrote a grant. Um some are buildingwide. Uh I think eight were buildingwide grants that will be used throughout the school. And uh again um elementary schools um middle schools, high schools, all across the district, our preschool program uh received grants um on a lot of creative topics, a lot around inclusive literacy and and literacy as well uh and um a number of other areas. So, look through that and if you want more information on the grants, uh, I'd be happy to share it with you or, uh, you can contact the contact on here. Thank you. Any other questions? Member Sidowski, >> just a comment. I wanted to apologize earlier for misspeaking that we didn't have grants this time. It just wasn't in my paper packet.

115So, um, I'm glad that we can bring this forth >> forgiven. Member Lelder, you your question. Perfect. All right. Seeing no further discussion, all those in favor of accepting the grants awarded to Duth Public Schools, please say I. >> I. >> Opposed. We have accepted those grants. Lastly, um, as Superintendent Maggus discussed in his superintendent report, we um the education equity advisory committee has brought forth their bylaws. So, I will be making that motion for us to approve the education equity advisory committee bylaws and those are listed in board book. Um, do we have a second? >> Member Laughler Camp has seconded it. Do we have any um discussion? Member Banks. >> I just have um just a couple clarifying questions if you will. um in section 2.1 or article 3 2.1 under membership and

116then section three I have a question there as well. Um do I ask this? >> Yes, we'll have uh director Greor Carrera if you could come up and uh fill the questions please. >> And this is just clarification. >> Yes. Okay. Okay. >> That is a beautiful color. Good evening everyone. >> Welcome. >> This is probably quick answers but um 2.1 uh it says the EAC shall consist of a minimum of 15 members with a maximum of 30. Uh can you explain why there's such a large number? Uh is that to make sure that folks in the community get an opportunity to be be a part of this or uh to me it seems like that maximum of 30 is seems kind of large. >> Yeah. Um I think the group felt passionate about we

117as you can see we listed all the groups that we would be targeting and so um it was kind of giving us some breathing room to say that we would really like to have a minimum of 15 because uh we also wanted to be clear that this is definitely a commitment and that that was something that was reiterated as a challenge in the past right that this is a voluntary commitment um and it's also I think you know an honor because you're applying and we uh are doing some really important work. Um and so we just wanted to give ourselves some breathing room in case we got to a place in a few years where we were really really efficient and we could afford to have more members. Um so I think that was kind

118of the idea to give itself just the opportunity to see how things go the first years and then what's the right number of people. >> Thank you for that clarification. And then the second uh section three um it says that for the selection committee it shall consist of two current EAC members elected by the full committee and then one or two uh district administrators. How does that process work? Uh I would be concerned not that there would be any um u I would say foul play but uh sometimes folks uh get these opportunities and they leave folks out that would be wonderful participants. I've seen that happen before in other committees. So how would you handle that? >> Yeah. So I think um it's another process that I think we're going to try out and

119see how it goes. Of course, the establishing year is a little bit tricky, but I think after that when we have some more established uh members and then again the group is electing who um is going to serve on kind of the subcommittee with me and potentially another district representative if um and and so I think for me personally the way that we would do that is one that's why we took the time to really discuss in detail who are we trying to target and make sure that we include. So, I think that that's a big thing, right? Being able to check that against a list. I know um before we went as a new person before I got down the road of the bylaws, I when I was thinking about recruiting this from the

120beginning and then you know obviously we had to take a pivot and redo the bylaws and all that. I really looked at this also from a mathematic uh perspective as well, right? breaking down the demograph demographic of our district and our community and then you can also then see okay you need to have a minimum from this group a minimum from this group a minimum from that group so I think some of those objective ways will help avoid subjectivity and and bias influence but I also think um after our first year it will be a good thing to revisit with the committee to see how it went and how that process felt for everyone so I think we are not you know we will be open to reflection also especially after that first year and

121how that went to make sure that we are being inclusive and not um leaving anyone out or feeling inaccessible. >> Absolutely. Thank you again for the clarification. >> Appreciate that. member Loel and >> and as long as you're here to to explain I um I've been I've enjoyed my role on EAC as a schoolboard representative and as I look at bylaws I don't know if it's appropriate or necessary in bylaws but where do you see the role of a schoolboard member? I think there's two of us appointed to EAC every year and you know it does there need to be clarification in bylaws about our role or about the presence of or the need for or do you do you know where you see school board member? I know it might be under um district

