##VIDEO ID:_j7LB7LZ5Gg## e e e e we won't wait for him is ready let's go this regular meeting of the Independent School District 535 School Board is called to order at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday January 7th 2025 in room 137 of the Edison building the board acknowledges this site and all RPS sites are situated on the ancestral land of the Dakota people and we honor the Dakota Nations and the sacred land of all indigenous peoples present at this meeting are school board members superintendent Kent pel a non- voting ex officio member and assistant school board clerk Miss Lorie Sam Miss Sam would you please call the role here here here here here here here at this time we offer the opportunity to say the Pledge of Allegiance to flag of the United States of America the repu for it stands one nation under God indivisible liy and justice for all our first agenda item is the board member oath of office tonight directors elect Don Barlo Karen mclin and Stephanie white horn will take a ceremonial oath of office directors elect will you join me in front of the board table it is an honor that you were elected to guide the education of our community's children as you recite the O of office assum a tremend responsibility as a director of our school district the this puts you and the other members of our school in position of being morally and legally responsible for respons vision structure accountability and advocacy in providing Vision the board with extensive participation of the community envisions the community's educational future and then formulates the goals defines the outcomes and for the public school to achieve the vision the board establishes a structure and creates an environment designed to ensure all students the opportunity to attain their maximum potential through a sound organizational framework because it's a board who must be accountable to the community we must ensure a continuous assessment of student achievement in all conditions affecting the education of our children as board members we serve as education's key Advocate on behalf of students in our community schools to advance the vision for our schools further we must strive to work together with the superintendent and staff to leave the district toward fulfilling the vision we have created fostering Excellence for every student in the areas of academic skills and knowledge citizenship and personal development directors elect you have already signed the acceptance of office and oath of office and now you will publicly affirm your commitment to that o raise your right hand and please read your o iirm that I will support the Constitution of the United States of this state and that I will discharge Faithfully the duties of the office of school board member of Independent School District number 535 to the best of my judgment and ability welcome to the board director white and back to the board directors at glin and Barlo let's have a round of applause we'd also like to welcome the family members of our uh newly SW morning board members if you could stand if you're [Applause] [Music] here item 2.1 is approval of the agenda are there any changes to the agenda move approval second it has been moved and seconded to approve the agenda all those in favor say I I I any proposed the agenda has been approved the agenda and documents for this meeting are available online at Rochester schools.org assembly comments to the board it is important for the school board to hear from our stakeholders regarding issues that impact our students staff families and schools we welcome communication via email phone call at our community engagement listening sessions and hear during comments to the board the purpose of comments to the board is to give community members an opportunity to provide input directly to the board about issues that fall within our Authority the board and superintendent do not respond directly to the speaker's comments during the meeting but may follow up with the speaker if requested and appropriate persons who want to make comments to the board must fill out the online form by 5:00 pm on Monday before the school board meeting to sign up for a time slot the form is available on the RPS website and the assmbly main page policy 206 and procedure 206a set the time place and manner procedures and restrictions on comments to the board by participating in the public comment period each speaker agrees to abide by this public comment procedure speakers when your name is called please come to the table if you have written materials for the board please provide them to the assistant school board clerk prior to your remarks and she will distribute them to board members choose a microphone to speak into and be seated please direct your remarks to the school board you will have three minutes to speak and the timer will be displayed right in front of me please begin your remarks by stating her name our first Speaker tonight is Nicole Layman e e e e e e our next item on the agenda is under reorganization of the Schoolboard 4.1 election of officers Minnesota statute 123 b14 specifies that Schoolboard officers chair Clerk and Treasurer must be elected for a one-year T term as soon after January 1st as practicable in addition Schoolboard policy 202 Schoolboard officer specifies that a vice chair is also elected we will now take officer nominations nominations do not require a second if there is only one nomination for an office the individual will be elected by acclamation if there are multiple nominations for an office a vote is required nominations are now in order for the office of chair director Marvin I'd like to nominate Kathy Nathan as chair are there any other nominations for the office of chair are there any further nominations for the office of chair if there are no further nominations nominations for the office of chair are closed with only one nomination for the office of chair Kathy Nathan is elected by acclamation that was close [Applause] here okay nominations are now in order for the office of Vice chair director mclin I nominate Julie Workman for the office of Vice chair are there any other nominations for the office of Vice chair are there any further nominations for the office of Vice chair there are no further nominations nominations for the office of Vice chair are closed with only one nomination for the office of Vice chair Julie Workman is elected by acclamation [Applause] nominations are now in order for the office of clerk director Workman I nominate Jee Marvin are there any other nominations for the office of clerk are there any further nominations for the office of clerk if there are no further nominations nominations for the office of clerk are closed with only one nomination for the office of clerk Gene Marvin is elected Ed by acclamation that was a real nailbiter nominations are now in order for the office of Treasurer Jean Marvin I'd like to uh nominate uh Justin Cook are there any other nominations for the office of Treasurer are there any further nominations for the office of Treasurer if there are no further nominations nominations for the office office of Treasurer are closed and with only one nomination for the office of Treasurer Justin Cook is elected by [Applause] acclamation having completed the elections I will now read the resolution for Action be it resolved that the school board of Independent School District 535 elect Kathy Nathan as its chair for a term of one year effective upon election on January 7th 2025 and be it resolved that the school board of Independent School District 53 elect Julie Workman as its Vice chair for a term of one year effective upon election on January 7th 2025 and be it resolved that the school board of Independent School District elect Gene Marvin as its clerk for a term of one year effective upon election on January 7th 2025 and be it resolve that the school board of Independent School District 535 elect Justin Cook as its treasurer for a term of one year effective upon election on January 7th 2025 is there a motion to approve move approval is there a second second it has been moved and seconded if there is no further discussion I'll in favor of the resolution say I I opposed the resolution has been approved thank you board members our next item is our review of the code of ethics policy 209 policy 209 code of ethics requires that the School Board review the policy on an annual basis board members I um as is our usual practice I'm asking each of you to discuss one or two components of the ethics policy that you believe is important for your service on the school board also if you have any recommendations for the policy committee to consider in reviewing this policy at its next meeting please note them tonight in your discussion director Workman um yes some things these three tie together maybe it's four um under section two general statement of policy um letter a number three and four listen to the opinions and views of others including but not limited to other school board members Administration staff students and community members and vote my conscience after informed discussion unless I abstain because of a conflict of interest exists um in conjunction with section c number two recognize that the authority rests with the school board in legal session not with the individual members of the school board except authorized by law and section F7 guard the confidentiality of information that is protected under applicable law I think this is especially important for me because many times I'm asked by someone about how I'm going to vote on an issue and my standard response generally tends to be you will know when I make my vote and I say that because no decision is ever final until a full board meets on it and there's always a possibility that I will be presented with new information that I had not considered in my reasoning so that's why these are important for me anybody else director Marvin under general statement of policy number seven be primarily v u motivated by a desire to provide the best possible education for the students of my school district um and as board members we have to make a lot of decisions about a lot of things but um it's always always has to be students first and they have we have diverse student population with diverse needs but I think that that's the thing we have to continue to remind ourselves about it's what's going to be the best for the kids who are going to school here anybody else have any they want to select uh yeah there's one I'd like to maybe comment on and uh it deals with um as a member of the school board one of those I will type of statements and uh number um three in particular that says listen to the opinions and views of others including but not limit to other school board members Administration staff students and community members uh you know for me that is so important because it's easy to uh only listen to those who may appear to be the loudest uh or who may be from a uh position of placement in the community uh those who are uh leaders uh and not necessarily representative of those who are our students our stakeholders and those who actually uh can benefit uh from what we do and and so this simply reminds me of the importance of of why we're here what our primary focus should be Dr mcin um thinking about the year ahead uh one of the roles that I fulfill on this board is U on the legislative committee and also thinking through the fact that we have some budget decisions that are being made at the board table tonight and also reflecting on the fact that we recently passed important referendum for the district that I focus on um the policy item D2 two and four I'm sorry two and five attempt to obtain adequate financial support for the district's school districts programs I think that's something that the legislative committee is in the process of working towards and also assume the responsibility for prudent fiscal management of the School District budget I see that as applicable to our decision tonight about the balance budget for um process and also um using the referendum dollars wisely so I look forward to doing that this year Dr Cook um I um I first Echo director Marvin's um highlighting of the uh commitment to Center students and all decisions that are made and and also to follow on with that um to recognize that each of us as board members are doing that and that it is often possible to um uh have a Earnest disagreement um or have a a difference in point of view that is that are both centered on what is best for students and I and I I really do um give everyone here the benefit of the doubt that that is exactly where uh you're coming from and I look forward to um instances where we can um further our own understandings by finding different ways of of going about um centering students and coming up with different um differences of of what is what is the best path forward um and along those lines um I also uh resonate with the A9 point the commitment to recognize the need to represent all children all parents and Guardians and all community members um all of us are informed by our particular set of life um experiences and the communities that we've come from and uh and I think do a good job collectively of um letting those different perspectives kind of echo in this space um but I think in addition to that we all individually have the responsibility to look out for the entire system and all students collectively and recognize that um you know while my kids attend three particular schools in the district right now um I'm not here to just represent those three schools or just the kids that are in the programs like mine are or something like that so um yeah that's that's those are the points that resonate with me director white hor just looked over I didn't get my hand all the way up um but I would say under I I do agree with Point s and nine um in a which is what uh director cook just spoke on um the need to represent all of our children parents and Guardians and community members um I just think it's very important that we have a voice for some of the people that are not sitting here on the board uh which as a new member I hope to be able to provide some of that um also as a new member to inform myself about the proper duties and functions as a school member which is A8 um so that I can be effective in this role um as I continue on this journey and then C1 to respect the rights of others to have an Express opinions um as I think has been mirrored here today that we want to have effective discussion um I think it's important that everybody does not think the same so that we're able to come to some common grounds um and I think that everybody's voice has value and everybody's opinion has value as we all have our separate lenses through which we're viewing the world so hopefully we're able to create policies and Implement things that um come to a consensus amongst amongst M well for me I um and I think other board members count are so fortunate that we have a good working relationship with the superintendent but it's always good to remember before which is recognized that my responsibility exercise through the actions of the school board as a whole is to see that the schools are properly run not to run them myself um and uh combined with that is E4 participate in school Schoolboard action after considering the recommendation of the superintendent and only after the superintendent has furnished adequate information supporting the recommendation I think as a board we have done a a much better job in the past few years asking and being clear to the superintendent about the information that we would like him to provide to us before we make a decision and he and the cabinet and staff have been good uh very good at providing us the information that we need and I look forward to those kinds of in-depth information that leads to our decision- making continuing anything else board members on the code of ethics great item 4.3 is Schoolboard committee assignments uh policy 213 Schoolboard committees identifies the standing committees of the school board and policy 213 1R Community advisory committees and liaison organizations identifies the community advisory committees and liaison organizations that school board members serve on some of these committees meet on a calendar year schedule and some meet on a school year schedule Schoolboard committee assignments are reviewed twice a year once in January following the reorganization of the school board and once in the summer prior to the beginning of the school year the recommendations in the agenda item designate the continuing assignments and term dates for board members so for the 20242 school year for Community engagement uh director Barlo and director Marvin will continue on the community engagement committee and director whorn will join them for the legislative committee director mclin and director Workman will continue on the legislative committee and director cook will join them on the policy committee Vice chair Workman chair Nathan and uh clerk Marvin will uh consist of the policy committee for the advisory and Community committees um director white whorn will join director Barlo on the parent family engagement committee the community curriculum and instruction advisory committee will be director Marvin and director mclin the reconsideration committee will be director cook the insurance trust committee director mclin the Rochester Public School Foundation liaison will be director cook student school board will be director Marvin the community budget advisory committee will be director cook and director mclin and the Minnesota State High School league will be director Barlo whose term will expire July 31st of 2025 B Ms delegate assembly Representatives will be director Workman and director mclin the association of metropolitan school districts um are virtual attendance by the chair and any other board members May attend those Board of director meetings meet and confer will be the board chair and the executive team is the board chair and vice chair and superintendent so thank you for volunteering um for continuing your service or joining service on the Committees director Workman yes um one additional fact I'd like to mention the msba delegate assembly is a two-year term and Karen and I just finished our second year so there will be um nominations you can self-nominate as well I believe it's in September and if there are more candidates who want to serve from the area seats that are available then we have an election otherwise it's kind of like what we did tonight and will the change in the bylaws for the msba change the number of yes um that will change and there is a session at the ition but will the number that we can send no ours we're we're fine for our we stay for two y okay I do believe though that they don't want more than three board members from the same board okay um item 4.4 is the review of the school district mission statement policy 104 School District mission statement requires the school board will review the school district's Mission Vision and goals annually especially when members of the school board change our mission the Rochester Public School's mission is to inspire Challenge and Empower all students with the knowledge and skills required to reach their full potential to contribute to Future generations and to become involved members of a global Community you will see that we have an agenda item later tonight to kick off an initiative to update our Mission Vision Values and brand in 2025 so this might be the last time we read this at the kickoff meeting in January the goals of Rochester Public Schools are reflected in the strateg strategic plan the RPS strategic plan has 15 essential objectives Each of which is a building block of the worldclass school system we are creating for those of you in the room or watching online who might not have seen them these building blocks are prominently displayed at the back of the boardroom and that same graphic is available in the agenda item tonight board members all of the um um objectives are in our agenda item and for the purpose of discussion of um this item I'm going to ask if anybody has any comments or any of the Strategic plan initiatives that they would like to highlight we had a somewhat significant discussion of these and we talked about the ABCD because we planned