001e e e basically two [Music] this Jo says call to order this meeting of the stoen Area School District Board of Education Miss Dar Ro Mr Tim buban here miss Mia cyle here fry here Miss Don Garcia here Mr Zach mamers here Miss Lisa Pew here Miss Allison sorg here Dr Sharon milin Bartlett here Lily here and President Joe Patterson here all right first item on the agenda then is public comment seeing no members of the public in the gallon today I will proceed to the written public comments as for board requirements the first comment is from Lori herkes hello I am here to express my deep concern about the rapid move to bring police back to stoton high school while this may seem like a solution to school's safety in reality it's an ineffective
002harmful and negligable mov the belie that the belief that police and schools deter shootings is not supported by evidence a 2021 study and Jama Network open analyzed nearly 200 school shootings and found that SRO did not reduce deaths or injuries and in some cases made situations worse what sro's do effectively is criminalized students particularly black latino lgbtq plus and disabled youth schools with SRO report higher arrest rates for minor infractions fueling the school to prison pipeline nationally black students make up 15% of enrollment but 31% of school related arrests here disparities are even worse A Center for Public Integrity report found that Wisconsin refers students to law enforcement at far than twice the national average with black indigenous and disabled students disproportionately targeted Beyond arrests police and schools create an environment of fear and anxiety
003students of color who have who already face systemic racism and police violence are forced to navigate schools where they feel like suspects rather than Learners if we truly care about school safety we must invest in proven Solutions Mental Health Resources counselors social workers and restorative justice programs real safety comes from addressing the root causes of violence not criminalizing students I urge you to reconsider this decision police presence in schools will not prevent shootings but it will harm our most vulnerable students and the second public comment is from Kristen Ford I concerned about the proposal to reintroduce police officers into our schools the timing of this proposal coinciding with Martin Luther King Jr day is striking given the historical and ongoing harm policing has inflicted on BL and ground communities Fugitive Slave Act to BR flow
004to public lynching to racial profiling and police brutality the legacy of policing in marginalized communities is one of trauma and Injustice while the intention may be to ensure Safety Research from organizations like the ACLU the National Association of school psychologists and the University of Florida shows that police in schools often has the opposite effect it fost fear criminalizes minor misbehavior and exacerbates the school to prison pipeline particularly for students of color I assume the board recognized these harms when it removed SRO after George Floyd's murder and that there was agreement that investing in counselors social workers and mental health professionals is the best way to address behavioral issues and create supportive environments for students it is very it is disappointing that this proposal was reintroduced in reaction to a school shooting exploiting a moment of
005vulnerability to revive a harmful strategy to do so on MLK Junior Day demonstrates a profound lack of sensitivity to communities of color I urge the board to reject this proposal and prioritize alternative approaches such as increasing funding for mental health resources implementing restorative justice programs providing trauma informed training and engaging students parents and community members in developing safety plans that reflect our shared values and that is all for public buet tonight so we can move on to item 2B which is the legislative I know that we'll be talking about our legislative tour later on the agenda so I'll just tell you what's going on at the federal and state levels uh last Friday the US Department of Education sent a dear colleague letter to schools around the country saying that the 2020 Title 9 rule
006from the previous Trump Administration was now enforced that's after um a u f challenge to the Biden administration's Title 9 rewrite you might recall we updated our policy related to that um change in Title 9 which would have added anti-discrimination protections for students on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity the new rule in the Trump Administration prohibits schools from barring transgender students from using bathrooms changing facilities and pronouns that correspond with their gender identities uh last week also last Wednesday president Trump signed two executive orders that impacted schools they are aimed mostly at promoting school choice through Federal grant programs um they also uh talked about restricting federal funds to schools or states that directly or indirectly support or subsidize the instruction advancement or promotion of gender ideology or discriminatory uh Equity ideology
007uh it's um according to wasby there won't be any um uh there will be limited impact from these orders uh since the largest sources of federal funds to K12 schools are around Title One and special education funding which would would require Congress to make a change um there you might recall there was a lot of news about a federal funding freeze uh that came out in an OM men memo which has now since been rescinded uh there was a concern about the freeze on some K12 funding related to Child Nutrition and other education funding streams um that again that um memo was related to funding that would was related to diversity equity and inclusion initiatives and transgender policies again that memo was resented although we don't know if there's more to come related to the
008executive orders that uh affect those Dei policies on the state level uh there are 93 referendum questions for 88 86 school districts across the state uh February 18th uh which is the uh primary election there will be five school districts on the ballot with five referendum questions and then on April 1st around the state there'll be 88 referendum questions in 81 districts I looked at the list of referendums the ones in our our general area Deerfield Belleview barbou and NIS have um referendum questions on their ballots this year I think it's I think it's once again a record year for referendum on the ballots uh the state does have an even bigger Surplus we've talked about this before that there's a $4 billion Surplus there was a reestimate the legislative fiscal Bureau just came back
009and said it's no longer Just 4 billion it's 4.3 billion which means that the state legislature has that funding to determine priorities um which oftentimes makes legislating the budget easier but I guess we'll see uh at the at the wasby convention men um there was a legislative update that I know some of our folks attended um some of takeaways from that uh they they gave a kind of an overview of where Wisconsin is with education funding in 2002 Wisconsin was 11th in per pupil spending in public schools in 2020 we dropped to 25th um the governor gave his State of the State address on January 22nd uh he announced that in his budget he will will be including 147 million for supplemental nutrition Aid so I he wants to expand um free school lunch for
