Hopkins School Board Meeting February 10th, 2026

001Hi everybody, welcome to this workshop of the Hopkins School Board. We're gonna get started right away at 5.30 since everybody is here. And just wanted to mention that, oh sorry, for Tuesday, February 10th, 2026. Wanted to mention that our treasurer, Rachel Hartland, is joining us remotely. She should be in the Google Meet. As we speak, so her treasurer's report will be delivered via the Google Meet. Hi Treasurer Hartland, thank you for joining us. And she is able to fully participate in this meeting due to a legislative change, and she does not need to list her location. But we are happy to have you here. Thank you for making the time. So we will get started. The first order of business on the workshop agenda is just a quick update for board members and for our

002community on the superintendent search. So as everyone knows, we have hired MSBA executive search services to lead our superintendent search and part of our tasks as a board was to find a date for our planning meeting. That date has been set. It is on Friday, February, I kept wanting to say March, February 13th. And it will get started at, I believe, 5.30 p.m. We have our materials. The first part of the meeting will be a workshop where we will get an hour training on MSBA's workshop called Hiring the Right Superintendent. And then we will go immediately from that workshop into, we are slated for three hours. I hear it can be done in two for a planning committee meeting. All board members received their packet for that meeting and hope that you've had some time

003to review it. We also did submit some preliminary feedback to MSBA via a email survey. I hope that everyone on the board was able to respond to that in a timely manner because that will be guiding some of our work on Friday. So that is the only update. Of course, if community members have input, want to contact the board about the planning meeting or want to attend to listen in and to see how that works, you are more than welcome to do so. And that is the update. Any questions? Fantastic. Then we can move right on to our next order of business, which is a, I'm just gonna turn it over to Dr. Mary Perry-Reed to bring up our next guests. Thank you, Chair Andresen. Good evening to board members, community members, and colleagues in

004the space. We do have a six-person team, I believe, who will approach the table. This agenda item is meant to provide a referendum update to our school board and community. Every chance we get, we as the Hopkins Public Schools want to thank our community for their tremendous support on November 4, voting for our bond referendum and capital projects levy renewal. We're very grateful to our community members, parents, taxpayers for the support, and these resources will ensure that our schools have the safety features and other modernizations that will provide great spaces for our students to learn and thrive now and into the future. We do meet on a bi-weekly basis with our construction partner, SiteLogic, and also our architectural partner, Fielding International, they are not here this evening, and our two leaders who are also intricately

005involved in this work are Gino Mazzoli and John Wedder, who lead the, Gino is in charge of buildings and grounds, and John, who, it's John Wedder night, you'll hear from him many times this evening. John leads ITIS, IT and Information Services, and then here with SiteLogic, we have John, Jake, Ziad, and Andy. So we are grateful to you for all the support and work that you are putting into an organized process that allows our staff to be involved. I know that you're going to be talking about the design sessions this evening, which is a really important part of this process, so that what gets constructed reflects input from the folks who are using these spaces. So with that, I'm just gonna turn it over to who is the first speaker, Jake, wonderful. Thanks for being

006here. Yeah, thank you very much for the opportunity to be here tonight. Feels like a long time ago and not very long ago that we are here in June before the referendum, so again, thank you for the support and the support of the community. We're really excited to be here tonight and share the progress that's been made since we've been together in June. And tonight's really gonna be a two-part update, a lot of exciting facility activities going on at the district, the referendum, of course, as well as the ongoing long-term facilities maintenance program, which we'll be providing a brief update on as well. So appreciate the introduction, Rhoda, and would like to introduce our roles in the project. So my name is Jake Berg. I've been a program manager with SiteLogic and Hopkins for a

007number of years. With so much work occurring now, I'll be really sharpening my focus on the referendum side as we go through the next five-year process and the implementation of the referendum as the program manager. And I'll introduce some of my colleagues here to my right as well. Thank you so much, Jake. We greatly appreciate the opportunity to serve Hopkins Public Schools. I'm Ziad Lindsay Qureshi. I'm the design project manager. I'll be leading the cause during the design process. Thank you, Ziad. And I'm Andy Fields. I'm LTFM project manager for SiteLogic. And with as many projects that will be going on with the referendum passing, it's critical that the ongoing work that your district does on the LTFM annual basis works in concert with the referendum projects as well. And our president of SiteLogic, John

008Bent. I would also like to echo the thanks for the opportunity to be part of the team for this project. And just wanna assure the administration and the board that you will have all the resources necessary to make this a very successful project. And we look forward to working with you over the next several years to deliver the referendum. Thank you. So as I mentioned, it'll be a two-part agenda really tonight to cover updates both on the long-term facilities maintenance side and the referendum. We don't have a lot of slides prepared. The intent is to provide you a broad overview of both programs. Ask any questions throughout the presentation. Please feel free to interrupt. We also would be planning to come back as well as we continue to achieve milestones in the program. We would

009next like to come back and talk about the phase right after the design which would be the bidding phase ahead of that. So we can talk through what bidding looks like and make sure everyone has a clear understanding of next steps before we get there. With that, I'll turn it over to Andy to speak to the LTFM program. Yeah, thank you. So as many of you know, the state requires an annual LTFM submittal. LTFM is long-term facility maintenance and each district is allocated a certain amount per pupil to maintain their facilities. As many of you know, that amount isn't nearly enough to maintain all of the facilities that you have to keep them dry, safe, and comfortable for your students and your community. And so we carefully work with Hopkins Public Schools to make sure

010that you have a prioritized plan that will serve you well to ensure equity across your buildings and to make sure that your buildings are dry, safe, and comfortable. Part of that is making sure that we utilize your resources as well as we possibly can. So with those limited dollars, our goal is to make sure that you don't have to dip into your unassigned accounts to pay for projects that need to be taken care of in your school. So having a thoughtful plan is critical to all of your funding resources. Your district, if you look at your track record for managing your long-term facility maintenance, every two years is selling bonds to make sure that your facilities stay in good condition. So this graph here in this chart just shows you an example on about every

011two years, there's $12 million worth of bonds that are sold to maintain your facilities. So some of the questions that you may have as board members or as community members are, how are critical infrastructure needs identified? How are those needs prioritized? And how are these decisions made? So before we go on to the next slide, it's really important that you start with a baseline. So making sure that you have an objective understanding of your facilities and all of those assets in your facilities to help you understand what are your greatest needs and how do you prioritize those. And then as alluded to before, you need to make sure that there's a way that you involve multiple people in deciding what are the most significant needs and how to address them accordingly. We've looked at all

012of your facilities and all of your assets, we refreshed those this year. And something that's different about SiteLogic is that we have a platform that we use to help put all of your assets into. And then, so you have those archived and it allows us to sort and prioritize those into projects that makes this process a lot easier and a lot more efficient for your district. So that is called MySiteIQ. It's something that we've been using in your district for a period of time. So we've recently this year updated and refreshed that those assessments and those assets are placed into MySite. And we've used that to help along the process. I think Gino and I have met maybe eight times, nine times this year, done some walkthroughs in buildings and excited to report that we'll

013be meeting with building principals next week just to share the plan a little bit more in detail with them. The picture that I'm gonna show you isn't the picture that every district that we partner with gets to see. The areas that are in the orange are areas that are in alarm and alert after our most recent assessment and the areas that are in light blue or in dark blue show that you have really good conditions in your facilities. So this is a picture that we hope that all districts hope to achieve. And I think this board and this leadership has done a fantastic job making sure that you prioritize your facilities for your students in your community. As I've stated earlier tonight, we've been working on your long-term facility maintenance plan the last three months,

014just making sure that we, number one, have an idea of the conditions in all of your buildings and then meeting to share those conditions and then building a plan from there. We are at the point where we feel really confident, maybe 95%, that we have a good 27, 28 plan for your LTFM and we'll be looking to build in the remaining eight years that will be submitted to the state in your 10-year LTFM plan in May. As I also shared earlier, we are going to be meeting with your building administrators to share what referendum work is being done in their buildings, what LTFM work is being done in their buildings, and then to get their perspective as to other areas of concerns or needs that they have. So that's an added step that I applaud

015Gino for wanting to make sure that he gets input and involvement from his building leadership. Our goal is to make sure that we keep this on plan. The state requires a submittal of the 10-year LTFM plan at the end of July, and we're hoping to get that to you in May for approval. Thank you, Andy. Before we transitioned into the referendum update, just wanted to pause and offer an opportunity to ask any questions regarding the Long-Term Facilities Maintenance Program. Thank you. So jumping into the referendum, again, a lot of excitement on our team, as well as in the district, since we last met in June and certainly since November 4th. Been a lot of busy activity. We've been planning, prioritizing, phasing projects, we've had a lot of people in Seattle talk about some of the

016user group meetings that himself and Gino have been spearheading and kicking off, and kind of most excitingly, we've kicked design off now as well. So the efforts are underway to begin the design phase and get us into construction, really starting later this year. So very excited about that. When I talk about phasing, what you'll see here is a graph, another shot from mySETAQ. The initial phasing plan for the projects and those bar charts represent the projects in terms of dollars by year. Because the referendum is large, roughly $140 million worth of projects, that's far more than any construction company and contractors can take care of in a single summer. So we've gone through a process of planning, prioritizing those projects over multiple years based on several factors, which we'll review here shortly as well. Of

017note in the plan that you see here, you'll see the big spike in 2027. I know that's probably hard to read from here, but the large spike is in 2027. That was very purposeful in that it makes sense for a number of reasons to start a lot of the construction work upfront as soon as we can complete the design cycle. It saves costs, it accelerates the improvements being available to the community and the students. And some of that construction work that'll start in 2027 will actually take multiple years to complete because we're limited to the summer break period when school is out as well. So back to the discussion around phasing and again answering the question of how were projects phased over a multi-year process, how were decisions made. We met with the district, administration,

018staff, our architectural partners, construction partners, over the course of several meetings really since June to determine a plan and a phasing plan that worked for everybody. It was really built around those five key factors that you see there, constructability, community input, equity and inclusivity, cost and funding, and then operations and safety. And when we look at constructability, that really refers to how practical it is to build the project. So it's about sequencing in a way that minimizes disruption to students, uses materials efficiently and ensures projects can be completed safely and not disrupt ongoing school operations. Next one being community support. So this considers the level of backing and enthusiasm for a given project, both in the school community, parents, teachers and staff. Again, it's your project, your referendum. So the projects that are most important

019should be prioritized early. The third lens we looked at is equity and inclusivity. So considering that all schools and students should benefit fairly from the construction program, we wanted to look, are there disparities in building quality resources, others that would maybe necessitate starting up one project ahead of the other? Again, to assure there's equity across the referendum program. The fourth variable, of course, cost is gonna be a factor in all of this. We wanted to ensure we had a solid plan but also kept an eye on budget management. So things like year over year normal construction inflation, we wanted to be considerate of that. Again, another reason why you saw such a large spike in volume of dollars in 2027. It's never gonna be cheaper to build the project than it is today. So that

020was a factor, of course, balanced with everything else. And then finally, operations and safety. So number one, school has to open on time. You need to use your buildings for summer programs. So all of that had to be considered in the sequencing of the projects of when we were disrupting normal summer operations versus flexibility with shifting to other buildings. So those were the five factors that we used to evaluate. And we feel very confident about the phasing plan we have put forward here. And I'll turn it over to Ziad next to talk a little bit more about the phasing plan and the design process. Thank you, Jake. The referendum work is a rare and deeply meaningful opportunity to improve large scale across the entire district, a wide variety of buildings and projects. In order to

021achieve this, an organized approach is essential. The approach is very straightforward in the sense that we're doing certain activities in certain years, and we have two different separated phases. There's a design phase per year, and there's a construction phase per year. Currently we're in the 2026 design phase. Our activities during this phase will impact then construction next summer. That cadence, that sequencing is consistently deployed across the totality of the five-year project. And it allows for us to scale this in a measured way, aiming for the best quality, the best product that can be possible given our capacities. So in the current phase of design, we have four different buildings that are being pursued. There are projects at the high school. There are projects at North Middle School. We have Gatewood Elementary School as well. And

022we're also pursuing work that is district-wide. We have security standards and restroom standards that are being established that will contribute to the work throughout the totality of the five years. With my compatriots in the design team, we have a variety of participants that are coming from the design team. And most importantly, we have robust participation from users. Talking about users and the user groups, there's really nothing more essential for us in terms of a positive design outcome than getting input, feedback, and information from those that we intend to serve. So the user groups have been one of the primary activities that have begun and commenced as we've kicked off design. We've been pursuing user groups towards the 2026 scope. We've also been pursuing user groups towards the restroom and security standards as well that will

023contribute towards the future. So the user groups being an essential piece of the puzzle, it's so key that we have the right voices, the right input, the right thoughts to develop designs that are responsive, that are carefully considered, and are aimed towards success. The user groups are continuing. We'll have multiple rounds of user groups, and I'll be talking about the design process as well. The organized approach that that entails and really taking advantage of the uniqueness of this rare opportunity to improve buildings across the entirety of the district. So this diagram is representative of how we're spreading it out over the years. And again, the repetition of that, the sequencing of that, as Jake alluded to, was pursued with thought. It has to do with constructability, it has to do with capacity, and a wide

024variety of other inputs that Jake had summarized. The diagram that's being shown here is representative of the organized and consistent process that we follow through design. The metaphor that might be helpful to describe how we approach design is a funnel. We're starting at the beginning with a wide variety and a large amount of ideas and input. Over time, we're working together to distill that and to filter that, to emerge at the end with something that's well-informed and also tuned. So with regard to the planning process, from the beginning of that design until its construction, we're working through different phases. Those range from the schematic or the very early beginnings of things, where we're centered upon our ideas and our concepts, towards the very end, which is the construction documentation, where we get very technical and

025we're producing the documents that allow us to then go to bid. So towards the end goal, which is a constructed reality, we have a one step at a time process that's organized and at every milestone, we'll have opportunities to, of course, check in, converse, get the right input and feedback, and this process starts large and small. So this process moving from the schematic to the bid happens annually. We have every year projects that were on the previous slide shown that are following these steps one piece at a time. With the end result being a clear direction for construction and ensuring that the vision of the design ends up in the result and that vision being informed by all of the various users, the community, all of the participants that we're looking to do the best

026service that we can for. So the schedule that's shown here is representative of the 2026 work that we're doing and every year, the same schedule is followed. We're in the current moment very early in the process. So with that in mind, in January and in February, we're in the schematic phase, which is the earliest phase. That's when we're doing our user groups, we're hearing from people, we're having conversations, we're thinking about the concepts in the broadest sense possible. As we move into March and April, we're then starting to solidify design ideas. We're working with our groups and our participants to ensure that we're getting closer to the mark. That's when we're making certain decisions towards the design that help us to solidify the vision to the next steps. Moving through the initial design, we're then

027moving into development. We'll be working on drawings and other documents that we're working with graphically and visually in the sense of a process of discussion and a sense of conversation that leads us through that design development. The end of that process is the construction document phase. That's when we're creating our technical plans and our information that's put out for the next step, which is bid. Bid and the bid process lends itself towards the construction. We get our contractors on board and we're ready to go in that summertime to commence the work for that year. So just to reiterate the expectation from January into the spring happens every year. Every year we have a new round of design and a new round of construction. This is the organized process that we're working through to achieve the

028objectives of the five-year process of the referendum work. And just to also restate, there will be always opportunities for communication such as tonight, the chance to update, the chance to communicate, the chance to share. And during this process, we'll have regular opportunities where we review outcomes and have opportunities to provide what we call sign-offs, which are the final decisions, the decisions that are made that let us move one step at a time through the process. So with that in mind, right now we're in February in 2026. We're at the very beginning of a very exciting journey. So I'm so excited for the coming years and in particular achieving the objectives in year one that will lend themselves to the establishment of the process moving forward. Thank you, Ziad. And as Ziad mentioned, as we approach

