Board Member (speaker 5) moved that the Alexandria Public School District not administer the Minnesota Student Survey this year and direct district staff to develop a district-specific survey drawing on local partners such as Horizon Public Health.

"I'd like to move that we do not administer the Minnesota Student Survey for this school year and that we direct our administration to put together a survey that's specific for our school district," Board Member (speaker 5) said, citing a desire for local control over question wording and how student responses would be used.

Supporters said a locally designed survey would allow the district to preserve the data needed for grant applications while removing questions they found objectionable or unclear. Board Member (speaker 15) noted the value of the regional partners’ use of the Minnesota data, including grant targeting and trend analysis.

Opponents raised concerns about specific questions on the statewide instrument. Board Member (speaker 4) said some published items—citing gender and traumatic‑experience questions—could be "very damaging to students" and argued that districts lack control over the statewide survey’s content.

Board Member (speaker 16) moved to amend the main motion to broaden the discussion to local control of statewide assessments as well, calling for a study of locally devised alternatives to the MCAs; that amendment was seconded and prompted extended debate over scope and timing. Critics of the amendment urged keeping the survey vote focused and deferring any action on statewide testing (MCAs) to a later, dedicated discussion.

The board did not record a final vote on the reformulation of testing policy in the provided transcript. Several board members asked administration to return cost and benchmarking information, and to outline how district‑level questions could preserve trend data used for grants. Superintendent Stanstedt and Horizon Public Health were cited as sources of context during the discussion.

Next steps recorded in the meeting: board members instructed administration to develop additional information about a locally controlled survey option and to return with cost and benchmarking details; no definitive vote on whether to administer or not administer the Minnesota Student Survey or on the proposed changes to statewide testing was recorded in the transcript.