001the roll. Mr. Tim Buban here. Miss Mia Croyle is excused. Mr. Jim Moser here. Miss Don Garcia here. Mr. Zach Masa Myers here. Miss Lisa Pew here. Miss Allison Sor, Dr. Sharon Milin Bartlett here, student rep. Michaela Becker here, President Joe Patterson here. Right. Um, first on the agenda is public comment. I don't believe we received any public comment prior to the meeting. And seeing no one in the gallery this evening, we will assume that there's no members of the public that want to comment and move on to item 2B, the legislative update. Uh on on the federal side of things, on August 1st, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved its FY2026 Labor, Health, Human Services, and Education Spending Bill. Um there's some good news there. The bill provides $79 billion in discretionary funding for the
002Department of Education and it rejects some of the Trump administration's calls to eliminate the Department of Education, maintains funding across the department, including funding for K12 and uh formula grants and competitive grants, CTE and other uh adult education programs. Um those are all things that were at risk uh under the original Trump administration proposal. Uh the bill also includes new requirements that the Department of Education maintain the staff necessary to ensure it carries out its statutory responsibilities which include carrying out programs and activities funded in the bill. Also new requirements that that the Department of Ed u make formula grants available to states on time. This particular language addition is in response to the recent withholding of uh federal funding for several education programs. Um the bill also strengthens investments in foundational forming grant programs
003for elementary and secondary education. Um rejecting $4.5 million in cuts uh and proposed consolidations of programs and funding under the President Trump's original budget request. Um this bill that just passed Senate committee has to pass the full US Senate and then be reconciled with the House version. Um the House bill is expected to be less generous to education investment. So it's kind of a wait and see, but at least it's moving forward in a better direction than was originally set out. Um mentioning those federal funds that had been with withheld on July 28th, the Trump administration announced it would unfreeze those billions of dollars in K12 education that had been holding since July 1st. Wisconsin will be receiving 72 million dollars of those funds. actually they might have already been released. Those were funds that
004Wisconsin was waiting for and I think we had some money coming here related to migrant education, professional development, um English language learners um services and other adult literacy programs. On the state budget side, the legislative fiscal bureau released some budget papers that basically explain how the state budget will play out across all programs. uh in the in their memo on education, it shares detail on individual school district aids and how they will change in the coming two years based upon the new bienial budget. The memo's conclusions are based on the assumption that districts will levy the entire amount of that 325 per pupil uh revenue limit increase that was granted to them by Governor's Eager's partial veto from the 2325 budget. You can find that full memo at legis.wosisconsisconsin.gov. So that's legisin.gov. Um for Stoton,
005let me see uh state aid as compared to 202425. There will be an increase uh in the 2526 school year of about 1.7 million to us. in 2026 27 it says it will be an increase on top of again 20 2425 of about $2.7 million. Um the Wisconsin policy forum just released a report overall on education funding last month late last month uh they said Wisconsin has fallen further in the national rankings when it comes to per pupil education spending. Wisconsin now ranks 26th in the country for per pupil spending and also falling to la uh second to last of our neighboring Midwest states ahead of only the state of Iowa. Uh the the particular Wisconsin policy forum report points to a couple of reasons for the decline. And the major reason is uh that
006the general state aid increases in recent years have failed to make meet the rate of inflation and they further to point to shifting priorities in the legislature such as prioritizing reducing taxes. Um and as just a wrap up I know that we uh worked together uh to send a letter to the legislature like we talked about last time thanking them uh thanking our legislators in Stoton for their support in public education funding in the last budget. That's all I have. I wish I could say very good, but none of that is very good. Does anyone have any questions for Lisa? Could you say that website one more time? Yes. So, the you're going to look on the legislative website and you're going to look for the legislative fiscal bureau. Yeah. Um memos and the website
