Verona Area School Board of Education Meeting October 6, 2025

001Greetings everyone and happy October officially our first board meeting of the month. I'm going to call this meeting to order. Let's establish that we have a quorum please by beginning with a roll call vote. Joe >> here. >> Corby >> here. >> John >> here. >> Meredith >> here. Christopher >> here. >> Juan Carlos >> here. >> I am here as well. We do have a quorum. Corby, has this meeting been properly noticed? >> It has. >> Thank you. To help ensure that we're centering our board work around our shared values and 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 found at the top of the agenda. Uh Corby, would you please be willing to read those for

002us tonight? >> Absolutely. In the Verona 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 Verona Area School District 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 in 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 Verona Area School District is committed to disrupting these systems of inequity. And the land acknowledgement reads, "There are currently 12 tribal nations who call Wisconsin home.

003With the whole chunk nation being the primary group living around Madison, no matter where you are in the state, you are on the ancestral land of a tribal nation. As we begin our meeting, we honor the land upon which we stand." Thanks, Corby. Uh, board members, drawing your attention to the remainder of tonight's agenda. Any suggestions, amendments? Otherwise, I would accept a motion to approve the agenda as presented. >> Motion to approve agenda as presented. >> Thank you, Christopher. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Thank you, Carlos. All those in favor of approving tonight's agenda signify with I. >> I. >> Any opposed? The agenda is approved. Moving on to board recognition. I think I'll maybe let Dr. Clarity speak first because this is always an awkward one when it's schoolboard recognition time of

004year. So, Superintendent Dr. Clarity, would you like to start? >> Absolutely. Um, I you know, it really is our honor. Um, and there are two distinct u recognition times of the year for uh the work of board of educations both across the state and then across our nation. But today, we're specifically thinking about uh the Wisconsin uh recognition. And so as we think about uh this week, you know, the Wisconsin Associated School Board designate this special week as a Wisconsin schoolboard week. It's time for building awareness and understanding the vital function an elected board of education plays in our community. Ron School District joins public school districts across the state to celebrate Wisconsin Board Week and honor BSD's board of education for their commitment to our community and students. And so truly on behalf of

005the entire staff and the community of the Bernary School District, we really thank you all for your service and what what that means for uh continuing uh the greatness of public education across our community. So thank you very much. >> Thank you. I know we all Oh, that's happening. I if I I hope it's fair to say speaking a bit on behalf of the group that I get the privilege of serving with that none of us sit at this table because of the recognitions and accolades. Um and I appreciate being a part of this group of seven um that head down do the work and do our best to serve the community. Um I'd like to just elevate for the sake of the community that WA was the Wisconsin Association of School Boards. This group

006has great participation within our state organization. Um we attend the state conference. We've uh many of us have helped facilitate at the conference. We attend regional meetings. We're um all very actively involved and I would even say actively involved to the sense of trying to continue to elevate values that we carry here to the state level. Um it can be really challenging to support the state of Wisconsin school boards collectively when there's so many facets of what districts look like. Um, and I I'm very proud of this group for taking the energy to try to propel forward things that we believe are true and benefit all kids throughout the state of Wisconsin. So, thanks to all of you for your time and commitment to WASBY and appreciate the the share from WASBY tests. >> Absolutely.

007Thank you so much. Um, in honor of this day, we have recognition from uh Governor Tony Gvers that I was asked all of us to read a proclamation on on his behalf. So whereas school boards are locally elected bodies that serve over 400 public school districts and communities across the state with the mission of preparing students for success in higher education, future jobs and careers and productive engagement in their communities. And whereas schoolboard members are elected to serve students, district employees, and a larger community, working closely with parents, taxpayers, educational professionals, and other community members to do what's best for kids and adapt to the evolving needs of their districts. And whereas school boards are empowered and charged with overseeing the education of students enrolled in their district as well whereas the district's employees finances

