December 16, 2025 at 6:30 PM - Regular School Board Meeting

001Good afternoon and welcome to the December regular school board meeting. We're beginning this evening at 712. So we're I'm calling this meeting to order and I'll turn it over to the clerk for roll call. >> Member Banks >> here. >> Chair Durk Eater >> here. Member Laughler Kemp >> here. >> Member Loal >> here. I am member Mikeel. I am here. Member Sidowski >> here. >> Member Williams >> here. >> Superintendent Maggus >> present and accounted for. >> Assistant Superintendent Bonds >> present. >> Deputy clerk Zunich >> present. And making his regular school board meeting debut, director of HR and operations Steve Johnson, >> present. >> Board secretary Pquette. [snorts] and student representative Dean >> present. >> And student representatives Garn and Taylor are excused. >> Welcome Steve to the meeting. We're glad to have

002you here. >> Thank you. I'm happy to be here. >> Great. Now we'll move on to our pledge of the allegiance. Please stand if you're able. The flags are 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. Now we'll turn it over to Assistant Superintendent Bonds for our school and community recognition. >> Oh, I'm just moving it along. Okay, now we will approve the agenda. I'm looking for a motion to approve the agenda. >> Member Saddowski has moved. Do I have a second? >> Second. >> Member Loal has seconded it. Do we have any discussion? Seeing no discussion, all those in favor of a >> Oh, yes.

003We will do a roll call vote. Thank you, clerk. Um, go ahead, clerk. >> Member Banks, >> yes. >> Chair Durer, >> member Laughler, >> yes. >> I vote yes. Member Saskki, >> yes. >> Member Williams, >> yes. >> 70. >> The um agenda has passed. Now we'll move on to school and community recognition. Thank you. >> Thank you and good evening uh board and community. Uh thank you uh for joining um us tonight uh for such an occasion. Uh one because you have to be here and two it's just incredible uh an opportunity that I have a chance to uh make these recognitions. Um, as someone who uh was an administrator, a principal, I'm just really pleased tonight uh members of the board and the community tonight, I am incredibly honored and pleased to

004recognize an educator who name is synonymous with dedication, heart in our district. Kathy Kush Marshall, the principal of Congden Park Elementary School, is being recognized tonight. We are so thrilled to announce that Kathy was recently named Division Leadership Award recipient for the Northeast Division by the Minnesota Elementary Principal School Association. This prestigious honor celebrates leaders who go above and beyond to support their colleagues and advance educational excellence across the region. With an astonishing 37 years in education, Kathy has spent nearly four decades building peaceful, inclusive, and high achieving learning environments. For the last 16 years at Cognitive Park, Kathy has served as the keeper of the kids, keeping student learning as her north star. She has been a champion of holistic wellness through programs like safe routes to school. She has fostered creativity through drumming

005and art clubs. She has built deep deep community trust through her monthly coffee with Kathy meetings. Additionally, her advocacy with parent advisory council for special education ensures equitable access, equitable access, and inclusive learning environments. Please join me in congratulating Kathy Kous Marshall for the welldeserved recognition and thanking her for her lifetime of service to the children of Duth. Congratulations, Kathy. >> [applause] >> Thank you. [applause] Brenda, thank you everyone. >> Yeah. No, thank you very much. So, most of you I know pretty well, huh? Been around for a while. So, thank you. Thank you this evening for inviting me to come and spend some time with you. I'm very honored. And yes, I've been around for a long time. Um, but I feel honored to serve our students every single day. Um, and um, I've

006been at Congden for a while and um, every day is a new day. Um, and I hope to make children, you know, help them to do their very, very best. Um, some days are great, some days are good and some days are really, really hard, but together we're going to do it. So, and I just um asked Brenda to come up because Brenda, you know, as the director of elementary education has been, you know, working with me for a number of years, and I really appreciate Brenda's hard work as we move forward, too. So, um I know you have a huge agenda tonight. Um and so I don't want to say very much. Our door is always open. Please come and spend some time looking at all the wonderful things that our staff does. And

007and Rosy's over there nodding her head. And please come and fill the blue bin, please. We need we need more snacks, right? Um but one of the other things I would offer and that is um from you know for many years I was at Nettleton Magnet School in the hillside and then I was honored to move over to Congden and I thought I knew what Congden was like all those years I was at Nettleton and you really don't know until you walk in someone's shoes and when I went to or went to Congden Park the first thing I remember and I was listening to all these people today talking about space I went from a office that overlooked Lake Superior It was amazing. I got so much strength from Lake Superior. When I moved into

008my office at Congden Park, there were no windows in the office. And I remember sitting there thinking, I was so excited to be at Congden and I wasn't sure what the journey was going to look like, but I learned very quickly. I'm like, "Holy moly, there's no windows in here, right?" So, one of my colleagues from Nettleton sent a picture, of course, is what they would do, of my old window so I could hang it on the wall, you know, to look at that. But the great news is when they remodeled the school, I now have a window that can look out at the children. But, um, anyway, but thank you. I don't know. Brenda, do you want to say anything? >> Yeah. Okay. >> Um, this is my over here because I'm so short.

009This is my fifth year working with Kathy and I just want to say that we don't have um people close to her caliber of being instructional leaders. Oh my gosh. And I've just enjoyed working with her very much. Uh we sometimes I get in her office, we start talking about education and we mean to be there half an hour and then two hours later we're still sitting there because she's really cutting edge on um education initiatives that she puts in her school and the research that she does. Um how she she searches out the next thing for education constantly. So um I just want to put that out there because I've just been impressed with that and she has taught me things. So anyway, just want to make sure everybody knows that. Thanks everybody. Thank

010you. Moving on, we will now um move on to agenda item number six, our fiscal year 25 audit, the presentation and the approval. And I will turn it over to Executive Director Zunich to move us through this part of the meeting. Good evening. Um, we are lucky enough to have Rob Gansshaw here tonight from Whipley. He is a >> What are you a partner? >> You're a partner. Okay. >> So, um, he's Patty's going to trying to cast the We want to put it up on the board. >> Okay. This way, we have something to look at. Okay, >> that's fine. better looking at me. [laughter] Oh, it was red. So, yep. Okay. I sound better when I'm not on the microphone. So our responsibility um as the auditors for the school district are to

011issue an opinion on your basic financial statements and then we also provide additional reports. One on compliance and internal controls over the financial reporting itself that's commonly called the yellowbook report that is uh directly related to um the financial statements itself. We look at the laws and regulations that the district is required to follow as long as the as well as the internal controls that are in place for uh recording transactions, uh preparing reports, all that kind of stuff. Um and then we also issue a report on compliance and internal controls over your federal programs, otherwise known as the uniform guidance um report. That report is not complete at this point because with the government uh shutdown, they did not get us the compliance supplement with all of the tests that they wanted us to

012perform on the specific federal programs. So the actual due date for that is March 31st of 2026. So we will certainly make sure that that gets completed and and submitted in a timely manner. And then we're also required, there's a um Minnesota legal compliance audit guide for school districts. We're required to look at several different uh um compliance requirements that the district is uh required to meet such as cash dispersements, deposit depositories and investments, um contracts, uh miscellaneous provisions, uh EURES reporting, items of that nature. Um, if you want to move to the next page for me, I'd appreciate it. Uh, the results of our audit, we are issuing an unmodified opinion on the basic financial statements. Basically, what that is equated to is in our language, we call that a clean opinion. That means

013in all material respects the financial statements are presented in accordance with generally accepted accounting principle as applied to governmental entities. Um internal controls and findings that we're reporting around the financial statements similar to what we've had in previous years. Um we had a number of audit adjustments and um reconciliation of s significant significant accounts um uh weren't done on a timely basis due to uh just the volume of work that the district office needs to get done on a day-to-day basis. and financial statement presentation and disclosure is, you know, those financial statements. When you see the whole document, um, I'm sure you can appreciate all of the information that goes into that and all of the different disclosures. District doesn't expect its staff to be able to prepare those financial statements. It's typically relied on

014the audit firm to prepare that. But when you look at the actual standards, um it says that uh if an entity isn't able to prepare it, we're required to report that. So um nothing out of the ordinary with either of those those findings. And as I briefly mentioned before, uh there is no report on compliance and internal controls over the federal programs at this time. Testing isn't completed. And then also happy to share with you that we did not identify any non-compliance with the Minnesota statutes that were required to test um in accordance with the uh legal compliance audit guide. Uh flipping to the next page. Uh the district is required to uh report its ending fund balances in a multitude of different categories according to uh the uniform financial accounting reporting standards that MDE

015puts out there. This just shows you a detail of all of the different categories. The total fund balance at uh year end June 30th, 2025 uh is about $8 million, just shy of $8 million. Um the restricted fund balance at year end is about $5.5 million and the assigned fund balance is about five uh.5 million as well. um with the unassigned fund balance at the end of the current year at a uh negative $3.1 million. The next page is a summary of the results of the operations in your general fund. We have the budget to the left and then the final actual numbers and then uh a column showing the positive or negative variance to that final budget. You'll notice that uh revenues this year came in a little bit over uh $5 million to

016the good. uh expenditures uh not so good over budget by about $15.3 million for an overall um variance to the budget of about $9.8 million. When you look at the the actual numbers that are in the financial statements, um revenues were about $141 million, expenditures about 153. So, the excess or the excess expenditures over revenues was about $12.3 million. You had um approximately $700,000 in other financing sources. Those are revenues that aren't generated by the operations of the district. They're uh like insurance recoveries. You issued some uh uh lease this year. So it's reported in that category and then anytime you you sell some capital assets, it's treated as an other financing source uh for reporting purposes. Um so with all that said, it comes down to that 7,998 that I shared on the the

017previous page. the prior period adjustment that we're showing there. MDE uh required the district to record a entry back to the 2024 records in March of 25 related to the unemployment insurance program. So um because that adjustment was made in 25 but related to 24 in order for the financial statements and balance, we show that as a prior period adjustment even though the district showed it as um in their their records back in in 2024. Moving on to the food service fund here again, you know, you budgeted a $56,000 deficit. actual uh deficit came in at around $4,000. So positive 52 uh $52,000 to bud uh to the budget. Um overall fund balance in your food service fund is extremely healthy. There's a lot of districts that actually have to transfer dollars into their food