007would be I just want to make sure I read it correctly. Um LGIS.Win Wisconsin.gov. Wisconsin spelled out whole word. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions for Lisa? Seeing none, we will move on to item 2 C. Workg groupoup reports and finance and facilities met since our last meeting. Yep. So, we met on July 22nd. Um a lot of the majority of it was um discussing the policies that you'll see for the discussion action items for tonight. Um just to kind of give you a preview before we discuss it there. A lot of um these policies were realigning some of the language. So particularly from Office of Management and Budget or OM um there were some things in there about uh video surveillance, electron monitoring, um drones. the one that I think we had and again
008um I'll ask Jim Jim and Sharon if I'm missing anything but I think a majority of the time or the one that we discussed the most was PO6235 about the fund balance um percentage. I think we spent probably a good deal talking about that when we met, but we'll have discussion once we get there. Um, pending anyone's questions before the discussion for the action item. All right. Any questions for Zach or the rest of the work group? Seeing none, thank you. Um, we will move on to 2D, student representative report. Okay, I don't have much since there's not much going on in the summer, but there's some things that are coming up. Um, first though, I thought this was kind of crazy when I saw it. Um, if this works. You're okay. Okay, so one
009of our Stone High School students, he's a senior this year, Gavin Riser, helped to set a national record in the 200 medley relay for the age range 15 to 18 for the uh comp competitive team McFarland Sharks. And then he also like has several school records for Stoen, but I thought it was kind of insane to have someone from Stoton have a national record. Um and then volleyball had its youth camp last week. So the camp was led by high school players and um they had a lot of participation from youth in our district. And then student senate um our exec team will be meeting tomorrow morning to start planning for homecoming and then our full senate meeting will be later. um thought I was in trouble. My high school days, but um so we're
010going to start planning homecoming tomorrow and then the full Senate meeting will be later this month on August 19th. Um so some exciting homecoming news. We thought we weren't going to have the back parking lot for the tailgate, but construction will be done. So, the tailgate will still be at the high school and the parade will still be its regular route this year. Um, and then some other things, all fall sports started practice today. And then football and soccer's first game will be August 22nd. And then girls swim and volleyball are on August 23rd. So, things coming up later this month, but nothing happening right now. And that's all I have. Huh? Does anyone have any questions for Michaela? Lisa, what's homecoming date? And who who's the football team playing? You should know this. I'm
011trying to think. Homecoming is late this year. It's October. It's like the second or third weekend in October. I'm not sure. I can let you know at the next meeting. October. Yeah. You can always text your dad. October 10th. That weekend. Do you know who they're playing? Do you have any idea? Prairie. Yeah, Prairie. Okay. I mean, you should. All right. Um, any other questions for Michaela? Seeing none, we are on to item 3A, Dr. Kezer's report. Okay. Have just a few things to share in my report. Um, one thing of note that came in today, um, and it's in everyone's folders. Um, WASB sent out their flyer for their regional meetings and workshops. So, I made copies, um, for board members. If you have an interest in um, finding out a little bit more,
012there's some a descriptor of each of the meetings. They all run the same the same format. You can do inperson or virtual. Um the inperson for our our group is on September 30th. Um it's in Sun Prairie. The virtual one is um statewide and you'll you'll find the the dates in there. Um we have welcome back coming up in a few short weeks. Um, hard to believe it's the 1st of August or first week in August and we're already talking about new teacher orientation on the 20th. Um, ice cream social will be on the 21st. Watch for an email finalizing um, all of the dates, but it'll be at the end of the day here at the district office. um if you're able to make it um it's a good opportunity for board members to