008operations and facilities. And whereas schoolboard service is an honor that carries a significant responsibility and in moments of need. Schoolboard members often go beyond the call of duty. And whereas this week, the state of Wisconsin commended school boards across the state for the important role they play as advocates for public education and as essential partners in the state's efforts to ensure that every co every kid in Wisconsin has access to high quality public education. Now I therefore speak on behalf of Governor Jonvers. I re hereby recognize schoolboard week um in the Bronair School District. So again, thank you so much for your service. >> Thank you. Moving on to community recognition. So speaking of WBY, the Wisconsin Association of School Boards, um we got an opportunity to honor some community partners in the area. Um

009again, Dr. Clar, if you want to speak first. This was a partnership on attempting to recognize the multiple partners that we have in terms of local organizations, businesses that support our school district. Um so if you want to start, I'll add a few pieces up for you. >> Absolutely. um as we in conjunction with the Wisconsin Association of School Boards, we were given an opportunity to uh nominate uh businesses around our area uh that really go above and beyond in their partnership and servicing and and prioritizing uh public education, specifically the Broner School District. And uh of our our nominees, we were excited to receive notice of five that would receive the honor of the 2025 Minnesota business honor role. And so with that, I'll turn those five over to you for recognition of our

010five winners. >> Yeah, thank you. Um, I think for each of these, there'd be a multitude of things that we could elevate for examples, but I'll just offer a few. Um, Epic, a big gratitude is for being able to share spaces, particularly for our graduation. It is such a luxury to have such a nearby space that allows for such a capacity for folks to come and celebrate our scholars. Um, that's one of many things that Epic does to support our schools. Millers, um, job opportunities, how many brought sales could we not even count in ways of supporting financially to student organizations, athletics, and so on. Um, and supporting students with special needs that are looking for careers as well. The Pittsburgh Chamber and the Verona Area Chamber as network partners for our um I'm losing

011my words here for a second. Um, just just business connections for our students with Jenny Johnston. the support that she provides our scholars here and then the Brona press of course and just being um a avenue for sharing and celebrating successes in our district and being a partner to help us share and keep our community informed. So we're super grat grateful for these five that are being recognized this year. Um and thank you for the partnership and time and being able to submit these nominees. >> Absolutely. Thank you so much and congratulations to these dynamic businesses and true appreciation for your partnership and what it means to the continuing education of our of our students. So this next part of the superintendent report um is I really wanted to pause uh we had a I

012say a monumental moment in the Broner School District last Friday. I'd like to thank our board of education members that were there present and those that were there in spirit. Um and thank you for your confidence and and vote and and responsible f fiscal management and prioritizing staff wellness as we opened up the employee health clinic with a ceremonial rib ribbon cutting on um last Friday. when you know I've been part of those but I never realized how sharp those scissors were and don't stick your hand in there might have been the first patient in the um but they are uh it was a great really a a great ceremony it was very proud to be be a part of it uh with speeches from our board president uh Jen Murphy and also representation from

013our businesses uh that supported the opening very honored to have the executive team of BAEA and the executive team of Vespa uh present in attendance to be a part of that knowing that their advocacy and their partnership has meant the world to bring this to light. And just an data uh the clinic is already booked two weeks or more out. Um so um it's filled up fast already and today was the first day of service and um yeah it's off to a great start. >> So thank you everyone. >> Yeah, so exciting. Thank you admin team all the leadership and work that went behind getting this done so expeditedly as well. So excited to get the data and to see the impact of our staff. >> Next as part of superintendent report I'd like to

014invite uh deputy superintendent Chad Weezy and our distinguished guest representative police department including our own newest uh SRO officer officer stole to give the safety and security update. Welcome everyone. Thank you. >> Good evening board. It's good to see everybody tonight and double down on Dr. C's kind words regarding recognition for your service. I bring with me three other uh public servants uh who um are integral in making sure that um our schools and community are safe on a daily basis. Uh we are excited to really give the board an update on this important work. At the end of the day, uh you get we're going to dive into Act 95 later, which is uh super exciting uh and uh tied to all kinds of academic achievement. Uh at the end of the day, if