010all students a three M $300 million investment in mental health in schools and then grants to schools to support violence reduction and other prevention initiatives that's just a snippet of what he said that will be included in his budget uh wasby shared what their budget priorities are increase increasing special education categorical a they want to get the reimbursement of special ed services to 90% currently we're about 33% uh they want at a minimum inflationary increases in spendable resources for schools and they talk also about preserving local Schoolboard Authority making sure that um unfunded State mandates to school districts aren't expanded they want to assist uh find ways to assist districts with staff retention and recruitment uh and then they want to H create a categorical aid for school-based mental health services basically to get away
011from just small Grant programs and make it a a reliable sustainable category of funding for schools so that's what wasby the School Board Association will be inside the capital lobbying for in the budget there's also a series of bills in the queue the legislative session is just getting started and we'll be hearing more about these uh particularly about the state report card uh there's a group of uh while legislators that are concerned that DPI the Department of Public Instruction altered its state testing and achievement scores this time so there's a lot of talk about how uh is should DPI have done that and there will be more restrictions on their ability to do that in the future there's a new uh Committee in the assembly called the government accountability government operations accountability and transparency committee
012or better known as goat um and that will be looking at school finances very heavily uh there's a cell phone bill uh cell phone ban bill that is being drafted and will be introduced shortly lots of uh feedback on that bill already um even before I think it's been um circulated and we heard certainly from students in our legislative tour today with about their opinions on um restrictions on cell phone use in school um another bill that they think might have legs this year which has stalled in previous sessions is a bill that would promote the hiring of retired teachers um some legislators that had been opposed to this legislation are no longer in the legislature so I think the deal with that is that when you retire as a teacher you are not able
013to access the um ws wrs and so if you go back in the pool then that's why retired teachers could not be rehired in the same way as previous as as they were um employed previously then also there's key Republican leaders that are um supporting and um continuing funding for the off office of school safety uh Governor delivers his budget address on February 18th so that's a date to mark on your calendar and March 12th is the Wisconsin Association School boards day at the capital and I don't know how long they are doing registration for that but March March 5th is the deadline yes that's it that's it y That's it any questions for wait oh I have a quick question was jez that was not right at all okay um is the 4.3 billion
014something big number is that extra or just like more than we would usually have or is that just like so there's a couple of reasons why that money exists I think they say that the States been collecting more on sales tax so um uh for because of inflation and other reasons there's more money just coming in in terms of Revenue I think that when there were Federal Co dollars that came in it kind of backfilled money that the state would normally have spent its own dollars on certain programs and things so and also in the last budget the governor and the Republican legislature couldn't agree on how to spend that money because the Republicans wanted to give a big tax cut and the Democrats wanted to say fund schools and because they couldn't agree that
015money just sat there it's just getting bigger and bigger and bigger it's kind of a good problem to have I guess depending on how you look at it other questions really okay moving on to item 2C is committee reports and I wonder if we want to just talk briefly about the legislative day today anybody else Zach why don't you yeah it was great I enjoyed being there it was nice to see local state and federal people come and to hear them say that stoen is one of the few places that has it in this format where all three are there I think the student panel was really set up well this year I think it was really effective um yeah it was it was nice to be able to have more time this year it
016it felt like a good amount of time [Music] so yeah I um compared to last year I think we had a couple we had more people in attendance um and they had some really great questions for our student panel I was impressed with like how engaged that back and forth was they really wanted to hear from the students and the students were like Zach said just did a great job Lily was one of them but uh talk the whole time but not just Lily you know to a person those the kids on that panel were just articulate um they had points of view and weren't afraid to be transparent about you know their experiences they shared openly their ideas um it it was great and they you know didn't always all they weren't all of
017One mind but they were very you know respectful of one another and let each other talk and then add it on and it was yeah it was a good it was a good a good uh panel which I think I didn't go on the tours of Sand Hill but I I heard back from some of the participants that the tours were really great it was great to get to see different things in action although Lots the runny noses and little kids yeah we started our day here at 8 um for like a like an hour of chatting and greeting with people and then the school bus came up and we all got on the bus and went over to Sand Hill and Principal Bob um gave a great introduction sharing a little bit about how
018they've used their referendum funding and some of the demographic challenges in that particular school with the 20% um population of students with disabilities compared to the district and generally State average of 14% um a high free and reduced lunch um uh population as well and then we split up into groups of six I think and then uh we we saw fourth grade classrooms in kindergarten and first grade classrooms we got to see like the the not wit and wisdom but the mag magnetic magnetic um curriculum in action um and got to sit and talk with individual little cute Little Learners although as I was helping a student with his math that he was like um so that was fun and um we were also in an art class and then when we came back to
019the library had that great student panel with you know freshman sophomore juniors and seniors all sharing everything about their concerns about River Bluff and their concerns about vaping but also the great things that you know the AP classes that they're able to take and the other course offerings and you know the all the opportunities that they have in school so it was really I think a great experience for everybody I learned something too no I would I thank you to the legislative committee for helping to continue this tradition of um the legislative day um as I as was mentioned um at the end when they're asking about other districts who do this when we were at the convention I had been approached by a couple of individuals about our legislative day and think that it