013um see all of our new educators coming to the district. Welcome back week is August 25th through the 29th. We'll do the kickoff on the 25th um at noon um in the comments and then the first day of school will be September 2nd. So mark your calendars. Um we want to say thank you to the class of 2025 which donated the remaining u meal balances um in their accounts to our students in need. Um so this money is being added to money that has already been donated by the community to address any um fun food service fund balances for students. Um and then um following up from our last board meeting, there was a question about summer excel as we were wrapping that up and just wanting a a snapshot in how are our trends
014in summer excel doing. So pulling the slides forward um from when we we were doing um board reports on summer Excel, you can see the trend the trend lines for our enrollment versus um those who voluntarily sign up for summer excel. Um it is all voluntary. It's o open. Um and then oftentimes we will um be limited by either the amount of staff that we have available um in filling out those seats. We had um I think the final count was 403 by the time we looked at anyone who um uh withdrew early. can kind of see a trend line of um elementary through 8th grade here in terms of enrollment. And you can see that those enrollment trends vary from year to year. Some years will have higher enrollment um in certain grade levels
015um and then less in the following year. If you really want to try to look at cohorts and it's hard to do that in a voluntary program, but then you you take first grade and then the very next year you'd go to second grade. So you red diagonally. I think here is where um a lot of the conversation when I was first coming into the district around summer excel was recruiting um and um participation in um demographics and subgroups. And while the numbers are small, this is all available um in PDF on board doc. So you can blow it up and take take a look. We had an increase in um uh students in categories um that identify as black um Hispanic um and uh two or more racist or multi-racial from last year to
016this year, which is exciting. Um, this takes a look at our e population. So, what's in red is our district population and then what's in blue is um the students who sign up for summer excel. So, you can see we had an increase in number of students um e students who participated from last year to this year. still um a little bit less than what our population is during the school year. When you take a look at students um with disabilities, you can see that we increased from last year to this year and we actually exceeded what we um have during during the school year. So by by by all accounts we've stayed strong um while increasing um diversity in our summer school summer excel program which is really really good. So after you have
017a chance to take a look at it if any board members have um individual questions feel free to reach out to me and if I can't answer them I'll get you um I'll get answers from Jeff. And last, but certainly not least, um, everyone is invited to the ribbon cutting ceremony on Tuesday, August 19th at 5:30 to 7 over at River Bluff. We'll be in the new gym. Ribbon claim will be at 6. We'll have um just a couple of short uh speaker or few speakers, couple of short speeches. Um it is registration so it will be a busy night. Um just so everyone is prepared um that we will be running uh registration so it will be active. Um and that was intentional. We wanted to make sure that uh we coincided our u
018ribbon cutting with um being able to see the see the building. very excited. As you can see in our space, um from the last board meeting to now, they completely ripped out all the carpeting, painted all the walls, new carpeting, um and the wall the partition walls closed because if you that were open, you would see exactly what this room looked like the day after our last board meeting. So, they are very quickly moving through their punch lists and um wrapping up their All right. Uh, any questions for Dan? Jared, can I ask I think this is a quick one about one of the graphs about summer excel. Yeah, it's the sixth slide, the one about race and ethnicity. Yes. Um, so like there are two columns. There's a blue column and a red column.
