##VIDEO ID:HbvwI9S1jdQ## e good evening the time is now 700 p.m. the WIA Public Schools Board of Education regular meeting for Monday December 9th 2024 will please come to order will the clerk please call the role Heidi ker is absent Sheila PRI present Sarah Johansson here Caris bende here Valentina SS here Dan janesta here Milan Sone present Chase Anderson here thank you we have a quum director ker is unable to attend this evening's meeting because of a serious situation with her mother she has asked for people to keep the family in their thoughts if you wish to speak during the audience opportunity to address the board please fill out a form placed at the back of the room and hand it over to our district admin admin assistant Amy sitting to my right all right the next item on our agenda is the approval of the agenda and the consent agenda items consent agenda items are considered routine in nature and will be enacted by one motion there will be no separate discussion of these items unless a board member or a citizen so requests in which event the item will be removed as a consent agenda item and addressed the consent agenda items are listed in the materials the recommended action is to approve the agenda and the consent agenda items is there a motion I so move I second moved and seconded will the clerk please take a roll call Vote Yes I will hold on one second take your time um sorry Valentina SS yes Dan janra yes Sarah Johansson yes yes Paris bende yes Sheila prior yes Heidi ker is absent Milan Sone yes we have an agenda thank you Sheila please note that our agenda this evening is slightly different from the one we have followed in past meetings this year prior to the reports from organizations there will be an annual truth in taxation presentation which will be followed by public comments on truth in taxation I will mention guidelines for the public comments when we get there so for now the next item on our agenda is the annual truth in taxation presented by Executive Director of Finance and operations Scott Lage all right thank you board chair soney board members superintendent Anderson and the community school districts are required to meet the truth and Taxation requirements for taxes payable in 2025 while school districts are no longer required to hold a separate truth and Taxation hearing they are required to discuss the payable 2025 tax levy in the current year budget at the regularly scheduled school board meeting which we're doing tonight all right I'm sure I know I am known for not short presentations um I think when you probably saw this and saw I think there's six 60 or 61 slides in there I did cut it down um but we won't be going through each slide um individually the presentation was put together in a in a manner um that it was to be kind of instructional tool for the public as well um just to create more transparency because this is a really complex process so um we're just including a lot of information in detail we won't spend a Time on every slide um and you'll notice board members and maybe even the community from past presentations there's some duplication of slides which I traditionally do in a lot of them because they're very applicable to the situation so um other thing just to note um that I also uh touch baseed with the finance committee of the board on this this is a second part of the process if you recall back on September 23rd um I came to the board with the preliminary Levy presentation um that the board approved that night this is the second part of that and then later on in the meeting would be the certification of the levy and that would be the third part so I just wanted to make sure I add added that and then I would also tell you um which we predicted the night of the 23rd of September that um when the board approved to the maximum none of the numbers have changed since then so numbers are exactly the same percentag is exactly the same all right next slide all right so um just getting into the requirements of the meeting um basically uh as I mentioned when I was introducing it that it has to be a public meeting it needs to be between November 25th and December 30th at 6 p.m. or later um it must be part of the regularly scheduled meeting it must allow for public comment and may adopt the final Levy at the same meeting and that's what I mentioned we'll be doing tonight at the presentation we'll be going through the current year budget and proposed property tax levy oh does that work all right Perfect all right so this is just a quick look at our agenda and what we'll be covering tonight so um I've provided some background information on school funding in here we'll go over the district's budget from FY 2425 that was approved by the board in June uh we'll go over the district's proposed tax levy for payable 2025 and then public comment uh the objective of this slide is just just to show um essentially that the Minnesota Legislature pretty much um dictates how schools are funded um and it just walks through that I won't read it word for word but it's in the uh presentation for your review so um as you can see the district is limit on what we can actually um do or Levy amounts um as the state and the legislature determine these um outside of what they set uh they do authorize school boards to submit referenda for operating and capital needs which the district does both of those um and the district does have an operating referendum Um this can the first time this can be reviewed is coming up in July 2025 and then the district does have the two um Capital levies going um but this just kind of highlights that the state sets a lot of these um and schools basically just kind of um follow what we're able to do here this is a slide that I include this is kind of a big topic we've touched on this at several board presentations but this just shows the challenges that school are in um especially as of late with inflation um and the different impacts from it this is a more recent slide so the one in here is from um June 2024 inflation estimates uh prior stuff that you'll see in a few slides is based on 2023 that's because that came from a presentation in June before this was known but this really highlights the impact it has on schools so um despite the fact which we were appreciative of the dollars that the legislature G in the 23 session in the spring um we are still are way underneath where we should be just to keep up with inflation you'll see in a couple slides the impact that has even on an annual basis so um this just kind of highlights we're at 7281 in the current year um we should be at 8645 just to keep Pace with what's going on so um we are tasked with operating school districts uh providing for students and families our community and our staff and that becomes a big challenge as we are faced with this this just shows um obviously um the first year of the legislative package was 4% we are already back down to 2% um as we all know because we all have personal bills and pay them um nothing is just 2% so it just poses that additional challenge so I just put this put this in here just to highlight this is the slide that you recognize from the June uh board presentation when the when the board approved the budget at that time time this goes back to what I had mentioned this is from a June 2023 estimate so if you see that number of 8637 it differs um a few dollars from the first slide but this just goes to sh goes to highlight so um if you're following kind of on the top left there you're seeing um that difference between the 8637 on this slide and the 7281 which is our prop allowance of on our state aid that difference is 1356 while it might not seem like a big difference when you factor in when you take um our estimated projected enrollment that we had in June at the 12684 multiply it by the current state aid per pupil and it comes to 90 just over 92 million now you take that same 12,684 multiply it by the 8637 if inflation was there and you have 109 million so just a simple math below that we'd have an additional 17.2 million inside of our budget if we kept up with inflation we've talked about this quite a bit but the special ed funding we were extremely grateful for the legislature um reducing the cross subsidy for districts but the one factor that really wasn't thought about was the fact that we continue to see increased needs and increased costs we have staff shortages as well so while we're grateful for that um we've seen our costs increase pretty substantially just our district alone we're projecting spending about 23.5 million on state special ed this year that's up almost $5 million over the last four years all right now we'll get into the preliminary budget for 202 uh 425 and again this was approved at the June 24th special school board meeting so just to touch base on some historical um important recent historical budget impact factors that really impacted the district over the last several years this just starts to talk about I know it seems like you know the pandemic it was a few years ago now but it had an absolutely um tremendous impact on our district and I'll get into that a little bit but it really hurt our finances and our budget tremendously um this is because we're a pup driven Revenue system so uh you look at you can see the trajectory of growth the district was experiencing and we just used a cutoff date of 101 because that's kind of the official count obviously by year end um we have a different number and then there's an aggregated average which is the ADM for the school um but but you can see that dip so you can see we are growing growing growing um and in this because we use 101 it's a little bit different than how the year ended but um when you look at that year really we had a we were projecting to grow by about 250 on average and this doesn't show it but in the one that we've shown before that shows the ADM we lost 200 kids so you had a swing of 450 which just doing the math real quick is right around four and a half five million dollars um and then just that trajectory it's kind of like a savings account Once you pull that out you're not going to continue to grow at the pace that you thought you were um and if we recall during the pandemic uh just the timing of the pandemic there was a lot of uncertainties so it was first going to be a couple weeks and then it turned into a couple months and then in July we were told to potentially prepare for a hybrid model and um both in person and uh online which then we had to hire more staff so we weren't able to react um and so when you look at us compared to others um I think one thing that makes us unique is that we were growing we lost enrollment outside of our control um and so we lost those dollars so pretty tremendous impact so this just highlights the reason that I include this slide and uh the board has seen it before in past presentations is because um there was a comment made uh by a local legislator that just had asked us you know why is why that in budget cuts what did they do with all the money they received um during the pandemic well I put this together because it shows that the uniqueness of our district and I don't think there was clear there wasn't Clarity around that comment and understanding so the district that year um showing here and this was what what I was alluding to we lost two we lost 200 kids when we were supposed to gain 250 um and then you kind of walk through the math here so um where we would have been versus where we were so just in FY 2324 which was last year we should have been at over 13,000 kids we're at 1248 um so if you just do the compounding Factor on that at a minimum the district lost out on 11.4 million in Revenue that we would have had um and up to as much as 22.4 million so we had a drastic impact on it and also those initial covid related dollars were based kind of on the free reduce the title um and we got very little compared comparably to other districts so while we were impacted the same we did not get a lot of Co dollars comparably and we also saw a big hit in enrollment this just highlights just the difference of where we where we were at that time versus where we had projected if the pandemic had not happened and just the last thing you pass to the pandemic um probably everybody in this room uh recalls when the district had to react because of the pandemic and go into Cost Containment measures I think it's kind of showing that um I think it was very unpopular at the time I think we took a lot of heat for it um because people didn't understand it and that's kind of what I talked about on that previous slide um I think it's showing um when you look at districts around us and across the state that maybe it was pretty smart that we got ahead of this when we did and made the cuts when we did um just because as you know a lot of those expenditures can even grow exponentially especially on the expenditure side so by making the cuts when we did back in 2223 and through this current year those cuts had to be less if we would have continued to wait obviously the amount of cuts we' had would have been more so um pretty impactful um and then obviously a big big help for us has been the growth that we're experiencing previous to the pandemic that's been a huge help so we're hopefully in the final year of the original Cost Containment plan all right preliminary budget so that was a lot of verbage before this but we get the prelim budget so Chase I think you told me I had 20 minutes so I'm kidding but I think you did um all right so this is this is a slide that the board's used to seeing the reason that I put it up here is because schools are complex um we are we're fund accounting so there's the different funding streams and they have to stay they're Guided by uniform Financial um uars codes and so we have to follow those by State Statute so the district has broken up into um several different funds starting on the top their general fund our food service fund community service fund building construction fund and our debt service fund they all obviously are for um different things um and certain things cannot be transferred from funds so our debt service can't go to anywhere else building construction fund has to be used for um exactly what it says community service and food service if they would go into deficit um the general fund would have to bail them out but when their um fund balances are healthy it can't go the other way around um for what we're going to be talking about tonight um the majority of our budget is the general fund that's the the key portion the arrows that are pointing are the ones that affect the levy so despite the fact we have these different funds um only those ones with yellow are affected by the are impacted by the lobby another similar slide this just shows the budget timeline tonight I'm showing the preliminary FY 2425 budget but as you can see here um we actually are already as soon as our audit ended um which the board will be approving later on um we go right into revised budget so I know uh Finance director David draskovich and his team and Jen wal are already working on the revised budget which we will likely come to the board um in February or March um and then April looks at the capital related budget um and then we show up here in June for the budget approval for next year so um I always say in in any given time period we're working in three different years so um it's always interesting and complex for the team this just goes over the sources of revenue so when you look at um when you look at kind of the pie of all the revenue that we receive you can see here the line share comes from state aid which is about 63% our property tax is about 33% and I would just Note coming from outstate and just being really familiar with other districts we're extremely lucky we have such a supportive Community typically um that property tax percentage is usually in the 10% to 20% range so we do have a very supportive Community we're very grateful for that so um the reason I also point that out is because of that property tax you'll see later in the presentation um there is a lot of the funding streams inside of the levy that are based on that and so we might as a community because of the makeup um of our community and the demographics uh will end up having to Levy more where you get outstate where uh different demographics that more state aid would cover their area if that makes sense and then just other and then Federal Federal shrank a little bit um it had increased and that was for obvious reasons during the co pandemic despite the fact that we did get some Co dollars I believe is around 11.7 million over that time period um that was a very small portion when you factor over those four years that's almost $800 million worth of budget general fund expenditures this shouldn't really be a surprise to anyone um we are a service oriented industry because we're serving our students and uh so 72.4% estimated of our budget is salaries and benefits and Then followed by purchase Services um supplies of materials capital and then miscellaneous purchase Services inside of there would be our transportation utilities and some of the other big ones inside of there and then capital and purchase Services would include a lot of the construction projects we do with the ltfm dollars all right excuse me this is the preliminary budget that went to the board uh in June and this puts everything together so um this gets a little complex it'll make more sense as I go through the next few slides but um this includes the general fund um and all the different funds as you can see over on the right uh the majority of the revenue comes out of the general fund rate it's 83.5% and then it would be same or pretty much similar in the expenditures from the general fund and then you can kind of work your way down and see the different size of the funds and the makeup of the dollars inside of those um you'll see the revenues over expenditures there is a negative 6.6 million um don't gasp um we've already kind of talked about this so um this deals with and we'll get into to it when we talk about the levy but there's massive Levy adjustments depending on a lot of things this one here is driven by that adjustment with the ltfm and I'll talk about that a little bit later but essentially um that was a big impact and then if you look here in the construction fund down under expenditures it's showing uh a projected expenditure spend of 4.5 million and revenue up top of only 291 million um the revenue on top is uh primarily just any rebate we would get but primarily it's interest income on those on those dollars sitting in there and then the construction fund would be the remaining of the abatement bonds that we have and so we're spending those down so that 4.5 million has a big impact on it all right now um we will switch over to let me see all right perfect I know it's really hard to see on the left there so um I won't be reading word for word uh this is from the June budget presentation but it just kind of alludes it kind of gives the reader um or the public the opportunity to kind of read through some of the um greater points in the fund so this is our general fund this is the one that when the community talks about it or when the school board's talking about it this is the one that we're paying attention to all the time because this is really um the operations of the district so you can see here with the with that Levy adjustment in there of the 5.6 million um it's showing we have a projected $2.8 million deficit again that that's not really the true piter um because there is a levy adjustment it's related to ltfm and with that ltfm adjustment uh the the district is able to Levy because we're a 1A district we're able to Levy for the ltfm projects that we are able to do as we all recall during the pandemic um because there's a two-year leg on here we didn't project the pandemic um and we didn't project the impacts it would have on our construction plans that we submit to the state with a 10-year plan um and so we weren't able to get to a lot of those projects so the last few years we're seeing pretty big swings on our adjustments so when you look at our financials it will look like we have this big fund balance in our long-term facility maintenance essentially what happens is the state through the levy goes and pulls back what we don't spend so if we Levy $16 million but we only spend eight they're going to come back and swoop that the next year so that's the reason for the adjustment on here all right this is just another way to look at it um this pulls out that adjustment this is a trer picture of the actual operations of the district so um really when you look at it uh this year as I said we're coming out of the Cost Containment we projected 2.7 million revenues over expenditures um as the board recalls from the June from the June presentation on the right there um we really kind of showed some of the highlights of the budget um what's included in there the different restricted UNS spendable assigned unassigned funds