015our schools aren't safe and welcoming, uh the conversation you're having after we're done tonight is quite honestly mute. Uh we have to make sure our kids are safe. Um and they come to a welcoming school on a daily basis. That work is, in my opinion, next to impossible if our community is not safe. Um and it's important that we build bridges and make sure we have a partnership with the folks uh to my left tonight. So, super excited uh to have them with me. But quickly what we're going to try to accomplish in our short presentation, we're going to reaffirm our commitment to making sure our schools are safe. We're going to share updates on the work we've been doing uh to make sure our school year was off to a safe start. Uh and

016we've got systems in place to ensure that our that safety uh can be replicated and looks the same uh in all of our schools. We're going to highlight some of the things we've been working on. Uh we're going to demonstrate accountability to all of you and to our community. Um and again, continue to strengthen trust. uh this is not a relationship that uh happens overnight uh and is uh it it does not exist in every single community where uh you can end up in a place that uh the police department and and the school system uh butt heads and do whatever they can to keep each other out of their spaces. Um in my opinion that doesn't work um during uh times where you need each other the most. Uh if you haven't fostered those

017relationships and built communication channels uh things fall apart in a hurry. So, it's great to have uh these three folks with me tonight. Uh you can see uh really uh this whole crew built these slides tonight. I said to Marcy that schoolboard slide makes all of the rest of my slides with clip art. Not quite. Look, we had you guys in 3D to start the meeting. Uh and we we got a little clip art and we did our best to follow suit with all of you. Um I'm going to have uh the Verona Police Department introduce themselves. Why don't we go in reverse order just so we can go in order of the slides. Chief, why don't we start with you? >> Hello again. Um, I met all of you, I don't know, probably six

018months ago. Um, so excited to be invited here again and this time with a school resource officer, Officer Brad Stole. Um, just a recap of of who I am. Um, maybe you might remember, but I'm I'm I would refer to as a hometown boy, born and raised in the city of Verona. Um, so served with the Rona Police Department full-time 2001 I was a sergeant and lieutenant 2008 and been chief for the last three years. Um, being born and raised in this community. I have a a passion for it um as well as this school. Um, graduating here in 1988 and then my two young adult children also graduated from Rona High School. Um, one was a a COVID graduate, so I did not get to uh walk the stage, but um and so I'm

019very interested in the safety of our community and the school district. So, thank you again for the invite. Um, I just want to stress uh how positive our relationship is with the school district, Dr. Clarity, Mr. Weezy, Mr. Cox, and others. It's we have a great relationship and none of them are allowed to leave. I think I can >> Yeah, recommendation. >> Um, so that's my introduction. Go ahead. >> Hi, my name is uh Jeremy Hapfield and I started my law enforcement career back in 2003. Uh during that time um I was able to spend a couple years as a school resource officer uh which was very eye opening and entertaining, very rewarding as well. Um I currently serve as a lieutenant with the Brona Police Department and my responsibilities are primarily investigations and emergency

020preparedness for the city as a whole. Um and then supervise the SRO program as well. >> Hi, I am Brad Stole. I am your new SRO for about a month now. Um so I'm been with the Verona Police Department for seven years. I started my career here. So, um, this is pretty much all I know is this city in terms of, uh, working as a police officer. Uh, so I'm excited to be here. U, my wife is a high school counselor in a different district. So, I'm not a stranger to education or anything like that. And so, I've kind of come into this role having a background in how the systems in a school kind of work, but um, obviously experiencing it in a different way than I ever experienced before. So, it's been a

021lot of learning, a lot of names, and I'm not good with names. And so I'm I'm working on it, but uh I just can't say like enough about how great Chad has been just responsive to everything. If I have a question that comes up, I send Chad a text message. He's like, "I don't know the answer, but I'll get it to you in the next five minutes." And sure enough, within five minutes, I'm getting a message back with everything I need. And so that's been really great to make sure that we're starting this new journey off on the right foot and kind of getting just everything I need to get going with it. >> And now I feel left out because I've had a great experience with Chad as well. Thanks for that, >> Chad.

