Hopkins School Board Meeting February 24th, 2026

001Are you sick? Why did you touch me? You should have been like, no. Well, that means we can't share food tonight. No, it's a risk I'll take. It's fair. Hello. Welcome, everybody, to this workshop of the Hopkins Public Schools School Board. It is 5.31 PM. And we will go ahead and get started with our workshop agenda. Not sure if she's joining us right now, but Director Hyman will be attending this meeting virtually. And the rest of us are here in the room. So just wanted to quickly give our community and any board members who needed an update on the superintendent search. On February 13, we had our planning meeting led by Barb Dorn with Minnesota School Board Association's executive search. And we fleshed out a few important things. One is our search timeline, and then

002also got all the required meetings for the school board, hopefully, to get us through to the end of finding the right fit candidate, negotiating the contract, and then accepting that. So you will see we have a search timeline. And thank you very much to our communications team for getting the web page that is dedicated to this important process up and running so that our community can go to our website and find the Hopkins School Superintendent search page. And it will have all this information on it. I feel like the most important thing for our community to know is that we are dedicated and committed and intentionally seeking out community input. Hello, Director Hyman. There you are. And one of the ways that we're doing that is with an online survey. You can also request a

003paper copy. And there are translations available as well. So that is live. And it's going on right now. We've already received responses, which is great. I think 61 last time I checked. So please, everybody, complete that survey. We are also hosting focus groups and listening sessions around this for different communities. We've set up three for community members and parents and then also have sessions for staff and for students. So look for emails have already gone out. And so look for those in your mail. They have links to the survey as well as times and dates and locations if you choose an in-person for those meetings. And again, there will be opportunities for you if you don't have internet access to attend one of those meetings and fill out a paper copy of the survey. I

004think those are the big highlights. That survey will be open until March 15 when it will close. And then we will have a board meeting where we get trained on interviewing because these interviews have to happen in public, which can be very awkward. And there's a lot of things around that that we need to adhere to as a board. And then we want to discuss the public input that we've gotten, which will shape not only the candidates that we select but also our interview questions. So that is just a quick update on that. Anybody else have anything they wanted to mention for the update? Yes. Chair Andresen. I just wanted to echo your thanks to our communications team for the efforts and partnership with MSBA and Natalia and others who've been a part of ensuring

005that we got out both the survey and then the timeline and the whole page in a timely manner. And I hope that that it's helpful for our community. And I hope they'll reach out if they have any questions or ways that we can help as they're engaging because we're looking forward to really hearing from them. So thank you. You're welcome. Yes, and I did forget to thank you, Natalia. You've been instrumental in setting up what I feel is a long list of meetings and in a short period of time. So thank you very much for doing that. It is appreciated. OK, well, that then ends the superintendent search update as long as there's no other input. I did also just want to quickly mention that we are in the process as a district and a

006board of ensuring that everything that needs to be put on consent for our regular board meetings is showing up. So I just wanted to make our community aware that we'll be going through the protocol. But what we might be doing as a board is pulling items off consent that normally we wouldn't pull just because we want to be able to have that discussion. So just a heads up, that's probably going to be more routine in nature than it generally is. But it is part of our process of backtracking and making sure that we are in full alignment with our policies. And with that, we will move to the next item on our agenda, which is something that is on our consent. So we'll be getting more information on that. I'd like to invite our next

007speakers up to the table from SiteLogic. And Gino, I probably should know your last name, Mazali. Welcome. Thanks for being here. So as our presenters approach the board table, as our chair mentioned, we do want to make sure that our board and community members understand what will be placed on consent moving forward, especially in the context of a number of referendum project related contracts coming forward. There was also a finding in the fiscal year 24 audit that we were not in compliance with board policy regarding contract and purchasing processes. So we want our community and board to know that we are committed to strong stewardship and accountability, and that we're reviewing our policy and our practices at this time so that we can move forward in a way that is very responsible and policy aligned.

008So this presentation, you'll hear a little bit of background on the contract procurement and purchasing policy. Then we also have presenters from SiteLogic who are here to provide an overview of a couple of the contracts that are currently on consent. So in the spirit of full transparency and no surprises, I'd like to introduce Dr. Lightfoot and Mr. Mazzoli from Buildings and Grounds, Director Wedder from IT, and our partners from SiteLogic. We have Jake Ziad and Anthony. You'll have to say your own last names, please. All I know is Berg. OK, I think we're going to start with you, right, Nick? Correct. OK, go ahead. Happy to kick it off this evening. Thank you for the opportunity to be here. As was stated, part of our goal with this time is to make sure that we

009have the ability to utilize this first experience to help norm what we hope to be a very well-flowing and well-understood process so that the board is aware of what's coming in front of it as it's happening, what to expect behind the scenes, and to be very clear and transparent about some of the differentiated items that go on throughout the course of the process. As we really get ready to launch the first project, we thought this was an opportunity to educate and form and really build that collective understanding. So that's, I think, kind of our hope and our purpose this evening. Anything else before we launch? Great. You can go ahead. All right, well, thank you for the introductions, Dr. Rodhamir Pirarid. And here are the last names. So Jake Berg, Referend and Program Manager with

010SiteLogic. Ziad? I'm Ziad Lindsay Qureshi. I'm the Design Project Manager. And then Anthony Haimkies. I'm the Construction Project Manager for SiteLogic. Please hold me accountable for saying your last names next time. Tonight we have a fairly straightforward agenda. Again, want to make this informational and educational. So three items. We'd like to start by providing a general contractual overview of how, in general, the contracts will be structured throughout the project. Next, we'll talk about a couple different procurement paths. There really will be two options that will come up during the course of the referendum. As mentioned earlier, there's an item on the consent agenda tonight. That project actually is a perfect example for the discussion tonight because it has elements of both traditional and cooperative purchasing procurement, which we'll discuss here shortly. And then finally, the

011third item, we'll go over more of a review of the actual contracts that are in consideration for the consent calendar tonight. Thank you so much. Grateful to be here again and to see you all. We're happy to introduce our process, and in particular, discussing contracts with the intention to be transparent and open about all of the means by which we would pursue this in service of Hopkins Public Schools. The contractual overview slide that we're looking at currently is representative of the relationships, of the arrangements that are working between SiteLogic as your service provider, as your partner, and then secondarily, the various participants that join us in construction and in the implementation of projects. We have a series of, as we term them, prime contractors. These are prime contract holders that are responsible for various aspects

012of the work. There would be, for example, the general prime contractor who is responsible for overall construction activities. And then we would have other prime contracts for mechanical, electrical, and potentially other items as well. Those specializations entail a particular contract for each of them. And underneath them, there would then be also subcontractors that they would be working with, that they would be responsible for as well. What's notable about this slide is that it indicates particularly that the prime contracts are under the school district directly. SiteLogic is your partner and helps to facilitate these relationships. The structure of the contractual arrangement is that SiteLogic does not have a contractual tied directly to the primes. Those contracts are under the school district itself. And there are various advantages for that. And at the same time, we're, of

013course, always a part of that conversation and here to help. Any questions on the contractual overview slide before we advance? I just have a general question just so that we have some context for this conversation. How long has SiteLogic been working with the Hopkins school district? For approximately 20 years in this capacity. OK, thanks. I know since I've been on the board, I've gotten updates from you. So I just wanted to put that in general context. Yeah, great question. And I'll elaborate a little further. So the same contractual overview you see here, as well as the procurement pass that we'll discuss, are the same strategies and arrangement that we've utilized over the last 20 years together with the long-term facilities maintenance work. Thank you. And I just wanted to say thanks. Go ahead. Please feel

014free at any time if there are questions. We're always very happy to address. We'll talk tonight about two particular procurement paths. And as was mentioned, these are very typical in the pursuit of the work that we do. There is the traditional public bidding process. Many of you might be familiar with this. It's a design, bid, build process. So we design it, we bid it, and then we construct it. We bid it. In that structure, there is a public advertisement that's a part of it so that it's open to all and there's the ability for participants to join in potentially bidding. Secondarily, the bids are delivered as sealed bids. And they would be opened simultaneously in a public forum where that information is made available to all. That bid process is typically resulting in an award

015that's made to the lowest responsible bidder. There are means by which we are able to filter the bids based on the lowest qualified bid as well. So that award is generally in a public bid circumstance the lowest bid amount with the most, with the essential qualifications that are provided. The second model that we'll go into depth with tonight is a cooperative purchasing model. And this is also a publicly bid process. There are contracts that are awarded at the state level in a competitive bid process for various suppliers of goods and services. You might be familiar with avenues such as Sourcewell or Omnia, which are the two typical examples that we use. Those can be utilized for a variety of contracts, anything ranging from office supplies to various services. As Jake had alluded to, both of

016these procurement paths are a part of one of the potential contracts that we'll discuss tonight as an excellent exemplar. So as I had mentioned, the traditional public bidding process is typical. This has been a process that's been in place for a very long time and it is a consistent means by which we do public bid process. It's typically used for new construction, major renovations, large improvements. There will be many projects that are a part of the referendum work that we're so happy to pursue together that will follow the traditional public bidding process. It is a formal advertising and bid opening as we had mentioned. There is a lot of transparency, competition, openness. The intent here is that this is vetted, it's available, and it's participatory. And a key aspect of that is it's openness. So

017it's open to bidders, it's open to scrutiny, it's open to awareness, and that is built into the traditional public bidding process. It can be, and we have a comparison table of pros and cons between the two procurement paths that we'll illustrate later. It can result in a more laborious process and it often can take more time. There are mandatory requirements for public advertisement of the bid just as an example, which add additional time to the process. At the same time, we want to do it right and we follow it in the process that is traditional accordingly. So a design is produced, an advertisement is made, a bid process is pursued, and then an award is granted at the end with a contract awarded to, again, the lowest responsible bidder. There is, in this less flexibility

018typically, we do have to entertain bids from a variety of competitive participants. So again, we'll talk about pros and cons between the different procurement pathways a little bit later on. This is, as Jake mentioned, the typical annual process for Hopkins LTFM Long-Term Facilities Maintenance work. This is the process that's been in place for multiple decades in the work that we've done with you. And to further add, SiteLogic's role in the process is to facilitate and administer this bid process really from design through the bidding stage. After bids are submitted, we'll go through and review and level the bids and bring to the administration and the board a recommendation for award, and that's where it's in the hands of the district and the board to decide to enter into a contract. But we'll go through, evaluate

019all the bids, and provide a recommendation on a course of action for next steps. Excellent, so the second example of procurement that also has relation to contracts is cooperative purchasing. So cooperative purchasing we often use for advantages in items like early equipment packages, an early equipment package would be for equipment, mechanical or otherwise, that potentially has a long lead time in order to obtain it. The disadvantage of a long lead time means that it can affect construction. We have an avenue that we've used, for example, during the pandemic when lead times became challenging as a result of manufacturing, where we've used cooperative purchasing to accelerate our ability to procure. There are a variety of means to do this. As I mentioned, Omnia and Sourcewell are two of the most well-known. Those are pre-negotiated contracts that

020have been established with the state for public entities like public schools that can take advantage of those. There are pre-vetted vendors that were competitively sourced, and the pricing is also advantageous as well. For example, in the case of the discussion towards the multi-sport dome, the Sourcewell procurement process gives a flat 5% additional discount that's given as a result of the cooperative benefit. We're going into it as a large pool. There is a negotiation that's an economy of scale benefit that comes from the fact that many schools are working together cooperatively to competitively pursue pricing. As mentioned, this is beneficial when the schedule is critical. This will be of pertinence when we talk about the contract for the multi-sport dome. And it's not always the case that it's advantageous for every project to pursue this particular

021pathway. When we look at the pros and cons, it will help to explain advantages and disadvantages to each. As has been mentioned, this is used in the case of, for example, equipment procurement. We have utilized Omnia for early equipment packages for mechanical equipment for Hopkins work in the past as well. Excellent, so this is the comparative table I had mentioned regarding the pros and cons and in circumstances where each different procurement path would potentially be pursued. So we have the traditional public bid and the cooperative purchasing. Obviously, speed is one of the reasons we would pick one over the other. There is a longer lead time in the traditional public bid process. There is a faster opportunity when we are able to do cooperative purchasing from selected vendors that are pre-negotiated because we don't have

022to go through the public bid process itself. Competition, there is a benefit that's of advantage to both of them. The cooperative purchasing competitive advantage is of course the economy of scale. So working with other schools or other public partners, the state is able to negotiate favorable pricing that's advantageous in a cooperative means. The direct project specific bidding is also beneficial, particularly when we have competitive bid for things that are specific or are not necessarily able to be obtained through cooperative purchasing itself. That is why we would use that for examples such as the majority of the work for the LTFM project pursuits that we're doing in this multi-phased, multi-year process. For flexibility, there is greater flexibility in choice with cooperative purchasing because they've been pre-negotiated. There is a list of vendors that are available that

023have those pre-negotiated contracts and they can be selected. There is limited flexibility with traditional public bid because of course we're looking for the lowest qualified bidder. And that means that we have more constrained ability to be selective in that case because it's a public and it's an open bid to all. With transparency, of course, they're both very high. They're both vetted processes. There are, for example, on the Sourcewell website, copies of all the contracts that have been made and negotiated from the cooperative perspective. There is also very high transparency in the traditional public bid, given that it's an open bid. There's the public advertisement. There is the example of the bid opening as well, which is open to the public. So both avenues are both providing the transparency that's being sought. Last but not least,

024the pros and cons of when each procurement pathway is beneficial or most advantageous. We have large, well-defined projects. For example, we might talk about the Pathfinders as an example for the work that's happening as a part of the referendum work at North Middle School and at the high school. Those large, well-defined, more complicated projects that have a variety of different needs, traditional public bid would be beneficial in that case. And we have the advantage of time there. So we can do this right and do this according to the schedule that we've set. For time-sensitive work where we're compressed, the example being the multi-sport dome that we'll talk about, we have a different time need and the cooperative purchasing model can be very helpful for us to accelerate our pathways. So the specific example that is

025in discussion today that's an excellent illustration of both procurement pathways is the multi-sport dome. As we've noted, the dome will have the public bid and it will also have the cooperative purchasing aspect of it as well. The cooperative purchasing aspect is the focus of the contractual discussion tonight. This is a contract that's necessitated as a part of the work with the particular provider of the dome itself. That is the inflatable, that's the structure, the membrane, all of that that comprises the dome above the surface. At the same time, there's work that's done subsurface, the foundations that need to go into place, the means by which we're doing the site work to make the dome function. And then secondarily, we have the support building that has restrooms, storage, office, other components that are a part of

026supporting the dome and also storage for the membrane in the off season. The work that is happening that is site related and is related to the buildings are the traditional bid process. So we have the advantage that that affords us. In the case of the dome itself, the contract that would be for the membrane, that is because of its lead times and because of the constricted schedule, something that we're seeking to provide for in an accelerated means. By allowing for that to be a cooperative purchase, which still has all of the transparency and all of the advantages that that affords, it also lets us maintain our schedule. So with that in mind, the dome is a perfect example for us to describe a project that entails both procurement pathways and the needs for both of

027those. So the dome itself is pursuant with regard to the cooperative purchasing pathway for Sourcewell. So Sourcewell is a process that Hopkins has used. It is a Sourcewell member as well. In this case, the contract that's of relevance to the provider, Yaden, who would be the manufacturer and supplier of the dome itself, had an RFP, a request for proposals, originally in 2023. There were 15 vendors that responded to that RFP and nine awarded contracts that were competitive. So again, it's an illustration that this was an open process, it was a pre-negotiated process, and it resulted in a selection of particular suppliers that received awards from the state. Sourcewell participating agencies receive a 5% discount across the board, as was mentioned. So in addition to the negotiated pre-vetted contract that was competitive, there's also the benefit

028of collective purchasing and economy of scale, which affords us the 5% discount as well. So the other part of it is to understand that we have the Yaden contract, which we're discussing, and we also have the other work that's a part of the dome as well, which would be the public bid work. The total budget for the dome is approximately 5.4 million. That is broken into the two parts. There is the 1.73 million Sourcewell-provided contract collective purchasing for the dome. There is also 3.67 million remaining, which would be utilized for the site work and would be used for the support building and the other public bid components. So again, the dome is an excellent example for us to illustrate how it's split, and the funding for it and the budget for it is allocated accordingly

029to each part. So with that in mind, again, illustrating that we have both in this project and there are benefits to using them to facilitate the schedule for the multi-sport dome at the high school. Yes, and also on the multi-sport dome, so part of the contract would require a 50% down payment to Yaden as well. Ziad had mentioned that lead time is a big driver in terms of time needs. So Yaden needs to go out and order the material and then start producing the dome, the membrane. So the 50% down payment associated with the contract is so that they're able to go out and make commitments to their vendors, to source the material, begin producing the dome over the course of the next several months while we're getting ready to install it. And just to

030help to advance that as well, the intent is that the dome is ready in October. So with that accelerated schedule that we're aiming for, in difference with the other LTFM work, which would later on go to bid in December or January, the dome has a specific need. So with that, a part of that down payment allows for Yaden to begin the fabrication of the mechanical units, the membrane that Jake mentioned, and other things to help us to hit that October target. And then the remaining traditional bid process for the multi-store dome, we would look to bid publicly shortly here in the coming months this spring as well. So I'll also mention the other contract that is in the consent calendar this evening is also a cooperative contract, and that is around the safety and security

031pieces. What we're looking to move forward this evening with is a consulting contract to help with our gap analysis and discovery around our physical security status. That really is going through everything, finding out both a full inventory, as well as everything down to the exact years that things were purchased. Are they still in support by their manufacturer? Are all of those details around that? So you'll see in the contract that also is a cooperative agreement, Minnesota state contract, a swift contract. So the same principles that we've been talking about with the source ball contract here, with those multiple bidders, and that's a pre-negotiated rate with all of those pieces already in place from the state level with that cooperative agreement. This evening, you'll also notice in that one, much like this is also a multi-step

032process, we are really only seeking approval for that phase one, which is doing that gap analysis and that discovery work, because that's what's going to define what the rest of that scope looks like, and how many bid packages we would be coming forward with, what speed we think we can move at. And so that is the other piece that you'll, that you see there is the contract for starting that work to really be in concert with and moving in the same timeline as our construction work over the next couple of years. We really want to get our standards in place there, so both our electronics and all those pieces that will actually plug in to those spaces, that we're ready to go in the same timeline that our construction pieces, so whether that be redoing

033a main entrance of a school or when we start adding on, doing the Pathfinder projects and those significant remodels, that we will have those standards in place from the electronics side, so that we can inform the work of the construction projects as well, knowing like, yep, we actually have to be able to get from here to here, that's currently an open space. How do we do that in the construction side of that as well? So those are the, I wanted to bring in just a little bit of information around that second contract that we see in the consent calendar tonight as well. Thank you. Anything else before I open it up to questions? I think the other thing that I would add, hopefully, that you can see through the process is that as these come

034forward, what we're looking to do is to present to you the information that's real relevant for the board as we think through the volume of what this contracting looks like and the big picture elements that we're bringing in front of you, so that you can understand the global perspective. Maybe not so much for the $5,000 contract to do maybe one specific item, but in general, if you go back to that slide on the general contracting and the general management and those public bids that are over that purchasing policy amount of 175,000, that's part of that state statute limit. We wanna make sure that we understand what the cadence will look like so that you have an expectation when you see on the consent agenda the knowledge behind what this has been through when it's on

035the consent so that you can understand what we have gone through before it gets there. And then as always, if there are questions on that or there are particular details, the piece that I wanna go back to with the audit is really about the responsibility of the district and our partners to keep that documentation so that we have that documentation ready and available should there be questions. And I think that's really the obligation that we have right now as we think through the implementation to make sure that not only are we doing this work, but we're doing the record keeping of this work so that we can be responsible if there are questions that come forward so that we can make sure that we have that documentation ready and available. Thank you. Well, I appreciate

036having the opportunity to ask questions about these contracts. And I know that other board members have questions as well. So I'm gonna go ahead and open it up for questions you may have. And just a reminder, we do have another agenda item. So if people could keep their first questions to one question, and perhaps another board member will ask your follow-up question for you. Anyone wanna start? Chair Andreessen? Yes. Yes, I could start. Hi, everybody. Thanks for coming out again. I think you're gonna need some frequent flyer points or something for coming out so much. So one concern or whatever you wanna call it I have is, so we see the cost, right, 5.4 million. And that in your presentation, I think, did a good job showing that it's a competitive and economically feasible thing.