018service fund in order to cover current year expenses. Um district here uh has not had to do that. So, that's that's always a positive. Moving on to the the community service fund, um you budgeted a a $731,000 uh excess and you actually came in uh you used $818,000 of fund balance during the current year. So, um, there that's a a negative budget to actual of about 1.5 million. A big chunk of that that deficit uh in the 818. There were some old receivables that were outstanding for grant programs that hadn't been collected. So, uh, we presented it, uh, adjusting journal entry to clean up the books and write off those receivables because the district wasn't going to be receiving them. No sense in having them out there. So, uh, at end of the year, the

019the fund balance is about a,395,000. And you can see, uh, what makes up that. The biggest portion of that is the the community education program at about $1.2 million and then some adult basic education at about $145,000. Your capital projects fund if you want to slide to the next page for me. Thank you. Um the no revenues budgeted in there this year because um all you're really generating is interest income in that fund at this point. on proceeds that have been borrowed and are are being spent down year-over-year. Um expenditures were budgeted at uh $993,000. Actual came in at about 4.5. A big chunk of those expenditures are related to the LTFM or the long-term facilities maintenance projects that are currently going on that had been borrowed for in previous years. And you know, so

020you don't uh get in trouble with arbitrage on the the bonds and the interest that you're earning, you have to to spend those down. And um that was that was the case during the current year. As you'll as you see there, you have about uh $2.9 million left in that. I did have a discussion um with Simone. uh she's aware of that and um projects are going to be scrutinized going forward now that she's in in charge of buildings and grounds too. So she can't wait till the grass starts growing so she can start mowing. >> [laughter] >> Um the debt service fund as you can see that that is uh a big expenditure item and you know Simone had shared that in her truth and taxation hearing. Uh the budget for last year budgeted

021about $28 million in t in revenues. Most of that being tax revenues and then your expenditures that's all principal and interest that's being paid on long-term debt. Um the uh variances there were um small variances uh overall about $450,000 uh between budget and actual here. Again, the the fund balance that's maintained in that debt service fund is a statuto statutory uh fund balance um because they dictate what you need to have in there and the 5% that you need to be levying in addition to payments. um not a whole lot of wiggle room for the the district to to grow that fund, nor should you be growing it as long as you can make your principal and interest payments. Um and the last slide that I have for you is just a summary of what

022you have out there for uh long-term debt between your go bonds and your certificates of participation. Um, you could see that total GEO bonds outstanding at the end of the year is about 68.5 million. You paid off about 8.4 million. Um, certificates of participation, uh, you're at about $57.2 million and you paid off a little bit over $15 million. So in total you paid about 24 million in principal and you have about 126 million outstanding at year end. Um I know that was uh pretty quick going through it but I wanted to make sure to uh leave you some time to to ask questions if you had some. Anything hard asked to Simone? I can answer the easy ones. I don't see any questions. >> I have no idea. >> Oh jeez. Okay. Sorry guys.

023Um, member Saddowski and then member Mikeel. um kind of a comment and a question, but when you're I think this question is more for the public, but when you're doing your audit, you're looking at all of our programs and all of the funds in all of those programs and making sure that everything is being spent um accurately and with fidelity. Correct. we do it at a higher level than than what people probably think we do because if we did it at a detailed level, we would be here all year long. Um we basically when we come into the audit during the planning process um we have a a calculation that we do that's called materiality and that's based on a a number of factors your revenues your assets your liabilities plus we also look at

024um the risk factors within the district itself and we kind of focus on what we believe to be the riskier areas at the district. Um, a lot of our audit procedures uh are based upon um tying out your balance sheet items. And then also we do do a deep dive into your state and federal aids and making sure that those revenues are tying to the reports that MDE provides to us. Making sure that your tax levy is in agreement with what MDE said that you were allowed to levy the previous year. And then as I mentioned with the uniform guidance audit that does a deeper dive into specific federal programs what we're required to do there is it's called a riskbased approach. So we look at uh your larger there are certain parameters that we're

025required to look at. Your larger programs like for this year it's programs that are over $750,000 or more are considered typea programs and those have to be evaluated on specific criteria. Did you have findings in previous years? uh are there changes in uh management of that program? Uh that would dictate that you know the program might be of a higher risk and if we deem that program to be a higher risk we would then select that program for detailed testing. What we do then is we do um non-statistical sampling of transactions in there. We look at the documentation, look at uh you know the the rules and regulations as to what that those funds can be spent on and you know we make sure that all the eyes are dotted and and the tees are

026crossed as far as those programs go. And um there are also times when we select programs that are underneath that threshold just because we're required to test a specific percentage of the federal funds that the district gets. Um and that percentage is 40%. So um a lot of times we'll test two or three programs to get to that threshold. But yes, we do. Um, and then we also do, you know, nobody wants to hear the the F-word, but we do unplanned procedures um around um, you know, fraud. We do uh we have questionnaires that we ask certain individuals, not the same individuals every year as to whether or not they, you know, have any specific uh knowledge of fraud. If they have any concerns that something may happen, that's done just between us and that

027individual. it it's not like it's something that is sent to um Superintendent Magus or Simone for them to pass along to the employee, get it back and send it to us. It's, you know, basically between us and them. Um so we also do procedures like that. We look at the internal controls, test those internal controls. So, um, we do look at items in detail, but you know, like I said, we'd be here for a year if if we looked at everything. So, >> yeah, thank you. That answers my question. >> Uh, thank you for the presentation. I'm glad there's people like you who exist who can do these deep dives for us. um especially um happy to hear that we had the unmodified opinion which means that you didn't see anything that majorly raised your

028eyebrows in terms of um how our books are being kept here in the district. Is that correct? >> Uh basically means that the financial statements themselves as they're put together that the numbers that you see in there and the disclosures in there that there's that they're not materially incorrect. >> Excellent. Thank you, Simone. and please pass my gratitude along to your staff for making it um be that way. Um very quickly, you had uh kind of off-handly mentioned that our community ed um funds we had to adjust down by over $800,000 due to receivables that were never going to come in. Is that something that happened over a long time that we finally made the decision just to give up or >> they they had actually been out there I think for either >> Yeah.

02920 >> two or three years. >> Yep. Since FY22. >> Okay. And those were things that I obviously we have just determined that we were never going to get. But >> correct. We've build them. We build them out and we never received the funds for it >> and they had been followed followed up on >> three times. >> Are those are those humans? Like are those participants or are those like we have revenue coming in from a different source that never sent it to us? If you're able to share, >> it would have been from um funding agencies, not from individuals that would have been getting build for services like that. >> Interesting. Okay. >> And I'll follow up with that. Thank you, Rob. Um Rob's being very modest here. He and his team have

030we've all been working since August on this is thousands of hours of work. Yeah. >> To uh you know, come up with a summary. Tonight I want to thank finance manager Sheila Stevens too who really got us to the finish line too. Um it's very common uh to carry these receivables for several years like that and then at some point the auditor will say to me or the business manager is it time to remove those from the books. Sometimes those are hard decisions to make. We had to do that in fund one as well. So you'll there are adjustments there. Sometimes they're three $400,000 and you just kind of gulp because you know that's going to affect your bottom line. But it's important that we keep uh clean, you know, clean books and that we

031stay true to our numbers. So that's part of that process. Thank you for explaining that then. Um [clears throat] I will say that um you know in watching last year's audit just to prepare myself for tonight I know we had a brief discussion on our standard operating debt and I'm curious where our numbers are on that right now. So in in our general fund um we have they were our expenditures over revenue were 12 million $326,000 $326494. So our sod is down to 189. Our policy, our schoolboard policy is 8%. And um it is essentially all payroll. And I can identify departments too, which I don't want to call out tonight, but um it was um departments, some programming departments and transportation. >> Thank you. I look forward to hearing more about those um >>

032in future HR business meetings and schoolboard meetings. >> And and I'd like to add one more thing too. Um you'll notice on Rob's one of his first slides, it showed that we had a fund balance of 19 million roughly coming into FY25. So from a year and a half ago, please remember we came off of ESSER of three years of ESSER. So we were able to we use the word stockpile but we were able to save general fund monies essentially uh because we were using esser funding. So we had a very healthy fund balance going into FY25. Well now last year esser funding went away and it our reality hit. Um, so it chewed up a lot of that fund and now we're at a new reality and uh, Rob and I have had a

033couple of meetings with MDE. Uh, he's called MDE. We had one on Monday. Superintendent Meus joined us um, looking at potential other that I will be bringing forth in January, February. Uh, possible transfer of some funds that we are not using that put it into the general fund to help offset anything. So, you know, I'll be bringing that forth to that is FY26. So, um that will happen in January, February, and then at that time is when I will bring um a revised budget to you as well. I have mentioned at HR business services to be totally transparent that we seem to be outpacing our um expenses to budget um in at the end of November it was 7% but in the beginning of the school year we do do all of our purchasing. I

034see that in fund two as well which is not related to fund one but everyone gets their supply money or their go ahead and buy all of their equipment or supplies at the beginning of the year. So we do see uh um you know we we seem to be tracking that higher. So in January when I come to HR business services I will be able to get a true um you know reading of what how we're pacing and what I do is take July 1 through December 31st of our regular expenditures. You take your payroll from September to December 31st. You you average the two and that's how we can track this and and where we're going. So, um, you know, I want to say we still have healthy restricted fund balances. We still have

035a nice assigned fund balance. Um, our food service came in flat. Uh, community ed. Um, the overall you some of that you have to remember head start is in there and other programming has a nice healthy fund balance as Rob pointed out. So, um, we, you know, we made an effort to, um, reduce our budget this year by 5 million just because we and, you know, this was an anticipated result. Again, um, you know, we do have some programs in the district that um are almost out of our control with the payroll because we have to staff them. Um, we don't see the funds for another two years. we are getting aid based on uh the 2324 school year. So, >> thank you. I think it's important that um you just mentioned that when you

036say it's outside of our control, it's not that we are allowing people to willy-nilly pay themselves however much. It's because we have students who have needs that we're obligated to provide. Um, and so that probably I'm imagining and I look forward to learning more is a big part of some of that overage. >> That is correct. >> Thank you. >> And thank you for pointing that out. And I know uh, Executive Director Zunich was hesitant to name departments, and I'm not naming this from a scolding standpoint at all, but but a point of necessity. Uh, we we are overspending in special education because of the needs. We've heard tonight about many many deep needs and the needs of our students that are changing so significantly and it's important for us to uh meet not only