019And like for example, 2425 school year, the far right, the white students blew 70.7 red 80.4 70.7 the census and then the red was attended. Yep. Yeah. So blue the blue So blue rep represents our population during the school year. Red represents the population that signed up for summer school. Very similar very similar to EL and special ed. It's just that with um keeping trends across multiple years, we it was easier to put it as a bar graph as as opposed to so 78.7% of the typical school year's population is white, but 80.4% of the Excel population was white. Correct. Thank you. Okay. Any other questions for Dan? Lisa, I just wanted to uh I think it's great that the class of 2025 um made that donation to pay for the outstanding meal bills for
020students. I had a question from the community and I communicated a little bit to Dan about this about someone referencing that um with um cuts to food assistance from the federal administration that there's some concern that people including um people with families might not have as much access to nutrition as she they have in prior years. And is there anything that the school district can do to make sure kids are connected to food assistance and or resources in the community? I know we talked a little bit about last time about how we put out start um start information, but is there do we also share then how people can contribute to like account balances um and other ways that we can make sure that our kids have access to nutrition? Um, I would say we
021actually have um one group that every year fundraises specific for for um fun uh students in need for um food assistance. Um they may having the conversation here at the board table so that it we have it on the in the public. But as far as access, are you asking for how do students and families access those funds or are you asking? This person was wishing that we would be feeding all students like some districts do breakfast and lunch for all students, but I don't think we're talking about that as a board given our budget, but like is there a better way to make sure that everyone's connected to right resources? We try we we try hard with um building those relationships in in the building and if we notice that students are not having
022lunches or are hungry um I'm I'm very confident that our counselors, our social workers, our administrators are delicately approaching those conversations so that students don't go hungry during during the school day. And then if uh there is a sense of assistance being needed then they reach reach out to see what resources we could make provide to the student and or the family to do that. Um and when we talk about demographics around economics, it is probably one of our most sensitive pieces of da d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d da and it is very closely um scrutinized as far as who has
023access um to that because it is highly confidential. So that's why it's it's very hard to um to give definitive answers because it is information that that we hold very uh very close because of its sensitivity um for families and want to make sure that we are doing right by by the families and the students. Now that being said, you talk to the parents and you talk to the child and you might get two vastly different answers on how they want to approach that. That being said, um we take a we take a very cautious approach in handling those conversations delicately. Thank you. Yeah, go for it. Come on up. Do you just want to add too that um Jenny in our office, she's been here for 16 years now and she's been sort of
024the lead in our food service um around in this particular area since then and a lot of families know her. Um and she knows of a lot of families. Again, like Dan said, we're pretty careful about confidentiality. One, because we want to be, but two because we have to be. Um there's some pretty strict requirements around that. but she knows a lot of families and they contact her directly and we um the vast majority of our students that qualify for free and reduced meals are done so through direct certification which is a process that was put in place. It's been a number of years now but essentially um what used to be a paper application where people had to fill that out. that's still an option, but the vast majority of our kids um are
025eligible through direct certification, which is a process that we run out of my office um where we submit our our student roster to the state and if they qualify for other things like I I don't even know what they all are, but there's certain um Medicaid, food stamps, there's a lot of different things where if they're already eligible for that as a family, they are direct certified, meaning they automatically qualify without, excuse me, having to go through that paper application process. We're required, I think, to run that a couple of times a year. Jenny does it at least once a month. Um, so if circumstances have changed, um, you know, just say someone loses a job or whatever and they automatically qualify for other services, they will come on to our our list through that
026direct certification process. So, she she does that pretty regularly. And then again, for families, um, once you're on it, like so, if you're on it in 2425, you don't roll roll off until I think it's the end of September. you have like that first month. So, um if there are families who qualified last year but didn't hit that direct certification target this year, um we will within in partnership with our food service company, we will practically reach out to those families and say you you didn't qualify through direct certification. Here's an application. Um and then we work with our social workers. We just, you know, we have some families that we know need some extra support. And so, I mean, that's probably one of Jenny's greatest strengths is she she has those relationships and she
027knows those people. So really definitely try to do our best to be proactive um to provide those resources before you know someone falls into a situation. That would that direct certification be seamless for the student where our system identifies that they're eligible for free and reduced lunch. They go into the lunch line with their card and their meal is covered. Like they don't they don't have to worry about that. They're not flagged in any way. No. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And like I said, I think last I looked, I think about 75% of the students who are on free free or reduced meals are are on through that direct certification process, which really it's it's just it's so much easier for the families. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks. Right. Any other questions about Dan's report?
