Verona Area School District Board of Education Meeting February 23, 2026

001All right, good evening everyone. Such energy in the room. Normally we'd have to wait for the lull, but here we are. Um, thanks for your attendance this evening. I'm going to go ahead and call this meeting to order. Let's establish, please, that we have a quorum by beginning with a roll call vote. Christopher >> here, >> Meredith here, >> Corby >> here, >> Joe >> here, >> and I am here as well. We have a quorum. Meredith, has the or Corby, you're here. Corby, has this meeting been properly noticed? >> Yes, it has. >> You um to help ensure that we're centering our board work around our shared values in serving our students, we begin each of our board meetings by reading our district's equity framework and the Ho Chunk Land acknowledgement, which can be

002found at the top of your agenda. Um Christopher, would you please read those for us this evening? >> Sure. In the Brun area school district, our mission is that each student will acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to achieve their personal goals, thrive in a diverse global society, and lead a healthy, self-fulfilling life. To meet this mission, the VR area school district has will ensure that every individual has access to the educational, social, and emotional support they need to feel valued and affirmed in their unique identities and experiences. We acknowledge that inequities and power dynamics exist within our system such that some individuals on the basis of their identities face barriers to accessing the opportunities they need to experience success. In acknowledgement of such, the Brun area school district is committed to disrupting these systems

003of inequity. The Hoch land acknowledgement. There are currently 12 tribal nations who call Wisconsin home with the Hochuk Nation being the primary group living in Madison. No matter where you are in this state, you are on the ancestral land of of a tribal nation. As we begin our meeting, we honor the land upon which we stand. >> Thank you. Um so board members, calling your attention to the remainder of the agenda. Um I'm so excited we have staff members that were willing to come and participate in our results monitoring conversations. So just in recognition of their time and the day they've already put in, I would prefer to bump our board action for monitoring to our next agenda item number three and then move forward from there. So without any other changes or suggestions, I

004would accept a motion to approve the amended agenda with board action being now item number three. >> Motioned. >> Thank you, Meredith. And a second by Christopher. Thank you. All those in favor of approving tonight's amended agenda signify with I. >> I. >> Excellent. The motion is approved. Waiting for our L of technology. So then we will do just that. So, we'll start with board action that works for our team and our staff to come up and begin conversation around results monitoring. We're so glad to have you all here. We hope that was a good surprise of changing the agenda. >> Okay, so >> definitely a welcome surprise. So, thank you for the opportunity to be here tonight. Um, we have two results policies. We're increasing exponentially in our results policies. We were doing them

005one at a time. Tonight we have two and next month we have four. So, we're just getting primed for that. But really excited tonight to be able to share about social studies. Last time we were able to talk about social studies. We were still in building capacity in our results policies and since then we have implemented a new curricular resource. I'm excited that Katie who is one of the leaders in that curricular adoption process is able to be here tonight to share a bit about what that has looked like in practice and what it means for our students and hear from them about what that looks like. So we'll start with social studies. So the language that we have in our results policy 2.4 report for social studies asks the question, to what extent are

006students building the knowledge and thinking skills necessary to understand society and act as informed, responsible global citizens. And so our data, the key findings, if we jump right in there and then we'll talk through some of the the leadership moves, the key findings first, it's important to note that as we looked at math and literacy, we have data for all grade levels. All of those grade levels are tested in our state assessment system. Um however in science and social studies there's only certain benchmark years. So we have data here for social studies aligned to our forward exam for fourth grade, eighth grade and 10th grade. But you may have noticed in the monitoring reports our n or our total sample size then is just one grade level for each of these. Um so about 400ish

007students depending on the grade level that are represented within this data. So just keeping that in mind sometimes when there's smaller specifically for our focus groups some of our focus groups then are down to 22 23 students the percentage then each student represents four or 5% and those jumps can be bigger with that um with that in mind. So just wanted to ground in that before we talk through what this data looks like. So the state forward assessment is aligned to our state standards for social studies. That was the guiding um of the guiding light as we chose our our social studies curricular resource. So in fourth grade what we've seen um between 23 24 and so one year of implementation of that curricular resource at fourth grade we saw an overall proficiency for all

008fourth grade students of about 4%. Many focus groups also saw increases specifically our Hispanic and Latinx students with an 11% increase in proficiency. So really exciting data um at our elementary level now that we have a standardized um curricular resource. At the eighth grade level, we saw an overall increase of about three and a half percent in proficiency for all students. Our multilingual students were by another 5% and many of our other focus groups remained sort of steady in their in their proficiency rates. We did see a slight decrease for African-American students. We also recognized that that um focus group just based on the class and the makeup of the class went from 35 students in 2324 to 23 students in 2425. So they also know that those percentages can be affecting um the proficiency

009rates as well. And then at the high school level, knowing that our curricular resource adoption went through US history in 9th grade, we did see an overall increase for 10th grade students in um overall proficiency. We also saw increases for many of our focus groups, actually all of our focus groups except for um students with IEPs. We dug in a little bit to did something change on the service delivery model there. um and the team does not believe that something specific changed in the service delivery model or the co-eing. So that's an area that we will continue to lean into for that focus group to understand what what happened. But across the board, some really positive increases for our first year of implementation of a new the new social studies resource. So at this point,

010I'm going to hand it over to Katie Moore. Katie serves as an instructional coach for us at Sugar Creek um and as I as I noted was instrumental in our curricular resource adoption process and within our implementation process as well. So she's going to walk you through some of our leadership moves and some of our student data and then Karen Sax Glover our director of teaching and learning and innovation will close us out. >> Thank you Amy. Thank you for having me here today. Um leadership moves. There are three key leadership moves that led to this growth and work within social studies. But first is that curriculum resource implementation. We implemented a new the new resource in the 2425 school year which helped provide focus around standards and alignment within social studies kindergarten through 9th

011grade. Um and this resource also provided an opportunity vertically align those social studies standards and learning with particular attention to that transition from middle school to high school. Uh second move was through our professional learning at the implementation rollout. We really provided a backwards design model for educators and understanding the standards and how they fit within the curriculum model and what those grade level expectations look like within those standards. And then finally inquiry. So inquiry is a hu the inquiry standards within social studies are a huge component of the standards and provide sort of an umbrella to all the subcontent areas within the social studies standards and um the implementation of the new resource has led to greater conversations around inquiry and what that can look like in supporting students and a pilot was done

012this year in first and fifth grade to engage students within that authentic inquiry specific to the history within Verona where our state of Wisconin. And then just some student quotes here. As I had mentioned, we in the fall, we had piloted um a fourth grade inquiry project um with the fourth grade classes and collected student feedback on that experience for them. So, which ultimately resulted in building an inquiry project model first through fifth grade. But as you can see, you can see the student voice here, what they're most proud of after completing that project. and elaps around research and what they learned around Verona and how they grew within social studies in Curry specifically. And so our next steps um as we continue to move forward with uh highquality instruction in social studies are to

013focus on essential standards, which is work that we're doing across the district in all content areas. um looking at building those essential standards kindergarten through 12th grade, making sure that we have that vertical alignment and articulation of student learning um and opportunities for clear student feedback. We also are developing rubrics that are aligned to those essential standards. again K12 um across um all grade levels and certainly aligned to our commitments to standardsbased teaching and learning so that students are getting that in time feedback and opportunities for growth in that rubric design model and then s finally the inquiry pilot as Katie mentioned that was at Sugar Creek and as we're building that out across all of our K5 schools currently um at all grade levels um really honing in on those inquiry standards Okay, that's

014kind of the high level overview of what we've been doing um with social studies. Really want to give credit to this team for the important work that's happening in bringing social studies to life. I got to go to Sugar Creek last Thursday and the third grade students were interviewing the mayor of Verona and the mayor of Pittsburgh to learn about their local um their local government. Yes, it's always great. They they let the students guess what the city budget the city of Pitchford budget was. You can imagine what those numbers were. Um students definitely think there's a lot of money there. Maybe the older person and mayor were able to correct for them. But great to see in this theme of inquiry really our students taking um taking that initiative and building their agency which

015I think comes through those those street data quotes that Katie shared as well and um building their skill set really coming back to that question about how are we helping students build knowledge and thinking skills and I think that's been on full display over this last year as we've been looking at our resources. So, we'll pause there for any questions that you all have. >> And Corby and Joe, feel free to just off mute and interject um anytime. >> I'm just interested to hear um any feedback you receive or um quantitative data you have around implementing our equity framework in regression social studies and especially current um affairs. I think that what you pointed out in regards to the meeting with the mayors of Fishburg and Brun are great examples and Malden social media post

016that felt great. But just in regards to um I think um the only reason why I asked my kids came back with an assignment for social studies uh in their zones and it was very current and so we walked through that in great detail but I just really thought that was an excellent way to really bring in social current affairs and social studies and really make it applicable right now. Um but I think there's a lens around the equity framework in regards to some of that Um, yes, we um are leaning into across all of our social studies content current events in ways that are age appropriate and also align to the standards because the standards dictate that we do that work with all of our students. So, it's good to hear that your students