and then kind of walked through at that time um we were projecting 12,684 uh I can tell you uh Finance director and David draskovich and myself were extremely uncomfortable with the 12684 um we were pushed to it I'm kidding um we had a lot of conversations on it because we're a pupil driven Revenue system we essentially that's your building block so you're laying in that projected enrollment which drives your revenue and then you're laying in your expenditures to see if they can cover we felt a little bit uncomfortable with that but after looking at kind of what we were watching and seeing and working with um other District partners and um jwalk with her experience we landed on that and kind of crazy enough the district has done two demographic studies in the last three years when you look at the demographic study done by Hazel reinh Harts in the fall winter of 2022 that projection right there is two and a half years ahead of her projections so um she's a well-respected um demographer and we're already kind of blowing those out you'll see later in the in the presentation we're actually we just crossed over 12,800 students so we're even increasing above what our forecast was but on the bottom there this just shows you um a lot of things can change so I always tell you the board members that you know you see these numbers don't fall in love with them because they will change like they they will for sure change when we're building this budget it's back in you know it starts in January February March April May and we're bringing it to you in June so we're going off of a lot of assumptions and so that's why the finance team in the district do a revised budget Midway through so there's a lot of variables that can happen um that can impact it and I listed um some of those on the upcoming slides as well so this is essentially the same thing but just a couple things I'd highlight is just what I um talked about Keys reasons why the district is rebounding from the devastating impact due to the pandemic uh was Cost Containment addressing that early and quickly um the student enrollment returning to prepandemic levels the special ed cross subsidy also had a big impact um the onetime general education at 4% um but now back to 2% but that 4% did help the one year and um and then kind of looking out into the future obviously the things that can quickly change is if student enrollment would slow so that would change thing drastically because as we're building into our projections excuse [Music] me there was a conspiracy theory that people claimed I was trying to lose my voice so someone would have to stand in for me so that is not true for the record so um but when you look at it if student enrollment growth would stop or slow that would have a pretty devastating impact um we saw that during the pandemic um and uh when you look at obviously negotiations can have a really big impact just because you look at 72 73% of our budget is made up of salaries and benefits so that could change things really quickly um special education costs increasing like I said we saw a big increase just in the current year when we budgeted from last year to this current year um if we had a referendum that failed a tech Levy failing um and then just the pure fact is Dr Anderson's mentioned it several times at board work sessions or board meetings this is a really bad business model I talked to my buddies in the private world or my counterparts and they always say wait so you can't control your Revenue you can't really control your enrollment and you can't totally control your expenditures and then you're supposed to operate and it's like yep that's that's the deal so um it is a challenging thing so um as I've talked about many times we're very lucky to have growing enrollment because it's allowed us to sustain and you'll notice that projection um of 2.7 million and the fact that at that time we are projecting a growth of 276 students roughly 10,000 a student gets you right to that 2.7 so it shows you the in instrumental nature of continued growth and why it helps us districts that aren't growing or are um stagnating they will be doing Cuts every three to five years just with the plain fact that you're bringing in between 2% two to 3% new money um and you're paying out far excess in that all right oops all right so this is just I'm not going to go over this whole slide but this is kind of a summary of what we just talked about um obviously we we as a district and a finance team and operations are watching heavily um the the enrollment we're watching that all the time um and we're watching uh expenditures and just different cost increase areas and we're also looking at some of the unfunded mandates that are still to come we'll touch on that um later in the presentation but we're still kind of waiting to see with the summer unemployment and now with uh the new um family leave that also could have some big impacts on districts and I don't think that was really thought about we did learned some numbers last Friday from amsd so um it will show we were pretty smart for putting away some of the dollars we did with the summer unemployment because that in my opinion will not make the summer they will not they will be out of that $135 million so I think we're on the good end of uh kind of foreseeing that this was going to come pretty quickly and putting some dollars aside all right now we're finally to the payable 2025 tax levy information I know everybody's been waiting for this part so and everybody in the room I do think I'm funnier than I am the board's probably used to it but um it's kind of my style so um just going into the change in the tech Levy does not determine change budget so you'll see some slides in here a lot of people think we're a growing District we're an expanding District there's new houses all the time there's new that doesn't necessarily mean more dollars for the district we're essentially as I pointed out in earlier slides the state sets the limits mde produces a levy limitation report for us we get what we get you'll see it later on in the slide but we break it down to kind of show that um but outside of our Tech Levy everything is set to the per pupil it's no different than state aid it's uh it is per pupil driven so um probably not too much else to touch on this one so Levy development the general Levy you've heard me talk about that during the budget but um the general fund the general Levy so student enrollment is the Big Driver voter approved operating referendum voter approved capital projects Levy otherwise known as the tech Levy and then facilities which would be ltfm community service um would be for our a programs and early childhood programs and then Debt Service of course is Levy to pay the the um Bond principal and interest on the voter approved and altern alternative facility bonds so differences in Levy Cycles so school districts our budget years begin on July 1 um as you can imagine that makes audits really fun because when do schools do projects we do projects in this in the summer so um you can imagine that's a lot of fun when we're working through Construction contracts and um factoring in our acrs but we start July 1st and June 30th um and then 20125 taxes provide revenue for 2026 so I talked about it a little bit we're always working in a few two to three years at a time so what we're talking about tonight will impact next year's budget not current year budget and then our budget is adopted in June so city or county differential there would be their budget year begins uh normal calendar year and then their 2025 taxes provide revenue for the calendar year that we're in this is just an example that we put up here but this would be an example of a um notification the proposed property tax that would go out by um a county again this is just an example on the right but every owner of a taxable property pays property taxes to various taxing jurisdictions so the county the city the school district Special Districts um in which the property is located so I feel like sometimes there is just a feeling that it's just the school district but um there is the uh City and counties on there and the other things that I mentioned so um so in here each taxing jurisdiction sets its own tax levy often based on limits set in state law for us that would be absolutely true because our limits are all determined by the legislature um and then the county sends out the bills collects taxes from the talk property tax owners and distributes the funds back to the other taxing jurisdictions which we would be one of those so this is just another slide showing the district um really doesn't have much control over the levy amounts so it just highlights here that the school district has a limited authority to the to the levy taxes and then um MD calculates the levy amounts for the various categories and they're set by state law and voter approval so this is a lot of information but we put it on here just because there's a lot of steps that happen before this even comes to the board in SE September when we asked you to approve the preliminary Levy but um Step One the city or the county assessor determines estimated Market values of the properties that's nothing that the school district does um the legislature sets the formulas for the tax capacity and the school district levy limits um the county auditor calculates calculates the tax capacity for each parcel of property as well as total tax capacity for each School District um the Minnesota Department of Ed uh it is a lovely lovely report roughly 39 to 42 pages that comes out early in September that that's what comes to you we kind of summarize it um go over it and we make some changes where we can but um it's basically determined by them and then the school board sets a levy and is and is only one step in this process and then finally the county auditor divides the final Levy by The District's total tax capacity to determine the tax rate needed to raise the levy amount so then this goes to us so September 8th uh that's what I just mentioned when mde prepares and distributes the first draft of the levy limitation report September 23rd is when this board approved our proposed Levy amounts to the maximum um and by maximum I've never really liked that word I've said it at our board things but it's the word that they use essentially it means that we can't go above that um but it allows for change so if something changed or if mde made an error if the county um noticed anything it would allow those numbers to change if the board had picked a set number in September we would be stuck at that number so I always like to explain that so mid November County mails out proposed property tax statements to all property tax owners um and then December 9th there's the public hearing which we're doing now and then following this um we'll ask the board to certify the levy amounts all right so now we'll get into some numbers for this so proposed uh payable 2025 tax levy is increased from 2024 of 3.9 million or 4.3% so changes by the levy category and reasons for these I'll describe further so this just kind of highlights the proposed amount as I mentioned um was increased by about 3.9 million or 4.3% um and that is up from 92.3 million up to 96.3 million one thing to point out and you'll see it on an upcoming slide um but our tax BAS SP has been growing and growing and growing and this is the first year it's kind of come back down um and people in this room or board members that own homes will um kind of resonate with the upcoming slide as well all right so um just to kind of remind when we look at RMV and NTC so referendum market value just as a definition um it's the taxable market value of all property taxes in the school district excluding seasonal Recreation and agricultural lands um so School taxes for the local share of a few categories of funding including voter approved operating refs are spread against the RMV net tax capacity the NTC that you see up there is the value of property in which the property taxes will be levied against for all other school funding formulas and it's calculated by multiplying a property's taxable market value by its assigned classification rate and those classification rates are set by the legislature so when you look on this um this would this just goes to show um obviously there's a lag so there's the catchup based on the property sales so you can see here um in 2023 and 2024 we probably all experienced it during the pandemic we saw house prices kind of go astronomical then there was the catchup so you saw that huge increase in both RMV and NTC of 16.5 and 18 uh 18.6 in 2023 came down a little bit in 2024 and then I just went a step further and grabbed some information off of hennipen County that shows uh it did decrease it or it isn't increasing at the same rate as it has the past two years so this we'll get into it a little bit more but this just shows like basically um this was kind of experienced all over the state too this wasn't just to our area our school district um even outstate Minnesota saw housing prices increase very substantially all right so now just breaking it down by the different areas if you recall in the earlier slide where I showed the yellow arrows and they're pointing to the different funds that are impacted by the levy when we look at just the general Levy that had an increase of 2.8 million or roughly 3.93% Community Service uh was up 4.7% or $95,000 um and Debt Service was up 984000 or 5.5% when you look at last year the general fund was up 3.8% Community Ed was a negative 6.6% and that was based off of the legislative change in FY 23 where they shifted more to state aid and away from Levy and then Debt Service um uh was 11.5% last year I won't dig through this slide but this is just more of the detail of the levy in the different voter approved areas um in all the different areas of the levy uh but essentially it just breaks down the same thing you'll see the 3.9 the 4.7 5.6 and then the overall aggregate of the 4.3 this looks at the the levy since 2016 2017 so fy17 all the way through the current that we're talking about today so kind of the the point of this slide is just to show as our enrollment increases the levy increases so logically right it's primarily driven by student count and so logically it would increase um and you can see over the years the increase the percentage increases um and pay 20 you and after that you're looking at some big adjustments from mde and some of the estimates caused by the pandemic but when you look at that aggregated average over that time period it was 4.84 um and then the current year is 4.26 so explanation of Levy changes um these get a little complex because we would kind of be going back and forth between this slide and this one but just to highlight um there's always going to be fluctuations in these because some of these estimates are by the district when we put in per pupil or when we put in pupil estimates the state also puts in a lot of estimates to on inflation and um some of the other areas that they are forecasting which then once they get the real numbers they have to go back and adjust so we did experience that um but this one This 1.2 million was voter approved operating referend Authority so it includes the annual annual inflationary increase and then enrollment of course is expected to continue to grow um the voter approved Capital Levy um Levy is based on voter approved tax rate applied to the district's previous year's tax base so the district's tax base has increased resulting in an increase in the district levy and then the ltfm um that increased roughly 1.4 million so as I alluded to earlier we're a 1A district so we're one of 28 in the state that are able to Levy for our ltfm dollars and aren um subject to the cap so the district's eligible for the ltfm revenue based on the state approved projected costs and levies are coordinated with other levies to maintain a level um or declining tax rate so um this just shows that continued as we kind of rebound from the pandemic and as we're able to get at a lot of those projects all right so um prior year adjustments this is kind of what I was talking about so um enrollment estimates provided by the district um impact these adjustments but estimates from mde used also play a role a large driver of the adjustments this year and last year were adjustments made to MD's initial estimates for the district's inflationary adjusted operating referenda to the final calculated Authority for FY 23 and an adjustment for an error that was made um by mde on the district's uh property tax label from 2024 um also had a significant impact on this as well um and finally Debt Service um this uh relates as kind of depending on when the debts maturing and as the bonds are set up um and we also have um an impact from the 2023a bond that was issued last year all right so factors impacting individual taxpayers um with their school taxes so changes in valuation of an individual property changes in total value of all properties within the district and then increase or increase in Levy amounts caused by changes in the state funding formulas local need and cost voter approv referenda and other factors so um this kind of just goes into you know what's happening with each slice so higher market value increase obviously there's going to be a bigger slice of that pie lower Market increase smaller slice so each property owner only pays a portion of the pie so when you look at it like this this lays it out so um two proper properties um both houses roughly at $650,000 valuation that's where I talked about we have a limit that we can Levy right that's set by the state so if we can only Levy Levy $5,000 each of these houses at the same value and obviously this is just the school taxes I'm talking about not the eight different towns or cities inside of our district because there would be their city taxes on there but if we were leving 5,000 for the school and all things were held constant each house would pay um $2,500 now taking it a step further where the these same two houses the orange house value increased by 10% and the blue house value increased by 25% so that's where we've talked about like that's nothing that we can necessarily control so this we'd still only be getting the same $5,000 and it would just show you the difference the house that's now estimated at 715 would be paying be paying 2340 and the house at 812 would be paying $2,600 I put this in here um just because it depicts if you had a $650,000 house in um in any of these districts this would be the portion that You' be paying for tax so um we grabbed cities and or districts right around us just to kind of show where we lie within that so I thought this was just kind of a good way to show um our district compared to the ones around us all right so legislative actions um changes for pay 25 so in 23 the legislature passed laws that affect property taxes in 2025 so provided tax benefit to homeowners by increasing the homestead exclusion um for valuations between 76,000 517 um and then increase the first tier um limit for egg homestead land to 3.5 from 2.15 obviously these don't impact our district pretty tremendously but we just had them in the slides and then forear Levy comparison um I won't go through this real deep but um examples include the school district taxes only and are shown based on no change and a 25.4% increase in property value for residential homes over the past um four years and that kind of is shown by that slide a few where we saw that big deviation or big increase so um this if you look up here you could just pull one um that shows a 600 $50,000 house just because we've kind of been focusing on that um but if you would kind of look over to the right you would see what they actually paid in 2022 which would be 3239 in Actual taxes payable 2023 if the valuation had stayed the same which we know property values increased if it stayed the same that same house would have paid 2810 so it would have paid almost $400 less the next year it would paid $2,700 um and then the estimate that we would be showing is 2739 for this year so um I'll talk a little bit about why that happens but um it's essentially because we are such a growing district and because we are expanding so fast there's more to spread um the the the dollars that are provided by the levy so obviously we know that it's not always the case that the house stays in the same valuation so people in here could say well my property taxes went up that's not right I'm assuming the valuation of your home went up at the same time time I won't go through each one of these as I'm sure the board um and if the P public was able to view this this just goes through a whole bunch of different scenarios of stuff that came up in September that we wanted to make sure we included um because it kind of highlights um an individual could go in here and kind of um associate it with their current situation so and that's basically all of these um just showing the difference in valuation so uh I would encourage