029the bidding phase, that'll be in December of 2026. However, the work in preparation for the bidding phase and the requirements will really begin in the summertime, June, July is when we begin assembling a lot of those documents. So in the effort of communication and education, we are happy to come back and provide a more in-depth overview of the bidding process as well ahead of the July summer recess. Thank you. I appreciate all this information, especially like knowing where we're at right now. Any questions, feedback from board members? Chair Andreson? Yes. Hi, SiteLogic team and Gino. I see that Pathfinder is a common theme, especially on our secondary schools. I think all of them. Could you talk a little bit about what that is for the benefit of the community, please? Yeah, absolutely. The Pathfinders are

030occurring at a number of different buildings across the scope of the five-year project. Currently, we're pursuing the Pathfinders at North Middle School and also at Hopkins High School. Fundamentally, the Pathfinders are a spearhead. The intention of the Pathfinder is to provide a reference towards a potential future. The Pathfinders, in their purpose, are an example of potentially what's to come in education, in curriculum, in pedagogy. The intention of the Pathfinders is to be a model or a case study that allows us to explore innovative approaches in how we educate. The high school Pathfinder includes a wide variety of possibilities. Some of them may involve different flex spaces, spaces that allow for large and small groups to collaborate. The Pathfinders are going through a process of exploration. We're working with users to develop what those are. They

031are the beginning of a new approach towards what's possible when we think about innovations in education. Chair Andreessen? May I just quickly add that all of the Pathfinders were developed by our teachers in partnership with Fielding International, guiding those discussions around what pedagogies are best practice and best for a futuristic space and what kind of features of a physical space are conducive to high quality learning. So these were all staff designed, which is, I think, a really great piece to add. Is this part of the models that were shown at Fielding? Yes, yes. And it was all site generated and proposed? Yeah, I remember that. A lot of it's really exciting. It is very exciting. Chair Andreessen, can I ask a question? Yeah. Thank you all so much for being here tonight and providing the

032PowerPoint on, providing a PowerPoint on a referendum. I have a question about your equity and inclusion on page 17. So it says, I consider that all schools and student populations benefit fairly from the construction program. That factor looks at like disparities in building quality. Could you maybe talk about some disparities that you're seeing in building qualities across the schools and what that looks like and how you have, like what does an infrastructure assessment look like for identifying disparities? Sure, I'll provide one example and I'm sure Gino may have others as well. As you may recall, there are several playgrounds that are gonna be renewed as a part of the referendum program as well. So when evaluating which playground should occur and which year, this was a very heavy factor in determining which one needed the

033upgrade first over one that may have a newer, more accessible playground versus another. So that's one example of projects there that were determined partially through that lens. Okay, thank you. And do you all consider, and I know, and this may be a question for an environmental consultant or I don't know if you all like do the consulting for environment, but do you all consider like the air quality in buildings? And do you look at like the population of students that's in the building and maybe the number of students who may have asthma or other respiratory conditions? Is that a part of that infrastructure assessment? Yes, and that really occurs very heavily during the long-term facilities maintenance assessments. So as a part of those assessments, we do indoor air quality in terms of ventilation rate assessments

034and ensure that your ventilation systems are up to code and any new systems that are designed follow the current ASHRAE standards for ventilation codes. Thank you. We also have indoor air quality testing annually. So to access health and safety funds, you are required to have those testing done on an annual basis through health and safety. Thank you. Yeah. Sharon Dreeson. Yes. Thanks. I echo my colleagues, thanks for your ongoing work. And as a person who has a long background in higher education, which involves a lot of buildings as well, I just was really pleased and wanted to compliment the work of the board and the leadership in our district and you all, I was pleased to see where we're at in terms of our LTFM. So thank you for that. And then I just also

035wanted to say, I got so excited when I saw some of the work and just knowing, I just started on the board and we got to talk with folks throughout the campaign about the referendum. And to see some of these items, whether it's special education suites or knowing that educators and the teachers have had such a deep influence on what we're gonna get to do with space, to just enhance learning, it makes me really proud and music and choir. And so there's so many wonderful stories and I think about what that will mean. So I just wanted to say thank you to you all and then thank you to our community and to echo that and it'll be exciting to build it together. So thank you. Chair Andresa? Yes. Really good presentation, really appreciate it.

036I thought the information was pertinent and timely so I really appreciate it. Just a couple of quick questions. I really like the slide with the phase one, phase two, phase three, phase four to kind of show where we're going with all of this. Is that all inclusive or are there any other projects that didn't make that list, you know? That is all inclusive of the referendum. It is summarized so you could have pages and pages of descriptions of the projects and sub-projects within there. We've summarized it to kind of the building level. However, that is inclusive of all referendum projects. That does not include any LTFM projects. Okay. Yeah, I guess I was just wondering as a follow-up question, there was a slide with the vision 2031 and the safety and security accessibility parking lots.

037You know, for example, like, I don't know if I saw parking lots on that list so I was just wondering like where they are. Sorry, and good catch. There was another slide that got cut off at the bottom that noted that on there. Those weren't bulleted listed in there, the parking lots and the playgrounds. Okay, and anything additional on the cutoff slide about athletics? The athletic projects, I believe, are mostly occurring in 2026 here. A lot of those didn't require kind of the design process that Zihad had went over. So again, the ability to execute those now when your dollars can go further without inflation. So we're looking to accelerate those in 2026. Okay. I would just be interested to see a list of those at some point if possible. A specific list of? The

038athletic facility improvement projects. Sure, we can do that. Would they all be listed in the review and comment or is there something more updated and maybe more concise that we can offer? We can provide you an updated list with the timing as well, now that we have that phased out for when they're proposed to be planned, yeah, and constructed. That's great, thank you. And then my last question, when you had mentioned the user groups, could you just give an example of a user group for let's say the restroom guidelines? Is it just students that are polled or are there particular affinity groups or student clubs? Who becomes involved in the user group? Excellent question. The restrooms are a wonderful example of participation. So we did have an affinity group participate. It was the LGBTIQ plus

039group that was with us. Very meaningful work, in particular, talking about how we can think about restrooms in a means that's not just functional. There's a purpose that's in service to people there. We have had a variety of participants with our user groups or workshops. We've also run workshops with students specifically as well. So for example, we held a user group meeting with the high school students and they provided wonderful insights that complimented some of the suggestions that were also coming from staff. So the constituencies of the user groups vary. For example, we may have for the pathfinders, certain participants that are coming from student and staff, district-wide security, that would be a different user group, of course. Those would be people most interested in those subjects. So we're trying to find the right voices

040and the right participants to get the best feedback and the best input possible. That's great, thank you. Chair Andreessen? Yes. Hi, so I was wondering, I know you mentioned that you were doing the groups. I was actually part of one of them and I think it's really amazing that you guys are getting input from the students. I think it's important that everybody's voices are heard and it's really happy to hear that you guys are doing things like that. Are you getting information from staff members like the custodial maintenance staff, seeing their insights and input on what would help them with adding on to the buildings and something, because of course that makes more work for them to do, so are you asking their input on stuff like that? And also, as you continue to do

041the phases and the design groups, are you gonna continue to have those groups with the students, updating them on the new processes that you have gotten asking for their input on what you're doing? Yeah, appreciate these questions very much. I'll take the first question as the lead-in. So we're very much wanting to have participation from all of those that are affected or interested in the designs. So I've been working with Gino just as an example in the case that we're trying to get the right participants to align with each user group. So with that in mind, we're also always hoping for that ongoing feedback as well, so in the case of the user groups, we currently have up to three scheduled, depending on the project. The Pathfinders have three meetings. We've just concluded our first

042round of meetings. We'll have another round in March and then another round in May as well, as we work in alignment with the phasing that I described in the diagram earlier. As far as updates, absolutely. There will be consistent updates that are provided throughout. The goal is for visibility, for transparency, and for awareness to be a part of this process. So with that, we're trying to formalize means of communication towards that. Just in our Thursday meeting, we were positing some possibilities to provide communications to participants or to even the broader community as needed. Thank you. Yeah, thank you so much. Excellent questions, thank you. Chair and Dr. Eason-Kai, one more question. Yes. So speaking of user groups, how do you go about recruiting or having participation in those conversations? If we want a group of

043parents, for the affinity groups, for example, should we reach out to you all and ask if there's any opportunities for participation or will you all reach out to the school and say, hey, we have this design phase coming up. Please invite folks to come. Yeah, absolutely. This is a very valuable question. So we've been very much leaning on our partners, John and Gino and others. In particular, we've been reaching out to the admins in each building to inquire who would be the right participants or otherwise. The willingness to have participants, we want as many participants as we can that are most effective to make the design outcomes as informed and as successful as possible. So we don't just do this because we have to. We do this because it is truly the primary means by

044which we can have an informed design. So participation is encouraged. The willingness to participate is invaluable. So we would love to have as much participation as we can facilitate. And if there are recommendations or otherwise, please feel free to reach out. Thank you. Thanks. And I just wanted to also say thank you for all of this work and for this excellent presentation. I too really appreciate this one slide with the different phases and the way it's laid out. It feels like I can follow it. I know what's coming up. I know where my attention will be going at different times. So thank you for that. And I did just want to make a plug to ensure that we are getting from the very beginning phases of planning the input of our special needs families and

045staff. Oftentimes, when we're talking about getting input, their needs tend to become, well, we're ADA compliant. And the assumption is made that their needs are met. And I would just encourage us to not rest on that, but to actively engage that community and the staff as well, because there are really big needs. So thank you for that. That's all. So appreciate you here this evening. And we look forward to next time you come back with an update. We're all really excited. Thank you very much. Thank you all so much. Thank you. That takes us to our next order of business, which is the student information systems, how it works. And I believe you get to stay at the table with us. Turn it over to Dr. Mary Pirie Reed. Director Wetter, are Keyshawn and Tracy

046joining you? No, just if we end up with some questions. OK, perfect. All right. Well, welcome Keyshawn and Tracy. So the purpose of this item is to provide an overview of our SIS student information system, which is Infinite Campus, to our board and community. It's a really important component of our data infrastructure and how we collect and maintain information about our students and families. And so I am very grateful to the efforts of Director Wetter. And staff, Keyshawn and Tracy, are here to help with questions. There is a small but mighty team who work together on protecting our student and family information. And because it's so complex, we did want to provide an overview of what it is and how it works. So I'll turn it over to you, John. All right. Thank you, Dr.

047Rhoda Pirie Reed. Tonight, we have a lot of information in the slides here. I won't be hitting every single piece in the slides. I really wanted to provide a broad overview of information for you to have as a reference. Certainly, we'll be talking about some of the pieces as we go further in here. But I did want to just mention that some of the slides are very dense with information that I wanted to make sure you had available for reading if you wanted to. But we certainly aren't going to go through necessarily every element that we have in the presentation here this evening. So as we talk about our student information system, here in Hopkins, it is Infinite Campus. That is our system that we use across all of our different data points that we're

048talking about. That really helps to pull the information together as we move through the evening. So a couple of quick acronyms and just kind of help build our collective vocabulary as we start into this conversation, really wanting to make sure just as every system you move into, we have the acronym LAND that we have to make sure that we can orient ourselves with as we go through the rest of the conversation. So SIS, we'll start to refer to as very shorthand for our student information system. Enrollment, really, again, those records of students' participation in different education programs. State reporting, certainly we'll talk about more as a driver behind some of the ways that we collect information and keep information. Relationships, really what we're all about in this, not only in our work, but also in

049the data and what are those relationships between that information, how people and information are connected in the system, making sure that we're linking all of those pieces together with that student, both their classes, what periods of the day they should be where, pulling all of that information together, parents, household information, everything related around those relationships. Minnesota Department of Education, and then PSEO, which we'll mention a little bit here as well, of course, the post-secondary education options. And as we go into the presentation, we really are gonna talk a lot about the information that we hold in the system, and as we hold that around, remembering our definition around data and information, we collect a lot of data points about individuals, and data are really just that, they're single points of information, and information is really

050when you take all of that data, you've processed and organized it and interpreted it to help bring meaning and value to this. So just wanted to make sure that we kind of lay the groundwork for a couple of those pieces as well. So what is the student information system? It really maintains our official student records across the district. So E through 21 with, E through 22 with all of those students. So supports the daily school operations, things you might think of very kind of basically as attendance, schedules, grades, all of that information. Connects families and schools, so all of those portals that you might look as a parent, whether that's lunch-related information or end of terms, looking at grades, those information that you have available to you as a caregiver as well. As well as

051that's what connects those pieces for communication. So whether that be the standard communications that we're sending out, like don't forget, it's open house night or those pieces, as well as the information, again, around those relationships that move us into our crisis communications platforms as well. Ensuring accurate state and federal reporting, certainly many elements of our funding contingent on accurate reporting within these areas to have all that information gathered and to be able to report on it as required by statute. Which we've also seen some significant changes in some of the areas in the last few years, especially related to our early childhood programming as the different funding streams have changed at the state level there, requiring significant work in how we're gathering, organizing and reporting on that data. So it also helps the district, as

052I mentioned, receive that correct funding to meet all and meet all of those legal requirements from the state and federal level. The next graphic is really just to give you a representation around how these different pieces come together. So really student information, the more the broad topic we're talking about, and both the staff as well as the systems that come together to really make this reporting happen. We have our enterprise information specialists who really kind of have the overall structure pieces around that data. And then we have the individual folks who are either entering, maintaining or reporting on that data. As you can see here, really across our system, the different types of folks that are involved in doing that. And in the rest of the presentation, we'll be diving down into some of these

053specific areas around what that information is, how that information is gathered, maintained and reported on. So wanted to really build kind of that piece of the pie, all the pieces of the pie that come together to collect this information, maintain it and report on it. First of all, kind of at the center of the information is the student. So the student and family information, there isn't a student information system without the students and without the people that are involved in that information. So students, parents, that household information, who all of the contacts are for a student, who are the preferred contacts, maybe there are records that we have in there of also folks that cannot have contact, all of those different pieces of information are in our student information system to help understand those relationships

054and help our staff to kind of build at least from an information perspective some of the picture around that. Most data is entered into the system at time of enrollment. So that's those initial household records, everything that's pulled together, really working with our enrollment staff, you know that it is a onerous process of collecting all of that information, getting all of that into one place, confirming the information and then from a data governance standpoint of also making sure that information, once it's been entered and confirmed is destroyed, that you're not holding on to pieces of data that you don't have to be holding on to. One example around that is that some school districts nationally ran into and the last year is another vendor for student information was breached. So we enter into the cybersecurity

055conversation there around and data was released around that. And so really thinking about that from a student perspective is those important pieces of information that we are keeping, we have a need to keep and to keep secure, information that we don't need to keep, we just need to confirm at time of enrollment that we are then removing that information so it's not part of the system on those long term record keeping requirements. So kind of an important piece of both the data we have as well as the data that we need to make sure we don't have. Most data, like I said, comes in at that time of enrollment, but data is entered throughout certainly a student's career here at Hopkins. So those roles that are involved in entering, maintaining this data really are enrollment

056clerks, our clerical staff in all of our schools, counseling staff when that's appropriate, certainly the instructional staff working on those kind of day of grading tasks as well as those final grades. So really a lot of hands across the entire district come together to make sure that the information that we are holding helps to paint that picture around a student's success and what that is looking like. So several hands, I guess, is the point that I wanna make here, go into having this information available. As we look at then that enrollment and registration, in Infinite Campus, it's really denoted with a calendar is how a lot of that information starts to come together, captures the school, the school year, who those teachers are, what those staff relationships are within that given time period, not only

057the grade level, but all those specialists that are involved there as well. So the start and end of the overall day is all of those calendars and schedules being kept there. Again, knowing that the student information system is that center of information, that goes into other systems as well. Should there be some sort of an emergency that we need to respond to, knowing where your students are at and helping to build those lists of what students should be together, who is reporting them, accounted for, all of those pieces. This is some of the roots that you see of that, that the data goes into other purposing as well. Thinking about all of that data, again, we have a lot of folks involved here, enrollment, the clerical, and really then those subject matter experts, so that