037What I'm struggling with a little bit is on the benefit side, right, is I don't really, it's hard to make a decision with just the cost, right? And I don't know how many people are gonna use this dome and for how long and what if we don't do it, right? So, and I know that you probably can't do this for literally everything, but is there, can you kind of show the benefit for these larger projects and maybe have a little blurb about we're gonna use it, 10,000 people are gonna use it a year and et cetera, et cetera because that makes the decision a lot easier because right now I'm just like, okay, we're gonna spend some money. Yeah, so for the benefit specifically for the project scope. Yeah, just in general, right? Like what

038are we getting for this money? Yes, yeah. Yeah, we certainly can. We didn't have that information prepared tonight, but my understanding is the dome will be utilized, both for athletic endeavors within the district and I believe as well it'll be opened up to community events. I don't fully know that the schedule has been split between there, but I do believe that it was intended and conceptualized to be a benefit to the district athletics as well as a community asset, something that kind of extends the outdoor season being that we're constrained by the weather here in Minnesota. Thank you for that, Jake. And just to build on that, Director Jowell, so the dome was part of our review and comment, so it has already been approved and we have done that, the return on investment analysis,

039so we could bring those details back during a board meeting if you'd like or send them via email because we have put together all of that information in pretty good detail. Okay, yeah, if we can leverage what we already have, right? I don't wanna be an onerous, like, you know, have a spreadsheet kind of thing, but maybe just as part of the package in the future, right? Like, hey, there's this thing and we talked about it and here's the benefits and here's the cost and have at it, I think that'd be great. Thank you, we can do that. Absolutely. I would also like to add that students will be using the dome while school is in session via gym class and stuff like that, so it will be used by our students during the day.

040Chair Anderson. Yes. I think this probably does veer, someone into operations would feel like it has a financial impact beyond, and I don't know if it's considered in that 5.4 million dollars, but I know that we as a district do not have an excess of storage space and rent storage space, so what do we do with the building that we take down and what kind of implications does that have for us, both like maintenance and financial wise? Yeah, very, very good question and one that the team has worked on during the design process, so we did mention that there is a support building that'll be part of the multi-sport dome package as well. It's a solid structure that's built that will not be taken down. It will have a storage room that'll be able to

041house the dome, which will be taken down seasonally, so the dome will be stored as a part of that kind of thing of a self-contained building there for the storage. I see, thank you. No other questions. I had a few in that I'm wondering, I'm looking back at this current contract, the Sourcewell was a boarded contract and we went out for an RFP in 2023. Was that specifically for this dome? So that is noting that Sourcewell, the Cooperative Purchasing Agency, that they went out and solicited a request for proposals from vendors capable of providing this type of dome in service, that's the cooperative element where they went out and solicited these and you as a member of Sourcewell are able to evaluate the proposals and the awards made and choose to enter into one of

042those pre-vetted negotiated contracts. During that RFP, they had 15 vendors that responded. They have a procurement board that reviews those responses and grades and awards them. All of that information is available on the Sourcewell website. So you can review the individual responses and the grading that was done by that procurement panel, ultimately leading to their recommendation to award nine of those 15 vendors a contract for public entities such as Hopkins to utilize should they so choose. Thank you. And I think Johanna, do you have a question that you'd like to ask? Sure, quick question. Can you hear me okay? Just a quick question about what fund the down payment would be coming out of. Is that referendum dollars? Is that long-term facilities maintenance? It's just, I was under the impression that we could not access

043our referendum dollars quite yet. So just some clarity around that. Happy to. When you think about the way that we're looking at those referendum dollars and you think about the resolution that was in front of you at the previous board, we looked at the presale work. We are working on that bond sale with Ehlers. And what we look at is the resolution to refund from bond proceeds once they're issued. So once the bonds are issued, there's that refund resolution which will come forward. Right now we look at the cash flow that we have internally within the reserved funds we have in Hopkins to prepay so that we can keep this on schedule. And with that resolution to your point, we're able to go back into those dedicated funds, have that documented for our auditors that

044we are using our cash flow right now to keep on schedule, noting that when this sale is complete, this will be, if you will, accounted to those bond funds and will be documented. Does that help? Perfect, yes, thank you. One, I think it's also a really good opportunity for us to look at how we're keeping track of the expenditures. And part of the reason that we're looking at collecting all of this information is so that we have that accountability to that 140 million. Because I think as we think about the work that we have as a district and the work that we have as a board is to really make the maximum use of those dollars. Because in general we may say we looked at the 140 issuance. We also have the obligation to say

045what can we maximize and get out of that to the best of the facilities? And that's part of the work that we're doing because we know when we keep on schedule that we're able to manage costs. If we move off schedule for some reason with inflationary expenses and other items, that can be a big swing against that 140. And we wanna make sure that we're being good stewards of that money and we wanna track that accordingly. So I appreciate the question and really looking at how we're tracking this, where we're keeping that information and how we're making sure that we're diligent. Thank you. And I did just have more of a contextual question around the referendum. And I know that Dr. Mary Perry Reed, you said that this project was approved. And from my memory,

046I don't have a recollection that this was a line item that I saw highlighted when we were talking about referendum projects. And so one of the things that I really wanna make sure that we are being transparent about with our community is what I feel like this is a really big investment in sports facilities. And I want to ensure that we have a similar and targeted investment into our arts programming. So can someone give me an idea that this is of what we have going on on the other side? I know we hear from our choir band, orchestra instructors all the time that they scramble for resources and just looking to get an idea of what kind of parity we have going on with investments from referendum dollars. I think I can speak to that

047right away just with some of the design work that we have ongoing right now. If my recollection is correct, which I'll look down the table here, I believe this is the largest project in the athletics and activities kind of area in the referendum pieces. Additional work that we have coming to your question, specifically Chair Andresen. One of the projects that we are working with right now is at our Eisenhower Elementary around remodeling their music suites, doing some sound work to help fit the needs better of the spaces and of the way the schedules work. We also a little bit further down the line in our referendum projects, I believe it's out at phase three. We are adding on to Glen Lake Elementary School with the design purpose to be a music suite there. They're one

048of the only, I believe the only elementary that doesn't have currently purpose-built spaces for music performance there. So that is an addition onto the school with that as the exact outlined item there. Currently in design, also at the high school, we expect to be building that in 2028 is a remodel of an area right around the music suite in the high school. We're still in conversations with the high school staff and administration around what exact form that will take, whether that be media lab, whether that be practice space, what that looks like, that is an active conversation that we're involved in with the high school, both music staff as well as administration right now. So I think those are the couple of ideas that come immediately to mind with design work that we're currently engaged

049in. I'm kind of not hearing a big line item in any of those. Is it, do we have a sense that there is like, as I said, parity in what we're investing? Budget wise, the projects that Mr. Wedder just recapped are far in excess of the multi-sport dome here in terms of dollar value for the remodel budgets, yes. Thanks, just wanted to, because I know I'm gonna get that question. Thank you. I'd like to just quickly add that if folks go to our website, then if you scroll down just a little bit on the front page, then you will be able to find a whole webpage dedicated to referendum projects. Now I think there's some work that we could do to enhance this information, so I will talk with our interim director of communications about

050that after this meeting, because under the high school, I don't actually see the dome listed, so I think we need to list that specifically, and then perhaps we can do dollar and square footage amounts to just show what that parity looks like in terms of cost per square foot or renovation per square foot, because I think we have that information anyway, right? So we could just add it. So I think it's a great question, and we can enhance the information provided on this webpage. Thank you, I appreciate it, and I appreciate you being here and answering questions. And I think that's it, no follow-up? And I think that's it, no follow-up? Wonderful, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Good evening. Thank you. And that takes us to our next line item,

051which is our Academy's model update, and I will turn it over to Dr. Mary Peary-Reed as Director Earl joins us. Perfect. So, Natalia, do I need to present, or will you be able to? I will hand it over. Oh, thank you, Anne. Okay, so we have a... Do I just connect? I've never presented here. Should I just connect to airplane? I think it's that cord. You can map. I can do airplane, okay. Yeah. Oh, fancy. God, give me a second. So we wanna keep our board and community engaged as we facilitate the envisioning phase, phase two of our exploration of building a career academy model at our high school, and I think it goes without saying that a public education, a strong public education is the foundation for a functioning democracy, and the role of

052our district is to prepare each and every one of our diverse students to be successful in a very demanding world. So I just have a few slides to provide a bit of a recap to a site visit that our current partner, Ford NGL, paid to us a couple of weeks ago, February 10 through February 13, and then I'd like to directly address some themes that are coming up and acknowledge some of those themes that are surfacing in the work that we're doing to address those themes, and so on this slide, you will see that we had many of our community members engaging in the envisioning and learning process about what the academy model is and what would be required of us if we were to move forward, so our facilitators from our partner organization, Ford

053NGL, engaged with myself as the superintendent, our board members, our cabinet. A couple of highlights on the slide, you'll see that we had a community convening with nearly 80 representatives from our student and staff body, from our community. That was a four-hour event. We also had a virtual parent info session, and then a full day of scheduling PD, professional development, so we could learn what is required of our master schedule at the high school if we were to build career academies throughout. So just super quickly, what is this academy model that we're talking about? So here are the key features. So first of all, it would include a freshman academy which is cohorting our freshmen into perhaps three cohorts of 150 or 175 students each so they can have a small school experience and get

054targeted support and interventions around attendance and academics and positive and pro-social behaviors. And then the career academy model also includes us building probably three but could be four broadly scoped career academies that our 10th, 11th, and 12th graders would be a part of. The model includes a much more explicit focus on career academy learning throughout the ninth through 12th grade experience, front-loaded by career exploration in upper elementary and middle school. The academy model that we're looking at would require students to select one career elective per year and I'll show a slide that depicts what a typical schedule could look like with this in place. And then of course, giving our students, if you think about a current program that we have at our high school called Propel, where students have career exploration, skill building, job

055shadowing, even internships and what we would like is for students who are in career pathways within career academies to graduate with a career-based credential or certificate. And then another key feature is working with a convening organization that helps us to secure external partnerships to support this work. So here's just an example, this is not branded to Hopkins because it comes from another school system, but here's just an example of a school that built three, as you can see, broadly scoped career academies, one around business and entrepreneurship and innovation, one around design, engineering, and manufacturing, and then a third around health and human and public service preceded by the freshman academy. And then on this slide and the next slide, you'll see just a couple of example course schedules for students, so you can see what

056students would, what students may select for sophomore, junior, and senior year with their required core courses in language arts, math, science, social studies, and any other courses that might be required to meet graduation requirements, for example, PE or personal finance, and then you can see that for each year there would be one career-based course, and the three career courses over time would be vertically aligned so that each one builds upon the one that precedes it with a number of spaces for elective course selection for each year. So that's an example of a healthcare pathway, and then here's an example of a business pathway, and I'll just leave it up for a few seconds so that you can see that this would be example of business-based career courses that are connected, one per year, leaving significant

057room for students to select electives that are of high interest to them. So then on this next slide, so the next few slides, I wanted to address just a few things that are coming up for us and also in our community to also share, well, what is our current response to some of these themes? At first, I call them headwinds, right? Some things that might, if not addressed, might interrupt our progress, but really, I think they are themes, and there's also some, some of them are challenges, and there's also some opportunities here. So the first is really what our shared belief is about high school. So there's a debate that has happened over time around whether the purpose of high school is to prepare kids for college or for career, and as we know, we

058want our students to be prepared for both college and career, whether that means preparing students to transition into a two-year program because they're highly interested in a trade that is high-wage, high-skill, or we wanna prepare our students to transition to a four-year liberal arts institution, however they know right away that they wanna focus on engineering or business, right? And so we want to make sure that we are providing the kinds of college and career preparatory experiences at our high school that give our students lots of opportunity to be well-matched with that post-high school plan. So our response really is that we have our strategic plan, based on our Vision 2031, that calls for every single graduate to be well-matched with college or career placement, and one of the things that I think we can do

059and do at a quality level moving forward is to provide our community and parents with examples of high-wage, high-skill jobs that require two years of post-secondary training and also provide examples of four-year liberal arts students who benefit from an engineering or medical pathway while still in high school. On this next slide, you'll see communication and engagement. So I think what I want to acknowledge is that sometimes as educators or as a district, we find ourselves in a place where there's a tension between wanting ourselves to amass a significant amount of expertise and information so that we can then share what we've learned with our public, with our parents, versus learning alongside with parents, and I think what our staff and parents are communicating to us now is that they would like to learn alongside with

060us the minute we're starting to explore a new concept or a change that could have a significant impact on our organization, how do we do a more effective job of letting our community know what we're thinking about, why we're thinking about this important thing, and then engage in kind of an agreement to learn alongside one another. And I think a couple of other things that I wanted our community and board to know about in our response to this is that we have, thanks to our communications and marketing department, we do have a really wonderful webpage that is published and we're in development of a comprehensive FAQ on what is the Career Academy model and what would it require, and then we're also offering another parent info session on March 10, and that will be in

061person. So the third theme that's coming up is really some fears and I think apprehensions about what the academy structure would require and whether it's perceived rigidity would prevent students from excelling, would prevent students from taking the courses that they want, would negatively impact our high interest electives. And so we acknowledge that with every new change, there is apprehension and that is why we are diving deep into this learning and envisioning process. And so what we're thinking about is the quality to which we can offer early career exposure in elementary and in middle school and also during freshman academy, so that our ninth graders during the registration process can make a really informed decision about what broadly scoped Career Academy they would want to be a part of. We also provided a full day of

062scheduling training, I mentioned that before, with 20 participants so that we could learn from folks who have already implemented the Career Academy structure, what did they do to implement Career Academies in a way that supported the quality programming that already existed in their high school, and what are some of the challenges with that implementation as well. And I think it's really important for us all to seize a hold of this idea that we get to decide what these Career Academies look like and what pathways are built and what programming we want to protect and what courses or programming we want to shift or adapt. So it's really how this unfolds is really up to us and I think that's really important. We're also taking it slow. So we did have the option to implement freshman

063academy in the fall of 2026 and we did recognize that we needed to slow down and continue the envisioning and planning and vetting process. And so should we decide to move forward to phase three, then we wouldn't implement the fully scoped freshman academy until fall of 2027. And then of course, it's up to us to ensure that providing career embedded learning at our high school elevates rigor, right? We already have extremely rigorous courses at our high school, so we'd only want to elevate that rigor and we want to deepen engagement. And we believe just like our students in Propel are highly engaged in the career connected learning, we want all of our students to truly feel that. Okay, so the fourth theme is around funding. So there are, of course, our concerns. What we find

064ourselves as a public school district here in Minnesota, across the country, school districts are faced with flat or declining enrollment and rising costs and flat revenue, right? And so there is a predicament as a public school system that we face around how are we going to pay for quality programs and services for our students? And so yes, what will this cost? Where will we get the funding? How might we repurpose some of our existing funding or resource? And also, what are the continued costs of upholding the status quo? Because we currently have room and space to truly sharpen our value proposition at our high school. And so in our response, I want our community to know that we are aware that this will cost a little bit more than $100,000 for the next three years

065each year. We will also need a freshman academy, associate principal or dean of students, and we will need coordination FTE. So we really have to think about how to leverage our resources if we wanted, and you know, this is whether we move forward with Ford NGL or not. If we want to embed career academies or more robust and vertically articulated career pathways that are high school, these kinds of high quality programs and program shifts do cost money. And so how do we think about repurposing existing resources or procuring outside resources? For example, we are grateful to HEF for their ongoing support of college and career preparation for all of our students, in particular high school students, and the theme for the Royal Bash in just a couple of weeks is supporting career connected learning at

066our high schools. We're grateful for that outside support, well, sort of inside support, HEF is part of Hopkins, right? And then we're also grateful for the grant procurement support that Laura Hetzel, our business development and grants officer is engaging in right now. She has currently secured 80,000 in grant support with another 75K still pending just for this year alone and funding this work at, especially at our high school, until we can say, look, we are graduating and preparing 100% of our students, right? So that's the goal. So we are focused on trying to figure out where we can get those resources so that all of our students can be effectively prepared. And then the last theme around partnerships, what kind of partners do we need? How will we build and maintain these partnerships? What is

067the role of Ford NGL? What is the role of Children's First? So really, Ford NGL is one of many organizations that does this work. We don't have to go with Ford NGL. However, as we explained at the community convening and in several other places, there were some really specific reasons why we thought they would be great. Number one, they've done this before like 40 plus times. Number two, they do it with a really holistic approach. They're very equity driven in their work and they believe that all students have to be prepared for college and career. And so it's their mission to help high schools with that work. And we were really attracted to them for having those elements in the way that they work. And then Children's First is an outside organization located here in

068the, actually they're right next door in St. Louis Park, but they are what we are calling our convening organization. So they will help us convene all of the important participants in this process. They will help us secure partnerships with the business community, with nonprofits, with for-profits. They are what you call a collective impact organization and their expertise is in garnering the partnerships so that entities can work together for collective impact. It's their niche area and we're really grateful for them stepping up saying, hey, we'd love to work with you in this important space. Okay, so then I did wanna share that just kind of moving forward. So I mentioned that we'll have another parent info session on March 10. After that, we'll have our high school team come to the March 17 school board meeting

069just to provide another update, especially providing some parent feedback because we are collecting that and the team can also provide an update about the school-based work that they're engaging in right now. We will have a third envisioning, so a third phase two site visit from our current partner, Ford NGL, on April 22, 23, and 24. And then in May or June, we will bring everything to the school board so that our board members can help us engage in a decision on whether we are ready and willing to move to phase three, which officially is called planning. However, it's really important that part of the process to understand what would need to be true to move forward is planning. So we are doing planning now, but it's really more of that sort of vetting and truly

070understanding, okay, like what would this require, which essentially is planning, although we're in the envisioning stage and then phase three is called planning. But there's a little bit of a kind of gray area there. And then we do have Mr. Rex Roth at our high school who is working with a committee of teachers thinking about Freshman Academy. As you remember, this was an important concept that came up during the transition process when we were planning on how to move our ninth graders from the junior highs to the high school. Lots of folks thought, well, there are a lot of high schools across the country that have a Freshman Academy, right? They're thinking through what do our freshmen need from us during that very pivotal year so they can be successful so that we can see

071decreased discipline referrals, we can see strong attendance and strong course completion grades. And so we like that. There's a lot of consensus around whether or not we do like this partner with Ford or build these career academy structures. We should definitely think about foundationally what would it mean to have a really great Freshman Academy or freshman experience during freshman year. And so that planning process is happening right now. And then if we moved forward with this particular model, then the formal and more robust Freshman Academy would launch in fall of 2027. And so this slide, I just wanted to make sure that our board and community, we've showed some of these data points before, but as you can see, our graduation data shows that 88% of the class of 2025 planned to attend a two

072year, 14% or four year, 74% college. And what's really interesting, and I think we really need to dig into this. In fact, we have asked our research analyst partners from the big data projects. So the folks who work at the Federal Reserve and Optum, we have asked them to look at our SLEDS data, which is the statewide longitudinal education data. And that actually shows lower numbers of students actually enrolling in post-secondary and completing a degree within six years. So we wanna analyze that data because oftentimes, just because kids are telling us they're going to this two or four year institution doesn't actually mean they land there in August or September and doesn't mean that they're finishing within ideally four years, but SLEDS tracks over a period of six years. So we really need to pay