the public or the board um to view those and if you had any questions you could always let me know but this is just a summary so what causes increases decreases in levies I talked about it state law per people and population obviously those impact heavily um the market value and tax capacity that we just talked about and then changes in expenditure so I talked about our long-term facility maintenance so if we were to Levy 16 million but we were only able to spend 12 million there would be those adjustments and expenditures all right so the final proposed property tax payable for 2025 um in summary the general fund would be 75.4 million community service at 2.1 million Debt Service at 18.7 for a total of 96 million 322 943 so next steps uh the board accepts the public comment on the proposed Levy and then the board certifies uh later on in the meeting the 2025 property tax Levy finally um and I know board chair soney will mention this but um there we are available for public comments so comments and questions must be related to the 2024 payable 25 tax Lobby um and why that a public schools portion of the taxes um not you can't talk about the city or county because obviously we have no control over those and then the speaker must be a district 284 taxpayer must state name and address for the record um and then h County determines property evaluation so if there was an issue with that you we would just advise you to reach out to them all right right thank you so much Scott um I you know I wonder if uh if we can Advocate with the legislature next year in their session that our Executive Director of Finance is a funny man can we get a little more funding for the district maybe maybe we can but thank thank you so much um board members there is no action required at this time but later in the meeting we will be asked to approve the levy reports and recommendations for now do you have any questions or comments okay I have one question Scott U if you can go back to the slide on rmvs and ntcs there you go that's the one so we have we have dropped from whatever it was in 23 to 24 and now estimated in 25 is is is a lot less as well so am I understanding this correct in that the the portion of the pie that the state contributes and property tax taxes are know they contribute is now going to change to higher proportion from the state lower from the property taxes so it used to be 6035 I think at one point now I'm seeing it inch to a 6530 state to property taxes is that correct um I'm not certain I think this would more depict just the growth in the valuation so it would be as we see the district expand um it's a mixture of all the new developments coming online and then the increases in property values so um if I'm understanding you correctly this would just depict those increase in valuations and expansion of the district and then it's starting to normalize now so where we're seeing big increases if someone bought a house for 600,000 in 2020 and they could sell it today for 850 we're seeing that slowly that increase de at that increase that was increasing at an increasing rate is now increasing at a decreasing rate if that makes sense yeah all right thank you no one else thank you so we'll move on to the next item on the agenda which is the public comments on truth in taxation this section of the agenda provides an opportunity for members of the audience to address the school board regarding the truth in taxation presentation Scott mentioned a couple of things uh uh during his presentation also speakers will be allotted approximately 3 minutes please note that this time is provided for Citizens only to address the board this is not an appropriate venue for discussion or debate if the speaker would like a followup contact from the board of Education they may leave their contact information with admin admin assistant Amy on my right are there any speakers are there any speakers okay I don't see anyone coming to the podium uh thank you all for your comments which there were none to the school board so next item on the agenda is reports from organizations this section of the agenda provides an opportunity for a wieta high school student council representative to report on information and events at wieta high school normally we have Pon M who is the vice president of the student council come and talk to us but this evening I believe there is Rachel who is the student council Junior VP from bazetta high school to to talk to us so Rachel would you please come forward chair sooney Rachel had to leave uh just due to timing she did leave me her notes so as long as you promised not to ask any questions I will read you her notes agreed good deal thank you thank you uh the student council is holding our annual winter festivities day on December 20th the Senate has supplied staff with elf on-the-shelf costumes that will be worn throughout the day candy canes will be passed out before school at each of the entrances ugly sweaters have been requested of the staff and students to wear adoptive family raised 11 $1,526 as of their last fundraising day last Wednesday Senate and House members gathered together at Target to shop for requested items a group of senators dropped off the gifts at the Children's Hospital this last Saturday the fundraiser at honey and Macky resulted in an extra $200 that was split between iocp and the Children's Hospital fall Sports season have ended with their annual Banquets girls cross country qualifiers however decided to end their season with another race um nxn out in Oregon and I believe they placed ninth nationally so congratulations to them drama club has callback editions for the winter play Romeo and Juliet NHS has started preparations for their annual winter formal the snowball they've not release the theme publicly yet but they hear it's it isn't The Great Gatsby which is good for student C counc finals are coming after winter break with SIP and study ready to start up again where students can help emotionally and academically support their peers through tutoring and last but not least pton mule would like to share that the high school's Nordic and Alpine team have a flag football competition to determine winter skiing Sports is superior like always the Nordic team one one to nothing Payton is not so optimistic for next year that's all thank you Amy on behalf of the board please convey our congratulations to the student council and and the students at Visa so thank you so much for filling in all right next item on the agenda is recognitions and I will now join superintendent Anderson at this at the podium good evening everybody welcome my name is Chase Anderson I'm the superintendent for the school district and it's my pleasure to welcome all of you here tonight I always get to convene the recognitions uh portion of our school board meetings so it's my pleasure tonight to uh make three such presentations and we have uh to start with two Central Middle School staff members an Holtman and Paul net pette chernis if they both would come forward please and join our board chair I'm going to uh read a script uh for each of our staff I'll do one at a time and then they'll have an opportunity to make a couple comments if you would like to do so so and we appreciate both of you being here tonight and congratulations I will start out with an Holtman it is with great pride and gratitude that I write to recognize the profound impact Anne Holtman has had on the wi Isetta Central Middle School Community as one of our longest tenured staff members in our special ed Department an's dedication compassion and Leadership have left an incredible mark on our school and serves as a teacher in one of our SDC classrooms a role that demands both expertise and an exceptional level of care she consistently goes above and beyond to meet the needs of her students advocating for their success and celebrating their achievements her thoughtful approach ensures that every student in her care feels valued and supported and her efforts have transformed countless lives over the years Anne's impact extends far beyond the classroom walls she is a quiet yet said steadfast leader in our school Community offering guidance and encouragement to both College Coles and students alike whether through mentoring new staff collaborating with teams to improve outcomes or simply offering a listening ear an's presence is a source of strength for many in our building one of Ann's most remarkable qualities is her sense of humor and what can often be demanding and challenging role her ability to find joy and bring laughter to those around her is truly a gift an embodies the spirit of CMS through her unwavering commitment to inclusion her dedication to fostering a supportive community and her passion for helping every student reach their full potential her contributions have been and continued to be a Cornerstone of our school's success we are excited to call Anne our wetta public school's Employee of the Month her impact is immeasurable and we are so fortunate to have her as part of the CMS family and at this time I would invite Anne forward to uh feel free to make a few comments if she would be so inclined sorry that was a little moving touching um I wrote something down because I'm a little overwhelmed uh in public speaking like this but um uh I was beyond flattered to receive this recognition um special education um as a whole is a team effort um I could not do my job without the support of my teacher team mates um and most importantly sorry the pair professor pair professionals that I work with each day and they're all here tonight so that's even more positive um the pair professionals at CMS are attentive empathetic and passionate about the work that we all do they help my they help make my days run more smoothly and I could not do it without them together we work hard to grow Middle School Minds sorry um I am uh thank you thankful for my special services supervisor Amy and the CMS administrative team Julie Rob and Xavier um I appreciate the respect and trust that they give me in my role teaching is exhausting um but the connections with the students and knowing that they look forward to seeing me each day makes it easy to come to work so I'm humbled and obviously moved to be chosen by my colleagues so thank you [Applause] congratulations again and no apologies necessary for emotion that's a good thing we value that around here um our next employee of the month is paulet chernes who has had a Prof Prof found impact on the wetta Central Middle School Community particularly within our special education department every day pette shows up to school and showcases her dedication and her unwavering commitment to students and colleagues making her a true Cornerstone of our school as one of our longest tenured special education staff members Paula has been a steadfast advocate for students with unique learning needs she tirelessly Works to ensure that every student in her care has the resources and support they need to thrive academically and personally her ability to connect with her students and provide individualized care is nothing short of inspiring Beyond her work with students Paulette has played an essential role in mentoring new staff members as they join our building her willingness to share her expertise offer guidance and provide encouragement has helped countless Educators find their footing and flourish in their roles poet's work ethic is unmatched she she consistently goes above and beyond not only meeting the needs of her students but also contributing to the overall success of our special education department her peers have described her as an anchor to the department this month we are thrilled to honor Paula chernes as our Yetta public school's employee of the month this recognition is a small token of our immense gratitude for her countless contributions to CMS she embodies the values of hard work compassion and Leadership and we are so fortunate to have her as part of our community thank you Paulette for all that you do your impact is immeasurable your work truly has made Central Middle School a better place for students and staff congratulations and now it's your turn see if I can hold it together uh first I just want to thank you so much for this recognition it truly is an honor um I'd like to thank Central the district and the students and families that I do have the pleasure to work with every day the families I work with are such amazing families who not only advocate for their students um but they support me as well the administration Xavier Julie Rob and then my special education supervisor Amy have continued to support me and I do really appreciate that dangy trying to hold it together I know I can always go to you guys if I need something all my co-workers at Central are the most amazing co-workers and Educators there are and I am very glad that I get to go to work each day and work with them and that also my own kids get to learn from them I feel this honor could go to each and every one of them I can also not go without me mentioning my amazing special education staff both the teachers and the amazing pair of professionals at Central they go unmatched to any other I am very lucky to be a part of that team I truly couldn't do my job without them and it helps that they' make coming to work a lot of fun I also like to shout out my family um they probably don't always get the best side of me uh when I get home after a long day um but they their love and support for me and what I is um always there so I appreciate that and then the last thing I was just kind of reflecting as I thought about it and when I got hired at Central Middle School I really wasn't sure how it was going to go I thought about it and I was a had four years experience under my belt and only had taught Elementary at a whole different district and so I thought they were a little crazy for hiring me for that role because I didn't think I could probably even do it myself but I was really extremely excited to get into the district and I you know I thought well I'll give it a chance chance I'll teach middle school for a year if I want to go back into Elementary I can try to apply and do that and now 14 years later I am still at Central Middle School and I have not left and I can't imagine uh going anywhere else and teaching anything but middle school so thank you [Applause] thanks again and congratulations well done and an impressive cheering Squad here tonight as well by the way thanks for joining them fun uh at the board meetings we also uh recognize individuals who have announced their uh intent to uh retire since the last uh board meeting that we had we only have one such individual tonight I do not believe she is here if so she can certainly come forward and be recognized and we're recognizing tonight rahima majumdar who has been with the wetta kids program at Birchview for 23 years she's probably tuned in on YouTube tonight so we'll give her a round of [Applause] applause that includes our recognitions for this evening and uh again thank you so much for uh being here with us tonight and congratulations to our recipients congratulations to the honores and thank you Dr Anderson and now we have the highlight of our regular meetings the school Spotlight presentation tonight the spotlight is on Central Middle School and I'll turn it over to executive director of teaching and learning DEA Miller to make the introductions DEA thank you members of the board welcome Dr Anderson tonight it is my great privilege um to introduce to you students and staff from Central Middle School under the direction of principal Xavier Reed as part of their student engagement goal of a 100% of students from Central Middle School growing in at least one category on the building co-created engagement rubric the staff and students at Central have leaned into a team of student leaders known as the central change agents principal Xavier Reid and assistant principal Julie Johnson and Rob Remington along with staff and the these student change agents are excited to share their story on how through student leadership they are making a positive impact on Central Middle School climate and so with that I'm going to turn it over to principal Reed and this fine group of change agents we have here with tonight to share their story thank you all right we're going to open it up and allow our change agents to introduce I'm Christian Sims I'm Harper mellitis I'm Ariel Foley I'm Daniel Johnson I'm BR fall I'm Obi then I'm Dino students Cameron McWater and I'm Sarah thelmon the other dean of students thank you for having us so uh you know something that we have discussed as a school um um is the importance of being able to get feedback from different parts of our school um different stakeholders and I think that we focus a lot on this and sometimes we can forget the student voice and student voice is probably the most important voice um in our school um this is the the group that we serve and so we wanted to have a focus on not just the voice of students but also give them opportunities to lead and to build agency as well um our students um in the past so beyond the students that are sitting in front of you right now years ago we've had students that were were were yearning for opportunities like this and we're yearning to have an impact on our school in a bigger way um and they wanted to be a part of conversations where policies or um planning or being in space with some of our teacher leaders and some of our administrative leaders as well um were happening and so that's where the idea of this of the central change agenc came from um truly and I I say this a lot these are the next generation of leaders in our society they're going to be change agents in our society and it's important for us to give them that opportunity while in Middle School to help them to grow these skills at an early age this work that we're doing is directly connected to our school growth plan um CCA has been involved with the same similar activities if not the same activities that some of our teachers and some of our licensed staff members have been involved with um specifically our second goal this year is around student experience and um Miss uh Dana had uh alluded to it earlier today but that goal is that 100% of our students in grades six through eight at Central Middle School will grow at least one category level on each of the categories on the co-created engagement rubric um later in the presentation you'll see where the students worked to give their feedback on our engagement rubric um that's some work that we have done recently so our vision of the central change agents is not to only Empower and Elevate themselves but others to be the best versions of themselves to be agents of change to specifically provide students the opportunity to impact the school climate and leverage their leadership throughout the building we plan on doing this in many different ways like changing policies to create inclusive learning envir en Ms mentoring younger students like our sixth graders and most importantly having student voice um be part of our leadership committees like our building operation committee and our building instructional leadership team um the CCA story is we work with a bunch of different things around the around our school and what in the picture on the left you see Ariel and Chandler handing out popcorn to one of the classes this morning the one on the bottom is working with our Friday morning announcements and then the one on the right was from in the middle of day where students let a circle so we work around all right so during this day we came together as a group and talked with the organization called mde so we basically made a circle in the wrestling room and then we talked about like how to make an impact on the school and we split in the groups and then went in the room and we also like had a talking piece so everybody could go by one by one and basically just talk about how we can make a change and like make the school a better place oh so in this this was the same day we basically went into the um we went into the auditorium and then we put posters up and split in the groups and talk about like basically like our decisions and like impacting and stuff like that when you looked at the engagement rubric survey that was taken previously that year and filled in what we thought was there and looked at how students had answered questions based on like like religion and all that um in the middle day was an opportunity we had for the sixth graders to come into the building a day before the eth and seventh graders were there we ran circles so they could ask their questions they wanted and get to know their way around the building and then in the end of the day we went to classrooms and helped students with stuff they needed to know around the building and to this day I still have six traders that will come up to me in the hall and tell me about their day from in the middle day and this is another amazing initiative that our change agents got to participate