017have that experience of being given um an opportunity to have an opinion likely to make an argument likely and those are key features of social studies standards and social studies instruction. >> That was great just to go through that process and for them to really have some critical thought around >> current things happening. Yeah, I think that's what really we've tried to emphasize and the standards have have some content about historical events, but also there is this critical thinking and inquiry element and so really highlighting and uplifting that and building those skills also around the disciplinary literacy that Karen's speaking to us is really critical as well. >> I just wanted to reiterate how much I like this format of the reports. It's so easy to read through and look at you know to see

018um you know comparisons the grade level bands the focus groups just very very um easy to navigate report. So first so thank you um I was curious of just the impact of a new curriculum on the proficiency levels. It looks like there's a big jump. Is that something you would anticipate like ongoing? Is that a do you typically see a big jump at the the first year of implementation or does that kind of continue once as people are are going more familiar with the uh the material? What how does that impact I think and I'm also thinking of this in terms of science the next one. So yeah yeah I think I can think holistically and then let the team jump in and what what's specific for social studies. I think what we've noticed in

019math and language arts as well is that when we teach to grade level standards, right, and we have a curricular resource that's aligned to grade level standards, the rigor increases. And we've also focused on a pacing guide that we're actually working through trying to to get um to have students have access to all the grade level standards. And across the board in math, language arts, and social studies, when we've implemented um new curricular resources, we've seen I guess we haven't implemented math yet, but that's coming. Um for language arts and social studies we have seen a bump in that and even in math though it's not been a new curricular resource diving back into the standards and even the professional learning that we provided for staff around those standards in addition to the resources has

020been um has has shown that it it results in some student impact and you'll see the science data later where we're actually not seeing that and hopeful that part of our strategy will be to do exactly that narrative. But I'll let the team jump in if there's other things. Yeah, I mean I think that what I would add to that is I mean we we speak about leading data versus lagging data and we know that the forward data is lagging data for us. So we with any implementation in a curriculum resource we're looking at where is the leading data that we are tending to regularly and that's happening in PLC's and opportunities when teacher teams come together and so because we're standards align and this the teachers can examine where did the students um show

021evidence of proficiency in that standard and not were able to have that immediate real time response to that meeting data which contributes to those outcomes overall. all um it is not unusual with an implementation of a curriculum resource to see a dip um over the course of three years. It's why we commit to a three-year implementation, but but we monitor it very closely. And so currently, I'm looking very closely, for example, at the language arts curriculum and the implementation, comparing results from last year to this year. And so far, we're not seeing a dip and so much of that has to do with our commitment to PLC work. Um, thank you for reminding me again that moving at lighting data. I think that's just a good to me it's >> it's data, right? But yes,

022I I think that's a great reminder to um that that this is data. And also I think that dip um that's something that I I've been familiar with that as you as teachers become more proficient in teaching the material like there's a a gain um so we're not even seeing that dip which is I think um nice and I think it's also great to see how a bilingual material has been clearly much and beneficial for our students. That's great. I think one of my questions or just wonderings with this is kind of exactly that piece that social studies and science are so interesting with the benchmarky data that we have right that we have fourth eighth and 10th we have such a minuscule formal snapshot of what's happening districtwide. So I wonder and we've talked

023about this a lot at the board table of not trying to create new things for you all to do but to feed to us right in that like pyramid working down what's happening at the classroom level that we can also hear at this table for the sake of the larger conversation. So the way that you frame that Karen about the leading data, how could we capture little nuggets of some of that when we do these reportings because there's so there's so much storytelling I feel that you all get to experience and see in the PLC spaces that reflect so great to the community because again of that investment of time. How can we pull some of those threads through to this conversation that reflect some of that real- time data and those things that teachers

024are feeling? um because this is a these are really interesting content areas in terms of what formally shows up here. It feels like such a small microcosm. Um and I think it is a reminder again that we've talked about forward data. It isn't really very informative to actual classroom practice and I'm really drawn to this thing you've talked about with the inquiry pieces. We've also talked about forward and maybe even act. How much of a reflection is that assessment on the richness of what we're doing through this curriculum? if if that disconnect exists, is that in favor of amazing things our learners are doing and forward. So all of those things kind of holding in space and just curious if you want to add anything about the things I'm proverating over, but >> those are

025a couple of my wonderings. >> The disconnect that you're describing is is one that that we live with. Yeah. Um, and so what I'd like to do is actually to hand it over to Katie for a minute because she's been instrumental in at the K5 level building out what that improved project model looks like. So Katie, if you want to share a little bit about the the work around the standards and the design of that model. >> Absolutely. Yes. I worked closely with another collaborator where we looked at some lessons within the units of instruction and thought how we could expand that into a deeper project for students. they have that experience that you're talking about. How can we look deeper? How do we know they're engaging in that work? So, we analyzed the different

026standards within inquiry, picked out the ones that we felt would be the easiest for, not the easiest, but the ones that would be most apparent in the work that they were engaging with and then what is the content standard within social studies that connected to those inquiry standards. So they we then did a backwards mapping design process of what that could look like for students and then worked very closely with classroom teachers on what this actually looks like in practice for students and then they helped us understand what was needed to help build that out systemwide which was imperative in our work was that collaboration with classroom teachers and then that student voice that we collected at the end of what they learned and what their process was and that and that that way of

027working, Jen, I think is speaking to what you're calling out about the very limiting nature of so much of social studies um assessment models particularly in the forward room and the the process that we have in the Vonarian school district and the leadership that we have in the Von area school district to say, hey, these standards are actually pretty good. So let's see if we can we can build out a better project model so that our students are actually spending time um gaining proficiency in those standards >> which almost feels still a bit then capacity building to me because I feel there's so much more space. Yes, we have this curricular adoption but there's so much more I can sense is happening to really have staff engage with what it means to put all of

028this work into practice. Um, and so then I'm kind of left with this, you know, the piece that I think we maybe lost, so to speak. This came up when we were reflecting at WASBY, um, talking about how we've really done results differently. So now we have this question of is this reasonable progress and we're not whole, we're not saying our goal was this, right? So we don't have kind of targets that we're going for. We I think did that somewhat purposefully, but I feel that this is really holding that in a different space than than math or language arts did for sure of how do we begin to process that question because we have small data points. I appreciate that you've elevated the number of students within each of these proficiencies because the percents

029can get so distorted, but then how do we dialogue around that as a board of so does this feel reasonable? how are we defining that knowing there's so much more narrative that's out there and this is kind of what we have. So that's something else I'm mulling over and I'm not sure what you all are thinking about that piece but or anything that you even want to say and add insight you know we've got the leadership moves but any insights that you have into our contemplation >> of that idea of yeah this feels reasonable for where we're situated. I think knowing that we adapted social studies at the same time and so at elementary we were launching language arts and social studies all at the same time. I don't think we anticipated large double-digit increases

030um in social studies that we saw in language arts and math knowing it's also the time of day that is that is devoted to social studies versus language arts and math. That's right. I appreciate that the team has has looked so innovatively at thinking about these inquiry projects that aren't built into the TCM or the National Geographic curriculum, but our ways that we're thinking that our staff are really collaborating to make this come to life. And then seeing the students so engaged in understanding something so applicable to them. Obviously, the history of the Verona area is not within the future creative materials, but that was the direction that the team took this and helped students to then really think about this is why that's named this way or this and they they got to ask

031their own authentic questions. I think some of the pictures we have on there, then they got to present within the community. So, also those those speaking and listening skills which are tying back to your language arts standards where then they're talking about those pieces I think are also really rich. And so, I think I hear you, Jen. I think it's hard to look at what that data looks like. Even the comparative data we try to break down by grade level across the state and across all of these um different districts, but we do know it is a small sampling of our students. I do think it is telling that we do see increases fourth, eth, and 10th tells me something about the system and what that's looking like as well. I think it's I appreciate

032highlighting the comparative data because I I do like having it just to see and I think you know the standards are are great and as we'll be we'll be striking but I also I I hear what you're saying though about >> it's not capturing the history of Verona you know and that's also the thing that can hook kids into learning and then those skills are applicable areas that are equally you know important. Um I thought it was interesting seeing the range of scores through our you know comparison um districts and I'm curious is it more the which school's curriculum is closely aligned with the forward exams versus um this is one where I feel like and I'm probably the one who's pushed for the comparative data the most so I appreciate having it for the

033you know for the math math and language arts. And here's where I feel like it's nice to see my stock in it probably isn't as high as it would be for language arts and math. That feels a little bit more, you know, we're not teaching algebra in a different way like as opposed to social studies. Um, so I guess if anyone's, you know, watching and is like, okay, well, we're we're above the state average, but we're behind X district. I'm not sure that we are. I feel like, you know, this is we're maybe the curriculum is just is a slight fear from um mostly aligned with the test taking and I would rather we're not teaching to the test as opposed to um teaching genuinely engaging material that's capturing our students and building learners. This

034is one where we do want all of them to read and do math and love social studies and science. This is just yeah where I feel like my push for comparative data and back off on this one. I think my last wondering and this is you know the hat that I wear this having taught mathematics but also curious now with a new curriculum and then digging into standards how I'll just say at the middle school level because it's happening all six through eight how colleagues in the same space and in different spaces interpret learner work to come to same agreement on what near mastery looks like and mastery looks like I feel that that would be more challenge challenging in social studies than maybe in math. And you can correct me if I'm wrong, but