073attention to that because we want 100% of our students to leave us with a plan and finish that plan. And it should involve, if not some kind of post-secondary experience, it should involve landing into a high wage, high skill job that can allow them to live comfortably. And then you can see that we have, I'm really proud of our high school. I just wanna see a couple, while I see Mr. Fulner in the audience, any high school staff who are listening, we have done a great job improving our successful course completion rate. So you can see that from 23-24 to 25-26 for term one, you can see an increase in the number of students successfully completing courses. And then you can see that our ninth grade fail rates decreased. Well, they went up a little

074bit from three years ago to two years ago, but increased significantly from last year into this year. And then that slide on the graph on the bottom, you may have seen this before when Dr. Urdle was here, showing that our upper classmen show a lower, much lower than ideal level of engagement. So about 25% of our sixth through 12th graders are saying that they are truly engaged in school, and we believe that we can improve that tremendously. So with that, and thank you so much for running the deck, although you're, thank you. And I don't know if you have anything to add, because you are also a partner in this work. So there is a small group of folks who get together every, do we get together every Monday? It feels like every Monday at

075nine o'clock. So we have the high school team. Mr. Rexroth has recently joined. We have our partners from Ford NGL, Dr. Urdle, maybe a couple of other folks that I'm forgetting, and we're just engaging in the ongoing planning process, because we wanna do this work with great intention. We wanna pay attention to what our community and parents and students and staff are saying and feeling, and move forward as thoughtfully as possible. So it does require a lot of time. And with that, thank you for listening, and I'm open to questions. Great, thank you. I want to remind everybody that we have, about 10 minutes for questions. So I know I've already heard from Director Hyman that she has lots of questions. So I am going to request that everybody be disciplined and ask one. And

076I also just wanted to quickly say that at my last 287 board meeting, we got an update on the CTE offerings that are part of that intermediate district. And really the context that was given is that this is where school districts are going. Across the board, I heard from our partners in 287 that they have either implemented CTE at their high schools, or are in the process of doing the work that we're doing, which is intentionally strategically bringing it in. So we are not alone. It is across the state. Districts have recognized that, I think it was back in the 60s or 70s when those classes started moving out of public education because it was just too expensive to provide it. Districts are recognizing we need to bring this back in. There is a group

077of students, a big group of students, and it's growing exponentially that we are not serving by not providing these opportunities. So I just wanted to give you that context that we are not alone, that we already send students to 287 to get this. And our goal has always been to keep our students in Hopkins. So this is one way that we could do that for those students that we're sending to 287. So with that, I would open it up to questions and or comments from my board colleagues. For the interest of time, I will email questions that I have. Okay, thank you. Anyone besides Director Hyman? If she wants to go, I'll go after her. I think she wanted to see if other board members were gonna ask some of her questions. Yeah, okay, I

078will then, Chair Andreessen. Great. So I think mine is, I just wanted to more so offer, this isn't so much a question, but you can absolutely engage or respond back. So it's more of just a comment and where I'm at. So first of all, I do just wanna thank you for the presentation update regarding the Academy model. And in particular, I really appreciate that you're addressing the themes that you've been hearing from our community and some of the feedback, the questions and the concerns. And I also wanna name that one of the things I appreciated in the session Director Hyman and I had is that this is something that's been in consideration in our district for over a decade. These sorts of themes of how do we serve our students. And so my comments aren't

079about the merits of transforming our high school, but I wanna just name as a board member that I do have concerns regarding the timing of our ongoing work in this, namely related to that we are in the midst of a superintendent and a high school principal search. And so one of the things that came up when we had the time with Ford and GL, which is just, do we have to vote in May to move on to stage three? Or could we extend stage two? And so I think particularly in view of the concern from the community around that I've heard that shared around timing. And then also some of the communication and just looking at what is continued work around strategic change management with our community. How do we cultivate that in a way

080that if we do get to yes, I want as much of our community to be at such a strong yes together. So that's just the thing that I would say that as we're having this conversation to continue to think about that Ford and GL did say we have flexibility in our timeline. We can extend, we can pause, we can deepen in. And that's just my place is that I wanna be sure that view of timing and that I want us to be able to get to a deep yes that resonates so we can build this in a way that's sustainable. Well, thank you, clerk WG. Sounds funny to say. So that should have been theme six. So thank you for raising that. And I think it's a very important consideration. And honestly, this process is

081up to us and up to our community. And so yes, there are readiness indicators at the end of every completed stage that help us understand if we're ready to move forward to the next phase. And we could say, well, we've met all of the readiness indicators, but we'd like to continue more time in our current phase. I think that is completely something that will be up to our board and up to our community. So thank you for raising the question. I do, I feel very confident that the highest quality school leaders and district leaders are thinking critically about how to ensure our students have opportunities for career-connected learning. So when we make an offer to a high school principal candidate before spring break, so in four weeks, we hope to have that person identified. If

082we're hiring well, we are hiring somebody who has already done something like this at a previous high school or has been thinking deeply about it because they want to serve all students. And I think same thing with our superintendent candidates, right, we're gonna be interviewing folks who, you know, maybe not this explicit model, but they will have researched and will have explored models that are very intentional about how students in high school, and starting with, you know, elementary and middle, but in particular high school, because that's the last stage before they go out into the world, they will have been very intentional about what that balance of college and career preparation looks like in one or more high schools. And I think finally I'll say that, of course, we want the principal and the new

083superintendent to like own the work, and in fact, that is a readiness indicator, and it's collective work, right, so we have to, if we're gonna move forward, it's because we all want it, and we're gonna tell the new people, and you're gonna be on board too, right? So it's truly collective work. It's not going to be up to just one leader, and so I really appreciate you bringing that up. Thank you. Director Hyman, I'm gonna move to you quickly, five minutes. Thanks, just a quick question, or more so one comment and then question. It's my understanding that the phase one report, which I believe is now available for download on the public facing website, or Ford NGL identified two issues or they had called them challenges that needed to be addressed before and during phase

084two, and that first challenge piggybacks off of what clerk WG just raised, and that is with respect to the district leadership's assessment of when the high school leadership team has the capacity to lead the entire school faculty through the transformational process, and the second challenge was related to the budget and ensuring their budgetary resources for sustaining the transformation during what we all know can become ongoing annual reductions to the general operating budget, and given our flat enrollment environment, it's also was noted in the phase one report that this challenge is further complicated by, at the time it was the impending departure of the district's chief financial officer, at this time we don't have a current business director, and so the phase one report had said Hopkins may determine that additional time is needed to adequately

085address both or either of these challenges before moving to phase two in vision, and I just wanted to name that and raise that, I don't know what work was done between deciding that we were, after completing phase one, what, you know, how these challenges were discussed or how they were addressed before we decided to move into phase two, but I just want to note that clerk WG and I, as she mentioned, had the opportunity to meet with Ford NGL coaches, and they were very clear that there are on ramps and off ramps at any time, and that we can pause or deepen our work or move forward at whatever pace we're comfortable with, so I just wanted to note that, and then with respect to the financial piece of this, do we have really any

086sense of what it would really cost? And I think that this is really important because some of my own research has shown that it could be quite costly, somewhere approximately $1,000 per student per year in the high school addition, in addition to what we're currently spending, I just don't know where that those funds would come from to sustain a program like this. Director Hyman, Director Hyman, I just want to say there's two minutes left. Do you want to leave room for a response to your questions? Sure, just can we get more data on the funding piece of this, and the costs. Thank you. Thank you for the questions, Director Hyman. I do want to acknowledge that with every end of phase report, the team will give grows and glows, and so we were aware and

087are currently aware of, honestly, leadership capacity issues, not just with this effort, but sort of multiple efforts across our system. It's honestly a theme that resonates throughout leadership, regardless of whether we're engaging in a change like this, or just in sustaining the current work. And so I think they, you know, it's their, they're doing their due diligence to sort of mention through a reminder that we need to figure out what that capacity, what capacity is required of us to do this work well, but not in a way where they were cautioning us from moving to phase two. And then, yes, there is some additional learning that we need to do around costing, what this will require of us for year one of implementation, year two, and then once we get beyond the one-time costs, what

088are some of the ongoing costs? And providing high quality education does cost money, it costs resources in terms of who our people are and what they're doing in the building, and we owe it to our community to get as much of those details as we can so that you can have that for your information and decision-making. And then, what was the last thing I was going to mention? I'm so sorry, I lost my last thought. But the costing is part of the envisioning and planning process. And you are right, oh, I wanted to mention, you are right, that there are on and off-ramps with this work. There are also other ways to build career connectedness at our high school, and it's work that we have to do, and we get to decide how we will

089do that work. So I appreciate your questions. Great, thank you so much. It is 7.01 p.m., so I am going to end the workshop for the Hopkins School Board on February 24th. Thank you all for presenting, and thank all the board members for engaging in these topics. And this is just gonna take us straight into our board meeting for tonight. So welcome, hello everybody, thank you for being here. It is to welcome to the general meeting of the Hopkins School Board on February 24th, 2026. It is 7.01 p.m., and we will kick off our board meeting as we like to do with honoring some of our amazing Hopkins students who are coming into the room. So we'll come down to the front. Oh yeah, hi everyone. Hello, hi everybody. We'd like to take a moment

090to recognize and congratulate our Hopkins High School Alpine and Nordic Ski Teams on an outstanding showing at the state meets recently. So competing at the state level takes an incredible amount of commitment, and both teams represented Hopkins with pride. The girls' Nordic team finished 16th overall, and the boys' team earned an impressive sixth place finish among the top teams in Minnesota. We also want to highlight some exceptional individual performances. Bridger Nelson earned a fifth place finish in the boys' pursuit race, competing against the very best skiers in the state. And Logan Drevlo capped off an extraordinary high school career by winning his third straight state championship, an incredible three-peat and a truly remarkable achievement. In alpine skiing, three of our student athletes qualified for and competed at the state meet, which in itself is a

091significant accomplishment. You can correct the pronunciation of this name. I think it's Haken Dosey finished 20th. Mary Foster placed 27th, and Courtney Weber earned a 39th place finish. Each of these athletes demonstrated skill, determination, and the confidence to perform on one of the biggest stages of the season. Achievements like these remind us why athletics is such an important part of the state. Athletics is such an important part of the educational experience. School sports help students develop discipline, resilience, teamwork, and time management skills. Student athletes learn how to set goals, overcome challenges, support one another, and represent something bigger than themselves. Lessons that extend far beyond competition and into life beyond high school. Good evening, everyone. So we also want to thank our coaches, but we only have two mentioned here. I feel like there's more

092than two coaches for Alpine and Nordic, right? So you're going to have to help me out. So Brett Schulze. Did I say your name right? Schulze? Okay, awesome. And then Tim, is it Hokey? He's the Alpine coach. Tim. I'm the Nordic coach. Awesome. Okay, awesome. And do you have assistant coaches? Are there other coaches as well? I do. Okay. Yeah. All right. So we run a great team, and we know that the coaching that is provided for our student athletes really help them excel, and we appreciate your leadership and your dedication and really everything that you do to help our students not just rise to the level of athleticism that allows them to compete at the state level, but also your coaching helps them be well-rounded and helps them be kind and helps them to

093be strong academically. So we just appreciate you so much. And also Tim, who I think is not here, and the assistant coaches as well. And also we want to thank our parents and caregivers in the audience. Do we have parents and family here? Two over here, and one over there. Awesome. So your support, and that includes all of the driving, early morning, late night, making sure that your athletes are eating nutritiously and getting enough sleep and just being encouraged when maybe their emotions are not as high all the time. And so we appreciate all of the work that our parents and families put into raising these well-rounded athletes. So what we're going to do, student athletes, is you get to walk up the Royal Blue Runner. You see this blue thing to your right here?

094So once you hop on up and go to the back of the room, and then we'll call your name, and hopefully we'll pronounce your names correctly. So come on, get up, go back there. Okay, so this will be very fun. We get to celebrate you as you walk up. Oh yeah, ski down. Some are not present, but most of them are. Okay, awesome. And then students, when you get up here, then you'll grab a certificate. And can you hang out with us? Because then we'll take a picture after. Our interim director of communications will take a picture of you and us. Okay, so is it Hawken? Yeah? Oh, they're not here. Okay, so yeah, this was Al Pineski. So Hawken, Dosie, Mary Foster, and Courtney Weber. So congrats to them. And then for Nordic, okay,

095River White, Maren Prius. Did I say your name right, Maren? My first name, yeah, my last name. How is it? It's Preuss. Maren Preuss? Yes. Oh, that's pretty. Okay, Amelia, is it Kuiper? Angela Dietrich? Helena, or Helena Whitaker? Is it Helena? Yeah. Okay, awesome. Clara Haugen? Did I say your name right? No. No, it's not okay. What is it? Isla. Isla. Okay, congratulations Isla. Okay, Sadie Eckert. Freya Rauch. Okay, Josie Schroeder. Logan Drevlo. Bridger Nelson. Not here. Callan Whitaker. Is it Callan? Okay, awesome. Clara Rausch-Devers. Can you hear? Solomon Norquist. Nolan Haar. Carter Howe. Is that your last name, Howe? Howe, yeah, okay. And Emmett Hayden. Okay, did we get all your kids? Yeah. Okay. That are here, yeah. Thanks for the picture. Thank you. Does everybody have a certificate? No. Oh. Oh, my gosh.

096Helena Whitaker. Courtney? Do you need one? Courtney Weber? No. Well? Yeah. All right, let's read. Thank you. What's your name? Oh, I already have one. Oh, I think everybody has one. Okay, sorry. Does everyone have one? Yes. Okay. Congratulations. Thanks for being here. You're welcome to stay, but if you need to leave, that's cool too. Congrats. We lost people. Okay. All right. I will officially call this meeting of the Hopkins School Board to order at 7, 12 p.m. And our first item of business is open agenda where we do public comment. Public comment is important to the board to ensure that we are implementing Vision 2031. If you wish to contact the board via email instead of publicly commenting at a meeting, please use school-board at hopkinschools.org. There are two ways to submit public comment

097to the board. The first is by voicemail. You can record a public comment and it will be played at the board meeting during this time. Do we have any voicemails this evening? Okay, great. And then we also have two public comment cards that are submitted. And we will be able to hear those later. So the school board, we have two public comment sections and I will read our public comment guidelines. So these are guidelines for public comment. Okay. Each public comment section lasts for 30 minutes. We have one at the beginning of the meeting and one at the end. The one at the beginning will be prioritized items on the agenda. We will allow comments up to three minutes for each person and as outlined in the board meeting protocols on the board website. If

098we have more community members than 10 per comment section, priority will be given to those comments pertaining to the agenda in this manner. The first five voicemails received will be played and the first five people who submitted public comment cards will be invited to the table. We do not have more than 10, so we are within the limits. These are the guidelines for public comment. Please keep your comments to three minutes or less. Public comment is for input only. Members of the school board will not respond directly to public comments that are made at this meeting. No specific action will be taken at this meeting in response to comments that are made or issues that are raised during the public comment period related to items not on the agenda. If the board determines that action

099is appropriate, the action will occur at a future board meeting. If you have left your contact information on the comment card, a district representative may follow up with you after the meeting. I will recognize one speaker at a time. Only those speakers who are recognized will be permitted to speak. Individuals who interfere with or interrupt speakers, the board, or the proceedings may be asked to leave. Personal attacks on any individual, including any other speaker during the public comment session are unacceptable, as are obscenities or profanity. Persistence in making such remarks will end the individual's opportunity to address the board and may result in the individual being directed to leave. I will rule out of order any statement that would violate state or federal law, school board policy, or the privacy rights of an individual. Minnesota's

100open meeting law prohibits the discussion of private educational data during an open meeting. Accordingly, during the public comment session, no person may discuss private educational data on an identifiable student. The open meeting law also requires the board to close a meeting for preliminary consideration of allegations against an employee. Accordingly, community members who have concerns about an employee or want to file a complaint or allegations against an employee are encouraged to contact the superintendent. We ask you not to name an employee by name during your comments. Repeated violations of these time, place, and manner restrictions may also lead to the meeting being briefly recessed. Community members will have an opportunity to be heard within the limits of the law and subject to the time, place, and manner restrictions above. Thank you for participating in public comment

101and for your patience while I read the guidelines. So first we will hear our voicemail public comment. My name is Kim VanderWaal. I am a parent of a kindergartner at Meadowbrook Elementary. My comment is in regards to the new policy on no bus zones. The new bus policy and creation of no bus zones has made a no man's land for families that live too far to walk yet are denied busing. Additionally, the rollout of the policy last year was chaotic and left families in a state of uncertainty and strain for the first several months of the school year. I worry that the same scenario will be true this year if the school board does nothing. I urge the board to reexamine transportation policies for the 2026-2027 school year as this issue has real everyday impact

102on affected families. The current no bus zones are especially frustrating since my house and others on my street are 1.1 to 1.2 miles drive distance from Meadowbrook according to the district website, which is beyond the stated policy of a 1 mile drive distance. A bus actually passes by our house picking up students at stops both a few houses before and a few houses after our house along its route. My daughter is not allowed on that bus and instead we are assigned to a stop that is a half mile away. As it stands, there is no mechanism to review or appeal situations where the no bus zones have been applied in ways that violate the stated policy or where there are safety concerns. At the same time, on the other side of Meadowbrook there are 10

103streets that are less than a 1 mile drive distance that all receive busing, some as little as .7 miles drive distance from the school. This calls into question how these lines were drawn so inconsistently with the stated district policy and to the fairness of its implementation. If the no bus zones cannot be reduced to a smaller radius, I first urge the district to address zoning that results in families like mine, 1.1 miles drive distance from school being denied busing, which is inconsistent with the stated policy. Second, consider a distance based lottery to increase access for families attending their assigned schools with no viable walking options. And reconsider the bus access to in-district transfer students at the expense of those attending their assigned schools. Thank you. Thank you. I would now like to invite Jonathan Fulner

104to the table to speak on Ford NGL Academy Model. Thank you for being here. Thank you. My name is John Fulner. I live in the community and I teach at Hopkins High School. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I've attended two Ford NGL information sessions, a school tour and the scheduling workshop. And I'm here tonight with concerns about Ford NGL student centeredness, their reliance on limiting student choice and their approach to grouping students that I believe conflicts with Hopkins core values. Before I get to those concerns, I want to acknowledge that our high school principal team has been thoughtful and well-intentioned when responding to questions. However, I am genuinely unclear who is making decisions about our commitment and no clear channel for feedback has emerged. Our community has been told we are exploring this

105opportunity, however, district messaging and our website indicate we are almost 40% through the academy implementation process. Ford NGL describes its program as student centered, but presentations to teachers in November contained no student outcome data, no details of student experience and no student testimonials. Hopkins teachers were told those were missing because the presentation was tailored to the audience. I found working in Hopkins that the vast majority of teachers are deeply student centered. Second, Ford NGL has assured stakeholders that student choice will be maintained, I'll be direct, that claim is false and contradicted by their training materials. The scheduling presenter equated their model to taking children through a fast food drive through and not allowing them to order from the full menu, but instead limiting them to one or two prepackaged combo meals. That is not my

106characterization, that is how Ford NGL described it. Limiting is so essential to the model's success that they measure it three ways. How completely students are siloed into one academy, how thoroughly teacher schedules are siloed and how self-contained each academy is. We measure what we value and by their metrics, what the model values most is how confined students are to their pathway. My third concern is how Ford NGL suggested we organize students into freshman academies. Students do not choose a freshman academy, but do take a majority of their classes with fellow academy members. Ford NGL suggested framework was to place all English language learners into one academy, place all students with IEPs or special needs into a second and place the remaining students into a third academy. When that process was questioned, the presenter explained that

107people enjoy elite things. I want to repeat that because it deserves to be said plainly. The consultant suggested we create a system in which ELL and IEP students are separated from a designated elite track and framed that model as a student recruitment strategy. It was said that we don't have to organize students that way and that is true, I would argue that we also don't have to work with consultants who lead with that type of separation. Hopkins has always worked to expand opportunities and support motivated students regardless of background and there is a meaningful difference between expanding premium course offerings and elitism. I believe in Hopkins' capacity to innovate and there is room in our structure to build upon the career-focused pathways that exist, however, we can do so in a value-guided way. Thank you.

