SASD Committee of the Whole Meeting 06.09.25

001Y that was loud. I'd like to call the meeting to order. The meeting has been noticed to Evans Print and Media Group, WC Radio, Magnum Radio, Lacrosse Tribune, Sparta City Hall, Sparta Free Library, and the Maplewood Administration Building. Are there any changes to the agenda? Yes, there are. I'd like I'd like to recommend um moving 3A to the top of the agenda followed by 2 C followed by 3C followed by a brief recess where we would go to the special board meeting. So, I'd recommend moving 3A, then 2 C, then 3 C to the front of the agenda with a possible recess after C. All right. Move 3A, 2C, 3 C up to the top at after public input is how I heard that. Yep. Okay. And then a possible recess after that. Does that

002track with everyone on the board? If that sounds good, I'd entertain a motion. Motion to adopt the agenda by Mr. Wells, second by Mr. Bernett. All those in favor say I. I. All oppose say nay. We have an agenda. Please stand for the pledge of allegiance. All right, Mr. Russ, will you remind us of Sparta's mission statement, please? Yes. To educate all students academically and socially curiosity and resilience. Thank you. It's why we're all here, right? All right, let's go into public input. Uh, I have two public input for this first meeting here. Uh, we'll go in the order as presented. Mr. Russ explain the three minutes and he'll be your timekeeper. Uh we'll start with Missy Brooks on the topic of lung care. Members of the board, I'm here tonight as a concerned parent,

003a member of this community, and a cancer mom to emit one of the six childhood leukemia cases in Sparta. I'm see I'm asking you to take a serious and urgent look at the chemicals being used on our school playgrounds. When I talk about pesticides and herbicides being sprayed on our school playgrounds, I'm not speaking hypothetically. I've seen what cancer does to a child. I've watched it steal time, energy, and joy. I've lived in the hospital, and I don't want to see another family have to go through that. We know these chemicals are linked to cancer. That alone should be enough. Why are we still spraying them where our children play, walk, and roll in the playground grass? Six cases of leukemia alone should be enough to make us stop and say, "What can we change?

004And what risks can we reduce?" Every spring we quote our fields with toxins in the name of maintenance, but at what cost? The risk is not worth it. Spraying pesticides and herbicides every spring is not just routine maintenance. It's a decision. And it's one that sends invisible cancer-l chemicals into the spaces where our kids breathe, play, and grow. But we have an alternative. What if instead of calling dandelions and clover a problem, we saw them as a possibility? What if instead of fighting nature, we embraced it? Imagine letting natural vegetation thrive. Dandelions, wild plantain, clover, these aren't just weeds. They're native plants with incredible benefits. They support pollinators like bees and butterflies. They heal soil and most importantly they don't cause cancer. There's an opportunity here to shift our perspective to create schoolyards that teach

005rather than just look tidy. Teachers can use those spaces to talk about pollination, plant medicine, ecological balance. Students can learn that nature isn't something to be fought off with a spray truck, but something to understand, protect, and be in awe of. This is not about letting things go wild. It's about protecting the wild and our children, their health, their safety, and their right to a future free from the long shadows of decisions made in the name of convenience. We can transform our schoolyards into places that nurture, not expose, that educate, not endanger, that reflect a deeper care not just for how things look, but for the lives that play in the grass. Please stop spraying our playgrounds. Let's choose a path that reflects the care and intelligence that I know this community stands for. This

006doesn't have to be radical. It has to be responsible. And I hope for the sake of every child on the playground that we have the courage to rethink the routine and stop spraying cancer-causing chemicals on our school grounds. For EMTT, Liliana, Harper, Ellie, Caleb, and Landon, and for all of our children. Thank you. [Applause] Thank you, Miss Brook. Next for public input. I believe this is Nate Mitchell about the baseball field. Nate, perfect. this a lot more nervous than in the classroom. So, this spring was a very tough year for the baseball team. Um, and much of that had to do with field conditions. Our field is our baseball field is viewed as by many of the coaches in the MVC as unsafe and many times unplayable. Much of it has to do with weather.

007The first base side of the infield becomes a pond where kids could swim and anytime we get rain. Third base is slightly better because it only turns to mud. Many of our boys spent countless hours this season moving water rather than taking ground balls or fly balls. This past Tuesday, we got a good amount of rain, so we had to move our playoff game to the next day. We allowed the water to sit and because that water sat, it sat and sat. And when I left on at 2:15 on Friday, the water was still there in a puddle. That's four whole days. Four days that we could have been practicing, four days that we could have been doing something on that field, right? Instead, we had to wait. It's unfair to our boys. Another large

008aspect of safety concern is the grass infield. Our infield is a roller coaster. Few people can walk on our infield without rolling an ankle, let alone feel the ground ball cleanly. We are in desperate need of a new or reworked infield. Eddie Peters was an allconerence player and now plays uh division one baseball at I believe Witchaw State. He's currently a shortstop for the lacrosse loggers. His junior year, he led the conference with only having five errors. Three of them were at Sparta. I don't uh three of them were at Sparta. I don't believe that was because of the player. I believe that was because of our infield. I have been a baseball coach here in Sparta for the last seven years and I have worked with some of the best kids that I can

009imagine working with. I believe we have the ability to play on a nice field. We show up to other high schools and are immenely reminded in comparing our field to theirs and that we are behind them. A baseball players mentality is extremely important um important to their success. And when you can't even show up to your own field with pride due to the way it looks, that's a problem. Our dugouts were given a band-aid two years ago. And while that was great because they were about to collapse onto us, a band-aid is not the major surgery they need. This past week, one of our players was hit with a ball, not and that's a routine thing in baseball. Unfortunately, it wasn't thrown by a pitcher. It wasn't hit off a bat onto a field. It

010came out of our cages. One of our players was hit in the shin because he was standing getting coaching from another coach and a ball through fle through one of the major holes in our batting cage. Our batting cages has more holes than basically at the point of being unusable. All of these things are major concerns for the safety of our players and it's one of the biggest things that's holding us back as a team. Got a question. Oh, I'm good. [Applause] All right. Thank you everybody. Thank you Nate. Um, next piece there because of the adjusted agenda, we'll go right into business 3A. Uh, discussion possible recommendation to approve possible changes to the district's lawn care program. Is that Miss Hower? Mr. Fridge. All right. So, um we're here to uh just discuss uh

011what the district does currently. um and what possible changes we can make. So right now currently we apply four times a year, May, June, July, and August. Um in conversations with the company, we could go to three, which would be June, July, and August, and still keep the professional job that we're having done. Right now, we're looking at about 90 acres districtwide roughly that we treat with focus on our athletic fields and areas immediately around the buildings and the public entrances. Um, so when we think about how we're treating our lawns, the word spraying comes up quite frequently. Um, and when you think of spraying, I think a lot of people think that there's this big cloud out there that's floating around. And um the company that we use, Lawnke keepers, they actually use um

012what's called the Turf Co 5000, which is what you see in the in the photos here. And what that is is it's actually a granular that's going on um with a water base. And that granular is actually diluted ahead of time along with the water base that they're putting on in precautions. Because we are a school district, the company that we use does this out of abundance of caution. So what that means is the application rate in that is used by lawn keepers. Um so they apply one c per 1,000 square ft which totals 946 milliliters. Of that 946 milliliters, only 10.3 milliliters is actual product grade. So the dilution rate is actually more than what the label recommendation is set by the company and the SDS of that sheet of that product. And that's

013again out of abundance of caution because we are a school district and the company we use this is what they do to uh service school districts um because they service other school districts as well. So, our services include not only just um controlling pre-emergent crab grass, dandelions, that kind of stuff. We're also adding a fertilization and nutrient nutrient supplements to our lawns. Um we're treating for broad leaf control, which is things like poison ivy, poison oak. We also do an insect control, which is helping keep fleas, ticks, uh anything that may be around the perimeter of the building from getting in. Uh we're also treating for uh ground wasps or ground bees in that same application. Um and as well as grubs. Um so right now the district pays for a four application rate. We

014do a prepayment on that um for around 23,000 for the 90 acres that we treat. Um it's been recommended to go to the three application rate. We avoid the school month. It's easier to work around the summer school schedule. the company we use prefers to do that. Um, and these are all things that I've learned in researching with them. Um, and obviously those rates are subject to change next year, um, if we decide to continue. Um, so again, like I said, this is what we currently do in talking with the company and other school districts that they use or do services for. They do a three application rate. or school districts around our school district that treat for the same things we do and they currently do a three application rate as well. Um, and

015in doing a three application rate, the company feels that we will still have a quality service and we may still at the beginning have those dandelions and those types of things um because we won't be doing that pre-emergent fourth application in May. So, any questions? Thank you. Questions or comments from the board? Tess [Music] Thank you very much. That's better. Thank you for providing this information for us and for looking at the possibility for a reduction in the number of applications of the pesticide. Are you aware are there any type of organic or non-toxin toxic to human um types of lawn chemicals or I don't I shouldn't maybe use the word chemical lawn products that might um be an option for the school district. Are are you aware of any district that fewer than three

016applications? Anything we can do to reduce the chemical exposure I think would be beneficial to our for our children. But to um Mrs. Brook's point, um, I feel like it could potentially be a very interesting and engaging, um, exercise and education for the children to have exposure to the types of plants that, you know, do produce the pollinators and or um, encourage the pollinators, I should say. And um I believe that there have been summer school classes where um students go into the woods and learn about plant medicine and different things like that. And I am just curious to know what your um experiences with other districts and whether or not there are any more healthy options. Yeah. So, wow. Thank you. Um of the halflife or the rate at which the product degrades so

017that it is safe for children. I mean, if we have the um dandelions growing and children are able to get out there and learn from that, but the ground has been sprayed um you know, where is that safety that safe period of time Thank you very much. I have a comment. Um, I did a little research uh when I saw this was on the agenda. And uh the uh cause of childhood leukemias is multiffactorial. Um meaning that there isn't one in definite factor that causes it. Uh there is some genetic related um causal factor. Uh the other thing is that there is an association um with pesticides but it's a weak one and the actual stronger association is uh from uh prenatal exposure when mother is exposed. So, I've got the MSDS sheet up for

018the product that you use. Um, there's a section in here that says persistence and degradability. It says may cause long-term adverse effects in the environment. This product is water soluble and eventually biodegrades into elemental nitrogen. Excess nitrogen and nitrates in a body of water will contribute to utrification with visible effects such as toxic algae bloom. Is that anything that you've been told about this product or I don't going a Sorry. Right. Just reading through the material safety data sheets. So, another section down lists all of the um compounds within this lawn care treatment. Um most of them say listed on the United States TSA or toxic subst. It's control act inventory. I don't see one of them on here that's not listed on this control act inventory. So, just something to consider, I guess. June,

019two applications. This is the recommendation to the board. I'll second Dr. Bernett. Yes. Miss Barren. Yes. Mr. Gonkey. Yes. Mrs. Lopez. Yes. Mr. Burns Gilbert. Yes. Mr. Wells. No. continue. We'll be the Not a new library. So, this is currently the cafeteria area right now. some uh projected areas of the high school. Oh, that probably can't. Hey, we got one that works. Perfect. Oops. Hopefully, this is a little bit better. Sorry, I was trying to conserve my voice for the whole meeting, so this will help. So, um this library area is in the cafeteria area right now. Um but, uh you have a clear line of sight. we have a maker space in there and uh we really feel that this is a a positive direction to do that. And on the to the left

020side of this is the uh new uh choir room that we're planning on uh putting in the back half of the cafeteria as well uh to adjust for that. And the current choir area would turn into an a secondary band area uh stage craft area and used uh in general for fine arts and uh choir and band. So that is the report uh for the facility project. Is there any questions from the board? question last meeting um asked about multi family bathroom. I see do I see an addition to that toilet over the gym. I think I see somewhere over there. Is that an addition or sorry where I'm looking? Well, no. I'm trying to move things around and moving the the whole scope. Um, so we're not looking we're actually looking to add family

021bathrooms uh next to the locker room areas as well. I know that for out there. Um, but we would I I don't know off the top of my head if we're looking to add another family bathroom or just have the one there, but uh we can definitely look into that. comments or questions. Mr. Russ, were you going to give up a No, the dark orange the facility study. So, um we are going through the one of the Yes. So that is so the the dark orange or the facility study that we did in uh 2020 gez time's flying 2023 um we will be going that with the additional ones that aren't included in the referendum. Yes. In the current project scope. Yes. All right. Any more questions from board? Otherwise, we'll move on to the

022next one. Uh down to the business agenda item 3C, discussion of possible action to approve projects and altern. Yes, I apologize. I'm trying to when I tried to zoom in on some things, everything got wonky. Uh let me see here. Let me go back. It's all right. So, getting to All right, the facility project the uh alternates um as we start to look into uh this project we have to start considering the fact that we may be um um having alternate projects. Uh part of our budgeting process, even through the referendum process, was to um have contingency funds, have escalators, contingency funds, just in case things change, tariffs, uh trade wars, whatever you want it to be. Um there's a contingency and market and Johnson added that in. And as we start getting closer to

023bid day, which is in the middle of January of 2026, um it's advantageous of the board and of the teams to start thinking about what are some possible alternate projects that we can add into the project if we have funds available. The benefit of doing that is that if we put them in bid project, you start building masses. Let me give you an example. Uh the board already has approved, if we have funds available going into this project, uh ADA improvements to uh our outdoor complexes, specifically at Meadow View with the uh football field and um tennis courts, so uh softball fields and then at SHS the uh baseball field. So the board has already done that. So, as an example that when we have a lot of concrete work that's going to be happening

024on uh the high school specifically and at Meadow View, we can put that into the project and people now know that they can we we might be able to get less per square foot because they're already on site. So, that is the approach to make sure that we're taking the 87 million and uh making it go as far as we can with the dollars we have. We want to make sure that we can do that and be best consumers. Um, also with that, we want to make sure that when we start to look at these priorities and there's a link in the um in the in the slides that uh we start to think about what are some alternate projects. There's a lot of alternate projects out there. When we went to the uh facility

025uh we did the facility study and then we went to the community survey through school perceptions, we had four or five projects on there and the last one was 140 million with a new three-station gym, uh expanded auditorium, you name it. We had basically everything that we we we plan to do. Um so we start to think about those things and the link that's on the slides doesn't have everything. for example, it doesn't have the three-station gym. It doesn't have the blown out auditorium because when we start to look at these um we start to the the administration went through this and said, "What did we originally plan on doing with the 87 million and through the project?" Mr. Burns Gilbert mentioned those bright orange or the red orange items, those capital improvement ones that

026may not be uh in the in the initial budget. Um and Miss Ellis, can you click on that link? Thank you. And for example, I want to call out some things at Southside and can you blow that up a little bit too? And once again, I know that this might be small, but at Southside, for example, I'm using this as an example. Uh new cubbies in the kindergarten side and new hallway flooring. It's becoming end of life. We want to start to upgrade those things, but those would be examples of things that we could do. And um what we're looking for tonight and and this is not an exhaustive list. But on this list, you'll see the board approved, which is the ADA sidewalks. Uh and then the administrative uh priorities. It doesn't mean that

027if it's not on here, it's not a priority. And it doesn't mean if it's not administration priority, it's not a priority there. But as we start to look and focus in on what projects we want to maybe put in that bid package, we have to start looking to prioritize those. And as you can see right now, there's not I I we don't have price takes for all these. We may be able to have estimates, but I didn't want to put that on there because our team is focused in on this building project right now. And the discussion here tonight is really to what are some additional things that the board would like us to explore if they're interested in uh baseball's on there. If they want interested in that, we can go that direction because