020is something we should strongly consider when it comes to June and they open up calls for proposals that we might want to consider um putting that as a uh a session for next convention and maybe even bringing some of our elected officials that have come for multiple U legislative days to to talk about it I can't say enough um to everything that was shared um not only from the legislative committee to uh coming up with the format and I agreed the feedback from last year of just spending one time in one building and having opportunity um to spend more time in classrooms and then bring the high school students up um because that was the other piece I think we maximized the value of both and I think the time the time allotment was was
021great I thank U Miss jimlo and and uh Miss Ash for working with the student population to get a very diverse um group of students who all had um their lived experiences to share and we're very open and brave to share those those um comments and again to miss daro um and Miss sharp who worked behind the scenes with Logistics to make sure that all the pieces were were put together so it was a really a lot of people in there to do to pull off a really I think positive day um I said this a couple of times to the elected officials and say this to the to the community at large advocating for public 12 education is really about the storytelling and how it impacts you in your community and our answer to
022share sharing with our elected officials what how it impacts our community is to bring them into our buildings and I think that is great so I look forward to hearing the feedback from the survey that we'll send out um and start planning for next year and um already have a couple of ideas that I can't wait to pitch to the legislative uh work group for 2026 so any other questions from board members about the day no all right moving on to item two D the student representative report clent and culture there okay so backing up item 2C was um committee reports climate and culture was listed but that committee work group meeting got rescheduled oh sorry about that so I am good to go you are good to go okay well I wasn't sure um
023if this doesn't work I'm gonna like you want to sit here it time no I think I was assigned this spot I didn't choose it okay so for academics our Spanish four kids got to try a taste of Spanish culture with a um breakout edu on um El Gordo which is an annual Spanish tradition so um I heard from a couple of my friends that were in that class that they really enjoyed that um we also enjoyed a visit from Thunder during finals week I know those of you who are at legislative day got to hear a little bit about thunder and him finding his her him finding their their word okay forever home um with a veteran and uh Thunder actually got to meet one of the other service dogs named Kevin it was
024adorable I couldn't find a picture but I'll I'll find one for you guys next time don't worry sixth graders also got to try out Escape in the wild robot breakout box which I also heard was very well received um and kindergarteners got to use um geod decodable texts to kind of help them build their reading skills and apply it like a Hands-On way um and then shs photography class is going to be showcasing their work in the boardroom coming soon I know we've got got that here but I think we've got a couple more things coming in pretty soon here so you guys will have to keep an eye out for that um as far as Athletics um our guys wrestling finished 22 at the warrior duels and celebrated senior night would have been last
025Friday and boys basketball beat Oregon and then girls basketball beat Lakeside Lutheran and and then on senior night boy swimming beat barou so we're heading pretty strong into our winter sports and then dance is sending brillan Bratz to the state dance championship this weekend so shout out to her she danced she danced her heart out so there's that and then as far as activities um the 2024 gobble wobble raised almost $14,000 which I think is incredible especially with what we talking about in terms of legislature happening right now um Norse afternoon of fun I know a couple of you guys were there was a huge success and I wasn't personally able to go but I have not heard a single bad thing at all so um we also had um our schools and forc play
026and learn um which was like a little event where the kids just got to kind of color and run around the gym and stuff so um in terms of high school activities though um well 4K open houses this month then I can go do you want to go to the next slide so the high school student Senate is doing our annual blood drive with the Red Cross in two weeks now I encourage you guys if you can to donate blood this is not only available to high school students but to the whole community and um we usually have a pretty good turnout every year um I donate blood every year they usually give out t-shirts apparently this time they're giving out gift cards I got a Snoopy t-shirt one year I thought it was pretty
027cool then I got a Godzilla shirt the other year but um mark your calendars Wednesday February 19th um there's a ton of slots open all throughout the day so um today sorry I felt like rhyming the next one all right and also on the topic of Senate run activities we just submitted our spirit of Excellence portfolio and for those of you guys who don't remember or haven't been introduced Spirit of Excellence is something that the WC holds as a competition every year where basically you get all of these categories and you put together like a 60 page document with everything that's basically great about your school so there's different categories like lowering the achievement Gap um Athletics and like sportsmanship school spirit and you know um like participation there's academic achievements um like Fine Arts
028achievements so like music band Orchestra the whole thing so that took an entire team of our Senators to put together and proof read all of that stuff so we will find out from the spirit of Excellence committee and the wasc in about a week here where we placed we typically win uh region five which is like our section of the state um every year for Spirit of excellence and we won two years ago and then got beat out by spash which is Steven's Point last year which I'm have my own thoughts about after seeing their portfolio regardless we are hoping to bring back the State title and we get to go to a Bucks game um they keep switching the day round so I'm not going to tell you when the day is because it's
029probably going to get switched again as soon as I tell you but regardless um I will eventually have either a paper copy or the PDF link for you guys to be able to look at because it really is a great portfolio of everything that the students do and that they care about and it is kind of weird because it's based on calendar year and not school year so there's some overlap but I think it's pretty cool do you want to and then last but certainly not least for those of you guys who did not see my email yet um there are still Pops concert tickets available and you guys should buy some we have a pretty good lineup this year and um you can see me in it too I'm just singing back with all