108Thank you. I would next like to invite Ed Zarit to the board table. He will be speaking about board chair violation of Minnesota Statute 12313.195, welcome. Good evening Chair Anderson, board members, superintendent and fellow community members. My name is Eddie Zarit and I am a Golden Valley resident of the school district and I've lived in the district for 16 years. I am here tonight to address a clear and repeated violation of Minnesota law by our board chair who serves as a paraprofessional in the Hopkins School District. Minnesota Statute 123B.195 allows a school board member to be employed by the district only if there is a reasonable expectation at the start of the fiscal year or when the contract is entered into or extended that earnings from that employment will not exceed $20,000 in that fiscal

109year. This $20,000 limit is a strict ceiling designed to prevent conflicts of interest, ensuring board members do not have direct financial stake in the district operations that could influence their decisions. The best case scenario for compliance in public trust is that a board members do not work for the district at all while serving. Many state boards such as Minnesota charter schools have an outright ban for board members to have any financial interest at all. I submitted a data request to the school district. That data shows the board chair's salary for her non-board position as a paraprofessional in the district exceeded the $20,000 statutory limits in both fiscal year 2024 and fiscal year 2025. This is not a one-time oversight. It is a knowing repeat violation for a second consecutive year, suggesting a belief that the

110rules do not fully apply in this case or that any excesses can be overlooked. I respectfully urge the boards to acknowledge these repeated violations, investigate the circumstances, including any lack of proper approval from the board ahead of time as dictated by law, and take immediate steps to comply fully with 123B.195. The statute is clear on corrective action needed to fix this problem. I suggest that if our board chair does not wish to resign from her employment with the district, the school board place this item on the next agenda and have legal counsel present to publicly provide its legal opinion. Two, the board chair recuse herself of any consideration or of participation in the matter and the board chair not communicate with any board member on the topic until an independent review completed and public action

111taken. Our district depends on transparent, impartial leadership. Thank you for addressing this matter seriously, and I look forward to the community response and corrective actions. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes open agenda. So we will then move to the student board representative's report. Hello, everyone. I'm Sufjan Osman. I'm a sophomore board rep, and to start my board report, this week it's conferences, and I'm happy because I get a day off from school, but most people wouldn't be. Actually, not last week. Over the weekend, we had our sweetheart's dance, and it was, I didn't go, but it seemed cool. And then Iris told me about this, but I'm not sure fully about the details, but our orchestra department is like Lake Conference Festival. She was telling me about it today, and I thought it was really

112cool. And finally, for our sports, there's a lot. Okay, you guys went over it earlier. Nordic and Alpine both made it to state. Logan Drevlo got first. Bridger Nelson got fifth. State qualifiers Hocken, Dosey, Courtney Weber, and Mary Foster. Boys Swim and Dive state qualifier is Luca Arcea. Boys wrestling state qualifier is Charlie Pollen. And girls state qualifiers are Bella Estrada, Raya Koski, and Gia Toren. For boys basketball, they made it to sections. I don't know if that's state, but it might be. And girls made it to sections as well, and they're Lake Conference champs. And gymnastics got third in state, and Naya Simone Britt got first in the vault category. Students qualified for state, and math league also made it to state. And finally, my teacher spotlight, it's not really a teacher spotlight, but

113I'm spotlighting all three principals. They are the goats. Nice. Thank you. Thank you. All right. My name is Mano Awahiu, I'm a junior student board rep, and so tomorrow is the in-school college fair during first block, and students will have the opportunity to meet with over 100 colleges and universities. And this includes two-year tech schools, two-year community colleges, four-year colleges and universities, both public and private, and also cosmetology schools. Students received an email that contains a barcode to be used with the college admission reps so that they can get some information on students and also send information to students. Also tomorrow, for weighted grades, we will be holding a second community meeting, which will be held virtually through a Google Meet from 6.30 to 8 p.m. Community members can join to learn more about weighted

114grades, ask questions and offer feedback. With test season coming up this spring, Hopkins will be partnering with Flying Colors Test Prep to offer an exclusive in-person ACT bootcamp leading up to the in-school ACT on April 14th. This class will take place at the Minnetonka Community Center and will be taught by two veteran ACT instructors with a depth of experience and a passion for their subjects. The bootcamp will cover the most frequently tested concepts, time management strategies and material from the most recent enhanced ACT's. An update for the commencement ceremony, the commencement ceremony will be held on June 10th at 12 p.m. at Roy Wilkins Auditorium. Every graduate will be guaranteed six tickets for their friends and family and additional tickets will be distributed through a lottery system as needed. And more information on commencement will

115be coming out within the next few weeks. And finally, my teacher spotlight today is for Mr. Thurl. And although I've not had Mr. Thurl as a teacher yet, he has helped me a lot through both the DECA and the Investment Club Advisor. Our DECA chapter is currently preparing for state, which is happening this weekend, and we will have a chance to qualify for the national competition, which will be held in Atlanta this year. 41 out of our 73 Hopkins DECA chapter members qualified for state, which is an amazing turnout and can be thanked. And we can thank Mr. Thurl for it. I personally have two projects and a role play going to state, which Mr. Thurl has spent a lot of time helping me with those projects because they are both 20-page written business plans.

116And he has done a lot of work at Hopkins specifically with the business wing through DECA, the PROPEL program and Investment Club. He's worked a lot to connect Hopkins students with working professionals so that students are career ready and it is much appreciated by Hopkins students. And he's also teaching the brand new AP Business class next year, which I'm super excited to take. Thank you. Thank you. Any questions or comments for our student board reps? Chair Andresen? Yes. Yes. Hi, Manuel. I was wondering how do, so there must be some grading criteria for DECA. How does that work for making nationals to compete with, is it like the top three or how does that work? Yeah. So every event is different. So for the role plays, generally for the role plays, you'll have your present,

117your role play score and then you also have a test score that you have to take like a written exam. So then those, they'll add up those scores. And then for most role plays, it's the top five in the state will end up going to nationals. And then for the prepared projects, there's a lot of different prepared projects. For the ones I'm doing, there's, they grade your written entry, which is the 20 pages. And then you also have a presentation that they grade like in front of a judge. And then they put those scores together. And then for projects, it's usually like the top four, three to four that go to nationals. But it changes every year based on how many people qualify for the events and how many people are in DECA. But yeah.

118Good luck. Chair Andresen, do you think that's a good question? Yes. Sorry, everyone. I did lose my voice. So I'm trying my best to speak as clearly as possible. Thank you all for being here. I really love your board reports as always. Could you just briefly explain maybe like a 10 second synopsis of what the weighted grade concern is so community members can know so they can attend tomorrow to support? So do you mean like the concern for like why we're considering it? Yeah. Okay. Dr. Kuhl, our career and college readiness counselor, has noticed these past few years that a lot of colleges and scholarships are moving towards a what's better for the student model in terms of taking GPAs. So many of our neighboring high schools offer weighted GPAs on their transcripts and we

119don't. So when colleges and scholarships take what's better for the student, they just take unweighted or weighted. So this could put, this has put a lot of Hopkins students at a disadvantage because we only offer unweighted with our neighboring schools all offering, mostly offering weighted grades too. If that makes sense. Thank you. So for clarity, so we will want to be in favor of the weighted grades for Hopkins? So yeah, there's pros and cons obviously. So those all have to be looked at and those will be looked at in the community meetings. Okay. Have been looked at in the community meetings too because this is the second one. But yeah, I'd encourage you to attend if you want to learn more about it. There's a lot of different aspects to it. Thank you so much.

120So this would be specifically for advanced courses such as AP and CIS and then we do have Dr. Kuhl coming to our workshop on March 17 to provide an overview for our board and community. Right. Yeah. So we don't have a policy right now or a proposed like system right now. But that's kind of what's like the topic of the discussion of how exactly it would look like if it were to be implemented at Hopkins High School. Thank you. Yep. Well, thank you very much. I hope that the three principals get your message, Sufjan. They're getting an email. Fantastic. Well, thank you for being here. And I, too, always appreciate your reports. They're thorough and I think they give us a really good idea of all the things that are happening at the high school.

121So the time you spend on preparing them is very much appreciated. And that takes us to the superintendent's report, Dr. Miriapiri Reed. Thank you so much, Chair Andreessen and Menwell, did you spotlight a teacher in your report? I did. Yeah, it was Mr. Thurrell. Oh, yes, Mr. Thurrell. Okay, thank you. I wrote down what you said but not the teacher's name. Thank you. Okay, so just a few slides for my report and then we do have a department spotlight. So in a few minutes, we'll invite our interim director of communications and marketing to come forward and introduce herself as she started here just after winter break. And then she'll give a highlight of our communications marketing and enrollment department. So I do want to begin by wishing Ramadan Mubarak or Happy Ramadan to those who

122celebrate. Hopkins, as we all know, is a community that is rich in religious diversity and many of our students and families are Muslim. Ramadan is the holiest month in Islam, observed by Muslims around the world as a time of fasting, prayer, reflection and community. From sunrise to sunset, those who are able refrain from food and drink as a way to deepen their spiritual discipline, practice gratitude and strengthen empathy for those in need. So we have nearly 500 Somali students in our district and for our students and families, Ramadan is not just a sacred religious observance but an important cultural tradition. I've personally been in classrooms where our educators are helping our students raise their awareness and knowledge about Ramadan. So I'm grateful for educators to ensure that all of our students are growing their appreciation

123and respect for this important time for our Muslim students and families. So next, I also want to recognize some truly amazing individuals. They are our superstar teachers. Actually, we have 600 superstar teachers, but here are six that are in the running as semifinalists for the 2026 Minnesota Teacher of the Year Awards, so our Hopkins educators are representing Hopkins district in a really big way. We had 21 deserving nominees and now six of the 30 semifinalists are teachers from Hopkins. So congratulations to Brittany Bancroft and Amy Fung from Meadowbrook. Congratulations to Cruz Conejo Cervantes from North, Autumn Schacht and Cher Unruh Friesen from Glen Lake, and Carl Schroeder from our high school, and we wish them the best of luck as they move forward in this process. We're very proud. Next, I wanted to share that,

124yes, last Monday our students had a day off, but our staff came to work. So last Monday, February 16, was a professional learning day for our staff, and our professional learning experiences require a lot of meeting and design and planning for quality delivery, so I'm grateful to our innovation design and learning team, to our principals and instructional coaches and other folks who help deliver these impactful experiences for our staff. Usually we do a mix of district-wide training and site-based activities, and they're usually split between morning and afternoon sessions. So on this particular day, which is last Monday, staff engaged in letters training to support their development in the READ Act. They also engaged in the newly developed and comprehensive curriculum program review process. There was a wide range of site-specific learning, including restorative practices, math

125implementation, and learning walk training, and then our clerical staff came together to learn de-escalation skills from Heidi Wilhelm and Mary Slobig. So again, thanks to all of the facilitators for that significant lift last week. As we near the end of February, of course, we don't stop learning about all of the ways that black Americans have contributed to building and sustaining this country, but we do have an opportunity to pause and celebrate throughout the month. There are incredible examples of black excellence being acknowledged and celebrated across our schools, and in addition, our high school students invite you to join in this Thursday, so just in a couple days here, as they showcase their knowledge, skill, and talents on stage in the auditorium. Please join us at 5 o'clock p.m. as we celebrate and uplift the brilliance,

126talent, and legacy of black excellence at Hopkins High School. On February 18, which is just this last week, AVID students hosted an HBCU fair at the high school. So HBCU is historically black college or university, and because HBCUs don't send their, many of them don't send representatives to Minnesota for college fairs, our AVID students research HBCUs, and then they host a college fair that their peers throughout the school attend. So it was a really fantastic experience, not only for our AVID students who have 100% acceptance rate to college, by the way, but it was a really great experience for our AVID students to research HBCUs, to showcase their new learning with other students, and in all 64 AVID seniors participated representing information about 33 colleges. And just an extra note to tell you that in

127the class of 2025, we do send a handful of students every year to HBCUs, but I went back into our high school profile for class of 2025 and noticed that we sent one or more students to Hampton University and Howard, which are two examples of really amazing HBCUs. So I did, our chair in the beginning of the workshop did provide an overview of the superintendent search process, but I thought it would be helpful just to provide a slide for our community. So thank you to our chair who is working closely with the search firm, MSBA, who is working closely with Natalia here at the table and also with interim director Toya and her team in communications to put together some engagement sessions and also QR code to a survey. So this survey is open to

128all of our students, parents, staff, and then we have sessions that will be open to all of our communities so that you can weigh in on what you want to see in the next superintendent and what you believe the future of Hopkins should bring to our community. And is that the last slide? Yes. Okay. Well, thank you very much, Natalia, for presenting. And at this time, we're going to present a department spotlight. So we have our interim director of communications and marketing, Toya Stewart Downey, who is not new to Hopkins because, and she'll let you know that she had a 2025 grad who was just fabulous, but she brings some exceptional experience to this work and we'll let you, we'll let her tell you all about it. Welcome. Thank you. Good evening, board chair Andreessen,

129Dr. Mirpria Reed, and school board members. I'm happy to be here with you tonight. And I'm happy to be serving as interim director of communications and marketing. As the superintendent alluded to, my youngest son graduated from Hopkins last spring. He's now attending Northwestern University. He started out as a, at Meadowbrook and then went to North. So he's doing really great things. So I have, I'm a former newspaper reporter and I covered education, large school districts in Texas, both the Dallas school district and Arlington schools. When I came back to Minnesota, I left journalism and ended up transitioning into school PR. So I've worked for St. Paul public schools as the director of communications, marketing and development. I was there for seven years, then I went to Robinsdale area schools and I was there for four

130years as the executive director of strategic communications, equity and inclusion. And I'm here now and I'm excited to be here. So I wanted to just tell a little bit, share a little bit about the department and how we tell our story. I think it's really important for communications and marketing to do everything that it can to inform stakeholders and to make sure that the messaging of the district is upfront and center. So as you'll see from the slide, we have a variety of ways that we communicate with stakeholders, including the royal report, which is an electronic newsletter that goes out every two weeks. We have high engagement with the royal report, although I know that not everybody subscribes. But we also look for other ways to tell our story, which is through the website, through

131social media. We're very active on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. We also have a hop inside Hopkins podcast that gets pretty good listeners. This year alone, we've had 8200 listens on the podcast, which is really good. And then we do a lot of marketing efforts to market the programs in the schools, including enrollment. We also produce really stellar videos with, as you'll see, almost 6000 unique views. And I think video is a really great asset for a district to have. And one of the things that Thomas did recently, he's our videographer, is he worked on a video students for the Legislative Action Committee, which was great. And we sent that video to lawmakers as a way to sort of impact their work because we couldn't do a breakfast this year. So I think it's really important

132to know that we have a multi-pronged approach to communications and marketing, and it's essential in building trust. And so I do appreciate the shout outs tonight for the work that the team has done related to the referendum, related to the superintendent search and the website work that we've done for Ford NGL and in general. The other thing is we did a tally in the most effective communications channels are the school district newsletter that we mail out, the district website, and word of mouth. And so together with the mailing, social media, and email, these channels reach about 94 percent of district households, which I think is a really high number. But we also try to create ways for families and other stakeholders to engage with us. We have often people will write in to our department

133and then we'll respond to direct questions that come our way. And if some were to stop by the front desk, we would certainly help answer questions as well or field phone calls. The other part of my job is overseeing the enrollment department. And so this slide provides you with an enrollment update and our sort of operational highlights. I'm happy to report that we've had 400 plus open enrollment applications by the January 15th deadline for the upcoming school year. And that demonstrates a sustained family interest in market demand for what Hopkins is offering. We have been proactive in collecting feedback in terms of why people are transferring or leaving the district. So that helps us better understand what's going on and how to continue to market the district or help grow enrollment. And marketing is not

134only is it showcasing what's happening in the district, but it's also enrollment focused and enrollment driven. We have looked for ways to improve our operational efficiency by strengthening our enrollment processes and reducing processing time so that the family experience is a better one. And then we've also strengthened our enrollment confirmation process. And so we have updated the process to require families to complete enrollment paperwork to secure their seat, which is an operational improvement. So this change improves commitment, accuracy, reduces summer attrition and provides more reliable enrollment projections. And then finally, we pride ourselves on having timely and transparent communication. So that way, 100% of applicants get confirmation of whether they are offered a spot in the district or on the waitlist by February 15th. So that's all I have unless anyone has questions for me.

135Chair Andreessen? Yes. Yes. So first of all, I just want to say thank you. And again, Director Hyman and I had the opportunity as part of our onboarding to hear about some of your work. Really grateful for both the passion for the district and then just the professional expertise that you bring to this work as myself having worked in communications and enrollment management for 15 plus years. I'm grateful. And I just wanted to I wanted to ask you then, so period, and I want to ask you a question, which is particularly related to enrollment. And I'm asking with this within the bracket that you helpfully told us about how you're strengthening the projections for enrollment by having this confirmation paperwork process because I've been a part of things where folks are like, oh, well, we

136had 1,000 folks who talked to us. And that doesn't always end up in that number. So kudos. That's a wonderful step. But I'm wondering within that, how does this 400 plus open enrollment applications, how does that compare to prior years for us? If you have that data, I'm just kind of wondering, what's your pulse as we're thinking about enrollment and as impacts our work as a board? So because I'm new, I don't have that data. I think that one of my colleagues may have that data, Dr. I don't know if you have it. If not, we can certainly get it for you. Open enrollment applications. Should we have that in our enrollment data spreadsheet, Dr. Lightfoot? I can look for it right now. Well, real quick, it is higher than we have experienced in previous

137years. And we've been tracking to look a little bit more at the why and break that out. As we look at that kind of general number, just so you know, we meet every other Thursday And right now we're processing those between January 15th and February 15th by statute. The offers are distributed and then February 15th to March 1st. Those offers can be accepted. So we're working with managing those wait lists and spaces available. And then we're taking that information and working through sectioning. But that is right now what we've seen an increase. What we hope is that that increase in application then turns into those acceptance components and then allows us to look at those enrollment targets and meet those accordingly. Does that help? Yeah, that is really helpful. And thank you for that. And

138then also just to affirm that the proactive family feedback collection is something that I'm also just really grateful that you're being intentional in a new way in this moment around that. And I think our community will appreciate that as well. So thank you for the updates holistically. I'm not finding the year over year numbers, but we can get that for you. We have lots of enrollment spreadsheets. Thank you. Any other comments or questions? Chair and Jason. Yes. Hi. Thank you so much for your overview of the communications. I do know that we have over, you know, incredible 7,000 students, I may be wrong with my numbers, but I know that a lot of them have great accomplishments that may not always get seen by the district or by other community members. Is there a way

139to submit stories online about like our achievements that are happening like in the community within our athletic department? Like, is there a way for those stories or those narratives to get out there via a form or something? Absolutely. One of the things that we do is we help curate the school newsletters and then we get a copy of all the newsletters that are published, so then each week we look through those newsletters to see if there's something that's been reported that we've missed, but we're also, you know, anyone that wants to email anyone on our team about things that they know about, we're happy to pursue those things. And actually, you know, as a journalist, I'm a storyteller by nature, right? And I'm always looking and listening for ways to tell stories because I think

140that's also an important part of this work. Thank you so much. Is there like a requirement that like a certain criteria that like stories must meet in order to be published, like socially or like our social media or? No, we would love to get photos and love to get stories. Obviously, we want to be focused on what's happening in Hopkins schools. We're looking specifically at ways right now to share more about our academic accomplishments and what we're doing in teaching and learning, to show people that, you know, there are really good things happening in Hopkins all the way around that covers all the bases. So I think if someone wants to email me directly, that would be just fine. Okay. Sorry, one more quick question. Is there any way to verify the data that I

141know that sometimes like if we post things, some of the numbers can get crushed up in the community that may be a little bit confusing. So is there a way to like verify like a process to say like these are official numbers from the district, you know, like this is the number of enrollment and just like verify like that certain data. So like if someone else was to put it out there that there wouldn't be any confusion about like the enrollment numbers or like the budget just to make sure that we're just keeping things clean and cut with where we are realistically in a district from a verified process? Yeah, I believe there is. We can certainly make sure that information is readily available on the website and that it's kept updated and current. So

142that way people have that as a resource to go to if that helps. Great, thank you. And I was able to pull up that spreadsheet, the marvel of technology and Google Drive on the phone. We're right about 58 above where we were last year. The majority of that difference is about 21 in kindergarten. Director Schell? Yes, hi. Hi, Director Downey. Nice to see you again. Thank you. Has there been any discussion about advertising, I guess paid advertising and I asked that because I receive a lot of, you know, I'm on YouTube and I get an ad for a competing district and it's pretty prevalent. Do we do that? Yes, we do. We do that. Okay. We've also launched a Google campaign within the last month to promote our Chinese immersion program and so we do

143targeted campaigns throughout the year and they're targeted by geographic areas and zip codes and we also, which I'm really excited about, we're putting an advertisement in the Stages Theater Playbill that will run through the rest of the year that highlights what's happening in Hopkins and calls out some of the programs that we offer and it's, you know, it's a pretty relatively low cost effort but I think it has a big impact because people from all over the Twin Cities come to Stages so we certainly look for ways to do some marketing related to paid campaigns mostly through Google. Okay. Yeah, I think even some defensive retention maybe would be apt just to keep people more. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. I believe Director Hyman has a question. We could take the, oh. I would just

144like to learn more about the enrollment data you're collecting and the research and information you're gathering and so I think other board members and community members would also be interested in that so I would just like to thank you for doing that and also request that we get updates as trends become apparent or information is discovered so that we can make decisions, informed decisions as a board based on, you know, what we're seeing, why people are coming to our district, what they love about our district and then you know addressing any trends that we're seeing people leaving the district. Director Hyman, I'll start, I don't know if anybody wants to add, we've had that conversation because we do have very rich enrollment data and so Director Stewart Downey and I recently met with a group

145of parents and talked about whether or not it would be savvy for us to build an enrollment webpage because we have some very storytelling trend data around enrollment, residential enrollment, open enrollment and we can go back five years or ten years or 20 years and we can also attach some presentations from previous board meetings on that webpage so that people can see what we've shared with the public in the past because some of that, some of those presentations have included reasons why families are coming or leaving, where families who are open enrolling are coming from and if they're open enrolling out where are they going so there's a lot of rich data and I think because we have so much of it, it would be probably smart for us to build a webpage around it.