028Being none, we are on to item four, the consent agenda. Move approval of the consent agenda as presented. Second. Seconded by Garcia. Is there any discussion? I had a question in the bills payable category. It was the document ECH. I think it's on page five. There was a payment to level up fitness for membership. I was just curious if anybody could elaborate what that is. Certainly. So, Level Up is a business in town and it is one of the benefits that we have for our um employees. So, they um can access if if you're an employee of the school district, you have access to free membership. Got it. Um one of the things that um also we've been working with level up um is trying to provide some um before school and after school programming
029also as part of that. So in lie of um not everyone accesses the free membership options. So trying to maximize the dollars that we um put towards level up that we are adding um exploring options of adding before and after school for our for our employees. So if they wanted to and I'm totally making this up a run club before school or after school or you know cardio workout or something like that. Makes sense. Thank you. Any other questions regarding the consent agenda discussion? Sharon, I had another about the athletic tournaments as fundraisers. I looked at the document, you know, it's got dates, how many teams? Where exactly does the fundraising piece come into that? I mean, I could imagine, you know, concessions or admission or something, but could anybody clarify that a little bit?
030Um, if I could give a very high level, but Eric is walking up and she can she can help out because this is an annual process that we do every August. Yeah. Of all the things that we're required to look at on an annual basis, this is one of it's very strange, but if a if um I'll just if a team I'll say the tennis team has a a meet where they invite a whole bunch of teams and it's a tournament, there's usually like an entry fee and then there's costs for tennis is a bad example. they don't have referees. Volleyball, let's say there's a volleyball tournament, you they pay an entry fee. There's costs associated with referees, whatnot. Um, usually there's a there's a profit from the operation of that tournament that is accounted
031for separately for our athletics department. So, the the profits they make on that, they basically treated the fundraiser so that way they can, using the volleyball example, maybe they want to have that tournament for three years, accumulate enough money to buy, a new setting machine or Yeah. whatever it is. So, they can use those funds to to be treated that way versus on an annual basis, the money just goes back into the general fund. So, it's but yes, you're right. There's concessions, all that kind of stuff, but it's it's just a way that they can generate some money for their programs. Thank you. Any other questions before Erica goes away? Nope. All right. Seeing none, the consent agenda has been moved and seconded. All in favor? I I any opposed? Any abstensions? The consent agenda
032is approved. We are now on to item five, discussion. There is nothing listed under discussion. So we will move to item six, discussion action. And this is where we talk about policy updates. So I need a motion. Move to approve the policies as presented. Second. Moved by Bubon and seconded by Pew. And now um if there is any discussion I'm just going to call out the policy numbers and if you have a question or comment or feedback um raise your hand. So policy 3440 and 4440 seeing none. Policy 6110 seeing none. Policy 6111. [Music] Seeing none. Policy 6112. Again, seeing none. Policy 6114. None. Policy 6235. So this is the one I think I just wanted to bring up for the full board's attention where we had a discussion because this is where at least
033when I came on the board um you know when when they were having to make the decision with um staffing uh this is where I think I heard a lot about percentages and like how much you know do you use from the general fund and so this is where it it says 25% and I I couldn't remember if it was 20 but historically I think Erica you said it's 20. I think that's what it used to be. Okay. But it was never in and it was never in policy. There was never an official number to in our old policy before Neiola. It did. Okay. Okay. Sorry not to put you on the spot, but yeah. But uh so I guess some of the question was is why, you know, why did it go from 20
034to 25? And we talked a lot about, I think, the short-term borrowing, how it correlates to the Moody's, you know, with our rating. And I don't know, we probably don't want to disrupt that if we can help it. And there that was, you know, Yeah. Yeah. I think the the big piece is is that the ability to short-term borrowing. So based on the time of year that we receive our funding from property taxes and state aid, there are when you look at our cash flow chart, there's definitely a historic pattern of when we have cash on hand and when we don't. And um there are many districts in the state that have to borrow. They basically take out a loan to cover their expenses kind of in that like October, November, December time frame. um