when some of these key initiatives would be coming back to the board we have an agenda item later tonight on the balanced budget model that is one of the building blocks of um the Strategic plan but if anybody has any um observations or comments to make regarding our mission statement or goals or strategic plan now is the time to make them no well I think that that's good I think part of it is that we work the Strategic plan in almost every meeting at multiple agenda items and if you know anything about our calendar for 2025 starting in the latter half of 2025 we're going to be starting a process to talk about the next three-year uh strategic plan um with significant Community feedback so stay tuned for that item 5.1 is information and Outreach our board member committee updates does any board member have updates from their committees that they would like to share director Marvin yes from our uh Rochester student School Board uh Julia bkey uh Banky sorry a student is here to give a brief update about what our high school students are working on they have been uh they represent the three General uh high schools in Rochester and Julia is one of the leaders all right hi my name is Julia bkey and I'm the president of the Mayo student School Board the Citywide student school board made a change this year in what the schools will be responsible that's like Century Jam um in mayo each school will meet and share what's happening at their schools with each other and then with the superintendent which will be at our monthly Citywide meetings on top of that each School meets outside of the Citywide student Schoolboard meeting including the rest of their school so just at their school recently we were asked to collect data on the cell phone policies at our school some of the formatting ways that we did it were interviews forms just going to people and talking to them at Mayo we found that in-person interviews were best because it's easier to talk to another human than it is to talk to a computer um a lot of that was we've seen the past with like Panorama surveys and the things we've sent out that not all people are comfortable um submitting data that they maybe don't necessarily want their name to so that's why we went with the interview but with the interviews we were able to get more the anecdotal information and like the fors were more specific questions um some of the questions for at least our interview and what we talked about the school were meeting were what are the pros of the cell phone policy what are the effects on you of the cell phone policy and would you change or get rid of the cell phone policy um the three high schools came together at our last meeting and we talked about the pros and cons the pros being no phones equals less distractions during class it's easier to engage in lessons and with each other focusing on homework in class you have less of it outside and then it helps students to get less stress and rely Less on checking messages no but there are some cons to this because no phones can create anxious feelings about not being able to communicate with like your family or friends or fear of missing important news messages information you can't listen to music during work time and makes some tasks harder to do some of those tasks are language barriers or 504 things um overall the most said comment that I heard and from the other schools was that cell phones should be able to be used during like free time or work time because there are some days in class where we're all sitting there and we have all of our work turned in but because we can't go on our phones you're just sitting there and doing nothing because you're not always going to want to talk to other people but in conclusion as I said most people said they wouldn't get rid of the cell phone policy policy which is aaz Major plus they would just change it there are some things we would like to do the next time we do an Outreach like this we would like to reach out further more people a lot of our things were just going into like cafeterias or sending out those forms which only branches out to like people we know people we like go and talk to and we would like to reach that out more um that is all I have for you tonight thank you thank you board members any other reports from well I will add that I attended the cape um Family engagement uh graduation at Overland today and uh was able to see um the end of the um Workshop session and was able to see the um the relationship ship that have been developed among um the participants in Cape as well as our um our trainers um Jared grayer the principal and uh Brianna blly and Michelle Severson and Jennifer Spiner craigy um it was it was exactly board members I hope you all have the opportunity to go see them in action because it's exactly what we've been hearing about about family engagement what the potential for the cape program can be um they were all excited they wanted to go talk to people about getting more people to enroll they wanted everybody to know that this was a great opportunity and that they had learned so much and I think we found some ambassadors uh through that program who are going to be able to spread the word so um that's just a little report from the field that um Cape is doing what we are hearing that is doing and um there's six I think I heard that there's six uh new cohort starting in the spring at six buildings so we'll have a chance to to see what they're doing in the spring director Workman um yes as the board is aware the legislative committee met relatively recently and you approved a resolution for us to take to the delegate assembly which Karen and I did um since then we've been putting together a priorities list and we'll be working together with superintendent pel and whatever your title is Mr Carlson on on cementing those and we will have those to you for review on Friday uh in order to have some Advanced thought before the study session next Tuesday any other comments board members director white horn I just want to uh publicly thank everybody for their support that um I was able to get to this space tonight thank you to all of my friends and family that came out to support me tonight night and the people viewing online um I just really hope to be able to be effective in this position um I do hope to you know continue to learn and and receive education um I I did receive an acceptance letter through the uh School Board Partners which is a National Organization to be part of their seventh cohart um so hopefully I'll be able to receive more information and mentorship through that program as well so that I can bring some of those things back to our board to make us more effective I think everyone here is doing a wonderful job I look forward to working with everyone here um and I just hope to be able to be a little addition little little [Applause] spice thank you we're awfully glad you're here too our next uh item is our consent agenda items 6.1 through 6.8 would any board member like any item removed from the consent agenda for separate consideration director mclin I would like to remove item 6.4 for separate consideration with is there a mo um is there a motion to approve the consent agenda with the exception of item 6.4 so move second it has been moved and seconded to approve the consent agenda with the exception of item 6.4 all those in favor say I I any opposed the consent agenda of 6.1 through3 and 6.5 through 8 have been approved sorry no comments for the audience we'll get to that in just a minute is that one we'll get to it in just a minute we will now take up item 6.4 approval of report to mde on removal of book from elementary school media center director mclin I would like to speak briefly on this agenda item and it's the reason that I asked for it to be removed and considered SE Seely from the consent agenda um is it proper for me to give my whole conversation now or yes okay okay um I very much recognize in the um agenda item and attachments that are attached in our assembly that under policy 66.5 that superintendent pel's decision about removal of this book from the elementary school media center is a final decision with no opport Unity to appeal and the decision for the board tonight is simply to um authorize the superintendent to submit a report on the challenge book The Rainbow parade to the Department of Education um I do want to speak on this issue because I I'm concerned that I I recognize superintendent's decision and I and I very much respect the work that he does for for the district but I worry at this point on this particular item that this is a very slippery slope that we might be going down by removing this book from the Elementary media center absolutely um I look at this as a couple different ways one of them is I when I started looking at this agenda item I'm concerned to some degree about the transparency of this decision that um that it's on the consent agenda until we just removed it and I would I view that as semi-transparent and the reason I say it that way is that we recently approved policy 66.5 at the board meeting on December 3rd of 2024 so it was about a month ago so a recent a recent policy approval that was a new policy and I went back reviewed the board action at that time and it struck me that in giving a little bit of History here in this policy was first presented to the board in September and one of my board colleagues raised some concerns and some questions about the policy in September and it came back to the board on the consent a I'm no I'm sorry on the on the regular agenda on December 3D and one of the questions that my board colleague raised was about transparency of any decisions regarding removal of Library materials from the school libraries and the answer was that that it is transparent because the policy provides again what we're doing tonight a report to the commissioner has been added to include Schoolboard action prior to submitting a report to the commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Education so that reporting requirement for the school board is the answer to the concern about transparency and I re I see that as semi-transparent but not fully transparent and it further concerned me then that tonight the action is on the consent agenda that could just be approved without further discussion that we're having now and that's why I asked to remove it for discussion here tonight um that I also uh reviewed the policy that was passed in December on December 3rd 66.5 and in Reading Dr pel's memo supporting his decision and that policy together I view it as in my mind that that policy provided him with the legal protection under that policy either way he decided about removing this book or not removing the book I think the policy sufficiently supported either decision that he was uh presented with I also note that I I struggled a little bit when I was looking at this yesterday about the fact that that policy was the 66.5 was not in place at the time of the original request to remove the book um I'm not sure where I come down on that completely but just note that um that was another concern of mine that the request to remove predated the policy um Dr pel memorandum also addresses a case that has proceeded through the Minnesota courts and I I should for those of you who don't know my background I am an attorney and I practiced in the criminal law area for many years so knew how to find that case and actually knew about it but hadn't read it recently so I did um and what I want people to know about that decision um is number one it's a court of appeals case and very interestingly if any attorneys are listening um it was there's a three member panel of the court of appeals it's very rare to have a published opinion from the court of appeals it's even more rare to have a court of appeals decision that has the three panel members of the judges at the court of appeals each making a different decision about the issue that was presented to them there was a um controlling opinion written by one of the Jud judges there was a um consenting opinion by another judge and then a dissenting opinion by a third judge they all had different reasons for what they decided but it was very interesting um from an attorney perspective that it's very rare to see something like that and what it indicates to me as an attorney is that there was no consensus about that decision and how to view the issues that were presented there so I wanted to point that out I also did want to point out that the court of appeals issued a decision in February of 2024 and that decision has actually been appealed to the Minnesota Supreme Court and there were oral arguments on that case in October October 8th and if anyone is super interested in this topic um they are available on the court website to listen to that oral argument but my point of all of this is that I view this as the the Dr pel references the you know basic concept of um what is um essentially um a case of indecent exposure but I view it as not really settled law at this time because the Supreme Court has not made a decision based on those oral arguments in October I also point this out because in looking at the so um the removal of the book I actually have not I don't have a copy of the book so I did find references to it online and looked at some of the pages that I believe that Dr pel was concerned about and what I want others to know is that I really had to look at those pictures and study them and study those photos to recognize the connection not only of that Minnesota case but also to understand what the concern was about um in in reading his memo and understanding what the concern was about that particular book and the um I refer to them as photos but they're really illustrations because it's essentially I it's a cartoon type of illustration um and what I point out in reference to the Minnesota case of Expo um indecent exposure that that case represents is it the connection to the children's book I see in combining those two things and it's not a huge point of his memo but I think it's worth discussing is it was really hard for me to see which photo even connected to that case and I would ask the questions of looking at the illustration it very well could be a transwoman in that um what it would be um viewed as exposing body parts or it could be a drag queen we don't know who that is and I I think that that plays some role in how this could be analyzed here so I view particularly the reference to that Minnesota case as very factually different from from the um the concerning cont content and visual um essentially public nudity in the REM uh decision to remove the book um in addition I also very much appreciate the letter from oh first of all let me start here um in addition to Dr pel's memorandum we also have correspondents from Tammy vanore who is the licensed media specialist at Franklin monasi I thank her and her committee for the work that was put into getting us to um tonight we also um more recently received a letter from the Rochester Public Library um signed by the library director the deputy director and head of Youth Services I appreciate their input here and their um concern about the decision that was made and there was one point I wanted to reference um what the Rochester Public Library letter says quote other children's titles contain similar innocent depictions of nudity and are considered Classics in children's literature um that statement reminded me of um my childhood um in reading um the Marie Sendak book of I won't give the name because I don't necessarily want people to connect it to um removing books from schools but it represents a child falling into I think it was a cup of soup um and I think that that's what's referenced here when we talk about um classic um children's literature that has similar innocent depictions of nudity um in a similar context um finally referencing the um information from our licensed media Specialists one of the things that occurred to me in thinking about this issue is that I fully believe and strongly believe that it's important to rely on the expertise of people who are knowledgeable in their areas of expertise I equate it to um following the science I think we also need to follow the expertise that we have here in our district and I think I'd feel differently about that if the recommendation of the committee had not been a nine to1 recommendation to keep the book in the library um so finally what I'm asking the board to consider here in the context of my comments tonight is one potentially a consideration of mod modifying the policy 66.5 or the procedure that I don't believe has been issued yet to very specifically um I think one modification we could make that I think would help with the transparency issue is to make it clear in the policy or procedure or both that any board action that needs to be taken should be on the board action portion of the board agenda and not on the consent agenda I think if we make that explicit it would be more transparent and uh more people could be aware of the fact that this is an issue that potentially could come up again um and then I would uh simply ask based on what I've reviewed um and I understand the decision is final but would ask superintendent to pel to at least uh consider reconsidering his decision on this issue order please thank you board member I'm sorry no comments to the audience um board members any other comments director uh director mclin I really appreciate your comments and I I think as a as a board that's uh part of our governance role is to really carefully consider the implications of policies that we approve um and um I I I think uh this particular policy is one that um that we ought to pay some attention to um in the context of these outcomes but I uh like you I certainly don't dispute that that policy hasn't been carefully considered already by this board is now effective and has been followed in this instance Dr Marvin I'm really turn about this one generally speaking I think it's dangerous to start removing books or Banning them um you know it's difficult for for one group of people people can absolutely decide what their own children can can read and be exposed to but I have a real problem with them making that decision for everybody's children that said uh the rationale that the superintendent used for this book was not that it was about an lgbtq parade um there's another book about an lgbtq parade with the same title the rainbow parade same artist different author um and I I think that our kids need to have books in their buildings have easy access to books in their buildings that reflect who they are how they live what they believe I think that's healthy the issue with this one was not the lgbtq thing but it was and as uh director MCL mclin said it was kind of cartoon like pictures I mean it wasn't graphic but there were a couple of them that showed new he had to look hard sort of to see what that was about but it was nudity I didn't find it offensive but it was there and I I think it was sort of gratuitous that the message about celebrating who one is celebrating that Community um would have been equally powerful without those depictions uh the other book as far as I know the rainbow parade Again by a different author um didn't have any nudity and so that was tough I guess the last thing is that if this were a really excellent work of literature if it were The Grapes of Wrath or something by Tony Morrison or by Louise erdrich I would say absolutely it's there's going to be tough material there but these are important seminal works that we need to keep and make sure that our kids have access to them this was a cute book but with the plethora of other books about uh gay rights and celebrating um lgbtq I'm not sure that this one is in particular is Meaningful enough that we have to really really fight for it there is there coms there is order please no order please there are no comments from the audience ma'am ma'am there are no comments ma'am there are no comments from the audience and what I was going to say is that my concern is that it could be president setting so thanks there are no comments from the audience if you if you continue to comment you'll be removed from the boardroom ma'am if you continue to comment you'll be removed from the boardroom board members are there any other comments are there