in so last spring our eighth graders um CCA members got to host a a tour for Birchview students not only were they able to create a sense of belonging but they were able to build a relationship with incoming students um they did this by facilitating like a circle where they got to do like questions q&as and provide helpful tips on how to be successful at Middle School one thing that amazed me was um that was also empowering is was how they LED some work around helping the students write a uh a letter of like encouragement empowerment to themselves so when they came back on the first day they was able to get those letters again they got those letters from themselves just to remind them that they are a part of this community and that we're here to support them and then this year um like it was spoken of earlier um our change agents this year got to co-create and collaborate with um our classroom teachers on creating an engagement rubric so both sides got to partake in a professional learning development where they had to identify um what it looks like feels like and sounds like when they are empowered engaged um compliant and so forth in specific areas of their learning such as like teamwork instruction and their presence in class now that both sides have done this um we're taking this to our buil team where we will identify um the key themes and Trends and create this rubric so students can feel supported and empowered with their learning um one example I had for the presence in class was I was talking with my health teacher and he was saying that he has kids that have their heads down on their desk air puds in but they're still participating in class and answering questions just throwing their answers into the ring even if they may not be right so no matter how it looks if they're pres in class all you always know is that they're listening um okay so popcorn carts was something that assistant principal Julie Johnson started um on every day one of the week we go around giving popcorn to teachers who request it and they give us 50 cents for it and with those 50 cents we use that to repair or get anything around the building that we need to better our school uh last year the Friday announcements were over the PA system throughout our school but this year we decided to make it more into of a video form to make it more interactive for students as you can see um we we go around and interview students and teachers um just to be able for students to feel connected and involved within our school last year I did Friday morning announcements with Miss T our eighth grade Dean and Friday morning announcements is something that we could look forward to throughout the week basically we did this thing called spotted slips where if we see any students showing children Pride they would get had a little treat for it and it was a very fun and good opportunity to connect with others um we started working with seventh graders so they're prepared to take over the Friday morning announcement uh this is our goals for future CCA and we would like to see CCA continue to grow in CMS and like just keep having it move on through the next years and find more opportunities to give back to Community um also um for other goals for the future of CCA let's say you had a good relationship with a teacher in sixth grade and you had free time you could help that teacher like a tutor other sixth graders that need help and peer mediation is where you see um two students not getting along and instead of a teacher like uh trying to settle it like uh pure mediation where like another students like would tell them like it's not good and they would like respect like they would listen to their words more than the teacher because they would relate to them anybody other other final thoughts Miss T would you like to say anything get to know the fifth graders from a variety of elementary schools is one big goal because we work with Birch View but we don't work with the other schools Fe feing into Central something else we would like to do is bring CCA to other schools because we feel like it's a good learning opportunity we feel like it's a good thing for you to connect with other students in the building like some of the people that I CCA I've never talked to them until I got in it and I never knew how we connected or related on a different level till now so I feel like it's a good experience for other kids in middle school to experience to learn how to work with others as they get older I would say too just starting CCA last year and the growth that I've seen confidence and advocacy skills in this group has just been really cool to watch and see and to have them feel comfortable and safe enough to approach us and say hey I have an idea or this is what we used to do at my old school could we try it here and being willing to think through and have some tough conversations but be able to see like the greater good for Central Middle School so it's been really neat to see that and to have them have a voice especially with the eighth graders moving into the high school too I think that's our presentation any questions right thank you so much uh principal Reed all change Agents from CMS and the coach U great to hear that uh that students are taking a lead leadership role actually in school so any questions comments from board colleagues yes sir this is fantastic thank you and thank you for waiting while we talked about a whole bunch of budget stuff that was a lot so so your leadership um shows through with that as well so um one of the questions that I have for you is you I know you went through an exercise right where you talked about what it looks like feels like and sounds like when something happens um and Mr Reed mentioned that you are the change makers in our in our world right in Central Middle School what does it look like sound like feel like when adults support you to use your voice or how what did the adults do to support you um the adults take our ideas and run them to a bunch of our different leadership teams in our building to try to get them to go further along because one thing I was really interested was working with sixth graders so starting on Wednesday I actually get to go to a sixth grade math classroom and help out in there for my half block awesome thank you I'm just curious about restorative uh Circle what is it about if you can explain thank you um so we had um two women come in from the Minnesota Department of Education and they taught um eighth graders last year who are now in ninth grade and um us about um what it is to be able to lead a circle which is connecting um um within a group using a talking piece going around and usually there's like a topic you talk about and expand off of um where you can just feel connected within a group of people and um yeah then related to that uh which kind of topic you after which kind of topic you felt uh connected um well last year on our training day uh we all talked about what it looked like to participate at CMS in the CCA and how we feel connected to the building and what we wanted to do for future CCA and get get things running thank you I would just add in too um that obviously restorative practices and circles can be to repair harm um these circles that we did on that day were more about building community um so we wanted to build community for the change agents and for all the students that were a part of that and so that was a way that we were able to start building community and start to build a connection with all of us I'm gonna add on to that that's what we use for especially for in the middle day we use circles to work with the sixth graders and get them welcomed into our community as well okay thank you leaders I have two questions so as a change helper what was the number one question or challenge that you heard from most of the students if there's one thing that all students were asking to change what would that be for us one thing that the students asked a lot for us to change was the school lunches um um one thing we wanted to change was just like how people address what we do in the building and actually get it going just even like the walking on the right side of the hallway and not like shoving people into lockers posts all that I remember last year too when we were talking about a lot of kids brought up hallway behaviors which was really interesting to me in the circles that they were recognizing like the hallways were really wild and even this year too when we were in doing the circles for in the middle day that was like a really big emphasis in our Circle we kind of split up and our circle with I think it was Daniel yep and Harper and one other student yes and they were very like the message was like you got to like keep your hands and your body to yourself and you got to walk on the right hand side we have a lot of kids here which kids are coming from a smaller middle school or smaller Elementary School to a big middle school like you don't like realize that so yeah that was a big one that I heard a lot great great so my second question is just looking at the pictures it looks like Friday morning announcement was really fun so what was the most funniest response that you probably edited from the final video what do you want to share oh it was our um hot to go dance we had the teachers and students do because it was like trending on Tik Tok like a really important week like so Daniel took it to our advisory leader and said why don't we do this and he got it motion running motion with teachers doing the dance and students doing the dance and turning it all into one clip we actually got all of them doing it with our custodian nice thank you then go ahead thank you well I just wanted to say Well done um it's an impressive set of skills you all have making change in your building um advocating for the kinds of you know citizens you want to be and whatnot and to see the excellent presentation public speaking skills inspires us as board members and really makes us look forward to what you're on to achieve in the future so well done and keep up the good work all right if there are no more questions thank you change agents teacher and principal Reed let's give them a round of applause please thank you okay moving on to the audience opportunity to address the board and I think uh we have few of those that that want to speak tonight if you haven't had a chance and you do want to speak please fill out a form in the back of the room and hand it over to Amy this section of the agenda provides an opportunity for members of the community to address the school board speakers who wish to provide input to the school board must complete the signup sheet and return it return it to our District Administrative Assistant Amy who is sitting at the table to my right please note that you will need to complete a request form to be included on the speaker request list when you are invited to the podium please identify the subject or agenda item to which your comments pertain priority will be given to students and families with students currently enrolled in the district the school board practices not to engage in a discussion or debate with the speaker but rather allow the speaker time to express their thoughts please present your comments in a respectful and professional manner this evening each speaker will be invited up to the podium to speak for 3 minutes and we have like I said we have a number of requested uh requested speakers so I ask that you keep your comments very brief definitely under three minutes and uh director prior will help us keep track of the time by holding up a red card at the three minute Mark please end your comments when you see the red card or if you miss it when I say thank you if you already shared your thoughts with the school School Board please consider letting someone new address the board if a Community member shares a message similar to yours please consider shortening your message or presenting as a group first are there any students who would like to speak I don't see that in the list so we will pick up the the names as as I go through these forms first one is Adam web Adam would you please approach the podium and please identify yourself and and let us know what you learn yeah absolutely good evening my my name is Adam Webb I'm here to speak about the attendance area adjustment process I I'm the annoying guy who has emailed you all a few times but I I've done so because the area attendance area adjustment process is significantly impacting my family as you may know I currently have a third grader and a kindergartner enrolled at Greenwood Elementary School I'm here today along with others to represent our neighborhood as concept 8 B5 released tonight contemplates moving our neighborhood the Reserve at Madina from Greenwood to Northwoods our neighborhood wants to stay at Greenwood and we believe the data and stated goals of the design team strongly support doing so I I also want to say during the working session earlier I I heard a lot of past tense um when we were talking about the process and and and that kind of implied 8 B5 is a done deal I really hope that's not the case I hope family stability isn't reserved for just the richest neighborhood in the school district I think you know which neighborhood I'm talking about and and I hope you hear hear me out on my simple proposal tonight um for reference our other one other one for reference our neighborhood is located here here sorry we should have rehearsed this better it's located here okay and we are literally the only neighborhood the only entire existing neighborhood moved out of Greenwood in concept 8 B5 the only one okay now I think everyone's in agreement that Greenwood is set to be overcapacity in the future if no changes are made but the data shows it will be over capacity primarily due to future development gains so if the school board is open to pocket zoning which it appears to be with holiday Hollydale and Tava kind of being on their own uh some of the future developments such as the ones here can simply be zoned for Northwoods and our neighborhood which is fully built out and has always been zoned for Greenwood can stay at Greenwood these neighborhoods are also closer to Northwoods than Greenwoods and result in minimal uh family disruption alternatively and this is my favorite idea I made this map myself this neighborhood right here is Meadow View and it's approximately the same size as our neighborhood it is being moved from gleon Lake to Greenwood in order to then move us out of Greenwood to Northwoods Why move two Neighbors neighborhoods it is it is unnecessary the neighborhoods are almost identically sized I asked Teamworks to look into this tonight Ray committed that he would I hope you as school board members hold him accountable to that this solve this adds stability to our neighborhood and our lives thank you for your time thank you thank you Adam next uh is Joseph delen I'm sorry if I butchered your last name j thank you like you said my name is joen live in the same neighborhood as Adam and and these fine people over here um I have a third grader and a kindergartner as well at Greenwood um I'll keep it generally short um I don't understand um you guys say you know open feedback we're open to suggestions our entire neighborhood everybody that I've talked to does not want to move and every single time there's been a New Concept that's been released it has had our neighborhood always zoned for Northwoods not once has there been a single concept that has showed us not moving the other thing that I think Adam pointed out it's important we are literally the only neighborhood that is moving out of Greenwood and you are moving other neighborhoods that are established into Greenwood Why move a neighborhood that's going somewhere else to Greenwood solely to move us out of Greenwood to Northwoods I don't understand how that makes sense it's just unnecessarily impacting lives um also if you guys are going to be open to pocket pocket boundaries you can't do it for some neighborhoods and not others all right we know that there's pocket neighborhoods on the inside of the Plymouth boundary mainly Kimberly Lane and Plymouth Creek you guys said Kimberly Lane is going to be way over capacity but it doesn't matter because we'll just pocket well then pocket for other neighborhoods as well and let us stay where we want to be um I have a thir third grader I have a kindergartner my kindergar is on an IEP he's finally just now established himself with his care team at Greenwood um he's learning to not be super dependent on my wife as you can imagine with a special needs child the mom tends to be a child's safety blanket right Greenwood has now become his safety blanket and it is doing a disservice to him to move him to a new place uh my third grader has spent four years at Greenwood he considers Greenwood his home he refers to it as being traded um he's a big Sports guy so when he talks about it he's saying why am I being traded to Northwoods and he has cried multiple times so as a dad seeing that I feel the need to come up and talk to you guys I know that it seems like it's already decided um I hope that's not the case like I said we've been putting in feedback since the beginning and it has never changed not once never been maybe it's been considered behind closed doors I don't know there's never been a concept map released um that's all I have to say like I said we just come here to try and make our voices heard so I'll yield uh next we have Adam Meyer good evening uh my name is Adam Meer I'm a resident reserve of Madina I can promise you in the last Adam from The Reserve of mad all speak tonight uh I'm obviously here to speak about the attendance uh area adjustments particularly how to minimize disruptions for the children in our neighborhood I'm the father to a first grader at at Greenwood I think Mr Webb did a good job with his recommendation to show there are possibilities to make financial and geog graic sense to keep our neighborhood in the Greenwood school while also holding true to the guiding principles that we've seen from the Teamworks team particularly managing capacity no material impacts to the capacity of Greenwoods or Northwoods under his proposal minimizing disruptions I think the team has done a great job bringing that number down from 25% of students further down and this is another way in which the school board and Teamworks can can accomplish that goal uh another particularly concerning point is during the working session we saw I think I counted 30 different scenarios that they've ran from Teamworks not one of those not one scenario had our our neighborhood staying in Greenwood it seems awfully coincidental that there wasn't one possibility to model that out or to say here's an opportunity for your neighborhood to stay yet some of our direct Geographic Neighbors and many of those scenarios remained in Greenwood so I'm asking the board Mr L Teamworks to strongly consider keeping our neighborhood in Greenwood thank you thank you again uh a request for speakers to consolidate your comments if they're similar to other speakers that have spoken before or if you know that they're going to speak about the same topic in a similar manner please try to consolidate and come up come up as a group if you can thank you IDI and I cannot read the last name I'm sorry I apologize I'm just repeating myself I didn't know we're supposed to cond consolidate I'm Heidi spy I'm a mom um I have a fourth grader at Greenwood and a seventh grader at West and and um we moved here um during the pandemic um October 2020 and we felt very welcomed by Dr G he made sure that my kids felt very comfortable that they were they had a buddy that they were coming in that they knew someone um I told you know Dr Anderson like I just felt like the grass was so much greener on the other side we came from Maple Grove where we just felt like you know we were just a number and I felt like when we came here we weren't just a number and when I have been putting in the feedback like they have said before not a single one was recognizing our little tiny neighborhood where I think there's only one fourth grader so it's just the one child would be moved and um you know not to get personally but it's he's one that it would not go over well with not knowing anyone and going into a new place just not knowing anyone and I know every kid is different and I'm just saying I just love that wi Isetta just really looks at people at the kids as kids not just like here this is the number and I just I just beg that you just look at Reserve at Madina our very tiny neighborhood and just please don't move us especially since we're the only ones and that would be hard to not know anyone so thank you very much for your time all right next is Vanessa baronson hi I'm Vanessa baronson and I also have a kindergartener at Greenwood Elementary I will be brief and just add my two cents around the community that we built at Greenwood we have been there through prek and then now through now in kindergarten