028we just want to be able to prioritize our time and resources. There might be something on here that's not on here. We can start to prioritize that. But once again, these are all additional projects that could be possible if we have the funds. there's a big if between now and January uh when we get to bid day. So hopefully that uh kind of lays the foundation. These are all recommendations to the full board and um if we don't come to a decision tonight, that's perfectly fine, but we'll continue to revisit this uh periodically and as we get closer again there's another big day in July when the design and development gets to another milestone. Markin and Johnson goes back and says, "Okay, this is our updated budget. This is Nope. The tariffs went up, the

029tariffs went down, things change mighty quickly in that, Miss Hower. Did I forget anything or you want to add anything?" Okay. So, thank you. Check. Check. [Music] Here you go. You can use this one. I guess I guess one of my priorities is to just make sure uh-c because we know that we just have limited finite resources. I just want to make sure that we're going forward to like what gives us the most bang for our buck improve student safety and also um you know imp greatly improves our operating outcomes for not not just not just while we're constructing these projects but also beyond. So, I see ju just look looking at this here, you know, um HVAC improvements, potential solar panel, energy, like things that are big budget ticket items that that are very

030important. And and so I I really respect the admin putting certain priorities that not just improve uh education in our district, but how we do education in the district. Um so I guess the one thing that I came in here today is not necessarily to uh be a champion for everything but for anything but rather to advocate to administration and our teams that that uh the priorities can be as generic as possible in order for us to really push forward in order to do safety because like like we've been hearing with like the the baseball field improvements. Well, if we clear up operations, that could easily be a project following. And I'm not excusing baseball field or or new library furniture or whatever it is. It's just mainly how can we we move forward in

031the best possible light. And I'd really like to see even a further comprehensive list on what what the admin team wants and needs and believes that will make the greatest impact on all of our kids. I heard Mr. address asking the board for a list of recommendations moving forward with any potential, not guaranteed, but any potential referendum money that we have available to use. Um, I want to thank Coach Mitchell for being here tonight and for speaking. Um, I know he had to miss uh some games tonight. It it was that important that he come um to speak about the baseball field. Um, on this list we have the track and field restoration as an administrative priority. And I 100% agree with that. The track and the field at Sparta High School by field um

032the infield I believe is where they used to practice uh football. That that facility that entire complex needs to be redone. It is no longer safe. It is no longer adequate. It needs attention. And I'm going to say the exact same thing for the baseball field. Many, many, many times when I was sitting out in the audience in crowds as large as yours, I heard the board up here saying, "Safety is our number one priority." And I can tell you, I did not know this before the beginning of the season, but the baseball field is not safe. There are a number of safety hazards out there. We have athletes running, hitting, and pitching in unsafe conditions. The outfield has not been overdressed, which means It hasn't had irerration and then sand put over it to

033soften it and level it in over 20 years. The infield gratefully the maintenance department did do a little bit of work what they were able to do in the time that they had last year. They worked on some of that but the the running the the baselines have not been worked. The pitching mound is not safe. The um home plate has lips that are tripping hazards for kids. I could go on and on and on. Not to not to include um the storage facility where the kids use the uh stairs are not to code. There's no water out there. If you have a if if you need to use a restroom, it's a porta potty. I could go on and on, but for safety reasons, I truly believe that the baseball field needs to be

034a priority for administration and for the board along with the track. If there are any extra funds, we need to um put those two things as a priority. Um, if you look at the facility study and you do a command F search and you type baseball and track, they are both included once. And that is just saying that there's a track and there's a baseball field up there. So, as far as the facility study goes, they both had the same amount of exposure and the same amount of input, but and they both have the same amount of need. So, I would recommend I know we're not looking for um you're not looking for motion right now, but um just in speaking, I'm recommending that the baseball field be included with the track and uh field

035with uh the baseball and the track. Uh Craig and myself uh and Kevin Fabre from Market and Johnson met with uh Winona Nursery and uh I made the mistake of going in the morning uh and my shoes and socks were socked soaked for the rest of the day. Um but uh we're talking about the infield um the Winona Nursery, his name was Sam, uh said that the infield is they said, you know, 50/50. We take out 50% of it. He said it's in good shape. He goes, "You've taken really good care of this." Um, so, uh, he talked about, you know, hey, level, you know, making it better about 5050, keep 50% of it and 50% needed to be redone. Um, the track uh, needs to be in in the big picture needs to be

036redone completely. Uh, baseball when we went up to the baseball field, uh, the Winona Nursery, I'm going to call him Winona Nursery because his name is Sam as well. we don't want to get it mixed up. Um said, "Yep, this is pretty much needs to probably be redone, you know, the you with everything like that." Talked about the sand and everything and you 50/50. He goes, "But regardless, we just need some it needs an overhaul that way." But he also mentioned uh drainage and uh coach Mitchell mentioned the drainage. Um, so it may be more comprehensive, you know, making sure that we can put in drain tiles and everything, but um, it might not do the do it any good. Um, so what he recommended if we wanted to go that route is getting an

037engineer, getting somebody in here that knows athletic fields and can really piece together. And we really need to make a decision if we're going to invest in the baseball field, for example, and I have no problem investing it, but doing it right. And do we want to keep it there? How does the baseball field fit in with the drainage? Because everything goes down towards the high school. And guess what's near the high school is the track. So, we just want to be careful of us if we do go build a new track, do everything completely that we're just buying time because all that water from up on top is going down. So um something to consider would be a holistic approach to that to the levels to the soccer field on the top level then

038to the baseball and then to the track. How do we use that? So as an idea is do we want to look at a complete redo up there and or if it's nope we're going to keep that facility there and we're good to go. But if we keep that facility there I think we need to do a little bit more investigation on all the um the drainage. my opinion. So, the board did approve the ADA um upgrades to that facility. Yep. So, it doesn't really make sense to me to put so much money into the ADA aspect if we're going to if we're not going to address the field or if we are going to address the field. I mean, and the ADA aspect is serious up there. Oh, agreed. Yeah, we need to it's

039all again it's we're we're starting to see how and this is new through this project for this complex project and I'm learning acronyms and everything. We don't want to put ADA compliance baseball for example without knowing that this is what's going to be moving forward because we put that in and we do a new baseball field. We do new fencing, new bleachers, new anything. We just don't want to pour more money into it if that if we know we're going to do something. So, it's all part of the big project. Yep. Exactly. That's why I believe it needs to be part of that bid package that goes out and or we request whatever whatever the logistical you know. Yep. And that's where you know when we start to you know hey this is what we

040want to do and that's where we work with our partners at uh building solutions and market and Johnson and Bray and think about is this a is this a standalone project because the track and field might not need to be attached to the the um high school project for example because we're talking about different vendors. So, it's really about getting this input and that's why this input is valuable to start t thinking about a strategy to move forward to best utilize the resources we have. As I'm sitting here uh thinking, I'm thinking about Memorial Field and what we could potentially do with getting that high school baseball uh in shape and and uh using that as the uh baseball facility. Are you talking about Memorial Field as a baseball facility? Um off the top of

041my head, I don't know if we have enough space for that. softball. I've seen softball fields on uh on ba on football fields before. I have not seen a baseball field though on it. Not to say that we couldn't. And we might have some good short porches out there. Um I don't know how much our neighbors would like us. But yeah, that's but that's part of the thinking of how do we look at holistically and part of our master planning was to possibly bring softball to uh the Meadow View making a part getting it off the city field and putting it up there building a new uh football where our softball fields are right now on the south side. Um, so it's really looking at what is the comprehensive outlook because if you know it's

042going back to the baseball, if we're looking at down the road, um, doing something different with our football field, do we want to invest ADA uh, for Middle View? Do we want to invest the ADA in there? Maybe, maybe not. I guess just one more thing I'd like to add about that about the baseball is um you know just to remember the safety and what are we going to have our boys playing on next summer. If we don't invest anything it's going to be what it is now which is not safe. Um and I can attest to what coach Mitchell was saying about the batting cages. I walked past the batting cage and I was hit by two balls that ca get came flying out of there when the 13U team was playing or practicing

043in the batting cage. Um it's not a safe situation. We do not want to open oursel up to liability and moreover than that we do not want to have our students injured when they're participating in a co-curricular and districts now call sports co-curriculars. It's an extension of the classroom. The facilities in the classroom and on the field need to have an equitable distribution of resources. As of as now, baseball has not had an equitable resource of uh distribution of resources in I could not even tell you how many years. Um uh there's a gentleman who graduated from Sparta. Um, I don't want to estimate what year, but I think it was the Well, I won't even estimate. And he said the field is exactly the same as it was when he played, and that was

044decades ago. Just did a little searching here. Sorry I didn't come up with this sooner, but maybe we can um potentially make both of them work better financially. There is a DOE grant, discretionary construction grants, impact aid section 7007 subb that allows for ADA compliance construction that might cover some of that ADA cost and offset that give us an opportunity to to move things a little bit more. Can you please send me that link? Thank you. Test test test one two. Okay. Um, awesome. Thank you. Good discussion. And I just wanted to add a couple pieces. I I appreciate us being prepared for if this opportunity comes up. Um, right, trying to think through some of those uses. I'm looking at the list. Uh, I I I'm going to share some stuff that might be

045repetition from before, but but I really think uh how can we stick to what we promised in the original referendum as much as possible. And that's to me the facility study. It's the dark orange. It's the getting rid of the ceilings in Monastery that are coming down. It's like from as far as paint chips and as far as the casings and the case works, right? Like not everything that needed attention was able to be fit in. And so that's where I would start. Um knowing that all of these other pieces need to be part of that conversation. You said bid day is what day, Mr. Russ? Middle of January. Middle of January. Middle of January. Yep. And you mentioned I don't want to um the the stuff you mentioned is in our pro our project.

046You were able to fit all of that in not all of it. But you know the when you start mentioning the monosuri cubbies you know we'll mention here about replacing lockers. Monasuri is going to get a a lot of a lot of stuff. Um hot water to the classrooms. That's our That's our So, this is not We have a lot more included in there. So, as we start to go through this and we can start to go through and that's why we have we can take notes and we have Markin and Johnson and uh building solutions here. Those are the things that we want to make sure because we've gone through this list over and over and said, "Yep, the ceilings. Yep. At Monasury, yep, this. Yep. This at Southside. Yep." So, yeah. So, but

047those are the things that we we a lot of this already included. So just as we move forward here, a lot of those red items have already been included and some of those dark orange items have been brought along as well. Okay, perfect. I I think uh from the baseball track piece, I think both definitely need attention. Like that's safety. You can't look at those spaces and not see that they're they're they're hurting. Um I just similar to uh I forget who just said it but I worry on if we rush something right now um that might close doors in the future. I I I wonder what some of those uh what the engineer if we had that flexibility for uh exploring what all three levels combined could look like. Um, I think that's to

048me I remember being I was on the board when we uh decided Memorial Field and the original conversation with that when I asked why are we doing this cuz it was already in motion. Um, we couldn't fit a regulation size football field up above the high school because of the constraints of that level one. And if we lock in level two with upgrading that baseball field, that removes any future possibility of expanding and doing something purposeful to fit that strategic plan moving forward. Um, so that's why I would be really interested to hear more about um what does it look like to play down at uh down at the park, down at uh Birch Lake, down at Memorial Field. Uh to me that makes a lot of sense because almost everything on our list of

049issues up at the high school is already taken care of. There's already ADA seating. There's already concessions. There's already bathrooms. It's there. And we've already built up that location in our community from the pool, from the police station, from the football field, from the awesome new all abilities park, right? Like to me, that's what people think of when they think of our town, the beautiful Perch Lake, not necessarily corn fields in the back of our high school. But if that's not possible, if the engineer says, "Hell heck no." Right? Um to me, providing safe opportunities is most important, I don't know why they can't play on a different field right now if it's underwater, right? like that's in my head of how can we work through some of these issues in the moment to get

050those short-term solutions without losing that long term. So I would encourage us to think about what that if it's an engineer and want to move forward on some of those um you know Winona nursery how that drainage fits with the parking that's about to come from the high school projects um whatever that looks like. But to me, having what 6, 7 months between now and bid day is enough time to get a more concrete plan of some of that, what it could look like down the road. Um, there's one more thing. Oh, uh, I just looking at the list again, I wanted to emphasize some of those pieces that we know, uh, similar to the condition, right? the fields, the track, and the baseball field. Like Monasuri wasn't designed to have sixth graders, the playground

051equipment stands out to me, right? Some of those age appropriate learning. There's hundreds of students using that every single day, right? All year round. And those are the pieces that, you know, want to set us up prioritizing those things um and doing it the right way for that big picture because that could be a really phenomenal space up behind the high school. I would just want us to do our due diligence before we invest money. And I still think any investment two, three, $400,000 that's going to go a lot further down at Memorial Field by Perch Lake than it would bringing a not great field up to average essentially behind the high school. Any other questions? That's all I got. Sorry folks, that's that's all I got for that. Any other questions, comments from board

052administration? Do you need any other discussion recommendations at this point to move forward that you were looking for tonight? So, this is good discussion. And I guess with the baseball field and the in that area, um we can look for we can go and and go to what does it cost to redo the um the field is uh fencing uh dugouts dugouts probably need to be looked at as well. Um do you want us to look go all in? uh wants to start looking into an engineer to and hire a a a athletic uh developer to start looking at how does this all going to fit in and maybe come up and you know that's going to cost some additional funds as well. Um or we can just start making some phone calls. But um

053when I talk to the Monuna nursery uh people like I said earlier, they're going to you want to do it right, you're going to we're going to need to get an engineer up at the baseball field for certain. And then we're going to have to start figuring out what do we do for parking? Um are we going to continue to use that so uh soccer field or is that going to have a different use? Uh we're currently looking we only have one regulation football field right now. We have soccer is is is good to go up at the high school, but if we need to play a uh a freshman or a JV level football game, it has to be at Memorial Field because we don't have any other option. Thus, that bumps soccer up

054to the high school, which is perfectly fine. It's grass, but um I think we need to start looking uh big picture at least have a different option. And I believe the infield once we do the track would give that option, but maybe we want to use the infield for something else. So, but it's really about do we want to redevelop that baseball area because the parking isn't very good. ADA accessibility isn't good. We don't have a we have portaotties. When they used to have soccer up there, it was portaotties. You know, really, how far do you want us to look to invest in that area would be my question for specifically for right now? Yes. If if you want us to use our time to do that, we can. or is that something that we

055want to pause and still we're still going to do our best to do the track because we're not going to get this done this year. So, we need to make some investments and improvements to the track most likely and the baseball field for sure in which we have plans to to do, but it's really about how much more investment do you want us to do and what is the long-term goal of of the baseball field specifically. Do you want us to start looking into partnerships at the at Memorial Field for the baseball? What would it cost to make the infield better? They'd have lights there. Um JB would move up. You know, once again, all those exploratory ideas if the board would like us to move in that direction or if they say, "Nope, we

056want to stay on campus." And I haven't asked I have not had discussions with the baseball with Coach Mitchell or the booster club at all with those either. So, I would like clarification. I would like clarification when you talk about um the baseball moving to Memorial Field. Do you mean Diamond One like the high school playing at Diamond One or do you mean a baseball field on the football field? Because then you also have logistics with uh spring soccer and baseball. Yeah. Diamond one is what you were saying. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Wherever Sparta Miller plays, that's where I caught the flag, which is owned by the city and the Right. And so the high the high school does not have a um a softball field. We don't the varsity does not have a softball field

