February 22, 2021, Special School Board Meeting

001meg i don't see judy in yet can you see her no she hasn't showed up yeah let me just check i did not i did not receive anything from her and i just emailed her emailed her the link okay the calendar invite was causing issues so i sent her the link okay we'll wait just a couple more minutes so it's funny i have um a beep when it's a district email thanks you are live right now okay okay yeah we're just waiting for to see if judy's having some issues connecting in my phone your presentation was fixtures and flying fixtures and great concerning garage doors this week this year this year oh yeah probably in june i'm waiting for the barbecue it's fresh veggies yep from the garden and we can socially distance them judy

002says she's trying another computer webex won't open for her you zoom hey barb barb yes i know before when i was having issues um i wasn't able to go into the link itself in the emails um so i was told i actually had to go into the um calendar calendar yeah but i know carlin just said that she sends a different link yeah we're getting a like like a five second delay in here yeah exactly i'm gonna probably just shut that door so if there are people in there we knew that would occur oh okay oh you can hear it though from here yeah okay i told her to check the calendar i know she's gotten him before so there must just be something hinky going on as we've all experienced in the time of

003covet right [Laughter] when you've been doing the same thing every time and then the one time you tried it doesn't work i have never had i have not had good luck with uh webex with what the weather yeah it's just i get a lot of pixelating even that meeting we had for the on wednesday and there was not a lot of traffic it was what i was the only one yeah maybe it doesn't like you i'm on zoom every day for four hours i haven't had any problems with that really gosh that's a long time that's a long time tell me about it my sister just refuses to do it every day since since last march wow [Music] a little vibrate too you gotta turn that vibrate off i think it's off off i mean

004well if it's not we'll find out she's there now we just need craig i'll get him can't start at the meeting without him where's judy that's here oh she's the plus one yep yeah why don't they squeeze around the bottom there's room for one more on the bottom what the heck there he is crack we're ready hollywood squares you know it's all a mystery there he is hey craig i told craig we're all here oh there we will call the special school board meeting for the stevens point area public school board for monday february 22nd 2021 to order i will note with respect to public access to meetings due to the public health emergency and the need to limit gatherings we are strongly encouraging members of the public to attend school board meetings remotely and

005you can find information on our website with respect to how you can access remotely i'm also going to note two um ministerial things at the beginning if board members who are here at the meeting can speak more directly into your mics during the meeting the board members who in webex are listening to you from the speaker up here and they have a hard time hearing anybody past corey and jeff the public can hear you because that's working off of a separate mic system but if you have questions or comments if you can directly speak into the mic um hopefully that'll allow the board members who are with us remotely to be able to to hear you the second point that i will make is that under the governor's uh order with respect to our state

006in the event we are dealing with the business of the school district and we are presenting for a period of time we are able to remove our masks to ensure that people can understand what we're saying there may be times during this meeting where i will remove a mask or craig will remove a mask or another member of the board will that is consistent with the governor's order but when we're not actively speaking we are required to have our masks on so with that i will have carlin do the roll call and verification of quorum mr manske president ms va mr pope here ms portson here mr wade present this is scott here mr evil here ms rano here this earlier here all present we have a quorum all right if we could stand for

007the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all we will move into item four which are public comments i'm going to remove my mask because we have a number of public comments that i want to make sure board members are accurately hearing at the march 19 2020 special school board meeting the stevens point area public school district passed a motion to suspend school board policy 0167.3 public participation at board meetings for the duration of the public health crisis members of the public may provide public comment pertaining only to specific items on the meeting agenda via email at comments at pointschools.net we did receive a number of emails um public

008comment emails um there were some that were beyond the deadline i will not be reading them there are others that have exceeded the word count we had increased the word count to a hundred for this meeting but there's some that exceeded that word count and um i'm i'm not going to read those as well because i can't parse which which of those hundred words the the authors would have wanted me to read every email that's received by this district is a matter of public record it is retained at the district and it is accessible by all of our board members um so i just wanted to know that note that in the event people are wondering if they sent one in why it wasn't read this evening um the the emails are separated into two

009general categories um one with respect to the superintendent's report which is going to be the first item on the agenda i will read those first the second is with respect to the um equity diversity and inclusion coordinator which will be later in the agenda and i will read those then in the next after i do the first ones so i'm gonna go ahead and start reading uh our the first email is from elizabeth van aston and she wrote i object to our children being out of school for a year now and want them back in school i also object to the position to teach diversity i've seen how other states are implementing this in their curriculum and it is very biased if a single race is singled out it is not unbiased we received an

010email from jean van der larshot uh as a taxpayer and parent it's time to open our schools and get back to normal enough is enough follow the science an email from ron and donna carlson the time has come the children need to be in school learning and socializing in short trying to be quote normal end quote once again we find it amazing that parochial schools have been open all year to all children teachers and staff but public schools cannot accomplish this you are better than this we understand the challenges but the time to act is now no more delays no more excuses time to get it done get the children back in school the children are our future and it is about the children an email from amy limburg i implore you to release a

011clear and transparent plan that delineates when our students can go back the current plan is not working for our kids nor is it working well for parents and teachers after a year of decline they are worth the risk time to take it an email from linda wanta our students need to be in school five days per week they need to be allowed to be maskless if they so choose clubs sports music theater all available and no politics taught i will see you all monday evening an email from jania grove good afternoon i am emailing about having the middle and high school go back to four days a week i have two seventh grade boys that go to ben franklin who are really struggling they need structure and routine trying to stay focused and basically trying

012to teach themselves is not working they're even saying they need to be in school it would be so much easier for them to understand my one son is really struggling with his stuff and is failing some of his classes right now please open school back up to four days thank you jania grove an email from miranda baker um and we received several emails from miranda baker i am reading the first one that came in that involved substance of what the board was discussing tonight if teachers can remove their masks in their personal space and while speaking as long as they are six feet social distance from others why can't the children remove their masks at their desk why are masks being forced on children who are exempt from the mask mandate why is the school

013district making their own set of rules for our children the school district is taking away parents rights over our children our own children those are the comments with respect to the superintendent's report i'm going to now switch to the comments related to the agenda item having to do with the equality diversity and inclusion coordinator the first email is from jessica harlan i am strongly in favor of the position for an equality diversity and inclusion coordinator in the school district as a recent graduate of spash in my time as a student i noticed discriminatory behaviors go ignored against marginalized folks and it would be beneficial to have someone who can improve the lives of students who are often excluded for this reason i am asking for the coordinator position to be black indigenous people of color

014transgender or a woman because they will have often experienced marginalization and be motivated to make change in the district there is an email from edith voom and i apologize if i'm mispronouncing any names i'm doing my best um edith boom spash class of 2020 to whom it may concern i am writing to express my ferverent support of the proposed equity diversity and inclusion coordinator while a student in this district my classmates and friends of color experienced negative interactions due to their race including well-intended lack of understanding from students and staff this position would help ensure that all portage county students feel safe and included while at school which is vital for academic success in mental slash emotional health thank you for your consideration there's an email from nick piotter hello school board if a position

015is going to be added to alleviate the racial injustices happening in the stevens point school district they would have to have clear goals in mind i am afraid that empty statements would be made to give the illusion of progress i suggest a quota to be met for a number of programs to be started or meetings to be had regarding inclusivity within school student faculty thank you for your time an email from maddie makowsky hi my name is maddie mikowski and i'm sending this email to advocate support of the edi coordinator position i think that this position in no way would perpetuate racism as some folks have claimed but ignoring the need for support staff for marginalized students is racist i think both the black indigenous and people of color and the majority community in stevens

016point would benefit and eliminate any disparities in education and help create extra support to groups that may not have accesses access to resources and support thank you and i hope that the stephens point school district passes and creates this position an email from jack elzinger i urge the school board to abandon the plan to hire a coordinator for diversity and inclusion this type of attempt at brainwashing of our children should have no place in public schools this is an outrageous effort to inject politics into the classroom in the name of quote equity end quote if this is adopted then the community will know that the board abandoned martin luther king's guiding principle of judging people quote by the content of their character not the color of their skin end quote i am greatly saddened that