146We've collected a lot of data so I think if that's of interest to our community that's something that we can start working on. Great, any other questions? Well thank you, appreciated you being here this evening and thanks for the assist on the Google Doc information. Thanks for your presentation Toya. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. So now, oh, I don't need the yellow till later. So now I would look for a motion to approve tonight's agenda. So moved. I have a motion, is there a 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 the agenda is approved. And that takes us to our consent calendar. These items provide the board with information considered to be more

147routine 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 point our community, if you are just tuning in to the board meeting and did not see the workshop that preceded the board meeting, we did have some discussion on a couple of the consent items already. So you can reference that if you are looking at the consent calendar and have questions about item F or G. So then I would look for a motion that the board approves the consent calendar. 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

148and the consent calendar is approved. And that takes us to the treasurer's report. Treasure Heartland. Wonderful. Good evening, everyone. Relevant to school finance, the 2026 Minnesota legislative session has officially kicked off. And as anticipated, this year's session is primarily a policy year. So that means much of the work our lawmakers will do will focus on crafting and refining state policy rather than setting and tweaking the next biennium's broad budget. But it is important to note that those policy bills that they consider and pass frequently do have funding implications across the state of Minnesota, but especially to our public school districts. And those policies can either direct new dollars towards programs such as when in 2024 our lawmakers added some additional funds for teacher training under the Minnesota Read Act, but occasionally they also cost our

149schools more money. And there's a few ways that our district keeps tabs on the impacts of legislative actions. One important partnership that does that is between the district administration and the non-partisan Hopkins Legislative Action Coalition, or the LAC. And so in December the LAC actually came to this board table and we discussed and then passed the legislative platform. So those are the items that the LAC will advocate for with our legislators this session in service of our schools, our staff and our students. And so anyone can see that platform. It's posted on our website under the district heading and then Legislative Action Coalition. There also is a short video that Markham Director Stuart Downey just referenced. It's an introduction to the Legislative Action Coalition's platform and stars our very own student board rep, Manuel. And

150so now that the platform has been developed and the legislative session has begun, the LAC's role will shift to monitoring the session and the discussions that are happening and then working with administration to understand and communicate the impact of any changes that our reps are discussing. So we will hear more about that periodically in Treasurer's Reports throughout the legislative session, which will end in May. Switching the focus to this period's check register, we paid $143,710 to Applications Software Technology for some of the last vestiges of the Oracle implementation. And these payments are appearing for us a bit late because they went through a special review process to ensure that all services billed were actually delivered. And so we are almost done paying for these final expenses. C2 Hopkins is our on-site solar panel provider partner

151and we paid them $46,753. Those costs are offset by credits on our Excel energy bills under a program that's run by the state of Minnesota. And for further information, anyone can view this board's workshop dated November 18th, 2025. And in that workshop, we learned that yes, the credits we receive from Excel do outweigh what we pay to these solar providers. And as of that November 2025 date, our district has saved over $700,000 since 2019. And so frequently on your check register, on our check registers, we'll see payments to our various solar providers like C2, US Hancock and MNSSI Tronch one and two. We paid the Children's Defense Fund $44,100 for their freedom school program fees. And so that provides the curriculum, the books, and the licensing for all these resources that we use in Hopkins

152to teach freedom school, an extremely popular and research-based program that we offer in the summers. We paid $16,994.16 to the cities of Minnetonka and Hopkins for water, sewer, and similar utilities. We also paid $91,332 to Neal's Outdoor Services for snow removal and salting across all of our sites for several weather events in December and January. You will always see on these check registers payments of special services, staff centers that support our students and families every day across the district. So you see Kelly Services is the source of most of our substitute teachers. There's Bilingual Therapies, Soliant Health, St. David's that provides mental health counseling, physical and occupational therapists, speech and language pathologists, and then Weaving Culture provides language interpretation services. And I know I did not just give a completely exhaustive list, but you will

153see those fairly often. And between our business services staff and I, we take care to make sure that we redact any sensitive information from those invoices before they're posted. I think that was all I wanted to cover in this report. And so with that, I move that we approve total disbursements in the amount of $1,273,803.51 for the people of the area get their transfer money on the time period of January 16th through January 31st, 2026, I have a motion. Is there a second? Second. I have a motion and a second to any discussion, Chair Andreessen, Director Thompson, I always want to see it. Sorry, pass clear. That's all good. Um, tracking, thanks for the very nice report. Appreciate software and so I'm glad to hear we're nearing the end of the Oracle what would you

154call it sojourn journey something like that so thanks for that update I guess I just had one question we see the payments to Ford Henry Ford learning for the invoice dated 11-1 so I'm assuming that's the first payment for phase 2 it looks like and so if I if I read those which funds it's coming out of it looks like 10,000 was from a federal grant 20,000 was from local grants but then 28,000 from the general fund is that something I guess maybe I'm asking dr. Mary Perry read as well like do we think that that's aiming to be reimbursed from charitable contributions or is that just an investment we're making from the general fund so I think over time if we look at how we paid for phase one how we will pay for

155phase two and moving forward we want to braid our funding between outside grant funding Perkins dollars which are career and technical education reimbursable funds and our professional development dollars so that would be a general fund so we want our funding sources to come from all of those sources okay I appreciate that I understand that just I will just note that on our our Ford NGL landing page which I appreciate the transparency from there there's a frequently asked question that says how has work with Ford NGL been funded and just says through a variety of external grants and philanthropic supports but it sounds like you know we are using some of our professional development dollars from the general fund yes which but we believe in the return that we are learning and benefiting professionally from that

156so absolutely maybe that may answer clearer be amended a little bit yeah we can definitely do that and I think we also want to get clear on like once we have our total amounts from each source then we can even detail those total amounts as well any other question discussion seeing none all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed the chair votes aye and the treasurer's report is accepted thank you treasure Heartland that takes us to our first item of new business which is our A&I report approval I would invite director campy and Erdl to the table and turn it over to dr. Mary Perry Reed thank you chair Andreessen so tonight we are seeking the board's approval of our achievement and integration report which we do need to submit to MDE for

157their approval as well and as our board is aware the A&I program requires participating districts to develop a three-year plan with goals and strategies around racial and economic integration raising student achievement and reducing academic disparities and so dr. campy who is our principal and special assignment and dr. Erdl who is our director of innovation design and learning as well as our district's assessment coordinator and quite a few other professionals have spent an enormous amount of time putting this report together after engaging in a lot of research and data review and partnering with principals so it's been truly a significant lift you can read the report in its entirety it's very detailed we are for for this particular presentation going to keep it a little bit higher level because the details are there on paper for

158for everyone to look at we want to be mindful of time and we also want to kind of provide the landscape of what A&I is and what it requires of us and truly what we are hoping to achieve for the learning and betterment of our students so with that I'll turn it over to dr. Erdl and dr. campy thank you dr. Mary Perry Reid chair Andreessen and board members thank you for having me back I am here to just give you a brief overview of what is in the plan that was I believe attached in your board packet that came last week as dr. Mary Perry Reid said and as I've said before at the board table there are some very specific purposes of the achievement integration funding so it's primarily intended to increase student

159achievement and decrease disparities with particular attention to racial and economic disparities as we sought to design the next three-year plan we did engage in a comprehensive needs analysis that involved a variety of stakeholders within the district and then sought feedback from a variety of sources including students and the goal was to ensure that those voices were represented in plan and then create a plan that had a stronger system alignment than what was in the previous plan I do feel much more confident that the way the plan was designed directly reflects the data that everyone looked at and the perspectives that were shared about that data and what we needed to pay attention to I also feel much more confident that we have not just chosen targets and benchmarks to meet each year but that we

160have been clear about what will have to happen what are the adult behaviors that will have to be in place what are the supports for those adults that will have to be in place so that we will be able to see the student outcomes that we are looking for in those KIPs each year and then within that that there is embedded accountability meaning that the way I'm looking at it is it's you know I'm kind of an architect of the plan but there needs to be a whole construction team to make sure that it happens and so the work will happen across the entire district and will involve our school leaders who gave their feedback yesterday as well as teachers and district leaders so there are four goals there are three required goal areas so

161the integration achievement diverse and effective teachers goals are all required goal areas we also have a required cross-district partnership which we hold with EDINA so the four goals cover those three areas plus the partnership the first goal is looking at how we create stronger integrated academic pathways that allow for all of our students to access and be successful in rigorous coursework at the high school level the second goal focuses on how we raise achievement and close gaps within achievement and do so with tactics that are well aligned to the new teacher project which we have been working with our staff on and worked on in HILT multiple times this year the third goal is tied to how we create a more diverse and effective teacher workforce and then the fourth goal is tied to how

162we close some gaps of disproportionality that we see in our discipline measures so I'll give you a quick snapshot of each goal and then if there are questions at the end you can go ahead and ask them so goal one is that we would increase access to and participation in advanced high school coursework for underrepresented groups and you can see that there are four different things that we're looking at so we're really looking at from the pre-k all the way to the high school what are things that would need to be in place and be strong so that students that we see under represented in those high school courses like advanced courses AP college in the schools pseo or even the pathways that we're looking to develop that we would make sure that our students

163are proportionately represented throughout those courses so looking at reading proficiency in all of the grades that are tested by the MCA looking at how we strengthen the rigor in our NYP program at the middle level how we take a look at the partnership we have with the dina that allows for a summer pre-k experience but then we also offer scholarships for students that are in our preschool program and we're looking at how we can be targeted in recruiting specific groups of students to be part of that program that are currently very underrepresented and then the goal is that all of that over time of course not in three years but over time will contribute to a measured increase in advanced coursework participation at the high school in the meantime since those first three pieces are

164a system shift that will take some time we will also be looking at what different recruitment efforts at the high school could look like to increase the participation of students that are there right now goal number two focuses on a decrease in the MCA proficiency gaps for reading specifically and an increased sense of belonging and the way that the new teacher project defines belonging is perhaps somewhat different than we have been thinking about it particularly with regard to panorama measures they define belonging as every student feeling that there is an adult who believes that they can achieve at high levels and knows them well enough to support them to do so and so we're looking at some really specific techniques to make that happen definitely a written MTSS framework that aligns to those principles which

165include consistency and coherence also articulation of what those rigorous act academic expectations look like and then professional development so that we know what we're looking for we know how to do it and then walking through classrooms and seeing if it's happening monitoring our interventions so we do need to have a strong MTSS framework that includes intervention for students who aren't being successful at tier one but one of the hallmark problems of MTSS is the over representation of students of color in tier two and three interventions so we do at the same time as we think about how we're going to intervene we have to be very mindful that we are not over representing certain groups in who's not being able to access tier one instruction all of our students should be able to access tier

166one instruction proportionate to their space in the population and then within all of that wanting to increase our rates of course passage for our BIPOC students AVID plays a role in this strategy we have some really good outcomes when it comes to our students who participate in AVID and so what we need to do is we need to continue to feed that that pathway so that those students can have access but we also have to take care of all of our students who may not be in the AVID program so that they all can access post high school opportunities that align with where they want to go in the world goal number three we have had a similar goal to this in the last several plans I would say what is somewhat different here is

167that Paris Timmons has written a grant for a grow your own program that's just kind of getting started and so we want to partner that program with the university partnerships that we've had in place with institutions like metro state so that we have a continual placement of educators looking to enter the field that look like our students we want to make sure that we continue a really strong onboarding and mentorship program for our staff of color because not only do we want to hire but we want to retain we are going to have to look at systemic barriers we know that our efforts to hire more teachers of color have been more prominent in the last decade and that means that most of our teachers of color are our newest teachers to our system and

168the tenure process says that when we have to make reductions which as you know we've had to make many years in a row now the people hired most recently are the first people to go so we're going to have to think about that if we want to retain staff of color once we've hired them the other thing that I am really proud of that is in this plan came right out of the needs analysis we noticed that when we were looking at the data around teacher representation so we saw an under representation of black teachers when compared to our black student population and over representation of white teachers when compared to our white student population for example that was mirrored in who takes the advanced courses so the graphs looked almost identical where we saw

169under representation of staff of color we saw under representation of students of color in those advanced coursework our courses and so what we talked about as a group is really getting clear about who is teaching those courses and what impact does that have on students feeling comfortable and wanting to take them and then finally goal number four we have been talking about for some time the racial disproportionality that we have in our discipline outcomes and I have been this entire school year talking with principals monthly about what their data looks like and I have been really clear to tell them that this is not about not suspending kids who do something that's a suspendable behavior this is about figuring out what we need to do so that we have the conditions where those behaviors are

170not occurring and so especially if I've got a student who continues to get in fights for example what does the support plan for that child look like so that that isn't the choice that the child feels that they have to make every time they get into conflict and we really have seen some strong outcomes coming out of one of our elementary schools that has really high fidelity to our restorative practices to the end that at at maybe their goals to meeting point which was a couple of weeks ago they had yet to make a special ed referral for behavior this year which is significant it shows that how and they always have had referrals in the past right but they've been decreasing year after year and this year they have made none and so I

171think that ensuring that all of our leadership teams have a strong understanding of what the culture looks like that's the preventative piece that we really need to take a look at because we'll never sort of like going back to the the MTSS thing we aren't going to intervene our way out of that disproportionality we have to fix tier 1 instruction well when it comes to the culture in the space and every child feeling like they have ownership and they they matter there but it what they do matters there too like when I feel like I matter in a space I don't want to harm that space when I feel like people could care less and I don't think any of our kids think that right but I think that it's just we have to be

172really mindful of the impact it has when I feel like I am as such a part of that that it matters what I do there so that's the RP piece is really looking at system-wide monitoring and our implementation fidelity accompanied by what are the outcomes we're getting as a result what you should expect is that there will be clear measurable targets we will continue our annual reporting through ANI as well as college and career readiness and that the plan as a whole is well aligned with the work we are already doing through vision 2031 so the goal was not to introduce anything new but rather to take a really close look at what we are doing well as well as what we are doing but maybe could be doing better in order to achieve the

173outcomes that are outlined in the plan questions great thank you for that high level and I hope I'm sure everyone's taken time to review the the actual report as well so if there are any questions on either document I'd assume they're welcome here chair Andreessen yes vice chair Roper thank you for coming to do the presentation tonight on the ANI plan and just about the goals our district is going toward I just do have a few quick questions um one when it says Edina public schools are racially isolated what does that mean in that report could you say that again it says Edina public schools racially isolated what does that mean yes so they are considered a racially isolated school district because they are adjacent to us and their demographics are so different than ours

174I think is the simplest way to explain it and so they receive some achievement integration funding to support the students of color they have but also to ensure that their students are having more integrated experience and so the partnership that we do with them is the ready set K and their preschool and our preschool work together the last two years we have done that at their site this summer we will be doing it in Hopkins and so we are anticipating that we'll even have more enrollment than we've had in the past because while busing is provided parents would rather have their child go someplace close than you know a little bit further away thank you and then for the multi-district collaboration I think it's the committee and then like the council and their community collaboration

175council are those folks are though are they like a mixture of community members from the district or are they like stakeholders or it is people that are working directly on the project I guess what you'd say ready set chaos is like it's like a project so my counterpart in Edina and Sarah Chauvin who leads our preschool programming here as well as some folks from Edina that lead the preschool programming there okay awesome and then my last question is just wondering thinking about the outcomes that we envision for to close on those opportunity gaps I'm thinking what social infrastructures do we have for black students in the district to support with the outcomes so like for example we have our incredible APAC was coming to do you know like their presentation right after you today I

176went to the educators of color event near like a Somali liaison what's available for black students mm-hmm I know that we have I would say really strong affinity groups at our high school and then I think that whether or not that is consistent across all of our other spaces is is probably in question so I appreciate you bringing that forward when we think about the plan what I would say is like the slides were high level and then the plan is here and then there's a whole bunch of other work that lives underneath it and that is a piece that could live in that underneath place where we could think about what are those supports that need to be in place for kids so I will add that to my notes and make sure I

177talk with our principals so that they're if they aren't already thinking about that they begin to think about it and it's not consistent but we do have models yes schools that are doing this work well so for example Gatewood is a school that does provide an affinity space for our african-american students and it's something that we can replicate at schools that are not there yet absolutely and and to be clear I've just in the last week or so as I've been working on this plan and we've been I've been talking to schools that have different pieces of this already in place about how can we sit down and partner with each other in order to spread that work so that would be an example of what we could do here with Gatewood or our high

178school where they have really well established groups thank you thank you chair and reason director shall yes hi hello so the last three years cycle you know some of the things we did well in and we hit and some of the things are have been flat or even down so just trying to figure out right and I don't want to get boil it down but like what what like how for the things that are like this especially like the achievement gap what is the difference in plan like what are we gonna do differently to close gaps right I mean it seems like we're just kind of doing more of the same I would say what is different so when I look at the last plan we we used some math metrics but we did not