057on campus. Um and we don't have a JB field up there. And so I what the the whole purpose of my conversation here is that it shows the track and field restoration as an admin priority. So I agree with you that needs to be done. It is a priority. But we can't invest the money into that without looking at it holistically. the entire complex, the baseball field is going to affect the track and field eventually and it needs to be done together. They both need attention. So, I would I'm fine with everything on this list. These are all the extras, all the oranges, all the whatever has been taken care of, majority of it. These are the items that administration has created as additional products projects and I would like to inclin but um the

058high school baseball field improvement should be a priority as well looking at what we're going to do if there are any potential extra referendum funds. That's all I'm saying. It can't be ignored. I would recommend doing both things. Bring an engineer in to see what needs to be done with the baseball field and at the same time have some discussion with the city about what can be done to uh play baseball there. Good, Mr. Russ. So, we can look into if that's we can start to look into these things. Uh partnership with the city um the engineer to to maybe get a comprehensive look there and some ideas if that's I'm fine with that. Yeah, I'm I'm in support of that. Does that sound good? Yeah. and then we'll see. I have a better picture

059to make that decision. Regardless, we're gonna improve the safety of track and baseball as best we can. Right. So, we'll we'll look to invest our time. Yeah. Mr. Yeah. Yeah. We're going to look into it right now. We're we're going to start the process right now. Am I going to be able to get you by the end of the month the the information? No. No. But the city, we might be able to and I might be able to give you updates throughout to see what it would mean. And they may say, "No, we're happy with our field right now. We don't want to go on to this adventure at this time." Which we know. So, Miss Hower, um, I just wanted to confirm regarding involving an engineer. Are you looking for plumbing and electrical? Also,

060there's been talk of restrooms and concession stands and um, there's no lighting up there. How far do you want us to take the discussion with the engineer? Are we looking just for the field or a complete redo of the engineer I believe should give their opinion regarding the complete redo. However, at the same time, we have to include the opportunity or the potential for improvement as it is now because it might be two or $3 million. I have no idea, but it could be millions of dollars to redo the baseball and track complex together. And that's not, you know, that's seasons and seasons away. So, we need to have both. Mhm. Any other comments from the board? Questions? Good. That is it. I'd recommend a uh recess of the committee. Recess of the committee of

061the special meeting. Right. And then re rec uh convene the special meeting. Um um there. Yeah. So I would entertain a motion to take a recess of the committee of the whole. So move motion by Mr. Wells, second by Miss Barren. Uh is that roll call? No. All in favor say I. I. All oppose say nay. All right. We take a recess and kick into the special meeting. What time is it? 7:14. Can we do 5 minutes? 7:20. There we go. Thank you. We'll reconvene pretty soon 7:20. 20. test test. This one. Test test test. Check check check. Okay. want to go on that power after I give him two more He's ready. Nope, he's not ready. Yes. And that's going to be something that Sam's going to do when he adopts the Oh, that's

062what I Yep. I'd like to I'd like to call this meeting to order. This meeting has been noticed by Evans Printton Media Group, WCOW Radio, Magnum Radio, Lacrosse Tribune, Sparta City Hall, and the Sparta Free Library. Are there any changes to the agenda? Yes, there is. I would like to recommend I'm pulling it up now. Uh after public input, we move to C uh to be the first order of business after public input. Sounds good. I'd like to uh accept motions to adopt the agenda as presented. Second. Mot motion made by Colin Burns Gilbert. Second by Miss Lopez. All those in favor say I. I oppose. Motion carries. Uh six 601 absent. All right. So moving on to two. Oh, sorry about that. Public input. Uh Sam, can you remind we have uh Yeah, public

063input. we have three minutes. Uh topics can be re uh restricted to 10 minutes unless the board decides to uh change the change that around. Uh so the board if you we do have I'd say about a dozen or so people that like to speak. Um so I I guess it'd be my recommendation if the board goes along with it to suspend the 10-minute rule. However, I would ask if there is anything as we go through this process, if there is I can't require you, but if there's anything new that you would like to add after the first person, that would be beneficial, but um it's up to the board if they want to stick to the 3 minutes or reduce it to two or just go from there. I stick to three minutes and

064extend the time. Okay, that's perfectly fine. As a reminder, I'm going to give a warning about 2:45. So, that gives you about, you know, 15 seconds or so uh to do that. The last thing we want to do is take the mic away from anybody. So, okay. And, uh, these were in the order that I received them. So, they were just random. I just first one, two, three, four, um, and so forth. So, Mr. Wells, you got it. All right. So, moving on with public input. I'm bound to botch at least one of these names in here, but we're gonna start with JessicaRandle. Uh topic is the musical Alrighty. I'd next like to welcome Miss Crystal Noble for uh uh for the topic of the 9 to5 the musical. All right. Just a little bit.

065politically. [Music] What were you finding? What we are saying to them is that their stories, their perspectives and their power to change the world, it isn't important to us. It doesn't matter to us. So please, I implore you to consider the commitment of our community to this program and to restore our kids rights to explore these topics to to question our standards and to create their content. Thank you. [Applause] Next, I'd like to welcome Miss Nancy, let's see Shidle to to the front. Just say hello. Yeah. Okay. Will you Yeah, I turned it off. Hello. part of my screen. No, not at all. Hello Let's try it. that board. Hello. Hello. Good. Better. Okay. Okay. I began my public teaching career as a seventh grade English teacher in Maine. My seventh graders taught me a

066lesson to allow them to make up their own minds. Back in Maine, a KKK group wanted to set up an event at a nearby farm. I told the kids not to go because like these parents who are protecting their children, I thought it would only steer them in a direction that I did not want them to go in. So I was the person deciding for them. Yet they appealed to me with their arguments. And guess what? I saw that they were indeed capable of making up their own minds and they changed mine. teaching seventh grade English in Sparta for 10 years with my principal's blessing. I taught a prejudice unit whereby I presented different scenarios that revolved around that topic. And I had my students respond in a persuasive essay of their viewpoint. One couple

067who came to speak were married, a black man and a white woman. Another couple were gay. parents could opt out of their child attending the discussion and these students went to the library. The rest of my 125 students were able to learn what prejudice was like firsthand and they made up their own minds as witnessed by the essays. We didn't close down the entire event because of a few parents who didn't want their child to hear the speakers. Instead, we allowed our students to grow in critical thinking skills, and those who didn't want to didn't come. Our job as teachers is to provide a safe environment for discussion of many different viewpoints, not just those of one perspective. This creates students to develop critical thinking skills. Isn't that what we want for our children? So

068that when real life comes along, they'll be able to make critical decisions. By cancelling a theater production because of quote material of the show from outside groups unquote, you are in essence depriving our community to use our critical thinking skills. As our district did before, can't those parents decide whether or not to allow their child to attend the production? If they choose not to, that is their parental right, but don't deny that same right to everyone in the community. Isn't that the true definition of liberty according to Oxford dictionary? To be free from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behavior or political views. I would just like to end by saying a lot of my former students are here tonight who are utilizing their critical thinking skills. Thank you. All righty.

069I'd like to welcome Miss Kelly Arnold uh discuss 9 to5 musical. Good evening and thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak. I am the grandma of one of the musical and show choir students. My grandchild was introverted, depressed, and suicidal. She was on anti-depressants and in counseling. Since becoming involved in the musicals of show choir, she has blossomed and no longer needs the meds nor the counseling. All of this because of the arts and the family that the arts built. I don't understand how a small group of people complain and get to dictate what the school does. I remember the cake parties that were held in the lower Publix when I went to Sparta High between 1977 and 1980. I would much rather see these kids singing, dancing, and acting than attending these

070parties. If you don't like 9 to5, nobody's forcing you to buy a ticket. Nobody's forcing you to attend. You, however, don't have the right to dictate to others what they can do. Let these directors and kids continue the work they started and give us another stellar performance. Thank you. Next, I'd like to welcome Dave Rice to discuss 9 to5. Good evening. Can everybody hear me? Um, my name is Dave Rice. I'm a retired judge. I'm also a a former school board member from long ago. I served on the board for nine years. I was president for four years. I don't want to be repetitious. Uh but I think I probably have more of a perspective like you folks have than like the audience has. Um I saw the I read about the cancellation on Facebook

071of all places and I wondered what is the objection to this movie. I had seen it uh 40 years ago. I remembered it as being funny. Remembered as being uh mocking the the boss who was a obviously a sexual harasser. And uh in the end I thought it was u it was a fairly funny movie. I didn't see what the objection was. I looked it up. Uh it actually is rated was rated G at the time that it went out. So uh it was not considered controversial then. That was 40 years ago. Um I have a couple of thoughts on it. Uh one is I think you know and I think you can see from what you've heard uh you have a really good program here. Uh this uh I call it your drama program

072is a terrific program. I've been to a couple of the plays. Uh they have a great participation. They have a large group of kids and all different types of uh contributions to it. Uh when the when the performances I saw were over, the kids were out in the hallway and uh I was really impressed with their enthusiasm. Uh I haven't seen that much enthusiasm since uh Sparty used to beat Toma in sports. I I'm serious. They're just just terrific. That's what you're trying to get in your school. That's what makes kids really excited about school. This is a program. It's led by great leaders. Um and so you have a real positive program. That's my first thought. My second thought is as you as school board members, I was a board member once and uh

073I had to make the same types of decisions you're making. This would be an easy one for me because it's a voluntary program. Nobody's required to participate. Those that do participate aren't graded for what they do. Uh I don't think they get extra credit if they do it. Um I nobody's required to attend. Um it's strictly voluntary. The fact that it's voluntary means that the decision on who who participates and who doesn't is made by the parents. Um that's who should make the decision, the parents. Uh you've heard from some parents here. Um, I think I've used my time up here, but uh, I would just uh urge you to to trust the parents in your school. They can make decisions for their own children. Thank you. Like to welcome Will Hawkins to discuss the

074performing arts. Thank you. Thank you, administration. Thank you school board for allowing me this opportunity to speak before you. Um I know this is a very difficult discussion though it shouldn't be. Um, I'm going to speak from the perspective of an executive board member uh this evening and not a parent. Though I have a of a son that is very successful in this program and and thanks to a a directors to give him an opportunity to really spread his wings and find out who he is. Um, but from the vice president of the booster club, um, I want you to understand that we don't take our productions lightly when we make a decision on what we do. We collaborate with the directors. They travel um throughout the whole state to figure out uh if the

075productions they're looking at doing for the following year are of value, educational, and would fit our community. and then they bring that to our board. We have a discussion and uh allow them to do whatever the musicals are. I want to give you an example. Uh last year they came to us with the two musicals they wanted to do. One of them us as a board did not think it would be the right timing to do that. Um it was Heather's the musical and we had recently lost JD in our community and there is a member of uh a character by the name of JD in that uh musical. So we as a board made a decision to not go forward with that. We asked them to pick something else. Um so they picked Rock

076of Ages and uh I think we all know that musical won an outstanding musical last year. So, um, from behalf of the board members of our performing arts booster club, we have all the trust in the directors to pick the right musicals, for our community, for our students, for our families. And, uh, I think the awards that they've won over the last three years speak volumes for what they do and what they know. Um, and I look forward to having more and more award-winning productions moving forward. Uh, I'll leave you with this. As a board member, as a booster club, we're looking to collaborate with the board um and our administration, and we want to make sure we strengthen what we have already for futures to come. So, thank you. [Applause] Next, I'd like to

077welcome Emily McCllum uh to to talk about 9 to5. Good evening. My name is Emily McCllum. I speak tonight as a lifelong resident, a former employee of the Sparta School District, and a former third grade teacher to several of the talented students currently participating in the Sparta performing arts program. I'm here to advocate on their behalf. The district administration's decision to bar the performance of 9 to5 the musical without any explanation to the public at least justification or transparency directly contradicts its own stated mission and values. It also perhaps unintentionally sends a message that the hard work and dedication of Skyler and his students are not appreciated or respected. By blocking this performance, the administration undermines parents' rights to decide what content is appropriate for their own children. Instead, it allows a small minority to

078dictate what is acceptable for the for everyone, something that runs counter to the principles of free expression. The board may wish to consider implementing a clear consistent process for approving musicals in the future as decisions made like this only so division. This kind of censorship suppresses creativity, silences student voices, and diminishes empathy. It is deeply contradictory for the district to publicly celebrate the program, such as in this weekend's Sparta High School Facebook post about the Jerry Awards nominations while also simultaneously discouraging and disrupting it from within. I respectfully urge you to reverse this decision and allow the performance of 9 to5 the musical to move forward. That is how we truly support the students of Sparta High School's performing arts program by trusting their talent, respecting their efforts, and standing behind their right to perform.

079Thanks for your time and consideration. Next, I'd like to welcome Skyler Ericson to the front to discuss the theater program. [Applause] Good evening. I hold before you our two Jerry awards that we received last night for both of our productions. Uh, as most of you know, uh, we returned around 12:30 this morning from the Jerry Awards in Madison Madison, Wisconsin after both of our musicals from this year won outstanding musical through the state of Wisconsin. Out of 116 schools that participated, only 22 musicals were chosen for outstanding musical, and Sparta was two of those 22. We also had two students who also received outstanding lead in a performance. We had Parker Culkins who actually received two of those in both both of the productions as well as um uh Garrick Manning in Spelling V as

080well. And because of that they also had the opportunity to audition for the Jimmy Awards in New York City where they could have the opportunity to receive a $25,000 um scholarship and a chance to be in a Broadway show. [Applause] And in the past two years as the theater department, we have received four outstanding musicals. I've been employed as the musical director here for the past eight years. And each year has continued to get better and better. What most of you don't know or a lot of other people don't know is the amount of hours that it does take to put on a production like this. There are sometimes over 400 500 plus hours that me and other directors um put on um to make these productions come to life. And the process usually begins

081in March, April, and May with auditions. And we work through the summer designing costumes, the set, the sound, the lights, marketing, etc. The list can go on and on. And then the process continues until we sing our final number on our final day. What we do here in Sparta is not what others in the area are doing by far. And we are being known on this side of the state for incredible theater and that just doesn't happen. But it happens when there's great leadership, dedication, and strength. Although I know I am valued to a point, there are some days that I do feel taken advantage through the district, especially moments like this and when my directoral choices are questioned. especially when I hear that it is because of controversial themes or concerns from people or

082a certain group. And in my opinion, they don't have to come to the show. It is a choice. And anytime we do a show, we are always transparent with the material as well as how we advertise, especially when we do a show that may be PG-13. And we always say our choices behind that. And then with that being said, it is up to those people to want to come or not. Theater has held a vital role in society, not just as a form of entertainment, but as a platform for reflection, critique, and share of diverse human experiences. The importance of theater and the argument against censoring its material can be understood through many key dimensions. Theater reflects the world we live in. It allows audiences to confront difficult truths, explore different perspectives, and consider issues

083of identity, morality, politics, and culture. By censoring material, we lose the opportunity to see ourselves and our society in their full complexity. Theater encourages critical thinking and dialogue. Challenging material or provocative plays. They're not dangerous. They're necessary. What they do is they spark conversations, debate, and deeper understanding. Theater doesn't exist to give answers, but to provoke thought. Censoring eliminates the potential. And in conclusion, censoring theater is not about protecting audiences. It's often about protecting systems of power from scrutiny. While sensitivity and responsib and responsible storytelling are important, silencing challenging material weakens one of society's most potent tools of empathy, education, and change. Theater must remain a space where truth, no matter how difficult it can be, it should be allowed to be spoken. I ask that with the future of the Sparta Performing Arts that