035I'm curious where that kind of lives with the work that you're doing and maybe how staff is feeling about those types of dialogues that we have. That feels comparative to me that it doesn't matter what classroom I'm in, that we all have the same understanding about what it means to have near mastery or mastery on something. >> Yeah, that's what that rubric design is is all about for us. So first identifying what are those essential standards and then um leaning into that rubric of design across the district. And that rubric design is built on sort of a universal process of really identifying um clearly the difference between near mastery and mastery to use for example and it will go through multiple iterations. The process of rubric design we're in phase one of that. Um the

036design process included classroom teachers from across sites who are um delivering that instruction every day looking at student work regularly. We have a we have a model for the rubric. Then we put it out in the field. We're going to test it out in the field for a while and we're going to pull it back get some feedback on it. We're going to continue to get to the place where we feel like the rubrics are really serving what we need them to serve. not just for the teachers but more importantly for the students who are looking at that rubric and saying I understand what mastery is. I understand where I am in my progress and I know how to get there. >> So maybe as a a thought that sounds like interesting information that I

037would love to hear. You know what does it look like in sixth grade for this particular standard that we think is really interesting or really valuable? What are we seeing in terms of achievement in accordance to that standard? Yeah. if that I mean right to not add more work that isn't what my comment is hopefully sounding like but to pull through some of the things that you and the staff are dialoguing around so we can elevate that here potentially >> I like that idea I think you'll see right this all this work that Karen's speaking about with designing essential standards and rubrics is all under that umbrella of standards based teaching and learning and that work I know some of focus on grading and reporting which will be >> a byproduct of that but really

038honing in on what are the essential standards how are we communicating with students and families about their students progress on that and how are we calibrating on student performance with that will be something that we'll have across all content areas. So something for science and social studies and our results monitoring we certainly can lean into those layers to help build more of the street data and build a more comprehensive profile beyond just the forward data of what that's looking like in practice. And certainly the inquiry project work would fit right into that. >> Yeah. And great things for parents in the community to hear more broadly too. And I appreciate again how we've really sort of held forward where it belongs and what it means for us. I think that's also really important to remind.

039>> Yeah, we we say that the rigors and the standard >> and so we we want to be sure that we are attending to the standards in all the ways that we're talking about here tonight, including this design and getting clear about what are the essential standards, the supporting standards and the essential standards. What's the rubric design? How do we support all students to achieve at that level of mastery? >> Board members, any further comments? We can continue to dialogue. And we do, of course, have now this achieving reasonable progress vote to take. >> I feel like we've asked a lot of you to be changing um reporting styles with new curriculum over and over. Um so thank you again for just >> continuing to adapt to as we you know learn at the board

040table what is valuable for us um we keep back putting out there to you. So thank you and it is very helpful >> and we certainly has always have to give credit to our amazing educators right led to this data and they've done the work that Kitty and team have led to bring us to like for students. I was just going to say I feel like this vote of achieving reasonable progress is is somewhat saying staff have absolutely superseded reasonable progress. Um I know we're looking at student outcomes but so much underneath this is the work that went into bringing on new curriculum that elevating that the reasonable progress is the whole everyone that has landed to this sort of reporting out. And so that measure to me really speaks to staff as well here,

041which is why I would make a motion to say the report is achieving progress. >> All right, sounds like Meredith gave a second. Christopher, anything else you want to add? >> Okay, Joe or Corby, just making sure. Virtual is really hard. I know. >> Nothing. Nothing I want to add. >> Thanks for chiming in. And we do have a motion then by me for achieving reasonable progress for social studies and a second by Meredith. All those in favor of approving results policy 2.3 social studies as achieving reasonable progress, please signify with I. >> I. >> Thank you. The report has been approved as achieving reasonable progress. >> So as we move to science, maybe there's a little shuffling that may be happening here. Thank you Katie. appreciate your time so much. >> Okay, so we

042will shift to science now. Um, we have not implemented a new curricular resource in science. We actually make a recommendation for that tonight, but want to share what we've learned from the data. Again, lagging data from 23 24 to 2425. We really leaned on forward assessment data here and then there is a science metric on the preac and the ect. that we do have at um at the school level overall. Amy just >> um I want to make sure that I put into this space and it speaks to I'm so proud proud of this board and our team for acknowledging the great work of our staff when on the social studies report in the science report you're going to hear uh us discuss language that um in terms of the high level of excellence that

043we have in the Ron school district from yeartoyear growth you're not going to see in the in the science level. I want to make sure no staff member, especially anyone that touches science or everyone's responsible, but uh that is a science staff hears that as anything that has to do with a a teaching staff member or anyone in our organization. Our responsibility as an administrative team is to create the best conditions for the dynamic work of our educators to come to life in in those spaces. And that and what you're hearing today as part of this report will be us kind of reflecting on have we actually created those conditions and what can we do to make sure those conditions are better for the magnitude of results that we expect in sight. So I I

044just want to make sure that all of our staff heard that from me heard that from our santa that you'll never hear me have any uh concerns about the work ethic or the the product that our staff members put in place because we are very blessed to have every single member of our organization that uh gives a great effort to our students. And we also know that there's a responsibility to create conditions to allow our our students to grow and we are not there yet in terms of science. >> Thank you. It's very important that back to your question Meredith too. what do you anticipate when you um adopt a new curricular resource and what does that look like and recognizing we haven't we haven't been there yet with with science um and seeing kind

045of what the data is telling us to help guide what our next steps and leadership use need to be as a result. So to walk you through the data, the overall results policy question is asking to what extent are students across grade levels engaging in scientific inquiries, understand core science concepts, applying engineering practices, and explaining the natural world. And so what the what we're seeing in the data, so again, fourth grade, 8th grade, and then high school is both preac and act. So um which is really n and 11th grades there. But again, small sample sizes because it's it's really single grade levels. But when we looked at our proficiency for fourth grade students from 23 24 to 24 25, we actually see an overall decrease for all students. We do see increases for students

046with um IEPs, but overall the trend is downward and not in the direction that we would expect. Um this has been an important conversation for us then to think through the need for a standards aligned curricular resource and also at the elementary level minutes are tricky and fitting in minutes and making sure there's large chunks of time for students to do um that really hands-on exciting science work um have been limited or fragmented throughout the day. And so those are things that we are looking at when we see decreases in this nature year over year and that's will lead to the again curricular adoption recommendation that we'll bring today but the decrease is certainly not what we would expect or want to see for our students at fourth grade level. Similarly at 8th grade then

047we see some slight increases in proficiency for um all students and specific focus groups. We did have a new curricular resource. So we split up the science curricular adoption. Last year we adopted science for secondary and this year then we went to K5 just recognizing how much elementary had on their plate previously. This data does not reflect the new implementation because that implementation is happening 25 26. We don't yet have that that forward data yet. So some slight increases at at middle school. Um but for the most part pretty pretty steady there. And then when you get to the high school, we're seeing decrease for decreases for students year-over-year in preACT. So the 9th and 10th grade classes year-over-year, we saw um a decrease. And then the ACT data is is pretty stagnant or steady

048from 23 24 to 24 25. We do see the preac data and the comparative data does show that we are outperforming the state and outperforming um a few of our other comparative districts. We also do see the cohort data when you look at the nth grade students that took preac as nth graders and then what was their preac score as a tth grader. We do have a full point increase there and then from preac and as 10th graders to act as 11th graders we see about a point4 increase. So our students are growing based on that cohort data but the year-over-year data is not the direction we would want to we would want to see. And even those increases um from preac to ACT, we'd like to accelerate that a bit so that the overall

049ACT score would be more in alignment. So kind of mixed results here. Social studies, you saw an increase across fourth, eighth, and 10th. Here we're seeing decreases at elementary, slight increases at middle, and then decreases again at high school. And so recognizing that there's some root causes under that with curricular resources, with scheduling pieces, um that's where we'll go into some of our some of the leadership moves underway, but also what we're kind of thinking about as next steps. Um again, not not as a result of the actions of our staff, but the conditions that we have not yet created or in the process of creating. So I'll hand it over to Karen. So uplifting some of the leadership moves associated with our understanding of the results. Um one is that curricular resource adoption. So

050as Amy said, we are in year one implementation of a science curriculum resource for middle school and for 9th grade biology. So four grade levels this year are experiencing a new curriculum resource. We're having really good results and feedback with that from staff, but also good results with students along the lines of students showing uh demonstrating growth within the assessments within the curriculum resource um and then also um students having positive experiences of that resource. So that curriculum resource adaption process is critical to all of our work and those um resources address where we were having some gaps and that standards aligned work knowing that the standards aligned work is a strategy that gets us where we want to be in the long run. Um the other thing that we wanted to uplift again is

051that identifying of essential standards. There are lots of standards in science. Science is an incredibly complex model of standards and so we want to be sure that we have the opportunity to get clear about what are the essential standards at every grade level within that complexity of science. So, we've been working on that very carefully. And as I was explaining before, we'll have that opportunity to do some field testing and come back. And when we um shift to talking with you about the K5 adoption tonight, um Heidi's going to do a good job of sort of explaining the complexity of those standards briefly to you all. And then finally, another leadership move is that increase access to high school um science courses in Spanish. um we have a non-negotiable in any of our curriculum resource