017i am even forced to address this type of bias an email from iris carufall my name is iris carufal i am a longtime community member of stevens point i am also a member of the smaller group of native american people in this living in this community i believe the equity diversity and inclusion coordinator for the stevens point school system is a wonderful idea i believe it will further promote acceptance and kindness for all the diversity that exists in the community this position will help our community thrive as we continue to learn and grow with one another an email from shelley stein i'm a citizen of stevens point and i'm writing in support for the proposed edi coordinator position the need and benefits of this position cannot be summarized in 100 words but i'll try racism

018is real color blindness does not make racism go away especially when we haven't been taught to acknowledge and fight our implicit racial biases i love point and want to raise a family here but it's downright a racist community which makes me want to leave that needs to change please it's 2021 don't let point be left in the 20th century an email from stephanie vong i am asking for the stevens point school board to give their hmong and black indigenous and people of color students somebody to serve as their voice and listen to their demands how many more students of color are we going to traumatize for white comfort soc do not know how to navigate racist experiences in the stevens point area school district because of how society prioritizes white comfort often times we feel

019like these little humans cannot handle these conversations about racism but students of color cannot handle being bullied and handle the results of systematic racism quote unawareness end quote can only venture so far white children can handle the discussions about white privilege race and racism without sugar coating children of color cannot handle the reality and death of people that look like them krista olsen i would like to offer my support for the diversity position especially in regards to promoting equality and proper treatment regardless of sex prevent male female since christmas break my daughter espace junior has had 85 percent of the online interactions with spanish male students result in solicitation for sex or inappropriate photos some of these solicitations occurred from athletes during times they were traveling back from school sporting events on the bus she's

020only had two young men that she's been able to keep in contact with that treated her in a respectful manner her friends say that's the way it is just ignore it but i don't agree it is long overdue to address the unacceptable behavior and culture that is occurring and to restore back equal and respectful treatment of all students regardless of if they are male or female i support the diversity position and hope it will start with tackling the inequality issues at the upper grade levels sarah we have an email from sarah kim to whom it may concern i am submitting a public comment regarding the equity diversity and collu inclusion coordinator section of the agenda for monday's meeting my comment is the edi coordinator should be a person of color who is committed to anti-racist

021work i am concerned that the ambiguity of the job description will allow for the hiring of a person who will work to mediate racial conflicts and quell disputes rather than serve minority student populations if the edi coordinator does not actively fight for students of color they will only be a patronizing figure to whom students of color come complain to but will always be gaslit and belittled for the sake of avoiding controversy this position should support marginalized students not just vaguely the community an email from reggie eaton the creation of an edi coordinator position on a school board level is long overdue the future higher paren if any paren needs to be committed to anti-racist work and be a black indigenous and people of color member of our community i worry that if this position is

022created the same structures of racism and injustice won't be addressed but merely pushed aside the edi coordinator position must fight for and alongside black indigenous and people of color students whose experiences are discredited discredited and overlooked an email from cassandra zhang my name is cassandra zhang and i support approving the edi coordinator position it's important to recognize there are students and staff who come from marginalized communities and address their needs appropriately in order to foster the success that the stevens point area school district aims for this position isn't racist as those who oppose may believe ignoring issues of inequality will not make it go away education is the best starting point in creating a more equitable community quote disadvantaged white people are not erased by discussions of disadvantaged is disadvantages facing people of color just

023as brain cancer is not erased by talking about breast cancer quote and it's jomo a luo is the individual that cassandra was quoting with that last quote so those are the items that we received with respect to public comment we will move into item five which is the superintendent's report by craig gerlack excuse me my superintendent's report is an overview of our learning models uh um to date as well as a presentation that supports uh quite frankly getting our back our students back in person uh four days a week at the secondary level beginning the fourth quarter um corey is going to present this i will add to it uh this was information that was put together uh by sarah corey and myself gloria okay i'm gonna share my screen here okay as craig indicated

024um we're gonna go through an update on where we're at with our current learning model and then share some information with you that has gotten us to the point to where we really feel like we need to bring our secondary students back grades 7 12 four days a week starting april 5th which is the beginning of the fourth quarter um the plan that we have in front of you tonight still includes our basic commitments that we started with nine months ago when we presented our reopening plan last summer staff and student safety has been at the forefront throughout the entire process we've made sure that we've been following guidance from the cdc as well as the department of public instruction and portage county health we've we've told our stakeholders that flexibility is key because depending

025on numbers depending on our capacity within the district we may need to continue to move in and out of whatever plan we're in um throughout the duration of the pandemic and then there's always been a focus on instruction and our priority of course is to have all staff and all students in our building five days a week when we feel like we're able to do that and unfortunately we've not been able to do that for some time but i feel like the plan that we've implemented has allowed for a phased integration of bringing kids back more frequently into our buildings and that's what we're here to present to you tonight our students in grades 7-12 are struggling they're struggling academically they're struggling um with social interactions they're not having enough social interactions with their peers

026and actually we're quite concerned about their social and emotional well-being now as well as into the future what we have in place right now is for grades pre-k through six we've got about 88 percent of our students that are in our buildings four days per week we have about 11 percent that is in the e-learning with the dedicated staff member that we made the switch to in january and we have about 1.5 percent in our online learning center those are the students and families that decided at the beginning of the year they wanted that online option for the entire year our secondary students currently we have 92 percent in person meaning they come two days a week and the remaining three days are online and we have 8.1 percent that are in our online learning

027center and those numbers are recent numbers if you recall we made that switch we took away the flexible e-learning at um semester which was january 25th throughout this process we've been monitoring our our trends in the in the county in the state and within the district and if you take a look at this chart um you'll see that there's been a significant decrease in numbers in all three of those entities um in the middle of november and you know between november and december is when we hit our peak and we're continuing to decline in fact right now wisconsin is at a 12 percent case rate for 100 000 people the county is at 14 and within the district we are at 16 um right now we have eight positive students with covid and we have

02864 students quarantined we have zero staff members with covid currently and we have nine staff members that are quarantined currently um yes you're cutting out okay can you hear me better now yeah but i missed most of your statistics but that's okay go ahead i can repeat it quickly barb we have eight students who are currently positive for covid 64 that are quarantined zero staff members positive nine staff members quarantined so you can see that there's a decline in in the trends within the county the state as well as with within the district we've also been monitoring what is our capacity within the the district to to have you know our students back in our buildings our sub fill rate in january we had 92 percent of our open positions um you know needing subs

029were filled at 92 percent our educational assistance at 72 percent for february our sub fill rate for teachers was at 92 percent and for educational assistance 79 percent currently we have no known shortages for any cleaning supplies materials or any ppe we have had an influx of masks that were just recently donated from the boys and girls club that they received from an outside entity and we learned today that we are going to be getting another 24 000 masks delivered from the state so if there's students that need a mask we've got masks available and there have been no major disruptions to our current learning model and we don't anticipate that there's going to be but again we know that we need to be flexible and if we need to make a shift or an

030adjustment we'll do that access to vaccination for staff at four o'clock today we learned that the department of health services is prioritizing covid19 vaccinations for all school employees and there's going to be a separate allocation process and dedicated vaccines for school staff their goal is to get all school staff vaccinated by the end of april could be before that but the goal is to have all school staff vaccinated by the end of april right now we have 74 of our staff members that have asked to be registered for an on-site clinic that we're working on we've been working closely with portage county health we've been working closely with local medical providers and we are going to get ourselves in a position so that when that vaccine becomes available we can quickly get as many staff

031members vaccinated that choose to do that um so 74 percent have indicated that they want to take advantage of either our site or they're going to be taking care of their vaccine through their own medical provider so how are we doing in the blended model as i had indicated earlier we're concerned about student achievement our students are not doing as well when they're in a virtual setting we know that our students perform better academically when they're in our school buildings in front of our teachers our teachers are working tirelessly to try to meet as many student needs as they can and it's difficult it's difficult when kids are in the classrooms and it's difficult when kids are outside of our classrooms and in a virtual environment but our staff deserve a lot of credit for