030my friends on because I'm not getting up in front of everybody and singing by myself but um we have the choir students working with with band and I believe Orchestra to bring this all together so next Monday I'll be looking for you guys don't worry the audience I'm gonna go you show up you show up you didn't show up third row third row we're going you gonna wear shirt this is Lily please don't so we can go on to the next thing if we want I'll have Miss sharp start working on some signs yeah we go okay thank you Lily does anyone have any questions for Lily other than what color signs we should make no I go ahead M Lily were you saying that the the blood um donation whatever it's called the blood
031drive is sponsored by student senate or who like who hosts that so the Red Cross kind of right we put the whole thing together with the Red Cross so they come in and they have all of the people that like draw the blood and stuff but then we have students who are checking people in for their appointments they have our little like snack station that you have to sit at afterwards so they help hand out snacks and make sure that there's no issues with like people filling out all the forms and stuff beforehand so they check IDs and stuff like that I'm going to come back on my microphone so people can actually hear me but yes student Senate yep student Senate has been doing that for quite a few years now so so uh
032seeing as how it's Black History Month you might want to highlight the fact that um blood banking in general and the first Blood drives were um brought to the the Red Cross did that under the leadership of uh I think his name is Dr Charles Drew who was a black physician oh kiding in England right before World War I I need the blood mobiles and yeah sorry I've been learning a lot about medical Pioneers for work black so no you need to learn something new every day are there any other questions for no then we will move on to item three Dr teaser all right see it doesn't work for me okay so apparently I'm just passing around the bad ju guu at this point all right so the I have three three bullet points
033the first one is uh we've talked already but I want to share um some photos from um legislative day so uh I did not get to go into join our class we were in a music class and we were learning how to play the ukulele so please that is actually me trying to play ukulele I haven't done that since I was in Middle School um we were able to see multiple classrooms going from kindergarten all the way to fifth grade we got to see um examples of um our art music and PE along with some literacy and and Mathematics um and um the experiences as you can see here um just run the gamut it was great to see um students engaged in their in their learning and um all all of our participants in
034the legis legislative day being able to get up um close to students and talking with them um sometimes wipe noses and stuff like that the important thing is we walked out no one had any any cling on students because that's the thing I always tell tell people when they go to elementary schools here is you gota look down when you walk out because you might have kids still hugging your legs when you're looking out so the next uh slide is um with all of um the past couple of weeks been a flurry of information in the media and on social media um um we sent out um through our our um building of family newsletters a statement um about immigration and um our immigrant students and really wanted to reassure our families of our continued
035commitment from the board table to the classroom table around we are educating all students every student who lives in our in our school district and comes to our schools our we take our charge around um making sure that they return home um well educated and well cared for and wanted to give the opportunity for the board and for the community to know exactly how we've codified those things within our policies and really it's for four policies but the main one is um our first one that I've listed here 554 which is how our schools and government agencies interact with one another in any and all cases whenever we are engaged with students and other government governmental agencies we are informing our families about um those connections so our policy 5540 if we invite a governmental
036agen like law enforcement or say family community services we are informing our F our families that um we're having that contact if they to our buildings our building administrators always have that right of refusal to not engage in those services so on one end it's a call for service on the other end it is them requesting entry and we have the right to evaluate that and make those determinations at the local level the third um piece which is rarely used but one that is definitely been in the news is about warrants if a valid warrant is served we are obligated to follow um that warrant in that execution now the I met with our building administrators and I've told them they're not uh they don't have JDS I don't have a JD we're not lawyers
037by training or profession and so if we are served with a warrant they are to let me know and then I will engage our legal services to validate a warrant and if that takes time that takes time but we're we're going to validate and make sure that we have a valid warrant if a warrant is served on us so the other three policies really talk about facility security student records and school visitors which all indicate that anyone who who isn't already a a staff member has is only invited into our system by the administration so either we've called them there or they've requested to come in and we've assessed and okay them to be on our premises and then the Student Records again validates what is a student record what is directory data versus non-directory
038data and anything that isn't already directory data and signed off for is not going to be released unless um acted in accordance to state or federal law and the third and last are a couple of updates I'm I figure people have questions about um what I just talked about but um we did receive one petition for detachment so prior um this was just decided prior to our 17th board meeting we will have a public hearing it will happen right uh just prior to the 17th meeting um so that will be information coming out shortly one month from today we will be bringing forward our um critical Staffing this is one month earlier than it was a year ago but a year ago we were going to operational referendum so we waited until after the um
039vote to bring our staffing but in the hopes of getting out in front of hiring um we want to make sure that we give as much time so by coming one month earlier um we hope that we can get through the Staffing process and then get any postings out there before spring break so our building administrators can start doing interviews and then as already mentioned the day at the capital is March 12th the due date is March 5th so you still have plenty of time to consider but if you do want to participate just let Rachel and she will get you registered for that can you like I don't want to say like dumb it down but what does petition to detach mean perfect so by state law um people who own property within a
040school district can have a right to detach their property and attach it to a different municipality in this case a different School District last year we had two individuals who live adjacent to neighboring school districts this one is adjacent to the Deerfield School District so they went to they are sending a petition to have their property which is currently part of the St Area School District and have it removed from our school district and attached to Deerfield School District which seems kind of like why would one do that but by doing that they become residents of that school district and they don't have to go through open enrollment to send their children to that school but at the same time doing that takes all of the the tax valuation the tax dollars and sends it