084we trust in the work that is being done as it is being taken serious care, consideration, heart, and of course the best interests of the kids with all of their successes in mind. In the words of Dolly Parton, if you want the rainbow, you got to put up with the [Applause] rain. Next, I'd like to welcome Dari Rude up for to talk about the supporting the school play. Uh, Miss RDE, I nothing to add. [Applause] Then I'd like to welcome Quinn Mat to the front to talk about the Sparta music department. Again, a lot was said that I was going to I was just rewriting, but um well, my name's Quinn Mat. I'm a theater mom, a showquoire mom, soccer mom, twice over track mom, and a wrestling mom. Um I'm here because um I'm

085here for the betterment of the Sparta Area School District. I was going to touch on the process of um just getting to the actual point of picking a show out and how much time goes into that and how um I think I can speak for many of us here saying that we trust our directors and our board to guide us. Um really nervous in the musical with the musical family. It's always said a lot, trust the process because sometimes we go along and we're just not sure where things are going, but in the end we get a beautiful amazing outcome. Um, I am going to skip ahead. I wrote theater is a reflection of culture and a time period. Um, history can be uncomfortable but not erased. So I wanted to talk about um the

086production of the play. As we know 9 to5 was well into the production process to when we when we backed it. Rights were bought, two full weeks of auditions, cast decided and many of us in the community feel that there could have been a better solution than just redacting the whole play. Um, it it has affected many students and families and already hundreds of hours of work. Time is money. Speaking of money, I would like to point out that the Sparta music department pays for all its rights, choreographies, costumes, set design, and more themselves, right down to the janitoriial services during production. All involved are invested tremendously. It is absolutely necessary for the shows to be successful. The music department depends largely on this community and after 9 to5 was cancelled. The community rallied in

087support of um the sport the sport has been overwhelmingly amazing. I believe Greece had a little push back too but the community spoke and the directors and students added another show to because the community asked for it. If a show is not wellreceived, the music department loses money. Simple as that. Let the community drive the wheel and show support or not. In the last two years, our program has received four statewide recognitions for Sparta, an outstanding musical. If you are not involved in this, please trust me when I say that this is very competitive and Sparta is recognized and celebrated across the state. Musical productions broach hard topics. You would be very hardressed to find one that doesn't. Even Disney movies. There is always a lesson learned from these shows and our musical department is

088a safe place to learn and grow. It is our jobs as parents, teachers, coaches, and directors to help them grow and feel safe to inquire about the road the world around them. All right. Next, I'd like to welcome Jean Bliss to talk. He wants to speak about censorship. Uh, good evening. My name, as you heard, is Jean Gllyce, and I'm a 1966 graduate of Sparta High. I also taught English here for 32 of my 38 years and I have four children who are all Sparta High School graduates. I'm telling you this because I have devoted a lot of time and effort to this school district. During my life and career, I have been against censorship and that is why I am here tonight. It would be easy to get sidetracked down in a debate about

089the specific play 9 to5, but we shouldn't lose sight of the bigger issue at stake. Apparently, there is a group called Mothers for Liberty trying to move into our schools with the object of forcing their views and opinions on what the rest of us should be allowed to see or read. I'm insulted as you should be that they think we are not intelligent enough to decide for ourselves what we should read or see. I have spent the weekend researching this group which I encourage all of you to do. It quickly became apparent that the real name of this group should be Moms Against Liberty because they are basically for censoring school curriculum of everything that doesn't fit their narrow agenda. even though they have a quote from John Adams on their website which states quote

090children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom unquote obviously this group doesn't understand the irony of that quote when they operate on eliminating freedom to choose for the rest of us also anyone can check out the curriculum on the appropriate school website if you're worried after working on writing curriculum over the ers. My advice is to read it some night when you can't get to sleep. It's riveting reading to find out what age parts of speech are taught. Seriously, my point is is that it's not for this mother's group to dictate what me, my family, or yours may read or see or discuss. If these people want to impose their values, they should stick to their own families and leave ours alone. This is an attempt to get a toll hold into

091our school system. Next, these people will be attacking school libraries and textbooks. If they still use textbooks in the computer age, I don't know. I might be dating myself. But seriously, considering s censorship by a conservative, narrow-minded group is not in the best interest of our school or community. Each of us should be able to decide whether or not we see 9 to5 or any other play that's put on. This is a crossroads for our district and I strongly urge the board members to side with real liberty and freedom. As that famed Sparta High School English teacher, Mrs. O'Neal, repeatedly said, "All choices have consequences." And I hope the school board backs the one that keeps censorship away from our school district. Next, I'd like to welcome Melissa Mulvini to discuss the musical. Hello, I'm

092Melissa Mulaney. Um I am a resident here, lifelong resident here. Um alumni and a mother of two high school students. One of my sons is involved in the it's his first year being involved in the musical um and show choir. He has um gained so much uh knowledge and confidence and the program is just outstanding. I can't say enough about it. Um I would like to thank to Mr. Ford and Mr. Sans Sons. I might be saying that wrong. Um I have seen them at performances supporting um different musical uh different music parts of music whether it's band or uh the musicals themselves. Um a lot of what has already been said I have written too. So I'm going to skip over that and kind of just highlight some of the things when looking at

0939 to5. One thing that I heard my own son say was how it's kind of neat to learn about like the rigging systems that uh that they'll have to do to raise a person up. Um that's something new that when we're talking about educational experiences with this particular 9to-5 that hasn't been done in my knowledge. Um, so obviously there's the content that's been covered in that, but actually the actual production part, there's there's things in it too that are learning, whether it's a certain type of choreography, a certain vocal thing that may um be new, but but that particular thing stood out to me with rigging that was a learning experience with this one. Um I guess by I just I was surprised about it by how late the um complaints came came in. That

094was a concern of mine and moving forward. That's something that needs to be evaluated um because we have put financial finances into this already. Um and if things are switched, we don't know if we get those back. And as a parent who um helps doing the fundraising, putting money into the into the program, I think that needs to be um thought of too when considering this. Um and also moving forward just working with um I Mr. Caukins had said working with the booster club and the directors when these things come up in a systematic way um that's documented um so that it's those people that are making those complaints are fully understanding what they're complaining about first. So that's all I have to say. Thank [Applause] you. Next I'd like to welcome Erin Willians. He

095wants to discuss the Sparta High School play. Hello. I don't know what to say after all these brave, wonderful people spoke and pretty much laid it out. So, we'll just talk about audio engineering, how we get this uh system sounding better. Um, I'm sure we can get some high school kids in here on that. Um, you know, I I I I guess I I'm concerned about Moms for Liberty, about how they want to bypass your decision-m, our decision- making, and go to a source um that apparently listen to them and um and and and I just I just don't see how that makes any sense to to being working with the community and and and everyone's interest. Yeah, I I've noticed a lot of the people running the Facebook group are from Toma, not on

096Facebook anymore, so I heard about this a little late. I I didn't quite get everything that's going on, but um but I think everyone everyone pretty much laid out what I think is is is the right thing, and that's to to let the kids do the play. We have we really have a great uh uh uh drama uh uh program here in Sparta. Um I I didn't know that until I went to Shrek the Musical, and I was like, "Wow, that was amazing." And I and I really enjoyed it. And um so so yeah, just um I guess you guys get to decide this though. Is that how this works eventually, right? You guys all get to vote on this. Do I get to ask questions? Oh, okay. So, I'm going to take it that

097you guys get to vote on this. So, please vote the right way. Um you know, it's it's good to see so many people show up and speak out because that's what it takes when when you're faced with people who who want to dictate what your children do. Um let's see. I guess uh that's pretty much all I got. My my kid wrote something now he's 10, but he listens to us speak and and he gets involved and you know basically I told him it's about women's empowerment and and it's and uh so he wrote first I would like to state that you guys are doing an amazing job of teaching us um but you canceled the plague. Now I don't know your reason for cancing 9 to5 but I'll say one thing do not bring

098sexist beliefs into our public education. All [Applause] right. I'd like to welcome Anthony Schoy and he wants to speak about the fall musical in the performing arts. Hey you guys, how's it going? It's quite a quite a night, huh? So I want to start just by saying trust the process. Right? We as I've I've had the opportunity to work with so many of you for years. In the last three and a half years, what we've done is we've allowed other people and we've trusted the process that things were going to work out the way they needed to. And look what's happened the last three and a half years of the performing arts program. Okay? Each each one of us has a choice and a decision to make tonight. And the last three and a half

099years is proof of why we should allow the performing arts to make that deci decision. We've had these battles with this group in the past. Um, and suppression and censorship is not something that we've pushed here in the district. And I'm not saying that you're starting that or or we're moving that direction. But I want to share something. Um, the first board of education annual meeting I ever went to, I went to a seminar. Sam, I can't remember if you and I went together. Might have been you, Colin, but we had two different um past school board presidents that were were talking at the the conference and the one lady came up and she said, "Well, you know, we we don't like these books and we didn't like having this in the school and that

100in the school and so we pulled all that and we didn't allow that opportunity for the kids. We just felt it was safer this way." And uh I was kind of like, "Wow." You know, sit back and surprised by that moment. And the next past president stands up and he says, "You know what? If you could take all that stuff and just send it right to my school district, our kids are ready for it." And right now is an inflection point for you as each each as a board member, right? You can we can choose to suppress and and censor or we can choose to trust the process, right? So, I'm asking you to please trust the process and give our directors, our our booster club um board the opportunity to make that decision. Thank

101you. Next, I'd like to welcome Corey Smith to speak about the musical. Well, there's one I can say that hasn't already been said. So, I'm going to speak a little bit about some kids. Kids that came to my house and did hair, did nails. I put three kids through this program and a whole bunch of unbiological kids. And we are selling them short. If we cancel this play, we are selling them short. We are seeing that they are not smart enough to deal with the hard subjects and they are. You know why? Because we've discussed the hard subjects. They did it over nails and hair and whatever. Don't sell these kids straight or short. I'm sorry. Give them the chance. I've got to know Cammy. I've got to know um Skyler, Mr. Nicholson, and uh

102Michelle, they would do nothing to ever hurt our kids. Nothing. If they say that they are ready to teach these kids, then I have faith in them. I say let them do what they need to do. Let them teach our kids. Let them te them teach our kids to not hide from the hard subjects but to face the hard subjects and to rise above them to do I mean that's this is what this school is about. It's about dealing with the hard subjects. It's we've dealt with suicide and drinking and so many other hard problems and these kids have rose above it. They've rose above the hard subjects. There's a few people telling you that we need to tell these kids what they need to do. We don't. They're too smart. They're smarter than we

103were at this age. I implore you, please do the right thing. You've heard the people speak. I know what the kids are saying. You know what the kids are saying. I implore you to vote the right way. I implore you to not let the minority make the decision for our kids, but let the majority let the kids make their decisions. All righty. I wanted to thank everyone for their their patience and thank thank everyone that came up to speak and and um everyone in the room for being respectful during that time. And so we've had some we've had a few minutes to reflect and now I'd like to move on to item two. My batteries are going out. Item 2C, discussion of possible action to decide on the SHS musical. Uh Sam, can I get

104some background? Uh yes. And once again, thank you very much for everyone who who spoke and uh as Mr. Wells said, thank you for being respectful um during this time. And I know there's a lot of passion going on here. And uh let me just talk a little bit about how this came about. One, I know Moms for Liberty came up a couple times. Moms of Liberty have nothing to do with this. They didn't reach out to to to me, Mr. Ford, uh or anyone else in the administration that I know of. So, please know Moms Liberty has nothing to do with this. Um this is the timeline that we have. Um in the past, uh we have had musicals. the board uh when I say board I'm sorry the booster I'm going to call

105him the booster board I apologize if I not calling him the right name the booster board worked with the director and uh during this this time and it's been moved forward um this is a high school production uh that's in collaboration with the uh the the boosters um ultimately we do have policies that govern certain things, instructional material and student productions. Um on the 4th we had our on May 4th we had our um transition day where the eighth grade students came in. Uh at that time the announcement was made that there was it was to be determined yet. on uh the week of the 12th um we had uh on at SHS they had a slide on Spartan Strong it's called uh about auditions on the 20th, 21st and 22nd. Uh at the beginning

106of those auditions um Mr. Ford and I received a word that um this musical may not be suitable for production by high school kids. And once again, as I stated in the beginning, please this is this is no longer I'm explaining the process. I'm not going to be able to engage with you. Please know that just like we didn't engage there. And we looked into this and uh Mr. Ford talked with Mr. Ericson and got some additional background. As we started to look into this, it became uh questionable if this is the right choice for to have our kids act out certain scenes in regards to sexual harassment, uh sexual induendos, inappropriate language, and uh drug use, whether implicit, implied, or anything like that. Looking into this a little bit more, we started to to

107to once again look into it and we were not collaborate this. We want this to be collaboration collaborative and we were not aboard we were not asked about this musical and rightfully so. We were not asked or admittedly so we were not asked uh about the past musicals. Uh if you recall this used to be a purely um SASD musical or SHS musical. Uh a few years ago the agreement was made that this would be more of a booster musical. However, SHS uh in the district would provide um the money for the d for the director assistant directors and some funds. Uh and most recently they paid for all the transportation to the Jerry Awards which was very exciting for the kids. So ultimately Mr. Ford collaborated and I agreed with the decision. Um he

108let Mr. Ericson know um and plans started to be made. Uh they talked about you know what needs to be adjusted. uh how do they move forward? Some possible alternatives. Um but and Mr. McKenna, who's not here tonight, asked me to put this on the agenda tonight for board um action. So tonight, uh the board has a couple decisions. One, they're they're they can feel free to um say, you know, the 9 to5 the musical will continue. um they can also decide that you know what moving forward this is truly a booster club event and all questions or anything like that would would go there. Um so it's really about what are the next steps. My recommendation you know what my recommendation is about the about the selection but moving forward we want to make

109it very clear that this is a collaborative process. This is a student production that falls under our policies. The instructional material falls under our policies. That is my view. And because of that, I think we need to do uh have our activities director work with the musical uh directors and his or her team about selecting be and bringing in the boosters. So, we don't get to this this point, but we are at this point now. Um, and I think I've said everything I'd like to say. I stand by the decision. It is now your decision as a board whether or not to move forward and um looking for guidance moving forward in the future. Uh, as I just laid out what I plan to do pending no board action because in the policies it gives

110the district administrator the right to put these into place. Open it up for questions. And do we have some microphones? Absolutely. Thank you, Mr. Bernett. I don't Mr. S, could you please answer the question from whom or what resources were used to determine that the musical may not be appropriate for high school students to perform? looking at the script and I looking at the script looking at the internet searches um became clear that this is more for mature audiences um teens to be performed with and I have concerns with 13 and 14 year olds doing that. Uh the question has come up well parents just don't send your kid don't send your kid. It's my opinion that we don't want to put our kids into a position where they have to choose whether or not

111they want to do something that is maybe questionable. We have curriculum and the the comment may say, "Well, we we we teach kids adult themes and yes, we want them to teach the adult themes and the difficult themes." However, in the classroom, it's controlled. It we can set it up. We can educate. we can really make sure that what we're talking about sorry is in that way. Um so but through uh the internet searches and looking at the actual script um I'm not going to go into it because I don't know if they can even hear me on the internet. I don't want to start talking about what's the actual quotes and anything like that. Overall it is in my opinion which we we that's why administration is is here to make these difficult decisions

112as well. Um it's inappropriate for that by looking at the uh information on the internet. Um this is a controversial subject, a controversial um play, I'm sorry, musical and that's one of the things and we have controversial subjects for that and but ultimately I'm sorry. Is that hurting your ears? Well, that's a different thing, but okay. So, um, but it it's we're we're we still believe that we can still have the instructional outcomes. Our kids can still have a great experience. We can still, to my knowledge, that you don't need to a specific musical does not lead to specifically a Jerry award. Uh, I trust our our our directors and our team to get the best musical out there for our kids as possible, regardless of the title. But uh the information we used was