032trying to make make this work and they're doing the very best that they can we've got concerns about engagement you know students some students engage frequently others it's difficult for them to engage they may have you know parents that are trying to work in the household while also trying to help them you know get connected to webex or you know google meet or whatever they need to do with their teacher so we're concerned about the engagement and we're quite honestly concerned about what impact this is going to have on student achievement going forward it's going to um and we need to be ready for that and we're also concerned about the mental health we have teens right now in crisis and we feel like we need to address that and we feel like we're in

033a place and we have the capacity to bring more kids back into our building so that we can start to get a handle on taking care of the teens that are having some significant mental health issues recently we learned from portage county health that last quarter and they had a significant increase last quarter and even a more significant increase this quarter to include intentional overdoses with students at an alarming rate that's very very concerning so students are significantly struggling with mental health and we have 24 percent of our spanish students that were in the blended model that failed at least one course last semester first semester of the year and that's at an increase compared to previous years how have we responded well we ended our flexible e-learning for our secondary students at the semester

034we've been working really hard at finding ways to address students who may not have attained credits those students that had failures we were bringing some of those kids back into the school on wednesdays to help them to attain that credit we're having conversations about expanded summer school so that students can come in the summertime to attain that credit we're concerned about students that are preparing for college and may be credit deficient and not ready to make that transition to college so we're doing everything we possibly can and putting as many interventions in place to help those students attain those credits we've also increased and and have ongoing home visits and school check-ins we've had a focus on social emotional so we feel like we're we're responding as very best that we can and we'll continue

035to support teachers and we'll continue to support families and kids as best we can as we move hopefully out of this pandemic and into a more normal environment our continued reopening so i think it was a couple weeks ago it was on a friday the cdc released new guidelines for schools there's been a real push across the state there's been a real push with the cdc um to get more kids back in school more frequently there were three things um that were really highlighted in that new reopening plan and it included consistent implementation of layered mitigation practices such as wearing masks such as healthy hygiene such as physically distancing to the greatest extent possible signage ventilation cleaning and disinfecting contact tracing so we feel like a lot of those things that we implemented right from

036the start are continuing to be those things that the cdc is recommending that we do to keep our kids in our buildings indicators of community transition we talked about that we talked about what are our numbers in the state what are our numbers in the county what are numbers within the district and we're continuing to monitor those the cdc put out some information in that new guidance that said you know here's an indicator as far as your case rates per hundred thousand um to bring kids back and i will tell you that we're at a place where the cdc would say it's okay for you to try bringing kids back into your building more frequently and then phased mitigation and learning modes we've done that we have transitioned we have shut classrooms down when we've

037needed to we've shut a school down when we needed to we've gone e-learning for a month we've you know taken away the flex e-learning we brought more kids back into our building second semester and now we're at another phase in the plan where we'd like to bring our secondary kids back four days a week the cdc um these are just a list of a lot of those things that i that i just mentioned um the two that the cdc says we need to place most of our attention on is those top two universal masking and physical distancing maximize to the greatest extent possible we know right now we are not keeping kids six feet apart every second of every single day we are doing the very best that we can but it it clearly does

038not happen at the elementary or at the secondary level every minute of every day but we'll continue to do our best bringing more kids back into spanish bringing more kids back into our junior highs that's a concern and we're not going to be able to keep our kids six feet apart all the time but we will do our very best and in a few minutes i'll tell you some of the things that we're going to do to help us to keep students distance the next few slides are really hard to read i'm just going to help you understand the visual behind this across the top there are some mitigation strategies such as mask use physically distancing disinfection disinfection practices hygiene ventilation and then signage and then what we did was we went through our buildings

039and we looked at every area of our building such as buses entrances exits student drop off and pick up the office space stairways hallways elevators and there's three or four slides here that just has all these different areas and what we did was if it was green we felt like we were able to do a really good job in that area and we are doing a good job in that area if it's yellow it probably is an area that we can't say that we're able to offer that every second of every day so social distancing for example you'll see a lot of yellows there we feel like in our offices we're able to do that but on this slide the other areas not all the time if it's red it's it's not happening if it's

040gray we really couldn't measure it so this down the left classrooms cafeteria kitchen health room isolation rooms so the gist of these slides are we feel in most areas we're doing a really good job and just another reason to be able to bring our kids back into our buildings we're at a good place to be able to do that so we have some smaller classrooms within our secondary buildings we know that we need a distance to the greatest extent possible we know that we're going to have to do some of those things that we did at the elementary like remove furniture remove storage units you know take some things out and really distance those desks distance those tables we might need to purchase new tables we might need to purchase new seating arrangements right now

041the principals are working really hard and they'll continue to work hard with their staff at how can we best support getting those kids back in schools and what do you need as far as items in your classroom to make sure that we're we're distancing as best we can we also have multiple uh plexiglas dividers we implemented those in the elementary we are going to do that as needed at the secondary buildings as well i'm not going to read this slide to you but we received a lot of feedback craig went out and spoke to every secondary building last week shared this plan with them so they had an opportunity to hear what we were going to be presenting to you tonight and he spent the majority of the time basically getting feedback from staff so

042i feel like we've really received some some good information we also know from students that we were presented a petition in favor of getting our students back in our buildings more there were about 1300 students parents and community members that signed that petition and we've heard that there's another petition that is circulating it has not been presented to us it been presented to us but that is a petition that is actually in opposition not to come back more in person and there was about 300 students um and community members that signed that petition we also have heard from staff um you know their biggest concern i would say is that the distancing you know how are we going to assure six feet of social distancing we can't we are going to assure distancing to the

043greatest extent possible um some staff felt like the model that we have is currently working so why would we abandon it some were really concerned about making sure that staff all staff are vaccinated before we return and honestly we can't control that that that vaccine and and when we get it um and how much we get is outside of our control so our recommendation is still to bring our kids back um you know without the guarantee that all staff will be vaccinated there is a good chance based on what we um you know received today that staff will be vaccinated in a timely manner we weren't sure would it be summer would it be the start of next year you know i feel good about the end of april i mean that's a much faster

044rate than what i had anticipated originally we also had some staff that said it's time just to get kids back in school they need to be here we're worried about them academically we're worried about them social emotionally staff said let's get them back families they feel the majority of information coming our way from families is let's get kids back in school it's time we're struggling we're struggling as a family we need them we need them in the buildings a couple other areas that we talked about in previous presentations that i wanted to bring up grab-and-go meals um we are going to continue grabbing go meals however we are only going to be doing grab-and-go deliveries on wednesdays but families will have the opportunity to get a week's worth of meals they will be frozen meals

045ones that they can prepare different than what we've been supplying families with currently the staff capacity with our food service is needed in our buildings if we bring our kids back four days a week we need to have staff in our buildings to be able to do that um so the the pickup locations will be the same locations and families will just let us know if they need a week's worth of meals so the bottom line is every family that needs food is going to be able to get that and our our grab and go meal numbers have decreased the need for those are decreasing the other thing to mention with that is the cost there's no cost for that through the remainder of this year so those will all be free of charge transportation

046our ridership for students in grades 7 through 12 is really low kids that go to secondaries generally do not ride our buses so we're not concerned that we need to make significant operational changes if we bring kids back four days and then we're going to continue our mitigation practices of masking distancing to the greatest extent possible and thorough cleaning of our buses and disinfecting between routes so that will just be continued when we come back the rationale for this is that you know health and safety continue to be our driving concerns for students and staff and we feel like we're in a really good place and we feel like we're going to be able to keep that at the forefront even if we bring kids back to additional days at the secondary level we're going

047to continue our our layers of mitigation we'll continue to communicate with portage county will watch the cdc um and department of public instruction and um we're going to continue to monitor students mental health as well as staff we're concerned about staff social emotional well-being this has been a tough year on everybody and we need to to do everything we can to continue to support families to support students and to support staff throughout this process flexible we know that we're going to bring more people in our buildings there's a chance that we're gonna maybe have more close contacts we're gonna probably have to shut some classrooms down we may have to shut schools down we're hopeful we don't have to but the chance is there if we're bringing more kids back and we'll just prepare and