035from the time in which they get their last aid payment from the state in June until those that next aid payment shows up like a or a large property tax payment in January. So because um our fund balance is sufficient that we we've been at a percentage for really over 20 years now where we have not had to do that. Essentially it a it avoids the cost associated with borrowing interest expense the cost for attorneys to get involved. So, we believe that it's important to to be able to avoid that to keep our money for educational purposes. All right. Any Oh, go ahead. What's an example of when we dipped into the fund balance over the years? So, well, one example is at our last board meeting, we actually approved a designation of our fund
036balance. So essentially what we've said is we're going to take a piece of that. We've identified the amount and we're going to carry that and then in 2526 so now as those purchases the when the goods show up here we're essentially going to pay for those and reduce that fund balance next year um for that amount. Um that's that's one way. Um trying to remember I don't there ever been an emergency sort of an example I would say not to the extent where we had to significant my balance. That's not good. Yeah. Well, whatever this you got the the We did not bring No. And during CO actually it was the opposite where when when everything shut down and we just had no idea if we would be seeing a budget repair bill or if
037you know something would change, we actually halted our spending. I think most districts did because we were just so fearful that there would be a budget repair bill. Um, and that's actually the point in time that our fund balance increased. I think we might have even talked about that a little bit in the committee meeting where we'd kind of been hovering around that 25 to 28% and then we had a that that COVID year our fund balance went up pretty significantly. We usually target we we tried to be within 2% of our budget. So if we underspend or overspend by 2% if you think about it $45 million budget 2% is about $900,000 either way. Um so that in 2020 we definitely were under budget by more than that because we just we just didn't
038know what to expect. Thank you. Any other questions about policy 6235? Jim, let me just say just and we had this conversation a while back that it was higher and it made sense uh to sit and see where things were going a little bit and the 25% I would is I would suggest is a pretty is a good healthy number. we could probably operate with a little less, but um it seems like that's a good target to stay close to and I see the policy includes, you know, if we're starting to approach that somehow or there's an issue with that, it'll come back to the board. You can always change the number for sure. The other thing I mentioned too, I know when our audit report comes back, the fund balance is always calculated as
039a percentage of fund 10. We typically add our special education fund into that as well because it is a large chunk of how we operate. So, um, when you add in those expenditures for our fund 27 as well, that can impact I mean it's it's it's a number that's based off of dividing two other numbers. So, um, you can look at it in different ways and and I typically do include our special education fund because it's part of our operational cost. I I would just add I think it reflects just from what I've followed over the prior experience too that it's a I think it overall represents good management of the budget where we're at. So it's good. All right. Any other comments regarding this policy? All right. Seeing none, policy 6325. Seeing none. Policy
0407310. [Music] Seeing none. Policy 7440. [Music] Seeing none. Policy 744.01. Seeing none. 744.02. Seeing none. Policy 7440.03. Again, seeing none. Policy 7454. Policy 7540.03. Policy 7540.04. Policy 8305. Policy 8500, policy 8531, and policy 8600. Very good. All right. So, um, the policies have been moved for approval and seconded, and this needs to be a roll call vote. Mr. Buban, yes. Miss Cryle is excused. Mr. Masa, yes. Miss Garcia, yes. Miss Sorg, yes. Miss Pew, yes. Mr. Moser, yes. Dr. Sharon Milin Bartlett, yes. President Patterson, yes. These are approved. We are on to item 7A, recap of action items. I have homecoming is October 10th against Sock Prairie. Tailgate will be in the parking lot. Uh there's a flyer in everyone's folder about upcoming WASBY meetings. Please take the flyer and leave the folder. August 19th
041is the ribbon cutting at Riverluff Middle School at 5:30. Arrival time ribbon cutting at 6. And what else did I forget? Being none. Okay, so we have future meetings. A regular board meeting on August 18th and September 2nd at 6:30. We have outreach workg group meeting tomorrow night, August 5th at 5:30 and employee relations is convening on August 6th at 5:00 pm. And if there is nothing else, I would entertain a motion for adjournment. So moved. Moved by seconded by Masa Meyers. Any discussion? All in favor? I. Any opposed? Any abstensions? Meeting is adjourned. Number nine.