052adoption and that is the resources have to be available to us in Spanish and so building on that especially in content area like science is going to be ultimately improving outcomes for our students in high school specifically when we look at some of the street data what I was speaking to before about how asking students specifically how have you grown as a scientist in in your science classroom room. Um our students are telling us again in this first year of implementation very clearly that they are um understanding and coming to understand themselves as scientists but also leaning into the disciplinary literacy of science and having what those experiences that we want in every science classroom of that excitement and that and that inquiry process. the students are very clear about how the new curriculum resources

053are supporting them as learners and their identity assignments. And then finally, when we think about those critical next steps for us moving forward, it's always going to be that curriculum resource implementation. We're going to tend to it carefully. We're going to tend to it over three years and we're going to make sure that it's having the impact that we want it to have. We're going to continue to leverage our PLC's and opportunities for collaboration so that our teachers do get the support that they need as well with the implementation. That also includes that professional learning for educators where we um ensuring that we have time for professional learning not only for the launch of the curriculum resource but over the course of the implementation and our coaches play um important role in that. Again, essential

054standards grounding in that. That's a key strategy for us in all content areas moving forward. And then looking at that elementary scheduling for science K5 specifically and how can we best be sure that we get um the just right minutes for our K5 students in science instruction. So overall, we want to be transparent with where we are with this data and recognize that it doesn't yet show the trends and um doesn't yet meet what our expectations would be for students in their in their science group and we have some ideas about what the root causes are. Some of those actions are already underway. We already have a new 6ix9ine curricular resource that we're implementing and hope to see in forward assessments that students will take real soon um and pret that they'll take even sooner.

055um that we will see what that looks like for our secondary students long term. And at the elementary level, we realize we still have some work to do in creating those those conditions to have this sort of impact on our students, not just in forward, but also like the inquiry projects we heard about in social studies. There's so many rich opportunities to do that in science and where can we lean into that? Where can we also make crosscurricular connections back to what they're um learning in language arts or in math? There's a lot of opportunities for that and um those are next steps and important leadership moves for us. But at this point, this you know the monary report shares what our current state is and there's certainly lots of room for us to grow.

056Person I appreciate that you don't shy away from data that isn't where we would like it to be because I think that it is just an information point. It isn't good or bad. um I mean bad data but it is not inherently like this designates a poor you know execution. No I don't think that at all. I think that this data is showing that the tools that needed to be updated. This is where the leadership moves in the um report I think are so important because it shows this was already analyzed and the um the steps that needed to be taken are already in place. I mean, that's that's how we want data to be looked at. We if it was well, it wasn't where we wanted it to be. Try again next year. I'd

057be concerned about that. But it's it wasn't where we wanted it to be and this is what we've done and we also need to make sure that ours, you know, our staff have the tools at their disposal to um to provide the high quality education that we know they provide. Um so again I just I appreciate that we don't you know shy away from data that isn't hitting the mark that we said um we're to try and you know obiscate that is there it is and and I think it's the important part to me is the and um all of these things that are in place as a result of of the data that we have right now and I reminder always that this is flagging data by now almost a year It's a big

058It's a big time change. >> And within that, I think looking at comparative data, we're we're above safe. So, I think that's great. Um, and we're doing well and I think pretty close to where we want to be with other other districts. I think I I'm I'm happy with that. I I would like to, you know, I'm always inquiring and thinking about how do we look at specific demographic groups and our um and how we can meet the needs of those groups in a culturally significant way. So um but you know whether we measure that is another question but u that's always a making the the connection point to bridge to inquiry within groups that may not see themselves necessarily traditionally within the curriculum that we've traditionally had. So, um, yeah, I appreciate the the

059transparency in the data as well >> and I appreciate you pulling that out, Christopher. I think you look at ACT data for our multilingual students, 0% of our students being benchmark. That's simply not our expectation. And we we know our our students um can do can do more than that. And yet, we recognize that in adding we have now we have Spanish biology, chemistry, and field biology. And so how can we continue to support students in their science learning and then yet recognize that the ACT at the end of the day that we're measuring them into English. And so how do we also bridge those concepts back for them into English so that their brilliance can shine here as well and beyond the test? What are all the other rich experiences that they're getting that

060they can begin to identify themselves as as a scientist and recognize the scientific thinking that they're doing inherently in lots of different ways. So definitely lots of room for growth in that. Yeah. >> To kind of bridge the two things I heard both of you say of just when we look at this data, this the the narrative immediately is what can we do because we know our learners can do all amazing things. So what are we not doing to service our kids? Um and I just think some places have a narrative that might not be that way. So I just so appreciate that that is the energy we always have is bringing out the the excellence and our scholars that are with us every day. Um I'm I'm super curious as we talk about the

061comparative data like in general this is an interesting content like they're all just sort of low if I can say it that way. So my same question comes to be how does ACT and even forward reflect what actually happens in science classrooms. This almost screams to me a larger disconnect just by looking at the pure raw numbers for even the state averages. So I'm I'm just curious about that. I know those things are relevant, but how often is there reflection within ACT on what they're measuring and is it keeping pace with the way that standards, you know, is growing and developing within science curriculum K12? I don't know if there's really a question in there, but that's I'm holding that again in a way with this content. Yeah, I I know that at the high

062school um with Brian Cox with his leadership team, his instructional coaches, they are and certainly the science teachers at the high school, they all they do look closely at those preacct and ACT um questions. They pay attention to where is their standards align and where isn't their standards alignment. So, they get very curious about that as well. Um I I don't know that I have an explanation for why we see hope for all the results that we do in science and we look at the comparative data. Um but what I but what I do know is that there's a lot of disciplinary literacy in science and ensuring that there is time and opportunity with a good resource to focus on that disciplinary literacy and support students with that. I think that's an indicator of what

063an assessment model looks like. There's often a conversation about the science portion of the ACT that it it's a reading assessment and it's a literacy assessment. So, ensuring that we do have the resources that our teachers need available to them or the opportunities for students to lean into that science, discipline, and literacy. And the more we build that from kindergarten all the way up, it's just going to continue to support our work. >> That is interesting. Um, and I'm also curious. I think we talked about this before the curricular adoption of the ingenuity that I think has really existed within our staff for a long time >> and how that ingenuity is marrying with a more defined curriculum. Yeah, it's um big shout out and kudos to our biology team who are um who regularly

064meet as a team in PLC and beyond to prepare those lessons together and who have made their own sort of adaptation understanding of this is a resource that provides us with lots of opportunity and a richness of experience and we have all of this experience as well. And that the the marriage of that work from that team is is a lot of enthusiasm for that for that course and resources to >> and it's a lot of work. Oh, >> that's a lot of new. >> Yeah, >> I think that's what I wanted to just like lean into that there has been um >> a recognition that the science curriculum needed to have new um resources for a couple of years, several years. And I think there's also been the recognition that so many other curricular

065resources were being updated that it was a matter of triage in a sense um over the past three years really. Um so where I would say this isn't reasonable progress. It's not because it's um again it's been a triage situation where it is now we're going to be seeing the results of this new um all these leadership moves that we are excited about um new curriculum in the next you know monitoring cycle. And I I I think that needs to just be uplifted though that it's not like we knew we needed a curriculum and we waited. Well, no, there was again a triage because you can't just implement all the curriculum all at once um and have anything work to fidelity at that point. Um so I guess I don't I don't have a problem

066with the we don't love that the you know proficiency percentage tiles are where they're at, but I think there's been um there's a bigger story behind this and that story is you know really advancing the knowledge right now. Um what are you Yeah, and just what you had started with about this conversation about achieving reasonable progress is not a measure of the impact of our staff, >> right? >> Or their dedication or their expertise. Um, and I think we would all staff included look at this and say, "Yeah, we really want to have different data." And so that I hope is kind of the shared story without trying to do anything of pointing fingers or blaming. It's the narrative of where we are with a larger context and yeah what are we doing next to

067>> so it's so heavy on forward >> yeah and ACT so if the curriculum that we are currently using or were previously using at the time of the board exam wasn't married to that exam it could still be high quality education or inquiry and advancing knowledge for our students that isn't going to be paired well with a test. That's where I struggle with the teaching to the using the forward exam is I mean makes sense, but it isn't the full story. And yeah, and that's the piece that I hope maybe I didn't state when I asked those questions about alignment. It's because I'm grouchy to standardized tests. I'm not grouchy about our system of teaching kids in this district. So yeah, um it's hard when those are the measures. if I personally might feel like

068they're nearly not measuring anything that we might hold valuable. So we know we have some amazing we all our science teachers are amazing districts as you said there's a lot of um eligibility that comes into play and has historically play um in our >> just wanted to put it into the space before uh we wrap up here and thanks team for phenomenal presentation as well but initially what I opened up with around making sure that there was clear support for our staff in in this work I also want to continue to think about you Our goal is to improve every year, you know, as a part of continuous improvement process. And thinking about, you know, our focus as this team came in was really literacy and literacy. And that also meant minutes. And we we

069we moved a lot of our instructional minutes specifically into um language arts both Spanish and English uh language arts uh minutes of instruction as as well as math uh as and there was a give and take into science and science and social studies as well. So I think to Amy's point that she mentioned earlier around how are we figuring out better ways to inter interweave the work have science-based instruction and interwoven into the minutes of language arts uh knowing that our our staff are getting stronger in that each day is some of our thoughts and I don't want to be a staff only burden like go through this how are we thinking about this collectively together working side by side to make sure that we we position our teams to do that best but I