179have very much funding that directly supported that and we did not have any layers of accountability about what would be happening in the buildings and in the classrooms to support that and so what's different is we're looking at reading we already have an established practice for doing walkthroughs with our classrooms where people are letters trained and so that is something that's already happening that we will continue we have already started the process as well of doing other types of walkthroughs where you can see the indicators of instruction and so in in my opinion the writing in of some of the fidelity measures instead of only the outcome measures is what will be different because a I wrote it and so therefore I have a bunch of deeper knowledge of it and therefore I have a

180much better grasp on what needs to be true for all of the adults to make the things happen whereas when I came in before it was there and I I would say I for sure spent year one just wrapping my brain around all the parts of this job and definitely wasn't even sure what I should be doing so I just I would liken it to I I've written multiple ads this plans now and that has become a pretty strong lever for us and I think similarly I've supported our principals in doing a couple of our title plans now and each time that we do that I personally become more clear on what are the fidelity measures that we need to be looking at to make sure that the outcomes are even possible so I think

181that's thing one thing two is I tried to be very reasonable and conservative in the goals so when I went to our SELS experts to ask about our panorama data for year three of the previous plan or our math expert to ask about the math data they both said to me I don't think those were reasonable targets knowing where we were I don't think it was reasonable to think that that's where we would go in that space of time and so I'm trying to be mindful of if we do all the things we try to do amongst all the other things we're doing what is a reasonable amount of improvement that we should be able to see if we see more than that that's great but I don't want us to I don't want us

182to overestimate what is possible knowing how many variables are at play I think also to build on that so with the measuring the fidelity that dr. Canvey referred to that is easier if we have a consistent curriculum across our schools yes and so what was different in the past is we were it you know piloting and exploring these all of them were high quality math curricula but then we did land on an elementary math curriculum that's consistent across our six schools most of our primary teachers are trained in evidence-based reading practices so now across our elementary schools we have consistent literacy consistent math instruction and we have a tool to help us measure the fidelity in both areas which will be very significant I just want to add one more thing so I have presented

183at this table and we've talked about the world's best workforce plan we've talked about some title goals add sys goals achievement integration goals and one of the things that we've dr. Campion I've been working really hard on which is is not an easy task is we're required to have improvement goals for a lot of different purposes and different plans including our district strategic plan and so we've been trying really hard to sort of corral everything in a coherent way so that we are working on the same types of goals sort of regardless of what the plan is for and that has taken it it sounds simpler than it really has been because each each federal or state plan that you write has its own set of indicators its own set of kips or some column

184kip some column KPI even that is variable so I think through a sort of knowing and understanding what our strategic goal is and our vision as a district dr. Campion I've been able to work over the last two years to get all of these other pieces in alignment so that we don't have a bucket of goals for this plan a bucket of goals for that plan and that's been good but and challenging work and I would say that's reflected in the plan and that I I don't think any one of the goals is relying on a and I alone right to make it happen there are other things already in motion that are braided into every single goal not to pile on but I would like to add just two more things that will be

185very critical in continuing to move forward one is teacher observation and feedback on a regular basis so this is something that we've been building our capacity around throughout the system but what's critical is that every teacher in our system has regular opportunities to be observed in a non evaluative fashion and they receive specific and actionable feedback that helps them improve their practice and they couple that application of feedback with a belief that it is their responsibility to see students learn rather than students responsibility to intake the material and go home and you know do the homework so the the instructional the sort of the burden of instructional effectiveness is really on the adults in our system teachers and leaders and that's really important and the reason that the feedback from school leaders and coaches is

186so important is that it's every principal's job to evaluate the quality of the impact of instruction on student learning and so we're really moving toward our educators and our school leaders believing these things and having their their pedagogy and leadership actions support those beliefs those are really critical ingredients. Chair Andreessen. Yes clerk Wilhelm Garbers. I want to just say my extend my gratitude to you all for the work not only of you but the team that worked on this because there's 34 pages here but that is reflective of just mountains of work over years and the a couple things I do just want to feed back as a board member that I especially appreciate is the connection to our strategic goals and plan and really working so hard to bring all of these different goals

187for all the different buckets of both required things from the state all that you named in a way that offers more coherence and the possibility that our teachers in the classroom and our schools can actually achieve these goals and they're not just pie in the sky let's pick numbers let's do things but this this sort of work is what will actually impact our students in really positive ways and then also I think you know teacher burnout and educator burnout was something I know so many of us are concerned about and so just that you've incorporated them in this process all that I'm really grateful to hear that and just thank you for your work. Thank you. Chair. Go for it. Director Thompson. Thank you. I heard clerk Sarah Wilhelm Garbers mention the process so I

188have a question about the process. First and foremost I think you mentioned Dr. Canffy that you got teacher feedback yesterday. No principal feedback. Principal feedback yesterday okay. The report talks about a council members and has a bunch of names listed this appears to be the ESAC group okay and their feedback since I'm on ESAC I know it's through the survey link that we had only a couple days to answer that though but did anything change based on feedback from that survey feedback from teachers the principals yesterday that type of thing. I would say that some things were highlighted so for instance something that's sticking out in my brain and it isn't from ESAC it's from the students that we got feedback from was there was a comment about how important preschool is and so we

189were already planning to do something with that but what shifted I think I think that's emblematic of in the feedback that helped me think about what do we need to be really clear about in terms of our measurements so I wouldn't say that any of the feedback we got negated the direction that we were going but I do think that some of the feedback just made it clear what what people see as a priority so in the ESAC feedback a clear theme was rigorous expectations and wanting to make sure that all students have access to that so that then made me think about you know what do we see with our AVID program in terms of its ability to accelerate learning for kids and help them be successful in those kinds of courses and to

190make sure that as I'm thinking through the kind of the bones of the plan what are our strategies to highlight that and bring it out but what are our strategies also to ensure the rigor like with the NYP that was another piece of it that it made me think about kids can't do that in high school if they haven't had those experiences in middle school and they can't do it in middle school if they aren't proficient in reading by the time they get to middle school or earlier so it just in my mind the feedback from the various sources just reiterated some of the things that seemed important to me anyway and made me think more deeply about how to set up appropriate structures for those things to be able to be reality instead of

191just an idea and something we care about okay thank you treasure heartland thank you I also appreciate all the work to sort of align this talk about like aligning our goals and stopping like the spread of focus and then potentially resulting in various failures or perceived failures right to achieve those goals which is damaging adult beliefs and even student beliefs inside our system and so I do appreciate that work and that also helps you know even the board it helps family members understand the work that we're doing and it is still clear to me that this is a very lofty document this program alone all of the actions required and and all of the adult activities and you talked a bit about accountability and also mentioned that there will be like annual reporting on this

192and as a board member like we've seen this be reported before but what does it look like in yours dr. can't fear possibly both of your roles to keep monitoring this like how does that sort of tracking and monitoring figure into the daily your daily life and maybe the building leaders daily yeah so my intent is pending approval that then I go back and map it all out so right now I have these huge lists of things that we want to track and and the ways we want to get there but then it's it's a backwards plan so like if we want to be here by the year of an year one then what are all the things that have to be in place like you know who has to be prepared to do go

193walking through classrooms which classrooms are we going to what does the professional development in Hilt need to look like so that our leaders in the buildings are able to teach that to their teachers so it's it's really a matter of mapping that all out and that I did not see evidence of being in place previously I what I did see was that the previous plan was certainly aligned to things we were already doing but there wasn't necessarily a really clearly articulated path to how those things would result in these outcomes that had been identified and so I think for that to occur you have to go back and think about and I tried to be really mindful honestly we've talked I don't know if we've talked to the board table about this but we've talked

194a lot at Hilt about a change management framework called ADCAR and ADK our awareness desire knowledge and almost all the time when we're trying to teach people something new we start at knowledge and so I try to be really careful that anything that we're going to do has already had awareness and desire built so that if there's knowledge that needs to be expanded upon that people are ready to do that that these are not new ideas here they are not things that people don't think we should be doing there are things people have been asking for us to do or we are already doing and so it's my belief that because we will have that strong foundation then it will just be a matter of making the plan that doesn't mean I mean it's still

195lofty right that doesn't mean that everything is gonna go exactly as we plan but I think we have a better shot at it thank you I appreciate that and it is I mean I I especially like to hear you guys as mindfulness about the ways in which our staff and our leaders like need clarity and need this focus so thank you I was just gonna say I think it's important to mention that we'll be building on a structure that's a I think a strength for us which is our goal setting like system and cadence and process and so we can make sure that these goals are the school improvement goals and inform the principals strategies and tactics and we we already have that structure that is really strong and this will will make it stronger

196and I think a way that some of that coherence has already started to show up you mentioned dr. Mary Perry read the teacher evaluation and I came to the board last year to talk about the principal evaluation and what I saw this year was as principals were you know solidifying their building goals and starting to think about their individual goals multiple of them thought about what does my staff need to make our building goal happen and then what does that mean for me like what do I need to be good at so for example at Tanglin dr. Hay bison knew that one of their goals around culture had to do with the implementation of purposeful people and how people feel in the space and so he made it his own leadership goal to go into

197classrooms and co-teach with people on the purposeful people lessons so I think that because we have been doing this like let's figure out how all these puzzle pieces come together for so long that we're now going to have an opportunity for greater synergy than what we've seen in the past so there's there's the monthly meetings that they have with me there's the quarterly goals meetings there's the Monday principal meetings there are all these touch points there's hilt that we can make good use of if we have everything pointing in the same direction thank you thank you director Hyman thank you for a truly impressive and lengthy report it is quite lofty as treasure Heartland pointed out I think I would love to hear some assurance and you kind of already did this but that we're

198not spreading ourselves too thin right across the board because there's so much here right and and we want to tackle everything and so some assurance I guess that we do have the infrastructure in place to give 100% to every single one of these things as opposed to you know trying something at 50% and hoping it goes well yeah that's my first question and my second question is with respect to the prior plan I guess was there any insight analysis done on maybe what didn't work so we know to exclude those strategies moving forward or anything like that those are my questions well I think the hindsight analysis I would share and then you can chime in and is I don't know if we know what didn't work because we didn't have the structures in place

199to make sure the thing that we were proposing would make a change occur was actually in place and so I think what didn't work in the last plan and and what I really did try to address was not having the plan was here are some things that we do here are some initiatives that we do in the district and here are some outcomes that we believe those initiatives should produce and it was like the two ends of a sandwich without any filling in the middle and so what I tried to address was what's gonna get us from A to D like what are all the things that have to happen in between now I think as you start to do those things that's where you figure out what's working what's not working if we have

200all of our teachers to fidelity using this strategy and we are not seeing the outcomes that we would expect then we know that we should change course but we can't decide to change course if only 50% of the people are doing it because then we don't have strong data to say whether it works or it doesn't and so what I tried to put in place was the way for us to measure that along the way and be clear when we're off course far bit long before it comes time for me to come and say to you we did or didn't make our 2% increase for this year. I think the only thing that I would add totally and said was we're really working hard with our school leaders to balance the tension between site based

201autonomy and site based decisions even around expenditures versus guaranteed consistency and coherence across our schools and so we are getting through some of the processes that she mentioned our goals meetings her check ins Hilt our the ideal team working with staff all of those things have us pointing in a more coherent direction and we know that we've got a strong history of site based autonomy and so we're really working with our school leaders through that because and trying to again build that consistency and coherence you see that with our math instruction at the elementary level as an example this year to go back to your first question though I would add that I hadn't said yet in response to like are we being spread too thin I also tried to be mindful because it's a

202three year plan and so you'll notice that some of the strategies only have like let's develop baseline data or let's let's put structures in place let's build a thing that's going to help us do what we want to see so that was intentional that some things are just about putting together the structure to support it all in your one where other things we can look more deeply into doing the work and then hopefully that gets established and that allows you to do some of the work in that other area in your two or your three so I tried to balance instead of having like every year have a percentage target I tried to be thoughtful about at what point can we measure something that's maybe not actually implemented yet and needs some time to get

203off the ground thank you that's very helpful thank you thank you I just wanted to reiterate my colleagues gratitude for this report and also the ways in which I feel that accountability is baked in that is something new and a departure that is really nice to see I am wondering a little bit about how in each specific category and in particular I'm I'm looking at our restorative practices consistency goal mm-hmm just knowing on how things have gone in the district in the past and I did hear your your comment that there's been a shift in just how we're kind of approaching it from the top down but wondering how can the board monitor that suspension rate and if we are just ensuring that the framework the the must-do restorative framework is being applied with fidelity

204and consistency just wondering what kind of ways in which the board can be monitoring all the different things well what we've talked about with Kavan who is our student wellness coordinator this year in regard to the restorative work is she and I have been working very closely for the last couple of years and she has wanted to get to a place where she meets with the coordinators monthly and she knows that even though we have that framework of here's what the work should look like it still doesn't look the same in every space and and I think what we have to be able to navigate is it could be true that whatever I'm doing as the coordinator does not align with what it says we want to have happen over here and this might still

205be necessary so we have to figure out whether some of that work has to be done by a different person so that the coordinator can be more highly involved in the pieces that will influence those behavioral outcomes that that will influence the staff engagement with students so I think that that's that's part of it I do think and and you know we still have to wait and see what happens but I do think that if we are able to secure the restorative grant that we applied for this is intended to amplify that so I purposely wrote it so that it could be open enough since we'll be submitting this at the same time that we should be finding out about that that if we get that this can amplify the work and if we don't

206get that then this can start to be like the foundation of the work and that work really does focus on the adult piece so I wonder if regardless of that grant or not if we want to think about what could be like quarterly or biannual share outs with you on not just discipline data but what the implementation of the restorative work looks like I think we could I mean we started this year having our buildings all report how they report behaviors and respond to behaviors all within the same framework and that has led us to be able to be more clear about where restorative work is happening and where it's not and so I do think even you know compared to a year ago we already have better data when it comes to that so

207I think we could figure out just an opportunity to share that with you on a more frequent basis we could add it we have we have the quarterly data report so we could add it there yep sure that would be great and I know I've been looking forward to that consistency in data collection so that we can compare apples to apples instead of going well we're not sure if that's right things are increasing or why and so I appreciate that thank you mm-hmm any further questions or comments just a real quick is there any way that parents can join any of those committees I think parents can all be part of ESAC right absolutely well not ESAC the one the community collaborative committee the community collaborate so we don't have the community collaborative we have

208the multi-district yeah and and that one I don't see why not I think that that's been an evolution because when I took the role on we had a different type of collaboration with Edina and so we actually had to kind of shift who was even in the room to help make the collaboration happen because it moved from being a middle school collaboration to being a preschool collaboration but I don't see any reason why we couldn't have more community involvement in that so when I meet with that group the next time I can talk with them about what they would want that to look like okay thank you mm-hmm thank you and with that I would look for the board to approve the ANI report as presented the motion so moved I have a motion is

209there a second second there is 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 the ANI report is approved thank you so much for being here this evening thank you dr. campy thank you dr. urdle thank you and that takes us to our next item of new business which is a resolution of concurrence for 2026 I would invite our APAC committee to come up to the table to present this report thank you for being here and sticking with us for for a while and turn it over to dr. Mary Perry thank you chair Andreessen and welcome to our members of our American Indian education parent advisory committee so prior to March 1st every year the APAC meets to discuss

210whether or not they concur with educational offerings to our American Indian students and they also talk about the impact of those offerings and then APAC will share with the board whether they issue a vote and resolution resolution of concurrence or whether they are moving toward non-concurrence so I am happy to have our team with us this evening Katie Soko is our American Indian education coordinator and Deb Andrein is Katie's partner in this work and we also have some fabulous members of our American Indian parent advisory committee welcome to all of you and Katie I will turn it over to you. Thank you and hello everyone good evening my Shoshone name is girl who plays with fire my English name is Katherine Soko and I am the tribal I am a tribal member of the Northwestern

211Band of Shoshone Nation and I am the district's coordinator for the American Indian education. Hello all my relatives my name is Deb Andrein that is what they call me I am from Turtle Mountain and I am of the Eagle Clan I'm the cultural associate for the district here. Hi I'm Jojo Battles I can't even say it in English now I'm from Minneapolis the bear is my clan and I'm from Fond du Lac reservation prepared for the Ojibwe but my name is Bob I am from the Lakuta Ray Ojibwe tribe and I have a first grade son at Alice Smith I I'm one of the parents for this Native American group I also work with the PTA over as well welcome thank you the district has established a strong foundation of cultural support and administrative infrastructure

212for the American Indian education program the imagine the American Indian education aid supports the American Indian students academic success while strengthening cultural identity through culturally responsive programming the role also serves as a bridge between the schools families and American Indian community to promote engagement understanding and equitable educational outcomes there are six focus areas of the American Indian education aid area one is to support support post-secondary preparation for American Indian pupils area two is to support the academic achievement American Indian pupils area three is to make curriculum relevant to the needs and interests and cultural heritage of American Indian pupils provide area sorry provide an area number four is to provide positive reinforcement of the self-image of American Indian pupils area five develop intercultural awareness among pupils parents and staff and area six is supplement not

213supplant state and federal educational and co-curricular programs the American Indian education aid program is a state mandate and it does have state statutes that we need to follow the Hopkins public school district currently has a hundred and forty seven self-identifying American Indian education students the positive impact of our current AIE programming we offer native groups with cultural lessons monthly family events sorry that wasn't supposed to play yet we're gonna go back sorry okay see if I can get this to go I'll just let it play first and then I'll talk this is just a little picture video of the programming that the program in our district district offers native groups with cultural lessons monthly family events field trips Ojibwe language exposure we facilitate American Indian parent advisory or the APAC monthly meetings we provide tuition

214reimbursement SAT and ACT prep and a blanket ceremony for graduation aligning current American Indian education services with the Hopkins vision 2031 priorities Hopkins currently employs two full-time American Indian education aunties and yes I have had that changed our district so our titles do have that in there Dev is the auntie of American Indian community and culture she provides age-appropriate cultural lessons and activity she creates culturally affirming spaces for our students she provides relationship and community and centers activities that encourage self-confidence myself I am the American Indian education auntie I manage state and federal grants and compliance I coordinate the American Indian aid students families and community events I advocate for our students and our families for their needs and the accommodations that they might need and I collaborate with the IDL team to embed culturally

215responsive practices where our program is effective we have cultural programming and grant coordination that are well established and align with Hopkins commitment to authentic inclusivity students and staff and the community benefit from the culturally grounded learning spaces to go to my notes for this part sorry because language is such a foundation to our identity and belonging language and culture are not just enrichment activities they are core equity and academic strategies that are aligned with Hopkins commitment to eliminating predictable disparities this increases engagement attendance a sense of belonging it strengthens literacy and academic persistence it reduces disciplinary risk and dropout rates and it builds family trust and community partnership with this in mind this year we have applied for the native language revitalization grant competitive opportunity offered by the state the purpose of this grant is

216to build that native language programming for our students our families and our community this is a two-year grant with the opportunity to reapply the first year we will be centered on a building a curriculum culturally grounded curriculum program for our K through 12 American Indian Ed students that Deb meets with by monthly we will also be doing a level one program for secondary students at the high school and community education classes in addition to that we would like to rate a summer camp for all of those American Indian Ed families and students and for the community classes the second year we plan to launch that program we will find out later on in March whether or not we qualified for that grant where the capacity is limited unfortunately we have come up against some things

217that have brought some light a lot of it is me being new to this position I am able to come in and really kind of see where the holes were we have limited capacity for regular student check-ins home visits IEP behavioral team participation we have 39 students in our district who have IEPs I am technically supposed to be at every single one of those meetings if they would like I were supposed to offer it we have limited visible American Indian representation in our schools and in our classrooms we have four or five I believe employees in this district that are American Indian including Deb and myself so the representation with our staff is very very limited and we also see persistent gaps in belonging advanced coursework participation MCS reading proficiencies disciplinary risk and graduation outcomes

218we met with the A&I group and this is where part of our limited capacity is really shown the sense of belonging distributed by the subgroups when we were looking at that panoramic data shows that the American Indian students show a smaller proportion to being a feeling of belonging in the district the higher graph there is for the elementary school and the second crap there is for the secondary level and the first line you can see while it shows zero it's it's not actually zero it's a very small percentage but it's so small that it doesn't even show up on the graph because of this our American Indian parent advisory committee is going to be voting non-concurrent this year it is very very important to clarify that this vote is not a statement of dissatisfaction with

219the current AI staff or the programming it is more of a statement that our students deserve more it is a call to move forward from strong cultural programming to a comprehensive academic and systemic support it is a request for growth it's not a criticism these are the recommendations to better serve our hundred and forty seven students here in the district we recommend the expanding of the AI staff to provide an academic to provide more academic monitoring regular student check-ins behavioral intervention and IEP support we recommend increased visibility among the American Indian representation through our staff presence we would like to have more staff that represent us we would like to have tribal flags throughout the schools when you walk into the buildings you can often see many flags that represent many different countries and many

220different people but there are no tribal flags in this district we suggest providing culturally responsive outreach to the American Indian families about the supplemental academic tools that they could use like Lexia and core power that they might not know about available to these students especially those who are approaching the intervention benchmarks but they don't quite fall under it but they come really close and we want to make sure the support we support our family in accessing and using these resources at home and at school. Miigwetch, is there any questions? Thank you I appreciate you being here tonight and for this beautiful presentation I'm always impressed with the the the graphics that you show and I loved the slideshow of all the students so thank you for that any questions or comments from my board colleagues?