058comes into special services programming that that student might be participating in, making sure all of those records are together, any of those specials through the day, making sure that those records are all pulled together. As you can imagine, then it comes into some of those reporting requirement pieces around the state, because participation in those programs are reported on for funding requirements. That might, that includes special education, title programming, ELL programming, some of those post-secondary education options, there again, as those are school being paid and then reimbursed for much of those pieces, so making sure that we have an accurate representation of all those programs that students are participating in. And that kind of the uncomfortable joke every once in a while when we go into some of the modules in the student information system is

059that you can tell they were written by an accountant, and that's exactly the purpose for many of those areas is very much aimed at that accounting standpoint, when we know that sometimes our structure is actually in our schools to really help a student be successful, can look different than what we're required to report on. Again, trying to make sure that we're taking care of the whole student, as well as meeting those reporting requirements. Next area really is that transcript and some of that summative data that we have for students at the elementary. Most summative information is really entered and maintained by that homeroom teacher. That's report cards, that's progress, all of those pieces that are going into that. At our secondary schools, counseling teams also have a significant lift there of helping the students both

060all the way as we are doing registration right now, well on our way with registration in our secondary schools. Those counselors now really coming and following up with the students of helping to fill in those last couple electives or helping to fill out the last of that schedule or making sure that some of those requirements are being met for that student successfully progressing toward graduation. That's really kind of that shift that you see as we move into the secondary level. All of that information coming together again to help build that summative picture around where that student is at, at least from an information perspective. Courses, schedules, rosters, Infinite Campus here again holds all of that current academic information for state reporting. We have to report on the areas from the Minnesota Common Course Catalog and

061those standards being addressed in common classification around them. The teacher and their course and their area of licensure, making sure that those HR elements are also coming into that student information, lining up this student is in this course taught by this teacher with these certifications and connecting all of those pieces of data for the reporting and funding requirements. So it really is a cross department team there as well, working to make sure we have all of the elements pulled together. Any special designations that are state reported as well. So whether they're a concurrent PSEO, Carl Perkins monies come into play with CTE classes, they're again making sure all of those, all those pieces of data are pulled together so that we have the information necessary to both report on as well as help that students

062successfully navigate all of those, both coursework as well as the requirements to meeting toward graduation. Student information during the year. So you've got your attendance being entered on that daily basis, making sure that we're tracking all of that information, helping ensure enrollments are staying active and accurate. Certainly that state, again, state funding based attendance around that required reporting around that. Many programs really require then a number of individual minutes that are being addressed as well. So making sure that we're deriving all of those pieces together from your rosters, your schedules and that attendance information. So not only is the student here, what coursework are they involved in, how many minutes of instruction are involved in that coursework and making sure that we have all of those reporting pieces together for both state and federal requirements.

063Really making sure that that all comes together. Again, multiple hands coming to touch that information to make sure that that full picture comes to bear. State and federal reporting. So that's kind of the last piece. You know, I've been mentioning that throughout here, but then after all of that information is coming together from these multiple different directions, that comes together to help do some of the more summative reporting for state and federal needs. This is really an additional piece to really think about is all, the summary of all the previous slides is kind of into this slide. As I mentioned earlier, one example here, and that's kind of the screenshot that we have on the right side, is an example from early childhood. So really thinking that not many years ago, as in like maybe

064just four or five years ago, a student participating in an early childhood program was a single checkbox of yes or no. And now just even within this same one screen for that child is four individual boxes of check downs and multi-selections that you're needing to make around what programs that student is participating in. So yes, our electronic systems and technology allow us to help maintain the workload on some of these pieces. We also see this workload continuing to grow. And systems can certainly help us with automating some of those pieces, but it really also comes back to the staff who are knowledgeable of that student experience and knowledgeable about putting that together to help that student be successful, as well as what those required reporting fields look like to make sure that we're really putting

065that picture together and kind of a summative representation around what those services look like. So another example that we can look at is PSEO students, which I mentioned earlier. They were reported as a single checkbox before as yes, participating in PSEO. And now the requirements really mandate a significant amount of reporting that four different PSEO, different elements related to student participation, traditional PSEO, concurrent PSEO, so those classes taught at the high school versus are they leaving campus to pursue a PSEO option at a higher learning institution somewhere. All of those complexities that we really need to keep track of here and keep all those data elements so both we know where students are at any given time, we know the relationships around the folks involved with that student throughout their education experience, and then ultimately

066reporting these pieces to our state, state and federal departments requiring that to get that information. So that is really the overview that I wanted to walk through tonight. Certainly be happy to entertain any questions or information, do the best that we can or certainly get back to you on any questions we can't answer tonight. Thank you, really appreciate it. And I also agree with your assessment at the beginning. This is a lot of information rich slides for people to look through. And I would just open it up for comments or questions and remind my board members, board colleagues that we'd like to give ourselves a little break. So 15 minutes for questions. Were you moving in Director Hyman? Chair Andresen? Yes. Thank you for the presentation. It's really interesting and data we collect and have

067to protect is just so extensive these days. So I appreciate all the work you do. Does the data we collect remain proprietary to Hopkins or does this data follow a student? So for example, if someone were to leave the district, do they have access to our information about that student or is that something we share or where are the privacy lines drawn there? Yeah, a couple different levels of that. So if a student is transferring within the state of Minnesota to another school district, then there is that cumulative file that the receiving school district can request about that information about that student to help really mostly about where, some of those initial placement pieces, where is the student data in their education journey to help understand where best they should be fitting from a programming

068standpoint with that. Also, as you move through kind of those final summative grades, again, all of those pieces thinking ahead towards graduation, knowing what credits that student has already accumulated, having that information together so that that student there again will have that full picture of education as they're moving toward graduation and meeting all of the requirements along with that. Then that information around students, if a student's staying in Hopkins, then to graduation, really that final piece of information that we keep from a permanent record standpoint is their graduation record. So their final grades of their high school experience along with that final graduation piece. Thank you. And I wanna make sure I'm checking in with Treasurer Heartland. If you have a question, just raise your hand. Sure, I do have a question if it's okay.

069Yeah. Thank you, Director Wetter for coming tonight. I am curious, as you described, the extensive changes in reporting that your team has had to accommodate. Do you get support from our vendors? Do this infinite campus or say, can any other vendor that we use, do they keep track of any of these changes and help us adjust our interfaces for reporting? Or is that all information we as a district have to track what the state is going to require now and then build ourselves? Yeah, thank you for that question. That really is a shared responsibility there. Both our vendor, Infinite Campus, to be a vendor student information system vendor in Minnesota, you have to be an accepted vendor in the state. Certainly there's a decent list of options there, but to retain that currency with the

070state of Minnesota, you do need to support some of those required reporting elements. We all know that sometimes we can get surprised with new required reporting elements, sometimes with the best of intentions and new additional funding to the district that we just frankly can't react fast enough. And so then we need to build in maybe some custom fields, do some of that work, which from a data governance and sustainability standpoint can get complex over the long haul. If you need to start doing something from a custom tracking level and then move that into more operational, that it actually has a home at some point moving forward. That is one of the requirements that we look at for upgrading our systems. So Infinite Campus, just to give the kind of personal and immediate example there with

071Hopkins, Infinite Campus comes out with a regular cadence of updates that really we need to stay current on as well, certainly for many different reasons, both for the practices of data management, for the requirements for reporting, as well as for security purposes, and really making sure that we're staying current on that. You'll see in the release notes almost any time that Infinite Campus comes with an update, it's a required reporting elements are part of that list almost every single time. Whether it's the new, for certain data classification may have additional breakouts now. There were four ways that you could refer to something before, maybe now there's six ways that you can refer to that information. And so those do update pretty progressively as Infinite Campus works through that. And it's always a back and forth

072that then, that's where sometimes the requirement to implement it can run into operational efficiencies or inefficiencies of, yes, we can account for this information, but then who is entering that data, who's responsible for it, is that data within classifications elsewhere in the system that those staff now required to report this new piece of information don't already have rights to in the system. It becomes a fairly large web of making sure we're connecting those pieces, certainly following back again to the protecting data and information, certainly doing the best we can within that framework of always following the principle of least privilege, which is what you really have to do when you're talking about data services. So I guess that's probably a lot longer answer than necessarily looking for yes, it really is a shared back and

073forth, but Infinite Campus as a vendor approved by the state of Minnesota also has a requirement to support any of those new reporting pieces as well. Thank you. Yeah, Sharon Dreeson. Yes. Yeah. I echo the thanks for your sharing the work that not only you, but a whole team and teams of individuals too in different parts of Hopkins School District invest in Infinite Campus. And I appreciated you starting with as well, like the many faceted elements of what this is all about. It's about the relationships we have reporting. This is how we communicate. And it's one of those things that we can take so for granted, but we all know when it doesn't work, right? When suddenly you're not getting the email or there's these different things. And so I'm just really struck by and

074I'm grateful you would present for all of us as board members and hopeful any of our community members who are listening in just to pause and recognize the sheer amount of work that all this is and how vital having data and the entry and all the labor that goes into it. So just want to say it really does take a team and we're grateful for you and your team doing that. And as a former enrollment management higher ed person, my props to all of you for all of the hard work with that. And I also just wanted to highlight what you named that as part of our relationships in our district, we have early childhood and early childhood education and for parents and then we have community all the way through, it's not just K-12,

075right? All the way through amazing community education efforts as well and we're all a part of that. So thanks for that work and that's all. Thank you. I think there are no further questions. I just want to express my gratitude for everything that you do and for making this really complicated system work for the most part. Because yeah, as everyone said, it's not easy and I do know too that there are frustrations on the other end when it doesn't work and I think that my experience has been that your team accepts those with grace and gets to work and fixes it. So thank you for that. Yeah, thank you very much. As a leader, it's humbled every day by the great team that's sitting behind me and making sure that on a daily basis they're

076there and making this all work for everyone. Yeah, thank you. Great, thank you. Thank you so much, John. And thank you, Kishan and Tracy for showing up. Thanks for all the hard work. Thank you for being here. Sorry we didn't have any questions for you. Do you want to feed us one? Okay, all right. You're information people, I get it. Worst nightmare. Thank you. Thanks, appreciate it. Board members, that concludes our workshop. We have 19 minutes before we need to be back here. Well done. Be done by 10 o'clock. I invite all my board members to come on back to the table. We're gonna go ahead and get started. Today is Tuesday, February 10th, 2026 and this is the general meeting of the Hopkins School Board. Welcome everybody. We're really happy to see you here

077this evening with us. And I will first mention that our treasurer, Rachel Hartland is joining us remotely for this meeting. So you will see an empty seat, but she is here in attendance and participating in the meeting. So with that, I will call this meeting to order of the Hopkins Public Schools School Board at 7 o'clock p.m. And we will go to our first order of business, which is to recognize some of our amazing students, some of whom are with us this evening. So we're gonna travel down to the front of the board table. Hello everybody, welcome again. It's really nice to see your smiling faces here with us this evening. Tonight we celebrate the outstanding achievements of a remarkable group of students who earned selection into the Minnesota Music Educators Association All-State Ensembles. The

078MMEA All-State Program is widely regarded as one of the finest in the nation. Its mission is to develop, promote and support equitable and comprehensive music learning and teaching across Minnesota. The All-State experience plays a powerful role in strengthening high school music programs while inspiring students and educators. At its core, MMEA believes that music is essential to the human experience. Through intentional and informed practices, the organization nurtures creativity, self-expression and aesthetic sensitivity, while honoring lived experiences and striving for both equity and excellence in music education. The students being recognized tonight were selected as part of an elite group of 628 young musicians from across the state. Following a rigorous audition process, they spent part of their summer at an all-state camp where they refined their craft under the direction of a guest conductor, probably several guest

079conductors, engaged in intensive rehearsals and built lasting friendships. We'd also like to recognize and thank their dedicated teachers. Melissa Hanson, who is here this evening. Wave, Ms. Hanson, and Allie Swigum. Wave, Ms. Swigum, thank you to you. We also have two additional instructors who are not here this evening, Nora Teichast and John Folner. We so appreciate our amazing educators, not just for the musicianship that you build in our students, but also for your mentorship and your guidance and everything that you provide along the way to build these awesome, well-rounded individuals. So we are going to recognize our all-state students and so musicians, if you would please go to the back of that royal blue runner, you will have an opportunity to walk forward when you hear your name and then hang out up here after

080you get your certificate so we can take a photo at the end. For all-state band, Gabrielle D'Amil, D'Amelo. For all-state choir, Rose Calabria, Lauren Dalvey, Henry Hiltner, Ella Moore, Nolan Sniders, and Joanna Zocchi. We're also recognizing a couple of other students who I don't think are here this evening. So for all-state digital music media, we are recognizing Elio Morocco. And for the all-state orchestra, we are recognizing Avery Kluwer and Kanoa Lee. And so at this time, musicians, would you please come over here? We're gonna take a photo and yes, we have our interim director of communications and marketing, Toya. Thanks for taking the photo. Congratulations. And thanks to all the parents and caregivers who showed up and friends. Thanks to all of you for supporting these amazing young people. And thank you all for being

081here. You don't need to stay. But we really appreciate you taking the time. I know you all have really busy lives. So we then go to open agenda and this is where we receive public comment. Do we have any voicemails or cards? We do really value hearing from our community. So if you ever have something that you want the board to know about, feel free to email us. And if you would like to make a public comment, you can do so in two ways. One is to show up before the meeting starts and fill out a public comment card or you are able to leave a voicemail that can be played during the meeting in this section. And we do host two public comment sections, half hour for each one, one at the beginning of

082our meeting and one at the end. And now we will go to our student board representatives report. Thank you for being here this evening. Hello everyone. I'm Sufjan Osman, sophomore board rep. And to start off my report, our boys basketball teams, ninth through varsity are playing games today. Well, actually freshmen already, or not freshmen, the sophomore team already finished their games. I don't know if they won, they're lost, but like go Hopkins. And right now JV and varsity are playing their games and hopefully they're winning. Next, I wanna speak about the BSA, Royally Speaking like event. On February 26th at 5 p.m. BSA will be hosting a hundred years of commemorating black history. This showcase will highlight their voices, stories, artistry and achievements that have shaped black history and continue to influence our world today.