022Weezy recognition. >> Certainly not the intent. Um I um we we could not really kick off an update on safety and security uh without recognizing the five security assistants uh that make up the team. I there will rarely be a time that you now come to the high school uh that um officer stole isn't checking in with at least one of them. what's going what's the word on the street for the day. Um and they um they're eyes and ears uh and building relationships with all of our students. Um and I think are an incredibly important component and really at the end of the day making sure uh when when Brad's here at the high school uh that Principal Cox has a team that's taking care of making sure that the place is safe. Uh

023you'll hear a little bit more about some of the work officer Stole is doing at all of our schools. uh he's continued to make sure that he's not only just stationed at the high school, but has been a presence at all of our schools and continues to be a resource uh for all of the the schools that are in Verona. Uh but again, can't say enough about this group of people. They are amazing, dedicated folks and and an outstanding team and we're in a really good spot with the five people that we've got. Um, I was going to kick off just uh really the first part portion of this slide and then turn it back over uh to Officer Stole to maybe just uh kind of expound a little bit on how his first month

024has gone. And this was this is a big deal. This is this transition back in uh to the school district after a few year hiatus um and making sure we found the right person uh and making sure that we got off to a smooth start was a big deal. And I, you know, the two of us and frankly the four of us knew that it was high stakes uh to make sure Officer Soul got off on the right foot and built relationships uh with our students and he has done that. Um Officer Soul's been an integral part and he can tell you a little bit more about some of the safety drills. Um, we've ended up in a place that we were committed to the school board uh when we signed this contract uh that

025we were going to share openly share data uh with all of you and our community in terms of what's happened. Uh, Officer Stole wrote his first newsletter and I think we'll detail uh some of that when you hear from him in a little bit here in terms of how that first month went. Uh, we did end up having two arrests uh in the month of September. Uh we had one where we had a a decent fight inside a dean's office uh where a student uh received a concussion and we ended up uh working with the Vernon Police Department. They made the determination after consultation with us. Um and it's not always going to be like that. There's going to be times that uh laws are broken. We're running a city of 2,000 adolescents here. Um

026there's going to be times that laws are broken and the Verona Police Department steps in and says a law is broken and there's going to be a consequence for actions. wasn't the case this time. Uh Jeremy came over when we had a decent little fight and said, "Here's where we're leaning. Are you comfortable with it?" I said, "By all means." If I would have said, "No," they still could have recommended a citation and said, "Jack, too bad, pound sand. This was too bad they broke the law." And that wasn't the case. Um and uh and then the other one I wanted to give a little bit more detail on. And I the the possession of a a dangerous weapon on school property uh quite frankly was uh a result of of the school district Fitchburg

027Police Department and the Verona Police Department uh having a working relationship enough that we had um a community-based issue that kind of spilled uh into Fitsburg off of a bus. um ended up having uh you know, Lieutenant Hatfield and a captain from the Fitchburg Police Department, Brian, uh myself on a conference call on a Sunday afternoon uh to make sure that our schools were safe on a Monday morning. Uh and without uh the communication that took place there, uh there's a chance we we would have kind of been opening up school Monday morning uh completely blind and that wasn't the case. Uh we had a few students who made bad decisions on a Friday afternoon and over the weekend. Uh and Brian was able to identify those students, hold I think three or four parent

028meetings uh to start the school day. Um and after multiple interviews across our school uh Fitchburg and the Verona Police Department, uh a student admitted that they had a um a pocketk knife, a closed blade knife uh that was that he carried around in a backpack for the day. Um, and of if you guys have questions around uh the the referral for a dangerous weapon on school property, they're here to answer questions. Uh, but made the decision that uh that's you're kind of crossing a no-go line uh in our school district if you bring a weapon, even if it's never seen, which it wasn't, uh, onto school property and made the decision to refer a case uh to Dane County for don't bring a knife to school and there's consequences. There are consequences here uh