048plan and deal with that as it as it comes providing two additional days gives more direct instruction with teachers students in front of teachers which is a good thing we're hopeful that student achievement will continue to go up and there won't need to be as many interventions for students and we feel like this is a natural progression craig has said from the very start our goal is to have kids in our buildings five days a week there is a chance if this goes well that we still may be able to do that by the end of the year we're hopeful but again we have to see how this goes and then we'll keep families we'll keep staff and we'll keep the board updated if we feel like we're at a place where we can do

049that before the end of the year with that any questions do board members have any questions i have a question i don't have any questions this is judy i'm glad to see that proposal and i think it's very well thought out so thanks for all the time put into putting that together thank you judy mike you had a question yeah um the decision to do this at the beginning of the fourth quarter is that mainly driven by that's just a really good transition time for something like that or do you need that much time between now and the start of the fourth quarter first of april in order to be ready for it or a little both i guess yeah really it's both it's it's we need a lot of time to to get our

050buildings ready to go and we feel like there's a better chance that staff will be vaccinated by then that's the question excuse me that we knew would come up a number of things we need to make some you know changes in the buildings we've got some classrooms we're going to have to eliminate some furniture some we're going to have to gain um the whole issue of vaccinations we feel very very comfortable that we will have vaccinations available for those that are interested mid-march i'm still holding out for early march into then early april weather gets a little bit warmer um you know it gives us a week after spring break we don't know what sure that's going to look like and it's the fourth quarter it's an even it's it's a natural time there are

051schools that are going back you know starting next week um i just think that we would be we'd be pressing it if we were to do that on the vaccination just based on the sheer number of employees of the district do you feel like they will the county or the state will be able to have a dedicated vaccination site just for the school district or we've been putting a tremendous amount of time working with the various clinics uh portage county we have a follow up with gary garski tomorrow we should have this in place by the end of the week it appears as if we're going to be having a mobile clinic quite frankly uh working with one of our i guess i'm gonna drag my feet as long as i can uh one of

052our local clinics is partnering up with with portage county um and it's really the accessibility of the of the the vaccine we'll be in a situation where we can set up a mobile site it's off campus so if we're we're hoping to have 700 um 700 vaccines available in one day because we might be able to get that done in one day if not a day and a half but we have to be prepared for maybe 200 maybe 300 and then maybe the week after um so we're working out details of all that but we're not in control of it and and up until now what's been very disappointing um regardless regardless if you're a clinic or the county they're getting significantly less than they're asking for that however apparently starting to change and i

053think there's a feeling that there's going to be an abundance in a short period of time but we just don't know we just know that we need to be prepared so that when it's available we're ready to go yeah what is the date that you look to come back four days a week april april 5th i i just asked a question four days a week or five days a week or why not five well i think we want to just step into it we still will have um teachers the need for teachers to do prep on wednesday that still is outside of the classroom depending on how many people are quarantined for for example um i think it's it's a step you know it's a step in the right direction part of it's let's see

054how that goes and if it goes well i may come back and say hey let's let's now go back five days a week that judgment would be made after a couple weeks i take it doing well because the goal is always to get them back five days a week before the end of the year right well the goal is to get our kids back in school that that didn't change from a year ago when abruptly we all walked out and if we would have said we're going to be having this conversation at this board meeting in at the end of february i don't think any of us would have believed that and so you'll go back to um as corey stated in june when we presented um the school board approved author authorizing me as

055superintendent all decisions related to getting back to school that's a tremendous amount of responsibility that i take very seriously um and i've been saying throughout the course of the year we need to get our kids back to school five days a week when we can when it's safe we're just learning more and more about what this looks like when we started school in august when i say we it's a very general term i think we feared this as superintendents we didn't think we'd be in session by october we thought we'd all be closed we didn't participate in fall athletics as superintendents even those that did participate they didn't think we'd make it a couple weeks well we did now we had to cancel a couple games we had to cancel some classes or uh we

056had to quarantine classes we had to quarantine two two buildings but quite frankly it wasn't as bad as we feared now we're ready to take the next step in the event something changes and we need to back off you know we're going to consider that as well but we won't know until we move forward right now we know our kids are struggling that information that i got from portage county regarding a significant increase of crisis reporting and and that's bodily harm and the major and then a significant number of those are purposeful intentional uh overdoses we got to get our kids back in school they need they need each other they need their staff they need their teachers um both academically uh and mentally in terms of their mental their mental health so this is

057a little unusual for me here tonight because i sit here stating that we're prepared to go back to school and we're going to con on april 5th we're going to continue to plan to do so very unlike many school districts throughout the state that are voting on this stuff and quite frankly they're all coming through with split boats they're five four or they're four or three boats because people can't agree on this stuff it's difficult i believe firmly we need to get our kids back to school and trust me when i say i'm very concerned about the health and well-being of our staff as well i'm a staff member i'm here i'm going to do what i can do we'll continue to work with staff that have have health issues individually we've been doing that

058all year our numbers in terms of students are as really as as low as they've been i i could speak out of turn here but i think the staff that we have quarantined are not from school spread i think they're from spread in their outside life the spread in schools schools are safer than it than the public right now it's safer to be in school than you are out in the public going from one place to another another question would be did you want to go around please i don't want it can you just talk into the mic oh sorry just to make sure that okay another question let's say students that are doing the cohort education right now if their parents they can go virtual if they say we don't want you know with

059all the kids coming in we're worried we're going to pull our kid out urge all students in the cohort to come back to school yeah now if there are some that don't want to or their parents don't want to we'll deal with those on an individual basis and we'll create a program we're gonna that's one of the first things when you talk about the amount of time mike we've got to determine who that is getting going into the online learning center is not the solution at this particular point in time nor do we have the capacity to do that right now so like craig had said our intent is for those kids to come back four days a week [Music] um i think rob had a question and then yeah were there any proposed changes

060to the extracurricular uh structures anything that we're we are we're in the middle of beginning our alternate fall spring season um you know we participating and practicing and we'll see what it looks like and then we will continue to have our spring season which is pushed back into uh late spring into early summer chris so cory coming back uh microphone speaking oh i'm sorry i moved it over and then i moved this one so coming back april 5th with what you know now kids are struggling academically socially emotionally so this group comes in is there a separate plan to address like at a higher level now they're coming in and maybe they're behind big time i know you're doing what you can now but i would imagine especially kids who are getting ready to graduate

061i mean there has to be a high intense okay we really need to gear up with these kids that are struggling in both ways is there a plan because they're not going to just come in and okay four days now we're all good our student service staff will go and they'll be highly involved with identifying who those students are they've already identified right in terms of academics who those are maybe not so much the social emotional component because we're limited to what we can find out when i talk about the significant increase of social services right that's just what gets reported through social services those aren't parents that might be going right to er the other the other uh component to the whole thing chris we've been making house visits and we've been making a

062lot of them we might it's much easier to have the kids uh being in schools in terms of to have have access for a lot of different reasons you know oftentimes we don't like making house calls but we do so it's going to we can better meet the needs of the kids quite frankly when they're in our buildings okay uh when i've heard you in the past during the year you said when people were talking about coming back in person totally in person uh one thing you stated was we don't want we can't handle 1500 kids at splash okay because it's you know there's just you can't social distance with that but you know that uh spash doesn't always have that same number of kids all day long kids come and go is there and

063i'm not sure if there is i don't know how i'd figure it out uh a way to say schedule kid a all their in-class things in the morning and kid b you're in in class things in the afternoon so those kids would filter in and out and they wouldn't be there all at the same time i sounds like a nightmare to me but well i think but we'll that's gonna we're gonna leave up to the principles individually in their buildings i can say that um we do have a number of students in work based placements for example that might be there only half a day and of course we're going to continue to maximize that but the whole issue when you first said 1500 yeah i did say that yeah that was back in august

064when um we didn't understand we we understood very little about this and i and i did make those those comments what we're finding out in terms of the spread not occurring to the level we thought i you know it's it is what it is you know the cd guidelines are saying continue to maintain social distance of six feet to the extent that you can you know if we had to maintain quite frankly six feet all day long we could not do it um and now again as corey said in the presentation that could lead to more closed contacts you know quite frankly the students that go back home um or have to quarantine they're not going home sick they're going home because they were a close contact in terms of our protocol we're sending a