122administrators or maybe or you know you do say something about a member from now I'm losing it but >> you know from teachers and staff and support staff and principles ISD79 employees do you see us in that group? >> Yeah and I would be open to your thoughts on this as well. I I I think I kind of see you all in that same role of having designated folks. Um, I would appreciate that perspective. I think to also um, you know, and maybe I think again we're here clear about the membership pieces might be where we want to get more clear on, right? Because you wouldn't be able to be obviously like a voting member, >> right? >> But I do think, you know, we were intentional about having, you know, some administrators perspective, for

123example. So, I think it could there definitely is benefit to having um, school board in the room. And the biggest thing that was coming up I think in meetings were okay when and how do we take things to the school board right and I think that is something that I'll be really working with the committee on um because I think in the past there were a lot of lot of great ideas and um and for me I'm someone who like we need to build out some work and have some long-term goals to be more clear on what our ask is if we have one or what our recommendation is right and And also that I think that that's when you bring a fullyfledged plan then you are more likely to have buy in and understanding

124that as well. So my goal is not to be bringing things you know here weekly or monthly but to have a longer term goal of what are we working towards and then what is the uh the board's role within that how do we support one another and collaborate with one another. And >> I guess I do see that then under your article five too. So it's it's reflected there in that process. Awesome. >> Thank you. Um, members Saddowski, >> mine was on, but I feel like um, some of my comments got resolved in the conversation. Just the fact I was going to say, "Yep, we're not voting members." And, um, I've served on this committee in the past as well. I really appreciate member Loeld's uh, serving on it now. I know member Williams, many

125of us have served on it. It's a great committee. Thank you for your work on streamlining the bylaws. I think that this looks like really good work. I really appreciate that. And um I think any number of us who get to serve on it will be there to support listen um and you just let us know what you need. >> Awesome. Thank you so much. I mean, before before we move on, I just I want to thank you because since you've shown up, you've um shown up in spaces with a lot of really hard work to do and to watch you methodically and professionally move through these program um these problems or let's not say, let's say challenges in terms of talking about let's get our bylaws straight, let's figure out these things and really

126turning these processes into a functional working group. I very very very good job. Thank you. >> Thank you. Seriously. Thank you. >> Thank you. So, um, seeing no further comments, all those in favor of accepting these bylaws, please say I. >> I. >> Um, now we have approved Oh, opposed. Thank you. Now we have approved our Education Equity Advisory Committee bylaws. Thank you so much. That's great. Yay. So, do we have any questions or any other information to share? Member Sidowski? Yeah, I just wanted to um give a shout out to member Lofal for spearheading the regional the sectional speech tournament and congratulate you on being uh voted as the is it section which section are we? Eight >> section seven. >> Section 7A coach of the year. >> So congratulations. >> Great. >> Thank

127you. That was Yeah. Thank you. I I was actually going to turn my mic on just to share because our Denfeld rep wasn't able to be here tonight and I know in her report um she had asked about um our success at the section tournament. So on Thursday we have six Denfeld hunters going to run the halls and get their classmates um applause and energy to go to the state Minnesota State High School League state speech tournament on Friday Friday down at Brooklyn Park. So, I have six um members of my speech team to um traveling to this to compete at the state tournament. So, it's exciting. It's a it's really a very nice way um I think it was yesterday I was talking to director Johnson that I turned in my resignation as the

128head coach. Um and we'll look forward to hopefully sitting on an interview team to usher in, you know, someone who wants to have such a incredible career as I was able to have here. So, what better way than to celebrate a career than at the Minnesota State High School League speech speech tournament. So, thank you. >> Yeah. >> Makes me a little tearary. Okay. So, now um who would like to make the motion to adjourn our meeting? Oh, we're going to keep going. Oh, there. Member Saddowski. Who'd like to second it? >> Member Williams. Do we have any discussion? We sure don't. All those in favor of adjourning this meeting, please say I. >> I. >> Opposed. Great. We have adjourn this meeting.