037the ethical obligation that we have to those students but also the legal obligation that we have to meet the needs of the students and so uh we are quite often even though we we might uh have intentions of having reduction in spending it always ends up uh costing more for special education because we have those needs of those students that we uh have the moral and ethical and legal obligation to meet. So that's that's where a lot of the extra funding comes u or the funding needs. Yet at the same time, we also hear that despite those um despite spending far beyond what we have budgeted, there are still continued additional needs that so it's it's hard for us to to uh to have that. But I really would like to close in saying uh

038thanks to Simone and Sheila and the auditing team for all their their really really hard work. I know uh personally that Simone has barely slept in the past probably month or two. Um and and the these are things that keep her awake at night really thinking about and I've never seen uh that that sort of deep deep dedication and heart in in u somebody working in this role. And I just wanted to say thank you to you and your team. I I just have a quick question. So, um, we know that the federal the Department of Education at the federal level is in a little bit of chaos right now. We know we had the government shutdown, so we didn't have our testing for our federal programs and that's been extended to March 31st. Does

039that mean that you're going to be back here in March? Well, the the actual it the due date for that report has always been March 31st, but typically >> because we've had the compliance supplement, we try to get that done when we're out here doing field work. >> So, um we won't be here in March, but we'll be here right after the new year for you. So, so we'll try and get it done as soon as possible. So, we know what federal programs they've told us what programs that you're going to be looking at or you pick them out. >> We determine what those programs are. I don't believe that we have I don't believe that Zach uh Sharp, the manager that is in charge of the engagement has actually pulled those programs yet. >>

040Okay. So because last year our audit was 80 pages long and this year was 20 pages just because we just didn't have that same >> and what you have in front of you tonight is just a portion of that document. Your the documents the full document >> don't don't worry it will still be 80 pages or more >> and then the single audit report will most likely be another 15 to 16. >> Okay. So that all right my time frame is just getting all Okay. >> So what you have tonight was just your fund financial statements the stuff that you're normally used to seeing >> from Simone because we were still making adjustments up until Friday night to try and get DPI or DPI I do audits in >> I do audits in Wisconsin and

041it's called the Department of Public Instruction there. So I'm sorry Minnesota Department of Education. >> Perfect. Thank you. Um Member Laughler. >> Yeah. Thank you. So, uh ju just a quick comment uh and again thank you for being here and uh uh it's been said but you've been working since August on this audit and greatly appreciate all of that work. Um on on one of your earlier pages there was the internal controls finding over financial reporting and I I I can you just kind of explain that um a little bit more? >> Yes. Um basically what we do is we have internal control checklists for the the major areas of the audit cash accounts payable acrals revenues all that kind of stuff. So what we do there is we look at okay who's responsible for

042doing what within those areas and then we do uh we test documentation to determine okay is what they're telling us actually what's happening. Um so uh in in these cases we just know that it's not happening from what we're finding like the the audit adjustments that comes about because we have to make a number of significant or material audit adjustments. The reason we report that is basically what we're saying there is if we wouldn't have made those audit adjustments and provided them to the district, your records more than likely would have been material materially misstated. Um, and the same thing with the reconciliation of certain accounts. If we wouldn't have done a a deep dive in on some of the the federal and state receivables and deferred revenues and acrruels, same sort of thing. More

043than likely, those balances would have been materially incorrect, either overstated or understated. Um, in the financial statements, we're basically saying there if if we weren't putting those together that we think that there could be material errors in the financial statements. >> Thank you. >> Yep. And I'll emphasize like I did before, it's not unusual in a lot of districts. Not trying to sugarcoat it, but I see it at a lot of entities. Seeing no other questions, thank you very much. I'm looking for a motion to approve the fiscal year 25 audit in substantial form. So moved. Member Laughler Kemp has moved. Do I have a second? Second. >> Member Saddowski is seconded. We need to do a roll call. Uh is there any discussion? Seeing no discussion, we'll do a roll call vote. >> Member

044Banks. Yes. Yes. >> Uh, chair. Yes. Member Luramp. >> Yes. >> Member Loeld. >> Yes. >> I vote yes. Member Saddowski. >> Yes. >> Member Williams. >> Yes. >> The vote is 7 to zero. Motion carries. We have passed the audit. Thank you very much for your time today. We appreciate it. [snorts] >> Happy holiday. >> It's just starting. >> [laughter] [sighs and gasps] >> Um, moving on. We'll now move on to a report of the superintendent. So, we'll turn it over to Superintendent Maggus. >> Just one second. Let me pull things up. Just one half second. Oh, wrong room. I was casting to another room, but here we are. So, um, my superintendence report for today. You, we've talked about our mission, vision, and values before. Um, our topics for tonight, we have we'll

045be starting with our student representative reports. And I also want to say a sincere uh thank you to our student representatives. Uh, Miss Dean is here tonight. And and I want to say thanks to Miss Gardner and Miss Taylor. And we also have um some we have a token of our appreciation, some Duth Public Schools swag. There is a a bag which I'm sure will be uh very much valued for you for the rest of your life. Uh we have some notebooks and we also have a very nice polo. So you you can uh sport that in in any any location that you'd like. But we we really appreciate the uh service that you've had to the school uh to the district. You I think um we've we've often had uh student representatives that have

046have tried to bring voice to the board table and I think uh you more than anybody in many respects has tried to make sure that that voice is not just your voice but the voice of many. So, I'd like to say on behalf of uh DUTH public schools, we thank you for your service as our student representative as you share your report tonight. Uh we also have a human resources update, a legislative update, superintendent contract update, and a communications audit update. But thank you, Miss Dean. >> Thank you so much. [applause] >> Well, thank you. My goodness, this is so exciting. Thank you. Perfect. All right. Well, as usual, I'll kick off my report with some updates on what students are staying busy with at East. To begin, our winter sports teams have been hard

047at work, per usual. Um, these sports include boys and girls basketball, the dance team, boys and girls hockey, the winter cheer team, the Nordic ski team, and the alpine ski team, as well as the boys swim team. Recently, an East senior and boys swim captain Joey Zelen competed at junior nationals in Texas. [snorts] Turning to the fine arts, the speech, debate, and one act teams have all been hard at work as well with games, meets, and competitions. East students work hard and represent our school well. If you'd like to support students at any of these events, make sure to check the activities calendar on the East website for schedules. In other school news, this week is yet another spirit week at East. Winter week is put on by Stugo and is filled with festive dressup

048days, decorations, and activities. Currently, East students are watching Elf in the cafeteria. And tomorrow, uh, Stugo will be delivering over 200 candy cane grams to all the third-hour classes. Today was our winter week assembly which featured performances from the coralairs cheer team, dance team and a group called brochain. Additionally, there was the yearly teachers versus students basketball game and a competition between the winter sports captains. [snorts] On Friday, the school will be a bit emptier. All of the music students will be spending the day at the deck rehearsing for the holiday concert. It's a beloved tradition. There have been morning rehearsals happening for weeks, a testament to the dedication and talent of our music department. The concert is on Friday evening, so make sure to attend if you can. In January, StuGo will be hosting

049an event to benefit local nonprofits. I think we have five on our list right now and the committee has been working really hard to reach out to more. It's going to be called the Winter Freeze Fest and it'll feature raffle baskets with goods from local businesses, ice skating, s'mores roasting, and many other super fun winter activities. We're hoping to engage the whole community and we'll have more details on it in the coming weeks. Speaking of where those details will come from, on December 10th, I hosted the elections for next year's student representative. the junior class came together and heard presentations from four incredibly qualified and talented candidates um in January. Miss Kina Matala will be joining you as East's new student representative. I know Kina personally. She's super involved. She's a well spoken leader and

050I couldn't feel better about having her as my successor. With that said, I still have my issues section of the report. Um, the biggest thing on students minds right now is the addition of Gemini AI on our Chromebooks. I've had multiple students reach out to me within the past few days who were hoping to be here to speak at the listening session tonight, but they either didn't find the link to sign up or didn't find it until um the listening session was already full. Um, I just think it's important to emphasize how big of an issue this is in students minds. I brought up the issue of AI in schools during a recent student forum meeting and the people there were not happy about um at least with the understanding I have of the implementation

051that will be coming in February. I think the communication about this initiative has been even less than minimal. So forgive me if it if I'm speaking without the whole picture. I just simply don't have the whole picture. Um, I [clears throat] appreciate how many aspects there are to your decision-m and it's my job to make sure that the aspect of students feelings, education, and experiences is at the very front of your minds. From what I've heard, the reasoning behind this initiative is that AI isn't going anywhere, so we should be educated on it. And that's totally true. We need thoughtful, comprehensive, and structured education on responsible usage of AI. Unfortunately, students are concerned that the short timeline on the implementation of this initiative will guarantee that really important details will be overlooked. I'd bet anything

052that those details will be ones of student and teacher experiences. Students turn to do turn to AI to do work for them when they're tired, don't know what to do for an assignment, or simply don't want to put in the work. That's a fact. We already have AI on our Chromebooks with the AI overview and AI mode. Um, students have their phones with them in classes. If students want to use AI, they already do. They they will then they do. If students want to cheat, they will. And they already do. Rather than investing time and resources into making students more feel more capable, the implementation of this AI initiative um is an action that will increase apathy, I think, and reduce literacy. With generative AI even more accessible for stu uh for school work than

053it already is, more and more students will stop putting in the work that defines a highquality education. So with public schools will produce graduates who not proofread their own papers. It'll be done by a robot. It'll be graduates who ask a chatbot rather than struggling through the math problem. Is it no longer important to focus on the quality of the details that make an education well-rounded? Students want AI as a tool. Yes, but more than that, we want the tools and education that will mean that we won't need AI to feel like we know what we're doing. We need support, not a computer program that gets us out of facing challenges. I talked to student forum members and not one single person said that they or their peers would be attentive to district guidelines or