065lot of healthy kids home because that's that's our protocol we're finding out that the spread is not happening in schools now common sense is maybe you put more people in maybe it does but there are schools that down in south milwaukee in the milwaukee southern eastern part of the state they've been going to cities they haven't stopped going to school they've been in five days a week school districts our size their quarantine and and positive rates aren't any different than those in the in the uh this is a general comment schools that are in the cohort models so there's there's a lot of inconsistency in terms of how schools went about this but regardless of what one school district did in terms of putting together their program compared to the next there's very much consistent

066results in terms of case cases that are positive in quarantines so g back to your point the principles have a lot of work to do between now and april 5th they'll be looking at you know classes that might have large numbers of students and maybe moving those classes to rooms that have more square footage so they'll be looking at student schedules they'll be they'll be doing all of that i mean i don't know if we can do exactly what you had mentioned yeah but i know it'd be hard yeah they'll do the best they can the one thing that i would say is you know we've all been in classrooms when you have 30 kids in a classroom it's crowded even without covid teachers i would hope would have the ability to say hey kids

067i got a room next door can we split up a little bit are there common areas that this is the work we're going to do it let's have 10 kids go over here yep yeah absolutely i've got a couple questions um so if it is decided that the students are going to return four days a week how will this be communicated to non-english speaking families so ann what we would do is we would follow the same procedure that we've done we send it to individuals to translate and help us put that communication together and then we would we would send it out would that be via email um you know the mass phone call yep the same way that we would uh communicate to all other families we would communicate to them because i i

068recently recently spoke to some home speaking families and they said that you know emails are understandable even when because we know that lots of non-english speaking families are relying on their children to be translating these documents for them and emails and so for them to understand that doesn't it it doesn't it just doesn't make sense um could be asking someone who who's in school to translate the documents so i think we need to do a better job of communicating again this can be done via a voicemail we can also look at you know maybe looking at what staff has the capacity to do it without taking without having them to do more than what they're already required to do i know families are frustrated because things are changing and they're not aware of it they're

069not aware that their children are missing assignments until they get a letter saying hey your student is missing these assignments and they're failing these um they're failing this um i said hey you know you um what i do is i check on skyward but i know it doesn't make sense because if you can't read um or speak english skyward doesn't really help you um and so they're struggling with that um and then we uh it was discussable um house visits um what are the reasons behind these house visits uh to find out where the kids are the students i mean that's that's part of it that that's been going on forever and a day when it comes to students being truant to find out if they're actually there and then if they are have a

070discussion um why they aren't um engaging um in school and and determine if it's a technology problem a motivation issue or is there proper supervision at home a number of things okay and is this for students not actively logging into um schoology or is this student who's missing um an excess amount of assignments i would have to say um connie if you're on but but certainly um not even accessing is part of it and if there are students that we haven't heard from for an extended period of time we might do a home visit or a well child check at that point if it's just a missing assignment absolutely not it would be somebody that we you know would be concerned about and just haven't heard from okay because um i know again um speaking

071to families one student was missing all nearly 30 assignments and they weren't even aware of it until they receive a truancy letter okay so they weren't aware um you know so i'm not i think we talked a little bit about home visits the last time we had a meeting but um i didn't really um i didn't ask you know how why these what's the purpose of these um so just questioning again speaking to families um these are some of the questions that um had come up from thank you and for sharing those honey did you have something to add um mainly the the home visits have been students that they have seen over a period of time that have not even logged into their computer so those have been the main focus of the home

072visits kids that that we're seeing zero attendance on barb do you have any questions i sure do um i have several first of all the presentation is very impressive thank you i know you've worked a lot of hours on that um i have some concerns my first question is do you think 16 days will be worth it to you know how does that compare to the health of our staff and our students the possibility that they could get coveted with some long-lasting effects a lot of people i don't know that 16 days will make up for that mental health crisis that we're in i guess i'm not understanding the question barb you're adding two more days to the week i'm assuming i think she's uh the fourth okay okay you know i any time we

073can get our kids back in the buildings is going to help i mean i 16 days is 16 days barb and i feel like um our kids are in crisis i know that staff is is struggling as well and we we need to keep that at the forefront also but i'm concerned for the effects that are going to be not only right now but into the future with kids and i think if we can get them back in we need to do it and and i feel like our our capacity and our numbers warrant that we're at a place where we feel like we can safely do so well we definitely won't be able to keep up that six foot distancing have you considered one-way traffic in those buildings we um we did that in

074our elementary buildings and yes that's another one of our safety protocols that we will consider at at those buildings too as well as limiting entrance and exits the number of people at those those entrances and exits all of those things that we did at first with summer school and then when we brought elementary kids in four days a week and the cdc recommends um closing any like dining halls cafeterias those spreader areas um do we currently have them just having box meals or are there serve yourself salad bars what what's our situation with the food distribution right so at the elementary level right now we've got some kids that are eating in the cafeteria and some that are eating in classrooms that bar question is one of those logistical things that we need time to

075figure out at our secondary building so what the cafeteria and lunchroom space will look like and how kids will eat and be served is yet to be determined okay and how about testing are we going to do any um antigen testing of staff or students with permission of course from parents we don't have any plan to do any testing of students or staff that would be uh an easy mitigation strategy as well i think and and what was your response with if if a kid or the parents don't want the student back you know if they're a high risk person what will they do beth has been working with staff all year long on on staff that are high risk and beth will continue to do that students that are not interested in coming back

076four days a week we're going to have to work with individually with the building principal and teacher to accommodate uh them appropriately okay thanks i actually had one more question bart if you were done yeah go ahead okay um so if it is decided that students are going to return how much time will families get to be notified of this change our intent anne is to communicate soon regarding this change we wanted to make sure that we talked to staff first and then you know brought it to the board and soon after this we'll we'll communicate with families um and then i noticed that um cory with your um powerpoint um with the survey results can you tell us about how many teachers have provided had return that survey and there was not a survey

077per se given a lot of the feedback came from craig's visits to the building and then we received some emails from staff and had conversations with staff um you know after that that meeting and may and maybe just a follow-up with respect to you indicated a percentage of staff that have indicated that they are interested in vaccination i think maybe that's that was a survey yes sarah do you know what the total number of staff was that completed that survey i'm so sorry can you repeat the question yes um the staff that have indicated they are interested in the vaccine how many steps 703 individuals who have responded of that i would say we had only um maybe 15 staff members indicate that they had already been vaccinated um and then maybe another 40-ish who

078indicated they were not interested in receiving a vaccine and then another smaller i'd say again like around that 15 number um that indicated they were interested in receiving the vaccination through their provider and do you uh um i know that you all said that craig had stopped into the building spoke with some of the teachers um do you all think that it it could be that some of the staff aren't um giving their true honest opinion um due to the possible backlash because i see a lot of comments um floating in social media unlike news outlets and just saying if teachers don't want to teach going back to five five days a week that they should just quit and they can be replaced well first of all i've never said that by the way so

079i don't i don't want that to get out there i didn't think you did though i'm just saying um there's a lot on social media quite frankly um i don't pay a lot of attention to it um we you know the whole issue of backlash that's just not the way i operate that's not the way we operate we had a number of staff members indicating indicate their concerns the vast majority of the people didn't didn't didn't give us any feedback i would say it was fewer than than most that gave us feedback um that said i had here to your point i had people that contacted me via because i opened it up if you want to continue to talk about this i'll be happy to come back i'll be happy to sit down with

080you large group small group email me i had staff email me saying craig thank you i support getting our kids back but they didn't feel comfortable saying it at the staff at meetings either so i'm sure people are uncomfortable about saying things in in front of their peers to what extent um i'm not you know i'm not sure in terms of exactly how many um staff members would feel that way but that that goes both ways and when or if surveys go out um regarding um you know just about anything are they confidential i know there's like surveymonkey where it sends to emails and i know that you have the option of tracking which emails it's coming from but are there ways to make it secure so that it is truly truly an anonymous survey