any other comments board members director Barlo director barin uh yes I just wanted to um uh first of all thank the um those who have written to the school board to express and share uh their viewpoints and thoughts um I was able to learn some things I uh was not previously aware of and um uh uh as I read through the letter that uh the superintendent is sending uh to the Minnesota Department of Education I also realized that this was not if you will his opinion but a decision based on a legal counsel that he sought uh that provided this specific Direction and uh so I further understand that that while M some of us may not fully agree or um uh process completely uh where people may be I I do fully recognize the value of everyone having a a place and my final Point regarding place is this uh I to this day continue to believe that it is the role of parents to inform uh set the foundation for uh identity uh uh purpose value sense and self uh uh I didn't send my kids to the public schools to have them obtain that from the schools had that occurred they'd have no sense of who they what they could be and and so I encourage um uh families uh organizations to um Avail yourself to to do what Public Schools can't necessarily do Public Schools cannot do everything that everyone wants public schools to do and just just based on the the the uh content of the letter uh I I could agree with director mlin uh what I have preferred to have had an opportunity to uh consider this outside the consent agenda probably so uh and that's why she referenced uh maybe uh Jus in our policy that uh allows that to occur I would be in full support of that uh I uh know we will in a moment vote on uh this um uh item that's been pulled off but uh um thank you for your willingness uh director mlin to to call it out and I think as director whorn suggested allow us to learn to work together and collaborate uh toward what we believe to be what is best for uh Rochester Public Schools director superintendent thank you um I I think it's only appropriate that I add a few comments here um and I appreciate I appreciate board members raising all of these uh concerns including the people who've emailed on both sides of this issue this is a very very difficult personal and professional decision professionally because I believe in our media centers it's one reason why I proposed and this board approved including media Specialists which many districts long ago I think uh in a very short-sighted action cut for financial reasons be included in our referendum and I learned learned from and spent a lot of time with our media Specialists and they landed in a different place it's personally difficult because as I mentioned in my memo to you I grew up the son of a gay father when being gay was something you kept hidden and in fact we kept it hidden from my younger sister there was so much shame I'm pleased to say eventually he married his husband and they were together for 20 years before he passed away but I am unequivocally supportive and there will be no slippery slope of backtracking on support for books that celebrate the lived experience of lgbtq students and families since I've been in this District we have started and supported an lgbtq employee Resource Group we have started student resource groups we have been the leader in the state of Minnesota on transgender procedures and support in other areas of equity it was our district that was last week subject to a complaint to the US Department of Education for our support of racial equity and growing staff of color and supporting staff of color who are currently in our system and so I want to be completely clear that this book is about the depiction of nudity and for people who are not clear what this nudity is it is the depiction of what is appeared to be female breasts in the front and a female backside and with all respect Dr mclin while I take your point about that maybe in this depiction of a pride parade it was someone who was transgender we're talking about first graders and kindergarteners here it looks like a female body were someone in this boardroom right now to take their clothes off and depict themselves like in that book at minimum the chair would recess the meeting and I think we all know that if the person refused to put their clothes on we'd probably adjourn the meeting and that ultimately the police could be called because with respect to Dr mlin it does remain illegal in our state at president though you're correct that that is like our title n9ine work on transgender issues subject to Court decisions and we will obey those Court decisions this is not primarily though an issue of legal uh compliance it's one about developmental appropriateness we are talking about 5-year-olds and six-year olds and seven-year olds and this is not hypothetical it was a first grader who brought the book Home and these are situations in which for a first grader to understand when public nudity isn't is not appropriate is something that requires explanation and discussion but the issue is and I spent a lot of time with our media Specialists on this kids who are required and I want them to be required to go to our libraries our media center ERS they pull books unsupervised and so they pull the books and they should and so while I appreciate that in miss van Moore's book she said some books are not for everyone you have to actually say the the converse some books are not for certain students but when they're on the open shelf of a media center there's no one not only there to say that's a good fit for you or it's not there's no one there to read it with the kid there's no one there to help them process it to make sense of it to answer their questions that's what happens in our classrooms that's not what happens with self-guided reading in our media centers and so for me the developmental appropriateness is can the student understand and access the material with in the in the realistic setting in which they will encounter it and this realistic setting was a student alone without guidance in a media center without someone to talk it through with and so it is deeply related to the specific content around the physical depiction of nudity and the setting in which that was happening what did not come to me was could a teacher read this book in a setting where they could be discussing it with kids that was not at hand what did not come to me was would this book be appropriate for middle school or high school students that was not at hand it was the specific question of Open Access on a media center where students encounter it without direction or guidance um again the most important reason I wanted to jump in is you can passionately disagree with this but I have abs Not only would I have no intention I would consider it deeply problematic were this a slippery slope in the way that I understand people may be concerned about whether it applies to books in general but in particular regarding lgbtq issues here and I wanted to be unequivocal this is not any hesitance on my part that we need to celebrate and affirm those students uh and their families who were privileged to educate ma'am we're going to have to have you removed from the room if you continue to comment out loud so I'm going to make some comments um I think ma'am I think that the the question that I have on this issue and I support as the superintendent has stated the materials the resources the programs the organizations that the district has done to support the lgbtq community are there other resources currently available in our libraries on the same subject of the book and and I guess before I ask that question I just want to make clear that my understanding is that the challenge to the book was not a challenge on the lgbtq content or the parade content it was specifically the nudity in the book I I think it's director mlof very perceptively pointed out this happened before the board updated its policy and um and so like happens in life this happened and we had to respond we are going to be in a much better place the next times this happened because this policy is there perhaps including some revisions like what you've suggested tonight um and so the process was not as clearly in place as it would be going forward and so I am not uh right now privy to the specific concerns Beyond and objections of the content I uh very carefully the thing too that's important to understand is this book is like where's Waldo it's intended to be to guiding the kids through discovering many things in the pictures and it's brilliant because of that and so the whole point is look what I found in the book which is great if you read read these kind of books with little kids it's why it's uh such an effective reading technique um there are other things in that book that people might object to um there are two guys in leather I did not include that in my memo that is a fashion choice not a question of something that is a misdemeanor um there is a silence equals Death sign that hearkens back to the early days of AIDS activism and the former High School social studies teacher in me was thinking God would kids know the history of what those activists did to change our government policies around HIV and AIDS that also would be need explanation but that was not a matter of concern either and certainly the depiction of a a child going to a pride parade with their parents was not only of no concern to me it was very positive it was simply looking at the depiction of uh nudity in the book and yes you can say that's prudish and P puant but as the leader of a public school district that serves an extraordinary diversity of families my job is to both look at uh what is developmentally appropriate for kids at different points in their development which I do have expert expertise and a doctorate in actually while I respect media specialist expertise I bring uh both academic and professional expertise to that discussion as well and to a lesser extent the fact that it remains illegal in Minnesota some of us might think that should change that may change that's still the law and what about resources that are available in our libr on the tops in fact in the Franklin Library Tam vanmore is a superb media specialist she has other resources in that Library I encourage her and our other media Specialists to continue expanding resources that depict lgbtq families and students in positive terms I know they exist now I haven't looked at them all and I certainly would support the expansion of those kinds of materials and I know that in a lot of the uh Communications that we've had uh the phrase was used that you know not all books are for all students but there are members of our community who would find the rainbow parade book a good resource for their own family situation or they do want to educate their child using this resource we already own the book you've asked for it to be removed from the open shelves what are the other options for that resource to be available should it be requested by parent guardians or teachers when I recent went out recently went out and met with Tammy and principal Sam Pearson at Franklin um we were not at the point of being able to think about that she feels this is she would make a different decision if she was in my shoes um we agreed that she was going to write her statement which is uh superbly done I was going to write mine make the decision the board will make a decision about transmitting that I think the decis I certainly did not order disposal of the book or anything of that sort I would personally be supportive of that I will say that as she talked me through and this happened in our meeting this summer with media Specialists running a media center with a bunch of little kids in it is a complex task there is not to my understanding a clear process right now through which we have controlled access to materials um which is is not easy to do and potentially problematic you don't want like the band books section in the Elementary media you know Center um so we couldn't quite find that but I would C I think it's I said in my memo I would have no concerns reading this book to my own kids and um I see why it's been highly reviewed I would be very supportive of alternative ways to do it that are not that five or six year old finding the book alone you know independently in a media center with no adult guidance or explanation but but in our discussions to date we really were focused on the difficult decision which as I know you know Madam chair I've struggled with a lot um that we are faced with now I would welcome the chance and I would certainly probably be turning to our chief academic officer Mona Perkins and her team to work with media Specialists to see is there some other way that we can uh make resources available but I I understand that that's that's that's not a simple thing to consider I've learned that actually in talking with our media Specialists board members any other comments before we move to the actual resolution so a reminder the resolution reads be it resolved School Board of Independent School District 535 does hereby authorize the superintendent to submit a report on the challenge to the book The Rainbow parade and the superintendent's decision to remove the book from the shelves of elementary school media centers in RPS to the Minnesota Department of Education um D before I asked for a motion in second director Marvin asked that I uh modify the resolution to say um to submit a report on the challenge to the book The Rainbow parade by Emily neelsen to make clear that it is that book because there are other books of that title called the rainbow parade right yes so do we have elementary kids right yeah do we have a motion so move do we have a second second it has been moved and seconded any further discussion director Marin just to clarify and Dr pel I I appreciate your comment that this book is not being banned I think that in almost all instances is really dangerous um I I think it's available at the public library I I think it's smart for us to uh determine a way that parents can have easy access to this book if they so and other books if they so choose for their children um but I think at this point just removing it from um elementary schools and perhaps replacing it with the other uh the rainbow parade book U by what's his name Shane uh Jordan would make sense um so I would be in favor of that Dr White hornn um just for my own clarification so so I understand um so this is to remove the book just from the ele schools so this book could still be in the middle schools or so forth we're just saying that the due to the depiction of the pictures in the book that we just don't want a 5-year-old pulling it off the shelf but it will still be available through the district and it could possibly still be available in the middle school or other is that what we're saying or we uh yeah direct white thank you for that question I was very deliberate in the language that I use which is the open shelves of an Elementary media center and I intentionally did not say any other either level of school it's a book for little kids so I don't know how much middle school or high school kids but maybe and I also did not say other settings in an elementary school in which there could be guidance and uh support for what's there or someone knows that a particular parent has said I don't want my kid to encounter or something now we have we don't have a policy of saying parents can opt out of everything we do have a very clear policy that says parents can request that their children be Exempted from certain content they consider controversial and so we would adhere to existing policies what I learned about the way our media centers work is until the kid brings the book up to check it out that's the moment when you the the whether it's the education support professional or the media specialist That's when they scan the book and that's when they would see that a parent has raised a concern but not when the kid picks picks it up so yes that's a longw way of saying it's very limited to it's not on the open shelves other possibilities uh I would certainly be um very open to and I frankly would expect to leave that to our professionals I feel my job is to respond to this complaint that came from a parent and do what we've done and then I would trust them to find good solutions that adhere to this direction but that also make uh great resources available to our kids any other comments hearing none all those in favor of the resolution say I I I all those opposed resolution passes the next item of our agenda is item 7.1 Focus topic redefining RPS key initiative this is an information item superintendent pel thank you chair Nathan I want to invite um Amy Ike who's our executive director of Community Education and Partnerships and I believe mams Su kuten who is our director of communications just stepped out but she has returning now yes you um as chair Nathan mentioned when the school board reviewed our mission statement we have not Revisited that mission statement for a fairly extended period of time it sits on the back wall there and many of us look up at it when I got to Rochester in 2021 and we launched the Strategic plan that director Nathan described a few moments ago we considered doing this then and we ultimately decided not to do it because frankly we needed to get into the nuts and bolts of our district initiative into our new work on reading into our new work on post-secondary and career Readiness and yet that work is important and deciding who we are as an organization in terms of our mission our vision and our values is not just fluff it really influences how people think and behave in organization and ultimately it influences how we express ourselves to the world and so tonight we are kicking off uh with Amy and msu's Leadership the updating of that mission that Vision those values and ultimately I think a new logo and a new brand and a new way of presenting ourselves to the world that is reflective of the diversity and dynamism that's happening in RPS today so thank you Amy and MSU and we'll turn it over to you all right MSU is going to kick KCK it off with some discussion of the uh Communications theory behind this key initiative uh I'll share an example with you of one that I love and then we'll talk about what the work is involved in this key initiative and then really we'd love to have a conversation with you about what are the things that are on your mind that we should consider as we uh undertake this key initiative hello everyone um so the key initiative is one of superintendent Kel's uh key initiatives that we're working on it's defining RPS so our uh charge is to develop a new Mission Vision and values for RPS and a new brand identity including but not limited to a new tagline and logo that encapsulates the new RPS Mission Vision and values and something that we're working off of this we started this uh this fall with an initiative called celebrate RPS um with the mindset that people won't change the way they talk about us until we change the way we talk about us and that's a quote from Dr s fipo but um that celebrate RPS thing is we're trying to get the community involved in sharing the good news because we as a Communications Department we're here in Edison sometimes we're out at schools out in the community but the people are in the schools and the people are out in the community and they're seeing the good work that's being done by staff and students so we're recommending they share those with us um why this work is important it helps us build a clear and consistent brand um a clear and consistent brand helps families and staff understand our impact on individuals and the community it uh develops trust in our ability to deliver on our promises and it helps differentiate us among choices in other school districts as well as increase pride and motivation for people to be a part of RPS it also supports other critical work in the district so another key initiative that this work will partner with is the enrollment strategy um that I believe John is leading um it ALS also helps build on the building blocks of the Strategic plan that's uh posted in the back of the boardroom and throughout um the website throughout the district Etc and also helps in we are coming to the end of the first strategic plan that superintend Piel