029with our our restorative uh you know our student discipline plan but also uh consequences that resulted with police involvement. Um officer stole certainly I want to turn this over to you. Um interested in highlights from your newsletter, other things you've got going on in school. Um certainly I'd like to hear from you regarding us kicking off youth quarter. Anything else? >> Uh yeah. So um I guess since well I'll just jump to the second bullet point because that's kind of what we've been talking about. So, um, one arrest and one criminal referral. So, I just want to differentiate that a referral is a little bit different and that's where an individual is just given a court date or a notice that there will be a court date coming in the future and that's not an

030actual physical arrest. So, um, there was one single physical arrest and that was for that fight in the Dina students office. Um, that resulted in some pretty substantial injuries and that kind of forced her hand in having to make that decision. Um, the referral uh was made after it was determined that the student involved knew that there was going to be an issue in the community after they got off the bus and they chose to still bring that knife to school in preparation for a fight that was going to occur. And they didn't disclose that to any one during that entire process. And that's kind of what forced our hand in in having to go the criminal referral route with that. Um just because there was a point in time all day long where that

031student could have made a different choice and they just didn't. Um, and they they brought that knife with the intention of using it in that fight. Um, and when that kind of comes out, that kind of forces our hand with that. Um, otherwise I have not issued any citations to uh any other students. Certainly made contact with a variety of different uh incidents that have occurred, issued some warnings. um otherwise been mainly allowing principal Cox and the rest of the admin team to kind of um deal with it following the progressive discipline model and a lot of just kind of figuring out where I fit in that model. Um you know establishing what rises to the level of needing my involvement um maybe just giving me a quick rundown and saying yes or no is

032this something that sounds like it could need police involvement or no this really sounds like a school only issue. Let's move forward with that. And so there have been some instances where um you know I've been consulting like you know this sounds like like a school issue like he may it's if unless you learn something crazy I think the school should just be the one running with this. And so just figuring out those lines of communication um have kind of been um what we've been up to in terms of that. Um for the standard response protocol uh we've been using Navigate 360 as our new app uh to be able to perform these drills. Uh pictured at the top is a fire drill. It was at Badger Ridge Middle School. Um and so I have

033attended eight of those drills across the district um in our city of Verona schools. So I have been to at least one drill at every school in the city. Um and made it a point to obviously introduce myself to the principles and especially uh the front office staff were the ones I'd pro primarily have the most contact with if I went to those buildings. Um and just doing little things like making sure keys are working when they're supposed to for our first responders. I discovered at one of the sites that my master key fob didn't work and we got that rectified very quickly. But, you know, just kind of some of those little things that in emergency we want to make sure that everything is working and overall the schools have been doing pretty well

034um and making sure that these drills are running smoothly. I've been really impressed with um a lot of that. We've had some other school safety investigations. uh first or second week of school, we had a a student who brought forth a concerning social social media post to a trusted adult in the high school. Um and we were able to conduct some interviews and determined that uh the uh weapon seen was fake in the photographs and it belonged to a different subject who didn't even live on this side of the county. Um, but that was something that we were able to screen out quickly just because a student had a trusted relationship with someone in the high school and was willing to bring that information forward. Um, and obviously kind of going back to the dangerous

035weapon thing, the other school safety one uh was that fight that we learned about after the fact that Fitchwick PD investigated and we had a good line of communication to be able to follow up on that, ensure that uh some of those problems didn't spill back into the school later that that week when we got back from the weekend. uh restorative justice court. Uh we are in discussion with a couple different trains of thoughts um in terms of setting up restoative justice program if we do get to the point where I have to issue citations to students for whatever it may be. Um, one of the options on the table is reaching out to a local youth organization that already administers a form of a youth uh, justice court. Um, in terms of they would