041to that school district moving forward we had a couple of two of those last school year and this is a repeat one okay so this one so this public hearing is the same one that we had a year ago and it's actually one of the two people that came last oh so they're like requesting it again oh okay I didn't know that that was what that was called when we were doing that yeah it's called a petition to detach thank you you're welcome Sharon building on that will the materials that you referred to that are going to come up before the February 17th meeting does that describe what this hearing process looks like yes and no um we'll for the the actual petition which will kind of give a description of where this property is
042and what what two school districts are involved in it essentially what the school boards here in in Dearfield are doing a hearing um they're reviewing the petition we have to have a public hearing by law the property owner may or may not show um and then the school boards have to either vote for the petition or vote against the petition and if there's a split vote then the petitioner has a right to appeal to the state for in a a final ruling but um I'll look to see if there's some additional information that I can I can send out to the board but it's it's a fairly straightforward process they're basically saying prior to open enrollment this was the only way that you could go from one school District to another was by actually physically
043moving your property from one school district to another but now that we have open enrollment it's kind of made this uh um Antiquated um process but it's still one that people choose particular that live along the margins of a school district because they can then get transportation from their home school district if you're open enrolled you don't have a right to transportation from your so that is kind of a big deal to some yeah for some it is and the tax the tax impact is a is an um impact as well does that like is that amount of money the same stuff as when you talk about like the per pupil money that we would have to give to them is that the same number not necessarily the same number because it's based on the
044value of the property um so this property is is out in the country um so the value the size and the value of the property may be different than if it were like in downtown stoton um however because it is a basically a permanent option those dollars will continue go to the new school district which decreases the tax burden on the receiving School District it increases our taxes so mil things like mill rate in the conversations we have every October for our annual meeting get impacted by that interesting any other questions I don't know if it's so much a question or maybe something for us to be cognizant of but the slide about the imig students and the policies that we currently have in place that govern interactions with things like um elide entities we
045should just make sure that if we do move forward with that position that the Contours of that contract are consistent with those policies or also decide to take up adjusting those policies if necessary I know if I were a parent right now and we had the SRO in place that might be one of the things I would be alarmed about so I would actually counter that because an SRO is going to be able to probably give us more guidance on whether a warrant is valid or not I'm one of my fears is that given the nature of I don't want to get into too much detail the nature of the work we're going to see an increase in some vigilantism perhaps and folks going into schools posing as immigrant officials and so I think I
046hear what you're saying I think it's a great point but I also think that there's another side to that too comments or questions go ahead um how much of the uh immigrant information has been sort of made widely available for our families in terms of which policies they can ref refer to basically your whole slide you how public facing is are you going to be with that I'll be as public facing as as families uh would like and working through our building administrators and being very in tune with our um staff who work with our multilingual Learners we want to make sure that we um inform but not alarm our F our families um so a lot of this um broke while uh those of us who were at the convention were in Milwaukee so
047it was the opportunity was afforded to me to talk to our two law firms that we work with closely and both happen to work with niola who um draft all of our policies they said our policies are written um very directly in terms of giving School District maximum flexibility in terms of being able to advocate for our students so they they said um their advice was you have to assess your community and your your local context if you are in a community that is already very much insulated in terms of um activities like Immigration and Customs Enforcement being in and around your your schools your um factories and so forth the last thing you really want to do is put a spotlight on your community by putting a lot a lot out in the public
048space that may draw attention to to law enforcement who are looking for for pockets we are fortunate enough to live in Dayne County where we have a lot of um public support in our um state and local communities and and um institutions that insulate our families from this so it's one to inform but it but not alarm so that we don't have families who are saying why are you putting this out here are you trying to tell us in a coded way that something is happening and if so I'm going to have my kids at home until I feel otherwise sending them back so that's what we mean by inform but not alarm when I worked in another District back in 2016 um our multilingual families in that Community told us very directly if you
049put out any communication around this that's exactly how we will take that we actually keep our keep our children home and we will go into hiding because any communication is a heads up that something is about to happen so please keep us informed but know that the any public statements will be taken in this way in much a similar fashion we I connected with building administration building Administration connected with our multilingual staff and so that we would um communicate appropriately for them so we provided a statement we have a working document that has the policy pieces in there and um all of our principles have access to that so if there is something we have a a line of communication from the buildings back to me to be able to react very quickly if if
050or um we if something happens or if we get word that something may happen Okay thank you any other questions report being none we are on to item four of the consent agenda I move approval of the consent agenda as presented second second by S any discussion being none all in favor I any opposed exensions the consent agenda is approved then we are on to item five which is State Convention reports I'd like to go first I'll go um one of the Keynotes one of the keynote speakers talked about you're never supposed to ask people like how they're doing uh in that it perpetuates kind of negative thinking and can and get you in a negative space he said you're always always supposed to start out your greeting by saying tell me something good so