054rubrics regarding AI. If AI isn't going anywhere, why are we rushing this process? Would you rather have semiformed plans that will ensure student apathy now or do you want effective and engaging education that'll take longer to plan it'll come a little bit later? Have you looked into other options designed specifically for students? For example, there are programs out there that only generate outlines and suggestions from data like class notes that a student would upload themselves. Have you considered whether the AI education plans should come before Gemini AI is implemented on our Chromebooks in order to ensure that students already have the info they need before those tools are put right at our fingertips? Have you considered how thoroughly or how not thoroughly curriculums will be implemented when they're added half over halfway through the school

055year? Have you talked to students about how they feel this will impact them? Have you talked to teachers? I'm curious about this. Whether you're for or against AI on a broader scale, I think we should all question whether this is a really healthy, responsible, and effective way to implement it in our schools. We've seen this issue in the past, the district making really big decisions with a short timeline, overlooking details of how it the you know, the impacts will trickle down to students and teachers once it's implemented. I've said this before and I'll say it again. It's not necessarily about what the decision is, it's how it's communicated to students. I can say with a lot of confidence um you know from just speaking to kids all over the school that if AI is implemented

056in February like I've been told that it will the negative effects will outweigh the positives because we just simply won't be ready for it. This is a district that values having long-term visions and goals. So let's take some time to look at the broader picture. I'm not saying that teaching us about I isn't important. That couldn't be further from my intention. What I'm saying is that this issue is big enough that it deserves time to become a really fully formed plan. We deserve clear communication. We deserve that consideration for our mental health, for the environmental impacts. Students already use AI. This initiative will simply make it more accessible and I think that will definitely increase like apathy and cheating and I just don't think that's what this district aims to stand for. I know that's

057a lot, but I think it's important to say. But on another note, during my time on this board, I have definitely learned, begun to learn the complexities of a group like this one. You know, schools are very intricate organizations, more so than I ever realized. So, I do appreciate the enormity of any decision, especially big decisions like this one. I think students don't fully appreciate how much you deal with, and it can be hard for you to fully appreciate how much students are dealing with. We all know our own perspectives, backgrounds, and struggles the best. Um, by serving as a student representative, I think I have expanded my own perspective and I hope that my challenges to you have contributed to expanding yours. So, for the final time, I'll share my monthly reminder to take

058student feedback with a fresh perspective each time you hear it. And to quote myself from one of my prior reports, you only see some of our perspectives and students only see some of yours. There needs to be a balance and luckily that's something that we can all can can contribute to. I challenge my peers to question why decisions that frustrate them are necessary. I challenge them to look at the broader picture. I challenge myself to encourage collaboration rather than frustration. It's an ongoing goal with imperfect execution. I hope that you will continually and critically reflect on how you're incorporating student voices. I have to say that one more time. I hope that you will continually and critically reflect on how you're incorporating student voices. There is a difference between listening and hearing. Thank you for

059your time and this opportunity. >> [applause] >> Thank you for your insightful uh reflections and I think that we we definitely want to make sure that we're uh informing the board and and informing the public and especially informing our students as far as the details of the plans and and also taking student voice into account within that. So, um is there a question? member member Williams. >> Yeah. Um I guess I just want Thank you very much. So, on to our other topics. Um, the human resources update. Uh, as we mentioned, we have some exciting news. Uh, Steve Johnson is was selected by our hiring team as our director of human resources. We'll be bringing his contract forward. So congratulations Steve on on that new uh position and you come to us with many years

060of experience in human resources uh particularly in higher education and healthc care most recently at the University of Minnesota Duth uh he also has been working with the human resources uh director here uh for for or I'm sorry for a while he's been a human resources manager within our district so the past two months uh and I would I would say in many respects um he has been pseudo interim director of human resources since since he was practically since he was hired. I was I was there in name but he was there very much in spirit and there was a huge uh roar of appreciation from the department when we uh let let his team know that he was selected as the director and I think that's the best uh seal of approval that that

061could be given. Uh and also we're looking now uh just for a uh organizational slight change that uh with the the change in the executive director position to being a director position uh that that position would now uh because we don't have directors who are in the senior leader role that that position would report to uh executive director Zunich at this point. So basically all of the operations uh the operational work and business services would be under uh executive director Zunich and all of the teaching and learning and equity oper aspects would be under assistant superintendent bonds. That's a model seen frequently of in districts of our s size and it makes sense for us to uh do moving forward. So, that's something we're we're uh in the midst of of working on. As far

062as our legislative updates, we've been working on our our U platforms. [clears throat] Our school board and administration worked on our draft legislative platform with Jeff Anderson at our workshop in November. We'll be voting to approve our legislative platform tonight and we're scheduled to meet with our local representatives on January 27th in preparation for the 2026 legislative session. So, I remember last year our timeline got a little uh cramped together. So, we were meeting with representatives before we'd actually had a chance to approve the the platform, but uh this time we've we've backwards designed and everything's ready to roll in that regard. Uh as [clears throat] far as our platform just for the public and we'll be talking about it later, our top priority is school funding, increasing the state funding formula. We've heard we

063always hear a lot about the needs out there and really when we think about fully funding education. This is this is what we most need. Making sure that we have an increase in the state funding formula if at all possible. Fully funding statemandated programs that will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to the district if they're not funded and no new unfunded mandates. Also with special education, we would really appreciate if the state can reduce or eliminate the special education cross subsidy, which is basically that uh special ed isn't fully paid for by the state that we get about 60 cents on the dollar. And we don't believe that's fair. And uh the state uh association of of school administrators doesn't believe that either. I I was chairing that group and that's one of their

064biggest platform issues is really thinking about fully funding special education. And then also uh we're reimbursement of the district for there was a state formula issue several years ago that resulted us in us uh not receiving over $5 million and there was a bill on the table last year for a million dollar uh recoup of some of those funds. And uh that is still a live uh possibility and so we want to make sure that we're we're looking at that as well. as well as uh funding for technology safety and infrastructure. Um as I've mentioned before, many many districts around the state have gone for technology referendums unsuccessfully like we have. Uh because there there is um just a need for us to consider how are we how are we making sure that we have

065those those areas funded and safety too. thinking about our agent aging camera systems and some of the infrastructure there. Also, career and technical education is in need of of support and transportation aid. And then also as as uh executive director Zunich was uh discussing the second uh phase of the read act as it moves into sec secondary schools, that's part of the uh top priority of school funding. Then uh thinking about school policies, this is more of a policy year than a budget year. Uh one thing that we've we've uh said, you know, if you're going to pass it, pay for it. So no unfunded mandates. We also want to focus on expanding educator workforce and uh along those those lines, thinking about how are we broadening lensure pathways, what are we going to do

066for um district flexibility and hiring and also thinking about the diversity of our workforce. What are we doing for uh grow your own programming? What are we doing to make sure that we are able to recruit and retain highquality educations educators and that we're also diversifying our workforce? That is very important to us. Uh then also thinking about student mental health. Uh we would like to see an increase in funding for school counselors, social workers, psych psychologists, and chemical health staff. also thinking about strengthening our school-based mental health partnerships and continuing to fund trauma-informed care in our schools. And then finally, uh the um looking at the work with the um DUTH Promise. We have our DUTH Promise efforts and and uh that was funded to the tune of uh $50,000 and uh we have

067meeting later later this week to continue that work. But uh meeting with those those groups and thinking about what are we doing to support in the area of the pathway for health care and um manufacturing our communications update as you know we've had a communications audit there's and thank you to the many board members who have answered uh questions and also reposted the uh the the scope survey on your your uh social media that's been really helpful. There were 10 focus groups. There were principles, assistant principles, pair professionals, clericals, teachers, families, community partners, directors, and program managers. And then part of the scope survey we had uh that was open between November 17th and December 12th. Uh we had families, staff, students, and communities, community members partake in that. and the researcher is going to

068work on all the data as well as the internal and external documentation on our website and we expect to have a completed audit uh and um presentation for January. Little update on my superintendent contract uh techn so basically my superintendent contract ends on June 30th. I am working with the board on finalization of our 2627 contract which will likely come to the board in January. Uh, and I just wanted to put this out here because we did have some questions because some people see that, you know, that it needs to be negotiated by the end of December. Uh, but we are we've just been really busy with a lot of things and we have a mutual agreement that there's there's nothing there's nothing fishy to see about not not finishing the contract. It's more just

069that we've been busy and we're we we things are progressing and we just need a little bit more time to finish that. But I really want to say that I'm truly truly looking forward to continuing to serve this district and community uh well into the future. DUTH is an amazing community uh and I'm very grateful to serve as superintendent of our schools here. So, thanks for uh working on that contract with me. Any questions? It's fine. If not, it's a long night. I would just add that um part of this is on this me as a board chair. This is my first year doing it. So some of the timing having to do with the superintendent contract is on me. superintendent was very much, you know, working to to do this and then I just

070had so I just want to take that piece for the public that this really is about um some logistics and a very busy schedule that we have and and we're I'm [snorts] very very very very optimistic about getting this next contract settled just getting it done in a timely manner. So just wanted to put that out there. [snorts] Yeah, member Loeld. >> Thanks. Thanks for a great uh superintendent update and report. I always look forward to um my my comments aren't really necessarily like a question for you on this. It's more of a connection that I have with some of um Superintendent Magus' report. So when he uh presented his legislative update uh culminated from our conversations and working with our lobbyist Jeff Anderson, you know, we um we actually offered a bill um this

071our dul school district uh to Minnesota schoolboard association. If you remember, we kind of talk about that. we submit it by the end of September and and this this board submitted a resolution bill to MSBA to increase the funding by 4%. Okay. And to to our surprise, my surprise kind of the the MSBA decided that that that they really had other bills uh about fully funding. So, it wasn't that they were denying that the resolution we brought forward was wrong, just that they would prefer to lobby for full funding, but we we did get up and and talk about the fact that 4% was, you know, something that that was tangible for legislators to listen to. many of us around this table and in that room that we were with go down and talk to

072legislators and we we actually got the the body of MSBA delegates to to really think about that and there was a lot of dialogue and and and we did end up not getting enough votes to put it back on MSBA's plate but we we were close. I think we were like 20 votes away from that. So I I I just appreciate that that's still on our platform. doesn't mean that we're we're not going to advocate and and I think school boards across the the state will still keep that probably in their legislative. And [snorts] then the other one that that's in his legislative update deals with flexibility in teacher um teacher lensure, teacher recruitment and expanding the workforce and I equate that right now I ser serve on the board of school administrators which is