um created and we're starting to develop the next set of it so it'll help tie into that um bringing together the vision the mission what the community says RPS is and moving into the future and I think Lori's going to help me one of my favorite examples of an effective Mission package if you will is how the University of Minnesota Rochester talks about the work that they do and just to give you an idea of how these pieces work together uh I'm gonna try and use this mouse to scroll we'll see if I can nope not quite well they begin with their vision statement can you go up just a little bit a little bit more other way sorry there we go so they talk about their Vision as what I would say their purpose of um really being transformative in the higher ed world as one piece of it and then how they're going to go about that so they really talk about um what drives everything that they do uh right now we'll talk a little bit about why this work is important now in a minute but as if you're ever in an audience where you hear Chancellor Carol talk about the university she refers to this and then um tells you about the exciting work that's happening at the you you can tell there's a very clear connection with that description of why they're doing what they're doing and what they're attempting to do with those um those examples that she gives so next they go into stay there and just scroll down sorry I nodded and I should have used words if you go down to the grounding values yep thank you and then if you can get as far as the list of those so what they do is uh they talk about the the values on which they make decisions that's good right there so this talks about how the people in the organization really act on what they agree on about the the way that they're going to do their work and what's important how do we identify and this is something that I believe has um maybe been missing in our previous work with our mission statement we had a mission we had our why and our what um but we never really got this far in terms of what we publicly communicated it may have been in the original strategic plan workk that occurred 12 years ago um that was right before I came so I I know some of you can speak to that uh I wasn't there but I think there's value in pulling out these individual statements that clarify the closest I would say that I refer to things now are our Equity statements that get at sort of what we value this is even broader than that in terms of when we do the work in the district what do we base that on what are what's the philosophy behind it what do we think is important and then the last thing they do is look into the future so they make some aspirational statements about where they're headed and you can read these at your leisure um but if you catch that all into a package it talks about the what and the why says how we make decisions based on our values and where we would really like to get to where are we headed why is this work important um that's what's exciting to me about this work ahead in this key initiative is we can do some work within our walls outside of our walls about really what does the community believe is important for RPS and where are we headed thank you we can go back to the slides so why is this important today as opposed to any other time I would just share that um as I said the original work on the mission was done about 12 years ago uh the mission is on that back wall it's up uh above your heads back here as well the Inspire challenge Empower I want to note I think someone said those kids have great graduated I think from well for sure from RPS some from college too so that's how all that is oh yeah so absolutely no offense to any who had a hand in that um but it is falling a bit out of date in terms of where we are today and I would just point out in reflecting back and thinking about the beginning of this key initiative we've had a significant amount of change in the last 12 years I don't think any of you would disagree with him that and as I thought about it it's worldwide it's in Minnesota it's right here in Rochester and I listed a few that popped into my head that perhaps weren't even part of our vocabulary at that point and certainly have changed both the uh the the makeup of our district and our state as well as the um what we're focusing on today in the world it's also the final year of our current strategic plan and as we transition from a plan that began when Dr pel accepted being interim superintendent and then became permanent superintendent now to a plan where he is fully immersed we have aligned our work under the current building blocks this seems the ideal time for us to take a critical look at how we talk about ourselves how we describe the work we do and how we make decisions so as we prepare for that next phase we know we will be looking at the whole Cadre of programs that the District offers um do we have the right combination of programs and some of that will be based on this work in terms of our our vision our mission our values so the work that's involved in this key initiative breaks down this way we start with the voices um we identify first of all all the different voices we need to hear um and that is no small task that means internal stakeholders that means Community Voices different life experiences different identities and we need all of that to come together and weave into the tapestry that is the district uh we need to assess our capacity to do this full key initiative with the uh the work that we have now the um the Personnel we have have uh as well we've begun some of this work we did some capturing of Baseline data so that as we get along in the project we can measure against that and then we'll be establishing a small group to uh lead this work that small group will then lead this broad assessment capturing those voices that we've identified um and really processing all of that information that engagement that consultation uh we'll be sharing our learning outcomes back with you at several points along the way I think we're on the ABCD about six times maybe between now and June so that we have an open Dialogue on this process uh and then once we land on those key ideas we'll be bringing uh the mom su's Department to the table to really create those tools for communicating all of that we are at about the fourth bullet right now and um MSU has put together a very thorough plan and we are actually right now out with a an RFP a request for proposal for some help so as we looked over the capacity to be able to do some of the research and the engagement with the community we felt we needed some additional help both on the expertise side of the uh development of these pieces and also the labor to to do the Outreach uh we're request or anticipating requesting your approval in early February for a u vendor to help us with some of this we would conduct the research and engagement you will absolutely be a part of that as board members and you'll also be hearing about that out in the community and within the district as well um and again we'll be developing those visuals our goal is to conclude this work by June 30th that is an aggressive goal we recognize that but with that would allow us to do is to prepare then over the summer to launch in the fall uh and then that also launches with the beginning of the development of the next strategic plan as well so we absolutely want to align this work with that um existing strategic plan and with the develop velopment of the next one so at this point we would love to hear from you on what are some of the issues you think we should consider as we delve into this work this is early input into our project but we'd love to hear your thoughts board members this is big director Marvin yes well I was one of those who was around a long time ago when we came up with that statement I think still think it's really relevant however um sometimes those things get to be like that old lounger in your living room not that I have one um that it's been there for so long you just don't notice it anymore and I think that's what you're talking about is that we want to make sure that people are really aware of what our district is about and what we're doing that's different and better than what we did 15 20 years ago and I think this is a great opportunity to really engage the community in and in giving them a picture that they may not have yet of who we are and what we do which is considerably different and advanced from what it was so I I think that the main concern I have and I see that you've addressed it here already is making sure sure that community members really are engaged in this I mean that statement took weeks or months maybe they were they were committee was looking at which pronoun to use which preposition to use and really find tuning it and um we're excited when they finally agreed that that was the one and I think it is time to revisit what we're doing Dr Workman um director Barlo and I had the opportunity to be on that original core planning team back in 2012 so this is sort of a trip back down memory lane but I certainly support what director Marvin had to say um one discussion that did take a lot of time several hours maybe was the first sentence our mission is to inspire Challenge and Empower and the question was word order some people well we have to challenge them but if they're not inspired they're not going to be challenged so I really like that piece of it it doesn't have to be said that way but to keep that Concept in mind and the preposition that you were talking about or the yes was the letter A that's not PR an article it's an article it's an article yes thank you and involved members of a global Community as opposed to the global Community there was a lot of discussion I don't know if you remember that but um it was an interesting time so I look forward to having this discussion now and agree that it's time we modernize it make it relevant to what our students and we are experiencing in 2025 and Beyond director Barla and to Simply uh piggy back off of what Dr Marvin and director Workman have said already um my involvement was not as a member of the school board but as a member of the community so community involv ment is important uh and hopefully uh we'll be able to not necessarily mirror what was but uh tap into what can be and it seems like that will probably occur and uh I'm looking forward to additional input opportunity you said perhaps six between now and looking forward to five or six okay director white horn so um I guess I a little bit of a concern so we I know we're talking very broadly about um Community involvement um as a before I was sworn in a little bit ago here I was just a regular Community member what I will say is that I appreciate that we want to involve the community but my concern is how are we not just meeting with the same 17 people right because when we say we're reaching out to the Comm community and we have these deadlines what I personally feel often happens is we have the same groups of people the same 30 people that show up to everything and come through everything so we're not really getting a gauge of the actual Community um sometimes it has to do with sex ability the time frames it's not that parents don't have something to say um but some of the communities that are directly impacted by some of the statements that we make are often not the table so my question is how are we shifting that because it sounds really beautiful that we're going to involve the community but I don't ever really see plans on Outreach on how we are actually going to involve the community um I know the the common um response is we send an email uh but I get a lot of emails and my my boxes I have 999 unread emails um and I know I'm not the only person um so how how do we intend to make that engagement happen I know we say we we'll send this out or do this but um If we're honest here we're not seeing an increase of community engagement we're not seeing new faces you know so how will we actually make this a community you know do you have a plan to actually make this a community initiative or is it just going to be a thing where we say all these 12 people showed up so this is the community that cared and we'll just go with their opinion because I feel like that's often what happens when we set these hard and fast to that Madam chair um the most successful experience that I've been involved with in Rochester that went beyond what you're worried about was when we worked on the 2020 census and we worked with different communities in Rochester and um actually hired Community uh connectors we call them and these were people who were willing to uh connect the group that had the information with um the county and and the others that were working on the census so they acted between groups out in the community and the kind of central committee that was working on things so we would share information with the community connectors we would ask them to reach out within the various communities gather data come back to us give us feedback and we got quite a bit more involvement within a variety of both ethnic communities age communities locations within Rochester things like that um um even within the homeless Community the teens um different groups like that and that Community Connector models seemed to work very well um I think some of the key was to identify people who had connections within different groups that we were not attracting to like the community meetings things like that and then to recognize that the time that they put in was valuable it was real work you know and to compensate them and and support them in that work so I would love to use a process like that so I guess um I would just say that maybe we could this would be a great opportunity to cons to work with some of the Grassroots organizations that are already in our community um I got a little pet peeve with us saying we have to find people uh because there are a lot of organizations that are already connected in these organizations and I think this would be a uh amazing opportunity for RPS to create Partnerships with some of these grassroot organizations that are already doing a lot of this work um as opposed to trying to find an additional person who is going to do nothing more than reach out to the pre-existing um grassroot organization I know that we talked a lot about the last process focusing on Words and obviously VI ly the product of this in in every District that I've seen is words and phrases and paragraphs is there a way in this process though to ask the community what would keep these words alive for you as we go forward so you know we write them we put them on a piece of paper we put them on a website we hope people reference them I think we do internally because I think it's going we know it's going to be the foundation for what we go forward to with a strategic plan and then we build on that with the concepts but I I always wonder about connecting to the community to keep I remember with the last mission there because they're still in the work room the posters that we printed and that we put posters up in every building and we sent it to every classroom and we you know did pictures the magnets who still has a magnet yeah um so we were we were trying to disseminate it and put it everywhere but that didn't necessarily keep it alive it was still just you know words so I don't know if there's anything that either our consultant can help us with or best practices or we find out from people how do we make this meaningful when this process is over to the community so it doesn't just end up being a web page superintendent um I think your point and director white Horn's points are really great ones to challenge us on I think um to your point Point director Nathan that's the board's job at the policy level and my job at the administrative level is to make it happen not to just put it on the wall and you know put it to bed I I appreciated that you mentioned you went to the graduation of our Cape program at Overland that grew out of our last strategic plan with our community saying we have a group of parents who need more support to understand how to help their kids succeed academically it came or authentically out of that feedback three years ago but then we actually made it happen like we actually have people like that's execution we all have lived these plans that get developed or put on the wall and then it just doesn't happen so I think part of that is that's on us I think too um and this is partly uh prompted by Dr whorn statements you're right like we can't just call The Usual Suspects like if I called Jerome Fon and danda Burks again like they'll always answer but we've got to go beyond um I think an important point though for us remember is three years ago the the Community also includes people in our schools and programs teachers principls and others three years ago they were saying we don't have a a voice in the direction in the Strategic plan they were saying we are top down and we are told again and again what the direction is I think over the last three years we we are nowhere there but we've made progress on that internal Community piece the external piece is absolutely the next Frontier and you're right we have to get creative um I'll be honest we have a particular challenge that I'm most concerned about about reaching our families and community members who face the biggest challenges to educational success we also have to get access to the power Brokers and the movers and shakers that we don't necessarily have I know that may seem counterintuitive but as Mayo Clinic is putting five billion dollars into this community how do we really understand what that partnership can bring us um because we don't necessarily have dialogue at the most senior levels of that organization either about the real real issues so I think that the point about as we embark on this and and this this effort by Design will lead into the next strategic plan so the relationships we build Around Mission Vision Values will feed right into the what of the next plan you know what's the next Cape program that we need what's the what's the things that we need to do so I'm grateful for you getting us underway and and lots of good lots of good feedback cook so the the I I'm excited by this initiative I I love branding I love um these kind of activities I think it's exciting and it's an opportunity to do some self-reflection and think about you know who we are and who we want to be when we grow up that kind of stuff the the perspective I wanted to share here though is that um for the overwhelming I I could be wrong but I'm I'm pretty sure for the overwhelming number of parents in our our community um RPS as an entity is like a place to be annoyed with or to complain to the what they are interested in and what they think of in terms of our schools are the schools that their kids attend and that they have a personal connection to and an experience with where the RPS brand identity gets the most mileage is with people that don't have kids in our school it's the broader community people who are you know past the age where their kids are attending school but still see that item on their property tax statement it's the business owners that are thinking about um their ability to hire seasonal workers or you know um summer summer scho students or something and like th those are the parts of our community that we I think we it's it's in our interest it's in their interest to have a brand identity that reflects the value that they um that they aspire to for RPS or that they hope they will receive from RPS um and the value that RPS brings to our community generally so that that's the that that was my thought on this but I'm looking forward to more updates and more opportunities for input anything else board members as you mentioned we will have multiple chances to and and I think what I heard from director white horn and from the superintendent as well is I'm assuming that as part of the information you're going to be providing is that the the details on the tasks and and how that Outreach is going to happen etc etc all right thank you our next item is 8.1 an action item approval of Schoolboard meeting dates for 2025 but before I read the resolution this action item is to approve the dates for our Schoolboard meetings for the