083After the event, there will be food. So that's great. There'll be a soul food dinner. I think it's gonna be like buffet style. Did you mention what day? Oh yeah. February 26th, 5 p.m. Thank you. And finally for my teacher spotlight, it's my APUSH teacher, Mr. Swenson. I just wanna say he's a great teacher. He's like, definitely not like a normal teacher. I'll put it like that. That's going in the email that I'm sending him. All right. But his class is rigorous and hard, which I enjoy. Thank you. All right. My name is Manuel and I am a junior student board rep. So to start out with my teacher spotlight, mine is for Ms. Hubble, who's my AP macro teacher. And recently we just completed and took tests for our first unit, which is basic

084economic concepts where we learned about core economic principles such as scarcity, the PPC, comparative advantage, supply curves, demand curves, and market equilibrium. Now we're moving on to our second unit, economic indicators and the business cycle where we begin learning about the circular flow model and GDP. So moving on, the Ford Next Generation Learning or Ford NGL parent information session that was scheduled for 6.30 p.m. on Wednesday, February 11th tomorrow will now be held virtually. The meeting session will also be recorded for those unable to join live. The session was moved to a virtual format in response to community feedback that an online option would improve accessibility. So what is Ford NGL? Well, Hopkins High School is exploring a new learning model in partnership with Ford NGL, a nonprofit organization that helps schools connect learning to

085real world careers and future pathways. This work is focused on helping students better understand their strengths, explore interests earlier, and graduate with a clearer sense of direction. If Hopkins moves forward, the model would include a freshman academy to support the transition into high school and career-themed academies or pathways designed by Hopkins staff, students, families, and community partners. Moving on, AP exam registration is here. The second opportunity to register and pay to take an AP exam is here for AP classes that are currently running during the second semester. The registration portal has opened and closes on Friday, February 20th, 2026. You must complete the registration questions and complete payment by the last day of the registration period. Exams are $77 or $40 if you qualify for meal benefits. So if you're taking a second semester AP

086class, make sure to sign up because it's a great way to get college credit if you're able to pass the exam. Finally, for yearbook ordering, the final orders have been placed for yearbooks and there are a limited supply of extra books available. So please make sure to order your yearbook as soon as possible because more will not be ordered. Thank you. Hi, my name is Hafsa and I'm a freshman. Today I wanted to start off by talking about the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAP, where our high school has been chosen to participate in the assessment. This means a randomly chosen group of 12th graders will be tested on math and reading that later get compiled with other scores from across the nation to help educators and policy makers better understand how to support

087students. These scores are anonymous and don't impact student grades or class placement. The students that are chosen to take the test will take the test on Wednesday the 18th during Rails Connect. The second thing I wanted to talk about was the next Digital Learning Day that's happening on Thursday the 19th, where students at the high school get to learn from their houses or if they choose to come to the high school, they could, to do a pre-assigned class, pre-assigned class work by 3.20 p.m. to be counted present for the class. Finally, I would like to spotlight Miss Donald, my help teacher, because I always find her classes interesting with the review games and diagrams on our notes. I also find the class to be faster paced than most of my other classes, which is really

088refreshing. Today, we took a quiz about neurons and neuron communication and reviewed the steps on how electrical energy turns into chemical energy that gives you dopamine in your brain. Thank you. That was health class? Yeah. Wow. That's great. What grade is that? Yeah. Next grade. Did you say it moves at a faster pace than other classes? Yes, it's faster paced because it goes blue silver day, so it kind of has to be a bit faster. Hi, I'm Adina. I'm one of the freshman representatives. I wanted to start with my teacher spotlight. Today, I'm spotlighting Mr. Eckhoff. Mr. Eckhoff is my ninth grade Lang and Lit teacher. So far, we've worked on self-identity and cultural identity, and we've done some assignments on what we think that means to us compared to what it actually means. Right

089now, we were able to choose between three short stories about revenge or coming of age. When you're done reading about the stories, you write a short essay explaining the themes of what the stories are. Next, I wanna talk about Spirit Week. This is in honor of the Valentine's Day sweetheart's dance coming up. So Monday, we don't have any school, but Tuesday, there's matching sets. Wednesday is date night. Thursday is PJ Day because it's a DLD Day. And Friday is class colors. Freshman is purple, sophomore white, juniors pink, and seniors are red. Along with that, heartograms are being set out at tables during lunch. Students are able to buy heartograms for other students during lunch, where on Friday the 13th, the choir band goes and sings a song to the person receiving the heartogram. Also on

090the 21st, there's a sweetheart's dance for anyone who wants to come and just have a fun night and hang out with friends. Next, registration week was, or for 2026, 2027 classes were last week. Each day of the week, the teachers shared with us how to sign up for classes and each day focused on something different relating to registration on how we can get the best classes as possible for our needs. Lastly, there is a new media center update. On December 8th through 14th, there was a computer science opportunity for students who wanted to learn more about computer science and get some more hands-on practice and work with it. They also worked with Mr. Davis who teaches the computer science courses at the high school. This is where they'll be offering Royals Connect classes for coding

091courses for anyone who's interested. Thank you. Thank you. Any feedback or questions? Chair Andresen? Yes, Director Roper. Thank you all for the incredible updates. I really, really, really enjoy listening to all the incredible things happening at the high school and what you all are into. Would you give me the date for this? Was it the sweetheart's dance? Was it, or like a day? Yeah, it's on the 21st of February. And where is it held? At the Hopkins High School. What time? We don't know yet. Sorry. I'll get it for you, Brooke. Okay, thank you. That's Mayor Perry. Or Director Roper. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. Any other questions? Well, thank you for that update. I am continuing to be impressed by your health class. I think all we ever talked about was don't drink

092alcohol. That's all I remember. So, yeah, amazing that that level of explanation of neurology is happening and how the chemicals are the thing. And I appreciated, Manuel, that you reminded me of some things on my to-do list. So thank you for that. The yearbook and AP exam registration. You're welcome. And with that, we will move to the superintendent's report. Thank you. And I also love the student board rep updates. The teachers love getting an email following your shout out. So keep up that work. And they love the detail. So the more detail you can provide, as long as I can capture it, they really love those emails. And thank you for spotlighting our educators. Okay, so I'm gonna provide some quick updates and then invite our director of information services for a department spotlight. So

093I'd like to begin by wishing everyone a happy Chinese New Year. February 17 is our Lunar New Year, celebrated by more than one and a half billion people across China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Singapore, Korea, Malaysia, and of course the Chinese diaspora, including our own Chinese students and Chinese immersion students here in Hopkins. This is a day that has been celebrated for more than 3,000 years in our world, making it one of the longest standing cultural traditions that is still actively practiced. And of course, last week's New Year celebration at the high school was a very, very beautiful showcase of song and dance by all of our elementary students in Sing Sing and also a special performance from our high schoolers, so it was great. After that New Year's performance, I was roaming the halls of Hopkins

094High School and encountered the robotics team hard at work, yes, at 8.45 p.m. And so it was great to run into them. They have two more weeks until their first competition, so they're busy with the coding and the building and the testing of their robot, which has yet to be named. In the middle there is Caitlin, and I had a really interesting conversation with her. She helped me understand the process that they follow to build their robot, but I asked her about her schedule. I always like to ask kids, well, what classes are you taking and what is your favorite? Well, her favorite class is chemistry, but it's at Dunwoody. And I asked her, why are you taking class at chemistry at Dunwoody, like we offer it at our high school? Well, she just explained

095that at Dunwoody, you learn how to apply chemistry in a real world setting, so she's learning chemistry concepts in the context of electrical engineering, and she really, really loves it. So it reminded me about the work that we're doing to explore how to embed more career connectedness at our high school. And on the next slide, I also wanted you to meet Henry. This is Henry. He's a student at West. He called me over to meet him at the school. Henry is newer to Hopkins. He transferred here from another district, and he loves Hopkins. He loves the sense of belonging that he found here, and he has a lot of ideas about how to keep students safe during this time. And when I shared with him all of the ways that our community is supporting families

096during this time, he was really, really impressed and very grateful. And I too am grateful. And so on behalf of our school district, I did want to thank HEF, ICA, our law enforcement partners, our city partners, and the 600 to 700 parents who are out there supporting our students and families in a variety of really critical ways. Thank you. And so Manuel touched on this a little bit during his report, but I wanted to acknowledge an important site visit happening this week to envision bringing more coherence to career and college readiness at our high school. And of course, in vision 2031, we have a success indicator related to graduation and post high school success, which is that every student will graduate with a post high school plan aligned to their strengths and personal purpose. And

097so today through Friday, our nonprofit partner, Fort NGL is here helping us to envision how we might compliment our strong college readiness programming with strong career readiness programming. And of course, how we might iterate the high school experience so that all students are engaged and successful is not a new conversation here in Hopkins. Prior to 2017, there was a small team at the high school that built differentiated diplomas, but didn't have the framework to implement them. And then in 2018, there was a college and career strategic task force that yielded a college specialist for our high school along with some other recommendations. In 2022, staff explored a ninth grade academy model as part of the research for transitioning our ninth graders from junior high to the high school. And then throughout all of this time,

098staff have visited a variety of high schools and high school models across the country. So on this next slide, you'll see that, you'll see the work that our nonprofit partner will be engaging in meeting with a variety of individuals and groups today through Friday. This partnership began last year, and this is their third in-person visit with a fourth visit in April that will culminate phase two, which is the envision phase. And then of course, we'll bring a robust presentation to our school board so that we can, after gathering community feedback and really understanding what would have to be true in order to continue moving forward, we'll engage our school board in making that decision. And then lastly, it's important to know that, whether we're facilitating this from the inside or the outside, there is of

099course a cost. And so we're braiding together funding from grants, Perkins, professional development and our general fund. And on this next slide, you will see something very phenomenal, which is 21 Hopkins educators who are being recognized as 2026 Minnesota Teacher of the Year nominees. This is really, really incredible that we have so many of our educators who have reached this level of recognition in the Teacher of the Year process. And we just want to wish them good luck as they proceed. I talked with Mr., well, I call him Mr. Tim, Mr. Mc, let me look so I can see that, his name. Mr. McCarran, he is a speech pathologist at our high school. I have seen him work with students. He's incredible. And if I remember my visits to, I think I've been to all

100of these teachers' classrooms, these are incredible educators, and we're just very excited that they are representing Hopkins during this time. Okay, and then lastly, I would like to share that, well, one of our, Soufan, I think it was you, who shared about the cultural showcase at the high school. And we have other opportunities to honor the brilliance, resilience and leadership of black communities, both past and present, and to also recognize how black history is woven into American history. And I think most of us know that black students represent 25% of our district. So it's a real, February being Black History Month is an important time to create, to continue creating schools where black students are not just authentically included, but seen, loved, challenged, and supported to thrive. So we're grateful to all the folks across

101our schools who are organizing efforts for our parents to get involved in this national, this comes, this national day comes around every year, the National African American Parent Involvement Day. Okay, so at this time, I think Mr. Wedder, if you'd like to approach for your third opportunity to present to the board, and we're gonna spotlight information services. So at the end of the superintendent report, we're trying to be thoughtful about spotlighting our schools, our departments, various programs to give our board and community members a chance to dive in more deeply and understand how the district is organized. Thanks for being here, Mr. Wedder. Thank you again. Good evening, everyone. Good to see you again. Like my earlier slides this evening, there's going to be a lot of information here, which we'll be just hitting the

102high points of. I wanted to provide a larger picture for you to be able to look at in your reading, but this evening certainly just hit the highlights as we talk through our department update here at information services. Tonight, I'll be speaking specifically just into our technical services, our technical support, our system administration. Those pieces, certainly the information services department and our very close collaboration with IDL encompasses many other functions as well, like our tech integration, our media services, and really making sure that that technology that we're talking about really comes to full force in the classroom is really one of those tools that our staff and students can utilize. So taking a look at just the overall, again, like I mentioned, really looking at our systems administration, network and device management. So all of

103the devices that are in everyone's hands around the entire district. Cybersecurity, certainly which we've visited on in the past here as well, becoming a larger and larger role of our department. That student and staff support, those hands, helping hands available in all of our spaces, our schools, our classrooms, making sure that that technology is successfully running in a very complex environment. Tech integration, library media services, and our data services teams as well, which we just talked about earlier. Real quick, just to begin with kind of the department structure and kind of how we support those different aspects. Besides myself, we have two assistant directors in information services, and you'll learn why we have some of the structure around segmentation, separation of duties here in a second. We have our assistant director of information services for

104operations, really that day-to-day oversight around what's happening in our schools, really holding much that staffing piece of that, the onboarding, off-boarding supervision, the cross-training, establishing those district-wide standards, procedures, and best practices, our IT systems and device lifecycle management, as well as providing some of those strategic pieces around aligning the operations up to our district goals. On the, kind of the, I say the opposite side of that, but really work very closely together, is our assistant director of information services for cybersecurity, identity, and user experience. We really think about that together, is that cybersecurity as well as the identity portions. We know that the current threat landscape identity is one of the most attacked portions of our security practices, and that also lends directly into the user experience. Because if your IT security systems are getting

105in the way of the user experience, staff and students, just the same are gonna try to go around them. So really making sure that you are not impacting your user experience by providing your safe and secure computing environment. So making sure that all of those pieces are in place, as well as much like in our accounting standards, having a separation of duties, that the cybersecurity person isn't the same person that's doing the standard maintenance and that work every single day. So maintaining those separation of duties, so that you have that second check on those systems. So like I mentioned here, all of those pieces really coming together, the cybersecurity identity and the user experience pieces to make sure that happens, and the staff that support that. System administration focus and the system administrators maintain the

106server infrastructure as you might think and kind of hear just even in technology in general. Much of that workload and used to be the actually like we call it rack and stacking servers, you're actually putting physical servers in place and doing that work now has really migrated almost being completely cloud services. So you're really managing it in a very different way than we have historically. This is also very closely working with other departments, maintaining all those systems, whether that be your HR system, your transportation system, built in ground systems, running our HVAC, all of those services that run atop of technology and making sure that we are successfully integrated across each other as well as that base infrastructure is supporting all of those systems that need to work, as well as backup, which is both

107a disaster recovery mechanism as well as a compliance mechanism. Remembering that every single email that comes in and out of the school district is retained for seven years as part of our wreckage retention requirements. Just one example of the work that we're engaged in there. Our network administrator certainly has been very busy over the last six months here, thinking about one of the largest projects that we've engaged in in a couple of years, really maintaining that network infrastructure, making sure all of those switches, access points, all of the wireless networking, everything is working as it needs to be across our environment. A new domain coming into this area with our networking as well as those, our security cameras. So we're seeing that domain really shift, that that physical security infrastructure is also riding atop our

108network infrastructure, which is pretty different than what it used to be. And that's, we're seeing that trend across all districts. That was one of the big conversations at the state tech directors conference that was last week was really talking about how all of these physical security pieces are really coming into the domain of IT as well now. Not only cameras, which have been there for some time, but now sensors in many of our spaces, as well as now the physical security door locks and all of those pieces riding atop our network as well. User experience, as I mentioned, this is making sure really all of these pieces are coming together, both the device experience, with the school district. We manage around 9,500 devices, around student and staff devices. Again, that's across our entire department. Also

109having the escalation support to the district level, as well as phone system management. Again, another significant change over the last 10 years. Phone system management has really turned from more of a clerical piece of tracking some of those pieces to now really another IT function within our identity services. Because the phone numbers follow people now and really they're again making all of our services much more people-centric instead of kind of the IT gobbledygook of numbers and everything. How do we center that on the people to make sure we're providing a great service? Our enterprise information specialists, again, managing our infinite campus system, making sure that training is there, as well as data integrations. As we talked about in workshop this evening, that center of information in our student information system certainly needs to be connected

110to many other systems to help make sure that we have a successful day-to-day operations across the school district. So making sure all of those pieces are in order. Really those roles, as we look at that, our technology support specialists and our lead support specialists out in our schools, making sure we're providing a great experience, hand-in-hand to our staff in all of our schools. Making sure that day-to-day there, there are frontline support there, right there, ready to assist in that. And really our leads who work right in all of that have an additional scope of helping to provide some of those cross-functional pieces, some of the onboarding our new staff members, making sure all of those dots are connected with lines. That integrated support workflow, making sure any issue that might start is just like a,

111this is acting weird, and seeing what that escalation path looks all the way up to, oh, this is actually a vendor issue where we're now engaging with a vendor, whether it be Google or Microsoft or someone else, or Apple, to help understand what actually caused that one, this is weird, comment very back at the beginning of that. So making sure we have all of those pieces in place. Call out a couple of the big projects that we've been engaged in. Full network project upgrade, we've talked about this both before the project as well as a little bit earlier this fall. This was a rip and replace of all of the infrastructure of our network we completed over the summer. All of the physical work around that was done in five weeks, which is the fastest

112we've ever done that. Really having that in place ready to go so that we're not interrupting summer school programs, we're not interrupting all of those uses of our facility that are happening really year round at this point. To be able to pull off that large of a project was significant. So that also sets us up in a much better place with better network segmentation and being ready for the cybersecurity, both current threats as well as what we're seeing on the horizon, the flexibility around connecting, that you can answer your phone from anywhere. Sometimes that's a good thing, sometimes not. Answering your desk phone from anywhere. So that really can ring just as there again, not even 10 years ago, you had to be sitting at your desk at that physical phone to be able to