073the licensing for the superintendent and the principles and assistants and we we do the same thing. So, I just want to share, you know, an observation that I I've been on the board now for eight years, and I'm going to finish the term this year. I'm not re asking the governor to reappoint me. For eight years, I've traveled once a month to the cities to represent um a voice of a school board. I'm the school board rep for the state. But learning about the complexities that our state demands of our leaders and the variances that we continue to struggle with and legislators and even, you know, other educational organizations look at Minnesota and say, "Yeah, we have high standards. We expect the best of school administrators and teachers." Pellsby does the same thing as we

074do. We often have conversation with Pellsby and we put a lot of we put a lot of angst and a lot of almost obstacles in the way of getting lentures and variances to superintendent assistant superintendent especially if they come from out of state. So when when member banks, you know, continues to encourage us to look for teachers and leaders of of color somewhat, we we have to what what we're asking for on our legislative platform is really important. I'm just kind of sharing my observation about the fact that we do put a lot of obstacles in Minnesota because as a state, we think we are, you know, a really solid state and it's because we we expect. So when a superintendent wants to get a new license like they're coming like John comes from Wisconsin

075you know he had to go through a rigorous observation he had to he had to prove every single lensure qualification that Minnesota superintendents have and he had to prove that he had that same education and if he didn't he had to enroll in college courses to get it which cost them money and that's the same obstacles we put in teachers. So, I'd like that part of our platform and if anybody wants more information, I'll share that. But I just wanted to thank him for putting it in our platform and I just wanted to clarify at least that's my observation of what we're asking for. >> Yeah. And I appreciate that. And I I um I think the advocacy that we do for the schools has to be multiaceted. You're you're advocating and uh lobbying with

076the Minnesota School Board Association. we're doing our own work as a district and then also uh I was very involved with the the Minnesota uh Association of School Administrators as their their chair of their lobbying platform and they just um produced and shared out their lobbying platform today. And you'll see not by coincidence there's a lot of overlap between what we're putting forward and what they're putting forward and what is out there with MSBA and other other entities because the needs are the same. And so uh I'm I'm very hopeful that we uh I was talking with Representative Kuslowski today. I've met talked with uh Representative Zlesnikar and I think that there's uh an appetite for u listening and and considering where we move forward. I think it's uh important that we continue to reach

077out to all of our our representatives actively. Seeing no other discussion, we can move on to our committee reports. Thank you, [clears throat] Superintendent Maggus, for your report and thank you, Representative Dean, as well. Um, now we'll move on to our standing committee reports. We'll talk about the committee of the whole. Um, assistant superintendent bonds, please talk to us about the committee of the whole meeting this month. >> Thank you. Um, but I would uh be remiss not to also take this opportunity to um thank um student rep dean as well for just an outstanding uh job uh serving as a rep for East. Um, I I get I smile every time she talks because I I get really excited about students and leadership and I just know that she has a a strong voice

078and and her aspirations uh for the future is is focused on not just debating but but uh you know maybe a run for the Senate, who knows or something political in nature u because I see that in her. So, I just have appreciated everything she brought to the table and so congratulations um on serving uh this board and and your next uh step um when you graduate. So, great job. So, um board um I would like to provide just a quick update on the committee to whole which took place on December uh 2nd. Um it was a a a really great discussion. Uh there was an introduction of a summary board report um that was introduced um to provide a summary of some some of the projects and initiatives that are going on in the

079district. Uh the first one that we did uh was related to the first street buildout. So Brian Brown, myself, other program leaders uh who are set to go into the first street building, they were present uh to provide information related to uh the buildout itself. So um so we just really uh um pleased to have that status update on the full buildout provided by Brown u Mr. Brown and others. There was also a report provided by our very own superintendent. Uh he provided information related to the strategic growth and capacity planning. So uh superintendent provided information on um how the enrollment of our district is really exciting. Um but it also has uh brought with it and all of the ongoing needs that we have you know in addition related to meeting the needs of

080students especially students who are students with uh special needs and um and just ongoing enrollment need um superintendent shared some information related to the process for doing a capacity study. So um want to thank him for that report. Also the teacher learning equity team specifically uh director spartz director larva um coordinators um usmen and coordinator um uh stabber provided an update related to our uh what's used to be known as the world's best uh workforce um which is now called the ker which is the comprehensive achievement and civic readiness presentation was provided. It was the annual presentation that is required uh by statute and I want to thank the team for providing information to the board um and the community. And then there was one additional presentation provided by Simone Zunich um with her guests

081and it was related to the bid process. So Simone um executive director Zunich provided that uh presentation related to the bid process. So that concluded the uh cow meeting for December 2nd. >> Great. Do we have any questions for Assistant Superintendent Bonds? >> Seeing no questions, we're going to move on to human resources and HR business services. Great. Well, we had a packed agenda. Um we met on Monday, December 8th here um at 4:30. And as always, I encourage the public to check out our YouTube um where we have all of our meetings recorded um because this is a really robust committee as is our policy committee um and we we review um all sorts of areas of HR business including human resources, business services um which includes our enrollment report, child nutrition, facilities, technology

082and transportation reports. This time we have five recommended resolutions which I'll talk about. Um and then on our consent agenda we often look at job descriptions. This year um of course we looked at our budget and our audit. Um we look at fundraisers, bids, RFPs and quotes. And then we have a miscellaneous section which is also um hefty. um where we get properties updates. Um we look at our expenditure contracts, no cost revenue contracts, and then grant applications and change orders. So, I just want to encourage folks to watch that. Um I'm not going to go through the whole thing again, but I will give some highlights for sure. Um before I do that, I just wanted to thank members Williams and Banks for your work on this committee over the last calendar year. I

083really enjoyed serving on the HR business committee with both of you. um and appreciate your work um because we know we have a lot to review with this committee. So the first uh things I would highlight on our HR report uh I know it was highlighted but we welcomed uh Steve Johnson as our new HR director. So thank you and welcome Steve. Um we also um I would highlight that we began to bargain um for the 2527 contract with our DIY group. Um uh the first meeting is set for December 22nd. And then uh our HR department has been helping staff navigate uh the new uh PFML and then continued um kind of disruption between even though Aspires and Blue Cross reached an agreement, there's still going to be some residual impact on staff. So

084helping staff navigate that and overcome that. And then um our enrollment report um we're still up and that is obviously a really good problem to have um which has led to um as assistant superintendent Bonds mentioned our growth in capacity and as we talked about um financially you know we're still in a spot where um we're two years you know our budget is based on two years ago. So, that's significant to think about when we have 200 more students in our district. So, um but it's good news that our enrollment is up and we will pivot and um do what we can to continue to meet all the needs. Any questions so far on either of those reports? Okay, seeing none, I'm going to keep going because there's a lot. Um so in our facilities

085uh report I just wanted to one of the things that I highlighted was the stats in the spotlight. Um there was several staff who moved forward um in their positions in the district. Maybe they were a custodian and now they're an engineer. And we talked a lot about that at our meeting. And I just think it's worthwhile um to highlight that um it's great that our district has created career pathways for people and you know it may it reminded me too of our program for to um I think it's for paras who want to become teachers that we've talked about. So we we're doing a lot as a district in our HR too to kind of create those pathways. So I just wanted to lift that up and highlight that for technology. Uh there's flat

086plan there's um been several flat panel displays that are going to replace smartboards and there um from what I understand we're piloting that um in different schools and seeing how how that works. Yep, I'm seeing nods which is great to hear. um and really appreciate technologies work on that because I know um smart boards are a um significant part of our our education for our students. Um getting out into the schools actually when member Loeld and I were at Laura MacArthur on behalf of the board last week or the week before it was neat to see how the teachers were utilizing those smartboards or those flat panel displays. Uh it's very engaging and creative and so uh I appreciate that because that's a important piece of our classrooms. [snorts] Transportation report. I think it's significant

087to point out that we're um hopefully going to be fully staffed in early 26. I know this is something that we um always look at is our our staffing report, especially with transportation. And um we also talked about uh we read about how our fleet is very is aging and so there's ongoing a lot of ongoing maintenance um work that's done on our buses and we really appreciate the work of our our maintenance department on our transportation. And in total I think it's uh pretty astounding to highlight that we have 441 routes that we complete every day. I think it's every day across the district getting kids to and from school seeing nods. So, um, significant. Any questions so far or comments? Member Laughler Kemp? Just a a quick comment being we've been talking a

088little bit about AI and I appreciated in uh Greg Krueger's uh uh manager's report that um you had attended a A1 and >> [snorts] >> an AI, excuse me, A1, A1, uh AI, uh training outside the district and just I know that um from other conversations that you uh have been putting um a lot of your professional expertise uh and uh uh into um our policies. So, I just wanted to note that and and appreciate that you uh were able to attend. Thank you. Okay, seeing no other questions or comments, I will continue. Um going to highlight a couple are all of our resolutions here. Um so we have um res the first resolution that we have is B2-25-4137 um aid anticipation certificate. And so you will see that in your packet. So, um, as

089we talked about, this is, um, basically, um, giving our district a line of credit. It's a temporary line of credit, um, that'll go through, um, February to May, so for about 160 days. Um, we will pay it back on June 1st, and it's not going to add to our debt, um, because we'll pay it off. really um this is um going to help us kind of fill fill a gap between like when we when we receive income and when we have payments going out. It's something that our district has done in the past um but the last time was in 2015 I believe. And um I know director Zunich consulted with Baird about that and they often recommend that districts actually do have an account. Um but I would open it up for any questions

090about the aid anticipation certificate. I know um several board members did email questions already and got questions answered, but seeing no no questions, that's great. I think we provided a lot of information. I appreciate Director Zunich's work on that. Thank you. Anything to add? >> No, I I um this was my first time doing this as well and one of the questions is a great questions that um it's not uncommon for districts to do this. It's uh there's approximately 12 annually a year that do uh apply for this line of credit. So, um we are working hard too in the finance department to um really look at like a net 30 days on payments on invoices to help with our um cash flow. Like I said, this did happen last year, but we were able