113searching the internet. It's not it's more for community and uh post-secondary performances. Um and ultimately knowing that the the team wants to move forward, the decision was made in a relatively short amount of time um working with the directors and to move forward. Any further discussion from the board? Yeah, I just want to comment that I did a little research myself as well when I got some of these uh emails. Um the uh the consensus seems to be that this is appropriate for a middle school audience and I guess we have to think about as well of uh younger children uh coming to these performances. Um, and uh the other thing I found uh just looking uh was an article um about a high school in Kansas that had uh done this uh musical and

114they uh got a lot of complaints from the uh um audience and what they did was they uh uh backtracked and rewrote ote uh some of the uh script. Um and uh I don't know if that's possible or even feasible, but uh the uh that might be something to look at. Mr. Ford did have that discussion um with Mr. Ericson. It's my understanding that that's not uh when you rewrite scripts, you need permission and all that. um that it entails of that and that's probably not the best option. Any further discussion from the [Music] board? This is going to be a little long. I apologize. I'm going to read to you board policy 2240. Controversial issues in the classroom. It states the board believes that the consideration of controversial issues has a legitimate place in

115the instructional program of the district. Properly introduced and conducted, the consideration of such issues can help students to a learn to identify important issues. B explore fully and fairly all sides of an issue. C weigh carefully the values and factors involved. D. Develop techniques for formulating and evaluating positions. E. Learn how to use critical thinking to problem solving skills. F. Study and analyze relevant issues. G. Evaluate different sources of information. H. Make intelligent decisions regarding issues. I. Appreciate the value of differing viewpoints. For purposes of this policy, a controversial issue is a topic on which varying points of view have been expressed by responsible opinion and or are likely to arouse both support and opposition in the community. These issues may range across a wide spectrum of political, social, economic, and religious topics. The board

116will permit the introduction and proper educational use of contra controversial issues provided that their use in the instructional program A is related to the instructional goals of the course of study and level of maturity of the students. B is not intend to indoctrinate students to a particular point of view. C encourages open-mindedness and is conducted in a spirit of scholarly inquiry and D does not cause a substantial disruption in the school environment. Controversial issues related to the program may be in initiated by the students themselves provided they are presented in the ordinary course of classroom instruction relate to the topic of instruction and do not cause substantial disruption to the school environment. Controversial issues may not be initiated by a source outside of schools unless prior approval has been given by the principal. Issues pertaining

117to human growth and development as defined by statute are subject to this other statute. Basically what I'm getting at is our policy is encouraging this is encouraging 9 to5 encouraging thinking and making decisions and growing [Applause] and I think we're being a little hypocritical if we don't at least consider this. Excellent. And and and thank you. And that's once again it's 2240. So the two points that I'd like to bring out that I and I shared that and the biggest thing is it will permit the introduction of proper educational use provided is related to the instructional goals of the course of studying the lever the maturity of the students. This does not need to be accomplished. This this in my opinion 9 to5 does not solely accomplish the instructional goals and I would question the

118maturity of the students at this level that we have 13 and 14 year olds acting and laughing upon we have that and I'm not talking about the message. The message is one thing. I'm not disagreeing with the message. Yes, women empowerment. There's no place for sexual harassment. There is no place for drug use either. So, we're not talking about the themes of the of the musical. We're talking about the way that this goes about in my opinion. It does not necessarily mean and we have seen other musicals that have matched the course of study that are more mature for the age level than this and encourages open-minded and scholarly inquiry. I'm not sure what kind of education is there and I'm sure that the team is saying this is all bad. You don't want to

119do this. This is bad. However, the instructional goals, in my opinion, can be met in a different way, especially with the maturity level of our kids doing this. So, that's I got that. This isn't curriculum, though. They don't get graded and they don't they don't get credit towards graduation. So, I mean, technically, this isn't curriculum. It's an extension of the classroom. I I have a question. Um, is it feasible to uh get permission from the playwright to alter this and in the in the in the meantime, I'd like I'd like for the audience to just maintain a level of respect. I understand that this is extremely complicated and I am not saying that Sam or Dr. Bernett, not to put words in their mouth, but they don't disagree with the amount of effort that's put

120into this. What it is is that what it is is that that there could be 12y olds playing and we we we just need it. It's just for the the point of discussion and that's what we're having here. So I'm I'm sorry that we we we need to but but but we need to go through this for because this is not just about 9 to5. This is about musicals from here on out in the procedures that we do from here on out. So I'm going to give the mic back to Dr. Bernett. Would it be reasonable to uh postpone the musical until spring in the interim we get permission from the uh playwright to edit edit it? It's just a thought. I'm not sure how this whole thing is. I'm not necessarily sure if that's

121uh we're able to do that. I know we have other um fine arts in the fall, but also we have other activities in the fall that people may or in the spring that may be counting on doing things in the musical and to do that. So, um not saying it's a bad idea, but it' be my recommendation to to move forward with the fall musical as planned. Um and we're just here to decide what that possible selection would be. and not the specific selection of basically whether or not 9 to5 should be the recommended fall musical uh moving forward. Any other further discussion from the [Music] board? Before I elaborate, I have a couple of questions. Um, do we know what it costs the booster club to obtain the rights? $455. $4,555. Thank you very

122much. Um, do we know whether or not there are parts for students who are not high school age? Okay. So, so um no middle school students or younger have any parts in this play. Correct. Okay. I other musicals sometimes, you know, I I I don't know which one it was, but uh there were like students from Okay. Newsies maybe it was. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I did see that. Okay. Thank you very much, Mr. Ericson. Um and then um so I maybe I am not afraid to speak my mind. I'm not afraid to have an opposing viewpoint. Um but I have heard from people who are concerned about the marijuana usage and usage in the schools um the depiction of marijuana use in the schools. So my question is um how many songs or scenes.

123Thank you. Revolve around drug use. So the mirror, so the drug aspect is a significant part of the theme of the play or the musical. Is that correct, Mr. X? We're just asking questions, please. We listened to you and we're I'm so grateful that you're here. We're just asking questions and we're gathering information. Okay. Okay. So, um, I personally don't have an opinion one way or another regarding the appropriateness of the musical 9 to5. I you know if you followed the board at all that I do support the arts and have been a supporter of improving your opportunities there at the high school. Um, however, what we've seen over the past couple of days is hearkens back to another other situations, multiple ones, in which people say the loudest numbers may not be the majority.

124Okay, I want everyone here to just think about this for a moment. the aggression and attacks on social media that have ensued um have mostly been loud and from one side. And I just want to remind you that there are people who have opposite viewpoints who no longer feel comfortable expressing their opinions on social media or even to their friends. I hear you know these people may be your neighbors or your friends or they might be your students. So, I don't have any problem necessarily with the nineto-five musical, but I do have community members coming up to me and saying, "These are school district employees, these are parents, these are grandparents who say that they are not comfortable with the adult themes at high school levels." Well, we have had the question from the audience

125was what are they? Well, we have had I'm not saying anything about the musicals themselves. I'm just saying that people are expressing concerns about um teenage pregnancy, um drug use. I'm expressing what other people's concerns with high school theater are and they have a right to ex to be heard also. So, I'm asking just for I'm asking for the opportunity to speak on behalf of other members of our community who may be intimidated or you can laugh if you think that that is appropriate. you will not intimidate me and I have not yet made a decision about this myself. So, I would just like to encourage the booster club moving forward to think about those other members of our community who would love to come, other students who would love to participate but who are

126not comfortable with the adult themes. There's a plethora of musical options that we could choose. They don't always have to focus on adult themes. That's my suggestion moving forward and just the arts can also take you away from the issues of the day, right? They can also remove the issues of the day from your mind for a few hours. And that's just a suggestion that I have on behalf of other members of the community who feel comfortable coming to me and expressing their opinion to me because they're not comfortable going to their neighbors necessarily. and I'm not pointing fingers at anyone but to their neighbors and their friends on social media or whatever. So, thank you for coming. I am so very grateful that you're here. But please, let's just be aware that not everybody

127shares the same viewpoint. Many times we said that there are diverse opinions and they need to be respected. Okay. Um, so I think that's all I wanted to share at this time. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. All right. Thank you everybody. Thanks for being here. Like everyone said, um I don't not what everyone said, but me personally, I'd rather have more engagement than not at all. So this is good. Um come back anytime you can. Uh especially send us your thoughts before the day we have to make a decision to. I want to learn more. I want to hear more. I'm a phone call away anytime. I got zero phone calls about this from anyone. And now this is how this is playing out. Okay. So communication is important and that's one of my biggest takeaways

128from this is that we need to understand who's centered in the conversations. Okay. Um as a board if we normalize making decisions on high school musicals we will not meet our district goals. We do not need to be in the weeds per so to say when we're talking about microlevel decisions that this needs to come from a collective community process which I'm learning didn't exist no process no approval it shifted okay thanks thank you please let's wait until the end thanks so as a board I hope that we can ask the conversations, the questions, the the people include the stakeholders across the board um as a admin, as students, as parents, right? To learn from this and move forward because this does not help anyone, right? So, and we can create systems of communication that

129live beyond any one musical, any one uh admin, any one board member, right? Um and that's the goal. That's how you create long-term success, not short-term wins and right being able to take a step back. So that I wanted to start there to refocus what hopefully our purpose is as a board moving forward. Um number two, I got a lot of numbers. Sorry. Um there are this it's going to be great regardless of what decisions we make tonight. So I I have no worry about that. I just I I have a hard time when convers like holding what's the word holding people accountable for unwritten processes unwritten rules right uh the way we've always done it those are some of the things that really get under my skin so so I implore that was used

130a lot tonight right us as a team whether it be Mr. for us, whether it be administration at the high school, we have a new activities director coming in. This is an opportunity to bring people together and make it even better moving forward. And I hope we can create that in collaboration, in unison, and not just because we can doesn't mean we should, right? Every decision we make along the way, just because it it looked like this pre- booster doesn't mean that should be the same. And I hope that that's a priority. I know there's a meeting coming up in a few weeks, I think, um, to work through some of those, but in my short time on the board, which is funny to think about, right, there have been multiple opportunities where this conversation

131can happen and has happened and should happen better moving forward. Um, no one benefits. Our students don't benefit. Our community doesn't benefit if we can't put whatever happened before 20 I didn't start until 2021. So, anything before that in my book needs to be hashed out and figured out and we need to move forward together, right? So, that's in my mind of knowing that we're not going to fix 20 years of ignoring facilities or decision that came before us. What matters most moving forward is how we can keep those conversations, establish those systems that don't rely on one motivated person or one really good experience. So, there's other things happening that I'm not going to get into some of that stuff, but I think from my end, I have a hard time holding people accountable

132for that breakdown in systems and culture and process and procedure. that hasn't happened yet. So, I hope that we move forward with that outcome maybe at the end of the month. I don't know when that would be a realistic, maybe July, but I want to see what that collaborative um plan looks like, right? How are we going to include booster parents, students, staff, admin? Um because that if we don't get it on paper, if we don't establish those goals, if we don't hold ourselves accountable to do better, we're not going to do better. We're going to be back here talking about either another musical that's right controversial or something else down the road. It takes different topics, but the process repeats itself until we do better. And once we know better, we got to do

133better. the other plays, the other options. Again, those are pieces in my mind that are irrelevant right now because right now moving forward to me that that has to be number one is what's best for students, what's best for our community. The fact that we've sunk thousands of dollars and hours into this. I don't know again what all went into this. We weren't consulted nor as we should be. I don't want to dictate where our home football games or what musicals we are. That's not our role, right? But I want to see the same level of excitement on so many other issues, too. Right? There are people in our community that may not I'm just going to stop, but like they go home at night not knowing what the hell they need for food. Okay?

134People that these tools and supports in place, we all focus on these pieces can't get lost along the way. thousands of dollars, thousand, hundreds of hours, right? I have a hard time saying, "Let's not allow this process to play out until I know do better in the future." And we have to like there's no other option. That's [Applause] it. First, thank you to everybody for being respectful. We've had a couple of of uproars and clapping and things in between, but for the most part, everybody's been great. I was here back behind those blinds when CO happened. I remember seeing the crowds that were upset and I remember having to play security guard at the back. It's not fun. Nobody should have to do that. No board member should have to worry about that. To what

135Mr. Bergen Giller was talking about uh I also would like to see an improvement in both the process and the communication. We should be able to trust the process. We should also have to worry about that going outside of the process to get the attention to be able to make it to this level. I think we can communicate better and like Mr. Burns Gilbert said, I think we can work on that process and that communication. Um my daughter's in theater. I'm looking forward to seeing what's coming up. um whether I have an opinion on what my opinion is on the on the particular play that they're talking that is in question what Mr. Burns Gilbert said was right I I feel where that isn't a decision we should be overruling because then we we kind

136of negate the trust and that community that we need that that communication that we need from Mr. for us. So that process needs to to work so we can trust it more. The booster club put a lot of time into this, put money into this. They absolutely should see the the outcomes of that and the fruits of all that work and money that went into it. Um I've tried to understand the school's position and the other uh positions s the far outside group. Um, but it does get back to what is it that we as a board need to be focusing on. We need to focus on that communication. We need to focus on that process. Please come to us if there's an issue so we can go ahead and discuss that issue with you.