113pick up a call or now you can do that at any point. And building that future forward piece is to make sure that we're ready for whatever might be coming. Certainly then artificial intelligence is in everything that we're doing right now. Not only is this significant work with our tech integration specialists around the district-wide guidance, but this is also making sure that our data is AI ready, that we're putting our proper procedures in place around safeguarding data, making sure that data is being properly labeled and ready for kind of that AI future that we're seeing with all these different pieces of data. That also is coming into our operations spaces as well with artificial intelligence significantly increasing our time that we're able to really dive in deep on a problem and find an answer much

114faster. We're seeing a lot of work both with our vendors around that as well as how we can work with it too. For example, even our network that we've just installed, one of the elements of that within an operation capability is anytime that an error message is produced by some of our equipment, you immediately get an AI summary of everything related to that and a direct reference into all of the documentation around that that can point you right into a direction to solve that on the spot. So we're seeing that top and bottom, left to right across all of our work. So that is really the quick overview of the department. Certainly there was more reading for you if you're interested in that as well. Thank you this evening. Certainly if there's any questions, otherwise

115we can keep moving. Any questions from my board colleagues? Chair Andresen? Yes, Vice Chair Roper. Thank you Mr. Wedder for your presentation. You do a lot of great work in the district. So I really wanted to say thank you for all the hard work you do to keep our information systems sophisticated and running properly. And I was gonna ask you some Wi-Fi questions right before you came up here, but I'm like, ooh, he's presenting, so I can't mess with him. But I do have two questions. One, the first question is, amongst the consortium of school partners that you work with, are there any like shared costs amongst any of the systems that we used? I know like the, maybe like the cybersecurity may be used by other districts. Like if there is some type of,

116you know, like cost affiliation amongst like that resource within multiple school districts. And then two, how do we test the integrity of the AI that we are starting to depend on, right? Because I know that when we get reports or when we get information from AI, I know that sometimes, especially me as I'm learning, I assume that AI is being 100% factual in what they're sharing with me. And so like if we get a report that they're, you know, they give us a summary of something, like who or what system are we using to test the integrity of that information? Yeah, thank you, Director Over for those questions. The first, to the first question I'll mention, there's a couple different ways that both we work together to try to control costs. A couple of those

117are, as you mentioned with cybersecurity, we are in part of a consortium where we work together because no one of the school districts involved would be able to afford to have a dedicated security personnel. Like that is currently just not in the realm of affordability for any of us individually. So that's where we work together with a security professional to be able to provide services across a consortium of about seven districts to spread that cost out. Another area where we work together, and unfortunately this funding is going away after this year, we do work together with another collaborative here in the metro area to help as a reimbursement for some of our internet connectivity costs. The state ended that program in the last session, so we will no longer have that opportunity for some of

118that reimbursement for connectivity. So that's one example we've been engaged in probably for the last 20 years is coming to an end here now. So those are a couple of the consortium pieces to your second question around AI. That is the question of the day right now. How do you ensure the integrity of the data that you are getting back from artificial intelligence? And mostly with AI, you're thinking about the large language models where you're asking a natural language question, getting information back. Some of the models are more dependent on how you ask those questions and others. That's really where our tech integration specialists do a ton of work, working with staff and students around what do the reliability pieces look like in that? How do you check your work? For example, AI that we

119use fairly extensively is Copilot from Microsoft, and you can actually do a deep research on something where it actually will flag and show you each one of the sources that it is used. It'll actually annotate all of your sources out for that. Additionally, when you're, I think some of the future around data is going to be within small models that are working on this specific set of data, which I think we're going to see a lot more success and around the quality of the output on that. But yeah, that is one of the number one challenges we have right now, and there have been some very demonstrated examples of AI answers leading folks astray as well. Thank you so much. Absolutely. Thank you. I wanted to make sure I'm checking in with Treasurer Heartland. Did

120you have any questions? Not at this time, no. Okay, thanks. Any other feedback or questions? Wonderful. Well, thank you for being here with us so many times this evening. Thank you very much. I really appreciate all the information about information. Thank you, Director Water. Thank you. That's sweet. That is what it is. So then I would look for a motion to approve tonight's agenda. So moved. I have a motion. Is there a second? Second. Okay, I guess we're going home. I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor? Would this be the time when? No? Okay. Okay. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? The chair votes aye and the agenda is approved. And that takes us to the consent calendar. These items provide the

121board with information considered to be more routine in nature. If the board deems an item to be necessary for additional discussion, a motion will be made to move the item to new business. I did want to highlight for our community that there are two items in the consent calendar that should have been posted at prior times. They are the two phase one and phase two Ford-NGL contracts. And we are working as a system to make sure that our contracts are again, part of consent. And that that has, because of due to staff turnover and processes not being totally transparent in the backend, we have not had that as part of our board practice in the last few years. So I wanted to call people's, everyone's attention to those contracts so that we know that they

122are there. And I believe that there is also a, going to be a motion to pull the audit to new business. So moved. You can make the motion. Chair Andreessen. Yes. Yes, hi. I would like to move FY 24 audit written report into new business. I think we want to memorialize and answer some questions that communities had and give the board space to talk about it a little bit. Great. I have a motion to move fiscal year audit, the written report to new business. Is there a second? Second. I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Chair Andreessen. Yes. Just to be clear in our consent agenda's policy, it says the request doesn't need a second or a vote. So I think by Director Zhao requesting that we're good. Okay, sorry. So no need

123to vote. We'll move it to new business. So now I would look for a motion that the board approve the consent calendar with the... Chair Andreessen, I'm so sorry to interrupt. I would respectfully request that we move the Ford NGL contracts out as well. I just have a couple of questions on that. Okay. So I will then look for a motion to approve the consent calendar minus items C, D, and E, which will be moved to new business. So moved. I have a motion. Is there a second? Second. I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? The chair votes aye and consent calendar less those items has been approved. And that takes us to the treasurer's report. Treasurer Heartland. Wonderful, thank

124you very much. Sorry, I have several screens open. So I need one moment to actually pull it up here. I am offsite obviously, so we'll give a slightly less contextualized treasurer's report this evening, but I did want to highlight that I have recently met with our district's new controller in our business services department, Ms. Emily Westrom, and she'll play a pivotal role in improving and implementing these internal controls and financial reporting standards that we have worked so hard to catch up on over the last year. And she and I discussed several ways to make the treasurer's report more readable and more useful to both the board and the community. And so obviously she is onboarding and working to implement items identified in audit. And so we will hear more about that. I will continue to

125work with her on that in the future. An expense of note for this period is our advanced imaging solutions. That is the company through which we rent our district's various copiers and printers. And we receive invoices for a variety of items from advanced imaging solutions, including the actual lease of the machines, supplies like corner or staples that those machines use, and then some overages. And we purposefully aim to have some overages so that we don't pay for usage in the lease, in the leases that we don't utilize. So the invoices you see listed this time are for the machines across the district for the whole first semester of the school year. The lease invoices themselves for the first semester total 30,891.71. Also, you see several pages of Amazon purchases. I discussed that large project to

126reconcile the previous year's supply purchases the business service department has done a wonderful job taking all of those transferring them to our current financial system, to Skyward and tying them to last year's budget in their appropriate departments. And so they're almost completely done with that. There's fewer than about a dozen invoices left to manage. So the total for Amazon in this period is $52,070.88. There we paid $104,973.03 to intermediate district 287 and some of these vendors I'm highlighting because we'll see them very often. And so again, for the edification of our community, our new board members, intermediate district 287 is kind of a cooperative public school district that serves a variety of West Metro districts and provides specialized education, alternative learning and targeted career and technical skills for students that learn best in environments with

127either really small staff to student ratios or highly individualized care settings. And so we paid them that $104,973.03 for the month of December. We pay that to cover costs for our in-district students that attend the special district 287. And that number fluctuates on December at fewer instructional days than other months. But typically you'll see intermediate district 287 monthly. We paid $89,069.64 for snow removal and salting for all of the buildings for multiple snow and ice events from November 26th through December 19th. Ring central is on most of our check registers and that's our phone and voicemail vendor. So you see $3,822.06 in invoices from December 2025. And also basically every check register will show expenses for mileage reimbursements for our staff and also for tuition reimbursement. We have many staff members that either always are

128assigned to work in multiple buildings or pinch hit when needed in other buildings and those staff members who use their personal vehicles for their work days get to submit their mileage for reimbursement. And then occasionally of course also have to drive off site for trainings or other meetings. Then tuition reimbursement is a perk that's written into many of our staff's union contracts. So in accordance with those agreements, staff members who are undergoing relevant continuing education can submit receipts and their grades to get that reimbursement. With that I move that we approve total disbursements in the amount of $2,571,563.11 for the period of January 1st through January 15th, 2026. I have a motion. Is there a second? Second. I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Chair Andreessen. Yes. Treasurer Heartland, thank you so much

129for the report and you did a great job even virtually. So really appreciate it. I just want to say thank you for clarifying those Amazon purchases. And because I mean, I was paging through it thinking like what was going on those weeks. So appreciate hearing that it was kind of carried over from last year as we got it into our new system. So really appreciate your diligence on that. Certainly. And I actually can't recall if you were there but we did talk about it a bit in the previous meeting as well. And so business services and then I actually can go in and see each of the actual items purchased. So we don't just see Amazon and this expense that we do actually have insight into the entire purchase if that's ever necessary. Thank you.

130Any further discussion? Chair Andreessen. Director Hyman. Thank you, Treasurer Heartland. I have one question about a charge related to the cabling for vape sensors and cameras at the high school in an amount of $3,244.67. Just for our community, I assume the vape sensors in the high school have been working and have been installed or is this to get them up and working? They have been installed and we're going through, I mean, they're working and they are being calibrated and tested for accuracy. Got it. They are currently installed. Okay, thank you. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? The chair votes aye and the treasurer's report is accepted. Thank you, Treasurer Heartland. And that takes us to our first item of new business which we will go

131in the order in which they were listed in consent. We will start with the Ford NGL contract, phase one. Thanks, Chair Andreessen. May I ask a question? Yes. Okay, thank you. Appreciate being able to see these, being able to discuss them. I just think it's important that, you know, obviously it was in the materials, community can see it. I guess just my only question is, I noticed that this phase one was signed by the high school principal at the time. Do we have, I would assume we do and I've tried to look to some degree, but is there policies around who can approve what amount? And so does this fit that a high school principal can approve something for $41,000? Thank you for the question. It's a great question. So I do know that we

132are going to be looking at those policies. I believe they're up for review. The procurement and program consulting policies will be reviewed on Thursday. And as I've indicated in some prior communications, this is part of the overall review that we need to do in our department. We actually don't want our school leaders or staff signing contracts above a certain dollar amount and what that threshold is should be determined and spelled out in policy. And we also want to, in terms of who signs a contract, who co-signs a contract, how they get put on consent and paid, we wanna improve the consistency and fidelity with all of those practices. So those, I think we're gonna relook at the policy and then start noting what practices we need to change or improve and then provide the board

133with relevant updates. All right, thank you so much. That was my question on the first one. Chair Andreson? Yes. I just have two comments tonight about the Ford NGL contracts. And I wanna start by being very clear that my comments tonight are not about the educational merits of Ford NGL. My first comment is related to just how the contracts have come to the board tonight from a governance perspective. And my second comment is about timing and readiness as we think about the next steps in Ford NGL. So first, with respect to how these contracts have come to the board, Minnesota law says that the school board is the body responsible for approving contracts that bind the district. And that's because the board is the final backstop for transparency, accountability and liability for the district. So

134if contracts don't come to the board, we can't do the job we were elected to do. Our district policies are structured consistently with that statute and the school board and administration together sets policy and authorizes contracts. Administration may determine how to implement board policy, but administration technically does not have authority to decide whether to bind the district to a contract. So with that framework in mind, it's just important to note, and I think we've already said this, that neither the phase one or phase two Ford NGL contracts were brought to the board for approval until tonight, which puts the board, or at least from my perspective, in the position of being asked to retroactively approve contracts after the work has already been done, work has already started and money has already gone out the door.

135And that just flips the process on its head. And going forward, and as Dr. Mary Perry-Reed stated, I've been assured and I do appreciate that the administration recognizes the need to take a closer look at our policies, our contracting processes, and those practices and reviews of those practices and policies are already underway. And I really appreciate that. So I just wanna say I'm open to approving this tonight with the understanding that it's a corrective step, not precedential, that we won't be retroactively approving contracts, you know, once there's really no way to unwind the clock. And the second thing I just wanted to express is an issue that I've personally been wrestling with since learning about where we are as a district on the Ford NGL roadmap. And I had the opportunity today to meet with

136the Ford NGL coaches and learn so much more than I knew before. And I understand we're currently in phase two, which is this envisioning phase. And in this phase, we're learning and understanding our district more deeply and we're deepening community understanding. And I also wanna note that Ford NGL's phase two states that part of this phase is understanding and developing the systems, structures, processes, and leadership needed to implement the plan and guide continuous improvement. As a district, I feel like we are in a period of significant transition. We're in the middle of a superintendent search, which was not anticipated when this Ford NGL work began. We're also in the process of transitioning leadership at the high school. On the financial side, we have not had a director of business services for some time. We've recently

137hired a controller and we're now just completing the year end 2024 audit, which was due in December of 2024. So with that said, even if Ford NGL ultimately proves to be a strong opportunity for our district, phase two itself contemplates assessing whether the system, structures, processes, and leadership needed to implement the plan and guide continuous improvement are in place. I might think of it like remodeling a house. You wouldn't invest in redesigning the interior of your home if the foundation and footings are in need of repair. That doesn't mean the remodel is a bad idea or not eventually needed. It means the timing matters. As a board, we have an obligation to make sure the foundation is sound before we commit significant resources to what comes next. I would just like to invite my fellow

138board members as we work through phase two to think through this and really be thoughtful about what our next steps are and to really take the lessons we learn in phase two into consideration and ensure that the district's on solid footing before we move beyond phase two. Thank you. And just for context, I believe it was shared with the board and also with our community that there will be that point of discussion and decision-making coming forward in the spring. So going back to the topic at hand, which is the Ford-NGL contract phase one, do I have a motion to approve that contract? Chair Andreeson? Yes. Can I offer an additional comment at this time? And it would be, I know we're considering them separately, but just the discussion, just an affirmation of a, I think,

139thank you for naming and bringing forward to us for our consideration these contracts and being recently raising my hand, excuse me, to be on the monitoring committee. It'll be good to be able to revisit this and just as we're fleshing out what our processes look like going forward, so I'm grateful for that because it is an awkward position where it's like, I mean, I'm gonna be voting yes, of course, like we, right? You know, that absolutely this is work that has happened and it's work that we're in an ongoing work that we're doing as a community. And so I do just wanna also note that in continuing to be intentional in these next steps about our communication and what are our steps throughout the rest of the spring and going forward that we just are

140deeply engaging the community in this because I want it to be, if we get to a yes, I want it to be a yes that our educators and our parents and everyone is like, we are yes and we're in on this or if we discern differently that it's clear that we're in this together and that it can be a positive outcome for us. Even being able to hear, it was so helpful hearing both from you and then from Ford and GL that this is actually a longer term body of work and consideration that has happened and I think more of us who can be just in that as a community to come alongside and support. So just wanted to note that as we continue the work forward. Thank you. So do I have a motion

141to approve the Ford and GL contract phase one? So moved. Thank you. Is there a second? Second. Second. I have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Chair Anderson. Yes. I don't wanna be redundant but I think it's important to mention and I appreciate all of the comments and reflections. Director Hyman, I think it's really important to mention to your first comment because there have been some community members. I don't really know how many. I just know that this sentiment exists with one or more community members that questioned if we were rushing the process and I wanted to make sure that folks know that the failure to bring the phase one and phase two contracts to consent before now was not a result of being intentional but oversight and unfortunately there are other contracts

142that weren't brought to the board. So I just wanted to put that in the context of we're looking at all of that right now and then we will probably bring some additional contracts that have expired but at least we're improving our processes and wanting to be fully transparent with our community what the contracts have been even though maybe they are expired and that's going to be part of the cleanup process. So thank you. I appreciate that it's better to have them now. Correct. And I am eager and happy to help with policies also as a member of that committee and look forward to tightening up that oversight as best we can. Yes, we do too. Thanks. Thank you. So we have a motion and a second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye.