remainder of this year uh the requirements for setting the dates and notice of Schoolboard meetings are available in the agenda item on Sim as are the school board meeting dates for 2025 as for our meeting dates we have two regular meetings per month except for March July and November because those are months with restricted dates and vacations we have five study sessions strategically scheduled for 2025 which is down from 10 in 2024 all meetings will start at 5:30 with the following exceptions on um August 5th National Night Out so our meeting will be from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. and on December 16th it will be our truth and Texas meeting which begins at 6:00 p.m. by Statute um any other comments on our meeting dates before we director Marvin just quick comment um our understanding is that in the event that we need to schedule an additional study session or an additional um meeting this schedule that we're about to approve would not prohibit us from doing that no and we would have to give um our uh statutory notice um of of a special meeting yes um and one other note is since the December 10th study session the decision was made to remove the February 4th special session and regular meeting um and the ABCD and this list of dates has been updated to reflect that so be it resolved that the school district of ISD 535 approved the dates times and locations for school board meetings for 2025 move approval second it has been moved and seconded all those in favor say I I I oppose the resolution has been approved board members it is 7:13 and we are about to embark on our next agenda item which is approval of the balanced budget model would anybody like to take a 10-minute recess before we dive in I see uh Mo would somebody like to make a motion to recess so moved seconded uh second we are in recess at 7:13 p.m. e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e the school board's back in session at 7:26 pm. our next agenda item is uh 8.2 approval of balanced budget model this is an action item but prior to me reading the resolution I believe we have a presentation of superintendent pel thank you madam chair and I am uh going to move quite quickly and uh you have the PowerPoint that's up there it's also on our symo website there are a few substantive changes since our last update to the board but most mostly this is before you open the discussion and take a vote a review of Where we've been over almost a year of work and many meetings of this board as you know this is one of the building blocks that director Nathan talked about at the beginning of our meeting tonight down there in the corner we called it modify funding formulas which evolved into rethinking funding which eventually has become the balance budget model that's before you tonight and what came out of one of those Community working groups that we had in the Strategic plan which we call our economic engine group was two big Ideas one we really need to be willing to allocate our resources which in any educational institution are people and time more than uh other operating funds to meet the needs of our students as they exist today and we need to put the school district on a solid Financial footing and that's why this board cut $21 million in the first two years I was here more than1 156 positions it's why you asked the referendum the community to stand up for with the referendum and renewed the exist exting operating referendum and it's why we're here tonight to talk about allocating our resources and ways that meet our student needs in a nutshell it's saying that if we are not willing to reallocate resources we're going to continue to get the same outcomes that we've always gotten so it was in the Strategic plan and it was by Design in the third wave of our strategic plan because we wanted the academic agenda to come first and so laying the groundwork with our science of reading strategy our post-secondary pathway strategy investing in our principles as leaders and all those other building blocks got underway first because we wanted to make sure that that was the uh horse that was pulling the wagon as opposed to the other way around and then in March of last year we launched this intensive process that brings us here tonight uh and very importantly there are still many details to be worked out in this process if you vote to approve the balance budget model tonight you are voting to approve a model not the actual budget and we will spend the next 6 months refining that budget meeting with every school to look at updated enrollment projections seeing what comes out of the 2025 legislative session looking at our Union contracts if there are any that settle although there's none scheduled to before June um looking at um the utilities costs that we will see for next year so the devil is always in the details here we have provided you with a lot of data though because I don't think you can vote for this model without seeing projections that said our projections in January will be much improved uh by June as I look at this really ambitious set of um Milestones that we've crossed over the last month I have to thank in particular our core team that's done this work um Andy cragstead and Denise Moody John Carlson Gretch nasio Peter Christopherson um I have pushed them very hard uh including uh interrupting a lot of Vikings games on Sundays which is painful for me too and not just people I was uh texting um and so this is an important moment uh board members have gotten to know this graphic that was prepared by our technical assistance partner afon Partners pretty well the star uh there is where they ranked our current uh what they call decision rights who decides how the money is spent who decides how the Staffing uh is allocated um our internal team allocates that not on a scientific scale the proposed balance budget model would move us to where that blue star is I will say as a as as some of you are maybe aware as board members I was initially conceptualizing moving much further to the left and I believe that the guidance in particular from this board but also from people in our buildings has convinced me that we want somewhat more flexibility but not uh uh excessively more flexibility and so uh we've moved uh in this proposal to more flexibility at the school level but very much in a bounded way not in a way that would move us all the way toward what you see often called High autonomous in which essentially schools are almost Charter Schools operating without uh District oversight very importantly next week at your study session we will give you an overview of the 2.0 version of our school improvement process which also provides more flexibility for decision- making at the school level with school Improvement teams that will be informing uh the budgets that principles prepare and then ultimately of course as those gears suggest this is about uh student learning um for all of our kids the connection between the budget and the skip plan is one that seems obvious your improvement plan should guide your budget in my 30 plus years working in the field I will say that is rarely achieved in education that very often we roll over the budget cutting it or increasing it as we get more or less money and we don't really reallocate strategies to adapt to our educational Mission that's what we're after here um we won't have that figured out by this year the end of this year or next year that will certainly be a multi-year journey I think this model lays the groundwork for it as a board you voted to approve the uh guiding principles of this redesign that we would be uh having a funding and Staffing model that's effective efficient Equitable coherent predictable transparent and responsive and as we tried to put in short statements there on the slide we believe that we have not fully but sufficiently achieved uh those principles and that we certainly should you this model would keep them in mind as we build it out and I'm sure we'd revisit it with you in June so this is the key model where at we've landed and this is probably where most of the change has occurred in recent weeks we begin with our fixed School Staffing uh component of the budget which would work a lot like our current process does today which as the five clean audits that this board has received from our external auditors uh in a row show is uh well-managed and pretty formulaic it also doesn't provide much flexibility um at the school level so we would continue to allocate those positions we'd allocate them using average salaries um and principles would not be able to change those the class siiz targets that are set the total what we call teaching load of 160 students per at the secondary level that's about where 80% of the funds would lie and so the majority is still being allocated in that way that guarantees a common educational program across the district but then there's that flexible school funding and the word there is important we're allocating funding in that category even though the salaries are still set at the average salary so we don't create a perverse incentive to hire less experienced people because they're cheaper um but that's where the flexible resources would come in we would still use transparent formulas which we'll touch on in a moment to allocate those dollars to schools but that's where our principles would have exibility based on the approved School Improvement plans that their skip teams put together very importantly and this is a point I don't think we've adequately made in our previous presentations those dollars would have to significantly not only but significantly serve our students who uh either live in poverty or face other barriers to learning that's in part because I think it's it's inke keeping with this this District's Equity commitments but it's also because that's where some of the funds that we're using toay pay for that money come from that's the intent of federal Title One funding that's the intent of State compensatory funding from the state of Minnesota so schools could use some of those dollars for students who are more advantaged uh it would not only be for students who are facing additional challenges but certainly the majority of those dollars the average of 20% as you saw in the long memo that I sent you um is an average and uh it goes down to about uh 15 16% at the low end and up to just under 40% depending on the demographics of our schools then we get to our specialized programs category and we would continue to budget that process similar to the way we do um today and then finally what we are now calling district-wide services as you may remember we previously called that central office and I realized that that is a terrible name because everyone's mind will go to this building and this building is in there but this building is nowhere near the majority of expense that would be in that category it will also include as I'll show you in a moment things like our transportation and custodial and other services to schools that are managed outside schools um a very important shift that I'll also highlight in a moment from the last version you saw uh of this model is that we would build that districtwide Services budget in this model if you approve it around what we're calling cost centers as opposed to the organizational chart at present our central office budgets are largely determined by the offices that exist in our district and in fact some of them use names from offices that no longer exist but they existed in previous years and I was in a meeting with the finance team is they were trying to remember the archaeology of some of the budget codes that went back to offices that no longer exist in RPS in short we organize the budgets outside schools by the offices that exist within the central office what I think is a better process for the long term is to create cost centers that are organized by function not who reports to where not whose budget is it as a person what function is it so then if previous future superintendents or me uh or future boards direct changes in the org chart the cost center structure still exists to fund the function um so this may seem like not a big change but I think once we get it built out it's going to be a Quantum Leap in our ability to have really serious strategic discussions of how we spend our money that is not in schools that is centrally so I'll show you example of that in just a second here are some examples of the positions that would be in that category one of fixed school funding critical positions that are providing our core educational program that also are part of our referendum commitments as I'll talk about at the end that is not something that they would be able to shift at the building level then we have our flexible school funding examples and the core idea is that those are positions and budgets that are support for learning as opposed to the core program itself and as we've said a number of times as I presented on this model I think it's really important not to look at those bullets that are up there and necessarily think schools will um choose to disinvest in those positions I think there's a great likelihood that they will increase investments in many of those positions as we give them the flexibility to make those uh decisions for instance taking a position that right now is part-time in your school like a three equity Specialist or reading specialist and upping the funding so you can have someone there for a 1.0 a full-time equivalent I have literally met one person in my three and a half years here who likes being a traveling staff member across schools and otherwise people would like to be housed and fully working in one school that requires choices when the budgets are tight would you rather have part of someone part of the week or someone full fulltime in a position so that's our our category or two category three are our specialized programs uh you can see there very importantly those are essentially those valuable programs that are not schools and they're not central office but they're um uh incredibly valuable parts we would continue to fund those uh largely as we do bringing the board a recommendation every year for funding levels and then finally there is our starting list of those cost centers and it Loosely ties to um the org chart that we've that exists now but to give you you an example um when we talk about the office of academics that's right now how we budget our work on Advanced learning it's subsumed in an office well that actually is a separate distinct function the support we give to our Advanced Learners and so we would build a cost center that is Advanced learning and that's how we would budget that function going forward you can see an array of those others that are there one that I also want to call out because I know board members have gotten um emails about this over the years we lack a funding source for playground upgrades in our elementary schools and there's a long-standing tradition of asking ptas to raise those dollars and I I believe that's both inefficient and not Equitable and so we would resource that as a cost center and at minimum have a 17-year cycle of saying which schools get playground upgrades on that cycle and if a PTA or the school or a donor wanted to go beyond it that might be something we could consider but but it's our job to fund that playgrounds are not peripheral resources for elementary schools um so I want to highlight that since that was not there we actually have done A needs assessment so if you approve this we could tell you which schools are first because of the conditions of their their playgrounds um this is the breakdown which you've seen before there's no significant change in this from your previous uh reviews of this um so I won't go into it into detail but our general fund would have a flexible pot of money that comes from the difference between all of our expenses and the revenues that we would have available it would be allocated by formula those formulas could be adjusted over time um they might be adjusted between now and when we bring you a budget in June if we find that we haven't gotten them right but we've we've refined them significantly over the last three months to be sure that we'd be resourcing schools um sufficiently then we've got our compensatory education Revenue the big change there is we currently allocate 80% to schools and we would allocate 100 % in in that the interest of increasing that flexibility for them another major change is we currently concentrate our Title One funding from the federal government in a limited number of elementary schools and then some schools like the Alternative Learning Center that have free and reduced price lunch rates more than 75% when federal law then requires you to fund them we would increase the number of our schools that get that title one funding that does have a consequence for schools that now get a lot of that title one funding uh in Minnesota unlike uh other states a school with a lot of low-income kids gets compensatory education funding which is Multiplied when there are more low-income kids in the school and so concentrating our Title One funding in the same schools as have significant amounts of compensatory has really maximized our resources in a very limited number of schools but those students are still with us in middle school they're still with us in high school and so we would expand the use of those dollars at the secondary level our achievement and integration fund funding from the state of Minnesota would um have a portion that would be taken uh off the top to uh fund uh our mtss work and literacy our post-secondary Pathways work and our efforts to recruit more uh diverse staff to the school district and then 2.8 million would be allocated out to sites as I'll talk about in a moment just to be sure we're clear about this um our PTEC ctec and PSO funding strategy would no longer hold schools high schools harmless for when students are not taking class in the high school but they are at PSO ptech or ctec and would reallocate those dollars that's how the program was has always been intended to work in Minnesota but we have essentially double dipped in Rochester where we have funded the high school as though the kid was in class there and funded ptech CCH or PSO uh as though they are there which is where they were and then we would uh reallocate our staff development funding to have 30% uh off the top to support the work that Mona and her team and others do at the system level and 70% out to schools for uh their work so um a few big issues as we've been in the home stretch of developing this model that I want to touch on first very critical what about the 2024 referendum I consider it not only frankly a moral imperative to meet the commitments of the referendum but frankly a political one the community voted for this and we need to demonstrate that we're sticking to what we said we're going to do and so in the balanced budget model all the positions and programs that were in the referendum proposal would be funded at the level we said they'd be funded and that's outlined in your memo um no schools would be closed none none of the class target class size targets would be changed we would not uh increase the teacher load level that would require uh negotiations with uh Rochester Education Association which we're not proposing uh and no major cuts um in positions or programs so uh touching base on PSO here I really summarized it succinctly or fairly succinctly a moment ago so I won't read you the bullet points but the critical point here is that we're our participation in post-secondary options classes mostly at Rochester Community Technical College for our district um or PSO and ctec very small we could probably continue doing what we've been doing um but at the level that it has expanded to right now it's simply not sustainable to fund the high schools and fund the those other programs that are serving those students um I will say I met with staff at Mayo high school this morning and we had a great discussion and the issue of PSO CCH and ptech came up and one of the things they urged was we know we want kids participating in that kind of rigorous coursework we need to take a look at making sure that what they're doing is educationally the best uh most valuable work uh for them and so I think