051that's supposed to be your greeting from now on um I went to a couple session I went to a session on SRO because of how much we've been talking about it and I thought it was really helpful the principal who's done a lot of his own like dissertation work on the role of police officers in schools uh basically didn't give an opinion on you know sr's good bad but said it was really important for school districts to have a policy on sro's because he said that the policy drives the culture and determines whether or not you get a police officer or you get a school resource officer and I did talk to the Neola Booth they have a they have a policy like a skeleton policy around sro's that we could you know look to
052developing so I thought that was something worth exploring um also into to a session on a superintendent evaluation because that's a big job of us and I know we've talked a lot about that here and there was just a couple of model of superintendent evaluation that they discussed and shared and um I took some resources around that and um and then I also was really interested in some of the one of the big things at convention I think that is interesting is the the convent the the vendor the vendor area just walking around and seeing like what's available what are other schools doing and I stopped at a couple booths that had dashboards that were because I feel like we have we have our three big great great big goals and it's on our website
053but it's just that information is not very easily understood the graphic is very detailed and I think I'm very interested in having a more userfriendly dashboard so there are places that could help us do that and so that was another thing that I went to and of course I also did the legislative update stuff which I shared earlier so um do you want to go oh okay um I went to a lot of interesting ones and I um the the school Finance thing is always interesting um the one that you know I went to the legislative update and you know they basically said a lot of what Lisa has mentioned in tonight's update um and a huge part of that is just the um lack of funding you know how we're running short so the
054next one I went to was was um called public education funding Equity um is it Equitable and you know is it adequate and they basically use science so it was um Anne Chapman from wasbo and um Chris San who's a um assoc assistant professor of Education research at W Madison and he has actually come up with a way to measure it based on something that um he calls a cost function and um he had lots of graphs and lots of slides and it went very quickly and um essentially it's not adequate and it's actually um not Equitable and they talked a lot about how had we used H this cost function based on the way we used to fund things when we were 11 in the country or or better um would if we were
055to have kept place with inflation right now we would be um funding um it was $4,400 per student more um it was quite a bit of money and he said especially what you need is more funding in high poverty areas um so he said that a lot of what happens is we end up with um uh students T not always but typically in the um better served areas that have more resources they are the ones that have the best funding and so really it was kind of no surprise to anyone what I was hoping is we were going to get to um how where to spend that money and they ran kind of ran out of time and I was waiting for them to send the rest of the PowerPoint and I don't have it
056yet um but one of the things they mentioned was your strongest benefit was from early childhood education so um I thought that was pretty interesting um and so of course this just doveet tailes into the leg um the day at the capital and you right now they're working on bills working on legislation really encourage people to reach out to your elected officials whether you think they're going to agree with you or not um they really do need to hear from us and anyway that would be that'd be my takea away from that um and then the only other one that was actually also very interesting was um dor County um had combined their four schools and and done something called project 180 that has stud um students basically run it and create it but they
057do have of course staff advisors and a huge thing that they really focused on was substance use um in their schools as well well as mental health and I there was so much information I'm not going to go into all of it but one of the things I thought was really important with it is the mental health they they had one provider youth provider for 720 kids um and that's just not going to work so what they did is they have come up with strategies to get kids involved and engaged in school they would have lock-ins or they would do um like Escape rooms or they would create all these really neat activities to kind of bring kids in um and a lot of it started from a substance use issue where one of their
058athletic teams everyone was disqualified from competing for substance use except for four kids so you can't run a team with so that was where this came in and they've actually really had a very positive impact um and I know our our students do an awful lot to help everybody else but it just seemed like a really neat student run group anyway that was it there was a lot but I'll stop and let Don go or Tim so I was your delegate um for um bosby and there were seven resolutions that were um put forth out of those seven five passed both the resolutions from ston passed um the ones that did not pass was the decoupling public and private school funding which um Lisa talked about at our last meeting and the other one that
059did not pass was um accountability and school report card standards actually there was more than seven sorry about that I think there's 12 so um right the accountability and school report card standards they wanted to um make some um changes to that and so that did not pass either um they there were some amendments to ours um nothing big at all um one of the um amendments did not pass one did um but uh um on on our um on the educational objectives that did pass um they wanted to change the word foreign language to World language in that past um they wanted to change the word technology to um Career and Technical education and um people felt that that was um just getting too nitpicky um as far as um bringing forth our um
060resolutions that um did not um come to the floor I was told to uh feel the room and no way people it went went way over time and people just wanted to get out of there there was um one school district that tried to bring something forward and it didn't get the two-thirds um vote that to bring it forward and then after that somebody tried to um adjourn and then after that another school district tried to bring theirs forward and it didn't get nearly 2third and people just wanted to get out of there but um I found it extremely interesting um people are very very passionate um about these proposals and these resolutions that come come forward um sometimes um the debate just went on and on until somebody came up and said I think
061everybody's made up their mind let's just vote so but it was uh really educational to me got a lot out of it and um so yeah going do it next here she said she right Tim you went yeah uh I went I went to some really good sessions I thought it was one of the better um conferences in recent years um so I guess I won't go into too much detail one that really stood out to me was uh building it's called building an Allan culture looking for my notes here a little bit um superintendent from beloy Turner who I went to college with so I felt like I had to go um but he's done some great work down there and one of the big things he talked about I think two things I