143Any opposed? The chair votes aye and Ford NGL contract phase one is approved. That takes us to the Ford NGL contract phase two. Any discussion? Chair Andreessen. Oh, go for it. Treasurer Hartland. Thank you. Briefly, I just wanted to say for the communities for their understanding that Director Hyman mentioned getting the chance to meet with Ford NGL and that that was really illuminating and I'm so glad that you had that opportunity and did just wanna point out to the community that the board, both the board members who kind of rolled off of the board and then also the other five existing board members did have an opportunity to engage with Ford NGL to have that similar onboarding and understanding built both in stages one and earlier this year, this school year in the phase two.

144So those opportunities have been afforded to the board and I am very glad that as new board members that it was offered to two newest as well. Thank you. Director Thompson. Thank you, Chair Andreessen. I think I just had two questions on this one and again, I appreciate the ability to ask these. So first question probably is gonna be a similar answer that we're refining our processes, but I noticed that this one wasn't signed until fairly recently, probably after it seems like the two invoices were due. So I'm assuming it's not routine that we would pay for something before a contract is signed, right? Let's see. So if we look at the correct sequence, then depending on the threshold, there may be an RFP for responses and then once a provider is selected, then we

145would want to have that contract put together, we'd wanna bring it before the board, we'd want to have it signed and then payment would be issued either during, let's say it's a year long, then during those services being provided or after and not before, correct? Yeah, that makes sense to me, thank you. And so this specific one is divided into two halves. Understood, thank you. And then my other question is, and I know that our goal for financing this is by very much appreciative charitable gifts, but it seems like if we're following the invoice timeline, we've probably had to, I don't know, for lack of a better term, front the money. So do you know where that money comes from as we pay it first? Is that out of professional development or administration bucket or

146just any idea kind of where we're getting that from? I actually don't believe we fully paid the first half. Yeah, and I haven't seen them in the treasurer's report, so that might be true. And I don't know sort of the proportion or amounts, but as I mentioned before, we're very intensely and actively searching for grant support, and then there would be the professional development dollars and Perkins funding. I just don't know the breakdown, but we could always delineate that and offer it on the Ford NGL webpage or send it to the board. That sounds very fair, so I appreciate it, thank you. Sure. Chair Andresen. Yes, Director Zhao. Yes, so the board did do a tour of the Shakopee schools with Ford NGL, I believe everybody was invited for that, and some of us had

147showed up. So I think at the end of the day, it kind of boils down for me for phase three to two big things that have kind of been touched on, right? One is our teachers, especially high school teachers, supportive, right? I think I would posit that the burden lies greatest there. And so if they can be brought on board and they're excited about it and they wanna do it, that's for me a big break point. And then for phase three and beyond really, what is it for the bottom line, right? To, not Clerk Thompson, Director Thompson's point, a lot of it depends on how much it's gonna cost, right? If it's 10 bucks, okay, great, let's do it. If it's a lot more than that, then I think that's when we need to consider

148strategically if it's worth the investment or if something else is. So just like to offer that. Thank you, and again, we'll have ample opportunity, I believe, to discuss this at the board table and we'll have a lot more information, I believe, at that point around funding, also around what it's going to look like and the input from parents, students, staff. I think that I'm looking forward to having a very robust discussion about the future of the high school and the partnership with Ford NGL. The matter before us right now is the Ford NGL contract phase two. So are there any specific discussions to be had on this actual contract before us? With that, I would look for a motion to approve the Ford NGL contract phase two. So moved. I have a motion, is there

149a second? Second. I have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? The chair votes aye and the Ford NGL contract. Phase two is approved. Thank you all, I really appreciate the discussion and also your patience as we do some housekeeping. So that then takes us to our next order of new business, which is the fiscal year 24 audit, the written report. Chair Andrewson? Yes. Yes, hi. So last board meeting on 127, we had a presentation from our external auditor, KDV, the CPA firm. And at the time, the audit was in the final draft phases and they weren't completely prepared to give us the final numbers, although they did give us a very good summary. And so if people are interested in

150diving deep into the guts of that, take a look at that board presentation. I will note that very recently the final report is out and I should note that there were no material differences between what they had in their draft and what we are considering today. So I'll give a very, very high level overview and talk a little bit about what we on the audit committee discussed about and some of our conclusions and most importantly, a little bit about the path forward to get on the audits more timely. So the district overall is in good financial shape. So that's really good news. Total revenues was 140.9 million against spending of 137.6 million. So that is very, very good news. In addition, there were some financial maneuvers or changes that we basically spent restricted funds instead

151of general funds where appropriate. So our actual unassigned fund balance increased $7 million to 16.3 million as of June 30th, 2024. So that's roughly about 12% of expenditure ratio, which is in excess of our board policy of a minimum of 6%. So that is very good news. One of the things that the audit committee is very worried about is I think people are more or less aware of some of our neighboring districts and some of their financial challenges. And so we are very worried about that and that is not the case for us, so that's great. In addition, the audit report concluded with an unmodified or a clean opinion, which is also very good news. It means that our various buckets were fairly represented in all material respects. So that's really good news. I take

152that very, very well. The auditors are a little bit like my parents. You can get adequate and that's about as good as it gets. And so we are adequate, so that's great. I'm very happy with that. So that's the good news. However, and for those following along, you can refer to the written report file for those supporting documents. However, there are of course areas for improvement and you can refer to the communications letter for that. So there's three major buckets of items that we need to work on. So the first is over a segregation of duties. Actually, Director Wetter talked a little bit about it, so that's great. But essentially the idea is that financial controls should be designed in a way that multiple people should be involved in large financial transactions. And that allows

153for checks and balances to catch mistakes or any nefarious attempts to bypass accounting practices. This particular issue can be generally traced to the understaffed finance team that we talked a little bit about in the past. And the financial controller who coordinates a lot of the financial operations and accounting activities was not in place for two years or so, which is a long time. So the good news is that we recently hired a controller from Edina. So they're onboarding and I think Treasure Heartland referenced talking to them already, so that's great. The next major item is the financial balance restatements. Basically, when money comes into the school system, they can be assigned to different buckets, right? And so there wasn't a problem necessarily with the flow, as we kind of mentioned, that was a positive direction,

154but there were some problems in how those accounts were bucketed or labeled basically. And so that causes a lot of issues when it's time to close the books and we need to do a lot of detective work to figure out, well, hey, where was this supposed to be and is it in the right place? And that really causes a lot of delays in the audit that we are seeing. Finally, also it is somewhat at least tangentially related contracted services implementation. The auditors noted the district's policies for some of the purchase services were not followed and in addition, there's areas for improvement in documentation around evaluation and selection. And so this rhymes with our discussion with Ford NGL and so it's somewhat related to that. Not mentioned in the letter, but definitely something that's on the

155audit committee's mind is how late this audit was. I think it's a year and change almost too. So this is an item that we'd need to improve upon. So there are gonna be corrective action plans or they call them caps, which are being created or have been created. And we as an audit committee will meet with the school management on a periodic basis to understand the status of those caps as they're being implemented. And at the end of the day, we need to make sure that the policies and procedures that we have can demonstrate that they meet all the accounting and compliance requirements. And so the hope is that with these concerted efforts that we can quicken the pace of these audits and make sure that we don't get a year plus in our audit

156commitments. And just finally, as an update, our 2025 audit is in progress and it's our intention and the school district's intention to have it complete by June of 2026. So in about, before we break for summer. This would be a improvement as far as timing goes. And so, and we've talked with our school management and we think that this is an achievable target. So we'll be providing updates and as we get closer to the June date. So I thought it was important to give this context and some of this info and we can have a discussion. Thank you, Director Zhao. And I just wanted to reiterate that your report is because the audit committee has had a chance to meet with the full report. And this is the outcomes of the committee meeting and discussing

157the report and you're bringing that to the table. Yes, that's correct. Sorry, I should have mentioned that. Oh, it's okay. I think it was clear. I just wanted to make it official that that is your report and that it's not, that there were a body of people looking at this and we actually have an audit committee which I think is important to note. And I actually am grateful that you're going to be taking, the audit committee is going to be taking an active role in the 2025 and that we will be getting as a board regular updates on the status. So thank you for that. And I would open it up to further questions and discussion. Treasurer Heartland, do you have anything you'd like to add as a member of the committee? No, thank you.

158Director Zhao worked with Director Simon and I to prepare those remarks, especially because I'm remotely, so he covered what we felt it was most essential to get out and the board audit committee can try to answer any questions. Otherwise, I know we have a little bit of admin support too, if necessary. Thank you. Chair Andrewson. Yes, direct, Vice Chair Roper. So thank you, Director Zhao, for that very high level overview of the audit. Just a quick question, what are the penalties for the audit being late? Like, are there any financial penalties that we would have to like pay, or what are like the, I would more say like the consequences of getting the audit in that late from an entity perspective? Well, I can take a stab at it and maybe correct me if I'm

159wrong, but so there aren't any penalties per se. We do, the MDE does pay attention and we submit these audit reports to MDE for their oversight and things like that. So they were, there's a lot of follow-up that occurs about when your audit is late. So I don't think there's like a penalty that you pay or anything like that. No. No. No. No. So I will say that for the 2025 audit, right? So this next audit that we want to get it done for referendum, before referendum. It just needs to be done before then, so. Are there any considerations, given that many districts are having capacity issues within like their business services? Do they have any type of, you know, like I won't say hardship, but any form of extensions that we could apply for,

160given what Director Hyman had mentioned, and we're going through a large transition of leadership right now. And so just wanted to make sure that, you know, we are not in all of our eyes and crossing our teeth when it comes to it, but also realizing the capacity within the district. Is there, was that a consideration within like the CAPS requirement? Well, so yes, I think so there, the main thing though is, we need to fix the problems at the root, right? And so when we miscategorize certain fund things, and then we have to go back and fix it later, it takes extra time. You have to do rework, it creates gray hair for me. And so, you know, it's not ideal. And so, yes, other districts are having similar, some districts are having similar problems

161with understaffing. And, you know, not that it's an excuse, but I've, you know, I do read that other districts have been late in audits too. You know, we need to do better though. Absolutely, thank you. And I think too, the ways in which a district can have financial impact is that this does, this can affect our ratings, which we want to be careful of, and to ensure that we are going out for the highest ratings that we can. And this is one of the key factors in that, when I think it's still moody, goes out and assesses. So- Director Andreessen, I believe that's end of June, which is why the- Yes, which is why we're on that timeline. Early June. So thank you for that. I appreciate that that is a big part of the

162consideration. Or the extra cost of a team coming in to do all the fixing and all of the extra time. So that's a great question. MDE is patient and they check in often, but there's, I haven't heard of any such thing as like a formal extension. I mean, they expect it by December 31st. And- If you don't, then they- Yeah, and if you don't, then they expect, they expect to hear about what your plan is for getting it in as soon as possible. Any other questions or discussion? Chair Andreessen? Yes, Director Thompson. Thank you. And appreciate that summary, Director Zhao. I just feel like you used language that helps me understand it. So I really appreciate that. Let's see, I mean, I do have a couple of questions. You know, we saw the final audit,

163you know, Friday night, you know, so I've had it for a couple of days, not, you know, the full five business days that we would generally have for a new business item. I guess kind of my first question is some members of the public have referenced a policy 703, the annual audit. When I go to the policy section of the website and I click the 700 series fiscal management, I don't actually see that policy, but with some searching, I was able to find it. And, you know, it says we reviewed it March 26, 2024. So I'm just curious, does anybody know, like, is this 703 annual audit, you know, a currently active policy of ours? Thank you for the question, Dr. Lightfoot, do you know the answer to that question about 703, I also do

164not see it listed on our policy's webpage. We'll see what's going on, because we'll see if we'll get to that, I don't. So it is an active policy, annual audit. Could it be internally facing versus externally facing? Because I'm on the external net. And if you look at all of the 700 policies, they are sequenced numerically but on my end, 703 is not listed. No 706 either. Were there specific questions just about the existence of the policy or? Yeah, so thank you for confirming that it's an active policy. So in here, it says we must approve the audit report by resolution. So it looks like we'll need to do a resolution to approve this. And then, it says something in here that the administration must report to the school board regarding any actions necessary to

165correct any deficiencies or exceptions noted. So I'm assuming that that's kind of a report about those caps that Director Zhao mentioned. And I did have at least one question on a particular cap. So I don't know if anybody's able to answer it this evening or not. Thank you for the question. So the corrective action measures are listed in the communications component of the report. And then, Jessica, do you have time to provide some additional context for what's your specific question, Director Thompson? Well, I think kind of the specific questions was in how some of this is worded, the official responsible for ensuring the cap is listed as the district's business services director. As I understand it, that is vacant at the moment. So would we substitute CISO for that? So Jessica Olson is our interim

166CFO or interim director of business services. Now, she is an employee of CISO, but she is acting as our interim CFO currently. Perfect. And then the other question I had is, it seemed like the planned completion date for the caps, some of them list like June 30th, 2025, but then some of them list June 30th, 2026, or November 30th, 2026. So I'm just curious, why does 2025 show up in there if that year is already come and gone? Does that make sense? It does. So it really depends on if a corrective action could have been done by 2025, so June 30th. So like the prior period restatements. So part of that was because in FY23, there was an error in how the financials were stated. So we restated it in FY24 around receivables. So our

167thought is in FY25, we're not gonna have that because we've gone through and we've done due diligence with the FY24 audit. So it should be corrected by June 30th of 2025. Now, some of the other findings in there, there's no way to have it corrected by June 25. So then we moved it out to June 26. So just depending on what the finding was, whether we had time to correct it, or if it was something that there was no way to have it corrected by the 25, then it was moved out to June 30th of 26. Great, thank you very much for that explanation. Chair Andreessen. Yes. If I can just jump in to say a lovely community member sent me a note that something's wrong with our filter on our policy page. So actually

168it is there online. If you click on all policies, you can find 703 that way. So just as a note. Where is this? And thank you, community member. Thank you. Look at us. Okay, thank you, Natalia. Thank you, Natalia and community member in conversation who I won't name them, but they sent me a note. Chair Andreessen, do you just wanna repeat that into the microphone or do you want me to? Yes, so the policy was not listed under the 700 block because it was not tagged as a 700 policy that has been corrected. So now if you refresh your website, it will show policy 703 annual audit when you click on the 700 block of policies. So thank you. Did you get your questions addressed, Clerk Thompson? Director Thompson, I will get it right someday.

169I believe I did. Thank you, Chair Andreessen and thank you very much. Any other questions or discussion? Thank you for being here tonight to field some detailed questions. I too want to express my gratitude for the work that went into getting this done and also to reiterate to our community that I think the entire board is committed to getting this done by our June 6 timeline. It is something that we take very seriously. And like I said, we know it impacts our financial picture. So it is something that needs to be addressed. And from my perspective is my highest priority. So thank you for all the work that's gone into it. Thank you audit committee for meeting and talking about it and pulling it out so that we can have this robust discussion. And with

170that, I would look for a motion that the board approves. Oh, no, we need to do a resolution. Clerk Wilhelm Garvers. I'm going to try and create, do I need any whereases in this resolution? Cause I don't know if I can do them justice. But I would look for a resolution that the board pass the fiscal 24 audit as presented in the attaching documents. Yes, clerk, would you read the role? Sorry, that was a very poorly worded resolution. Director Hyman. Aye. Yay. Aye. Director Zhao. Aye. Director, oh, I go to, I just keep pointing, okay. Vice Chair Roper. Yay. Aye. Chair Andreessen. Aye. Director Thompson. Aye. And I, Treasurer Hartland, thank you. Aye. And the clerk votes aye. The resolution passes. I will practice that. Thank you. Congratulations. Chair Andreessen. WJ, your first roll call.