221Yes director Zhao. Hello nice to talk to you so as far as representation I think you said there was five staff what would a proportional number of staff be have you done that calculation how many? I have not I just know more than five for the district especially since three of us Toya is also one of our members there's three of us in the district that don't aren't completely seen throughout the day by a lot of students. Deb does go to the buildings but she goes bi-weekly the other staff member is Dr. Jim he's the principal at Tanglin I apologize thank you yes and I have heard that possibly there might be a para at one of the buildings but I would like to see at least one if possible in a couple of the

222buildings so it's not just these people who walk through the buildings that they see but they're actually able to see somebody else in the building who is American Indian. And then my second question especially that data with the elementary at zero is there something wrong with the data I mean I would have expected if it really was zero it would be 98 not favorable wouldn't it seems like maybe something's wrong with the data. As far as I understand the data that it was such a small percentage that it wouldn't show up I believe it is like point four percent and I'd be happy to email you the more conclusive point four percent favorable yes oh four percent that even commented okay but those who did what was favorable I believe that's how it was. Thank

223you. Chair Andreessen yes thank you for coming to do the presentation I concur with Chair Andreessen about the graphics and just like the story that it tells through your logos it's really impressive to my understanding the student designs one of them which is incredible just to you know talk about the talent that's within our district. So for APAC let me just I want to just clarify so is is APAC a within embedded within different school districts across the metro and if it is and if it is do you all meet to talk about like kind of like a common agenda that you all would like to see in the school districts like you're coming like you're creating these key indicators that you want to see from each school district in respective to APAC like collective

224goals. So it is state legislature that if a school district has over ten students who self-identify as American Indian that there will be an APAC committee. After that it is really kind of left up to that APAC to decide what they want because they know their children best. There has been a lot of displacement with American Indian and American Indian families and over 30 thousand students and I believe that's like 80 percent of American Indian students are in public schools and so it's very hard to say the American Indian students need this one thing across the board when you have students who have different tribal affiliations different beliefs and so it's going to be slightly different and tailored to the students that are in the district does that make sense? Yeah that makes sense thank

225you I was and I please forgive my ignorance I just want to make sure that I understood like the the foundation of APAC so I can know how to better support like the work that you all are doing and like from a governance level the accountability that needs to support what the outcomes you all are looking and how do we get you all from not concurrence to concurrent and future you know board approvals so thank you thank you. Chair Andreessen may I just clarify so on the elementary belonging chart so the N is zero not the student sense of belonging but did were we able to determine what so of the students who who may have did or may have completed the survey were we able to understand how they rated their satisfaction level with

226belonging? Sort of the panoramic data that I have I wasn't I didn't want to present to you because it did have data on it that I believe was district only say Leigh Ann and I discussed it okay can you repeat your question more times? I just want our I want our board and community to understand that where we saw zero on the graph that that represents like the number of students so N was zero but that didn't represent the the sense of belonging rating so I think our our task is to figure out what that rating was for the students who took the survey similar so that's what director Hsiao was asking and the information can come later but to be clear their sense of belonging was lower than other student subgroups I think if

227we could figure out what it was that would be helpful. Yes it was definitely lower than all the other subgroups I need to relook at that particular data in depth to give you more of an answer. Yes I think the importance is to acknowledge that it was not as high as what other students reported which is the source of the concern mm-hmm and for you know further context if we were able to get what that level was then it would be helpful so we know what our baseline is and how much we need to really grow their sense of identity and belonging. So we're talking about the first graph which is the elementary level yes yes that's right and then and then I'm looking at the is this secondary the bottom graph mm-hmm that's secondary

228yes because I'm I'm looking at I think that overall favorable approaching favorable is lower if I'm reading this correctly than other groups but the favorable is second highest yes right after white students so that's interesting. I think I think we're I think too we're trying to understand while more Native American students aren't participating maybe in this so what we're looking for as a parent group is how can we reach more students or Native American students help them feel a sense of belonging help them feel like it's okay for them to say I'm Native you know help help children figure out who they are help them develop their own sense of being and belonging and so we're looking for more support for our group to be able to do that and be able to get more

229data so that we can work forward from this. Yeah that's really important. Let's just bring closure to that Dr. Camphy did you find that data point? Yes so let me let me provide some clarification here so the data that Katie has is data that I shared when I went to the APAC to present the goals for A&I and when I pulled that data from Panorama I downloaded it as numbers in like a CSV file and then I uploaded that and made a chart in Google. When you download it that way because the number of Native students that took the survey was so small they represented as zero as a numeric number but then when I was talking with Katie yesterday I went into Panorama and I looked at their charts so on their charts they

230have 65 percent as compared to the other groups being at 94 95 whatever they are but then they have it confidentiality protected so like the way Panorama has set it up because they have individual students behind that data the way that they've set it up is that you can look at the graph and see relatively where groups are but they don't want you to know how many kids actually responded that way because then we could identify those students and the goal when they take that survey is that they feel that they are anonymous and they cannot be identified for how they respond. All that being said I noticed in the three years of data that we were looking at as a needs analysis group that it varied from year to year like one year we

231might have such a low end that it would show up that way and then the next year we wouldn't have that low of an end and so I think that that speaks to are we getting all of the students that are there to respond every single year and what are we doing if we didn't have them all participate not to mention that there is still a gap so even for the students that did respond they were responding 65 percent feel like they belong versus the 90 plus percent in the other racial groups. I hope that helps it is very confusing to look at and I think I contributed to the confusion by how I downloaded the data and made my own chart so. I think it is really helpful to have that context because then

232you can see how it tracks to the older students yes because it's a very similar trend so yeah I think I think it's really nice to have that. Can I add a comment about so kind of reflective of these kind of sense of not belonging what also shocked us was the the rate of suspensions particularly even this year was a far greater in the American Indian students and and that was a kind of a major factor of why we thought maybe Katie and Deb needed some more support to help these kids. Speaking as a parent that metrics disturbed me I was looking at that and I'm like those are the ones that I didn't find as Native American how many more were not observed as Native American that were not on that table. Do we

233have that data? I can show that data with you yes when we were looking at the data for the needs analysis we saw the highest levels of disproportionality in suspensions for our Native students and our black students and it sort of would vary depending on the metric we're looking at so that that was the highest disproportionality those groups there but then when I looked at like who's taking advanced coursework students on getting educational benefits showed up as the greatest disproportionality so I think that what is true across the board is that our student groups who have not historically been served well by our system are not being served well by our system and so I deeply respect the group's willingness to advocate and say we need to do better because we do. Thank you for

234that context I also just wanted to layer on for for people who are new to the board that this is a departure from I think it's two years now I think we had concurrence votes the last two years and this year is non-concurrence we did start off with non-concurrence so I feel good about the fact that Hopkins schools since I've been on the board is responsive to these non-concurrent votes and that we I hope are going to be able to follow your recommendations in my experience they are taken seriously not just by the board but by administration and so thank you for the thought that went into these recommendations because I think you do know best what will will help your students and what will bring us to a place where we aren't experiencing such

235steep disparities any other questions or comments just a quick question do you know what happens as the result of receiving a vote of non-concurrence do we do we get like less funding I don't think so I think it's just a formal way to tell us to do better I believe there is a 60-day window for the board to make a plan basically and give it back to us and we just give that to MDE and they it's just yes basically a way for us to say that things need to change so there there's not less funding there's no ramifications or consequences at this point in time with MDE to quickly touch back on board member Roper we do know most of the coordinators in the state that have or the school districts that have coordinators

236and we do meet with them and we do we have different conferences we also get together outside of school like we make sure that we have nights where we get together and have dinner and we discuss things because we are a very community based people and so we do definitely have relationships and friendships with different districts throughout the state thank you for that that's really that's a great model I think for other cultural groups who are looking to develop the same type of framework you know to help their disparities as well so I appreciate that is there any upcoming events or meetings that we can attend there is March 18th through the 20th there is what's called MIEA Minnesota Indigenous no Minnesota Indian Education Association Conference I have actually invited some of the IDL members

237and they are going to be coming with us as well but I highly recommend that you attend that there's going to be a whole bunch of breakout classes there's wonderful keynote speakers they have a language bowl because they invite high schoolers who speak and come so I would highly recommend that if you're able to attend that conference and the shopping is really good thank you could you would you be able to email that or some information about that thank you Chair Andreessen yes yes hi so one question more for the board is can the monitoring committee come up with something about the flag request can we is there a policy against that can we put in a no so could they request the principal put it up and it would be okay or can the

238school board request I don't I think that for our schools that do display flags it would probably be an easy ask to to add on I don't know if we want to be that directive to buildings that don't already have that practice but something we can take care of right away and what would be helpful is meeting with our American Indian students to identify the flags that they would like to see because there I imagine there are a variety of tribal flags so we want to be intentional with which ones are are flown at each of our schools and I do know that we went through a process of actually purchasing different flags to have at our graduation so I know this is a process that we do display them at graduation so it's not

239a complete divergence to have them at our schools that practice that you can you push back you can have them email me that's right yeah I did just quickly have a question about the grant I'm really excited to see that there's this opportunity and that so did we get the grant we won't know until March no no until March okay well I'm excited to hear so what let me know if we get it or not but I was also wondering because I think this is so incredibly important to are there plans or should administration be working on plans to ensure that even if even if we do get the grant that this is something that is sustainable long term often I feel like when things in education are grant specific we once we lose the

240grant we oftentimes lose the enrichment yeah we have talked about sustainability when it comes to the native language program if we're able to get that grant the nice thing is that the grant is reapplyable and they recommend or they encourage that the state does we are very fortunate that Annie Huberty who used to be in my role is now the director for MDE in American Indian Ed so she has she and I have talked and a lot about the grant and what we can do and the sustainability piece we would really love to have help for we do have an idea of how to keep it going because we do want it to continue going but any support and help with getting it to be sustainable in the district would be amazing great thank you

241chair Andreessen yes Clark Wilhelm Garbers thank you I want to add my gratitude to all for being here and for your work and advocacy on behalf of our students and families as you were sharing I was reminded of the words of one of my favorite poets and I'll just read a line which is we see you we see ourselves and know that we must take the utmost care and kindness in all things and then Joy Harjo ends with we pray that it will be done in beauty and so just thank you for being here and sharing and my only question that I have is regarding the follow-up with the vote of non-coherence you know you named how there's then it asks of us as a district intentional follow-up and partnership on this work and you

242just named that it was the board who takes action I just want to clarify who's taking those steps you know and how what's the next steps in terms of the vote of non-coherence and our follow-up as a district I'm searching for that right now because I don't actually know so you mentioned that we have 60 days to put together or is it a response or an action plan that addresses the recommendations action plan I believe is that the work of the APAC team or in partnership with the district it's very vague it's very vague it's very big but I believe it's it's a plan that is come the district comes up with and then the board signs off right so I would be happy to work on that plan with you or whoever yes so

243let's work on a plan and then let's figure out if we need to bring it back to the board even as an FYI or email the board and then we'll we'll do what is required so we'll work together sounds good thank you thank you so with that I would look for a motion that the board accept the Hopkins American Indian Parent Advisory Committee vote of non-concurrence it does say in our agenda that it is a vote of concurrence so I just wanted to make sure that we are all aware that of what we are voting for which is to accept the vote of non-concurrence 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

244opposed the chair votes aye and the vote is accepted thank you so much for being here tonight thank you yeah thank you thank you thank you all and that takes us to our seas in first read I would like to invite assistant superintendent Lightfoot to the table and I did just want to share briefly the grounding questions that the monitoring committee goes through and it's a part of our equity impact analysis tool and so I want the board to keep them in mind in particular the the last two I think are pretty impactful when when considering policies so the first is who participated in completing this analysis what are the equity impacts of this decision who will benefit from and or be burdened by this decision and are there strategies to mitigate any unintended consequences

245of this decision just wanted us all to be grounded in those questions as we consider policy and I will turn it over to vice chair Roper good evening community tonight we will be reviewing the monitoring committee met last last Thursday another Thursday before and we went through the following policy which was district excuse me policy 752 for purchasing and I will let dr. Lightfoot go through the policy and discussion for board approval good evening good to be with you as was just mentioned the monitoring committee is looking at those policies that are in specific areas as part of our normal cycle of review as we are looking at those at this point in time we're scheduled to look at the 700 policies and those related to it those are the fiscal elements the operational elements

246that are part of the district's work in particular related to the information that came forward from the audit and what we looked toward was one of the first pieces of work to come forward is the purchasing policy that the district has to ensure number one that we were inclusive of all of the aspects of the work that's done in the business office related to the purchase and disposal of supplies materials and equipment and part of that work was working with our new controller to make sure that we were comprehensive that we were compliant and with state statute and making sure that we had those elements as part of the policy itself we did bring that back to the monitoring committee in addition to this I just want to make sure that the board knows that

247we are also looking at as as mentioned before when we were discussing the audit a part of the work that we're looking at is also with the policies that we have on consultants which are different than the purchasing of supplies equipment and material as we are looking at that policy we are looking at policies throughout the state of Minnesota and districts that have adopted those as well as national policies and bringing those back to the monitoring committee as part of that ongoing work in addition to that there are additional items that we are looking at specifically I just wanted to let the board know that one of the particular ones that we are continuing to work on as a monitoring committee is the playground policy we will be discussing that in more detail if you

248will recall you did have the play for all group bring specific information for the monitoring to committee related to directly in the way that we consider how we plan for and the process used in that planning we are working with that and those are some of the ongoing elements that are part of the committee work in the next couple weeks related to this series of policies in addition in front of you this evening with the purchasing policy in particular part of the work that was added really was focused on the procurement cards and looking at how through those procurement cards we want to make sure that we have very specific information and policy related to the use and to the education components that come with that when individuals have that within the district so with

249that I would be open for specific questions as they relate to policy 752. Thank you. Any questions? Chair Andreessen? Yes, Treasurer Heartland. I'm so sorry I'm having a very hard time actually pushing the correct buttons to open this window back up so I do have a question and need just a second to get along with technology here. Thank you for revisiting this policy it's very timely as we move in to making a variety of purchases as a district related to our referendum and also as we are looking at our own practices around contracts and consultants and the oversight of those and certainly everyone has heard some stories about you know procurement in the ways that those pieces can go astray in organizations and fully support adding some additional requirements and training around these p-cards do

250we know so we already did have training that was required and some approval that was required so I understand some of this have existed in practice and and not just in policy is this going to represent any sort of substantial burden to our staff who is already quite burdened? No I so appreciate that this really is the culmination of work that really helps it be efficient and explains the work that is necessary to be compliant what I truly believe here is helpful is this is the board's certification that this work is important to do so that when we do this we can go forward in our organization and say these are the requirements that are doing this in the best interest of the district and we can come back to policy if there are questions

251it really helps with the why and it helps with a particular if that makes sense. No that does help absolutely and think that it is the correct role of the board and that the board is gonna enthusiastically support being that backstop so thank you for that and also kind of your nod to the review of was it 354 that's related to consultants I appreciate that business services and the policy monitoring committee will look at that to make sure that it kind of aligns with wording in this policy for consistency and aligns like you said with the best practices across our state and nation and so will we hear more will that come before the board at some point here this spring? Yes. Wonderful thank you. Yes director Thompson. Thank you assistant superintendent I got a

252number of questions here I'll start smallest to largest so first one just sort of a cosmetic thing on the first page it has like the cross references and the adopted revised reviewed I feel like I usually see that section at the very bottom like at the very end was that like a cut-paste issue or something? I can maybe answer that so that is the end of the actual policy and then it goes to regulations so this is a district code so it's the regulations part of it it's not it's more the operational end of the policy we have some policies that we do okay thank you that yeah and then in the paragraph right above that where it says the district right above the cross references the district will purchase from a successful bidder or

253quota does that mean the successful bidder or quota is just simply the lowest price because it it doesn't necessarily say these are other things you'd take into consideration beyond just the price you know the reputation how long they've been in business that type of thing so is it for these things do we define the successful bidder as simply the lowest price bid? Excellent question and I think I'd go back to the language in the workshop that the board was presented with when it was the responsible remember that when site logic talked about the the bid coming in is that the work that is done is to ensure that it is the lowest responsible bid and what I really appreciate and I don't know if they drew it out well enough but in our conversation part

254of the work that's done especially at that level where it is beyond that $175,000 threshold when we're looking at that is the rubric that's used to evaluate the bid based on that specific information you know what quotes can you give us and what references do you give us about the work that has been done or the quality of the material so that there is that extra level to ensure that the responsible nature of it is also there. Does it say that here? It does not. Could that be an additional addition the board would wish to consider? We certainly could look at that type of language if there is a feeling that that would add value to the policy. Thank you for that and I just wanted to because this actually came up when I keep

255referencing the meetings that director Hyman and I have had so thank you for onboarding us you know and one of the things that we talked about when we met with Gino it was precisely this sort of question around values and of our district and how those figure into the assessment of the responsible the most responsible bid that there is both a fiduciary responsibility and obligation that we have and then what if not only their reputation with you know has that been evaluated are the references checking out have they consistently done good work those sorts of things and also have we done an evaluation of their values as a company do they align with us as as a school district so just say for instance I'm sure this doesn't happen but that there has been a

256company whose CEO has been very clear in deeply funding efforts against let's say queer students or queer people well that would probably not be a good values alignment you know so that was one of the questions we brought or I brought up in that conversation in the onboarding is how does a responsible bid evaluated because I would be interested in and I would wonder if there was a way for us to ensure that we're incorporating that robust evaluation ensuring that our funding and resources are in alignment with the values of our district thank you I'm wondering director Thompson we're on to this one now you can come back to my last question okay I'm sorry if I hijacked you I did my apologies that's a great point I don't know I will just officially say

257I apologize for speaking out of turn no that's okay just wondering was there a question or I mean I'm thinking we can go to director Thompson mine was just an affirmation that I would be interested in us exploring that more at the policy committee in view of both what director Thompson was naming and some of the questions that have been surfaced responding to vice superintendent Lightfoot's wonder to us as a board would be in we'd be interested in more language I personally would be more language around what does responsible director I don't want to take another question because I know director Thompson is waiting so I'm hearing that there is an appetite for us to return this to the monitoring committee to put in language around what does responsible mean to Hopkins is that correct

