Extra Info and 7/9/2025 Regular Meeting

Before giving board meeting updates, here are just a few highlights from the most recent Owatonna Public Schools Newsletter, July 2025.

Welcome Dr. Tamara Champa, our new superintendent! 

Levy information for the upcoming vote in the November 2025 election, including a calculator for determining the estimated amount each household may pay in taxes, is available on the district website: https://www.isd761.org/our-district/levy2025. I’ve heard concerns about the possibility that our district administrative staff earns higher than average salaries.  A few months ago, after a finance committee meeting where we reviewed budget expenditures, as I was told, I reported that our overall admin staff salary amount in total (about 3% of the total budget) was less than the Minnesota average (which is about 3.5% of total budget.)  At this time, I cannot report that anything has significantly changed, but finance data is public record for anyone to review.  Please reach out with any questions or concerns.

State standards for health class curricula are currently being updated by the Minnesota Department of Education (https://education.mn.gov/MDE/dse/stds/hpe/ .) Anyone can comment on the current draft of new standards and feedback will be considered when writing the third draft.  Comments are due by July 18, 2025.  Here are a few of the new proposed standards that I am concerned about due to the fact that these “sexual health” concepts are addressed at very young ages, are concepts that should be discussed at home with parents, and are concepts that not all families will agree with due to differences in morals and beliefs.  While the complete list of standards is broken down into several topics, each of the standards listed here fall under the “sexual health” topic:

Kindergarten: use medically accurate terms for body parts, including genitals; identify ways that disease-causing germs are transmitted; recognize the range of different family and peer relationships

Third grade: describe internal and external reproductive body parts using medically accurate terms in a gender-neutral way; describe consent and its importance in all relationships; describe gender identity and expression; explain the difference between sex assigned at birth and gender identity and expression; explain how puberty and development can vary greatly and be normal

Fifth grade: describe ways that common infectious diseases are transmitted; describe ways to prevent the spread of germs that cause infectious diseases; define sexual orientation including sense of identity, attractions and related behaviors; describe the difference between sexual orientation, and gender identity and expression

Grade 6-8: Sexual health has 70 different standards with benchmarks—too many to type but worth reviewing

Grade 9-12: Sexual health has 25 standards with benchmarks—too many to type here

For the regular board meeting on July 9, 2025, Dr. Champa was present for the first time as the superintendent of OPS.  The primary report for the evening was a presentation given by Sean Williams and Lisa Cochran regarding use of the district’s Rose Street building.  They have coordinated with other city offices to develop a plan for a new Rose Street Center with The Rose Street Shops.  The district building would be leased by the city for 3 years, with no cost to the district.  The concept includes designing and building a boardwalk of small shops on a portion of Rose Street, with seasonal retail shops open approximately May through December 24 of each year, and Thursday through Sunday of each week.   Each retail space will be signed with a one-year lease, hopefully giving entrepreneurs an opportunity they otherwise wouldn’t have, and potentially helping to grow our downtown brick and mortar spaces. They are hoping to work with students in the process of building the small shops and allowing one of the shops to operate as the school store.

A second presentation was given by Maria Terry, our director of nutrition services, who has been in this role since May 2024.  She reviewed the growing number of meals served each year, noting the significant increase in special meals needed for students including gluten free, dairy free, sesame free, high protein, modified texture, and others.  One particularly busy month, she noted having written 80+ different menus for the month in order to meet these students’ needs.

Several documents were brought up for review including committee meeting minutes, policies, personnel report, disbursement reports, and previous board meeting minutes.

Bob Olson, our director of facilities, briefly discussed our Long Term Facilities Maintenance plan as previously completed with SitelogIQ.  This will be submitted to the state of Minnesota for annual funding which is about $1.3 million.  He noted that OPS is listed second only to Hopkins school district in MN with regard to the quality of our buildings and facilities.

Take care, please be kind and respectful to one another. Soli Deo Gloria!