that's going to be a theme of our our next strategic plan we got a lot of kids taking those classes because they perceive a financial incentive of earning college credit but not all of them are passing those classes and some of those classes might not serve them as well as what we're teaching in our high schools but we also need to be very very cautious about reaching that conclusion because we want more of our kids especially more of our kids that are underrepresented in higher education taking those College earning credits we need to do some homework to make sure uh they're taking them that are putting them on the path to their plans after high school and then a really important point that came I know uh up as people started to look at the budget projections by School in this memo um there's an increased transparency this year on this issue because we're asking you to adopt a new budget model but in fact schools see swings in funding every year based on enrollment and based on changes in their demographics this year because we're asking you to vote on this new budget model and we're presenting it as a column where you can see the current funding and the change um it's much more explicit but it's important to say this is actually something we navigate and support schools through um every year there are three primary reasons that seven schools are seeing declines and those declines range from quite small $25,000 um to quite significant you know uh a few $1,000 um in a number of instances and then one outlier that I'll talk about in a second the three main reasons for that are overall enrollment Decline and uh as we've talked about in this this at these board meetings before we are entering a gigantic transformation in American public education because the senior class of 2025 is the biggest class that is going to exist for the foreseeable future in terms of size it's all downhill from here the birth rate is in since 2008 in the United States has gone down by 17% the P has shrunk and that's not at all a just a Rochester phenomenon in fact there's a lot of reason to believe as we've also talked about that as the male Clinic investment destination Medical Center actually generates new employment here will be an exception to that Trend in the medium and longer term but um when schools and districts don't reallocate dollars to reflect changes in enrollment it seems to postpone the pain of change but it can set you up to be unviable in the long term we need to allocate the dollars where the kids are so the first reason some of these schools are seeing a decline is a decline in their overall enrollment as I said at the outset it's January this is a projection when we bring you the budget in June we'll have firmer numbers and then if something changes over the summer if we got the projection wrong or new kids move into a community we add or subtract Staffing tied to the changing enrollment right up to and through the start of the school year compensatory revenue is the dollars the state of Minnesota all allocates to serve uh the they're generated by kids who live in low-income families and they can serve about 11 uh 9 or 11 functions that are are outlined in your memo um those are allocated by formula and so when the number of those kids in a school changes we are legally bound to reallocate those dollars so that is happening in this model because we have some swings that are happening in the demographics of our school the title one change is also driven by change in demographics so if there's fewer low-income kids in a school it will generate less title one but it also is uh impacted by the recommendation that I'm making to you that we shift our allowed Federal funding strategy for title one and fund more of our schools um with that funding source so you can see on the slide there are six schools Bamber Valley Franklin Elementary Gibbs Elementary Longfellow Overland and Min sing online and we've broken down in narrative form the reasons that they see a decrease we will work closely with those principles over the next six months to uh look at their enrollment projections and work with them to plan for adjusting for those decreases but in short it's not the Balan budget model and the new flexible funding that is reducing their budgets its enrollment and changes in demographics with the exception of the title one shift um which I believe again is prudent because we were concentrating a lot of resources in a relatively limited number of schools in our previous title strategy now this is one where I just have to say I wish we could have a doover um in our model for reasons that I totally understand uh we Alec we staffed Minn online the uh online school that we started shortly after I got here in during the height of the pandemic we staffed it in this model like we staff a bricks and mortar High School like we staff Sentry or John Marshall or Mayo there certainly is a logic to that but the level of budget cut that you saw in the memo would be unsustainable uh for that school so we have some homework to do you can see that when we looked at mining online secondary you know one FTE is is allocated at 12.4 uh students and at John Marshall which uh we picked just as an example it's one is 21.52 so between now and when we bring you a budget proposal in June and we'll give you updates before that we need to go in and take a look in particular at the appropriate Staffing model for an online school I think the reason this happened is because we funded the entire School initially with covid dollars and so it was funded as a way to provide fully online synchronous education to kids during the pandemic we've transitioned that to away from Co dollars because of course those all had to be spent by the end of September of last year but that has meant we've postponed I think and now we obviously need to engage in some careful analysis as to what does the uh funding uh strategy need to look like for insync online I personally believe we should for sure continue our support for that school I think it's doing good things for the kids it's serving and we can see it grow uh in the years ahead but we need to get the the funding uh straight so as soon as I saw that budget projection I said to our team someone called Brandon mcrai so he doesn't jump out a window because that that level of cut uh would kill the program and we obviously don't want to do that I also think frankly it's insightful to see the difference in Staffing models that we have there um so we've learned something but that is not uh a recommendation so that Madame chair is uh overview I'm sure that if you have uh either questions that go to levels of detail I'll ask um John or Andy to um join me for anything but I don't think they need to come up just yet because I know board members have had a lot of times to ask questions and so maybe we're more at the statement uh part of the process okay so because this is an action item I will read the resolution um and I want to give uh make it clear that this was the superintendent resolution and that is why you're going to hear my voice for the next few minutes be it resolved that the school board of Independent School District 535 does hereby direct the superintendent to develop a comprehensive recommendation for the 2025 2026 budget that incorporates the following four components of the balanced budget model the fix School Staffing component of the budget model should enable the School District central office leaders to allocate positions to schools through established and publicly available formulas that School principles are not allowed to reallocate at the school site level the formulas that are utilized to allocate positions in the fixed School Staffing component of the model should be determined based upon projected student enrollment class-size targets determined by the RPS School Board contractual agreements with the school district's labor unions statutory and regulatory requirements commitments from the 2024 ignite student learning referendum and other relevant factors funding for the fixed School Staffing component of the model should be drawn from the school District's general fund allocation from the state of Minnesota local levies state and federal funding for special education and multilanguage learner services and other appropriate sources the flexible school funding component of the budget model should enable the School District central office leaders to allocate funding to schools through established and publicly available formulas that School principles are allowed to utilize to meet the particular needs of their students in school communities formulas that determine the amount of flexible school funding that each School receives should be based upon projected student enrollment the level of the school elementary middle or high school and the number and percentage of lowincome students who attend the school each year school principal should be required to develop and secure central office approval of a plan for use of the flexible school funding resources that is aligned with their school's approved School continuous Improvement plan Skip and that meets all relevant statutory and regulatory requirements funding for the flexible school funding component of the model should be drawn from the school district's allocation of general fund Revenue compensatory education Revenue achievement and integration revenue and professional development funding from the state of Minnesota as well as Title One funding from the federal government the specialized programs component of the budget model should enable the School District central office leaders to allocate funding through established and publicly available formulas to programs within RPS that are not K12 schools formulas that determine the amount of funding that specialized programs receive should be based upon projected student enrollment statutory and regulatory requirements commitments from the 2024 ignite student learning referendum and the priorities of the school district's strategic plan funding for specialized programs component of the model should be drawn from the school district's general fund allocation from the state of Minnesota local levies state and federal funding for special education services and reallocation of funding from Century John Marshall and Mayo high schools to reflect the participation of their students in PSO ctec and ptech classes the district-wide services component of the budget model should enable the superintendent to allocate funding to departments in the School District central office to provide leadership and support for the work of the school district as a whole allocation of funds within the districtwide services component of the model should be based upon a limited number of costs centers through which the school district accomplishes important functions that can be tracked and managed as a unified set of functions and expenses the cost center structure of the district-wide services component of the model should be based upon related functions and processes rather than the organizational structure of the School District central office building the districtwide services component around cost centers rather than the school district's current organizational chart will facilitate efficient and effective use of Financial and Human Resources even as changes are made in the organizational chart over time the budget model should include a target for the percentage of total District funding that the district-wide services component will receive in the budget for each school year establishing and working to meet that Target will help to ensure that the size of the school district's total annual expenditure for the districtwide services component increases or decreases as student enrollment in the district schools and programs increases or decreas Ines funding for the districtwide services component of the model should be drawn from the school district's general fund achievement and integration Aid professional development special education and multilingual learning funding allocations from the state of Minnesota local levies Federal funding for special education services and related services and other appropriate sources in order to avoid creating an incentive for schools and programs to hire less experienced and therefore less expensive staff positions within all four components of the BBM should be allocated based upon average rather than actual salaries the RPS school board will review the superintendent's proposal for the 2025 2026 budget that incorporates the four components of the balance budget model outlined above in a series of meetings in May and June of 2025 an act on the final version of the superintendent's proposed budget at its regular meeting on June 17th 2025 do I have a motion to approve read it again twice so moved second it has been moved and seconded discussion on the motion board members I think um I shared with you that one way that we could go through our questions and comments is to go through the major sections of the uh memo um so I just read the resolution to implement the balanced budget model the second section is the development of the balanced budget balanced budget model are there any comments to that topic or you could just say if you have a question and we'll find this find the director Marvin's Rino I can tell yeah I have a question clearly I understand that schools uh will have more autonomy in terms of how they spend a certain amount of their funding that they will um offer the courses required and uh they will offer those based on student enrollment um under the uh districtwide Services potential cost centers for instance though it lists activities in athletics so every school will get a fund for activities in athletics could one school decide for instance that they're going to discontinue their theater program and just spend more money providing additional soccer coaches for an expanded soccer teams and in mural I'm and I'm interested in how the money is spent but I'm also under interested in how Equitable it's going to be for kids at different buildings to have opportunities um thank you chair Nathan and Dr barvin that's why that is not in the flexible school funding category so that would continue to be centrally allocated but also managed so we would work with our activities directors on that so were they to want to discontinue theater they would have to get approval for that and we would have a deep discussion in fact tomorrow I have a meeting with them about adding boys volleyball which is um something that they've proposed collectively um and so that would continue to be uh managed in that separate pot and not in the flexible and that's that's partly why it would be there you could just give them an activities budget but I think that that would potentially result in the kind of um I would hope they wouldn't cut theater but you know that you you could lose that commonality in programming so that's why it's not in that flexible good thank you director whorn um and this may have been answered at some point earlier um but we in the in the flexible school funding um examples um and this and I would just like clarification if a misunderstanding so it's my understanding that with title wand or compensatory funding some of the positions that are in this flexible model are required with that funding correct um I just I I'm I'm a little I I I maybe I just need a little bit more understanding on what exactly is flexible so we have a limited number of schools right now who are not um being funded I think there's three or four schools um from what I understand that are not um receiving Title One or compensatory funding um so my question is it's flexible but is it is it flexible because if if it's if it's required I mean feel like it's flexible with an asri right because we're saying it's flexible but if they receive certain funding they really can't say um you know and I'm just throwing this out there if they're getting so much funding the federal state requirement may be that they have to have so many assistant principles you know so is there a way to make that clearer because the way it it it presents is if they have decision making when from what I understand they really they really don't um it it appears like a very wholesome list but in truth you know a lot of these positions are required to be in the school in order for them to receive levels of um funding and I might not I might I might be off here but yeah know I I really appreciate that Dr white horn those are actually not required by any of those funding sources neither title nor compensatory requires a specific position they require to serve a specific type of student and some of those are in the memo or student need so there are nine purposes and title one so for instance with title you must do family engagement and we're committed to do it but it doesn't actually say exactly which position you have would have to structure it you could potentially do something very Innovative where you weren't necessarily doing uh funding a position most schools do have if they have title they fund a position for family Gauger coordinator so all of these positions that are there as examples are authentically flexible the the place where you're correct the flexible school funding is not totally flexible is meeting the intended needs of the funding source in terms of service to students so for instance you can't use compensatory funding to fund uh Advanced learning program for middle and upper income kids so we will have to build in rules that make sure that even though the positions are flexible we're meeting the intent of those dollars similarly for instance with uh with the title funding uh we will be required to make sure that we have A needs assessment that demonstrates that those dollars are going to the essentially the weaknesses that are identified in the needs assessment and that's the mechanism for saying we need these reading Specialists we want to do these tutoring programs and that the state of Minnesota reviews that annually to confirm that our title budget is meeting the intents of the federal law but those positions are not positionally required it's more the functions where where we do see and that's why we tried not to suggest it's flexible those are the positions that are not flexible because they are required statutorily or things so you're right we are we're being pretty blunt 80% of the funding is not flexible it's a bounded 20% Which is an increase over where we are now but it's not the majority of funding for sure I close Okay so I got I clarified that um my follow-up question um regarding the budget was where you said the um so for certain schools they get certain elementary schools get funded a little bit more money and then you said we would be um dispersing those funds over the middle schools and the high schools how like I I guess maybe I didn't understand that so if the so I'm just throw School up if Ben Franklin gets x amount of dollars are we saying that we are taking away from their funding to place it somewhere else or and what is the percentage on that and how are we determining how much of each school's funding is following the student and I might be a little not super educated on this but are we not double dipping right because doesn't the Middle School get funding as well are we trying to I just am a little confused as to why we have to move funding if if every school is funded based on the so I'm going to ask John or Andy to help me with the exact percentages that we're shifting to for title um but I'm going to explain it and then make sure that they can help me figure it out um so the federal government allows you to use your title $1 in several different ways and it all depends on do you want to concentrate the dollars in your highest highest poverty schools or do you want to spread it out somewhat more in your schools that are still serving a lot of low-income kids but not your highest poverty schools and it's a percentage that is um open to us because we're considered a high poverty district with more than 35% of our kids who qualify for free and reduced price Lans so that's why we have this flexibility what we have been doing is we have been concentrating our title funding in schools like I'll just use a a very present example Riverside where you've had about 70% of the kids