and the community at Greenwood that we've built just in the past year and a half has been amazing and when talking to my kindergarten about it it's really upsetting because out of all of his friends from PE pre he is the only one that has to move and so OB you know I can only equate that the last time I've seen him cry this much was when our dog died and so um I just wanted to share that I I fully support the other um points and I won't repeat them but just the fact that we've already invested time and um we've also invested financially in the community at Greenwood that we hope that you allow us to say thank you thank you Vanessa okay next we have is it gank yes okay thank you Tim aesome um so again another Reserve person I'm just going to make two little comments one uh so I'm 715 liliam Trail and the reserve I'm also a business owner in the community at 822 Highway 55 also known as McDonald's um so I pay taxes twice in the community um because our neighborhood is so far away from Greenwood we're our children are the only people that would be moved out of the school system my daughter is in fourth grade she's a high anxiety child um she would be moved into a different school with none of her friends and then the year after go to a different Middle School where she would not meet up with any of those people that's hard on her um if we can find any solution that would keep the kids in the in the school system that would be wonderful thank you so much and I know this is a very very difficult and thankless task that you guys are working on and I appreciate everything that you're doing I know it's not easy so thank you thank you Tim and then next we have Alison biskupski hi my name is Alison bsky I have three kids that go to Plymouth Creek um I wanted to thank the Teamworks team for reducing the amount of kids um that would be disrupted I know the first round was like 1,800 kids um which I'm sure the overwhelming feedback was negative on those full stance um I uh put up a petition together to vote for Plan B um I would like our kids to stay at plmouth Creek and not be moved um I think the plan B other than the reserve neighborhood I'm sorry um um uh reduces the amount of kids that are affected dramatically from 855 to 555 Elementary kid students it also lowers the amount of middleaged or middle school students um I believe it's one 27 to like 105 um I printed off a ginormous amount of studies that talks about um the relationship between mental health and school and um kids and you know lowering their Dropout rates um I'll leave those over there if you'd want to peruse them so I'm really here to say I would like you to vote for Plan B and I appreciate that the district has taken our feedback and is minimizing the disruption for these kids and lowering their risks for mental health issues so thank you okay next we have Peter Kim hello um Peter Kim I'm in the western Ridge Neighborhood so I'm here because my kids actually used to go to Greenwood and I personally moveed them to uh Northwoods by moving so I know how much it impacts the family when they move from one area to another I'm coming here more from a just a pure numbers perspective I'm a math guy and so I was looking at the plan and I was looking at 8B and one of the things that we struggle with in Northwoods is there's a lot of kids there my child in fourth grade has 30 kids in our classro and that's a lot for a fourth grade class so I look at 8B and in 20 uh 2728 right now we're at about 850 we're at they're going to be like 949 so they're going to put 90 more kids in Northwoods that's a lot of kids get getting added to Northwoods and the biggest place where we're growing in Plymouth it's the northwest suburbs where Northwood is going to be I know they're projecting how many people are going to move in that area but it's still a lot of Farmland out there and so I feel that AB is only taxing Northwoods more it's going to get worse it's going to get more populated I don't know one time I think met Ridge before it got expanded kids were studying in hallways I don't want that to be done at Northwoods second is just Logistics I mean we have a neighborhood that's north of us literally we are the walking distance to Northwoods we have a neighborhood north of us which used to be in meal Ridge now they are slotted for Northwoods and we are close we're Lally next door I can see pretty much Northwoods and I'm going to meow how is the neighborhood Norther me suddenly flipped with meat it doesn't make any sense some of the neighborhoods like rinia looks like someone took a doughnut hole and cut a middle section out of it it doesn't make sense why that would be done and so and lastly um middle school so 8B right now uh from now till 2029 it's looking to be 11 to 12% over capacity where 8A is around netive -2% so once again you're taxing one school way more than others so I come here from a uh thing where it doesn't matter about diversity or distance as much it I personally think it's capacity if you have classrooms that are just overwhelmed with kids teachers can't teach that that's impossible you're putting too much pressure on and so I want to finalize one thing is my neighborhood got shifted after I don't know eight concept we were all slotted for Northwood now lastly without any communication we are now slotted for mege so I have a simple solution uh I have friends in Greenwood and also Northwoods why don't you take Metal Ridge and send us to uh Northwoods and take Reserve similar sized neighborhood and send them to Greenwood it is literally a flip-flop so that's a simple solution right we both get what we want and it's similar sized neighborhood and we're trying to reduce the amount of kids that are going to Northwood so thank you thank you Peter all right I think we have one more speaker tonight [Music] Ben masado hi there my name is Ben mzo I have a kindergartener that goes to Metal Ridge he started this year um he's always been a bit of a high anxiety child um throughout our daycare days and uh he's really adapted really well to the Metal Ridge Community I live in the Rosemary Woods neighborhood on the far north side of the district and I'm here simply to advocate for concept B um not for my just my neighborhood or my child but because it appear appears to uh cause less disruption across the entire uh attempt here to to rezone um that's all I have tonight I do want to thank everyone because I know it's uh there's no perfect scenario here and it was probably an arduous task so I appreciate the opportunity to speak and uh advocate for concept B thank you Ben uh I believe that's all unless I missed anyone please let me know doesn't look like it thank you all right moving on on hold on one second all right moving on to administrative reports and recommendations beginning with the superintendent report first we have District admin assistant Amy G who is also the school board election Clerk and she will present a res resolution establishing combined polling places Amy all yours thank you School Board chair soney and superintendent Anderson um I come to you tonight with the uh combined polling places for our upcoming Schoolboard election being held on November 4th 2025 because we hold elections in odd years we have to establish our own combined polling places Minnesota statute section 205a do11 requires the establishment of polling places for next year to be adopted by December 31st for elections that are held calendar year 2025 Andor School District elections that are not held on the same day as a Statewide election the school board establishes five combined polling places for multiple precincts the precincts are detailed in the attached resolution before you the board reaffirms that the polling places will remain open for voting on November 4th from the hours of 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. School District residents that reside within the city of minetonka they will vote at their polling places and hours established by the city of minetonka they're the only exception for this coming year the only one that we had to change was the previously used polling PL location Peace Lutheran Church was sold last year and so the city no longer uses that location so we cannot use a location we have to use locations that um our cities and counties already use luckily we as the wetta public schools um used our Creekside building as a replacement for the city of Plymouth so we will now use that as both an absentee voting location for early voting and on Election Day we will use that for precincts six and seven those postcards will go out to those residence if approved by the school board the recommended actions are before you thank you so much Amy board members the recommended action is to adopt the resolution establishing combined polling places for the calendar year 2025 and School District elections not held on the same day as a Statewide election and designating hours during which the polling places will remain open is there a motion to approve so moved second reading a second second moved on seconded is there a discussion any questions or comments hearing none uh this will be a roll call vote Heidi ker is absent Valentina SS yes Dan janra yes Sarah Johansson yes Paris bende yes Sheila prior yes Milan Sone yes the motion carries thank you Sheila next Dr Anderson will present several policies for approval Mr chair and members of the board attached for review are the following policies and regulations for your consideration the policies and regulations were reviewed as part of the regular review cycle and using the Minnesota School Board Association model policy where available by District administration and other District stakeholders were necessary a final review was completed by the policy Committee of the board and as the board's well aware we have an active policy committee that meets monthly they review uh policies on a review cycle and uh do a lot of uh preliminary work uh in preparation of bringing policies uh to the school board for Action so the policies included in tonight's packet include the following there are seven of them policy 407 tobacco free environment policy 411 staff hiring policy 412 employee background checks policy 414 students and employees with communicable diseases and infectious conditions policy 47 employee right to know exposure to hazardous substances policy 419 policies Incorporated by reference and policy 420 employee student relationships and the recommended AC action is to approve the above policies as presented in the attachments thank you Dr Anderson so as Dr Anderson said the recommended action is to approve the policies as presented is there a motion to approve approve yes second and U you you move right yeah okay and you we the reading second okay and any second a second Valentine a second thank you any discussion I I just wanted to thank everyone on the policy committee I'm one of them Valentina is the other member and Paras as well um is a third member so I want to thank my committee uh colleagues for a job well done and you know it's it's a lot of work to go through all those and I also wanted to thank the administrative liazon that do a lot more work than we do so thank you so much for that um again the recommended action is to approve the policies as presented uh this will be a Voice vote all in favor say I I I oppose n motion carries thank you there are no teaching and learning reports tonight and then moving on to the finance again back to finance and operation reports uh we have Executive Director of Finance and operations Scott Lage and he will make the presentations first Scott will report the combined financials for the month ending October 31st thank you board chair Sone and board members Dr Anderson um this one will be very brief so I feel like you guys have heard enough from me but um this just to outline I'll just point out a few things um on this document it's just a quick summary um this is through October 31st so it's the first four fiscal months of the year um if we go to the second page uh just some high level things to point out the big things we watch are the property taxes and the state AIDS that's the line share of our revenues as you can see they're right on Pace with prior years are within what the team is projecting uh same with food service Community Ed um and Debt Service right in line one thing to note on food service if you look there and you go um something looks off uh with last year that's because that was the first year where the state was picking up the free launches so there's a little bit of lag time between when those counts were submitted and we were getting reimbursed so it was more in align with how our state AIDS are paid on the general fund uh next page um don't know if you can make that a little bit bigger if not that's okay I apologize it's so small but um one of the big things as we saw earlier in my presentation on truth and Taxation uh we are a very uh staff oriented organization serving students and so the big things we pay attention to on this um when you factor in that 72 73% of our overall expenditures are salary and benefits we look at that um we're spoton with salaries um with prior years benefits were right actually where we um expected to be because we did make an accounting change or an adjustment from how things were done in Prior years uh and so we are right in line with that uh also like to thank uh director draskovich who's sitting back there um and then also Dave loots and the HR team because they work very closely together uh because we uh have a huge number of staff and so they track that really well together so thank you for that and also Jen wal because she handles the special education side which I alluded to um is north of $23 million so um other things things to point out uh purchase Services can vary significantly as I mentioned earlier um in a previous presentation that's where a transportation is paid and that is also where some of the construction fees are paid out of along with utility bills Transportation can have big fluctuations from month to month it depends on when we're build we might have a couple months where we aren't build and then we'll get two bills at once so that can vary um supplies and materials is up from previous years we just saw more of a uh increased purchase at the beginning of the year we expect that to kind of level out as time goes Capital expenditures this includes um a variety of things but includes a lot of the construction um inside of that and so with a fiscal year being June 30th and with projects being done over the summer time and then um minimally over during the year we're closing out some of those pay apps at this time uh Food Service fund uh just pointing out you can see they're they're right in line with expectation community service um this conver as well depending on when the programming is because they do have a lot of hourly um staff in there and then Debt Service fund is right in line with her expectation would be uh last page um if you look and this is as of October 31st uh the district had roughly $62 million sitting in the bank um a big portion of that uh is our property tax levy that comes in in the spring we get two payments in the spring and then we get two payments in the fall so um as soon as those those dollars come in our state AIDS basically turn off because the state is aware of when those property tax dollars come in and so during that time we don't get state aid there's payments that we don't so and that is it any questions thank you Scott any uh questions board colleagues okay thank you very much at this point I want I want to thank the finance committee Sarah Johansson and Paris I think Paris and Dan you're on the Committees thank you for all your hard work as well okay next item uh Scott will request the board for its fiscal year 2024 audit approval Scott again all right thank you very much um before I get started I just want to point out a few people sitting in here tonight uh David draskovich our Director of Finance sitting back there in the gray jacket that just looked like he looked behind him it's you David um and then our finance and student accounting manager Jen wel um they are big parts of the audit and I'd also like to thank um people that aren't here tonight uh Jack Sterns Andrew Balman uh Carrie Lynch and I'm sure I'm forgetting others but um it's a true team effort this was the first year that I was in the finance and operations executive role I've always uh run audits so um it was very comforting to have David run that this year he has a fantastic team the audit went uh smoother smoother than it ever has as you guys heard from our audit manager I don't know if I should be worried about that because this is the first year I wasn't part of the dayto day on that but um I'll just take it as it was really good hiring by me so but great job you guys so thank you for that um as a reminder to the board uh we did receive a thorough presentation from Jackie heagle our manager at mmkr at the last board work session on November 25th um I'll also note that the finance committee of the board um has also discussed and reviewed this twice um last Friday we went over it as a finance committee and then we also reviewed this the Friday prior to the work session so I've bugged them quite a bit on this so thank you very much for your Friday morning so we I've really appreciated that so um The District's annual audit for the fiscal year ending June 30th 2024 has been completed by the audit firm um mmkr so the following reports have been issued the comprehensive annual audit financial report ending June 30th 2024 the management report special purpose reports on single audit internal controls in compliance with laws and regulations um and then here a portion of the general fund balance is assigned for specific purp purposes and is approved by the Schoolboard on an annual basis um there's a list of them for you up on the screen and that was in the board packet for your review um again the financial statements were provided to the board via board book um and pending your approval tonight will go on the district website tomorrow so with that um without with I would open it up to any questions for me thank you Scott uh colleagues the recommended action is to approve the audited financial statements for the fiscal year year ending June 30th 2024 further approve the June 30th 2024 assigned fund balance in the amount of 8,643 744 to be used for the specific purposes noted in the attachment is there a motion i s move second second okay thank you moved and seconded is there a discussion any questions or comments so I just want to say a huge thanks Scot listed off our amazing Finance team um and and then I'm gonna add a thank you to Scott right and so to to David and to Jen and to Scott and Andrew and Jack and Carrie um this is a tremendous lift that I feel like you're working on all year long um it it it's it's huge lift in for the Auditors and they tell us every year that we do a good audit at least every year for the last 11 years they've told us it's the best if this is the best of the best um it's because we have the best of the best team so thank you so much for your diligence and your comprehensive look and it really allows us as citizens of the community to have a high level of trust and confidence in the work of this District so thank you yes Sheila thank you uh just to follow up on that um just to remind for anybody who didn't see the the audit report there were no issues um so thank you Scott for all your hard work okay if there are no other comments uh the again the recommended action is to approve the audited financial statements for the fiscal year ending June 30th 2024 and then further approve the June 30th 2024 assigned fund balance in the amount of 8,643 744 to be used for the specific purposes noted in the attachment uh this is a ro call Sheila prior yes Heidi Kar is absent Valentina SS yes Dan janra yes Sarah Johansson yes Paris bende yes Milan Sone yes motion carries thank you all right finally Scott will ask the board to approve the 2024 payable 2025 Levy certification one more item for your SC thank you all right perfect this should be the last time that you have to hear for me so I want to apologize to everybody in the audience I know that my presentations are exhilarating I'm sure you'll go back and watch them later they'll be on YouTube and on the district website but this will be brief so again this is the final item um this is related to the uh the presentation that we did earlier this evening um but the District administration recommends certification of the 2024 payable 2025 property tax levy in the amount of 96 m322 1942. 