081yes and we've when we survey and we don't track email and we don't the forms we use don't have the i mean they have the capacity to do that but i don't turn that on so there is no unless someone self kind of identifies who they are if they want follow-up um but we would never release that or share that in a way that would um create you know a an unwanted work environment thank you i do have another comment about the students there are a lot of students who are scared to death to come back even four days a week and maybe they also aren't afraid to speak up but i did a survey of a few of the high school kids that i know and none of them said that they were ready

082to come back because they were fearful and so we're going to have that you know that fear factor and you know i think i think consistency is going to have to be key if you're going to um you know every building had had better do their tracing the same i do contact trey saying for the county and i i've had parents tell me well we were told this we were told that and corey has quickly addressed those issues when i told her about those um and i appreciate that corey um but consistency and every you know staff is going to have to buy in and assure that their people are wearing their masks correctly not under their nose um and that they are maintaining the six feet as best they can any other board members

083with questions i just have one more relating yep um go ahead um so um i i know that we've talked about what happens to those students who may not be comfortable going back to coming back to four days a week and that you know something will have to be worked out with them um if if it does come to coming back to four days and we have a number of students um who are not going to be coming back the four days do we have enough support in the district to accommodate these children to accommodate these students and their families connie i'll defer to you hi everyone um when we um took away the e-learning we were um we were very surprised at how many students chose to come back to full person and we

084have very few students given the nature of the pandemic that chose to go to the online learning center we are going to have students and families that have said that are going to say that they're very uncomfortable with this we will deal with that on an individual basis but i'm i'm i'm pretty convinced that based on the number of students and families that came from the flex learning back to um coming in person um that that we're gonna see more students that will come four days a week and if not we're gonna we'll deal with that just like we've dealt with everything with the pandemic and figure it out for the kids and the families thank you so i i just i have a kind of a more logistical question which is i was in

085high school a long time ago and i was in junior high a long time ago but i remember junior high in high school isn't like desks i mean a lot of our classrooms in our junior high and our high school are tables or their labs where you've got so i guess i'm just asking for a practical about have have we already accessed ppe that we would need the plexiglas shields the whatever or is that something we're in the process of doing and is that is that another step that we're looking to make sure we complete prior to having kids come back yes principals and and staff will work to determine what it is they need and if we don't have it we'll get it we still have a ton of plexiglass available um there might

086be some some seating arrangements that need to be reworked you know if tables aren't going to work in a classroom to distance students appropriately we'll find desks we'll do whatever we need to do are we looking to use spring break i mean you've talked about doing a bunch of reconfiguration of classrooms and changes in stuff in classrooms are are we looking to use spring break to do that or are we is that beginning now it'll begin you know what the decision here is um you know we're talking about surveys we're talking about when a decision gets made i've made a decision this is not a power play we're coming back to school april 5th unless you as the school board decide differently and and to do that you would have to have a board meeting

087you would have to then rescind the vote to give me um authorization and then you would take a vote on whether or not that you can do i mean so when we talk about what and if um if we leave tonight unless the board says we want to we want to come back and and have board discussion we're going to start communicating regarding coming back to school and and that's just that was what i was directed to do in june and that's what i'm going to be doing unless you tell me differently i might i'm not going to change my my thoughts if you take a vote and just it'll be split if we survey it'll be split if you survey parents it'll be split if you uh survey students it'll be split if you

088surveyed staff it'll be split you as a board will be split i believe kids got to get back to school i firmly believe that and so a lot's gonna happen after today um we're gonna begin communicating to uh to parents and and students that we're going back to school april 5th and uh we're going to start determining what we need to do for those students that are not engaged we're going to have to get and maybe this is a survey that we're going to get um how many students aren't interested in coming back because we're going to have to um you know that's real you know we're going to have to address that we know that so we will take every ounce of time that we need between now and april 5th to do just

089that if we need to remove furniture get additional plexiglass whatever we need it's and that starts now i i guess i would i would all i would i would encourage and it's kind of a follow-up to anne um my kids are through school i mean they're young adults now um when they were in school in junior high and high school i know there was the mentality that students need to take start taking responsibility for themselves and students need to be responsible for their work and and and the importance of communication between students and staff if there's some way we can end this school year creating a better triangle because i know for at least two of my four kids i would have never learned anything that was communicated to them sure probably all four of

090them sure i mean i just never would have and i think anne raised that point that um that i think part of this pandemic is recognizing that we probably have to create a more sufficient triangle between our parents and our students and our school community to to let people know how our kids are doing if there's any way that we can do that at least during this public health pandemic to ensure um that that communication loop is working better i i i guess i i mean i i shudder to think of what would have happened in my home frankly so noted meg so i just have one last thing to say um craig i i was not aware that you had made the decision for school to reserve to resume four days a week starting

091april 5th i thought that this is a discussion i again i didn't realize that you had made that decision already um and i do just want to make it out there that um how many of the families have decided to have their students return to school um not because they wanted to but because they had to and when i talk about having to is maybe because you know if they were at home and they were consenting to fail they were going to be um or you know if they weren't able to log on for various reasons and they didn't have a way to communicate now the students are going to be true ones right um and so that was kind of like hey you have to go back because that's the only way that they

092are able that's the only way that you can account for yourself for being in school and like i tell everyone else that i've been talking to my students are now just surviving they are definitely not thriving in the pandemic that we we are in right now um so i just want to make that out there like how many of our students are actually not doing this by choice and parents aren't doing this by choice but because of other reasons and i'm not talking about because they have worked full time until they're deciding to send this um children back to school but like other reasons than that how would you even and i and because it because now that we know that students are going back to four days a week looking at the calendar here

093we've got a little about what five five and a half weeks five and a half weeks i think that the ball should start um should be rolling about how do we communicate this with our parents as to what you decide to do um and really say hey this is what's going to happen and see if there's if there is an alternative i think that it's important for us to give them the alternative like hey you know if it is um if there are other reasons such as health issues that you're that you're not comfortable with your child going to four days a week talk to us communicate with us so that we can we can figure something out really give them giving them their options and i would say most most students are surviving and

094not thriving and i'm sure there's a lot of reasons why students came back to school in the cohort model for a lot of specific reasons um and i'll be the first to agree um none of this is this is none of this is perfect it's it's all very far from perfect are there any comments or questions of board members uh meg just one question this is not i mean i'm very supportive of this very supportive kids need to be back in school um is there any planning yet we haven't gotten here yet but is there any planning yet for summer school yes because i would hope this is just me personally i would hope that it would look way different than what it looked like especially with kids this last year that there would be

095a lot of of things offered to them to help bring them you know back to a level a long time and i know that isn't a discussion with this but because of this and and i think this is a really good plan putting safety number one not just we all want i i can't speak for everyone here but i think we want our kids back in school back to a normal life it's not a normal world right now but i think it's really important that mitigation is really important and i do believe that students are safer in school so the summer school i just i later that can be a later talk i just wanted to mention that okay thank you we will move into item six and the item a is equity diversity and

096inclusion coordinator okay let's see if i can find my notes shifting gears here you'll note about a year ago we came forward when we administration with a position related to a safety and security went to the hr committee finance committee in march and then the board meeting there were a number of comments at the board level related to the job description i think first and foremost it looked more as if we were hiring a law enforcement position related to safety and security i mean there were questions why we weren't emphasizing the issue of mental health as well as equity diversity and inclusion we did make some changes to that and then we were ready to move forward covet 19 hit i was in march and it really things got put on the back burner for

097the obvious uh we talked about hiring the position a couple times early in the summer and thought it's just not a good time to bring in a new position the students we don't know if they're going to be in school the school year started up and running and we started having conversations what our needs are we then had an opening um a resignation in um in our position well don keck resigned and he moved on in as the our facilities uh manager uh we restructured that position we'll talk about that actually in in closed session we're going to have an approval on that position and we include increased our uh we included in that particular job description description issues specifically rated to related to a safety and security of the physicalness of the buildings um