070just feel like we just wanted to publicly state it, you know, that we and frankly so wanted to ensure that we had um high highly proficient readers in our or in our organization and you see our data is showing that and there could be some cause and effect in terms of where did we pull those moves from as well and how do we shape shift our instruction I that's something I apologize for I still think it's the right move but there's always also cause and effect there so if I miss anything on that piece of it too >> I I think it goes back to Merida's point too about we couldn't implement everything at the same time, right? And so helping what we've done now is we've established PLC's. So we have teams that deeply

071understand standards and they know how to look at standards regardless of content area and then are able to apply them. And I think now we have we'll be on year three next year of status implementation while we layer on a new K5 um resource that you'll hear about tonight. teachers are more proficient in those standards and are are more prepared then to make connections across those content areas as well and continue to uplift that and so I think it is the approach we took was also for sustainability and building the professional learning and capacity of our staff with those standards as well and in the meantime that's not what we want it to be yet in this one slice >> in this one slice but holistically there's been a foundation that's being built that supports

072either teaching and learning in such a strong way across all disciplines. And so this is just this one slice hasn't had its time quite yet or it's having its time at this again last year what we measured. I always feel badly when there's like, okay, the the data isn't showing what we would like to see and there's been so much work that has gone into all this and all of the um the foundational work that's been done that will support growth now that the right tools are being put into place with the curricular resources. >> Is that fair? >> So with that, what do you think about the report? Now we have to do our board job. Well, I mean, okay, realistically, >> I I don't think we can say it is achieved reasonable progress.

073I just don't think that I think that undermines then what reasonable progress means. >> Um, I think we can say reasonable progress. It's not yet been achieved and I think we could recognize >> and because that was recognized, these steps are in place and we are looking forward to seeing, you know, the next cycle that reflects the leadership moves that um have been implemented and ongoing. Um and again saying it's reasonable progress has not yet been achieved is certainly not a um to denigrate the work that's been done. It's really honestly it's more like put the aster the recognition that there has been so much foundational work across all curricular subjects and this one we can't do everything all at once. Um, so this isn't like >> I don't want it to be a negative.

074I want it to be more but there has to be a a transparency with the data. And I think we've talked about this that we need not shy away from not achieving reasonable progress because we don't have it all figured out. And so right we're on the learning curve as staff, as leaders, as students to be able to make this progress. So again, I hope it's that no one feels like it's a reflection or a a mark against anything. You know, even for you, Dr. Clarity, right? This is part of what we, you know, hold you in terms of your overall evaluation that this is not like, oh, gotcha. >> Um, it's a true just reflection of where we are. >> And I appreciate the word yet. Reason it's not yet achieved. We have billboards

075around the yet. >> Exactly. And so recognizing that there are leadership moves in place and this is also not >> and that we have the log the logistics now of these reports that have your leadership moves that have notes. Thank you again for taking notes this evening Christopher because this has been a really rich discussion and you've done both of these reports. So thank you for that that we get these comments to live within these documents for you know anyone that looks at them for our own reminders of what this narrative was because that's also such a rich part of looking at these reports now is what was the dialogue that led to this particular vote and discussion um and that is really meaningful too. So is there a motion there from >> the language

076move to accept um reasonable progress not yet achieved with my aster excited to see how the leadership moves um >> okay thank you Motion from Meredith >> second from Christopher any further conversation so there is a motion to um approve the report as reasonable progress not yet achieved. Um all those in favor of signifying as such say I. >> I. >> Thank you. Any opposed? All right. Report has been approved as reasonable progress not yet achieved. Thank you. >> And we're going to keep talking about >> science. Next steps begin right now. Okay. >> I mean, talk about living on the not yet achieved. Here we go. Not yet. Now, >> that's good. >> And so, we recognize all of those things and you just saw in the data and we realized that in part

077of creating those conditions was adopting a science curriculum um resource or going through a curricular renewal process to look at how different resources best align to standards and best meet our student needs. And so we have a talented team here tonight joining us with Ty instructional coach Basentury and um Kate as well, Kate Raming from um Gingi and Sugar Creek as a bilingual coach and they were the leaders in our curricular renewal process for science K5 and really led a very robust process, really boyful process, um really analytical process this year to dive into those standards and to begin to address some of the gaps that we're seeing. And so we're here tonight to make a proposal then about a K5 curricular resource adoption which will be part of addressing that that yet. So I'm

078going to turn it over to the team. All right. So I'm going to go ahead and get us started here. I wanted to be sure that the board was grounded in some of the basics of our process for curriculum renewal. Um so very clearly what our commitments are and how those commitments are aligned to our strategic framework. But again all the things that you would expect to see in those commitments, the standards alignment that um coherent vertical alignment, disciplinary literacy, inclusive teaching and learning and supporting teachers with the implementation of those resources. So those commitments are part of the foundation of the work that we do. Um, additionally, when we're looking at the adoption of new curriculum resources to support our teachers, focusing specifically in on that grade level standard, looking for evidence of where

079the students have agency in the learning, looking for engageable and accessible instruction, what is the assessment model and how can we collect data um, formative and summative data to support our learners on that process. Um going all the way back to a curriculum audit that we did as a district um a few years ago. We wanted to uplift specifically using those questions the things that emerged for us related to K5 science. Again that curriculum audit was a foundational piece of our process for determining what award process would be. So you can see there four things that we've called out specifically that came up in that um in that audit. One was the lack of knowledge of the complexity of those standards. Those Wisconsin state standards which are aligned to the national standards are indeed complex

080and we didn't have evidence that that in our resources had we had sort of limited use of common summitive assessments um with our previous curriculum resources and we're looking for ways to improve that. wanted to be sure that all of our curricular materials are available in Spanish and then also needing to have a coherent resource implementation. So going back to it, Meredith had lifted for us earlier, we have a three-year strategy of every implementation across sites when we do make a decision. Turn it over to Kate who's going to take us through some more slides here about the team specifically. Yeah, I'll get to walk you through our process and just highlight our incredible team that collaborated around this. So, um before the school year started, we assembled this team of seven teachers. Um there

081were two multilingual teachers, one from the 2A immersion program and a bilingual resource teacher, a special education teacher, and four classroom teachers, as well as Heidi and I's instructional coaches. And we had um district leaders that represented various departments to help us through that. Um our team was small but mighty. After our first meeting, they looked us three looked at each other and said, "We have the right people in the room." And not only did they bring expertise but passion as well, and it was very clear that their commitment to this work was really going to lend itself to the outcomes that we hoped and in finding a resource that really served our students. So our team met nine times through September um beginning of the year until just a few weeks ago um for

082two hours each um night and we had a lot of opportunities outside of that to also collaborate and dive into the standards and disciplinary literacy. Um and as I said our team just had a very diverse representation um that brought in the perspectives of our students and um our team started with gathering feedback from our science educators. So, our coaches went to teachers and just heard what are our priorities and needs when you're thinking about our current state. So, Karen kind of shared a little bit about that, but at the beginning of the year, we collected a little bit more. And here are just a few highlights. As um we have said that our resources need to be available in Spanish. That's a non-negotiable. We want our curriculum aligned to the standards. We want it

083to highlight real life connections and draw on students interests. We want it to be interactive and explorative. and we want to center our disciplinary literacy and skills in all that we do. So here's our process that we've followed. I'm going to dive into each one of these, but now you can kind of ground yourself in the full picture of where we began with forming a team and looking at standards to where we are now in February um with you all at the board meeting. So um our first three meetings we really just dedicated to a lot of shared learning and deepening our team's understanding of the science standards. So we spent an extensive amount of time just really understanding the complexity and the rigor of those science standards. We also took some time to think

084about the Wita language standards and to really understand their importance about giving students the language for science to do science not just the language of science. We highlighted and uplifted the teaching learning framework and our district's commitment to disciplinary literacy and this led our team to identify some must-have criteria that we used to guide the rest of our work moving forward. Um, and this was a really important process that our team leaned on heavily and we trusted in as the we looked at resources and really tried to develop that lens of will this serve the students in front of us in our classrooms today. I wanted to highlight just one other thing that our team did at the beginning is that we um did some learning around what equitable science instruction um really looks like

085and this was important for us to really understand these non-negotiables things that we are committed to and that we want to include in um in the or we want the resource to include. So things that you can see up here that our teachers um spoke about of defining and solving real world problems of removing removing barriers for our students, increasing access, celebrating student diversity, um bringing in their interest and their excitement and their passion. Joy as we said was a huge theme of this entire um experience for our team. And yeah, so that was a great place for us to start to think about what we were going to discover in the process. Um, from that we asked our teams to share a little elevator speech of a summary of those first three sessions. So,

086someone walked up to them and said, "Hey, what are you doing? What's this work all about?" Here, um, are just a few quotes from our teachers. And I'm just going to highlight the middle one. I think it's really important. Our goal is to make science instruction equitable across BSDK5. The data from fourth grade forward exam shows that science is an area with the highest percentage of different groups of students, not meeting proficiency. this tells us something needs to change. So our team was really committed to this and it was incredible to just watch the capacity of our team grow in order to move forward in the next few sessions. Going to speak a little bit. >> Thanks. Um, as Karen mentioned, um, the Wisconsin standards for science, which are based off of NGSS or the