091to control it through accounts payable. And now, as you can see with the audit results too, it almost coalines with um you know, dollars and whatnot. So, um just yeah, thank you for your support. >> Great. Thank you. Uh the next resolution our committee is bringing forth is um B12-25-4138 and that's our certified tax levy levy 2025 payable 2026. I'm not going to talk about that one a lot because we had a presentation about it but I'll open it up for questions in a minute. And then um we have our resolution uh 12-25-4139 which is the acceptance of donations to DUTH public schools as usual. And then we have our acceptance of grant awards to DUTH public schools. And then our last resolution um is a resolution establishing combined polling places. And as all of

092you know, since we've been on the board for at least a couple years each, um this is something that we look a resolution that we bring forth every year. Uh so, uh I would kind of open it up to discussion. I know I can share the past history of the last four years. Our board has never passed this resolution. We voted to keep all of the polling places open. Um what this resolution um is saying is that we we could we could vote to combine the polling places if there were a special election that were needed. It would be less costly. Um I think my my feeling on it is that we should uh well that I wouldn't vote to approve it that I would want to make sure that voting was uh as widespread

093as possible so folks could vote at their own regular polling place. But I would open it up for discussion to the board. Other comments? Member Laughler Kim? >> Yeah, I was planning on commenting when we voted, but yeah, I have not supported it before and I just really I understand why we bring it forward and I understand uh the need uh or to look at it financially. But um we're at a time in this country where we need to make sure voting is even more accessible to people and uh we're not constraining or uh having barriers. Um and um so and I do believe combining polling places taking it out of the neighborhoods uh that people can easily access um does that. So I I will not be supporting it, but I look forward to

094um uh any other discussion around it. >> Member Melo. >> Um I also will not be in support of this um for the reasons already previously stated. Um but I just want to make sure that the public is aware that at this point in time there's uh no special election on the docket going forward. Um uh and the state legislature gives us this uh option uh if there was going to be one to help the district save money um because it costs a lot of money to have all 34 polling places or thereabouts um here in Duth if there was going to be a special election. Um but as to the points that member Laughler Kemp, member Saddowski said, um democracy is uh needing everyone to be able to participate fully and uh voting is

095one of those ways that we can do it. So therefore I also when it comes up on the agenda will not be in support. >> Great. Thank you. I really appreciate the discussion. Um and sorry to hope we can get our discussion in now and then vote later. But member Loel, >> so I agree. I'm not going to support this. And um I think it's important though that we put it on our agenda. There have been years I've been on the board where for whatever reason we if you don't put it on the agenda, it it does not, you know, it there isn't going to be a a a special or a a reduction of polling. But, um, MSBA kind of, uh, uh, encourages school boards to to annually put it on your December budget

096because if you don't pass it before december, it's it's just a no a no deal. And I just think it's important to be transparent that this is an option and other districts might do it. And maybe some people are wondering why we don't even discuss it. So, I just I'm glad it's on the agenda. It's been on the agenda, I think, for mostly the last four years. and it hasn't um been supported by this board because of the the conversations. So, thank you. >> Yeah, thank you. I would I agree that it's good to continually have it on and and have that discussion in public. Seeing no other questions or comments on that, um I will move on to our budget summary report on page 25. Um, I would just want to thank Director Zunich

097for her work um on our budget and and tracking all of our finances. As she mentioned, um, we are outpacing our budget by about 7%. Um, especially looking at fund one, tracking that fund. Um, as she also mentioned, there's a lot of spending that happens at the beginning of the year. So, I look forward to um, in January kind of diving in to that again after we're at the sixmon mark. um which is often a time where we can have an even more it's always accurate but that's an even more accurate um time. So and then um wanted to highlight are some we had a couple expenditure contracts this time that we had some um discussion about. Um those are on on as far as my book page 33. And one of them is called

098Thought Exchange [snorts] and that is a um software or a product that really distills public opinion down to digestible data for decision making. And I just wanted to I was going to highlight it anyway, but um student rep Dean to your point about really listening to and getting student feedback and and not just hearing but listening and taking that in. Um Superintendent Magus, the way you describe this platform, this is going to be another tool that we can use. I mean, I asked about it because it is a hefty price tag on it. However, um after hearing about it and reading about it a little bit more, I thought that it could be a really valuable tool. Um would you add anything to that? Superintendent Magus, >> I was just pulling up their web page

099for a moment, but uh yes, it's it's um it's an interactive tool if you think about um and actually to be honest my I'm a little tired and I don't know if I'll I'll articulate it as well as I'd like, but uh it does do survey work. it does um do there there are uh possibilities for uh AI interviews. So it can do like basically some work as far as um focus group work interviewing people going deeper with with questioning and and gaining input that way. But the main thing is is what they call a thought exchange which is where different participants in the thought exchange uh put in their information. if you've ever used like menty or any of those other uh surveying pieces and it surfaces ideas and then people can basically recomment

100on them or uh kind of like them and better than you know how uh if you think about like um social media algorithms, but you can see how certain certain [clears throat] ideas are are uh looked at as potentially being more popular and they they surface and so more people can add to that idea. And so it's a way to make sure that it's not just a conversation listening to loudest voices or um people putting things on um social media where they're just putting negative trolling type comments. It's uh it's a a resource that's used in a lot of different districts for a lot of different things, particularly with um sometimes if there's there's a need to engage the public more deeply, like thinking about our our capacity and growth work that we'll be doing,

101we want to make sure that people feel heard and are heard. And this offers yet another way in outside of the uh in-person forums that we would have because sometimes I've been part of in-person forums like that where sometimes it's the uh person who's most popular who whose idea comes forward or the person who's you know most vocal and pressing is hard that comes forward. But this allows ideas to be surfaced based on the merit of the idea itself. >> Yeah. And of course, it'll no way in no way replace, you know, one-on-one communication or getting out into the schools or anything like that. But I uh after hearing about it, appreciated that it'll be another tool in the toolbox for um hearing student voices and community voices as well. Um, and I appreciated what

102Superintendent Mega shared tonight and then again at our HR meeting about um, you know, some of the people who might feel a little more confident speaking out and then making sure we get the voices of someone who maybe is a little quieter too. So, and then uh, the other expenditure contract that I wanted to highlight was the CFS interiors um, because that was a hefty one. This was basically our um contract. We had already approved the bid back in August. So that's kind of what this is. We were we approved the bid in August and now we're um seeing that contract come through. So just kind of wanted to highlight that and explain that because we want to keep an eye on all this all of the things. Um I would also kind of uh

103point out some of our change orders. I always want to look at those. For me, those are found on page 169. So, I'm just going there. Um, so we had two change orders. Um, one for uh Intercon Group and that was for um over $77,000 and then one with Beat I think it's Beaten Company for about $20,000. And I just wanted to share that I did inquire about that and um if anyone wants I can share with them you know where I wanted to know where that $77,000 change order kind of came from and it's broken down into different chunks. You know $20,000 was for um dealing with um existing unknowing unknown conditions related to one aspect of the building project uh at First Street. And um there was a few of those. So just

104whenever you're doing construction, you run into unknown things when you get behind that wall or whatnot. Um there was also some code required changes and um some construction coordination changes. And then um one chunk of it was we decided we want to level this floor where the big paper room was. So just wanted to share that. I did ask about those >> hefty change orders and um they all seem in line with normal construction. Superintendent Magus. >> Sure. Just when we think about uh change orders and First Street and we're also hearing from people about they you know wanting major changes in layout and things like that. It's the the wall walls are already up and in place and we've toured and so there like we're way beyond the point of being able to uh

105thoughtfully make any sort of change in the allocation of space. I I think that the space is is well allocated, but I think this uh the the cost of change orders further articulates like we we don't have millions extra to go back to the architects and completely redesign First Street. Uh I've I just don't don't see us being able to make major changes at this point. We've we actually delayed the start of construction by a year because we had which is costing us quite a bit more because we wanted to take time and listen and think about programming. And so I know that there might be some some even significant dissatisfaction at times about what we're doing with with First Street. I believe it's a beautiful building. I think it's a going to be a

106great place for learning and we don't have millions of dollars to go back to the drawing board and uh redo it. So, >> great. Thank you. Any other questions or comments on the HR report? [snorts] >> All right, that concludes my report then. Thank you. >> Thank you, Member Saddowski. We'll move on now to the policy committee. Member Laughler Kemp. >> Thank you. Thank you. Our policy committee met on uh Thursday, December 11th. Uh and also before I jump in um uh it was a a long meeting and you can go to YouTube to learn more about the discussions and the presentations that happened uh from different staff people on the the policies I'm going to be talking about. Um I too also want to appreciate uh member Mikeell and member uh LoD for serving

107with me on the policy committee this year and also the tremendous we've done a tremendous amount of work on policies this year and really uh could not uh have done that without the work of our staff across the district and particularly our executive assistant Patty Pquette uh for um managing our policies and changes and um really helping us move forward uh like we have this past year. So I wanted to start with that as well. Um I'm going to as I always do um just highlight u the policies and read the introduction uh or the purpose uh for the public and um then we'll move through all of um uh this report or most of this report is a part of the consent agenda as well. Uh so for the first policy it's policy 709

108student transportation safety policy. This is replacing um our thousand series uh 3150 and 3160. And the purpose of this policy is to provide safe transportation for students and to educate students on safety issues and the responsibilities of school bus ridership. And um uh and then uh as always with all of these policies, there's uh many other sections to it as well as it has the legal statutes uh uh that we are following uh state statutes on the back uh of it. So uh appreciate Jeremy from transportation for reviewing this policy and making um bringing bringing it forward to us. Uh the next policy is um uh for a second reading uh and that's policy 9005 advertising. This replaces 1025 and 10:30. The purpose of this policy is to provide guidelines for the advertising or promoting

109of products or services to students and parents uh in the schools. And there were no changes from the first reading that we had and from the review of um our policy committee as well as all of you at our uh last meeting. The next policy is policy 70. Uh these are the next few policies are policies for review. So there's um minor changes, legislative changes um uh to these uh next three policies. But the uh the first for review is 707 transportation of public school students. And the purpose of this policy is to provide for the transportation of students consistent with the requirements of law. Uh policy 515, protection and privacy of pupil records. the school district. The purpose of this policy is the school district recognizes its responsibility in regard to the collection, maintenance,