99 um as presented earlier this amount represents 3.9 million or 4.26 increase from the payable 202 2024 Levy while the district's property tax base has grown by approximately 2.73% obviously as I mentioned earlier um we saw significant growth in the Pro barers before that um so the levy amounts by fund were presented earlier and are listed on the agenda sheet um for each of the board members so with that the administration is asking the board to approve the 2024 payable 2025 tax Lobby thank you Scott colleagues the recommended action is to approve and certify the maximum allowable Levy amount of 96 milli authorize the board clerk to sign the attached final 2024 payable 2025 Levy for Independent School District 284 is there a motion I so move second moved and seconded is there a discussion I would like to yes please Valentina um I know that um what I'm going to say it's not going to be popular but at the same time time I have a hard time uh looking at numbers and thinking and hearing uh what I heard from uh Morris Leatherman company that 90% of motans are feeling um the effect of his this economy and when we just uh uh approved uh the contracts of free groups uh with pay raise and then uh we we are also obviously going to be uh talking about calendar where uh several day for several days kids need need to be at home while it's counted as a contact day I have a hard time um taking it because um to be honest at certain point uh we need to make some adjustment and uh maybe uh some consideration because public maybe not all of all maybe not many or not all of you I'm happy for you but um many minnesotans are feeling this economy and um looks like our taxes are only going up for some reason we never go down um and I would like us also to um and when we are getting uh money from uh State and a state had um quite a bit of uh money to deal with maybe we should come to State and talk to state that they need to allocate money to education not to spend uh money on something else because we paid obviously enough taxes to State and um would be good idea to go to legislature and talk that schools need uh money uh not other uh projects uh which state is choosing thank you any any other comments discussion okay hearing none the recommended action again is to approve and certify the maximum allowable Levy amount of 96,3 22,9 42.99 and authorize the board clerk to sign the attached final 2024 payable 2025 Levy for Independent School District 2084 uh this is a roll call again Sheila prior yes Heidi Kar is absent Valentina SS no Dan janesta yes Sarah Johansson yes Paris Bend yes Milan soney uh yes motion carries thank you as always Scott for the heavy lift with our district finances thank you I won't ask you to speak again tonight thank you thank you all right finally we have the Human Resource Services report presented by executive director Stacy was Stacy has one item for board approval which is the 2025 26 and 2026 27 school calendars good evening chair soney and members of the board I'm pleased to share with you the recommended 2526 and 2627 calendars this year we worked uh hard to solicit more staff input by sharing calendar proposals with all building principles building principles were then tasked with sharing the calendar options to their built teams or sharing this information at a staff meeting this again was done in an effort to give more staff the opportunity to provide input and it was also in response to the district survey results in which teachers shared that there were too many meetings unique challenges to the 2526 calendar was winter break and the late date of Labor Day for the 2627 calendar um the proposed calendar dates were shared with you at the work session and again in your board agenda and I would ask that you um approve the recommended recommended action before you this evening thank you Stacy board colleagues the recommended action is to approve the proposed 2025 26 and 2026 27 7even school calendars is there a motion so moved is there a second second thank you Paris and thank you Dan uh a dis is there a discussion Valentina yeah I will be talking about at home learning now named PDA learning days our school exists for students education keeping them away from schools for two days older students for three days doesn't make sense especially when these students lost so much in learning opportunities during covid speaking from personal experience there is little or no learning happening on those days at home we are talking about needing to be more transparent with our community but last time we got a feedback from parents was two years ago and parents were not happy about these days I would be more comfortable with voting if I knew that parents had a chance to weigh into that and agree to go with proposal teachers need professional development days nobody argues about that but in the past you had different solution which kept uh both parts um parents and teachers happy I supported professional days because of a read act initiative and uh seeing myself how students grow when they are taught how to read based on science of reading this year that's very valuable and help students to succeed I also don't see the reason to approve a calendar for two years once again I want our community to be able to weigh into the decision not to lock them out from the opportunity for two years lastly I don't feel comfortable knowing that these two three days counted as a contact days even though there is no contact whatsoever this practice have great effect on lowincome families families where blue colored workers have to go to work who don't have money to pay to tutors in order for their kids uh would catch up with their peers we just asked for 4.3% tax levy increase while simultaneously ask them to do more the August survey uh ran by the Morris leverman company showed that 90% of percent of motans feel the pain from this economy we should abandon this practice at of at home learning days thank you thank you Valentina anyone else comment discussion okay the recommended action again is to approve the proposed 2025 26 and 2026 27 school calendars all in favor say I I I oppose Nay n motion carries okay there is no other board action tonight and then the final item on the agenda is board reports this section of the agenda provides an opportunity for board members to update school board members on school board related work or to make announcements of interest to the public today we have director Dan ginestra with the report Dan thank you Mr chair as wia's representative to the Intermediate School District 287 School Board I've been fortun to oversee the district from a governance perspective working with Administration and my board colleagues to affirm 287s reason for establishment and mission statement Intermediate School District 287 was established in 1969 to be the leading provider of innovative specialized Services ensuring that each member district can meet the unique learning needs of its students on December 3rd board representatives of Brooklyn Center St Louis Park Mount West Tonk and wetta public schools joined District 287 leaders on a visit to the henpen Technical College in Eden Prairie State Representative Ned Carroll joined us as a special guest here we toured Pathways and gateways programming which offer Technical and postsecondary Readiness coursework respectively this included a certified nursing assistance class and a course on computer design and construction we then visited a transition classroom where we saw students in a cooking for Independent Living class in these settings we were fortunate to hear from student speakers who presented the merits and virtues of 287 programming as well as their future plans it was a wonderful visit thank you to District 287 superintendent Marcy Dow and her team for making our time at hennipin Technical College possible and now I would like to give a year in review update for Intermediate School District 287 and its board the the past year has been full of activity from the creation of our itrack teacher apprenticeship program and further student and staff development to robust discussions at the board table around District policy we have been fortunate to tackle the stereotypes and misconceptions many have toward becoming a teacher by creating opportunities for apprenticeship and mentorship at all levels we have been able to Fast Track hirings and promotions by continuing to develop Talent among our staff we have continued our efforts to enhance programming for students all while seeing results that are both measurable and impressive our policy policy conversations at the board table have been enlightening and serve to remind all of us that education is a process both meticulous and sophisticated thank you to the staff of District 287 for all you do thank you to our team here at wetta for your partnership and support of the intermediate thank you to my predecessor board Treasurer Sarah Johansson for onboarding and preparing me for what to expect on the 287 board and thank you to the students for continuing to be our inspiration Mr chair I yield back um anybody have any questions or comments for that isv 287 okay thank you so much um our next board work session will be the organizational work session on Monday December 16th at 4 p.m. uh this concludes the wieta Public Schools regular board meeting I just want to take a minute to thank everyone uh I was elected for one year as chair of the board earlier this year in January this is my last regular meeting as board chair for the year it has been an invaluable experience and I want to thank my colleagues each one of them for the trust placed in me I want to extend my heartfelt gratitude to each of you for your commitment insights and the dedication you bring to our mission it's truly a privilege to work alongside such a talented and passionate group your contributions have been invaluable and our successes are a direct result of your hard work and vision as we look to the Future I'm excited by what we can accomplish together as a board thank you also to the administration for your continued dedication collaboration and Trust together we will continue to make a meaningful impact in the lives of our largest stakeholder the the students happy holidays and a very safe and healthy New Year to all of you is there a motion to adjourn I move to adjourn second second thank you all in favor say i i i oppos n the motion carries the time is now 9:13 the WIA Public Schools Board of Education regular meeting for Tuesday no uh Tu uh Monday December 9th 2024 is adjourned --------- ##VIDEO ID:N50wSXig5co## microphone test for school board work session December 9th 2024 e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e good evening the time is now 5:30 the wetta Public Schools Board of Education special work session for Monday December 9th 2024 pleas will please come to order let's go around the table for introduction we'll start from my right Sheila prior danan estra Sarah Johansson Valentine a Chase Anderson and I am milen Sone thank you and welcome everyone the only item on the agenda is the finance and operations reports Executive Director of Finance and operation Scott Lage and Dr Ray Queener from Teamworks will present update on attendance area adjustments gentlemen perfect thank you board chair soney board members and superintend uh the district received feed Fe back from the input team based on their meeting last Wednesday December 4th along with the public feedback that closed last Friday at 5:00 p.m. the design team met this morning and Ray and I are coming to the board and superintendent Anderson with a preliminary recommendation Ray and I will present the process in the preliminary recommendation thank you good evening good to be with you again um tonight we're GNA do a quick update on kind of our current status and then as Scott mentioned we're going to walk through um the preliminary recommendation uh that's on the table um so we've uh we've met again as a design team I think two times since the last time I was before you we also had another input team meeting and um we'll share some of that information we also had another round of public feedback um we had approximately 300 responses across all all the models um of that feedback um again we our guiding change that's led us through this process um the recommendation you're going to see tonight we're going to talk a little bit about the benefits and some of the challenges um but we've tried to meet as many of these as possible to um to a high degree uh it's very challenging to do it to 100% and um it wasn't from a lack of trying um many many hours were spent in a lot of scenarios and what ifs uh to get to this point uh um so we still use our data system underneath to do that um I think uh hopefully we've demonstrated that the intent here is that this has been an open process so uh We've provided opportunity for people to be engaged um the feedback has been honored and valued every one of the models that have uh come out into the public has um reflected change that we received from the input um so even tonight what we're recommending will demonstrate that we heard again from another round of interested parties in the school district um their feedback and I think the district's also done a really nice job I guess that's a bias comment I think the district's done a really nice job communicating keeping people AB breast of where we're at in the process and what's happening so we have forly had 12 design team meetings there has been a um data group we called that has met numerous times in between to help support the work of the design team we did meet for about two and a half hours this morning and as a reminder there's 30 uh members on that team representing uh District leadership building principles uh District administrators uh to represent the entire District including Transportation so Transportation has been at the coners been in the conversation since the very beginning these are the official models that or concepts that have been looked at um even um late Friday and into the weekend there were still a couple of um ideas being considered and talked about um but feel like we've landed on one that we think will um meet as many of the needs as possible and be as responsive as possible to the feedback received I do want to point out that even though the list here is comprehensive there's probably I don't know I don't want to exaggerate but at least 60 plus other wh if situ situations that we have explored and tried um these are just the formal modeling that Teamworks provided the district but even in our design team meetings there was a lot of what if we try this or what if we try that and we would do some preliminary testing so um I can't think of a space or an area in the district that we haven't um that we haven't looked at or or considered uh we had our first input team meeting way back um on October 8th uh we we uh commented to the input team that we had a gorgeous night on October for the first one we had a very wet rainy night on the second one and we had winter on the third so the input team actually navigated through three seasons of weather in this process um last week they gave us feedback on two Elementary models 8A and 8 B-2 and Middle School models 8A and 8 B-2 and so we collected feedback from the group and compiled that information and combined it with the public feedback and brought that to the design team uh for their review over the weekend I I do want to point out that I received uh comments from the input team meeting and Scott can can add into this as well um there's a lot of appreciation between input team meetings on their feedback being heard and considered and they saw saw that uh in the revised models that were presented last week I think there was also some early indication of some preference on which they liked um and there were folks that were not 100% satisfied you know it was it's it's an imperfect um situation to to try to meet every single need and every single expectation but I did receive a lot of positive comments at the at the meeting last week yeah I think I would just Echo that I think people to especially that input team which we're extremely appreciative of their time because that's time away from their families and it's in the evening and as Ry alluded to we couldn't promise perfect weather so um we really appreciated their feedback at the end um I know I think they even kind of collapsed at the end I think they understood the complexity of this process and it's just not quantitative data it's qualitative data it's mixing a lot of different variables um it's trying to look into the P into the future a little bit but understanding that we can't control so many different um but yet we are expected to react to them and do it quickly the themes from the public were summarized uh again we used the artificial intelligence to help capture all the comments we looked at themes we also um I also asked to have those themes expanded with additional information and I also asked um chat gbt to give us some examples exles and so in the feedback that will be posted um the summary feedback you'll see that data that the design team received it gives not only the themes but also illustrative examples of where it's collecting the data as I mentioned we had 373 responses on one of the models so that tells me that 373 people looked at all of them although they didn't all offer comments on each model um here's an examp example of what that looks like so you have um this is an example of feedback on model 8A so you've got um a summary of the themes and then also some specific examples that were Illustrated in the in the feedback from the public and so you can see that um they not only had the themes they had the examples to connect it and the same thing for ideas for improvement so all of these for all the models will be um posted um if not today the first thing tomorrow on on the district website so um again as Scott mentioned the complexities of doing this work um the goal trying to balance um capacities to around 90% of the functional capacity um being aware of the demographics of all the schools um the the Hope was to try to move toward District averages as much as possible maintaining neighborhood schools as much as possible um trying to keep developments in neighborhoods together uh in Elementary Middle School pathway we heard again a desire to have pure Elementary feeders we tried many ways to do pure Elementary feeders into the middle schools with the limitations of the capacities primarily at East and West that just is not um doable under the current building size um paying attention to roadways um we also paid attention as best as possible for the proximity to schools from neighborhoods and I I mentioned a couple of times if if we could pick buildings up and move them you know that would help out a great deal but that doesn't that's not a possibility here and so while we paid attention to it there were places where it was just not manageable to be able to do that and then as I mentioned Rich was with us from transportation and he was we were always talking about imp imps and efficiencies so one of our goals is try to improve Transportation efficiencies from present day so um the team is recommending to the school board and the superintendent a model concept 8 B5 we're going to walk through that um talk a little bit about the differences between 8 B5 and our previous 8 B-2 um the the numbering sequence tells us that we were in Model 8 it was a different version so model B and it's the fifth iteration of model B so we looked at 8b1 2 three four and this is now five so it's a it's a uh continuation of the model 8B I think um one thing I will say um before we talk about ab5 is that we did have one other model that we were still carrying into last week model 8A model 8A the desire was to try to have as contiguous boundaries as possible and so um when you look at the AA map you'll see that um the idea was to try to um uh balance or create that neighborhood School impact as as much as possible but adaa also moved the most students um it um we received a lot of concern from the input team and from the public about 8A because of the large amount of movement and um and it moved neighborhoods that had previously or even just recently been moved and so when we took all of that into effect and the fact that um wisata Public Schools is still growing and the potential to grow even more significantly exists um decided to abandon that pursuit of that model so that's not on the table but that's that's where it resolved is that we just didn't have a viable model that would meet as all the especially all the input and the feedback we received yeah I think it was an attempt at trying to create those nice contiguous lines and start to formalize that part but you know through this process the recognition came that there's just an enormous amount of potential development still to come and the district is just not at that point yet I might just add one point of clarification too is that I think what's being brought here tonight is a preliminary recommendation and just as a reminder we're zeroing in on a special school board meeting Wednesday December 18th at 7 pm where uh we'll make any final refinements between now and then and uh bring the recommendation to the board for Action at that point so because this is um coming to you um new today um fresh from the the work over the