who've concentrated so that allows us to to concentrate those dollars in Minnesota we also have compensatory education funding that also goes to schools like Riverside in large dollars we have not been funding um a additional group of of um elementary schools or our middle and high schools accept the area Learning Center Alternative Learning Center because they were 75% more free R and you have no choice you have to use title there if you're 75% or more so essentially what we're doing is we're shifting from an option that the federal government gives us or I'm recommending that we concentrate all those dollars in a small set of our highest poverty schools to actually fund schools that still have significant numbers of free and reduced price lunch but that are not quite in that same category and if I if John or Andy hasn't been able to pull up the specific percentages or if you've gotten that we can get that to I don't want to I don't want to say it wrong off the top of my head but they're statuto Allowed by the federal government to do it so for instance we couldn't fund fallwell with titl Mone there's not enough kids there who generate free and reduced priced lunch and so that's not even it's not proposed and we wouldn't be allowed to do that if we wanted to do that so so I'm sorry so just so I'm clear so is this a funneling issue because may maybe I don't understand so my assumption is that if okay use the Riverside right that let's say the higher percentage of those kids are going to be going to Willow Creek right because that's their District why is there a reduction because right now there's no funding for Willow Creek and so we're I'm proposing that we expand title to follow the kids exactly that logic because we have not been using those dollars in our secondary schools and at the core of my proposal is to provide them to our secondary schools because those kids are still with us oh so when the kids all funnel in the number is reducing is that well we are reducing the allocation to that group of elementary schools that has been getting it somewhat in order to fund more of our schools in the title allocation I think I understand thank you it's a it's a it's a complex system and I'm frustrated with myself because I'm not immediately remembering the percentages but we're we're we're leveraging and if John and Andy aren't getting it right away I don't feel so bad but we're adhering to statute that allows us to basically concentrate or or share those dollars looks like the Cavalry is coming texting and trying to figure this out yeah we're taking about $700,000 out of elementary schools and we're pushing it into middle schools and high schools basically we're we're changing the the per pupil funding unit amount so where we were funding about $1,000 per um student in poverty at the elementary schools only this year we're going to subset of Elementary scho subset of elementary schools is going to be pushed out to more schools at about4 to $500 per people funding unit dror cook uh so I I had a question about the the cost center approach which I makes a lot of sense to me I certainly see cost centers in the in in uh my uh my day job context and um that seems like a sensible way to track things B excuse me based on um the particular priorities I'm I'm just reflecting a little bit on you know as we change something and I think this board has done a good job of of thinking about the potential negatives of changing from a known structure where we you know good bad or ugly at least we know how it works today um and so we I think have been focusing a lot on the the opportunities for Innovation and being responsive and the the benefits that this change could bring about um I'm I'm just I'm trying to think through you know what are we going to be potentially um talking about 12 months from now that we thought oh gez nobody thought that the budget balanced budget model was going to create you know whatever um and the the one thing that I I just wanted to make sure I asked very explicitly about the shift to the cost center or anything else about allowing the flexible dollars to be um allocated or priorities set um at the building level is do we think that that's going to make it more difficult for us to be faithful fiscal stewards of the resources that we're entrusted with or any challenge in um you know six successful audit or or anything along those lines that while you might have a plan for it you would view it as a potential challenge or something that is a potential downside to the shift that we're talking about no I think it's the opposite I think it's going to improve that it's going to bring um Clarity and um as we were discussing as well um actually setting targets at our our districtwide service level and saying this percentage of the budget is going to be this and we're going to live within that and that means if the funding um is flat or going up or going down even we need to make adjustments at the central or the district uh wide Services level as well to keep our proportion of the budget from not growing um um over the schools proportion of the budget so actually I think it's going to it's going to do the opposite I think we're going to have U more clarity and it's going to help keep us um adapting better as the revenues may go up or may go down the um the the the resolution that director Nathan just read um included a direction for us to give you in June a target for the total cost of what we're now calling district-wide services and for anybody especially anybody who's been a teacher or at the school level what do they cost at the district office is this deep issue in every school district because people see us as overhead and like what do they do down there and that's probably in any organization maybe in your Corporation it's like emic our early thinking is that within that districtwide Services bucket it's going to break down like this the total Target is going to be about 30% of the total budget so onethird now you have to remember a lot of that there is not at all in the Edison building it's uh services that are across the entire you know school district and that of that 30% 20% will be for the services themselves and 10% % will be for staff and a as we complete that analysis and if that's the recommendation we bring you I think over time that could be quite powerful because it could allow you in future budget years to say well tell me what's the cost of central district-wide services staff as a percentage of the total budget H enrollments I hope this isn't the case enrollments going down but the cost of you're going over Target for the cost of central office because the danger is always students student enrollment declines in a school oh what do you do you cut staff but nobody gets cut at the central level because there's no transparency to the idea that the students are getting smaller the central office should get smaller too so this would build in some level of transparency and I think again I'm very hopeful in the medium and long term about Rising enrollment in Rochester but especially as we're entering this period of declining K12 numbers across the district this is a mechanism as John was saying to have the central office and the Central Services be proportionally bounded so that you would be able to make a decision in future years about are we spending too much when we're cutting at the site level I don't know too much if John iFit ancient history but I found it fascinating as you explained to me why we don't have a cost center structure right now that essentially when you joined the district for whatever reason there was a decision to move away from cost centers we did used to build that because as the last part of this model that we've gotten into has been this Central piece most of the work we did was on the site budgets and as we've dug into this I kept tripping over the fact that the budget looks like the org chart as opposed to and that's the org chart is not disconnected from like you know will Ruffin's office doesn't include Transportation budget so it's not like it makes no sense but it's not organized by function um so can you talk a little bit about how that happened historically I contacted a a predecessor of mine just on the side to understand kind of what happened and and part of why it got implemented was to make it easier um back in the 90s or whenever it was implemented to um to tie these things together versus using the mandated coding structure that mde makes us use so it was a way to kind of work within Both Worlds but make it more kind of act like a corporate cost center type of budget but that was the decision was made to move away from that as we were implementing the new Skyward system that decision I think was made in the 2010ish time frame and so as I was getting here in 2011 we were actually like redoing our our coding to uh um span the cost center that was the direction I was operating under and so um we've pretty much operated more under an org chart of assigning our budget codes by the numbering system that MD has come up with so I actually see the value in going back to this because I think it will help tie some of these things um together um better for us if if you said for instance and I apologize Madam chair I'll stop digging too deep in but if you said to me right now Kent what's the cost of leadership development and support we could pull that together but we would not be able to push a button and show show that to you um whereas if you really want to strategically talk about how are we investing in our leaders that's a potential cost center that we would then build the budget around right now we'd have to look at salaries and benefits like contracts with you know a professional development provider and we' Cobble it together and we'd say oh that's how much we spend on leadership um this would be uh a more functional approach to the budget Dr parlo uh two quick things uh when it comes to title and compensatory dollars um could you speak briefly as to the goal of or usage for uh and how um unless it is tied to specific anticipated or targeted outcomes so redistribution of the money occurs but we still are having students who are not fairing well even though they're getting all this if you will additional monetary support uh directed towards them uh so uh and I understand this is about a budget versus the outcomes of the budget but is it possible for you to potentially at least um what my appetite as to how this potentially will will yes direct Bary thank you at at your study session next week we will present you with an initial list for your conversation reaction of no more than 10 of those outcomes for each level of the system elementary middle and high school and the proposal will be that that's our North Star those are the performance measures we're going to use going forward and that as we look at school outcomes which will be a balanced scorecard it will it will not just be one test score as we look at that that will be what we'll be expecting our school leaders and school Improvement teams to allocate and it's what we should be using at the central level to make those decisions and I need to be super careful in what I'm about to say because I do not want to disparage people who've been doing great hard work in our system but to director white Horn's question a moment ago to me about title one we have concentrated our title $1s in a limited subset of schools that have had low and declining outcomes we have seen no progress tied to that additional investment for a very long time now that is not just because of the money but we we we have right here in Rochester multiple CA case studies of the fact that concentrating the dollars does not lead to improvements in those outcomes and that's the education work I mean that's that's the real work but getting the dollars so that they actually that was one reason why I don't like to mess with success if I was looking at our current funding strategy with title one and I was seeing this kind of uh like Improvement I would have said well we can't touch that now those schools are still going to be adequately resourced um but we have the same students with us in middle school and high school who also need that additional support and that's the $700,000 that that John was referring to so the connection between outcomes and these Investments is is 100% what we're after and then finally um 10-month process uh there are things that have been discovered along the way that were unknown initially they there may be a additional things that manifest themselves along the way uh as relates to school Improvement teams and uh the ongoing uh request uh that we have received or heard that's been communicated via uh public comment period uh through uh companion organizations um PTSA we want to involved we we want to so and this I get is is the budget uh in terms of the me mechanics uh when will there be an opportunity for um site leaders principles to engage their respective communities to potentially actively solicit their input I think this also rolls back to what director white horn suggested earlier that it's aom matter of parents not being interested it could very well be that when these opportunities are presented it may not be when they are actually available uh so not that I would expect you and you may you're a smart guy I mean you have a de but uh it's quite possible you you might be prepared to uh offer a comment regarding what that might look like and and to reassure uh communities that yeah it is our intent not just desire we will be intent intentional to ensure that there are opportunities for you to provide input yep uh I thank you Dr B we're going to bring you uh an an initial proposal for the school improvement process next week at your study session for discussion and reaction it builds on work that we've done similar to this work to look at our current process over the last year so it's not far away the um resolution says two key things the school must have a school Improvement team that brings together diverse stakeholders they must approve the school Improvement plan the principal develops budget but the budget must align with the school Improvement Plan and there's a review process that is external to the school to ensure that's the case next week we're going to bring you some more fleshed out ideas on that like who's required to be on a school Improvement team uh what perspectives might be encouraged but optional um some early thinking on what proc C might be used uh for instance majority vote unanimous vote to do those kinds of things so um and then those indicators next week I'll be honest in a perfect world the side of me like that likes to have everything figured out we would actually ask you to make the vote on the budget after all of that is fleshed out the problem with that is that we have got to get going to develop the 2025 26 budget this month because of all the complexities that have to get done and we're going to ask you next week to also consider parameters for the development of that budget so um there's a little trust involved here to say that we're going to get to it um and that the resolution does unambiguously say it's not just principal as dictator of that flexible funding it has to be the plan has to be rooted in data there has to be a team that develops it but yes the principal does have an increased role because we're asking our principles to step up to uh provide really transformative leadership here too thank you director ml I have a question about the enrollment projections and um it seems like historically we've had that information in an aggregate sense of the entire District I don't think I've ever seen it broken down by school as it is in the memo um and I want to tie it to um the um projections and then the related funding as it as it will play out in the process I'm curious about what data is used for identifying those projections at the school level and then how much confidence you have in that both now and as you talk about we'll likely have some updates when we approve the budget let me let John answer that and just say John question yeah well just say as a pre preface that we have just decided to update the budget project the enrollment projection with the former Minnesota state demographer because um the projection we've been using since shortly after I got here has uh it certainly has not been wildly wrong it's been a little discrepant but we want to make sure that we're looking at it so want to talk about how those were yeah so for purposes of this planning where we're at so far is as we rolled up numbers so for example in elementary school we took off the fifth graders and pushed them into sixth grade and we moved all the other grades all the kids in K through four up a grade then for kindergarten which is really the biggest unknown we assumed about 90 something per of this year's kindergarteners would be the number we'd have in that school next year again to kind of assume for some uh declining enrollment due to birth rates uh so then we applied that all the way through sixth to e8th grade schools and 9th to 12th grade as well um this week um what our process is on Friday we take our first cut of numbers of students that have enrolled because we've had kindergarten applications or enrollments ready or we've been collecting them since December around December 1st so we take our first batch of kindergarten enrollments and we uh start actually dealing with real students and real numbers now and we start the actual Staffing uh process or preparing budgets and allocations based on numbers and that's not the only cut of data we're going to take we'll probably take it every other Friday from there on um through the whole Staffing process so that we're always dealing with numbers that are no um out ofd more than about two weeks and how confident are you in the numbers that are in the memo currently would you can you put a some sort of number well based on that Andy did them I am very confident because of the process he used en rolling them all up and school by school grade by grade so yeah those those are pretty uh accurate but we'll start to take real numbers and then of course through this whole process we've also uh since early December had the um uh School mint application open so that people who want to do self transport or apply for other schools so we've been taking those applications and that's going to create movement and change and do pluses and minuses all through the system so that's that's why we do actually run the numbers every uh other Friday from now um through Staffing season thank you Dr whorn two questions I'mma ask them both and then maybe we can yes or no them so first thing was that I see that in a specialized program and in the districtwide potential call centers um driver's education is repeated and I'm not sure if that was intentional or if that is an error um and then secondly we have uh my question is regarding housing stability um interpreters Transportation I know those are uh districtwide funding but there are certain schools uh that have more issue with those particular um concerns um as you said earlier due to Poverty rates or different things in the schools um and I know that that has been an ongoing uh issue just as a community member here in Rochester that we often run out of funding in those spaces fairly quickly um with the new with the bu with the model that we are going to vote on tonight um which I think was overall well well done is there any opportunity uh as was stated earlier as we work through this and we go this this needs to be more flexible because we really cannot say that Riverside is not going to need more money for housing stability because this is an issue at Riverside um is there an option to move anything into another bucket as we build this budget out or we just kind of stuck with it and if there's you know you know what I mean and if we we can't move it around or is there the opportunity to put things in multiple buckets like like I don't know if the driver's education is supposed to be in multiple buckets but is it an option to say well there needs to be also a flexible funding for interpreters or there needs to be some flexible funding for housing stability because these are issues that are specialized to or or directly related to Poverty um which we just can't say we're