110and dissemination of pupil records in the protection of privacy rights of students as provided in federal and state law. And uh this is um again um we actually had just uh adopted it in June of 2023. It was revised uh earlier this year in 2025, but again because of legislative changes, we're bringing it back for review. Uh so that is 5:15 and um the last one for review is 429 employee recognition and memorials. And with that one, we are just um uh reumbering it to our four our uh 400 series. So um we are reumbering 4160 to 429 and the purpose of this policy is to establish appropriate and acceptable guidelines for families, friends andor community members who wish to establish a memorial or recognition for living or deceased employees. And then uh the next

111uh section um that we spent time on was under regulations and this is uh 524 uh 1R uh and this isformational artificial intelligence uh AI tool use and I sorry I said A1 I think I am hungry and I was thinking of steak sauce uh when I said that as you all might be too. Uh so um uh I appreciate the work again that Greg Krueger and Jen Larva, Greg Krueger, our director of technology, uh and Jen Larva as well as a a committee of folks did on um this regulation. Uh and the uh this uh uh goes with our policy 524 which is internet acceptable use and safety. uh and um one of the changes we made on this is uh the regulation is it's in uh AI tool use um for all not

112just for staff as it had been and again um uh a lot of thought went into this and uh I uh appreciate uh Greg being here just hearing uh some of the concerns that were brought forward um by our student rep as well. So, thank you uh for that. And then um the last um thing that we spent a lot of time on uh is uh again we've been bringing a whole series of policies uh to be uh considered for deletion. Um and so this month we had the 5,000 series. Uh and we are just asking to delete three of those for now and then the others will continue to be brought forward like we have been seeing with the the other series. So uh we are uh uh wanting to delete from the 500

113series 5015 which is ages of compulsory attendance 5042 open enrollment and 5120 emergency procedures for bodily injuries and um they all fall within other policies. So, uh, in summary, uh, that was our, um, policy meeting and, um, board members, any additional things you would want to add? Okay. Uh, again, uh, go to Thursday, December 11th, YouTube, uh, for, uh, getting a sizzling. Yeah. Getting more more of the discussion and the presentations. Thank you so much. >> Sizzling and A1. That is quite the homage to steak right [laughter] now. >> I appreciate the meaty report. >> Yeah, exactly. [laughter] No more puns. Um, thank you. Do we have any questions for member Laughler Kemp? Doesn't look like it. So, we'll move on to um some general board committee updates. Would anybody like to go ahead and

114give a update? Member Mike Stell. Uh yes. Uh back at the end of November, I was able to attend the first district advisory committee meeting. Um which was wonderful. Um we had community members and parents uh staff um uh all all people all different uh kind of perspectives there. Um the career no the comprehensive achievement and career readiness which civic oh yeah um which I learned today at an MSBA uh uh coffee and conversation that other school districts call it the quaser so in case we wanted to change how we say it. Um and so that was presented uh to the group at that time. Um and unfortunately I was unable to make the second meeting. I also was able to attend the um wellness committee meeting that happened earlier this month. Again, another great

115group of um community members and parents um and staff who are very have vested interest in um our students and the their success and the wellness in our district. Um they're reviewing our wellness uh policy like literally line by line. Um Simone is uh leading that and uh doing a fabulous job. Um really looking at everything with a fine tooth comb and they'll uh bring forward some recommendations uh when they're all through. Member Saddowski. Yeah. Uh last Thursday I attended uh the Head Start Policy Council meeting or at least most of it. It's a busy time of year with the holiday season so I had to um step away towards the end. Um, but one thing that they were talking about is their budget. You know, as we know, our Head Start teachers are part

116of our our teachers as a whole, you know, the union. And so when we pass those um teacher contracts, it affects the Head Start as well. And we're really proud of that in our district. And I think it is definitely something to be proud of. But um they have had to do they have their own budget. And I know Simone would know more about this. I won't put you on the spot, but I know that they've been having to look at their budget and maybe make some cuts. They've they've cut some paras this last year. Um, and so they're just they were kind of talking about that and brainstorming um as a committee just different ways that they could look at kind of at their budget in the future. And then they also talked about

117the playscapes that were built probably around 2020ish um that are at many of the schools. Um that's the date that was thrown out. That could be the wrong date, but either way, um we have playscapes throughout our district in elementary schools that house some of our littles or Head Start and ECF, um preschool. And so, um, they were just kind of talking about the maintenance of those kind of ongoing and how how we can how they can communicate and collaborate with the district on those playscapes and um, making sure that because they're such a valuable resource to a lot of our littles that they continue to be maintained. Those are a few of the things they talked about. >> Member Laughler Camp. Yeah, I um don't so I serve on the federal uh grants committee

118and um we we didn't meet but we are meeting on Thursday morning and just because of the holidays and that and because the federal grants were mentioned a bit tonight just wanted to let you know there is a meeting and I'll have some updates for January uh and I am looking forward to just uh understanding also the impact of what's happening at the federal level uh at that meeting as well. So thank you >> member banks. Sure. Thank you. I actually have three updates. Um I have a handout for you. I'm just going to pass that out. Pass these around, please. >> So, I just thought I'd start with this. >> Thank you. >> Couple more. And this is the school resource officers uh by the numbers. And so I wanted to make sure here's

119more. >> Okay. >> A tamber needs can somebody pass this around? Make sure the student there's a few more there. So thank you. So, just take a look there briefly at the school resource officers by the numbers and uh very exciting numbers as you see there. And then uh Danfield High School citations, East High School citations. I should uh let you all know there were zero citations for our middle schools to the state. So, that's very exciting. And um so, one in September citation at Denfield and two in October. uh two in November for east uh and see the citations and what was associated with them. But because of uh community relationships and partnerships uh the two citations in October at Danfeld are no longer uh because of a relationship with the um uh Pez

120Davala and their organization working with the school district and the police department and the students. uh to um get the student back on track. And so that we do see happening and it's very exciting. These numbers are uh very hopeful. And so I wanted folks to see that. If you have any questions about that, just please let us know. Um I think there might be a question. Is uh that handout available digitally? Sorry, I can't be there. >> Yes, it is. Okay. >> Yeah. Make sure I'll make sure you get it. >> And then member Banks, is this because is this from the the the committee that meets for SRO's this? So, when did was that just this past? >> We just met about a week or so. >> Okay. Thank you. I just clarifying

121>> and I want to announce that Ethan Row is the new supervisor um for the SRO's and I've known Ethan for decades. He and I served on uh the board at the Damiano Center and uh he's going to be a great addition to uh working with our SRO's. Folks should know that as well. Any questions about what I handed out to you? Okay. Transfer appeal. So, we had that meeting. Uh we just finalized um um we had a conversation. I won't share a lot of information about that because because of names and stuff I don't want to share that. Uh but uh we have a robust uh group of about three people uh that reviewed a transfer appeal from a family and um we made that decision and that's going to be announced to the

122family soon. just a very robust got all the information necessary to make sure we were making the right decisions and having the right conversations uh in providing what we believe was the right decision. And then uh the transportation safety hazard committee. We had three requests for uh changing bus stops in the district and uh of the three we approved one of those changes. Uh and what we do is we look at the policy that is there related to the transportation and bus stops and all of that in the district. And um so two were denied and one was approved. That's the best I can say on that. Just uh for confidentiality and stuff like that. Okay, that's it. >> Thank you so much, member banks. Seeing no other Oh, sorry, member Loaltton. Sorry about that.

123>> Just an update and and member Mike Cell and member Zidowski. We have an intergovernmental tomorrow. So, um, that's the meeting with county commissioners and city councilors and school board and conversation. So, I look forward to that. And our our our EAC meeting that I'm the rep for the school board and I think member Williams is as well meets tomorrow at 4:30 um here at the district service and and that that's I'm welcoming that with our new leadership and and our our our new process. So, I'll report that next month, too. Thank you. Seeing no further updates, we'll move on to our consent agenda. Do we have a motion to approve the consent agenda? >> So moved. >> Member Micel. Do we have a second? >> Second. >> Member Laughler Kemp. Um, do we have

124any discussion? Seeing no discussion, we will move on to a roll call vote. Member Banks, >> yes. >> Chair, yes. Member Laughler, >> yes. >> Member Loal, >> yes. I vote yes. Member Sidowski, >> yes. >> Member Williams, >> yes. >> The vote is seven to zero. >> The consent agenda has passed. We'll now move on to resolutions from committee reports and the first one on aid anticipation certificate. Member Saddowski. >> Yes. I will move uh resolution B-12-25-4132. This is a resolution relating to general obligation aid anticipation certificates of indebtedness series 22026A um in an amount not to exceed $12 million authorizing the issuance and establishing the terms thereof and authorizing certain officers of the district to award the sale thereof and to take such action and execute all documents necessary to accomplish the award

125and So, be it resolved by the school board um the school board of independent school district number 709 St. Louis County, Minnesota um the district as follows and it's multiple pages which we all had previous. So, I move that resolution B12-25-4137. Member Saddowski has made the motion. Do we have a second? Second. >> Member Loalt has seconded it. Do we have any discussion? Seeing no discussion, we will now have a roll call vote. >> Member Banks, >> yes. >> Chair Eater, >> yes. >> Member Laughler, >> yes. >> Member Loel, >> yes. >> I vote yes. Member Sidowski, >> yes. >> Member Williams, >> yes. >> Passes 70. The motion has passed. Next, we have the certified tax levy. Member Banks. >> Thank you. I move resolution B-12-25-4138 a resolution for certified tax levy 2025

126payable 2026 be it resolved by the school board of independent se district 709 St. Louisis County, Minnesota to hereby set the tax levy for 2025 payable 2026 at 48 million 062,491.97. >> Don't [snorts] forget the 97 cents. A member bank has made the motion. Do we have a second? >> Second. >> Member Saddowski has seconded it. Do we have any discussion? Seeing no discussion, we will have a roll call vote. >> Member Banks, >> yes. >> Chair Derk, >> yep. >> Member Laughler, >> yes. >> Member Loal, >> yes. >> I vote yes. Member Saddowski, >> yes. >> Member Williams, >> yes. >> 70. The motion passed. Next, we have member Loal. I will make a motion to uh accept and pass resolution B-12-25-4139. It is a resolution whereas Minnesota statute 465.03 requires a school