098and quite frankly that's typically where there is that is uh in in most districts um then we looked at what our needs are as it relates to the issues of equity uh diversity and inclusion and and believe that we do have significant needs not only in this school district but at uh in our community i'm sitting on a couple different groups maybe unofficial that we have these discuss discussions in terms of um issues throughout the uh the school district and as well as specific to uh to um our school district so um changing that job description gave cabinet uh the idea of recreating that particular position if you recall it was going to come out of fund 80 which is a community fund so it to come out of fund 80 it needs to be

099community based so we looked at a number of job descriptions um from fair uh various universities our own here uh others throughout actually the country and a number of school districts provided by the school board association came up with a job description um related to such topics and and that is in front of you today for consideration um to hire that position again out of fun 80 and you'll know that job description does hold um true to specifically talk about community issues and and this would be someone that i would expect would be a liaison or someone that would i would expect that would be heavily involved with various components of our community as well as tying it back to our our school district so i know meg you had i just you had had

100a number of yeah i i just wanted i public comments on that and i opened that up for discussion right i want to note that the board earlier this year also um agreed as a board that that this focus for our district is a priority focus moving forward and the the reality is right now everyone working here has a full-time job and there is no one working here with their existing full-time job that has either the background expertise knowledge time to be able to focus on this and and really move the work forward in order for this work to be moved forward this district needs a person who that's their job and that's their background and their expertise and their knowledge beyond what we as board members have beyond what current administration have and so

101so for me if if we as a board are truly committed to create this priority focus and really have that be part of our strategic plan and vision with our district then then then we need to invest in it um and so i guess that's i'm very supportive of this i'll put that out right now and i guess i would just um any board members that have questions or comments or suggestions um this job description is a job description that administration created like any new position the reality is over the next several years this position is going to much more fully create and define itself based on based on the individual within the job and the resources and the support that this district provides to that position so like everything else we do as a

102board anything new it's a work in progress and it's a work in process but but this is the the best that administration taking a look at existing positions within our state and within our area um this is this is what i believe we're looking for so i guess i'd open it up to board members i don't usually talk first but i just wanted to put that out there do any board members have any comments or questions i do um so i i of course am for creating this position um but i think that we really need to be looking at who should be benefiting from this position and why we shouldn't be creating this position to be checking off boxes and check marking things that we think we're doing to be great um we should

103be doing this because we want to be great um we need to start off by creating this position for the right reasons um some of the questions i have is what kind of power um does this person have to influence the change we i know that the description talks about liaison and everything but if they're there to do their job but they don't have the power to make any changes i know that they're um right through it they're going to come come back with like um um on different like reports and whatnot and reporting back but i want to know what what their findings how their findings are going to be used and how their findings are going to be used to make a change for the positive um and what effect infrastructure will be

104put in place to support this position so we know that we want someone who knows what they're doing into to do this position to do this job but what kind of support will we be able to provide for them first of all the position will report directly to me i'm not quite sure if i understand when you use the term power to influence change um in terms of decision making i'm confused by the word power um oftentimes influencing change is it's from the bottom up it's changing ideas and it's changing cultures and it's changing thoughts it's it's opening up it's opening up conversations um so i'm i'm not quite sure what you mean by the power ish that term power uh the infrastructure um it becomes a position a district-wide position that again it'll report

105to me it'll be working with obviously building principles it'll be responsible for creating specific committees sitting on the culturally responsive practice team that we have individually or right now with teachers i'm opening up a broader range of committees working with the portage county for example has their own committee of such bringing in the resources throughout the community to bring a larger change and as it relates to the culture of our community is what i'm looking at so when i when i i mean like the power to change is um you know what is their um what is their ability to shape and redefine policy right so we know that we want to do something um further better for each and every um each and every student but then how do we do this where we

106can say yup so this person is here to provide support for you this person is going to be um talking with us and they're going to be looking at this and like what do we need to change so that per our uh mission statement so that we can make um so that we um every student is successful um and so when i say the powers change that that's what i mean yeah i believe that uh this particular person in the job description now speaks towards being involved with policy specific and i also agree when we rewrite our strategic plan next year that this of course that isn't determined by me it's determined by a process i i would expect however that this issue become um a pillar of one of our of our strategic plan

107moving forward and i would expect that that person would be heavily involved with that do any other board members have any questions mike is this a position that that you would say is common of of school districts our size in wisconsin yes and it's it's growing this the school districts that we receive job descriptions are districts our size i guess monona grove had one which is about half of our side but um districts in that 7 000 range i believe we've you've got your larger schools the green bays and the madisons um but there are a number of school districts that that have this position and quite frankly those that don't are having these conversations about creating that it's about how does it fit into your current structure your thoughts and needs of your community

108quite frankly um expectations but yes long long answer for yes you know you had mentioned the and it's listed in the job description quite a bit that they're a liaison to the community what other types of i know your role as a superintendent you're a liaison to the community what other types of roles do we have in the district that serve like that it's an interesting question mike i you know i'll be the first to say when we as a liaison to the community when we have the discussions and the discussions are continuing to grow regarding equity diversity inclusion i'm not an expert i'm not and i don't know i shouldn't say that it going back to what meg had said part of this is it's it's time if you don't wake up in the

109morning and this is your job it's the last thing it just gets put on the black back burner i've been in this business a long time and and this issue has this issue's been here 20 years ago we call it tolerance teaching tolerance and it's just evolved over time if if we don't have somebody that's focusing on this and working with myself the board staff the community it just gets forgotten and i don't have the expertise yeah i just i don't i'm i'm learning i want to i will continue to learn but i don't have the expertise and i'm not convinced there's anybody that that i work closely with in the school district that has the expertise and then we find ourselves in difficult situations and and we got to lean on somebody and and

110i've used my resources around the community and and there are resources but it's just that it's a resource that group those people have their own positions as well yeah i just asked that question because it seems like most of the job descriptions we look at you just don't see that much of a of a role of being a liaison so i think that's going to be very interesting about this and well and maybe that talks to what what ann said you know what when you when you use that term power i just i just don't like that word um but what authority does that have position have that that'll grow you know this will this when you terms a liaison is a liaison takes information to that group and it relays it back to here

111versus having serious feedback and input to make change maybe that maybe that term needs to be discussed specifically as we move forward because i would expect that this person will be attending various organizational meetings and whatnot that will have influence and say around the table they need to they'll also have to work very closely with myself and cabinet so we're in lockstep yeah and again don't think i have a problem with the term because i think it's a very important part of of the job description and their job duties will their office be here in bliss more than likely or yeah it'll also work very closely with student services yeah very closely with student services and you know mike the reason i believe too that that's liaison pieces in here is there are so many

112different organizations within the community that are working on this very issue and i know that craig has been involved in a lot of those conversations so we need to continue to be part of that and we need to continue to provide input and and receive input so that we can make better decisions within the district i agree thanks chris so one person i thought of mike when you asked that question with sarah because i think sarah is really a link for our district out there i also think i think our kids are more world citizens now than they ever have been and we're in a small community and i think one of the things the potential of this position is to that it will affect students staff community and link them together because i think

113you need someone who has to be part of all of those to understand what the concerns are um ways that and i don't know anything about this this type of position but as i read it and i know there were a couple business people that i talked to that are having these kind of discussions you know they're a large business and they are dealing with all kinds of things and the the people that they talk to and that they work with they want people who understand that we are now world citizens and it's actually a little harder maybe a lot harder living in a small town or a small area versus a chicago or milwaukee or you know large city so i think this could be a really really powerful position but i i do

114think it will take time to have those connections out there to see what what can what can we all do better you know staff board everyone so do any other board members have any comments or questions i i'd have a comment and maybe a question um this position i read through all the job the job description i don't know anybody who could do all that but superman you know that's a lot of stuff and the person that gets hired i i would view this as their job is going to be like if you hired one person the way this position looks will be very different than if you hired another person because they're going to create their own infrastructure i would assume they'd be welcomed on community committees and things like that so the person

115we look for is i mean how am i saying this they will create their own job essentially and we have to know what that is uh i would say though if we create a job like that we need to be able to evaluate it and i don't know if if it's a success or not and maybe that depends on the person you hire because they may do the job in very different ways and maybe be successful or not so as we look at this i you know to me there's if something new like this there should be a way to evaluate if in three years is it is a success you know and the person that gets hired has to know that [Music] i'm not yeah there were some questions and some comments in there