going to give every school x amount of dollars uh for instance we just did have this fire in one in um I think that is in the Riverside District uh so their housing stability dollars are not going to be equal to or the same even as another school that may have that same amount of Title One or compensatory funding um so now this school is getting multiple calls but there's not you know then there's no flexibility for their staff to say we can you know request additional dollars and I know that might have been a long question but I'm not sure how that works and then you mentioned something about a 17year cycle for playgrounds and maybe I don't know if you were just throwing a number out there but my question was why why 17 years is there a reason why we got to wait number of our one a year so the number of schools that we would have so we could we we would have enough money to upgrade one playground a year oh okay we'd be on that cycle so that was the logic of that one okay uh I'm very impressed with your uh uh early attention to detail I think you and our chair are going to get along very well and and make my make my life challenging in a good way I think either the driver Z is reflected of the fact that we have two programs we have a long-standing one at the area Learning Center Alternative Learning Center and we started a new one when I got here that was for low-income kids who couldn't afford it in the traditional high schools and we may need to clean that up I don't know joh Andy yeah so that okay so one is the alc uh program that's longstanding been at ALC for ALC kids then we started another one for kids at the other schools who needed financial assistance to pay for driver's ed so those are the two in terms of the the uh support for kids who are living in a family that's uh housing unstable right now um in some ways the term flexible uh school funding for the this category it is right but wrong it's right because it would be more flexible for the sites but it implies that the other dollars are not flexible and in fact they are very much flexible and we allocate and reallocate those housing stability resources whether it's staff time or funding for somebody who's getting evicted based on changes at the site level and needs that we see so those are flexible too they're not something a principle has any flexibility with like that Riverside they would need to be talking to us and saying we have these needs you know for our families and then we'd be looking at allocating those additional dollars they can use their Title One allocation for some housing support so that's another possibility that that could be some additional flexible but when you're seeing the the housing piece and the cost center um there that the housing stability those would be flexible in the sense that we would allocate them every year to meet the needs but they wouldn't be under the control of a principal individually though we're getting all of our information about where those are needed from our staff at the site like our community schools coordinators and and others well only ask um the reason why I asked specifically about those areas is I do know that some of the schools some of the principles have actually gone outside for funding so they're they they've been writing grants doing things which is fine but that's why I was kind of under the impression that maybe it wasn't as um accessible for dollars um transportation is a problem in Rochester um you know uh housing stability has been a problem so I just was wondering if that that what was the transparency with that as far as how it's funded because unfortunately even though the school is not uh I mean for instance housing stability shouldn't be the go-to it it it is slowly becoming that way you know for some reason um so that's why I ask yeah I could certainly say the dollars we have for that and we work with Olstead County a lot on that are nowhere near sufficient to meet the need and it might be something Madam chair that we want to look at putting an update for the board on the board calendar on our housing work because we haven't done that um and it's not something that occurred to me until this moment so it might be good to to put that on the calendar and bring you some information on what we're doing around eviction prevention and um stabilization and sometimes resources to help a family bridge and you're right it is something that is a subject of Grants part of our referendum strategy is going to be greatly in inreasing the funding that we hopefully bring in to support that kind of work because we're going to have a position to facilitate the development of those grants because you're right right now it's mostly someone in a school writing it themselves and so we think we can significantly increase that support for this work so and that may help with some of the other outcomes as well I would think housing stability has a lot to do with long-term students you know our kids not moving around so much did you also have a question about the interpreters did I hear you say yes I kind of included them all together Transportation interpreters and um housing stability driver's ed I just know that those are places where often times uh grassroot organizations often get reached out for for funding or help um you know they start with RPS and then they reach out to the Hispanic Alliance or you know what I mean there there seems to be a lot of footwork that um is done in order to cover those areas so since we're talking about funding on the budget I was just wondering where you know is their flexibility M um in that space or is that something that may need its own bucket uh because they are transportation and housing stability alone are huge huge issues right now in Rochester um and we keep coming up a little short you know we right now have kids that are not getting to school and we're running out of Transportation dollars from what I understand as a community member um you know so these are things that I you know I know they're thrown in there but they have a direct impact on our students and their results and kids can't get to school and they don't have stable housing all the stuff that we're doing doesn't do anything if we can't get them there and they can't get a meal and get to sleep you know so I don't know if these are areas that we need to maybe look at a little bit more in depth I know they we have to have you know an allocation for them but I know that it it is a big concern for a large subset of our community right now yeah that's a good example and kind of also to director Cook's question about the cost center is this was our first cut at it um I could see interpreters being brought into language support because right now what that is it's the people who sit down the hall here but then we have a task force that Mom Su cansen and Natalia Benjamin are working on to uh and others to significantly strengthen all of the language support we support for kids and families that don't speak English from translations to things so that cost center right now I think we were thinking of the people who directly do interpretation but we have also a lot of Need for translation of materials so when we design the cost centers we're going to have to make it like a decision about what's the most useful way for decision makers to look at that work to fund it um because if we had interpreters here and translation services here those actually maybe should be combined because it's all about giving families you know access to services in the language they understand board members any other questions I just want to say that and I think you alluded to it earlier about the level of transparency at this point in the budget process I think we'd shortly be getting the Staffing model document but we've never seen uh amounts by School uh in dollar amounts usually we don't see anything like that until the budget document where you give us that chart and very teeny tiny print um that shows the various FTE by category and by then all the decisions are made um one of the reasons why I excited about moving forward with this model is I I don't want to overlook the recognition of the current state that you put in your memo and you've mentioned a number of times which is we have significant differences in a wide range of student outcomes across schools particularly when examining outcomes by race and other student characteristics using a highly centralized system of funding and Staffing schools but if we can give the schools the flexibility to allocate the resources based on the needs of the students in their schools the data the conversation with the staff we're bringing that decision making down to that school level for for 20 an average of 20% of the budget but I think it also has brought an awareness to the other buckets of dollars about how all of those other buckets have to serve the needs of the students in the schools all that data analysis that the skips are going to be doing is going to inform what we know we have to do even at a central level um so I am ready to take a vote if everybody else is so I'm not reading the resolution again thank you all those in favor of the resolution signify by saying I I all opposed the resolution has been approved thank you board members superintendent Mr Carlson our next item is the school board handbook this is an action item that we have discussed at the December 10th and December 17th meetings be it resolved that the school board of ISD 535 approve the Schoolboard handbook for 2025 and schedule an annual review of the handbook for December of 2025 for approval at the first meeting in January of 2026 move approval second it has been moved and seconded any questions or discussion hearing none all those in favor say I I oppose the resolution has been approved the next uh action item is our Schoolboard budget and member compensation um this is an annual agenda item um that we have started to look at in January so as part of the budget development process we can give direction to the superintendent and um Mr Carlson as to where to set our Schoolboard budget uh in 2024 25 it was set at $251,700 the major components and I won't list the dollar values because they are all in the agenda item is our school board compensation which is currently set at $116,000 per board member with a $1600 additional stien for board chair our are uh salaries benefits insurances and taxes primarily related to our share of the assistant school board clerk dues membership and licenses that the school board has with uh some of our professional organizations and um professional development training contracted Services which are mostly related to uh the board share of Legal Services travel and conferences primarily the msba leadership conference but also the opportunity for two board members to attend attend the cosba National Conference each year and then supplies and materials so given the information that is in the agenda regarding the all all the categories except for Schoolboard compensation um the recommendation is that we keep those uh amounts the same um there's no increase in the annual uh the assistant Schoolboard clerk costs there's no increase in the dues or membership or licenses so that we can set those categories at the same level as our uh budget for the 2024 2025 school year do we have any discussion or consensus on all of those categories besides Schoolboard compensation hearing none then we can set those at the same level um and then Schoolboard compensation our um best practices suggest that we review member compensation on an annual basis at the first meeting in January I do not have a recommendation so board members any questions or comments Dr W um so I'll just take a little historical review um back in 2019 um School Board director Amon amonson at the time and I um reviewed where our compensation was at that time which was $7,200 per year and that compensation was set in 1985 that we were looking at the same compensation from 1985 until 2019 the first time that school board got any compensation was in 1976 at $3,600 so there was only a nine-year gap between 3600 and a change in 1985 but between 1985 and 2019 there were it was more years than that it was quite um so we were looking at this and in January of January 28th of 2020 and if you want to review the discussion of uh that conversation it begins at the 1 hour 46 minute and 23 Second mark on that tape um so we recommended at that time looking at the Social Security cost of living in increases and also the Department of Labor's Consumer Price Index and at that time in early 2020 it was determined that to keep it purely lined up with inflation over some 30 some years uh that compensation would be $177,000 um that was in 2020 uh I think for some reason we dropped it 16,000 it seemed like a more round number or easier or you know this was a big jump in salary we were also looking at the time at some of the projected increases that the city council and County Commission were setting um and we decided that to really take a huge fight at that time would uh not be terribly prudent so I looked at the um Social Security cost of living increases between 19 or 2019 and uh today however I only um I decided that since our compensation had been set at $116,000 as of July 1st 2021 that it made sense to just look at any change of the Social Security increase between 2021 and now um so I bounced some ideas off of um Mr Carlson at the last minute and we came up with about the same uh the same numbers um in several different categories I was going to recommend that to keep somewhat um in line with inflation that our salaries could be increased to $199,000 per board member I'd also like to point out that over the three years that we didn't raise our our salaries that we save the district about $41,000 by not doing that um and then the school board chair would still remain at a 10% increase we got to the numbers um originally by taking uh some surveys of our current board at the time as about how many hours they spent in board work Community uh committee meetings meetings Etc and also some looking at other districts of our size and what they compensated their school board meetings um so as I said the um compensation that was approved on May 25th 2021 of $166,000 was $1,000 less than what lined up with uh Social Security Cola um and we didn't consider any infl inflation adjustment between the time we did that original original study and the time that we um changed our compensation um so um Mr Carlson came up with the social security number it was 19538 um so I think 19,000 would not be out of line for that um and then another I'm sorry that was back up the Social Security one was $1 19,42 um if we were to look at what our employee contract settlements have been during this time um that would bring our compensation to 19,5 38,000 if we looked at what the general education basic formula has been it would only bring it up to $17,730 um my recommendation would be that we move forward with $199,000 um increase to $199,000 with an additional $1,900 for the chair and then moving forward so that we don't have to come back and wait three years or four years or 30 years to make another adjustment that we um have some kind of metric that we can assign to that so that the increases reflect other things that are happening in the budget or inflation or whatever metric you might choose and I would certainly um you know be interested Mr Carlson would have any recommendations on whether or not that would be helpful to have you know as other things inflate that the school board salary would inflate along with it or um you know certainly open to board discussion board members anybody have any comments or responses I have a question is it possible for us to pass this resolution without cons determining tonight what a new Schoolboard compensation might be I mean can we can we postpone that decision till a later meeting about our compensation I'm asking Mr Carlson that I I think that's probably true we don't have a hard deadline coming up on that if that's the I think the other question I have is initially when we when we set our compensation it was starting on July 1 however um the school board chair salary runs from January through December and would it be possible for us to align our um salary increase or decrease as the case may be up with the calendar year rather than the fiscal year and if which case I would recommend strongly that we not wait until January 1st 2026 because we'll then be a year behind but to make that retroactive to January 1st of 20125 if unless that's too complicated for the finance department which I think it's not I mean we're talking about um $223,000 of increase and I think that's a good question for us to ask as we consider this because this discussion item is usually based to give guidance to the to Mr Carlson for our role in the budget that begins July 1 right um which is why we're having the conversation now so that it can be worked into um and I think another question I would have is if we uh I agree with you director Marvin this we can separate the resolution if it's the will of the board and and add it to another a meeting and gather some more information um because my other question would be what can we afford um given that we don't have a line item from any of our Revenue sources whether it's state aid local levies we weren't included in the referendum so um it would that would be another good conversation is where would this money coming from but I think what you're saying direct working with the increase is that it would be an additional $23,000 increase in the school board budget to accommodate the increase in Schoolboard salary so if I am not hearing any objections from board members about moving this to a separate agenda item we could pass a resolution regarding the remainder of the um Schoolboard budget or we could wait and do it all together at a later date since we have have time what's your preference well if I may Madam chair um under the current resolution it it does appear as if that option is there already and certainly I would be in favor of voting on uh number one in its entirety uh but also uh speak against um folks on item two which would be the increase tonight in that um uh there is not a exigent reason to do so we could have included it and can as a regular agenda item and and allow to go through the normal course to allow public comment things such as that there and I wouldn't want to create the impression that when it comes to us we you know just my thought I mean you're the chair of course and I take all of your thoughts under advisor I I support what director bar said so did I hear to vote on the first part tonight and then vote on the comp or do have a compensation item at a later date yes okay so I will read the resolution for um you just to make a motion to amend um well I haven't read resolution yet so we're good all right so be it resolved that the school board of Independent School District 535 directs the superintendent to use the parameters agreed upon by the board at the January 7th 2025 meeting for the 2020 526 budget as follows with necessary increases for inflation or other cost increases $ 62,3 for salaries benefits insurance and taxes $36,000 for dues memberships and licenses $188,000 for contracted services $117,000 for travel and conferences and 4,300 for supplies and materials move approval second so we have a motion and a second hearing no other discussion all in favor of the resolution say I I I all those opposed so that portion of the resolution has been approved and we will AB CD the compensation conversation for perhaps our next regular meeting thank you thank you 9.1 other business uh board questions and responses the questions submitted by board members um are available in this agenda item the ABCD 2025 uh updates um the current version is available in the agenda item and we have added a few to the ABCD tonight if anybody has any other um items to raise for consideration you can do so now or we offer the opportunity at every meeting upcoming board meeting dates January 14th at 5:30 is is a study session January 21st at 5:30 is a regular meeting and on February 18th at 5:30 we have a special session on field trip fees with a regular meeting immediately following and hearing no other business this meeting is adjourned at 8:52 p.m. [Music]