087national, um, next generation science standards are very complex. And as the visual shows, there's actually three components to a standard that kind of weave together into what's called a performance indicator. So you can see in blue is the science and engineering practices and then the disciplinary core ideas in orange and then the crosscutting concepts in green, which I'll highlight here in the next few slides. So the science and engineering practices are the how of science. It's what science and engineers can't forget our engineers. Um what they do in science to do their job. So they ask questions and they investigate things and they look at data and they analyze data and they write um conclusions around that data. So there's eight science and engineering practices. In the middle are the disciplinary core ideas. that that's

088what you want to think of as the what, like the meat, like what's the content that kids are learning. Um, and then finally, the cross cutting concepts are the kind of the why it matters. I always kind of say that there it's it's cutting. So, it's a concept that cuts across all the different domains of science. So, if you think of physical science, earth science, and space science, and life science, these are big ideas that are going to be found in all of those. We want kids to recognize that those patterns or those cross cutting consonants exist. And I have a slide that kind of um gives you more examples of that because sometimes those are the most confusing. Um this is just one small activity that we did with our team as we unpacked

089a science and engineering practice. So remember this is one of eight and you can see just by the the standard alone as you look from K2 to 912 our our little small and mighty team kind of looked at the skills that kids are little kidders are engaging in looking at data and how that will change as they grow and grow and grow until they're in 91 12. Um and then we always anytime we looked at a standard we brought it back to that that shift to equitable science instruction and how we want to see those standards living in our belief that all science all kids deserve to see themselves as scientists and as engineers. The cross cutting concepts are here on the screen and these are the seven. So if you think of if you

090just look at those real quickly um we I highlight patterns because that was the one that we kind of looked at as a team. So a pattern can be seen in earth science, it can be seen in space science, it can be seen in life science, it can be seen in physical science. So can energy and matter exists across all of them, right? Civilian change, making models, thinking about models. Um so these are the crosscutting concepts. And so we did kind of a similar activity here in comparing what is the difference between a crosscutting concept and a science and engineering practice and how does that change across K12. And just the visual alone you can see that the K's the K1 and twos are setting that foundation in a very simpler way. But if you

091look at the 912 look at where they have to go. We have to make sure our elementary students are interacting with those complex ideas as well as the skills of being an engineer or a scientist. And then finally here is the the what's the disciplinary core idea. That's your your the word friction, right? We have to know friction. In kindergarten, we don't introduce friction. We talk about pushes and pulls and how do things change as they slide across the carpet or slide across the cement or slide across the tile. So this is the what of science and again we looked at how you just look at that visual again the K2 versus the 912 and complexity and change in the rigor that is expected of those kiddos once they get up into the high school.

092Um so all of this um was really important for our our team to understand those three threads and they are colorcoded um not only in the standards themselves but in like the forward exam I know we've talked about that a little bit tonight but all three of those you will find in a question that would be on the forward exam and those three things this is a high school example but you can see in each bubble if you read the performance indicator. So that would be what do we want our how do we want our students to show that they know these three things in this particular manner and there's the core idea motion changes in motion. How are you going to do that? You're going to show us a model. You're going to develop

093a model and then you're going to understand that the amount of energy and matter changes as the system stays closed. And so energy and um sorry energy and matter are is one of the crosscutting concepts you can find elsewhere. So they kind of three of them go inside the funnel and and get um put out as a performance indicator. So um those are found at all grade levels, not just high school. So um knowing that we grounded ourselves in what a performance indicator looks like and the three things that are important to have students be able to demonstrate that, we um then began to put together our evaluation tool. And these are the 10 criteria that the team created that were important to look at the six curricula that we did. And I'll just highlight

094that the first one of course is that the standard is aligned and knowing those three colors was actually really important as we unpacked a curriculum to see that those three were there. If you look at the second to bottom bullet, it says standard align assessments, units, and lessons. So, as we were talking a little bit about um rubric design work and looking at how are how is our curricular resource going to support some very knowledgeable ways that we can see kids working in both a science and engineering practice and a crosscutting concept in a DCI. We wanted to make sure that that was something we were looking for. And so the criteria up there of clear evidence, some evidence, and no evidence. And so we moved through the curricula looking at all 10 of those

095things. Um, and then after we um did that, teachers got a pilot, which I'll pass back to Kate. Yes. So, like Heidi said, we use that evaluation tool to look at six different resources. And that brought us to our two strongest resources. And from those two, we brought them to life within the classroom with students. And that was just so exciting for our teachers. And we gathered such great, invaluable feedback from our teachers and from students. Um, here are just some quotes from students. And I'm not going to read through them all, but there are some themes of I want more science time. I love science. This was the best lesson I've ever experienced. And I think it's perfectly summed up by the last bullet point. It was very, very, super duper fun. So that's

096right out right out from, you know, the hearts and minds of our littlest learners. And um, just brought a lot of joy to our team. So that was an incredible experience. And from that um our teachers brought all that feedback back um to our team to one of our sessions and we got to calibrate think about what questions do we still have regarding these two resources. What did we not see yet? What do we want to know more about? Um and we developed a list of questions that we sent to our vendors. Um so the two curriculara curriculum resource vendors got to answer some of those questions, send them back to the team and then one night we got to talk with them. So we invited them to give our team a demo and to

097have a little question and answer time. We had our central office partners there, Amy was there and um Jason Rubble was there to think about technology and how all of that kind of just works together. Um and we gathered a lot of um wonderful responses and our team got a lot more clarity around which resource would best serve um our learners. So that leads us to our team's final recommendation. our team had a very clear consensus that amplify science would be the curricular resource that we would offer um to the team tonight to move forward with um within this resource we saw clear evidence of many of that those criteria that Heidi had already shared um aligned to standards the resource is fully available in Spanish which is an incredible um asset to it um

098it focuses on disciplinary literacy student collaboration there's multimodal experiences where students get to explore and have hands-on experience. Um, and it's standard aligned with summitative informative assessments, which is key to be able to show um or have students show us what they know. >> Can I just ask while you're on this slide, what does trans adapted mean? >> That it is not um translated or like is actually like authentically >> like written in Spanish, not translated from English to Spanish. Thank you. I've not heard that term and so I would ask. Thank you. And um we did want to put for the team too or for the board as well that we do have summer professional learning as an option. We would offer two days in June for all of our K5 educators to have

099one day with the vendor to learn about resources, accessing the resources um both in print and online. And then also a second day which would be supported by our instructional coaches to really walk the teachers into the lessons at the grade level or the units at the grade level so that they can be prepared for use of that. And then the ongoing support that would happen as it does with all of our implementation models through late start Mondays season. And then I hear that last piece as they can opt in to June or will we expected to be there in June? >> Not have the expectation. Okay. Um but our our experience in the past with language arts and other critical legal processes that we often have just about everybody. >> Yeah. Be really appreciated

100that time to dig in um and to understand what does this look like as well. And I think in language arts we offered June and August and we had far more people that were interested in June. And so that's what we carried through. >> So with that, that's kind of the amazing work of this team. Really appreciates all the time and dedication. Like the night that they met with the vendors until 7 p.m. was after the PD day when they'd been engaged in professional learning all day and then stayed even later to to talk with with our vendors. So really appreciate the dedication and the thorough approach they took to to this process. And then I think it's also telling being there on the last night when the team comes to complete consensus. It's a

101blind vote and yet at the end everybody made the exact same recommendation which makes it feel like this is a really good fit for our for our students going forward. I think it's also important to note it wasn't one of the 10 criteria but it does help bigger picture. Amplify science is what we also adopted 68. So that is what we are currently implementing for our middle school. So we do have a relationship with the vendor. We do have a understanding of how some of these pieces work and are getting positive feedback from our current middle school middle school students about what that looks like as well in English and in our tweet program as well. >> Great. So with that, we'll take any any questions that you happen to questions. It was just fascinating

102to hear this detailed process that you undertook to a you know curriculum recommendation. Um thank you. That's just I I don't think you could really time this better having the report and then the and now this is so that's a it really is a great bookend um report. So, this is fascinating to hear how detailed your process was and just I think anyone who's watching this, if they're seeing the rigor that is going into the curriculum selection process um would be very um reassured that good things are happening. So, thank you for the work. >> I just want to elevate a little bit. I'll just draw attention back to slide 47. And so Heidi, when you were sharing about just the deep dive that you all did within the content standards, I just want to

103lift up the complexity of that work on behalf of educators. I mean, you all are professionals who understand content and that is really hard work to take dense standards and to put them through the funnel and then the added layer of how do we communicate this so students can talk about what they're learning and families can understand. That slide I think just really lifts up so much I think of what is happening in PLC's. That is a lot of work and just how professional and amazing you all are to be able to do that alone. I just want to lift that piece up of what is happening every day across all our content areas. I think just got elevated there and I wanted to call attention to that. Um and then in general funny that