137Bring it up with Sam. Understand all the pieces that went into that decision. This has evolved very rapidly. I'm still trying to come up to speed on all of it. Um, but I do think like Mr. Scholsey said, we should be able to trust the process, but that also means there's got to be communication both ways. Um, and there has to be communication all the way through and back. Um, there is an escalation process, too. Um, if you're unsure of that at any point, please bring it up to myself or one of the other board members. We can help walk you through it. We can help make sure that that process is followed so when we get to this point, we have a better understanding of what's going on. Um, but again, thank you to

138everybody for being respectful tonight. Um, being able to voice your opinions. um not being afraid of it but also um not forcing that to the degree that that we've seen in the past um especially those of you who have been around for a lot of the discussions at CO was very very tension. So again thank you um I think we should like Mr. Burns Gilbert to look at the process and develop that and work on that because I think that that puts us further going forward. Um, that doesn't mean I I agree or disagree with the decision that's made, but trusting that I have to go ahead and work through that process and work to help develop a better solution going forward so that we can continue to keep um having these productions and being

139cooperative and having the engagement of the community, of the school, um having the uh parent group um be part of that discussion and be able to talk about it so that we're not waiting until now to have this discussion. I coached a team for robotics or had coached a team. Um, and being communicative ahead of time was something that we tried very hard to do. Uh, even if we didn't like the decision and it was definitely tough. Um, and it's not to say that this hasn't happened on the other end, but that full back and forth communication is would be huge to see. So, I would support um looking at that process as a whole. Any further communication from the board before I take over? Loud. Um could I get a little bit of clarification

140please? Um Mr. Burns Gilbert and Mr. Gonkey um the process trusting the process um that you're speaking of are you saying that um Mr. and Skilbert, you said that you don't feel like you should hold or we should hold against something against someone for an unwritten rule, right? And trust the process with what administration has decided because that's the process or or I'm just like asking like which process are you asking to support? I think I understand Collins but so the question was specifically the process uh for the process administration. Yeah. Uhhuh. Neither. Neither. Everyone dropped the ball across the board is how this played out, right? I didn't get anything from our people any time before this. Uh we didn't have a process in place. So, I'm emphasizing the process of collaboration moving forward,

141but up until this point, I I don't I'm not happy with what I've been presented with the investigation, discovery, the comparisons, like the list is long and I didn't get into half of it because we talked about other things. So uh from my end um I guess very clearly I would be in favor of moving forward with 9 to5 with the understanding with the understanding that this doesn't happen again because of the process we collectively put in place but at the same time but at the same time I want that energy to like we need to do that together right it can't be a this over here that decision over there right um that's where my head goes Collectively this is not a normal thing that we should be doing every musical season right our

142directors we can do better in communication our admin can do better in the systems we I don't I can be more present in the community whatever we can do but if we do nothing and if we keep spinning these wheels and coming back in this again and again this is you know the third at least off top of my head similar conversation related to fine arts since I started And that's the process that I'm struggling with. The fact that that communication wasn't clear, the expectations weren't defined, and that our staff, our students, whoever, right, didn't know, didn't well, I don't know what they knew or didn't know, right? But if it's not clear in policy or procedure for our admin to communicate and educate our internal organizational management side of things, that's a problem. And

143if the none of the board gets a phone call and an email or any communication and here we are tonight, that's another problem right in a different conversation. So specifically the process I'm unhappy with is both. I would support moving forward with some of those um expectations that this is an opportunity to improve [Applause] Any other comments from the board? One more. This one might work. Okay. What about your second one? Thank you so much for that clarification and for the topic of communication. Um, moving forward again, let's try to go to the primary source as opposed to running with what we see, running with what we hear. I asked Mr. Russ specifically a few days ago, did any outside group have any bearing on this whatsoever and he said no. And so then I

144knew that's all it took. Thank you. Anything else further from the board? I just have just I I just want to add some closing comments just because I think it's incredibly important as we move forward because that this isn't about even even though there's banners that say 9 to5, this isn't necessarily about 9 to5, right? And when we're sitting on th this when we're sitting here making decisions collectively as a community, it it needs to be more than 9 to5 because next year could be a whole other issue or problem and whatnot and we we just want to solve it. So I guess for starters, I I I could start with a little bit of background. It's been six years since I graduated from high school and it feels like an eternity, but I know

145that our kids are culpable and capable of performing these musicals. I went to every single AP uh educa AP course in high school and the main you the one thing that connected us all is that we were more likely than not a part of a musical program. So, I know that we uh I I know that the musicals and our arts do enrich our students and make them the best that they possibly can be. I know that. And so, I know that these themes are capable for mature students. On the other hand though, I do respect Sam's ability to make that to make that call. Now that call was likely too late and it was part of a communication issue where everyone was excited to do 9 to5 and that Sam had to and administration

146needed to be a bearer of bad news and they did everything according to policy based on what I could read that was accurate and afforded to them to say because a 13year-old, a 14-year-old can have a lead, a 14-year-old can have a lead role in this musical. 14y olds can have a lead role in this musical. They're freshmen. They're freshman. they could have a lead role in this musical. So that's what's saying. Yep. And so that's just something that we have to weigh. I also know that our musicals do great. We know it. And it's not the particular musical. We know it because we've seen it. We've seen it multiple years in a row. It's the It's the club. It's the community. It's everyone that's supporting it. And that's what makes these musicals strong. It's

147not 9 to5. It was the people involved that make the decisions that decide the musicals, but it's also the amount of effort and love that's put into these things. So, I I respect even though I do respect Sam's decision, I agree with Colin and that the procedures just arrived too late. And so I'd like to request a motion that we move forward with 9 to5, but that but that we need to either put forth a policy or have clear set standards that there needs to be a an active communication between the theater booster, which is their community as a whole. and administrative before these key decisions are made because I also understand that these key decisions have been made for 9 to5 and that that's probably what sucks, right? A lot of people are excited

148for it. So, did you make a motion? I said I'd like to request a motion. Okay. All right. Uh, where we at? Uh, discuss. So, I would make a motion to move forward with accepting 9 to5 as the musical selection for fall of 26. Sorry, 25. Thank you. Teamwork. um fall at 25 with the understanding that the stakeholders will create an action plan moving forward to address communication, consistency, and vetting of future co-curricular experiences. Heard it. We have a motion by Mr. Burns Gilbert a second by Mr. Gonkey Sam. So I just want to make sure you're the second part of your motion you're saying for all co-curriculars because our current co-curricular is is that the head adviser or head coach works with our ad and establish student activities. Would you like to carve out

149something different for this? Because because ultimately that's what we're asking basically. I'm going to be asking for is this a Sparta High School musical or is this a booster club musical because that's where that's moving forward which has to be established. That is my plan is to move forward with having it clear just like every just like our new football coach is going to have to ask if they where do they want to play. It's not going to tell the AD a month later this is what I've organized as an example. So holding the musical to the same expectation and standard of selecting student activities is what my plan moving forward is. And we do have various booster clubs that are have input which we will continue to to value. But ultimately I want the

150decision to be back into policy like it is is that this is a high school production. So that I just want to make sure we're on the same page and not carving out a specific exception for theater. Okay. Got it. If that's what you when would you like I just need to know when you would like that because it'll be so I just need with working with Mr. Dao and making sure because we the guideline has been work with the um the the the director in this case. However, this is the blurry line about that's why I ask whose musical is it because we have carved out exceptions for all the revenue. So, and that's I just want to make it clear. Okay. So, was it clear that it's Yes. Was that your understanding, Mr.

151Bunky? Yeah. So I guess moving forward I just have one question. Whose m I just want to know before we vote whose musical are you saying it is? I I'm saying it is Sparta high schools or the Sparta area school district's musical and they will have working through this process so we don't get here. So that's what the policy says. And if that's not the case, we just need to start working things out. When we transport kids to jury awards, it's our musical. So once again, it's really about and this is the the crux of the issue as well. I was just going to say I I'm I'm excited to see the plan that the stakeholders develop and in that process I think that's where it'll be very clear what recommendation for that is moving

152forward of ownership of accountability of but to me it it's not a this or them it's it's both it needs to be all of us not a high school or a booster it needs to be together well That's and that's however if things happen we have to have the primary responsibility everything that is happening in there and I'm going to have to learn a little bit more some on the comment today was something about somebody jumping up or being I I I don't know what that is but we need to learn this is all part of the process is is that we have a liability carrier that we have to work with right or wrong that if we start doing things that are against our liability carrier, not to say that they will be no,

153but this is part of the process that we have to start implementing because decisions have to be made about the production. And if we're doing whatever, we're making modifications or we're doing this, this, and this, ultimately, if it's our production, we we need to know what's going on so we can take the the appropriate measures. And from the crowd, it doesn't seem that they like that. But I I need clarification on the motion. [Music] I believe that Mr. Rest is asking the board to determine or set forth the the parameters of the process. Well, the per whether it's a Sparta area school district um production in cooperation with the booster club or booster club production and cooperation with the school. I think you're asking for like who is primary decision like has the final decision.

154Yes. Because ultimately we're going to work with the collaboration but ultimately if we come to a disagreement somebody's going to have to ultimately say this is this is what it is. We understand 95 moving forward is 9 to5 but it's again so we're not back here it's really about establishing you know going through our process because student productions are under a policy and if it's our student production if you want to speak I just want Yeah, I just wanted uh I'm just going to break rules a little bit here and I'd like uh Mr. Caulkins to to say what he has to say real quick. And is as a just as because we're talking about the the theater booster club, he is a he is a a board member or executive director or whatever and

155that this impacts him. and so he's part of the team. Um so just to clarify a few things from the booster club perspective. Uh we um run these productions separate from the district. We hold our own liabil liability insurance. Okay. The only thing financially that the district pays for are the small salaries that the directors get. Other than that there is no financial obligation from a district perspective. So we have the insurance we have to book the facility we pay the janitorial services. So there's there's really um besides our students right in the facility um there's no other decisions made by administration district though our directors collaborate with um Eric or administration if you will um there is no other obligation there from a district perspective So, with that said, um, sorry, Sam. With that

156said, um, it costs us about $50,000 to put a production on for the fall musical. And, um, I don't think the district is willing to weigh that burden financially. Um because if we've set a standard where we're at and we keep growing this program, we can't digress. We can't go backwards and say that the district is going to it's going to be a high Sparta High School musical and then you give us a $10,000 budget. That just doesn't work with the direction that we've gone and how far we've we've we've made it. So, as a as a executive director for the booster club, I want it to stay with the booster club. I don't want it in the hands of the district to make decisions. I want to collaborate with that. That's how we fund

157our booster club to begin with is through admissions, donations. That's why we're able to put on the productions we put on. Does that make sense? Okay. Any do you guys have questions in regards to that for me? I do. Did you pay for It's my understanding that the district paid for the transportation on Friday to the Jerry Awards which includes a coach bus on Saturday because it was considered their their their top performance. Yes, that would have been the state like you would for any other activity and to be devil's advocate that would be our activity that we would control. So that's the that's is this is where the blurred lines in in in agree in in collaboration with this and but so maybe this isn't the time right now to to talk about this

158but ultimately we're going to have to figure you know if the board says this is the booster club we won't worry about it and we'll but I'm not sure how that will go but that's perfect. We could just say, "Hey, this is not our kit. This is not our event." And then all these policies are out are out the window and we move we move forward. Okay. I I'm going to look forward to seeing to to me that's the collaboration conversation that needs to happen. The just cuz it's a policy doesn't mean it can't be changed. Just cuz it's been that way doesn't mean it has to stay that way, right? That's the conversation that needs to happen with the student centered and the community centered because that's where like we can cross that bridge

159after that meeting in a couple weeks that's collaborative and then that defines what the procedure the process the policy is moving forward knowing that this situation is a unique special case that hopefully we don't have to go through again. Does that help? That's we have our meeting on the 23rd. We'll we'll start that process. Does that help? Yeah. I I just don't want you guys to make a decision right now because we don't have everything ironed out. I I get we're here. What brought us here is because of 9 to5. It's a much bigger picture than that, right? And and frankly, I'm I'm going to tell you not to not that we wasted everybody's time here by any means because it was really important to talk about a process. Um, but with all the publicity

160that this got, I can tell you the energy from the students and the directors, which is all that really matters when you're putting on a production um for this musical itself, has um digressed considerably. So the passion there that they learned about when they they learned about 9 to5 is kind of like liquidated if you will because of all of the um publicity this has gotten. You need the kids 100% invested. You need your directors 100% invested um into a musical to get to win Jerry awards. And I I think we still have students here and we have directors here right now. If you took a poll watching what went on this evening in the last month of this of what's transpired, they may say, "I don't even want to put it on anymore, you

161know, which is unfortunate, but it's reality." So, um I would I would uh highly encourage you not to make a vote tonight, truthfully. um because there it's much deeper than what this vote is, you know, once we collaborate and we really define what the rules are, if you will. Um because again, it goes, you know, there's a huge financial part of this that I I'm guessing the district's not willing to absorb. So, thank you. So I think and thank you. Yep. Um I think learning even more because without the particular rules in place, it worked. It worked very well for a lot of our musicals beforehand. It was pretty much like we're doing this. Yep. And then the booster does their thing and then the school district we have invested our thing and it all

162works out right. So, I mean, like like Sam said, if if all the information I've been getting is correct, like we take them to Jerry's because it's state because because it's the boosters, not not the boosters, but it's like like our program and we sent them there, but at the same time, the theater is able to raise money and do things and make these productions the best that they could be. And like I said before, it isn't nineto-5 that makes us that makes these musicals great. It's the amount of people that invest their time and love into them. And that includes everyone and every single stakeholder is involved including the school district. And so I I do understand and we could we can wait on what the nitty-gritty on the collaborative processes, but there needs

163to be a collaborative process, right? And that collaborative process can't involve it can't involve nope. well, we're doing it anyway or we've bought it and we've bought everything and we've invested all this time into it and then it's just going to be like, nope, you can't do that. Like, that's not the that's not the way we want to see it. and knowing and getting to know the people on the theater booster club and knowing the community that they developed. I'm willing to bet that if administration says we're concerned about X, Y, and Z, they'll probably change it. You know, it just it just those kind of things need to be set in place because this is so like I said before, this is so much more than 9 to5 the musical. This is Sparta's best

164program and that we need to treat it as such. And how we do that involves a lot of care and also a lot of precision. Um, we need to change the motion before I call a vote. I don't I I don't see it as changing. It is developing communication con uh consistency and efficiency. So, we're going to continue. We're going to We got already have a meeting schedule with the with the club. Yeah. So, I really don't see the unless you want to change it because right now we have a 9 to5 moving forward. Yep. For this fall and you've asked uh administration to come up with a a process for this across the board for all co-curriculars, which I think we can do. I I still think we can do that. [Music] So to

165Mr. Caukins um comment if we say if we agree to this motion are we setting that musical as 9 to5 or are we providing it as an option? That's a clarification in the I believe you'd be saying that it does move forward unless the booster clubs want to change it. It it moves forward unless they want to change it. Yes. Okay. Thank you. That's the board is approving 9 to5 is the way I understood that if that motion continues along with developing a system and co-curriculars in general to move forward for approval. We're not. No. Yep. All right. With that, roll call. Wendy. Mrs. Lopez. Yes. Mr. Gonkey. Yes. Mr. Wells. Yes. Dr. Bernett. Yes. Miss Barren. Yes. Mr. Burns Gilbert. Yes. Brady Mo motion passes 601 absent. Mr. uh vice president I would recommend

166get a a brief recess when I know people you know us conducting business when people leave probably isn't always the best. So I'd recommend a 5minute recess and we'll come back and finish the uh rest of the special and then we'll go to the committee. Thank you everyone. What's your name? [Applause] [Music] They come for you. [Music] I'm still here. You're still here. All right, we're going to get going in about a minute. Um, our plan is is to continue on a special agenda, our special meeting, and then we're going to go to the uh committee reports which will be abbreviated due to the time. All righty. We got to finish this meeting, Wendy. Uh, all right. So, I guess we're going off to 2A. Dis discussion of possible action to approve employment recommendations. Sam,

167uh, yes, they're present. They are in the um board docks for your consideration. I move Second. A motion was made by Miss Lopez, a second by Mr. Burns Gilbert. Roll call, please. Wendy. Miss Barren. Yes. Mrs. Lopez. Yes. Mr. Wells. Yes. Mr. Gi, yes. Mr. Burns, Gilbert, yes. Dr. Bernett, yes. Moving on. discussion and possible discussion and possible action to approve a schoolboard resolution for the waiver of a September 1st start date pursu pursuant to Wisconsin statutes 18.045 045. Yes. Hoping this helps. Um the DPI is requiring now a special resolution specifically. Uh so it's attached in board docs. Last time I attached the uh board minutes and board agenda and they said thank you very much after they got a little bit more information. Uh I sent in the request. I got a different

168person. So they wanted a formal resolution. They gave me a sample resolution. So it's attached in board doc. So, we do need formal action uh on that resolution. Uh and I believe it's it's perfectly fine to say as presented. Move to approve the schoolboard resolution as presented. Second. All right. A motion was made by Dr. Bernett and seconded by Miss Lopez. Roll call, please. Wendy. Mr. Wells. Yes. Mr. Gonkey. Yes. Miss Barren. Yes, Mr. Burns Gilbert. Yes, Dr. Bernett. Mrs. Lopez. Yes. All righty. Motion passes. 601 absent. Number 3A, adjournment. Do we have a motion to adjurnn? Second. A motion was made by Miss Barren, seconded by Mr. Colin Burns Gilbert. All those in favor say I. I. All oppose say nay. We are ajourned call to uh come off of our recess from the