127district to accept donations 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 there 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. And there are, I think, 16 um donations this month. Um [snorts] and many of them revolve around donations to uh support the winter cold at various um schools throughout our region and also just to support um many of the programs um in our district. So, I move resolution B-12-25-4139. >> Do

128we have a second? >> Second. >> Member um Laughler Kemp has seconded the motion. Do we have any discussion? >> Seeing no discussion, we will have a roll call vote. >> Member Banks, >> yes. >> Chair Der, >> yep. >> Member Laughler, >> yes. >> Member Loal, >> yes. >> I vote yes. Member Sidowski, >> yes. >> Member Williams, >> yes. passes 70. Great. Member Mike Excel, I move resolution B-12-25-4140, uh, the acceptance of grant awards to Duth Public Schools, whereas Minnesota statute 465.03 requires a school district to accept grants by resolution expressed in the terms prescribed by the donor in full. And whereas acceptance of the grants in accordance to the donor's term is in the best interest of DUTH public schools. Now therefore be it resolved the duth public schools does accept the

129belowescribed grant from the said organization in accordance with the term set forth herein. Be it further resolved that duth public schools wishes to extend its grateful appreciation to this organization. The organization is hospitality Minnesota education foundation. our wonderful staff member, Adam Mazaki, um from the DUTH East Culinary Arts Program, um is seeking to uh get an award of $3,500 uh to use for uh our students um in our district. [snorts] >> Um member Mikeell has made the motion. Do we have a second? >> Second. >> Member Banks has seconded it. Do we have any discussion? >> Seeing no discussion, we will have a roll call vote. Member Banks, >> yes. >> Chair Derk. >> Yep. >> Member Loal or no. Member Laugh. >> Yes. >> Now, member Loel, >> yes. >> I vote yes. Member

130Sidowski, >> yes. >> Member Williams, >> yes. >> Passes 70. >> The motion has passed. Moving on. Next, we have a resolution to establish combined polling places for multi for multiple precincts and designating hours during which the polling places will remain open for voting for the school district elections not held on the day of a statewide election. Be it resolved by the school board of independent school district 709 state of Minnesota as follows. Pursuant to the Minnesota statute section um 205A1, the precincts and polling places for school district elections are those precincts or parts of precincts located with the boundary of the school district which have been established by the cities or town located in whole or in part within the school district. The board hereby confirms those precincts and polling places so established by

131those m municipalities. [snorts] two. Um, pursuant to Minnesota statute 205A11, the board may establish a combined polling place for several precincts for school district elections not held on the day of a statewide election. Each combined polling place must be a polling place that has been designated by a county or municipality. The following combined polling places are established to serve um the precincts specified for all school districts. Special and general elections not held on the day of a statewide election. You can see those combined polling places. I move resolution B-12-254141 forward. Member Eer has made the motion. Do we have a second? >> Don't all jump at once. >> Member Banks. Thank you. Do we have any discussion? [snorts] >> Um, yes. >> I raised my hand. >> Great. Member Williams. Um just I guess want

132to just echo what everybody said earlier during um the during um report. I I appreciate that we bring this up every year just so the public sees and we're fully transparent on on why we do this and it's important that we keep our polling places open and keep voting as accessible as possible for everyone. So um I'm glad we do it every every year. Thank you. >> Thank you, Member Williams. Do we have any other discussion? Seeing no other discussion, we will have a roll call vote. Member Banks, >> no. >> Chair Derker, >> yes. Member Laughler. >> Um, I don't support. So, is that a yes? >> It's a no. It's a no. >> That's a no. >> Member Lald say yes. So, I was like, >> Member Loeld, >> no. >> I vote

133no. Member Saddowski, >> no. >> Member Williams, >> no. >> Uh, the vote is six to one. Thank you. The motion passes. >> Oh, I'm sorry. Go back. The motion fails. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry about that. U member Laughler Kemp. uh 2026 legislative platform. I move resolution B12254142. Be it resolved that the school board of independent school district uh 709 St. Louis County, Minnesota that the attached 2026 DUTH school district legislative platform be adopted. Member um Laughler Kemp has made the motion. Do we have a second? >> Second. >> Member Saddowski has seconded it. Do we have any uh discussion? Superintendent Maggus. >> Thanks. Uh just a minor suggested change of of a single word or two um under the part where we talk about special education support duth specific legislation reimbursing $1 million

134[snorts] for a state formula error uh that forced DPS to absorb a $5.8 million gap. I think there was some controversy back and forth whether it was um I I would prefer to call it a uh funding issue rather than an error because I think that there was um u maybe frustration of maybe MDE feeling blamed for something and maybe it wasn't maybe it wasn't actually an error on their part. It's it's complicated. I can explain in greater depth at a different time, but I'd like to change it from error to issue. >> So, do you need us to do anything with this resolution or are you just informing? >> I think it's good. I'm just I'm just letting you know that that we might tweak the wording on a on a thing or two

135based on this. But this the spirit of everything that's in here should remain the same. But if there's a minor change, that would be the reason why I'd make that minor change with that one particular place. Okay. >> Sounds good. U member Laughler. >> No. Okay. Um, seeing no further discussion, we will have a roll call vote. >> Member >> Oh, I'm sorry, member. I'm sorry, member Banks. That's me. My apology. >> I just have a quick question or perhaps I need clarification. uh in this um legislative platform that we're hoping to bring forth. Um can you talk uh because I don't see it in here, but I want to make sure it's in here in some way related to our uh diversity, equity, and inclusion as it relates to uh hiring teachers. Um is

136is there some kind of pro I know we talk about grow your own and all of that. So can you just clarify that that will be a part of this as well? >> Yes, we have a part where it says under expand educator because and I talked about it very briefly uh in my superintendent's update but is basically expand educator workforce support district flexibility in building diverse and effective educator pipelines. >> Right. Thanks. So I just needed that clarification. Thank you. >> Appreciate it. >> My apologies, member banks. I didn't I saw your light and I just went right ahead. So my apologies for that. Um, okay. Roll call vote. >> Member Banks, >> yes. >> Chair Derk Eater, >> yes. >> Member Laughler, >> yes. >> Member Loal, >> yes. >> I vote yes.

137Member Saddowski, >> yes. >> Member Williams, >> yes. >> Passes 70. >> Motion carries. Thank you very much. We'll move on now. Member Mikeel. >> I move resolution SP-12-25-4143. Uh resolution for schoolboard member attendance of the MSBA learning to lead workshop series and officers workshop. Resolve the independent school district 709 St. Louis County, Minnesota pay costs incurred as per district policy for schoolboard members to attend the MSBA learning to lead workshop series and officers workshops. Um member Mike Sal made the motion. Do we have a second? >> Second. [clears throat] >> Member Loal to second it. Do we have any discussion? Seeing no discussion, we'll have a roll call vote. >> Member Banks, >> yes. >> Chair Derek Eater, >> yep. >> Member Laugh, >> yes. >> Member Lald, >> yes. >> I vote yes.

138Member Saddowski, >> yes. >> Member Williams, >> yes. >> That passes 70. The motion carries. Um, now we move on to what we just blew through special resolution and action items. No, now we're on questions and other and I just had one thing I wanted to share with the board. A couple weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go with the um safe routes to school crew for Piedmont to run around Piedmont um and look at all the different routes that kids walk to school, including mine. So, it was selfish on my part to be able to holler more about how dangerous Chambersburg is for our students up in Piedmont. But I will say it was great to have the county support, the city support, the whole group was wonderful, really focused on kids, and

139it was a great experience. So other board members, if you get an opportunity, I think they're done for now cuz it's cold outside, but I think they may be doing some more in the spring, but it was it was just a really wonderful opportunity and it was it was great. So, anything else anybody else would like to share? Oh, yes, executive director Zunich. >> Thank you. I just wanted to answer the question about the egg 2 school tax credit. [laughter] I would have not slept tonight if I hadn't answered it. The egg to school, it's just very brief. Um, is a statef funed program in Minnesota designed to reduce the property tax impact of voterapproved school building bond levies for owners of agricultural land. Now, we saw in our pie charts, we have very little

140agricultural land. Thank you for do that. >> Thank you so much. I bet those districts in southwest Minnesota though, they probably have a little bit there. So, um, seeing no for me, Superintendent Maggus, you just couldn't help it. >> I I couldn't help it without saying, uh, that this is our our next uh, school board meeting is our um, organizational our organizational meeting. And I thank the board members for everything that you've done in your current roles and if things change for next time, you know, that's that that will be what it is. But thank you so much. Another thing I wanted to point out um early in the earlier in the process when we were hiring for the uh director of human resources and I can't I can't remember where but I want to

141make sure that the board and public knows um that when we were posting we went back to a former position that we had just because uh executive director uh severance had a lot of experience with facilities and other types of areas like that. And so when we modified the position, we went back to the old job description of just having it a director of human resources. And in in doing so, we we uh removed the facilities oversight from the position and had u executive director Zunish take that on. So that's why the position is a director position rather than an executive director position, but it was based partly on the um the likelihood of finding somebody who who had skill sets in both areas was pretty pretty unlikely and uh executive director Zunich has already

142done a lot with uh facilities. So that was why there was a change there, but I apologize to the board if I wasn't clear about that previously. Thank you. Um, member Laughler Camp. >> Sorry, I'm sorry. I just It's not 9:30 YET, SO HECK. NO, I just uh you know uh I'm sure all of us would would want to be saying this, but just uh uh thank you to uh as we wrap up our December meeting. uh thank all of our our staff that are sitting here, our staff that might be listening uh for that incredible work that you have done and your time and commitment uh for um our students all across the district. And uh just um uh we we appreciate being able to work with such professional, dedicated, committed staff. And so

143uh just thank you. Have a safe holiday and a happy new year. Yes, for sure. Member Laughler Cam, thank you for that. Do we have a motion to adjourn the meeting? >> So moved. U member Mike Cells made the motion. Do we have a second? >> Second. >> Member Saddowski. >> Yeah. Member Williams outshed member Saddowski with enthusiasm on that one. So seeing no discussion, all those in favor, we'll do a roll call vote to adjourn the meeting. >> Member Banks. >> Yes. >> Chair. Yep. >> Member Laughler. >> Yes. >> Member Loal. >> Yes. >> I vote yes. Member Sidowski. >> Yes. >> Member Williams. >> Yes. Please. >> 70. Ajourned. Yay. and and just