weekend and yet today from the design team we we're going to take a few moments and just walk through the report the vast majority of the report is unchanged in terms of the background and context so I won't spend a great deal of time but I do want to illustrate a little bit of how the design team looked at this data and what they were trying to do as they navigated these um Concepts again the first part of this is is unchanged the need that was driving all of this is a capacity issue um I'll talk about this again in a few moments but we went back to the current reality report which is our very first report of projections with with nothing changed and the the model that's the preliminary recommendation T tonight has addressed every one of those concerns from a capacity standpoint so it's looked at every building and um addressed those capacities for balance um in different ways um across across the time but every one of the schools that we looked at has been addressed The Guiding change we already talked about um this is unchanged from the previous report um and again we want to highlight that really the design team struggled with um one of the pieces where if we were designing something for three years it might steer us down One path um if we were designing it for the second three years it's a different path but when you look across the five years you see a lot of ups and downs in enrollment and when you make a change in a boundary are you moving those lines all of them up or down and so we we're trying to find the middle of the line to get between 90 and 100% especially at the elementary it was really challenging to stay under 100 at East and West Middle School um because your middle school capacity your middle school numbers are pushing your buildings to and Beyond capacity that is what your current configuration looks like um on page four and um couple of things to note there were several pocket boundaries that existed in the school district up in Greenwood um one in Kimberly Lane Oakwood had a pocket boundary a couple of places had two pocket boundaries and so the idea was to bring balance and try to remove some of the pocket Bal uh boundaries um skip that one of the things that we did in every iteration is take a look at the demographic table on page six the capacity information at the top is a fiveyear um look at this um so when you're looking at concept 8B um 8 B5 when you see the low enrollment and the high enrollment numbers those are five years out and as you it tell that tells a picture but it doesn't tell the whole story you really have to look at the school by school analysis on how do we get from today to five years out and then we also looked at the current demographic profile of each School each model we looked at the same profile and we had the district averages that we that were in the table up above so we could see how we were comparing from current day to projected models so um this this last iteration came from um 8 B4 and it's 8 B5 and they're um the changes from 8 B-2 I know these are hard to say quickly so I have to slow on 8 B-2 to 8 B5 um there were five changes that occurred in that model um that's it yeah no can so all right so looking at I wonder if we want to go to that slide quick perfect so when you look at 8 B5 and you compare it to um 8b2 some of the shifts in there um and I know 8b2 isn't up there but um there was a pocket inside of Northwoods towards the top um that was removed um and then also that top portion that now says KL for Kimberly Lane that was also shifted that was at Northwoods and that is an area that there's uh tremendous amount of girls still potentially to happen um and then another shift on it was you can see a section of GLE and Lake um was expanded a little bit and then we also had trying to remember all of them we also had um Kimberly Kimberly um Lane the top portion um there was part that was um kind of taken off and put into Kimberly Lane that was at Metal Ridge um that was put back so those are kind of the highlights right off the bat and the fifth one was um in the middle level model this now has 100% of Oakwood Oakwood going to west in the previous model it was 70% um no change to east east has got Sunset Hill Plymouth Creek and a part of yeah 30% and we did model that out so that um spent our weekend doing a lot of the modeling and stuff um but we did attempt to try different percentages to East as Ray and Chase alluded to we have size limitations at both of those schools so we don't really have a lot of variability in either of those buildings so even when we went up to 50% uh hearing some of the feedback it put East in a in a situation that it would not be able to handle that sort of capacity so to talk a little bit about so what happens at a design team meeting um usually what we have is a large map that we put on the wall and the design team will look at the current concept and they will offer suggestions or edits to that or changes to that um we have the ability to run some short-term data analysis so that we can identify how many students on the profile of students in the area that's being proposed and so we were we would go through that iteration until we landed on some changes or revisions to the map um and then when the new version comes out the team would take a look at each of these school by school analysis and so so there's a lot of data here um and I want to just point out a couple of things one in the top chart you'll see um we're looking at Birch viw here you're going to see two lines the bottom line in that um line chart is what we call cohort survival and birth rates so if there's no new development that's what we would project Birch views uh enrollment to be the blue line on the top is when we add in development in that area and so um well that's not a guarantee it is a projection it's it we have modeled for y Zetta all developments that we know about as of today to be built out in five years that may or may not happen um so the line the real line could actually approach that blue line it may not get there depending on how fast developments are built out what happens with the economy and all those other factors but that's kind of the range and so we were trying to keep in many instances those two lines at around 90% but trying to keep them under 100% that's kind of the Target that we're we're aiming for the table on the leftand side the setting 3 SDC programming we also were monitoring how many students are placed in that building in an in an SDC program and then you can see in the middle of the the page the projected facility utilization both at the fiveyear and the 10year marks um uh based on the current capacity the functional capacity that's right under the table the bottom table is a demographic profile you have the current buildings profile you have the profile if this change if this concept was applied to today's students because we don't project demographics we just take a look at what happens if we implemented the model the difference how that compares to your other elementary schools and how it compares to your District averages so every time we made a suggestion or ran A New Concept all of this data was evaluated and looked at to see whether or not that fit with our parameters in The Guiding change and the desired variables so I won't go through each of these I just wanted to walk you through how the team utilized that data and as we walk through the schools you're going to see that for the most part the two lines um by the way if there's not a difference a big difference between the two lines it just means there's not a lot of development there yeah I think I would just point out just because you have gleon Lake up gleon L gleon gleon Lake would be an example of um one that we we purposely left a little bit of capacity because we'll get to it when we get to Kimberly Lane but this would be one of the buildings that we would try to keep capacity so that um so that we would be able to shift some of those pocket bounders as new development come online then we have Greenwood and you can see that Greenwood's blue line if it's fully developed um is pushing the 100 or slightly over 100% in the five years and again as Scott's mentioning there's there's an idea or strategy that would be implemented and how to balance new developments that are coming online if that if that blue line is materializing exactly so that would be one of the things the district would stay consistent to what we've done previously and that is sticking to some of the pocket boundaries as we mentioned recognizing that we still have a lot of growth to happen I'm sorry I'm losing my voice um but we recognize that it would allow us some of that ability to take on growth that we can't necessarily predict or as race said if the economy changes if rates go down or if there is um some increased permits issued it would allow us to kind of uh fluctuate some of those capacities to send some of those new developments into uh schools that have capacity so this would be a great example of that when you look at this you would go why would you go that route if you call when you looked at the map from 8 B5 on the top portion there where the KL is um where there's still a lot of development to happen that would be it's titled KL um and that's where the kids currently there would go um but as new developments come online that's where the district would enact a purchase agreement date or whatever the language would be that would allow us to shift kids to buildings that have open capacity so we would never let it get to this point where it's over capacity like that and you can see in Metal Ridge and Northwoods um they're all hovering between you know that 90 to 100% Target that we were hoping for or aiming for um Oakwood um this is a an example of where if we move a boundary for Oakwood we move that entire line up or down yeah and so it starts out you know kind of in the 90 to 100% And grows and it'll have to be monitored but another adjustment either starts them below 90% or if we move something else it moves them up above 100 um Plymouth Creek is another Trend um School trending down so again if we move a boundary we're going to move that those two lines up or down and so you can see it's a for the first three years it's really kind of in The Sweet Spot but the last two years it starts to decline and something may have to be addressed again if all of that materializes as projected well and this kind of highlights kind of the direction that we could forecast the district to potentially go depending on continued development then that is pulling things towards the east if that makes sense because we're going to see potential enormous growth in the Far West that's very undeveloped yet so current boundaries would start shifting more to the east if that makes sense because we'd have to leave that space open for uh potential 10th Elementary School and a third middle um and Sunset Hill um again the first couple years that are right in kind of that sweet spot of 90 to 100 but then um dropping so that may require adjustments in the future as well and I think that kind of talks to um when we talked about some of the buildings it's not just the quantitative data it's looking at the qualitative data and taking into account the situations each building is in the uniques um the uniqueness of each of them so that was abs absolutely discussed um when we were going through these models as well we turn to Middle Schools um Central Middle School um again they have larger building um you can see the first few years there in that um 90 to 100% um space and the same is true at um East with no change to building configuration um this consideration for some modific ifications and reorientation at West that would accommodate that growth in the first couple years they are um still within range of what they can handle um the out years would require some additional space and reconfiguration which I know the district's already talking about and working on and this does bring in 100% of um Oakwood to West I say East West Y and we won't show you that that map is the in the in your packet you have a high resolution 3D not 3D that'd be impressive wow high resolution um maps and those two will be posted um online for the public to be able to review I think I would just add going back to um and am you don't have to bring it up but going back to the packet that Ray just went through I think it would be really easy um to look at and go you know grab 8 b-5 and then grab our current situation and go geez they don't look a whole lot different what did you guys do for all this time um in all these meetings but as Ry alluded to when you look at the current situation um and compareed to that we literally um took care of essentially every situation we had because if you recall looking at that we had some serious problems that we were faced with so um although it looks very similar I think there was wins in pretty much every category um and there's a ton of value in going through a process like this because you know we had Community involvement we had the input team which was staff and community members parents we had the design team um I think it was a great thing to go through because we recognized a lot more about the district and as we kind of alluded to I don't think that we're ready for contiguous boundaries we still have a ton of growth to to go in our district so we looked at um what are the benefits that this model this concept provides um wanted to adjust capacity at every site um that really was a fundamental driver in this full conversation is that you had buildings significantly over capacity and that's that's what kept driving the work um 8 B5 minimizes the number of students and families that are impacted um you can't move attendance areas and not move families and we we constantly remind ourselves our input team our design team that while we look at maps and we look at charts and tables um there's a family and there's a student on the back side of every one of the numbers and so um we paid attention to that and you can't make changes without moving um families um to address capacity but this one does have the minimal minimal number of impacted it does create a threee to fiveyear plan um it's somewhere in that range um um you know your middle school is your most pressing Challenge from a capacity standpoint but your Elementary is not far behind and that's just what the current growth that's projected there was Improvement in transportation efficiencies so the the reduction of pocket boundaries uh does create efficiencies although not 100% because there's still a couple of areas that require um some pocket boundar that require some Transportation dual Transportation I think we tried to focus just to build on that as an example uh prior boundary areas where we had Pockets we would have 30 kids going to Oakwood for example and 22 kids going to Northwoods while two different buses are going in there and obviously that's not the most efficient model I think it positions the district to handle future student growth even though we're modeling all the development that we know about we know there's potential for even more and so just having that kind of as a horizon look um was important considering prior boundary changes so we did hear from the input team in public that we just moved or we just moved a year ago or it was the second or third time we moved and so we're trying to find Concepts that minimize that um the demographics pretty much stayed consistent throughout the process throughout the the model um there was some progress toward neighborhood schools recognizing it's not 100% um we did minimize Elementary splits um we're down to one we tried many many ways to have none and it just does not work um and I think the model has been very responsive to the feedback from the input team last week as well as the public feedback um insing days but um and I know Dr Anderson will talk about this um even even with Benefits there's still imperfections because um there's still challenges so there's still pocket boundaries that help mitigate the number of moves um but it doesn't help with our transportation efficiencies um the district might continue the practice of assigning schools based on purchase agreement dates um and we know if there's a new school there's a potential that folks that are moved may be moved again when that school opens um if it is 5 years out the students in the in the elementary or middle school ages have will have matriculated through they may have a sibling in the family that might be impacted but trying not to move kids twice in their same um grade span at the elementary or at the middle um we mentioned the transportation and as hard as we tried it's impossible to meet all expectations um of interested parties we we did take it seriously we talked about them all and it's this if you give this you have to take this away and uh invariably no one wants to move but in order to balance capacities there has to be some movements um so this concept will be posted on the website we talked this morning about the importance of getting feedback giving folks an opportunity to provide feedback on this so there will also be a feedback form provided we will summarize that data and provide it to the school board um our intent is to do that by Friday December 13th and as Dr Anderson mentioned um right now the board slated to take action on the recommendation December 18th uh at 7 pm so with that um we'll use the same practice as we have in previous updates and workshops all the hard questions go to Scot I'll take the the no I'm kidding thank you both Scott is he still your friend uh I thought so okay I'm kidding all right thank you so much um board colleagues any questions comments concerns so you spoke about um transportation and efficiencies could you you kind of speak to that a little more I notic that there are some you know boundary lines that you know get uh to be a little bit unique birge view being kitty corner with itself Menat Tonka and so on and so forth so just you know to to elaborate on that more um well the easy one is to talk about pocket boundaries so when there's a pocket boundary you're you have to run a bus from that pocket boundary to that school and if a pocket boundary is residing in another School's attendance area it's not the most efficient so when we started this whole conversation when we looked at all the different pocket boundaries there was a lot of of buses going in that were from different schools in different areas and so we were trying to minimize that and we have a fairon just not eliminated it I might just add to if I may one thing that uh somewhat offsets a little bit is if you are able to get um a most appropriate number of students in the buildings your Staffing efficiencies might go up a little bit even if your transportation ones may go down a little bit so it's hard to put that into a perfect metric to calculate what the savings might be or what the cost might be but um there are some counterbalancing efficiencies that I think happen as well thanks um I just I I had a comment first of all that um I do feel that this process was um transparent and that you did take feedback and that feedback was entered into the model and you looked at you know so much feedback and that the results you know the resulting proposals have been kind of you know we don't have a whole lot of other choices um so I guess I feel confident that you did explore all avenues and that there there were many opportunities for people to give their feedback um I am looking at the maps and this is a new map that we're just seeing tonight and I'm trying to kind of figure out the differences and I'm wondering if you know out of when you guys are have time is there is it possible for you to do an overlay of the old boundaries over the new ones I kind of found some areas that are you know that I can see have changed but as Scott mentioned this is kind of similar to what we already have um with the pocket boundaries moved out and maybe a little corner of one area and and another so I'm having a hard time seeing where we actually made changes can I project okay oh time this this this will not be a perfect overlay um but it might be able to give you what you're looking for and just to also comment that I I know like you know geographical area the size of geographical area does not equate to number of students you can have you know a higher density of families living in a smaller area so it's kind of hard for me to tell what's going on and how many how how much we gained in one area and lost in another yeah you're absolutely right there is some spots that were big areas that we moved even from 8 B-2 to 8 b-5 that really there's not a whole lot of people in there where you look in geographically it looks really big and there's nine CH nine students in there and then you'll see other pocket areas that um look really small and there's 81 students in there so one of the things that I do when we do modeling is I create a duplicate PDF and I put all