062kind of stood out to me was really focusing more on culture than morale uh in a school district and in the way he described it was uh if you were to describe the weather in the state of Wisconsin you wouldn't take the coldest week and say this is what Wisconsin weather is all about you would talk about it in its totality and so really emphasizing focusing on uh not just knee-jerk reacting to you know obviously if morale is down you want to address it or assess it but that not being kind of defining what your culture is at and then the thing that's always been impressed and I've talked with him about this before was they they're really focused on college career and life skills Readiness and so every student that graduates from there gets
063basically a not that not shouldn't say graduates but they get a report card that doesn't just have letter grades on it but it also information about the student in ter terms of their Readiness for careers their Readiness for college and even their life skills uh and so they're looking at that data as well as just test scores which uh I thought was really impressive um I if I have any more from that one I went to one on standards based grading which really we don't get involved in too much as a as a school board but um I thought that was fascinating in in regards to kids in this District I can't remember the district they get a grade they they're assessed on every St standard and so kids get grades based on their Proficiency
064in the standard versus a grade you know like some and I'm not suggesting this happens here but in some cases you know you'll have grading processes where if you're tardy that might count against your grade and all that stuff and really that's not how we should be grading kids we should be grading them based on evidence that they've met a standard and that we should be giving them multiple opportunities to um and some use this Competency Based learning but we should be giving them multiple opportunities to demonstrate that ultimately we want all of our kids to meet proficiency and our standards and if they're not then you know we fail them but what does that mean and so I thought that was really interesting in terms of and I've known a little bit about that
065but the processes they used I thought was really good um I went to one on on teacher mentoring one I I actually spent uh I went to one on the the wiaa did a pretty lengthy session uh you don't know what the wi is the Wisconsin inter Scholastic Athletic Association um I didn't know you know as as into Athletics and extracurriculars as I am I didn't know a lot about how they operated and it was fascinating kind of hear about that um they sometimes take a lot of criticism um but I actually I was very impressed with what I learned um and that it's membership driven um that they're very focused on competitive balance they're very focused on Equity um and getting as many kids involved um and I think one thing um they talked
066a lot about facilities and one I wrote some notes down here like they I don't know anything about this from a financial standpoint here but the money that they bring in 3.7 million is given back to membership schools so schools actually uh that are part of the WIA which most public schools and private schools are getting money back but then you know we upgraded colins field which would make us eligible to host uh tournaments a tournament game and that's a revenue Vue stream that's a possible Revenue stream and so the importance of you know uh good facilities and things like that um but for me it was really just interesting to um to hear how committed they were to Athletics being an Avenue to improve academic performance um with the idea that 98% of kids
067that play High School athletics don't go on to play in college so um and so it was just really interesting to me to hear that there was there was some you know there was some back and forth about conference realignment and things like that which I stayed out of um but um but I just felt it was very informative for me to learn a little bit more about that and then the last thing I always I always enjoy networking uh at these and meeting different people and some of you know I've been in education for a while so I run into people that I know but also people I don't to just talk with them about you know they I talked a lot about SRO and get got their perspective on how that worked and
068didn't work and um and other things that that we deal with with and so that's always very uh very useful to me and I agree uh the I always for some reason I enjoy the the gallery of the exhibitors I mean I get a lot of free pens maybe that's why I enjoy it but um and food and food yes yeah that true um but there's always some interesting stuff to see there uh so like I said I thought it was one of the better ones I've been to in years um and I really appreciate the district allowing us to go and I highly recommend if you if you can go at least once that you go because there's just there's a lot to learn anyone have any questions for Tim go which one of
069you want so is there um I know that all not all school boards or school districts belong to wasby is what is the alternative to wasby and does anybody know like what school districts per chance don't belong to wasby I do not that's a good question I do not know um what is an alternative to to wasby um and I don't believe you have to be a member of wasby to go to the convention oh you can reg you can register whether you're a member of wasp or not that's a good question though I was just curious him in the session with the person from booy if they got into details about how they evaluate the Readiness in college career and life skills like any yeah that's a good question um I wanted to see
070I'm going to reach out to them I want to see a sample of the the report card um so they didn't they didn't too much as much as saying we want to give we want to give feedback to students based on certain criteria that they're looking at yeah but that was a question I I don't know I still haven't figured out how you do that thing where you scan it and you get all the information so I'm going to reach out out to him and see can you send me an example I know I know that but if I can unlock my if I can unlock my phone it's a good day for me so specifically I would be curious to know how they are providing an evaluation of a student's life skilles yeah and
071I don't know if it's an evaluation as much as and it's funny because I deal with this in Corrections a lot because that's a big thing we look at is are we preparing these guys for re-entry um and um so I don't know if it's if it's a grade as much as they look at certain things think these are things you know almost a checklist of things to think about you know I think open you know a bank account uh insurance needs um you know things like that uh you have a Social Security card do you have all these kinds of things um but yeah so that was a question you know I I was going to follow up with is how howly does it look and you know you can't I'm certainly don't they