104I called attention to the slide with the funnel because I feel like this moment really captures our inverted pyramid, right? Yeah, we have to do the board vote, but it comes to us from you for a reason. There is no way I would sit here and challenge what you all did because you're the ones doing I mean the effort of the team, the work from the pilot, just all of the organic nature that this comes to us. This is where I just get to smile and nod and say thank you so much. Of course, you have my vote because this is what you all do. So, I just wanted to elevate that. the living breathing inverted pyramid I think lives in a moment like this really richly at the board table. I would echo that

105like I would love to challenge what you did. >> I I think that that um I can echo the fact that you know you guys have a process in place that at least in my read before I got here late was so thorough and like step by step well done that even someone like me can't find a way to challenge it. This is great. And that's the way it should be. Like you want the professionals to do professional things and the promotions to sit quietly and appreciate it. >> Okay. >> Mic drop right when you come to the board. >> Right. >> I'm ready to roll today. I too appreciate the detail of your process and and how you identified the curriculum. Um and really appreciate um the the two graphs you did for vision

106reporting for a science curriculum. That's been through some of those. But I I love I mean these are big typical chunks of what will come out of a process like that. And I I think that um you know looking identifying um barriers, identifying where the opportunities are to um increase access, those are really great processes. um um and the commitment to again Spanish that that's not a notionable that we're looking at um really making sure that um we're addressing those barriers and making science successful and exciting for all for students. Um I know this is in place. I'm just going to highlight it because I come from a science background. um uh making sure that we recognize that we live in a very science uh area of the state uh with the university many places

107like Epic and Promega etc. um and that we're drawing upon those those places as well for expertise to enrich our students and our communities here. Um I know that you're all thinking about that we're discussing necessarily here, but I just want to say, you know, let's I'm I'm happy to help connect those points as well for our our community as well. One, I'll point out MAM. MAM is an incredible organization uh doing um great STEM work for uh youth of color and specifically girls into STEM careers and uh have great content there. So, I'll make sure that you all get that. Well, board, we do actually get to vote on this and there are almighty power out into the space here. Um, so is there a motion to approve amplified science as the new curriculum

108K5? So move. >> Thank you, Meredith. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Thank you, Christopher. Any further discussion? All those in favor of approving Amplify Science as our K5 curriculum purchase signify with I >> I. >> Any opposed? >> All right. The curriculum has been approved. >> Thank you again. Um I just want to say thanks again to the staff members. This was something that we I'll say we and me asked for of having your presence at the board table. um not because our leaders don't do amazing work and share that to us, but just to have more of that grassroots feel. So, I'm just so appreciative of your time being here. It means a lot to hear from you directly, especially with results and whatnot. So, thank you. Appreciate your time. >> Thanks.

109All right. So, John, we did do a little rearranging of the agenda. So, now we are technically to item four, which is superintendent report with updates from our employee um on-site clinic. I lost my words there for a second. >> Hi, Michelle. Welcome. >> Thanks for being here to share some updates. I just got asked, how are things going with the on-site clinic? >> Stay tuned. >> All right, so let's back up a whole lot here to get to the onsite clinic section. It's hard to follow such an amazing presentation on the academic side. So on the now you know how Chad feels on a regular basis, right? Students like singing. Yes. Um, so I I thought it would be good to come back and give you an update on the clinic. It has been

110open since early October and we've had massive success with the clinic and um want to just share some of those early successes that we have seen. Um, between October and early December, we had almost 100% utilization within the clinic. Every slot was full. And that was primarily because that time of the year is also the time we are um incentivizing and recommending our staff going for an annual wellness exam. And so we saw a significant increase of our staff using the clinic, which is our our goal is to have staff access the clinic at least once to get to know what the clinic looks like and then hopefully they will continue to come back. Um we have also seen wild success on some of our specialty days. We've had two vaccine clinic days. We've had

111multiple derm days. Um, and we continue to schedule those because they they fill up every single time. We did a hearing exam day. We are looking at a menopause day, a urology day, another derm day, and we just locked into a know your numbers day, which is diabetes and high blood pressure, which are also two things that are really important to us. When we look at not only just me sharing what the success is, it's important to follow it up with the data. So what you can see here is um the information we receive from the clinic on a monthly basis. The board requested data. This is the data that we are getting. You can see the high utilization in October and November and it fell back a little bit in December. And part of

112it is because we were in winter break for a couple of weeks. some legalization fell and the wellness assessments had wrapped up and so people started using the clinic more for dayto-day needs rather than those wellness assessment places. Um we can also see top referrals at this point digestive general surgery OBGYn and urology. I think the piece that I'd like to point out here is the unique patient visits. So um as of the end of December we had 463 unique patients. We just received our January report. it is up to 550 unique patients. Um that sounds amazing yet there is so much more work that needs to be done because we are we are looking at our employees as well as dependence on our dean health insurance plan. >> So this represents about 30% of

113our total population that is eligible for the clinic. And what we can see here at that top graph is our visitors our employees are knocking it out of the ballpark. our employees are visiting the clinic. Our dependents and our spouses are the areas that we need to continue to educate and get information out why it's important to use the clinic. When we look at the data, we also want to look at what the projected savings is. Our community um supported us in opening up the clinic and we have to follow that up with savings. So if I look at those first three months, October, November, December, and we know that we had 924 visits at that point, and we average that out for a claims cost, we've avoided approximately $350,000 of claims that have not

114hit our health insurance plan costs. That's a huge savings. Um, we're also starting to tick up on employ uh pre-employment physical costs. That's much smaller, but we continue to have employees visit the clinic as a firsttime visitor getting their new employee physical. So, it saves us there, but it also opens the doorway for them to be able to understand what the clinic is and visit it continually. Where the biggest savings is and and I'm really shocked by this is what we're saving for students um in front of substitutes versus students in front of teachers. If we take those 924 visits and we say a staff member alone misses at least an hour of time traveling to and from an office visit outside of the clinic. They travel to the east side or the west side

115of town. That's an hour loss of classroom time. If we average that out and then spread that over days, that's almost a hundred school days that our students have had in front of their teachers rather than in front of substitutes. And if we want to go back to what a talked about, students grow up when they're in front of the staff members that know what they're doing. And so this is this is humongous in the the value of the clinic is really it is impacting our kiddos. And I think that's a very conservative using a oneh hour measurement for that because right depending on the appointment, depending on the location, depending on the complexities of getting someone to cover for an hour versus putting in for a substitute teacher, I would wager to guess that's

116a fairly conservative estimate and it probably I will be really curious too to see some of the more tangible savings. >> Yes. Yeah. So that's our future work is the tangible savings. >> And that wasn't a knock on staff to say that it actually takes longer because that's the reality, right? takes longer to leave any job to go do any appointment. It's not unique to teachers. >> It's just the reality of what healthcare is. >> Yeah. >> On the flip side, I wanted to pull up what our contract costs were um that we locked into for the clinic. And if you look at the bottom right, it is costing the district about $650,000 this year for clinic costs. And within the first three months of our clinic being open, we're beyond 50% of the way

117there for just for claims avoidance. So this is um this is not normal. Most clinics don't see this success so quickly. We have done an amazing job communicating to our employees and this was a need our employees had and we are meeting the need by allowing them access to the clinic which is way more important than my mind and sometimes the financial piece but we have to tie them together. Um we also have to continue to make sure we're doing what's right. So we continually survey our staff. the clinic survey each visitor asking for their feedback and we did a survey about a month ago. Staff have shared it's convenient. The staff at the clinic are professional and they take time to listen to me. Um staff have also asked some questions. I don't know

118how to schedule. Is it confidential? Do we want more dermatology days? We've also gotten feedback that our Savannah Oaks clinic, which was scheduled for two days a month be open, is one that is not entirely used as much. Um, and we've also noticed that our clinic providers have had higher turnover than what we wanted. So, those are areas of improvement that we're working with with SSM to um turn the ship a little bit on that. So, our ongoing leadership moves, continuing to communicate to staff about the clinic. Marcy and her amazing team are working on a fun little video that we're going to put together in a couple of weeks that will show the process of how do you make an appointment all the way through this is what the clinic is like and we're

119going to get that out to our staff. Um, we've created FAQs that we share and clarify how staff make appointments. We've recommunicated what the services are that are available through the clinic. We continue to reinforce the confidentiality of the clinic. Um we're expanding the specialty days. We're also looking at how we monitor the clinic at Savannah Oaks and we're actually pushing it back to one day a month instead of two because the need exists so greatly at the Verona Clinic that we're actually in we're getting more utilization by keeping the Verona clinic open than the Savannah Oaks portion. Um, and we're continuing to work with SSM on recruiting and retaining their clinic staff. Next steps, um, for us, we're going to continue to look at those high demand services, the derm days, the specialty offerings.