the maps together so you can toggle back and forth so that's what we're looking at here here's your current configuration and as I toggle to ap5 you can see some of the changes um if we start in the kind of the northwest corner we go back and forth you're seeing a lot of changes on the pocket boundaries that are there today um you have a gleon lake couple of gleon Lake pocket boundaries you have that um North Northwestern part of the district that goes up that's um Oakwood um you got some Northwoods so then if we drop down you see a change to Northwoods pretty significant change Metal Ridge is pretty close a couple of changes there Kimberly Lane changes a little bit to the West um which shifts that part of that Greenwood space so when we move Northwoods over then you pick up some of the Greenwood gleon Lake is fairly similar there's a little bit more of that former gleon Lake um portion that's now going to Oakwood Oakwood stays pretty consistent except for that Northern portion GLE and Lake uh pretty much stays the same except for the removal of the pocket boundaries in the northwest corner Birchwood is close there's one little change U to the south of Oakwood kind of Southeast Corner you'll see the change to Birchwood or sorry Birch View thank you Sunset Hill um currently has that little portion that goes south along 494 that has been moved to Birchfield in the 8 B5 and then we've continue North uh Plymouth Creeks changed um no pouth Creek has not changed Kimberly Lane's changed um the pocket boundary stays the same but there the part of the northwest corner of Kimberly Lane you can see that changed in that model so a lot of a lot of shifts in in the model um I'm sorry I don't have a way to overlay it on top of it that was helpful to see it kind of toggled back and forth like that um looking at Northwoods they've gained back the the neighborhood that was going to Oak Wood and I don't know I mean I you you said all of the um all the buildings will be under capacity so I believe you um I guess I we weren't we had some overc capacity schools and that was not one of them and we have since you know helped the ones that were too full so when when you see a school pick up something like that you can we can rest assured that we're not creating another problem somewhere else okay sorry I'm just kind of thinking out loud here but thank you for your work yes thank you so much and thank you to the design team and to everyone that that put a lot into this I know it's it's a lot um so I have a question just to make sure I'm understanding when we looked at the graphs of the when we looked at the birth rate cohort versus the development cohort right and kind of where that tracked um one of the questions that I have is what where was it in one of those two where we factored in housing turnover so in our district although we're saying our students are growing and growing right and we're over 12,000 and that's great we have 70% of our district roughly that don't even have kids in school and um so and we know with real estate turnover that can happen and so where do those numbers fall in our modeling so the short answer is it's in there okay and then I can give you the technical answer the the cohort survival plus birth rate calculation follows a 10year trend so looks back 10 years and says what's happened between last last year's third graders and this year's fourth graders and we average that across the 10 years so your normal your average sales and conversion is is in there um and it also includes a element of growth so um the cohort survival projection model which is a trend line projection model captures all the variables that have happened in the previous 10 years on average and then what we do is we look at so what's happened in the past 10 years on the development side compared to what's projected on new development and so the new development then gets is the one we're seeing added on um the last the last comment I'll make is that we also monitor sales housing sales and um if there's a neighborhood that we're watching for example when I was a in a district we had a neighborhood that turned over all empty nesters turned over single families and so 50 kindergarten students showed up that weren't projected so our system now has the ability to monitor that so if we're seeing turnover or change over then we can dig in for more information okay but the bottom line is it's in there okay and if I can just add on to that I think about that right like we have like when we look at our Sunset Hill modeling um we don't have a lot of opportunity for New Growth um but we have a whole bunch of um really great starter family houses that would that could very easily turn over and we know at least in the last five years or so with interest rates and maybe things haven't been turning over as much and so good to know that it's in there and if we start to see a lot of sales and we're generating a lot of um um awareness of that happening then we can dig deeper to find out what what are those sales are they sales to young families and if so what's the magnitude of that okay thank you I think this just kind of highlights the complexity of the whole process Sarah just like you had mentioned um it is a challenge when you're trying to balance everything out I'll just add um talking about the the state birth rates um I think it's very well known it is declining in Minnesota um and I will just say as I've said several times during budget presentations and um will during the uh Levy presentation coming up that we're very lucky to be in a district where I know these are challeng this is a big challenge but um and Ray probably can attest to it districts he works with as well but most districts are Contracting they're declining they're stagnated their closing buildings so um we are very lucky to live in a district that we are seeing growth because that isn't Statewide so um although this is definitely a challenge and not taking anything away from that this this is a good problem to have and it's a good problem for our budget as well it's a good problem which then translates into opportunities um and programs for our students in our community well thank you so much it really means a lot it's been a lot of hours of work I'm sure and you know a lot of Engagement whatnot so your caretaking this process really does mean a lot um and I think it will it will certainly pay off um I did have two final questions for you so um looking at page three in the introduction section um you say as we go to full screen here for viewers um 2,000 new housing units within the next three to five years so how that estimation is arrived and then um 750 additional students attending Wisa public schools that estimate how it is arrived so um the district well teamwork subscribes to um a national development database that monitors all developments across metropolitan areas um they call it Metro study and so all school districts in the nine count metro area all the developments that are in those nine districts are monitored by a third party of which we subscribe to that database and they're monitoring them on a quarterly basis so if we were to open up the online system we could click on a development and tell you how many units have been built out of of what is a total capacity what that does is it saves a great deal of time uh from District staff having to go out and talk to developers and city planners and um Gathering all that data and trying to come up with their own projections so we just been using the Metro study data um so there are 2,000 new housing um units that are slated to be built out and again for this modeling we're assuming that all happens in five years we then take take a look at um by Elementary attendance area the yield the ratio that we will see from a single family home from a apartment complex from condos on how many students come to the school district come to wisett public schools from each of those areas and no two developments are the same no two Elementary attendance areas are the same and so that calculation when you add up all of those new units times those ratios yields to 750 additional students that's a lot of information thank you um the final question I did want to ask was and this involves I'm sure a little bit of speculation so maybe perhaps a little bit out of our uh Comfort zones but is there kind of a sort of design for if we were to build that 10th Elementary that fourth uh Middle School kind of is there a design to the boundary lines that makes you know drawing that 10th attendance area that fourth attendance area for the middle schools easier was that kind of set into motion I'll start Scott Canad I I think the the idea with the design team was that um we know where the district property or the district owns property um but it's not a guarantee there's not been a question put before the board or put before the public so it's it's like we designed with um a look at the Horizon of a possibility without a guarantee and so if it happened what would be our um how what would be our planning and so we start kind of in the Southeast corner and worked our way counterclockwise because if there is a new Elementary or new middle school and it's in the northwest corner um we wanted to provide as much stability across the rest of the district as possible in PR operation for um new buildings if and when that would happen okay thank you I think the only thing I would add is that's what I had mentioned earlier when uh one might might come to the conclusion that the district will continue to pull East um to the buildings as that develops West if that makes sense so you would see boundaries kind of shift a little bit to the west to where they are um because we'd be pulling back to the east as that part of the district um especially the southern part there's not the population or the growth that we will see in the north thank you um okay so I'm going to give kudos for two things Express a concern for one and ask a couple of questions Kos to you for I don't know if it was you listening to me or everybody else but changing the virtue model and bringing it to where I think it's very very Equitable so thank you for that um and then also we I think we started out at 20% of the students being affected in the very initial models down to like n 7 7.5% now so I think that's that's a very good Improvement I'm very happy with that what I'm concerned about is the middle schools in the next five years or so even before that maybe they're at 104 105% capacity so maybe uh the district should consider a middle school sooner rather than later another one if possible and then the questions relate to map for 8 B5 if you can bring that up on the screen okay so the first question is about a comparison between 8b2 and 8 B5 in in the Northwood section there was a little piece that was going to go to Meadow Ridge and from what I heard from the community that was going to be from ravenia going to Midge and what they were saying is wcot Glenn is is already you know it's in Oakwood apparently they are not and it was mislabeled as oak wood but now W now we are going to have oak wood come up um the ones from wcot Glen Glenn come up to Northwoods is that no they are going to stay at wood I think I know what you're asking um I believe that was in the Northwoods section that you're talking about um they would be going to Northwoods in this model is that well Glen you mean or rinia both both okay yeah okay yeah that little Crown part you know that little part on the top was exactly was going to go to Midge y but now they are not going to go Midge exactly okay good all right the second question I have on that map we are looking at Kimberly Lane being at 104% capacity in a few years and Plymouth Creek only at 87 or so per. so why is that extreme Northwest part of car I don't know which neighborhood it is going to go to Kimberly Lane now and then maybe they will move to Pou Creek in five years um help me understand that yeah I can understand we kind of what we talked about earlier the Kimberly Lane part up top when Ray was on that slide it showed that they were going to increase just like you had mentioned and that's where we said that wouldn't happen and the reason that wouldn't happen is because we shifted that top part um that's KL on the map um wish I had like a pointer um but the top portion that says Kimberly Lane that says Kimberly Lane but it's for the Cur the students that are currently there so once we get to that capacity level inside of Kimberly Lane the that would become pocketed and then those depending on purchase agreement or whatever is determined by the board and the district uh those new families would then go to a building that has capacity okay more likely Plymouth Creek right that would yeah that would be at 87% only I think it would all depend on where buildings were at because as we know um things can change variables can change quickly too so I think we would look at where we would have capacity and then look at it from an efficiency standpoint with Transportation as well okay but the small portion on the northwest corner there that big rectangle they they more likely more than likely will not be moving again in five years um what portion is that Northwest of Northwoods the KL Mark um I think it's highly likely I I I guess I wouldn't want to answer because we don't know how that's going to grow out so I wouldn't want to speculate at this point um that is massively I mean there's a lot of expansion my understanding is it's about 30% developed right now um and there's a lot of development to still be had in there um and then it all depends on what happens with Madina um and the growth there so I think it would be a little too early to speculate at this point okay all right sounds good and then one final comment I think uh this movement will hopefully help class sizes which is again my biggest concern and like you said last time it will all then depend on the Staffing eventually right so let's hope all of those work out and we get a class size that is you know at least I would like it to be better than it is right now so so thank you so much any other questions all right thank you thank thank you both of you um so now we are going to be as Dr Anderson said valtina you had a question no okay okay no that's right okay so do as Dr Andrew and said we will the board will be meeting again on December 18th that would be the final yeah if you'd like me to just make a few summary abut I can do that too so just a few things that come to mind for me first of all I want to thank our presenters here tonight Ry and Scott have worked really hard and Jen wel who's uh sitting there uh on the side as well and a very large team of people have looked at a whole lot of information and I created a lot of different concepts many of which you've seen the community scene or leadership teams have have seen and I just really appreciate all the work that's gone into it um I think they probably has not been a neighborhood that we haven't looked at and considered and thought about you know the wh ifs of this and and if we did that instead so the preliminary recommendation that we brought forth tonight I think is very close to what eventually and you've heard me use this terminology before could be characterized as the best of the imperfect options I think we could spend six more months looking we would not find a perfect option that would be perfectly suitable to everybody and you do kind of get to a point where you know the return on investment of vetting different uh perspectives uh become increasingly difficult I think given that uh we did make a few tweaks for tonight and uh what we presented to you and we're going to be sending that out in the morning we will give a consideration to um that feedback the inputs that we've received here from the board tonight and another thing about this particular scenario even though we don't have a perfect crystal ball it's really hard to know what's it going to look like in three years or five years we really don't know for sure we can speculate we know where our property is that we could build schools on if we uh chose to do so um we can kind of speculate a little bit that if and when it's known a school might be built that tends to help uh get neighborhoods moving more quickly I think uh in response to that and I think this plan or you know a close derivative of it really positions us uh probably about as well as we can given in imperfect ability to forecast exactly what the future's going to look like so from that perspective based on what I've heard and the involvement I've had along the way I think this particular concept is is pretty good um I do appreciate all the variables and and uh that were considered and that are are really included in this scenario the things that we continuously heard back from the community was you know move as few kids as possible do your best to align neighborhoods with proximity to the school and those types of things and I think this particular model probably achieves the greatest number of those and we did get to a point where we you do and and we've had to do this before in these uh approaches where you get close to the point where you need to wrap it up because we have the whole school year plan next year we need to know where kids are going to be and how to staff that building and how to create Transportation lines I don't feel that we're being excessively rushed to hit that timeline um and that is causing us to come up short in regard to giving consideration to all the feedback that we've had but the reality is uh we we start working really hard on next year now but uh especially by February 1st and even late January so um I've really appreciated all the feedback as I know uh others have as well the feedback from the board the community and and U from our our leadership team building principles have been very involved with us and as you alluded to and your introduction for me to make a few comments is uh we'll plan on coming back uh here to this building Wednesday December 18th 7 o'clock uh where we'll fine-tune a recommendation driven I think pretty closely to the one that you've seen tonight and uh make a recommendation uh like we do for all action items on what the administration would be looking for uh the school board to do that night I mentioned the timeline so I won't go through that all that much more in the critical nature of just being sure that we finished in a good timely manner and uh we recognize that along with us that that change is always very difficult none of us have really enjoyed going through this all that much because we know as Ray said I don't know your exact terminology but we know it's more than just lines on a map it's impacts kids and families and relationships and connections um and we've done this before and we we know how to uh be responsive to new students and new families into a different school or a new school and I just have the highest of confidence in our building principles and the teachers and the staff at each one of our schools that want once uh we know what the game plan is for next year and hopefully the next three to five years um I know principales will roll up their sleeves and roll out the welcome at and make sure that they do everything possible to help welcome new students and families into their building so just again thank Ry and Scott and Jen for their work on crunching the numbers and making the presentation tonight and also along the way so with that I'll turn it back over to you thank you Dr Anderson again again one more time thank you Ray Scott Jen and also the many many volunteers that provided input also the design team it obviously takes a village right to do this so thank you so much and I I think uh I don't know if it's a record time or not but four months is a pretty darn good turnaround time for when we started in July as a board uh to now in December so so I appreciate all everything that you've done and let's hope things go well on December 18th thank you so much so if I may just make one final comment that I forgot to make what I described is that uh seemed to resonate with you as board chair and what we should do for December 18th I do I do we you and I discussed the possibilities of other dates um maybe perhaps doing it in January but I think I agree that we don't want to push this to to January December is probably a good time and and if Ray can be here on the 18th you know we will try and our best as a board I personally won't be here I'll be out of the country so I have to let you know that that I will not be attending that meeting but I know my board colleagues are pretty pretty darn good and uh very able to to make that decision on behalf of the board so yes absolutely thank you so much and Ray can be here that night so okay this completes our work session for this evening and the work session will be followed by our regular school board meeting at 7 p.m. the time is now 6:33 the wetta Public Schools Board of Education special work session for Monday December 9th 2024 is adjourned