169committee of the whole meeting. Uh we are going to pick the agenda back up at 2A, the achievement gap reduction report. Miss Mansky, some good news. Okay, Mr. Russ, are you going to time me? Five minutes. All right. Yes. Good news. Um, so AGR, if you remember, uh, our goal is that 80% of our students would make the typical growth goal in both reading and math. Um and just to remind you or just to let you know really when we look at the national norms 50% of students would really make their growth goal. So 80% is a very lofty goal. So when we look at the students who actually accomplished their growth goal um you can see overall eighth or first and second grade achieved that goal in reading. Um, so that was very exciting

170and you can see everybody made that made more than that 50% which is the national norms. Um, this just explains how to interpret the graphs and I'm just going to show you the graphs. So I did show you graphs for each of the grade levels. Um, the left side is showing growth, the right side is pro showing proficiency. Um when you look at that top graph that is showing overall of all of the kids. So each student made some percent of their growth goal. And when we look overall so some kids made less than 100% of their goal, some kids made more than 100% of their goal. When we average out all of those kids, so all of the kindergarten students when we average that out, they made 111% of their growth goal. When you

171look at the bar graph underneath, it shows you 60 whatever percent made their growth goal. And then that next one over shows you 17% made between 80 and 99% of their growth goal. So that's where I think it's helpful to see that bar graph. So you can see this many this percent made their growth goal, but you can also see how many were close to that. So that's that looking at the growth. When you look to the right side and you look at that proficiency, really we're looking for the green with the black. So that would be looking at the end of kindergarten level. Um for the sake of looking at on grade level, I also looked at the green like the the green green which would be early on grade level. So looking at

172both of those green and green with black lines, 90% are either early to above grade level in kindergarten reading. So again looking at growth and proficiency and you can see underneath that the the brighter colors you're looking at the be beginning of the year. So that faded graph is showing where they were at in the beginning of the year. So you can see the growth over time. So, this is showing kindergarten reading. And then here's kindergarten math, first grade reading, math. Oh, let me go back. This is really exciting. looking at the um proficiency side, looking how much red there was in first grade at the beginning of the year and by the end of the year all of the red is gone. So red would be one grade level below. This is second grade

173reading, second grade math, third grade reading, third grade math. Now, AGR is only looking at K through three, but just knowing that fourth grade is also used in that new um resource, I've also put fourth grade in here as well, but that we won't report to the state as part of our AGR goal. So, fourth grade reading and math. So, you'll notice that as we get up to fourth grade that the number of proficiency is is lower. Um, just thinking about the gap is bigger for those kids that are below grade level. It's harder for those kids to catch up in that one year. So, overall, some really good progress that we've made. Um, we have worked on setting goals for this upcoming. We have we will sign that five-year contract again. Um, Mr. Oswald,

174Mrs. um, Iverson Riley and I worked on setting goals for the new contract. we are setting the lofty goals. Um 80% of students will set will achieve their growth goal in reading and with math we went a little bit go lower at 70%. So that's the goal that we'll be setting for the new contract that we are signing this year. Any questions on AGR? All right. Oh, sorry. Was there any way to compare how things looked at the beginning of the year to the end? So, if you look at the one on the right, the graphs on the right, um, with the lighter colored, that shows where we were at the beginning of the year compared to the darker colors on the at the end of the year. And I'd be happy to meet with

175you at a different time and go over that more. Mr. Gonkey and I did that earlier last week um and spent a little bit more time diving into the graphs and me explaining them a little bit more. So I'd be happy to do that with you as well. Question. Um is this shared with our staff? I think has it been I I did share this with both um Southside and Herman staff so they could see the great progress too. Yeah. Good. I that's seems like that would make sense. Thanks for doing that. Yeah. Yep. Other questions or comments from board. All right. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Mr. Blaha SHs spring co-curricular report 2B. And as Mr. Blaha comes, I want to congratulate him on his retirement and uh this may be his last

176board meeting. Um but we may be able to get him back at the end of the month, too. So, we'll see. Hopeful. Um thank you for giving me the opportunity here. Uh just a little bit ahead. This is kind of an abbreviated one, not due to time, but because where we are in our cycle, so you will not see things like all of our um all academic um students GPA, those type of things that you would normally get. Um since our grading period just kind of ended on Wednesday last week with redoss, um we have to run them off of second semester. So those will come to you, but probably not until um July. Um I think the plan is through the notes that you'll get those reports for each of the activities. Um so

177briefly um just a couple highlights from spring. Um you can see from each of uh some of the seasons here some of our individual um notables for all conference um some additional ones for all conference and then um some of our state participants um from our track team. Um, our DECA had quite a large state participation here. We did not have anyone that went on from nationals from them, but this was a contingent that did compete um that went from districts to the state level. And then for our FCCLA, here was our national qualifier. She won't actually compete until July. So, it actually Sorry, Adam, but this goes on your next fiscal year budget. Then, as you heard Skylar share already, um, our students that we had down in Madison, specifically for our spring musical

178and some of the awards they received. And then last highlighting our visual arts classic team um with Miss Hughes um that won second at the regional and then competed at the state level. Uh pending your questions that's about as abbreviated view as I think I can give you. Thank you. Questions or comments from the board? Good. Thank you, Mr. All right. Uh 2D financial report, Miss Hower. All right. Um again, the detailed report is in board next, but we're in June, the final month of our school year. Uh the big revenue stream coming in is that is when we get all of our state aid settlements, which we have started receiving those dollar amounts. And the good news is they're trending about $250,000 more than what we budgeted. So that's good news. Less fund balance

179we'll need to use. Um one of them that we received more on was for our students who reside at Fort McCoy. Um there were changes in the reporting structure with DPI this year and it resulted in our favor to the tune of about $200,000. So that was excellent. Um and then the other one was for high cost special educ special education. Um, this is something that requires a lot of additional reporting and kind of some deep understanding of um the law and kind of how you can um do some reporting that's not required but may result in some financial revenue. And so Lisa and I worked collaboratively on that for quite a while this winter and we found out that that work g got us $40,000 more dollars. So we are really excited about that.

180So, um, our revenue is looking good. As far as expenses, um, we will continue closing out our books through July 8th, meaning waiting for all of our, um, final invoices and things to come in. We also after the last payroll in June, we'll run our payroll payables. So teachers in particular, they'll get paid all the way through the end of August, and we need to book all of those expenses as soon as we're done with our final payroll. Um we're also working on going through the balance sheet and cleaning that up, which um will continue to impact expenses as we get through that, getting ready for the audit. And then lastly, we have to submit all of our final grant claims. Um, but where this is shaking out is we're looking to use a fraction

181of the fund balance this year that we originally anticipated, which leaves us up in the 20% range for percent of expenditures. So, that's super positive as we go into next year with all of the unknowns. Again, um the final budget revisions will come to you in July where we'll firm all of this up and then that'll be what goes to the audit and then eventually to the annual meeting. Um but overall good news, a lot of great news. Thank you. Any questions or comments from the board? Yeah. Uh, slightly higher. I'd say about 21%. Yep. Because we're still dipping into fund balance a little bit with this, but not near to the extent we thought we would. Yep. Percent of expenditures, which our expenditures did go up this year. It's floated right in that 19

182to 21 range. So, yep. Any other questions? Good. All right. Thank you, Miss Hower. Uh, where are we at? 2E announcements information, Mr. Russ. Yeah, very briefly, uh, the board uh, agendas or board meetings are coming up. Uh, first day of school, always good to keep that on the horizon. It is a quick turnaround. Um, but, uh, I can tell you our custodial staff and maintenance staff are working very hard, uh, to get that turnaround. uh summer school at SHS for Meadow View and SHS students started today and um a lot of kids working hard. I was in every classroom encouraging them, hey, get your stuff done, move on. Um it was four credit and credit recovery and remedial. So, it's not just the students who need that extra support. It's the kids that want

183to get ahead. Uh weight room is very active, which is very good um to stay, you know, fit and that sort of thing. uh Spartan fit the girls uh activity is very well attended. The boys started they didn't give the boys any rest. They were back at it right away on uh the Monday right after school. So, but lots of positivity and uh continue to move forward. 23rd will be the full board and we'll go from there. Questions? Thank you. All right. 2B discussion and possible recommend All right. Um, so Rob is going to get you started with some history of the year and then I'll help cover some of the financial pieces. So Rob, go ahead. Thank you. Okay. So, um want to let you know that for breakfast this year we were uh

184we had 214,32 breakfast meals. So, ultimately our breakfast was up uh 9,360 meals. Uh for lunch uh we served 270,000 meals uh which is an increase of about 2,200. Um in November of this year uh we saw a decrease in the uh eligibility for free reduced um meals or uh for those participants. That was primarily because of a federal change in the threshold for free reduced eligibility. Um so what happened was um that was about 5.3%. Uh but we did see an increase of 5% and our paid um p our paid status our paid meals that increased 5%. Um, so what that's telling us is that even though uh students no longer qualified for free and reduced meals, that they were able to um continue participating in our program and pay for those meals. Um

185the couple of changes. So this year we primarily focused on our um high school and making some changes to increase participation and then also to kind of focus on cost savings initiatives. So, we started right away at the beginning of the year with a new Asian bar buffet that was uh very receptive to students. Um we were putting out more variety like uh chicken sandwiches every day, hamburgers every day, and I know uh Mr. Ford likes those chicken sandwich options daily. So, um what you can see here is uh you know, we talk to students about what they like and what they don't like. We wanted to know what they're going out and eating and that sort of thing. So, um we had the sweet teriyak chicken sandwich that was on a bun. They said

186it's too much bread. We put it on the flatbread for example, um a kicking Korean bowl, just some of those things that were offering more variety to get the kids um stay in school, increase participation in um that way. Couple of cost savings initiatives that we had done this year was really um looked at our salad bar. We had about 20 feet of salad and there's a lot of uh items on there, toppings that were a lot of just um no nutritional value, added cost. In fact, like diced ham, um, pickles that were on our salad bar were high in sodium, no nutritional value, but they were one of the top like 10 spends at the high school. So, the the salad bar was meant to be smaller. Side salads, another veggie option that wound

187up being um quite costly for us. So, to give that to the students, we uh started producing wraps, salads, sandwiches, those types of things that we can control the portions, control the toppings, and that sort of thing, and kind of give back to them that way. Um, another one that you might have heard was, uh, they did away with ranch dressing or they're charging us for ranch dressing. Now, the fact is ranch dressing was one of our top uh, three or four food costs at the high school. Um, and so we did not do away with it. In order to align with our nutritional um, guidelines, we offer one ranch dressing and any additional ones that have to purchase. So, um, from a food cost perspective, if they cost 30 cents each and kids are

188grabbing four of those, all of a sudden you have a$120 or a third of our food cost is in ranch dressing. So, that really didn't make sense. So, some of those types of things we continue to look at as we add for more variety to increase participation, but then also looking at how do we how do we control cost? Um, that's our goal and that's what we're going to be for next year as well. Um, so we covered this next slide here. Chicken wing day was just another one I want to throw out there. We're doing that on Fridays. If we did it every single day, I think we'd increase the participation to 100%. Absolutely love chicken wing day with uh different types of sauces. Um, and we do like a homemade mac and cheese

189and that sort of thing, too. So, that is uh just to give you a little bit of summary of where where a lot of our work was this year was at the high school. All right. and I will cover the financials. Um, so for revenue, we kind of broke this out a couple different ways. We track uh breakfast and lunch revenue separately because we have to report that to the federal government. Um, and then we just have all other revenue. And so the first row you can see is paid meals. So this would be from our reduced and our full paid students. We collected about $500,000 this year. Our federal reimbursements make up the most of our revenue which is just shy of 1.2 million. And then we have some other sources of revenue for

190things like summer meals, alle cart. We also cater to the prochial schools and head start. Um so all of those things come other under other revenue. So you can see it's about a $2 million program a year to feed our students and some of the students in our community. Looking at the expenses, the food is the only line item that we truly break out dollar for dollar between breakfast and lunch. So um when Rob does his purchases, he all breakfast comes on the invoice and all lunch comes on an invoice. All of the other expense categories we just allocate via percentage basis to breakfast and lunch based on Rob's estimates of how the time is used in the kitchen. Um, and so what you can see is we spend about 900,000 of our 2 million

191revenue each year on the actual food and about the same amount on labor. So basically food and labor are two driving costs. Um, breakfast cost us just shy of $700,000 to put on. Lunch cost us about 1.1 million. And the key line I'd like you to look at is the bottom net profit and loss. The way we're currently doing breakfast, we lose about $250,000 a year. Okay? And we'll get into that a little deeper in a following slide um explaining how we're doing breakfast this year, but I just want you to keep that number in mind. um lunch we about break even. So and that's where we want to be. So per school district accounting uh food service is the only fund that we have that's fund 50 that operates like a business meaning you

192have to connect collect enough revenue to cover all of your expenses. If you don't fund 10 has to subsidize that cost so they can't go negative. They have to at least break even. So that's always our goal is to break even. And then you can see the other column which again is the catering, the allocart, the summer meals, those revenues. So those are additional programs we're not required to provide. But Rob and his team do that because they create additional revenue that helps keep the meal cost low for breakfast and lunch. So that's something they go above and beyond to do to help control costs for the other programs and subsidize that cost. So that's really positive. But where it ends, if we were to end the school or the accounting year today, we'd be

19385,000 in the whole this year. We still have a couple more weeks of things to shake out. So that number definitely will change, but that's where we're at as of Friday afternoon. Oh, sorry. One more. So that $85,000 loss um where that shakes out in fund balance if you see I went back five years I think it is. So in 201920 we had a zero fund balance nothing in reserves. 2021 we ended the year just a little ahead. So we built up that fund balance, but if you look even five years back from this, we always floated maybe 0 to 50,000. Like we always had just a little bit of fun balance or no fund balance. But then you'll see in 2122 it spikes. That's all related to CO. So during COVID, the federal government

194paid for all breakfast and lunch for all kids and they reimbured at a higher rate than our cost to put out those meals and we were running significantly less staff. So us along with nearly every other school district everywhere was able to build a fund balance during that time. That is a once I would argue in a lifetime thing. that's not the norm. And as you can see, we've been chipping away at that ever since. And so that has helped us to be able to control our meal prices the past couple of years, but you can see how quickly that money is running down. And then finally, um the reason a fund balance is good to have in fund 50 is again all of their costs have to be covered by revenue within the program,

195including any equipment repairs or new equipment needs. So as Rob's looking to expand his programming, um that comes with expensive equipment. And so this fund balance helps to purchase new equipment and maintain existing equipment. Okay. You want me to do that? You want to keep doing that for me? That worked out well. Okay. I'm sorry. Okay. So, as I stated, we served uh 214,000 meals, uh breakfast meals. Uh this slide really does show you um how much we receive in revenue uh per meal. and then what the total cost per meal is um for us to produce. So, just spending a little bit of time on the free uh the federal reimbursement rate for free meal is $2.84 for severe needs and $2.37 for uh it's called a regular um free breakfast. Um so of

196course uh as you know we provide free meals uh free breakfastes for prek through 4 uh in addition to monastery and sales. Um so in that first uh column there our total revenue for uh that meal is $2.84 or $2.37. Um likewise with the paid full we'll go to that one. We receive 39 cents in reimbursement for a paid meal. Um, again, free for uh preK through 4, monastery and sales. Um, in the fifth through 8th grade levels, uh, we receive $2.15 uh cost per student and $2.25 uh for the 9 through 12. So, the total um, including the reimbursements is $2.54 or $2.64 that um, we receive in revenue, but the cost to produce these meals is $321. So essentially for every meal that we serve for breakfast, we lose uh between 37 to