171Before we move on, I just want to publicly thank Jessica. She's been here for quite a few months and has done a tremendous amount of work to get us to this point in partnership with Dr. Lightfoot and the team. She's very knowledgeable, very detail oriented, very direct in a non-judgmental way about what we need to do differently and there's a lot of appreciation for how she is engaging in this work and helping us. So thank you, Jessica. Thank you, it's been a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you, appreciate it, and the whole team. That takes us to our next business, next order of new business, which is a resolution amending and reinstatement of prior resolution, I believe, for issuing bonds. And we have a whole team coming to the table. So I will turn it over

172to Dr. Mary Pirie. Thank you, Chair Andreessen. So yes, this is about bond issuance and we have Shelby McCoy from Ellers who is with us this evening and Jessica will remain at the table and Dr. Lightfoot as well. And we did hear from our SiteLogic construction partners earlier giving context to the projects and the design process and we need to pay for all of those services and pay for the construction work. So I'll turn it over to the team to give context to what this resolution calls for. Good evening, I'll kick it off. Just as Dr. Mary Pirie-Reed identified, this is the work that is related to the referendum as well as to other bonds, which we are issuing, which we'll go into in a little bit more detail with specifics. So with that, Jessica,

173would you like to give a little of the fiscal background? Yeah, so with the completion of the 24 audit, we are able to go out for rating. So that's exciting news, which will help with our bonds with that. The resolution that is in front of you tonight goes for twofold. So the first one is for the referendum. So there's 75,000, sorry, 75 million that will be going out for a bond for that piece of it. And then there's also a facility maintenance bond for 13,650,000. And that is actually a bond that should have been issued back in 25. So this is a restatement of the original resolution, just bringing that forward so that projects that have been done and that are being completed are funded with the bond funds for that. So with that, I

174will give it over to Shelby. Good evening, Madam Chair, members of the board. I have in front of you a pre-sale report. That's the informational item, just laying out kind of the steps that we'll go through with administration and your steps in this process to issue the debt. And then your action item tonight, which is another roll call resolution, will be the resolution restating the resolution, the facilities maintenance bond portion resolution from 2024, and then also incorporating about 75 million of the $140 million authority that voters granted to you. So we're allowed to kind of put those, or you as a district are allowed to put those together into one bond issuance and you get some economies of scale by doing that. You have one issuance cost and that'll just go in part. The authority

175granted by voters is part of your school building bond authority. And then the facilities maintenance bond authority is authority that you have as a district to issue debt for certain deferred maintenance costs. So you have multiple authorities incorporated into this. One, financing, both will be secured by the general obligation of the school district and by property taxes. And that was all laid out as part of your overall levy that you approved last fall. And that was then incorporated into, or after the vote was incorporated into the final levy after that was approved. The bond itself will be issued for 20 years. That was what was presented to the taxpayers at the time of the vote. And then the facilities maintenance portion is slightly less than that. Well, it is less than that, about eight years.

176As part of the overall issuance, we'll get a rating on the bonds and you'll also have the credit enhancement rating. So the state will step in on your behalf if you're unable to pick those payments. And that's part of the overall credit enhancement program. And what that looks like to bondholders is a very secure bond. So one, Minnesota debt is very good. Minnesota school district debt is very good. And then two, the state kind of backs that. So as was mentioned, we've held off on issuing a portion of the facilities maintenance bond. We weren't, you had the money in your general fund to pay those bills. And so there wasn't like an urgent need to go out for funds until we understood what the rating of the district was. So we're gonna go into the

177rating conversation with the assumption that we have the data coming in and we'll be able to have a good conversation with the rating agency. Your underlying rating before it was withdrawn was a AA2. So it was withdrawn, but you had all of your debt, the rates on those were locked in. So nothing affected what you had. It was the bondholders that had those as investments was, had a AA2 bond and then they had a withdrawn debt. So if they held onto those, you'll have that, hopefully AA2 reinstated and then we'll proceed as normal with the bond sale. As part of the bond resolution, we've set this out as either a competitive or negotiated depending on how we're gonna proceed with the bond sale. But our intention is to have you have the funds available by

178April 30th for the facilities maintenance portion to proceed with projects there and the school building bond portion. And the overall assumption is that we going into this is a 4.3% interest rate for the bonds, they'll be tax exempt. And then the 20 year like I said for the school building and the eight year for the facilities maintenance bond, all falling in line with the overall capital plan that we presented to the voters, you incorporate in your preliminary levy and then was able to include an additional levy as a result of the voter approved authority in November. So a few steps along the way, but I'll be, elders will be back here, either me, Matthew or Beth with the results of the sale on April 7th, and then you'll have those funds available at the end

179of April. So I'm happy to answer any questions on the overall process here or the resolution as well as part of the roll call vote. Thank you, appreciate you being here. Any questions? Chair Andresen. Yes, Director Zhao. Hi, thank you, it's a question for elders. You said you're expecting 4.3 for our interest rate. Is that AA2, is that what you're expecting? So our assumptions are that you have your existing rating of the AA2 reinstated. So we do also incorporate some market cushion into our preliminary assumptions. Okay, and is AA1 worse, technically? AA1 is above AA2. Okay, and what would AA1's interest rate be? So generally speaking, if you look just at a lot of data, there's about five basis points spread between ratings. However, we in Minnesota come in with that sort of buffer of

180the credit enhancement program, which plays off the state's credit rating. The state's credit rating is a AAA. Moody's makes the assumption that they'll pay all their bills first and then pay school districts. So that carries a AA1 rating. And so that sort of buffers that five basis point or five to 10 basis point assumption between ratings overall. So it could theoretically be like three to eight then? Is that what I'm hearing? And then the other piece that just plays into it overall is supply and demand on the day of sale. So generally in the markets, we see about $11 billion each week. And we've certainly had those weeks where there's $6 billion, but the demand is still up higher. So that 100% will play into the competitive marketplace. Okay, and this is maybe beyond the

181scope of this, but how would we get to AA1 from AA2? So I don't know if I have, a lot of times what you'll get on that day of sale is the credit report, which Moody's has done a really good job at highlighting what is needed to go up or down in the rating. And Moody's compiles a number of factors, I was just looking if I had the last report in my file, that are both in your control and outside of your control. And so you have the most Fortune 500 companies of any school district in Minnesota in your tax base. So your tax base is, I think if you slivered that out in the AAA category, and your income per resident is also very high. So those are all things that, while affect your

182school district, are outside of your control. They also look at enrollment, they look at finances, and they look at the overall funding in Minnesota. So I can't point to exactly, but I can get that information back to you on what it would take to move up. They also rely heavily on trend data. They will not move usually on a single audit, up or down. They like to see a trend of either lower debt, higher fund balance, increasing enrollment over time. Yeah, it'd be interesting, we could save money, right? Yeah, any other questions? Chair Andresen? Yes, Director Thompson. Could somebody just explain to me again, the two pieces. So we're amending a prior resolution that we made on August 20th, 2024. And so can you just explain why we're amending that, and then what the second

183component is that we've lumped together? I heard it, but it didn't totally sink in. So as part of your general facilities maintenance program, every other year, the district has issued debt to fund a portion of your facilities maintenance. So the 10-year plan and just replacing carpet, fixing walls and HVAC. So that was part of the plan, which was I think the FY26 plan that was adopted by the board in the summer of 24. So with that, given the overall project expenditures, we built a capital plan that would keep your taxes nice and level by mixing some bonds with the levy that you all get. So it's not like you haven't gotten any money for your FM bonds or for your facilities maintenance projects, you just had some of that and just cash through levies each

184year. But at that time, we had a bond assumption of about, of $13 million. We held off on issuing that until we had the full picture of financials. So we're now taking that authority that you had in 2024 and combining it with a portion of your school building bond authority. There is not a need to issue $140 million right now for that authority because the projects will happen over time. So we're taking an assumption of about $75 million. So we're gonna combine that all together. And then we also, in order to keep everything moving along and yet give maximum flexibility, we've included both the authority to either issue this competitively if all things flow through and we have a full financial picture that we want to provide to the rating agency. Otherwise we would have

185the authority, you as the board are granting LRs and the administration to move through with a negotiated issuance should we not have a full picture, but yet you still need to move forward with projects. And if that's the case, then we wouldn't carry, then you wouldn't have a full rating, in which case we don't wanna issue any more money than you absolutely need. So we're just combining that all. And then we're also putting a parameter in there that says we don't wanna issue these bonds or you're not allowing the issuance to proceed if it's more than a 4.75% interest rate. Got it. So there's a cap there that you simply could not award if it was higher. It makes sense. Thank you for taking me through that. And I just wanna add onto that. So

186we have the FY24 audit done. The FY25 audit needs to be far enough along that we could provide an outlook of preliminary review of it. And the audit has to be completed by the end of June. So just to clarify on what that financial picture looks like. All right. And I would add just on the procedural level, know that we have weekly check-ins on the progress that we're making as part of that audit cadence. So we're really driving procedurally to make sure that we are keeping up on a weekly basis to make sure that these timelines are met. Thank you for that. So I would look for a motion that the board approve the resolution amending and restating prior resolution to state the intention of the school board to issue general obligations, school building and

187facilities maintenance bonds, series 202A in the maximum aggregate principal amount of, wow, $88,650,000 and taking other actions with respect there too. So moved. I have a motion. Is there a second? Second. I have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Seeing none, clerk, please call the roll. Thank you. I will call roll according to alphabetical order this time. Shannon Andreessen. Aye. Rachel Heartland. Joanna Hyman. Aye. Brooke Roper. Aye. Kai Thompson. Aye. Sarah Wilhelm-Garbers. Aye. Ximing Zhao. Aye. Having the motion for adoption of this resolution was made and then duly seconded and upon the vote all have voted in favor of the motion. Thank you. Appreciate it. Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you for being here tonight and for the information and for the care with which you are engaging in this process. I appreciate

188it. Thank you. Thank you all. That takes us, oh, Assistant Superintendent Lightfoot gets to stay at the table with us because that takes us to our policies in first read. I would like to turn it over to Vice Chair Roper. Okay, just a second. This is my first policy read as Vice Chair, you also please. So we will be discussing, oh, just a second. So we are discussing Policy 503 and Mr. Nick, would you wanna read over that policy? Do we wanna just talk about each one and then we can pass the slate perhaps? See if there's any discussion. Yep, happy to cover both. Okay, yeah, I'll let you take the lead. I'm learning, so I'll take the lead on this first one or I'll let you take the lead on the first one. Great.

189Just so that the board is aware, we are up and fully functional within our weekly connections just so people know that Vice Chair Roper and I and Natalia do meet on every other week to look at the monitoring committee agenda. So we work to set that agenda based on the policies that are in cycle with the board at the period of time and any additional policies that are being requested to being reviewed at that time. For these first sets, what we went through were two policies to get everything moving forward and further discussions on additional policies as the board has requested. We are in discussion with the transportation policy. We are in discussion as identified earlier and we'll be in discussion this Thursday on the purchasing policy and consultant policy. In addition, what we're also

190doing as part of our work is making sure that if there are any policies that are mandatory that we need to update with our list, we are adding those and any that may have any immediate need we are attending to. In addition, there were two holdover policies from the previous work of the monitoring committee in the first semester of the year. That was work done with the playground policy that we are in process with as well based on the request that came forward from our play for all and community members. In addition to that, we do have a safe community policy. A community member brought forward that the monitoring committee had originally looked at that we will be continuing to review and work with as well. So just a little bit of background with what

191is ahead. In particular, what is here this evening, 503. And 503, just as a protocol so that all boards understand when we, board members understand when we have policies, we do present you with the Hopkins policy. And then in addition to the Hopkins policy, if there is model school board policy, we do present that to you as well so that you can see both of those as was presented to the monitoring committee for discussion. Tonight, first, 503. In 503, it is our student attendance policy, part of the work that we did with that. You will see in particular the changes. The changes are identified in the color red so that you can more easily see the work that the monitoring committee did. Part of the change that was particular to that was making sure under

192the set of conditions for excused absences, that we did look at family emergencies and those family emergencies also being inclusive of conditions that make it unsafe to attend in person. In particular, that was specific language that members of the committee wanted to make sure that we had. There were some other minor changes that were allowed within some of the model MSBA work that is identified as well. But with that, I would open it up to any other monitoring committee members for anything I might have missed on 503. And then of course any other questions, comments from the board. Thank you. I wanted to make sure that our community was aware that this policy is one that we reviewed because of specific asks that the LAC has to our state legislature to make changes that will

193protect our communities and our schools during this time. And so this was the one piece that we had within our control that our school board had already shored up protections for our families previous to our current climate. So we were making sure that not just in practice, but also in policy, we are responsive to our community's needs in real time. And so this is our policy that we knew needed a little bit of work. So just some context. Chair Andreson? Yes. Yeah, so I regretfully was not able to be at the monitoring committee for this. And I just wanted to say thank you for working on it. And it does mean a lot, and it's important. And this is one of those things like it's a policy, but it's a policy that humanizes and is

194about caring for our community. So thank you for that. Collective work. All right, if no further questions, then policy 512. Policy 512 is an additional policy. As I identified, part of our work is reviewing to make sure that we have all the mandatory policies that are required in statute. One of those is that there is a mandatory requirement in Minnesota statute to have a school-sponsored student publication policy. That policy, what you will see, is basically capture of the model MSBA policy. There were some particulars as we reviewed all of the items. I would draw the board's attention to Article 4 guidelines. In that subsection, there are additional items that really identify student expression, and when that is prohibited, we wanted to make sure that from the model policy that we were more inclusive in number

195nine. And we also wanted to make sure that in number nine, we referenced all the policy work that the district has done to be inclusive in its work and its policies. And so all of those are called out by name, where there are specific additional policies that we hold here in Hopkins. So with that, otherwise, basically the policy itself is more of a restatement of statute, and as well, some of the particulars that we blended in through Hopkins policy work. Any other comments from monitoring committee, and or, of course, questions from the board? Chair Andresen. Yes, Director Hyman. Just a quick question so I understand as I'm reviewing the policies. The red text in the proposed policy, those are changes to the MSBA model policy, is that, am I understanding that correctly? Yes, and you're

196identifying, what we did with 512 was really take the model policy, adopt the model policy with some specific changes, and we wanted to draw those changes out and identify those in red. Understood, thank you. So yeah, this is a new policy for the district required by state statute. Chair Andresen. Yes, Director Zhao. Yes, hi, Dr. Knightfoot. It's my favorite time of night, policy time, with you. There you go. I do have a question around item two B here, where if a student believes that their freedom of speech has been unfairly restricted, they can appeal to the principal. Is it opening a can of worms to create another level? It seems like the principal gets the final say. Is that standard practice and would it make sense to have one defined layer above that? Just a

197thought. It's an interesting question. You do actually have policies that if individuals don't feel that the issue is resolved, they can issue a complaint and they can ask that that complaint be resolved. You do have a policy on complaints and those complaints would go to myself or to the superintendent. So there is another avenue that could be pursued. Is that expressly laid out here? No. Certainly it could be something that we could work on and or add to if the board would be looking toward that as an additional step toward resolution. If there is no resolution that's done in mutually agreeable terms, we certainly could have language. I'll defer to my board colleagues what they think. I think I appreciate you bringing that up because it is, I feel, an oversight. I mean, would it

198be something that the board would want us to add like a step three or yeah, but they could then come to another body. I'm not sure if it would be reference this policy, assistant superintendent life, but where they would be directed to you or if we want to have something specific to each site. I don't know what are we thinking as a board. Chair and recent. Yes, director Hyman. If there is that, I think what I heard you say, Dr. Lightfoot is that there is sort of this appeal option, right? This secondary file of complaint, if you are dissatisfied or disagree with the principals decision. And so perhaps we can reference that policy within this policy to say. That option is what you're thinking is the best. I think that would be the, from my