072don't you know it's not a graduation requirement but I think it's more part of kind of their their portfolio or whatever as they leave one one additional session that I uh that I attended is really you're talking about individual report cards this session was about um school districts or schools within districts creating their own uh locally developed uh report cards for their schools that weren't necessarily about all all the technical information that the state tells us grades our schools but they were able to kind of share data about their students that were aligned with research-based criteria the redefining ready research based criteria that um were predictors of success for students and then they aggregated that to tell the story of their school so like for instance um course attendance is eight times more predictive of
073success in freshman year than eighth grade test scores a GPA of 2.8 GPA when graduating you have a 71% chance of reaching the middle class um uh algebra grades uh so I what they were saying is that uh someone in each of the cesas has the skills to help school districts develop their own report their own individual school report cards aligned with research-based redefining ready criteria so it's not just you're not just picking these sort of you know fluffy data points you're actually saying here's we know this is what help helps us know that our kids are going to be successful and here's how well our students are doing in this area so I'm guessing it's maybe similar criteria that they're using for individual students that so um having having work worked with um blood
074Turner team um that is where it's coming from is the redefining ready so the redefining R was a national Consortium of of school districts um cus 7 is is housing kind of the the hub for all the other CES of collect having the resources so if you Google redefining ready Wisconsin you'll find the website and they all list out what college ready like career ready life ready standards are and the research that Lisa was just sharing is the background research that pinpoints where all of these bullet points come from um which is again studies upon studies so these meta studies that have looked at um thousands of studies in across Across the Nation and in some cases the globe that um have shown you know if you're have 90% attendance rate or better you're demonstrating
075perseverance in handling situations and so these things that we could build into our um scaffold so as we think about our three big goals we also can be thinking about why is attendance important well research shows that attendance is is important in the short term around education for this reason but longterm career careerwise if you had maintained this attendance you're more likely to have X Y and Z in your um job whether that job is directly out of school into the workforce or into service or going into postsecondary and then ultimately to the workforce from there so I urge everyone if you want to get some best ground ring they C7 does a really nice job of synthesizing that research down into some very digestible chunks so redefining ready at cisa 7 what is the
076cisa no problem so cisa is a a um Collective uh within the state so the state is organized into 12 Cooperative agencies that are designed to help support school districts carry out the mission of educating our our population so we are in cisa 2 which is one of the um larger cesas it has think six no I won't even say we have a lot of school districts in there um and so ceas will help school districts with resources so for instance if uh a small school district isn't big enough to have its own pupil service director um you can contract with Aisa and they will hire a pupil service director to come to the school district and help with IEPs and so forth likewise in business if you don't have a business manager sometimes cus
077can help help with that they're also a great resource for um educational um equipment so Adaptive Technologies and so forth because some of these uh pieces of equipment can cost $330,000 and school distu just don't have the resources you can they have a a uh basically a resource Library where school districts can check out things so they they are kind of a catch all and we use professional development CE my Cooperative Educational Service agent yep yeah That's So Random I do okay Tim I have one last question when do um the students get this report I didn't really catch that um because I can't imagine walking out the door when you already you know think that you're going to you know knock it out of the park and then this report card says you know
078yeah and I don't know if I mean I think they use the term report card I think in many cases it was sort of a portfolio type yeah yeah right thing that you know um that they get uh we use something similar actually where I work in Department of Corrections where you know do you have a bank account set up do you have social security card do you have do you know how to fill out a job application you read a uh a lease a rental lease and all those things that um that are you know crucial that you know the reality of it is that you know I I I my wife and I have the means to help our kids develop it but a lot of families don't and those are really essential
079skills right uh that I you know a lot of kids don't have how do you know how to appropriately use a credit card and so on and so forth so when I was in school we had that class it was called senior economics oh really yeah everyone had to take it um okay so we are sticking to the agenda and we are now to meeting closing ly has a question oh Lily does anybody know did Sten ever require personal finance to graduate at any point yes we have a have credit for that no but like as a requirement to graduate taking it's in middle school isn't it we do we do and um also the um act forget which act that was past the year ago um now mandates it across the state so we
080do we do have a personal finance uh credit half Credit in our graduation requirements which um was offered in in either um CTE in a couple of different areas or in um social studies through Eon I did not take personal finance when does when do people have to starta yeah did you say it's included in econ did you take e it's not it's not a stand Standalone like there is a standalone it's just a subject it is Incorporated with it yeah okay okay now we're on to meeting closing so for Action items I have there's a blood drive at the high school on February 19th and you can sign up online yep uh March 5th is the deadline if you want to go to wasby day at the capital that is happening on March 12th
081and more pressing the Pops concert is next Monday February 10th at 7 o'clock and if heard there's still some tickets left even though I have none of you let Colt steel all right future meetings we have a meeting of the climate and culture committee on Wednesday at 6:30 wait this Wednesday Community relation that's Community Rel Community Rel it's not climate the 11 it's the 11 11th at 5:30 it was on the the it's on board docks y this is not on here um and then our next board meeting is February 17th but remember we'll be starting at six o'clock that night because of the Detachment public here now which I don't believe you have to attend if you don't want to the regular board meeting will start at 6:3 but we vote on it at
082the board meeting doesn't have to attend to vote on anything but the rest of okay if there is nothing else I would entertain a motion for adjournment we move second move by fry seconded by m Myers any discussion all in favor I I any oppos exensions meeting is a jour