19784 cents and then the adult meals are at a rate of $3. You got to do a couple on. Okay, so moving on to this next slide. The universal free breakfast is what um we call this for southside Herman Monastery and sales. So uh in in um looking at the average daily attendance and the the percent of students that are participating is 86.5% for Southside. So it's pretty high. Herman two both elementary schools are pretty high. Um Monastery is 54% and sales is 9%. Um we've seen an increase in Southside and Monastery about 9 and a half 10%. That's because of some of the work that we were doing to um increase meal participation at breakfast. Um the percent of free and reduced students um you can see those there is 56% 54% monastery was

198at 32% they were at 37% in November but that um had dropped about 5% um as a result of that free reduced um ch those changes there. This this last uh column is the one that's kind of interesting to me. the percent of free to reduced students that are actually participating in the meal program. Um uh there's 84% at Southside, 80% at um permanent 56% at Monasur and 11% at sales. So we've done some work trying to u reach out to the the families and say, you know, if you qualify for free reduce, we you know, we highly encourage you to take advantage of that. uh we sent letters out to those that we know that qualify that weren't taking advantage of the program to increase participation because that is really the uh the reimbursements

199that we receive for free and reduce um goes a long ways to help support our program. So um we continue to make strides to reach out and try and increase those that participation the best we can. Um I won't get into the details of this slide. It's similar to the breakfast one. The total reimbur uh revenue per meal is $4.52 for free. Um $4.52 for reduced. And then you can see the paid full there. The total cost per meal again is $4.15. So um for every meal that's served to the paid full students, we lose between 14 cents and 39 cents. And again, the adult meal rate is $4.65. Um, so here's where we get to our administrative recommendation. On the next slide, I'll have some history for you also as far as what we

200have done for increases. So the first column is 2425 rates. Next column is the proposed change to get to the actual proposed rates for 2526. And then we calculated on a per student basis what that would mean to each family. Keep in mind that change is impacting the paid full families. Free would still stay free and reduced would still stay at the 30 cents for breakfast and 40 cents for lunch. Okay. Um to paraphrase though, the biggest change arguably that we're recommending is that breakfast at all of our universal free breakfast sites goes to reduced pay 30 cents. Paid full pays 50 cents. Um currently if you're at middle school or high school, you're paying 215 or 225 for breakfast. We are nervous that would be too much of a jump. We acknowledge that at

20150 cents we're still losing money on each breakfast served, but it helps to get that $85,000 back down. Um, and then additionally, we're looking at 20 cent to a quarter increase on everything else. Keeping in mind, this only impacts paid full students. free and reduced would not be impacted other than our elementary reduced kids currently eat free and they would be at the 30 cent reduced rate. So going to historical meal prices, oldest is on the right side, proposed is on the left side. Um so if you go to the right first uh 2021, that'd be the year before COVID. Um, you can see all of our dollar amounts. Again, during COVID, everybody ate free except for adults. And you can see the year we came back from COVID, there was a lot of concern

202with the supply chains. Um, I remember chicken being a huge concern of can we get it and how much are we going to pay for it. And so, we did some 20 cent increases that year as well. So, we're looking at 20 to 25 cent increases here. that's in line with what we did a few years back. But then in 23 24 and 24 25 we really did minimal adjustments. Um I think just acknowledging the economy and things like that. But what we're seeing is we can't keep up with those revenue or meal costs with the cost of food and salaries and benefits. So again food is one c about half of our cost. Salaries and benefits are about the other half. We know what CPI has been doing. We know what health insurance has

203been doing and that's catching up to us and we need to be able to pick that up through the revenue that we bring in. So, if we implemented um these proposed increases, what would that look like to that $85,000 number? So if we applied that change to the actual number of meals we served this year, you can see the additional projected revenue in the final column. So for instance, changing from universal free breakfast to the 50 cents would bring in about $32,000 and so on down the chart. And so this is just a summary of if all the revenues and expenses stayed the same as this year and the only thing that changed was the meal cost, how would our income statement shake out? And so if you look at the bottom right corner, what

204was 85,000 if all other things were equal would be -20,000. So it' bring us about 65,000 more in revenue. Um so this again is just circling back to the administrative recommendation. Um we can definitely play with other numbers. Um their proposed changes are really arbitrary based on the facts of we increased 20 cents a couple years ago and have kind of let that ride. Um it doesn't completely get us back to a zero balance, but it gets us closer. Um, we're also trying to keep in mind, um, looking at kind of the costs and what our actual costs are. All of these numbers can change with your feedback. Um, and then just keep in mind once our fund balance runs out, any loss in future years would have to be subsidized by fund 10. So

205with that, we'll turn it over for discussion. questions or gosh questions or comments from the board. Um, quick comment. I love that you uh save money by eliminating non-nutritional choices. That's great. It's awesome. But really, ranch, come on. It goes with everything. Um, and I'm wondering, do we are we losing cost savings by purchasing breakfast in one um one invoice and uh lunch in another, you know, like bulk purchases you think would get you a better cost? I Yeah, they're great question. They're all contract pricing through it's not Reinhardt PFG performance group. PFG. Um we also do competitive bidding as a group for bread, for milk, dairy, um we have commodities. So we have that type of pricing. We just well batch it differently, but it's all that competitive pricing. Um and then I just

206am curious why we have such a low increase to the adult prices. Um I am thinking that adults have more food choices than kids do. And I can't imagine, sorry, Mr. Ford and your chicken sandwiches, but I can't imagine um you know, adults being able to get even a sandwich at Quick Trip for less than $4 um you know, breakfast or lunch. So, yeah, we definitely can increase it more. We just wanted to make sure we are at least covering the cost. Do you want to talk about adult meals? Are they the same as a kids meal? Yeah, it kind of I I think there's maybe a misunderstanding as to how we're supposed to price those meals in the past. I'm not really sure. You know, um I know that they're called non-programmed foods and

207they should be set at a little bit higher of a of a price. um we do we give the adults almost like the same meal that we give the students and so from their perception it is like why do I have to pay so much for my meal when you know they're offering to the students at a less cost and it's the same meal but there's other things that kind of factors that go into that so I would say too um because it's a non-programmed food like an alocard item it should we could look at increasing the I'm not sure the history on maybe it was almost seen as gratuitity or you know something like that. But um yeah, the big thing is just going back to these slides, we just wanted to make sure

208we at least covered the cost in the orange box, but we can go above that. I'm not a mathematician by any stretch. Um, and where I think, you know, it it could potentially be appropriate to increase the adult prices, I don't think that there's enough adult participation to kind of offset an increase to the to the student um prices. So, I don't know. Yeah, you're correct. Um, so for breakfast, we only sold 229 adult breakfast over the whole year and lunch it was 2300. So the quantity is pretty little. Um, yeah, but we still can, but it it won't offset drastically. Good. Other questions? I uh two questions. Um one, uh that overage or that negative balance, right, the 80, are we able to use the fund balance that we just said we're not planning

209to use as much to offset that or is that separate fund 50? Does that have to stay separate? Yep. So, the fund balance I showed in this presentation will offset that 85,000. um the fund balance I talked about in my update a few agenda items ago, that would not. So, it's two different buckets of fund balance. And that's Yeah, that's what I I just want to make sure we couldn't merge the two. Um I mean, technically at any point you could do a transfer from fund 10 to fund 50. Typically, you wouldn't until fund 50 requires it, but that's an option that we would have. Okay. Um, and my other question was maybe not tonight, but before the end of the month, if we could see how our prices compare locally, like to other districts,

210some of those other comparables, that would just be and I do have that information as well that I can provide to you. So, um, we discussed this as a group. We set prices, you know. Um, so yeah, I'll be happy to share that with you. Perfect. Thank you. Um, any other questions or comments from the board? Otherwise, I'd entertain a motion. I guess I'll move to approve the proposed changes to let's see to approve changes to the meal prices for the 20 2526 school year is presented. Motion for Mr. Wells, second from Mr. Gonkey. Any further questions or comments? Otherwise, um I believe this is a rule. Sorry, where am I looking here? Yeah. Roll call, please. Miss Markin. Mrs. Lopez. Yes. Mr. Gonkey. Yes. Mr. Wells. Yes. Dr. Bernett. Yes. Miss Barns. Yes. Mr.

211Bernett. Brent. Sorry. Yes. Yes. Thank you. under consent. Everyone okay with that? Okay. Thank you. I just want to thank Mr. Preswood and his team for continuing to be creative with better meal offerings while looking at more efficient ways to do it. They're doing a great job. Thank you. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, that's awesome. Thank you. Mhm. Thank you. All right. Uh, where are we at? 3D discussion. Possible recommendation to approve employees paying benefits while on unpaid leave. Mr. Russ, Miss Hower. All right, I'll take it from down here. Um, all right. Um, so we've been exploring unapproved unpaid leave, which in essence is an employee um, takes a day off without having prior approval and has exhausted their paid leave days. Some places might call it a no-show or something like that. And the impact

212it can have on the building is not enough time to plan for a substitute. um and it can just overall impact the building. And so we're putting things in place to try and help reduce that and give the supports where needed. So if somebody has FMLA or a pre-approved time off, we're going to work with them administratively. Um this is trying to discourage the unplanned unapproved time off. So um the reason that we got to the recommendation we're going to be giving you is based on the data. So we have seen an uptick in the number of staff who are taking these unapproved days off. Um and you can see this is from this school year up through April. We had 38 classified staff and five certified staff who took these unapproved days or basically

213didn't show up for work or overused their paid leave time which totaled 172 days between that employee group. When a employee takes one of these days, the financial impact to them is they don't get paid. There's no other financial ties to that, meaning they the district still pays their full benefits. Um, and they still continue receiving all of their benefit allocations. It's only their pay that is currently affected. And so what we're looking to do, and we modeled this off of several other districts in our area who already follow a process like this, is we're looking to recuperate the daily cost of health insurance and dental insurance from employees who take this unapproved, unpaid day off. This would be separate from any conversation they have with their supervisor regarding performance and things like that. Um,

214that's a separate topic. But for this, it would be a change to the employee handbook again where you'd be authorizing us to do a payroll deduction um for them not showing up to a day that was scheduled. And again, uh, many other school districts do this, including districts in our area. Are there any questions or anything I can fill in? I got one. So, we're talking the assumption is full days, but what about partial base? Mhm. Um so we have had that talk in a partial day will be handled again through administrative you know coaching conversations or followup any reprimand or anything that's needed from this standpoint for a payroll perspective. We're talking full day increments for um recuperating the benefits. So, we're not going to like an hourly or a 15 minute increment or

215anything. It would be a full day. Yeah. I don't I don't think it would be fair. I mean, maybe it might be for some people, but for like a staff member that showed up 5 minutes late. Yeah. No, we're not looking to get to that. Um, and again, if an employee is on FMLA military leave, they've gone through the proper board policy to have um Mr. Russ approve extended leave, that wouldn't apply to this. This is really the last minute type things and they've already exhausted all of their paid leave allocation for the year. And along with this, there was the slide that had 38 staff member, you know, basically 40 plus staff members. We're looking at having uh an administrative rule to limit that. Uh currently we already have in place that if you

216not if you don't show up to work for all if you have unapproved pay if if you don't uh if you have unapproved unpaid days we can discipline. So what we're looking at is becoming more systemic in this process in regards to hey as an example we're still following it through but hey first time you get a letter of reprimand second time another letter of reprimand. Third time we're going to possibly suspend you and you're going to have a meeting with me. the fourth time we're gonna, you know, basically we can't depending on time, you know, once again once again we don't want to have hard and fast rules because if somebody comes in on May 28th and is out of paid leave, are we going to terminate? We may, but we would we would

217have to look at that. Um, in addition to that, um, we're looking at, um, how does this affect, I know Miss Hower said a little bit about this really affects because if Dave doesn't show up, Dr. Bernett doesn't show up, I now have to cover his class. Miss Lopez covers his class and that sort of thing. So, it it's really a snowball effect we're looking to looking to stop. And once again, I can't reinforce enough, this is not FMLA. This is not anything that's approved prior. It's solely I'm out of my 10 paid days. I'm out of my two p personal days. I've been gone that amount of time. Other questions or comments from the board? Yeah. And this leaves out the extra cost the district has too of like paying for a sub on

218top of everything else. doesn't talk about WRS. This is just health insurance to hopefully maybe incentivize what I can. We're finding that people might be able to say, "Yeah, don't pay me a day." Now, you are paying an additional if I had a family cost $127 a day that we're investing in you to be at work. Probably not going to be too popular, but we're going to get this out to the staff early. Put it part of that they know and that they already and also we're looking at a system that if I go have five days of paid leave gone through five days of paid leave and I have five days paid left sending an automatic email three days you know so we can look ourselves in the mirror and say we've communicated the

219best we can that's the system that we're looking to have in place with I didn't know I didn't know which is far from the truth because everybody has a balance but we want to make sure that we shift that out to so that we acknowledge that this is where you're at. Other questions? I was going to ask on that breakdown of the 30 38 uh versus if I read that right, most of it was classified, right? So, can you do we have those trend? Is it EAS or is it maintenance or is it like kind of where and if those five are the teachers you're talking about and then the classes get I just curious if Um, I would say largely EAS, but that's also our biggest classified group, but there's definitely custodians. Um, I

220mean, nutrition across the board. Yeah. No. No. All right. Um, any further questions from board? Otherwise, I'd entertain a motion. Uh move to approve employees paying benefit while on unpaid leave. Yeah, on consent. I'll second that. Uh motion for Mr. Bernett, second from Mr. Wells. Uh to move forward full board on consent. On this one, we can do all in favor say I. I. I. All oppose say nay. All right. 3E discussion, possible recommendation to approve the 2526 WIA membership renewals for high school meview and sales. Mr. Blah. Good evening again. Um, annually if we want to be part of WA, the board has to have an action to approve that we are members. um no changes from previous years. It would entail for the high school our 21 approved um sports and co-op activities

221as shown there. I do not have a current handbook. They have not published it yet. Um but that link will bring it to you where they will be hopefully within two weeks. Thank you. Questions or comments for board? And it's the same for me as well. It applies to all of them. Do we have we don't have to do separate motions, right, for each? Okay. Does that entertain a motion? I move to recommend to the full board to approve the 2526 WIA membership renewals as presented under consent. Second. Motion for Mr. Wells, second from Mr. Gonkey. All those in favor say I. I. All oppose say nay. Motion moves the full board. 60 3F discussion and possible recommendation to approve business insurance for the 2526 school year. Miss Hower? You bet. Thank you. I'll make

222this one quick. It's really easy this year. Um, I am not recommending any changes to carriers and all of our insuranceances came in extremely close to where we are currently paying this year. If you remember last year, our insurance increased about $60,000 and we had to make some changes on our deductibles and things. That is not the case this year. So, all good news. Liability insurance, slight increase of about $2,000. Work comp actually went down. property insurance went up about $5,000. This is the one that had increased about 60,000 last year. So happy with the 5,000. Um so our recommendation is continue with the carriers and the coverage that we have and we'll save a couple thousand dollars. Thank you. Any questions or comments from the board? Otherwise, I would entertain a motion. Move to

223approve the business insurance for the 2526 school year under consent. Motion from Mr. Bernett, second from Miss Lopez. On consent of all those in favor say I. I. All oppose say nay. Motion moves to the full board 60 when absent. Uh with that, I'd entertain a motion to adjurnn. So moved. Second. Motion for Mr. Wells, second for Mr. Gonkey. All those in favor say I. I. Thank you. We're adjourned. Thanks everybody for staying late. Appreciate it.