199perspective, I think that would be the best option. It's just at least directing whoever's reading the policy where to go next. Thoughts? I think that we could work on wordsmithing this tonight or we could send it back to the monitoring committee. I'm a little bit inclined to think maybe a little bit more creatively because this is a student facing document and about student rights that we, I would like to get student input, I guess is what I'm saying, because I don't know if even if we put it in here that students are going to feel like taking that next step, like moving from the principal to either the assistant superintendent or the superintendent. Perhaps we could be more creative and our students might have another idea of where they would feel comfortable moving that review

200process further. Do we think that might be good to get student input? I don't think we had any students at the meeting. No, we didn't. And one of the student board reps actually was just talking about the missing the monitoring committee meeting last week and so I do think it would be appropriate for us to parking like this until we receive their feedback because what was her, Dina gave some very great feedback during the presentation for the referendum and so I will be very interested to hear what she has to say about this policy specifically. Okay. And procedurally there, just so people understand in second read, if we're able to get that feedback, make those modifications, we can bring it forward to the board in second read on consent. If people review that and they're

201fine with that, they can adopt it in consent or as you've already experienced this evening, we can move it, have some additional conversation as the board would see fit. So we certainly have some definite time to do that within and get the feedback that we need. We certainly still could approve it in first read with those directions to take it back and do that work and bring it back in second. Thank you. Appreciate that. Appreciate that question. Any further discussion on this policy? I guess my one question is if students were to come to one of us, even if it isn't written in policy, there's nothing that would preclude us from meeting with them. Right. Yeah. So then I would look for a motion to approve the above policies in first read. Further, the board

202directs the administration to prepare the policies with suggested revisions for approval in second reading at the next meeting as part of consent. So moved. I have a motion. Is there a second? Second. I have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. The chair votes aye and the policies are approved in first read. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate you being here. And that brings us to our board member reports, which feels refreshing that we're doing them before 10 p.m. So thank you everybody for contributing to that. We can go ahead and get started. It has been our practice to introduce ourselves and then to say how you're connected to the district beyond being on the board and also give a report of your activities and

203learnings over the past, however many days it's been since we met. So hello everybody. My name is Shannon Andreessen. I have been on the board, this is my seventh year and I have a senior at the high school and a graduate and also work at Gatewood Elementary. I did just want to do a quick call out for an upcoming event that we will be participating in and some people might remember one of our former student board reps, Oscar Wolf, will be presenting along with myself and Assistant Superintendent Lightfoot for the city of Rochester. They host an equity series and they reached out to Hopkins Public Schools because of our calendar equity work that was done and Oscar was instrumental in that, becoming part of our board practice. And so he will be joining us from

204Columbia to give this presentation on the student perspective but I just wanted everybody in the community to be aware that Hopkins is seen as a leader in this space and we also, I feel really proud that we're not only a leader in the space of responding to our community but that we are a leader in the space of having students lead that work. So just wanted to give a shout out for that and I will pass it to Vice Chair Roper. Hello everyone, my name is Brooke Roper. I am the Vice Chair of the Hopkins School Board. I am now in my third year. I have two incredible children in the district and I wanna just start off with happy Black History Month to our district and to our community and to our nation. It

205is an important month for us to celebrate black culture in all ways. I'm very clear about black history being a vibe 365 and not just for 28 days. And so I celebrate my blackness fully and unapologetically and I just wanted to name some of the events that I went to over the past few days. So last Friday, one of our incredible parents in the district, Valita had invited some of our elementary girls to cheerlead with the high school girls at the Hopkins to Eden Prairie game. And so they were able to be like junior cheerleaders and it was a very amazing experience for them. They were super adorable and I loved that they were able to just have that experience with mentorship from our older girls. It was very powerful to see the connection there

206with them. I also was able to participate in National African American Parent Involvement Day yesterday. I spent the day at my children's school, hanging out with my daughter and her friends and then also hanging out in my son's classroom and reading him a book or reading a book to the class and led a discussion about the role of the school board with elementary students and learned a lot about their request and their demands. And one of them was longer recess. Of course. Yes, no. I'm 100% behind that. Yes, longer recess, they want more PE time. Yep, one of the students' name that they would like to see more, less bullying in the schools which I totally agree with. And then my son, of course, said longer lunchtime. And I couldn't even get to the story

207because they were just kept coming up with stuff. So I had to like cut it off pretty rapidly. I said, hey, you all like, but we got to cut this off. But everyone rolled their hand and was able to speak. And I loved it. So that just is a sign to us that we need to engage our younger people in our conversations more. And so that was really powerful to see. And I'm looking forward to being a part of the Ford NGO listening session tomorrow. I want to just be very clear with community. I know that we've been hearing things and just answering questions but I'm still learning what the Ford NGO means. And I do not want to misrepresent what that is for our district. So that's why I have not been answering questions

208because I want to give you accurate an accurate description of what it is. So I'm learning with all of you. And I'm also understanding what that is from the board level too. And then I want to just say a quick note to black history again, just one of my favorite quotes and some words of encouragement for you all to think about. My favorite quote from Toni Morrison is called what it says is definitions belong to the definers and not the defined. And so for far too long, black children have entered into classrooms where the world tried to name them before they ever had the chance to name themselves. Measured before they were understood, disciplined before they were heard and labeled before they were loved. Black history is how we return language, power and imagination to

209our children. It teaches them they are not a problem to be fixed, but a people in motion, thinking, creating and leading. This is about telling the black child, you are not an exception. You are not an afterthought. You are not a footnote in February. You come from thinkers and builders, freedom dreamers and truth tellers from people who saying through suffering, organized through fear and still believe tomorrow could bend towards justice. And when our schools honor that truth fully, we are not engaging in politics. We are fulfilling the promise of education. And because a child who knows their history, learn something unshakable, that no matter the moment, the pressure or the pain, they come from a people who endure, who rise and who keep moving forward. And so with that knowing and with that truth in

210their bones, I'm gonna go ahead and quote my bro, Kendrick Lamar, we are going to be all right, y'all, okay? And shout out to all the teachers, I love all of our staff members, but since it's Black History Month, I wanna shout out our black teachers and our black educators, our ESPs, our students for the brilliance that you bring to the Hopkins district, our Hopkins basketball team, all of our teams. We had a, one of our members of the basketball team, Jayden Moore was nominated for McDonald's All-American, the All-American nominee. So that's like really big news for us. So yeah, y'all just keep being brilliant, keep showing up and thank you, Dr. Mary Perry, for you also being a historic leader in our district as a black woman, so thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

211Yes, thank you. It was beautiful. Hello, this is Jiming Zhao. I have two children in the district in fifth grade and second grade in the Xing Xing program. Xin nian kuai le, it is Chinese New Year and it's the year of the horse, which is hard work and energy, which is actually very important for our upcoming board schedule. We've got CFAC tomorrow morning, we've got Ford NGL and then we have our superintendent search on Friday. So, you know, we just approaching everything with as much energy and hard work as possible. We had a, I think the superintendent had a reference to, we had a really good New Year's celebration. And yeah, it's next week, in one week, so have a happy New Year. I pray for ADM, Average Daily Membership, which is our enrollment. It's

212not like a bad luck to tell people what you wish for for Chinese New Year, so that's what I wish for. Hi, my name is Johanna Hyman. This is my first year on the board and very happy to be here. Tomorrow morning, I will also be at the Ford NGL Community Convening. Let me back up. I have two kids in the district, both in elementary school at Meadowbrook, a kindergartner and a third grader. And I'm gonna say again, you better not be up watching YouTube right now. Go to bed. Okay, so tomorrow morning, I will also be at the Ford NGL Community Convening, which I'm very excited for and looking forward to. I'm eager to listen and learn more about a potential partnership and hear from, my understanding is we will hear a lot of

213information and learn a lot of things and discuss with the community and have robust conversations. So I'm really looking forward to that. Thursday night, I will be at Meadowbrook's Kindergarten Roundup, volunteering as a float to help wherever's needed. Believe it or not, we will be welcoming Hopkins future grads, class of 2039. So tomorrow night, that is the Kindergarten Roundup and that's an event designed to connect our future kindergartners with the school community and it's a family-friendly event. Kindergarteners come and they can explore the classrooms, meet other teachers, learn about how we will help them develop their strengths and discover their talents throughout their kindergarten year and beyond here in Hopkins schools. And it will also provide an opportunity to complete your child's kindergarten enrollment process, which is very important. Then on Saturday, because I don't

214have enough to do, on Saturday, I will be going to cheer on our Hopkins Royals dance team at the state tournament. The Hopkins Royals dance team has made program history by qualifying for state dance team tournament in kick for the third year in a row. And I'm very happy and excited for them. That will be at the Target Center this Saturday, February 14th. Hopkins Royals, our amazing dance team, is scheduled to perform at 3.08, so don't be late. And if Hopkins makes the finals, they'll dance again later in the finals later that evening. That's my board report. Well, greetings. I'm Sarah Wilhelm Garber, she, they, and it's my first year, first into the second month, but like first set of month on the board. I live in downtown Hopkins, and I am both a neighbor

215and a part of our broader district and community. And I am also very happy to be the parent of a human who will be class of 2041 Hopkins graduate. So, I did the math the other day and figured that out, I was like, goodness. So, just a couple notes. The one is, I was so grateful to our communications team for highlighting and the individual schools also in the different ways for highlighting the teachers in our district, who I just felt so proud to be able to say that there are 21 of the, what was it, 128 total. And again, I don't ever claim to be good at math. I actually am not bad at it, but I don't like to do it in my brain. And so, that's just a lot, percentage wise, when you

216compare the number of districts. And what was really joyful is that I actually just sent a note to them and I've gotten back some stories of folks who are just little connections about saying things like, well, actually my dad graduated from Hopkins and my mom was on the school board, and hey, I'm doing this work, or just, it was really lovely. And then what actually happened is we took Josie for Josie's priest, that's my human who I didn't name, who's gonna be 2041. And we went for our preschool kindergarten readiness at Harley Hopkins. And one of our educators, finalists for Minnesota Teacher of the Year was there. And just, it was so lovely to get to see them in action. And also just, I'm such a huge fan and believer in early childhood education. And

217it was wonderful to just see the ways that that's prepping my kid and prepping all of our kids to just be able to feel confident as they go into kindergarten. So with that, I also got to bring Josie, the four-year-old, to the Jing Jing Chinese New Year. Thank you to community members for the invitation. And it was just joyful to be there and to be able to celebrate with neighbors and friends and community members. And just so impressive to see the kids at every single class doing at least one of their songs and just major thanks to all of the educators and folks who put that together. Grateful for that. And then it was fun to get to walk down the hall past the graduates from last spring and Hopkins and say, Josie. And we

218ran into you, Brooke, right? Because you were there that night too. Ran in and I waved to you from up top. But it was just so lovely to walk past the graduates and say, one day you get to be a Hopkins graduate too. So I'm grateful for all of the different connections with staff and community members who have reached out the ability to get connected with the committees that I am a part of. Also, if my email's not working, if you've tried to email me and I haven't written you back, you may be one of at least one person I am aware of who tried to email me and it didn't get through. We are working on that. So let Chair Andreessen know if you tried to get ahold of me or something. And I

219just also wanna again say thank you to all of our community, the district leadership and staff and educators, transportation, bus drivers, and then the hundreds of parents who are doing so much work in addition to everything else that they already have in their very full lives to care for the safety and wellbeing of our students and our families and to care for one another. And I think that's our strength and beauty is when we can come alongside of and take care of one another. And just to remember that we are all in this together, took, I'm gonna break out into song, we're all in this together from High School Musical, if you don't know that. And as a part of that, just the affirmation with Ford NGL and our superintendent search that it's I think

220both not only a personal commitment, but I think our commitment to get to continue to do this work together. I'm really grateful to be a part of that. And with that, I will end my report. Thank you. Hello, I'm Kai Thompson. I'm in my third year on the board, three kids in the district ranging from fifth grade to 10th grade. Only thing I wanted to mention is the talk in my house is that both the boys and girls Nordic ski teams qualified for state. So they'll be competing up at Giants Ridge tomorrow. There's some question of if I'll drive up there, but who knows? So yeah, so go Royals. So thank you. That concludes my report. Treasurer Heartland. Yeah, hi, thank you everybody. I am Rachel Heartland currently serving as treasurer. I am in my

221fifth year on the board and very happy to be here. I have three students in our district, a sixth, eighth and 10th graders. And one of the things that my family has had on their minds lately is registration for next year. And so next year I will have two high schoolers. And so I have a child and a lot of their friends that are very excited and feeling very confident that their other questions have been asked about high school registration. And last week we attended a wonderful information registration night at the high school in the auditorium. Additionally, I have been part of the board audit committee, the citizens financial advisory committee and the legislative action coalition. And this is prime time for all of those groups. Everyone should look out for an updated invitation of

222sorts to the legislative action coalition soon. We do to community events and kind of a large load that's on the plate of our legislators. As you know, we did not hold our previously scheduled January 30th legislative action coalition breakfast. And so that will look probably something digital. And so you guys will get an update on that soon, but we have been writing white papers and talking with our legislators. And so that has been a very busy group, in addition to of course the audit committee and CFAC being busy as well. So we've been meeting weekly. Speaking of Royals teams that are making state, the middle school robotics team has their state competition this weekend, Friday the 13th and Saturday the 14th at Burnsville high school. Our middle school team is there's 56 teams that are

223gonna participate. At the state competition out of 250 or so. And our team is one of just single digit total middle school teams that made it. So they're very proud, they're very excited. They're very short compared to all the 17 year olds that are going to be there. So that will be very exciting. And quick WG you mentioned high school musical that's gonna be the middle school musical. And so that has been in rehearsal and will be available for our community come watch at the end of March. And I think that's everything. Thank you guys. Taryn, I forgot something. Okay, sorry. I just wanted to just note really quick. The four NGO is not tomorrow morning, it's at 6.30 PM. It's two. Oh, is it both? Yep. What time is the one in the morning?

224The industry or the community convening is from eight to 12. Okay. And the parent information session is from 6.30 to 8 PM. Okay. So thank you for bringing that up for the morning one. Cause I only knew about the evening one. So I appreciate that. I also attended Chinese New Year's. I wanna just say that was an incredible presentation. I mean, not presentation event, sorry. I went to it every year. I told Z, I saw the panda. I thought it was him and I went up to it and I was like, Z, like talking in the face of it, like Z, Z, and it was a student. So I'm very sorry to that student because our incredible director is the panda at the parade. And then really quick, Boy Muffy, I think I'm saying his

225name right, won the Superbowl yesterday and he, was that yesterday? Hopkins grad. Sunday, and he was a Hopkins alum. So congratulations. Yes, congratulations. That was another moment in black history that I wanted to say, congratulations. Boy Muffy, is that his name? Am I saying it right? Boy Muffy. I think so. Boy, yeah. Boy, okay. All right, that's it. Minding all of us. I think we forgot about that. Do you want me to go? Yes. Hi everyone. I'm Rhoda Marie Perry Reed, superintendent. I do have an eighth grader at West. She's on the kick team. So she'll be dancing on Saturday. So I'll see you there, Director Hyman. And I just love hearing about all of our teams qualifying for state. They work, our kids work. So our student athletes work very, very hard. And it

226was nice to recognize our all state musicians earlier during the board meeting. And thank you for bringing up the parent opportunity. Vice Chair Roper for tomorrow evening to attend a parent and family caregiver information session on embedding more coherence and career connected learning at our high school, 6.30 p.m. virtual. And there's a link embedded in a district communication that was sent to families yesterday. And on the website. Thank you. It will be available to view after as well. Yes, and I think there's been so much interest that we also are trying to identify a date for an in-person meeting, maybe before spring break. Is the one in the morning in-person or is that virtual? It's in-person. It's in-person. Yeah, and there will be too, I believe, a feedback mechanism for the recording if people want

227to view it later. And then provide feedback. All right, so I would look for a motion to adjourn. So moved. I have a motion. Is there a second? Second. I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The chair votes aye. And this meeting of the Hopkins School Board is adjourned at 9.34 p.m. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Bye, Treasure Heart.