116sorry so noted though on on on [Music] on how do you measure that success and i don't know how and that's i i hear you i don't know if i could answer that right now that may be a function of the person you hire i agree that the person um is going to have a tremendous tremendous amount of impact and influence in terms of how this does grow i'll say that this person's going to be experienced or they're not going to get hired i mean this this requires somebody with some experience very involved in a high level of experience and i'll be frank that concerns me because there's not i don't know maybe there's going to be a huge pool out there um time will tell on that but i hear you uh jeff and

117then yeah rob uh jeff and then rob and then we'll go to the next thing i do have something to say but i gotta find my charger so if i get disconnected oh okay all right no worries all right go ahead jeff yeah just to address that comment on how you're gonna measure the performance of the job i think that's an excellent question but i think one of the best sources for determining how to evaluate that is from the person in that position first of all because they're the experts the other thing is you know they want to do a good job and they want to be able to show you that they can do a good job so i found that a lot of those metrics a lot of those measurements can best be

118determined by the person that's going to fill that position fair enough fair enough rob do we have of of the items that are listed here one area that is the most critical need so if we're if someone's coming in and and we have a a rather broad list of duties a rather broad list of groups that this individual be working with is there one or two that we could say for certain this should be an initial source of focus for this position or are we saying this person comes in they identify the one or two or three or all areas of focus and that's where that individual starts to build out the position you know i'm going to answer that this way [Music] i started with with the this job description took months because it

119was difficult i started with the title um equity diversity and inclusion edi you know we love acronyms and i and i asked the question to somebody it just doesn't flow and they said if you're going to use the term use the term equity there's a difference between equity and diversity and inclusion so i got that in terms of because there's a lot there a lot there what's most important is equity and understanding what equity is i can't tell you how many times i've heard people think equity is equal it's not equal you might need something my two kids are very different they need they need things that are different it's not equal but i try to i try to deal with them in an equitable manner because their needs are different um you know you

120ask a very good question there's an awful lot here um we've intentionally put a lot here i did have some feedback from the university some of the people that are involved with this some people that are involved with these issues in portage county you know as well as some of my colleagues throughout the state to take a look at it and of course everybody could say well maybe you want to do this or that but generally speaking it's a good place to start and we we tweak we re-evaluate job descriptions all the time most common is when you have somebody that leaves and you say oh we're going to rehire this position let's take a look at it and then you tend to look at job descriptions when maybe there's a need and it's just

121like okay we got a need who can i sign this one to and this one's a little bit a little bit big to assign to somebody not a very good answer well and we've had some conversations rob about doing a real needs assessment first and then determining what it is the focus should be because we've not really done a true needs assessment in this area so okay that could be the direction we go so about five years ago about five years ago we created um the director of communications position at the time when we created it we knew that we as a district were not providing the communication that we needed to provide to our external constituents to our internal constituents and we truly needed a focus and you know we we created that position

122and thank god we were sarah was here and was willing to stay with us and take it on and over the i think you would agree with me over the course of the first period of time part of it was just assessing what's here you know what's going on and then then out of that what do we want to create but also again pointing to that position things in our community happened things in our school community happened and have continued to happen that have i at least for me just brought home over and over again about the importance of that ability to communicate um a large part of that position became crisis communication and crisis management and i i think this is a unique position there's nothing like this in our district just like there's

123there was there's nothing like the director of communications um but there's so much work that that that we could and should be doing in this area and um i think the first part of anyone coming into this position is really going to be that down deep look at where are we in the district what's already happening and then that strategic planning process of about what we want what do we want to do next and and without a position such as this i just don't see how that happens here so well craig craig you said that we had that other districts have this position similar you so you've i mean uh larger districts they all have a situation like this that it's a common position yes you know it depends on how large the district you're

124going to madison they got a department in this yeah um you know we're not you can't compare ourselves to madison but i would say that and and those that don't are continuing to look at this universities it's very common every university has this position you know i can run through them you know wauwatosa um you know green bay uh i just don't have the list in front of me but we looked at eau claire north carolina chapel hill um just a number apart lacrosse has one yes um so it's not uncommon now the positions themselves are very different in terms of what that looks like and that's very unique to the organization [Music] judy did you have a comment i thought i heard you yes thank you i agree that this is something that we

125need um in the district because while things become important unless we put resources toward it it doesn't happen or we start and stop a lot of things but nobody can sustain it so i think it's good that we're looking at this and it does fit um those other criteria in that original job description that you brought up earlier that missing piece the only thing that i'm looking at is in those other duties is that mediate equity complaints that one just to me well it it fits somewhat just seems a little odd in that job description because the rest of it kind of flows if you're doing training and legislation and policy and that one i wasn't quite sure about i actually agree with you on that right now right now that's caleb's our responsibility um

126i think what i think what we would do is continue because when you start talking about that particular job description that becomes administrative and this is not an administrative position and that caleb fight would be continued to will reword that will continue to be responsible for that however we would expect that caleb would rely on this person to get some feedback right so what i would say is in in that position it really is you know supports um you know be become that expert or that subject better expert in those individual diversity inclusion and not being involved what could be or lead to some type of disciplinary action right but that mediate just seems like it doesn't seem to fit yeah so noted i've got a couple more things to talk about in creating this

127position so um i do just want to thank uh craig and beth for um bringing this to the agenda um i think that it is a much much needed position within our school district and i i would highly encourage for us to all pass tonight i do just have a couple of things regarding the position the hiring and a couple of things on the description and the job description it states that a bachelor's or a master's is required and some experience in my professional experience of working i have met some folks who have not gone beyond high school and it's not because it was it's not because it was a choice to not go but there are various reasons that's why they couldn't go um so with where i'm going with this is that i

128think we should also put on there that if you have the equivalent experience of this that we can certainly take a look at omitting the bachelors of the masters if we have someone who has been doing this kind of diversity work for 10 15 years but they only have a high school degree and we have someone who's got a bachelor's or a master's and they're coming in to this line of work for one or two years i would certainly choose someone who has had far more hands-on experience than someone with a college degree i know that a lot of jobs are looking for college degrees over experience but i think it's a scooter shift where we're teaching our young folks what it means i think we need to do that is to look at also

129the experience um someone who's got years of experience doing this is going to be readily is going to be ready to take on and say okay so where are we out what does your policy look like and what needs to go from there and be familiar with the process already another thing with this is i believe that i truly truly believe that because this is going to be the equity diversity and inclusion coordinator now we need to take a look at our hiring practice for this specific position here i think we need to get a committee together who will be doing this hiring this community should consist of bipac community members and marginalized students because if we're saying that this is for the marginalized students within within our school district shouldn't we be getting the

130expert advice from these folks who are going to be receiving these services or who's going to be most benefiting from these services i know we got a lot of comments about race but what those comments fail to realize is that we have students from the lgbtq community we have ableism we have social social economic we have all of that and i think if we keep this with the staff who are saying that we need this change i think they're not going to be able to recognize um the qualities that we need for the person to be leading this position so noted for each one of our positions and we have a discussion um internally in terms of what our uh what what our appropriate um groups to be involved with with certain uh interviews and

131often times that does change based on the position itself are there any other comments or questions of board members if not i would be looking for a motion to approve the creation of an equity diversity in inclusion coordinator position for the district to perform the responsibilities included in the attached job discretion it's all moved second i got a motion by jeff and i've got a second by mike any other questions all those in favor with i i i any opposed with nay the motion is approved we'll move into item seven general which is our next school board meeting is going to be on march 8th our regular school board meeting and i now need a motion to go into closed session under wisconsin statute 1985 paren one parent c considering employment promotion compensation or performance

132evaluation data of any public employee over which the governmental body has jurisdiction or exercises responsibility specifically consideration of facilities and safety manager employment recommendation and contract do i have a motion motion by evil do i have a second second second by scott um if carlene if you could call the rule please i'm sorry ms rano yes mr evil yes ms portson yes miss scott yes mr wade yes mr pope yes this is mr manske yes mrs yes unanimous all right so we are now going to get ourselves ready to go into close