120We're going to continue to increase utilization and awareness of the video that we've got as well as um determining what targeted communication we can send to um spouses and dependents and our staff on how important it is that they can access the clinic. We're going to continue to monitor our financial and wellness impacts. We'll continue to report to you how that is going. Um and finally, it it's important that this is a it it is constantly gathering feedback. So, we're going to continue to do that in a way that ensures that we're providing the best value to our staff. >> With that, does anyone have any questions? >> Joe, go ahead. >> Yeah, just a comment, I think, and and you can correct me if I'm misstating anything, and I'm I'm very happy with how

121the clinic's going. I think it's really it's being really successful in a staff support standpoint, but from a a transparency point of view, I don't know that we can represent claims avoidance as if it's cost savings. Like, I think we're all hopeful that it'll translate to cost savings down the road. But I I don't think we can say, "Oh, we've avoided $320,000 in claims, so that's $320,000 we've saved in costs to justify the expense." I I unless unless there's something I'm not understanding. >> Joe, you're correct. Um there is $350,000 worth of claims avoidance that does not tie correctly to what our health insurance renewal is because our health insurance renewal isn't just based on dollars of claims. It's also based on the health of our population and specific claims, cancer claims, trainees. Um, so

122the $350,000 is used specifically in our insurance renewal negotiations to have our renewal rate come in lower. >> That's what I thought. And there's also the on top of what we've already talked about, there's staff savings on co-pays, right? That that we haven't really talked about too of a of a benefit of the clinic is staff don't have to pay co-pays at the our clinic. >> That's correct. And that's a good point. So it's uh $20 for every visit. So 950 visits times $20 is money back in our staff's pocket. >> I'm glad Joe brought that up. I think that was something that we kind of grappled with when we were trying to figure out the cost versus the savings and the savings are still a little bit when you're talking find, you know, monetary

123savings, those are a little more speculative when it comes to renewal rates. So I appreciate then seeing the tangible days that students have their teacher in front of them and you know I mean going to a doctor appointment if that only took an hour that would be amazing but that's it it's a huge chunk of time. Um so to have that type of impact for our students is a another metric that I think is um happening now and great to highlight because ultimately we want to do what's best for our staff and our students and I do hope that the monetary savings you know is realized in our um renewal but this is clearly a move for our staff. And maybe just to reiterate by talking about this, I don't want to give the perception

124that somehow staff are abusing the general leave they have to go to doctor appointments, it's just the proximity piece. And I I know from having been at that spot >> to make sub notes and take that time away is also really stressful. And so maybe folks are being more proactive in being seen because there's less barriers to making that available and how that again intangibly or tangibly plays out over time. Um but yeah, this is by no means a knock on behaviors our staff have had in the past. It is the way of making those needs more readily met in a productive way. >> You think it's more of a knock on medical providers who take forever while you sit there and wait and wait. So >> yeah, >> so this is really fantastic. I'll

125be, you know, I'll be anxious to see how um the numbers continue to come in, but I think the number of unique patient visits seems very very high which is exciting. Thanks in advance. Well, retroactively, thank you to you and your team for all the pre-work that got to even these numbers and continued gratitude to Marcy, all of you for just the ongoing just really intense efforts to to make this utilized to the fullest degree. I know that's a big task with everything else. So, thank you. >> You're welcome. >> So, I'll just make one comment in regards to the clinic and that, you know, this is brand new. this is just riding the ship in regards to what the actual need might be with the zones clinic. So I I guess that's the way

126I'm viewing that. Um and I hope that remains, you know, we continue to see that as a a cost effective way for time as well for ourselves and our pitch students. So does that make sense? Made sense. And we're going to continue to monitor. I think that's the most important piece is we have to watch our data and be nimble and respond to that data. >> Well, thank you for the update. >> Yeah, really appreciate getting some of that data. >> Thanks for >> All right, moving through our agenda to public comment. We do have one this evening. Megan Gross, you're welcome to speak from there. You're welcome to come as other folks have come to the table. So, >> thank you. >> Um, so once again talking about the hockey suspension. I know you

127guys are probably getting really. Um, so our son was suspended from hockey based on allegations that were attributed to him by the school that took the school over 35 days after the appeal to actually tell us what alleged violations he did. Why weren't these kids asked about this in their initial meeting? Why weren't they given the chance to give their side of the story? When asked that question in our last meeting, the response was, "So you would have had you would have liked to have known that." All we were told was that there was eyewitness accounts, but never checked to see if those allegations were the truth. And this where our frustration lies. After obtaining the official police report, then during our meeting, we discovered something that should concern everyone. The conduct the school told

128us our son committed is identified in that report as being committed by a different student. He was never even questioned by the police. That is not a gray area. That is not interpretation. That's a factual contradiction. When a student is disciplined for conduct that official documentation attributes to someone else, that is not a minor discrepancy. This is a serious fail failure in the process. It raises necessary questions. Were all facts thoroughly reviewed? Were conclusions formed before evidence was verified? And when questions were raised, why were we as parents quickly dismissed? In addition to that discrepancy, we have identified concerns regarding dates referenced in the allegations. There are instances where students were accused of conduct on specific dates and events for which documentation from the school should show that they weren't even present that day. If

129timelines and presence were not verified before conclusions were reached, that represents a breakdown in bas basic factchecking. Accuracy matters, details matter, and facts matter. When a school formally accuses a student of conduct that law enforcement documentation does not attribute to him, and when allegations are tied to dates that do not align with the with the records, it impacts reputation, standing, and future opportunities. If the district determination differs from documented evidence, then the district should be prepared to clearly explain explain the factual basis for that difference because if no such evidence exists, then decisions were not made on something other than verified facts. That should concern every parent, which is why we are still here talking and will continue to do so. And every every parent should understand that when facts are ignored, it becomes our

130responsibility to step in and protect our children from decisions that are not grounded in the truth. We must also ensure that disciplinary decisions are not driven by emotion, pressure, or reaction, but by the documented evidence. Every student involved, regardless of their role, even the accused, should be asked the same thorough questions and evaluated under the same factual standards. Not assumptions, not association, not momentum, not emotion, but facts. If we expect accountability from our children, then accountability must also exist in our within our administration. When facts and motives are clear, decision decisions should follow them, not have the ad administration try to defend what was clearly already decided. Thank you so much. >> Thank you for your time, Megan. All right, forward. All my papers here. So, now we are on to uh board updates. Any

131updates board members this evening? As I'm scrolling through, I think my only update just relates to our upcoming um future dates that our next meeting will be full board workshop. Um and for the community to know as well, those are open sessions, but we'll be in the quiet space so we can just have more of a dialogue type centric conversation space. And thanks in advance to John for the work that will fuel our conversation on March 2nd. Um just next week already. >> March is Sunday. So, yes, see you in a week. >> One of those months where the calendar is a little fun. Yeah. Yeah. >> Thank you for the portion. >> Yeah. And for admin team just in terms of how agendas are coming through. I think this will be really impactful. So,

132um and then moving on to super superintendent consent agenda. Making sure you've taken a look at that. Are there any questions? Hearing none, superintendent's consent agenda is approved as presented and then uh board consent agenda. So we have board meeting minutes and OE7. Thank you, John, for taking those notes last time. Are there any questions? Okay, hearing none, the board's consent agenda is also approved. So we just highlighted a few future dates. Um so we'll see you all in one week's time and then we are going to adjourn to close session. And then I do want to give a little added context this evening um as we shift into close session with certain topics just to provide a little bit more transparency to the community. Um so if you're all okay, I am going to

133read so I don't miss anything. Um so before I make the motion to enter close session, I'd like to briefly explain why each of these items qualifies for close session under Wisconsin law and why confidentiality is necessary at this time. So, first regarding the potential lease agreement with the Miracle League of Dne County, as reflected in the posted notice, the purpose of this portion of the closed session is to provide direction to administration regarding negotiating parameters for a potential lease. The board has previously discussed general concepts related to this matter in open session, including at the December 15, 2025 board meeting. I'd encourage constituents who are interested in the broader context of this discussion to refer to the minutes from that meeting. You can also rewatch um via YouTube. At this stage, however, the board

134will be discussing potential negotiation parameters and considerations that could shape the district's position. Public discussion of those parameters could limit the district's flexibility and reduce its negotiating leverage. For that reason, this portion of the discussion qualifies for close session under Wisconsin statute 19.85 sub one sube as competitive and bargaining reasons requiring confidentiality. Second, regarding the unsolicited offer from a Verona youth athletics organization to purchase district land. This item has been placed in close session because it involves the potential sale of public property and discussion of the district's possible response to that offer. Public discussion at this stage could affect property value, negotiating posture, and the district's ability to evaluate and respond strategically. For those reasons, competitive and bargaining considerations support discussion in close session again under Wisconsin statute 19.85 sub1 sube. If there are any

135added comments from any board members, um, you can certainly make those publicly without revealing any strategy. Please feel free to do so. I would note that you're adding context as a best practice, not because of the unique nature of these things. >> Thank you. Correct. Correct. This is something that's been encouraged by school boards to provide more transparency to the community about what is being discussed. Um so this is a practice that is not just unique to us at this evening or this juncture. Thank you for that. Uh and then finally, the board will remain in close session under Wisconsin statute 19.85 the 85 sub1c to confer with legal counsel regarding strategy in connection with a potential writ of mandemus to pause at that word because I don't use it very often. This portion of

136the agenda involves attorney client communication concerning strategy and its appropriately held in close session under that statutory exemption. So with all of that explanation, I will now make a motion to adjourn to close session pursuant to Wisconsin statute 19.85 sub and G as stated in the posted notice. Um that motion does require a roll call vote. Is there a second to my motion? >> Second. >> We'll give John that second by a hair. Um so moving to um close session by roll call vote. Christopher >> yes. >> John, >> yes. >> Meredith, >> yes. >> Joe, >> yes. >> And I am a yes as well. We are moved. We are joured and into closed session.