258and are you feeling vice chair Roper like that is something we could do yes given our timeline yes I think we can definitely get that reviewed okay great so now director Thompson thank you chair Andreessen I think it's great discussion it's a great point I think it'll be great to see that new language my final question then and I guess I maybe this would require an addition at the monitoring committee maybe not but it just in reading through the whole thing you know there's mentions of the district there's mentions of the school board you know for example in the case of identical high bids from two or more bidders the school board may add its direction utilize negotiate procurement methods nothing in here spells out to me very explicitly so this threshold requires school board

259approval so I'm wondering if that maybe could be worked in here because as I read it it never says that explicitly to me absolutely a hundred percent and I would say across the board no pun intended we got a laugh a little bit but with that a hundred percent that has been part of the question that we've been looking at and appreciate the guidance from the board at what level when we're thinking about these purchases of particular materials and equipment does the board feel that that level of obligation of funds within the district become critical for the board to review at that level so for example there are internal departmental components that are looked at and when these contracts for these particular items and purchases are brought in front of you in conversation with director

260wetter that threshold for what he uses in technology is a hundred thousand dollars if there is an investment in materials purchases goods within that area then that hundred thousand threshold is used can I say that that's used across the district with consistency I cannot but if that's guidance from this that the board says particularly this is our threshold we certainly will use that and go forward with that and that actually would be helpful guidance and bring clarity and understanding and would certainly fit well within the regulations and is there a best practice threshold across that we see across other districts I would say that there is a bit of a challenge there because if you'll see 752 is really our policy and we've worked off of the state statute there isn't a state statute element

261that says this is exactly what you need to do it's really more about the board's guidance and the board's adoption at a specific level that feels to reflect what the board wants to see and what the board feels that it benefits by in knowing what those purchases are the other thing that you do that most sports don't if you look at if you happen to watch board meetings you won't see them go through the treasurer's report with the acuity that you do that is a practice where you really are looking at those purchases so you do have that level of knowledge of what's being purchased far more readily than many other spaces ever do granted that is after a fact but it is a set of knowledge that you have that is not identical in

262many other spaces it really then becomes the question of how much do you want to know before those purchases are made and how much do you want to look at what that may be dependent on the level of investment the board is making for materials and goods and supplies I think that's interesting for the board to really think about especially since this board historically has had more of a governance role and we often delegate historically decisions like this to administration so I think that would be an interesting conversation to have and thank you for putting in that context of our excellent Treasurer's reports it is fairly unique across the state so I do appreciate that level of insight that we get at each board meeting yeah and again just just reiterating certainly that level of

263clarity would be helpful I think I'm inclined to suggest that we suggest a threshold say a hundred like the IT department has or whatever but do you have any just ballpark figure how many of those if we were to say that we would say no like we might get buried well that's like what percent of the contracts are below and are there 300 of these a year is there a hundred well here here is what I might I might suggest when we look at the policy itself is really as was mentioned those general guidance in the actual governance components the regulations the regulations can change without going through this big process beer policy on policies allows the administration to look at changing those as may be beneficial for you and the district what we may

264suggest is to set the threshold look at that threshold and then give you a lived experience of what that might be for three months and you can see over the course of those three months what this actually is it also gives us and the work that the business office is doing the opportunity to operationalize this to be intentional and more direct with what you are actually seeing and operationalize the process to me to align our practice with policy absolutely and even if we did it throughout the remainder of the school year knowing that you have a seven board meetings left throughout the school year taking us to June 30 and then reevaluating as we start the next that might be just a benchmark at least to Thank you and I don't want to forget about

265director Hyman do you still have a question no I don't have a question okay thanks chair Andreessen yes yes director Joe I guess one of the things I struggle with is that we're not in the trenches and we don't actually know like what you need and what the situation on the ground is and so what I worry about is you'll bring us something and we'll be like do you need it and it'll be like yes and I'll be like okay and then we just wasted you know to a week right I worry about that a little bit yeah that's important to consider too I may draw upon director wetter just because if the threshold at a hundred thousand has been lived maybe there could be some discussion around how that was arrived at so I

266make and this could also be discussion we have at the monitoring committee level I'm just looking at time and wondering if I think that in addition to adding language around what does responsible mean we could have a discussion about what does that like having a level what would that what could that look like and director Joe do you mean like that we have enough foresight to bring a contract let's say we have a two months coming up where there's just one board meeting then we have the foresight to put those to know that we need those contracts and put them on consent with enough time to bring that vendor on board and do the work is that what you mean well mostly I just mean that like you know if let's you know if there's

267a situation let's say we're buying a hundred thousand dollars worth of milk right and we're like okay here's a contract for milk for hundred thousand dollars like I mean what what is the board gonna you know are we gonna go over like oh we're gonna go you know audit your your your procurement process and I don't know it's just kind of seems like a lot of extra work that is not adding a lot of value so I don't know like I mean is there a way to like be like this is an extraordinary thing right it's different than milk right and it's like maybe I don't know let's say Ford NGL or let's say Oracle or let's like we can identify what's kind of extraordinary and maybe then you bring it and not like the

268routine stuff is that something that you could a couple things that immediately came to my mind around that are contracts that maybe are renewals for existing services of more of an ordinary nature I also think about maybe you know continuations art is a service that's existing that you're maybe moving to a different vendor there again those you start to very quickly go down into those details around that I think exactly to your toy you're mentioning there how do you differentiate those pieces I think some of that does become a challenge pretty quickly as I'm just trying to go through some of these in my head thinking about what that might look like like I mean there may be some pieces where it's renewals based or whether there's a an incumbency there but but yes I

269think that can get complex pretty quickly and I think you are director Zhao speaking to the fact that historically we have as a board Hopkins hasn't wanted to see these things we have delegated it to the staff who's who's doing it and so I I get your your point and that is it becoming two in the weeds to be approving everything that meets a certain threshold what I would say right now is the over 175,000 that requires formal bid when there is a formal bid you do get the formal contract placed I think the question is between that 25 and 175 thousand dollars because it is such a big spread when you think about that is there a threshold that you really would like to see within that so that you are aware of those

270larger purchases it raises a board's level of awareness I don't know the significance as you discussed how much that would require to raise that level but I would say in transparency to the community and the stewardship of dollars a hundred thousand dollar investment is worth some level of a review. Chair Andreessen? Yes. So would like Ford NGL reach that threshold because maybe eventually it would maybe one of the later phases cause more but like Ford NGL even if we have spent approximately we haven't quite hit that threshold I don't think but it's broken up such that each of these contracts are only at you know 48,000 or whatever the one for today was and so I guess my question is is it only monetary? Yeah. Is the requirement of what we want to see just

271a dollar limit? Mm-hmm and I think that's gonna be this this will help frame that conversation around consultants and professional services this really is about that supplies materials equipment and if we know what that framework looks like for supplies materials and equipment it helped give a good reference point when we're thinking about professional services and we're thinking about consultants what that might look like as well. Thank you for that context. In the interest of time I'm gonna recommend that this conversation move to the monitoring committee and then I'm wondering how the board would like to move forward do we want to approve this policy with the stated edits and then we would have the edits be in second read on consent or would you like this policy with this recommended changes from the monitoring committee

272to be a old business on the next board meeting? Chair Andreessen? Yes. The process doesn't necessarily matter to me but I would certainly be in favor of having a hundred thousand dollar threshold you know through or to June and just see how it goes and then we can repeal it or whatever if we need to so you know if that change is agreed to by the board then let's just put it on consent you know make the changes and put it on consent. So you're and so instead of sending it back to the monitoring committee you want to make it here tonight or? Oh no I didn't mean that like the monitoring committee could then you know type up that change and then put it on consent for next time. Okay so we could do

273with suggested edits so your suggested edit is that it's a hundred thousand instead of so we're still doing the 25 to a hundred thousand? Yes. So we're just reducing to 175 from 175 to 100? Yeah I mean I feel like we're adding language that says at a hundred thousand or more it requires board approval because I don't think it's that explicit anywhere in here. Temperature check because I don't know if I heard agreement on that around the board so is that is that something we want to agree to tonight as a board or do we want to send this conversation to the monitoring committee for further discussion? And there's also the clarification around the yes that we already agreed to yeah. If I could make a recommendation I think that we should take this back

274to the monitoring committee and then for like additional context like if director Thompson if you can maybe email some of your concerns or then we can review it in real time and then have a discussion and bring it to the board approval just so we can make sure that we have clarity around what we are reviewing and implementing in the new policy if that's okay with everyone so you have like additional questions to email it. And what we can do too is why don't we because I'm getting the sense that there's an appetite for further discussion let's just say that we're going to instead of having it be part of consent we'll have it be an item of old business old business at the new at the next board meeting so we can have a

275more robust discussion if the monitoring committee comes back and doesn't follow director Thompson's recommendation. Yes that sound good? Okay so I would look for oh well then that is a question for for you assistant superintendent Lifefoot since we only have this one policy are we would there need to be a motion since we're not approving yeah the policy in first read we're sending it back to the monitoring committee. Well I think what I might recommend is that you approve it in first read with the recommended changes to come before you as a live item and second read because the no policy gets approved until it goes through the two readings if it's an existing policy so you certainly will have the review and the opportunity and comment and then it gives you another opportunity to

276have this discussion in the language in front of you. Thank you so I would look for a motion that the board approves the above policy and first read and that further the board directs the administration to prepare the policy with suggested revisions for approval in a second reading as part of old business in the next meeting. So moved. I have a motion is there a second I think we can take a motion in a second if that's all right and any further discussion seeing none all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The chair votes aye and the policy is approved. Thank you very much. Thank you. And that takes us to our board member reports. I wanted to take an opportunity to read a statement as we are embarking on our Black

277Excellence Week. I want to thank Vice Chair Roper not only for the resolution that we passed but also for a reminder that we passed this resolution and so to mark that I've prepared a statement with the help of administration. So as Hopkins Public Schools marks Black Excellence Weeks during the final week of February we do so not only in the spirit of Black History Month but in direct affirmation of the brilliant scholars educators and leaders who shape our schools every single day. This week adopted by board resolution is a purposeful celebration one that showcases the academic artistic and leadership achievements of black students and staff through performances exhibitions and storytelling. It is a week rooted in community inviting families local organizations and black led initiatives to gather reflect and celebrate the cultural heritage that enriches

278all of Hopkins. Black Excellence Week is not just a moment it is a mirror held up to the real measurable progress our district is making in building an environment where black students and staff see themselves reflected valued and affirmed. Our CDF Freedom Schools program has grown from a strong foundation into one of our most impactful equity investments. Since launching in summer 2023 scholar enrollment has increased by 84% from 121 scholars to 223 in summer 2025 the program's largest enrollment to date. Staffing has more than doubled from 14 to 29 staff members while BIPOC staff representation consistently between 86 and 90 percent across all three years. Notably black male educator representation has grown from 8 to 16 staff members a meaningful investment in the role model relationships that support student identity development and belonging. The program

279also reflects our commitment to building the next generation of educators from within our own community through grow your own pathways junior servant leader interns and GYO apprentices we are cultivating an educator pipeline that looks like lives alongside and deeply understands the scholars it serves and I want to thank Paris Timmons for that excellent snapshot of what our Freedom Schools has grown into and this progress extends into our broader staffing picture in the 2017 2018 school year just 12% of Hopkins staff were educators of color today and the 2025 26 school year that number has risen to 26% more than doubling over eight years while there is still meaningful work ahead this trajectory of reflects a district that is moving with intention and I would be remiss if I didn't highlight our twice award-winning superintendent dr.

280Mary Perry read in this statement we are incredibly proud of your latest achievement the Minnesota Association of school administrators has named Hopkins superintendent dr. Rhoda Mary Perry read as the recipient of the 2026 K.E. Jacobs Memorial Award congratulations so black excellence weeks week reminds us that excellence is not something we wait to celebrate it is something we build conditions for invest in and witness every day in our classrooms our hallways in our community Hopkins Public Schools is proud to honor that excellence this week and every week during recent can I add one thing yes you mentioned freedom school and it reminds me that we do have a report from the National Children's Defense Fund and so I wanted to share with our community that of our freedom schools students who took pre and post tests

281in the during the this past summer program those students showed an average increase of seven months and instructional reading levels so freedom school has a tremendous impact on the learning and reading comprehension and fluency of our students and so that's something that we should be very proud of and for context to how long does freedom school run in the summer oh gosh it's six six or eight weeks yeah so seven months of growth in six days yes there's a really strong concentration of access to literature and reading practice that students engage in all summer wonderful thank you for adding that and with that I will pass it to vice-chair Roper thank you all for that incredible statement I really feel I feel inspired by the work that we are doing to ensure that you know

282black excellence excuse me is noted in our district and also the improvement of student outcomes that comes with the work of our brilliant educators and staff and so I did have like a very very small statement as well and I would just say that black excellence week in Hopkins is both cultural recognition and an institutional commitment it affirms that the history intellect creativity and leadership of black students educators staff and families are integral to our district and black excellence is not an exception here it lives in our classrooms our arts our athletics our student leadership and an everyday determination of young people who continue to rise and achieve this week gives us space to celebrate that reality openly and intentionally to center joy heritage and contribution in in meaningful ways at the same time celebration

283must be matched with responsibility honoring black excellence requires measurable progress it requires closing opportunity gaps strengthening academic outcomes expanding access to advanced coursework and ensuring every black student experiences belonging alongside high expectations and so black excellence week celebrates who we are accountability ensures we become who we say we want to be in that process and so thank you Hopkins for celebrating this week and I just want to say there is not enough words and I do not have enough time to name every black staff for a student in this district who's doing incredible work I do just have a few of them I would say like our sports teams are doing incredible and I would love to invite them to one of our board meetings to just celebrate all the achievements that they have like

284Julia Diggs who are on our girls basketball team who's making really big achievements Jaden Moore who just achieved or broke a record a Minnesota State record all-time career assist that was broken I believe during a YZ game that we went to that had over I think a thousand spectators and then also you know like the IB schools that dr. Nolan and principal Julius are leading us to black incredible men who are doing great work at our elementary in excuse me junior high schools and some of our Paris Miss Aria over at the high school and crystal that's over at North I can't thank you all enough for everything that you're doing if I missed anyone I'm very sorry really speaking is coming up so y'all do want to close out black history month with us

285please do attend the event and then also north has a black history month door decorating contest going on right now so if you have a chance to stop by go look at some of the doors that they have decorated for our students and then also tomorrow I am hosting like a virtual conversation with some other board members from different districts Erica Valiant from st. Paul school district and then Helen Bassett from Robinsdale we're just talking about the power of black parent engagement in public education just a general conversation and then I thought I won't see you all again till March 17th for our general board meeting so happy history women's history month in advance and what else and then I will be attending the Royal bash and then the children's breakfast that's coming up with

286children's first and I believe that's all I have tonight and thank you for dealing with my coffee and my raspy voice I appreciate this so much vice-chair Roper since you're shouting people out I'm pretty sure you want to shout out our director of special services Fonda Contreras who is in the audience yes Fonda thank you so much for all that you do in Paris who hosted a great educators of color event and we had a special guest dr. Brown was there tonight so he came and was celebrating with us so thank you dr. Brown for your work and I'm so sorry doctor excuse me director Contreras I appreciate your work so much and then I also got word that my kids are probably still up watching me right now Brooklyn and CJ I love you

287so much but please go to bed okay I know they they're they're starting to watch our school board meetings now I love you but please go to bed and that's it thank you thank you director Sha I'm Jimmy Joe I'm on this second year on the school board obviously I'm in the school board I have two kids that are in the Xing Xing Academy over here in Eisenhower the only thing I wanted to talk a little bit about is on the February 18th I went to the weighted grades parents forum and I think they're going to be presenting to the board so I won't you know steal their thunder too much but just wanted to let people know that I did have some I have some friends who are in admissions at one of the

288most selective colleges in Minnesota and just chatted with them a little bit about weighted grades and and how they view it and they told me that it's preferred to have weighted grades they whenever somebody with weighted grades came across their desk you know it was a it was a good thing because they could take that and run with it a little bit easier otherwise they had to do mental calculations and think about you know there wasn't a formal weight that they would do so they'd have to manually take a look and everything and so they said definitely preferred weighted grades and I just thought that you know I'm thinking a lot about it and we're gonna have a good discussion about it I think at the board table soon thank you and director Hyman if

289you want to go hi I'm Johanna Hyman this is my first year on the board I have two children in elementary school in this school district and it's a very late and I'm in the eastern time zone so it's almost midnight here and I will forego any further report tonight thank you I'm clerk Wilhelm Garvers and I parent a lovely four-year-old human and for my report I noted this on my social media which I'm sure everyone follows unbated breath but I did just name there which I want to affirm what has been said here that we are just we're in this amazing time of new beginnings both of the Lunar New Year which was at the same time as we started Ramadan and it's also the same time as the start of Lent in the

290Christian tradition which is a 40-day journey as well and then we're in the midst of Black History Month so just what beautiful diversity we have in our district of humans and culture and people and I'm honored and grateful to be a part of that just a couple notes I wanted to name in terms of the ongoing work I've been onboarding with all sorts of things as you heard me reference earlier including the committees and I'm on the monitoring committee as a part of that body of work and and just have also been grateful to be able to continue to connect with parents and community leaders and particularly and the ongoing support that parents and community members have been providing to vulnerable community members during the time of where there has been increased ice presence that

291is still active throughout our communities I also wanted to name that through our our teachers who just major shout out affirmation of those I didn't do the math I was gonna do it of six out of thirty that's a lot but just to say that through that I ended up getting connected and I'm gonna be meeting with some of our our former school board members and one of our final semifinalists is the daughter of both a Hopkins grad and then also former school board members so she's gonna meet with me and share about her experiences when she was on the board and I also wanted to give a shout out to the communication and advertising efforts which you brought up director Zhao earlier I have been receiving significant social media and other online advertising efforts

292that have encouraged me that I should enroll my child in Hopkins preschool and or in come to the different like kindergarten information session things I also got a postcard so I'm just saying that I plan to enroll my child in Hopkins Public Schools if there was any question about that but it is working your target demographics are accurate and then also just to say I am looking forward to being at the Hopkins Education Foundation Royal bash on March 14th and I would like to encourage all of my neighbors who are currently still watching along with your children I'm sure not in the same place because we're not neighbors in that sort of proximity to please ensure that they use the signup code so that we can sit at a table together with that I will

293conclude my report thank you hello I'm Kai Thompson third year on the school board three kids in the school district oldest one just got her driver's license last week so yeah happy to have another driver in the house my dried out contacts are telling me I will forego any more of a board report here thank you I'm good evening everybody I am Rachel Heartland currently serving as the treasurer of the board this is my fifth year on the board I have three lovely children in our district one of whom's birthday is tonight and so I will give a short I can't quite bring myself to give no board meeting but I'll keep it short I'm already talked about some work that the legislative action coalition is doing that is very important work and that is

294a committee that meets very often and has a lot of work to do and also really brings in our student board representatives and it's kind of an exciting collaboration with them on the citizens financial advisory committee is just beginning to or will just get to hear some initial information about budget forecasts and then that information will also come before the board because we are beginning that exciting time in our both for the board and for the district and community and the middle school robotics team went to the state competition they finished 17th or so I think that was the final number out of 56 and there was like literally two or three middle school teams there and so the rest of them were high school level teams so they were so small and they did

295such a good job up against a bunch of 16 and 17 year olds and were very proud of their robot whose name is Reginald and the high school robotics team is about to go to their first competition in Duluth and not this coming weekend but the next weekend the middle school musical is underway and performs at the end of March I don't know there's so many awesome things that we were doing all the time that that I and all of our board members participate in and I'm always I always love to hear what you guys do thank you for taking the extra time hi everyone again I'm Rhoda Mary Perry Reid superintendent and I've already provided my board report and I do have a wonderful daughter in eighth grade at West thank you everybody for

296keeping it short and sweet as we went around the table and I would look for a motion to adjourn some of I have a motion is there a second second the motion and a second any discussion see none all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed chair votes aye and this meeting of the Hopkins School Board is adjourned at 10 I can't see the number 25 p.m.