036offer things like community service, um, peacemakers who kind of mentor the student in hopes that we're preventing recidivism. Uh, and the other option would be us uh, kind of doing that and building that on our own within uh, the school district and the Verona Municipal Court. And so those are some of the things that are kind of ongoing right now that we're still having discussions about um in terms of what makes the most sense for us um and all of that. Uh and lastly, just building relationships. Um you know, there's a lot of kids at the this high school and especially now that this position is more um districtwide, a lot of different buildings to get to, a lot of different kids to see. Um, and so I'm starting off uh trying to get to

037all the different schools for lunch at least once a month. Uh, trying to hit up a different grade level. Uh, this past week I was at Country for second grade lunch. Um, and handing out stickers, kind of meeting and greeting with the kids a little bit. Um, and trying to weave that into seeing like one grade at every school every month. uh just to kind of get myself out there because although I do cover all those schools, there's not always a a call for service need for me to be at those schools and to just kind of remind them that I'm there and this is what I do and kind of meet some kiddos. I do a brief pause there. Anybody have questions for officer stole specifically? We've got time for questions at the end

038as well. >> We good. I >> I just want to add a comment, but go ahead, Christopher. Oh, I was just wondering um how the community has responded to your presence and you the difference that there's between parents, students, and uh staff. The response has been overwhelmingly positive. Um I can't I can't recall instances at all. You know, hearing I guess rude remarks in the hallway or anything like that. A lot of the students just come right up to me and talk to me just like I'm a normal staff member. Um, one thing that has been shocking to me at the high school level is I pull out the roll of stickers in the high school cafeteria and my kids just block even the high schoolers. It's it's phenomenal. And so I tell them the

039rule to get a sticker is they have to tell me their name because like I said, terrible with names trying to remember. Um, then they have to either tell me a fun fact about themselves or they have to ask a question they've always wanted to ask a police officer. And then there are speeding tickets and radar questions >> notes and >> it generates a lot of it generates a lot of discussion. But it's pretty amazing how many questions exist for both students and staff that are questions that they've always wanted to ask and they've just never had the space or the place to be able to ask those questions. Um, and so it's every day that I'm getting bombarded with all these questions and I'm like, you know, I know a little bit about a

040lot of things, so sometimes I might have to get back to you on an answer. Um, but I can, you know, provide you with my best educated guess as to what the answer is. Um, so overwhelmingly positive for sure. Thanks. >> Just go ahead. Yeah. >> Yeah. Just a quick question, Officer Sto. Did I hear you correctly that Pona is looking at participating in the uh the day county restorative justice program? is that >> so um there's two different programs. One for 12 to 16 year olds is through Brier Patch. >> Okay. >> And then for the 17 and 18 year olds would be through Dane County. Got >> um those are the the two programs that are in existence. Um and we have some meetings set up this week I think to kind of

041discuss those in greater detail um to see if they're they'd be good fits for us. Um, obviously, you know, Brier Patch was a it seems like a good choice being in Fitsburg, kind of local to our area and accessible and all those things. And so, those are things we're trying to keep into consideration. Um, and we have those discussions ongoing and I I I venture by the end of the semester, we'll probably have a pretty good idea of where we want to go with it. Um, but it's all things that, you know, take some time to set up and get the systems in place and make sure that we're doing everything the way that we want it to be. You know, the reason I I'm a peacemaker for the Dane County program and whenever we

042get a kid from Fitchburg or Wilma, the question always comes up, why doesn't participate in the way we I'm super passionate about it. My when I was a principal, we had a very high functioning youth court and I I think it's I think it's an amazing opportunity to change lives. So, yeah. And I I can add a little bit on that. Um although we don't have a formal agreement in place and and we have it for you know at least five years um we do have a relationship established and so um you know Ishmail will call and say hey we have this case can we refer it um and so to seek permission and every time we've granted permission so >> we do have that working relationship so it's not it's not a hard no

043>> excellent thank you >> I can add a little bit further I actually was um in one of those uh restorative circles last week for a separate case involving a a a 16-year-old who made a poor decision when I was back working patrol. Um so it was that was my first time ever being in the process and I thought it went very well and so kind of being on a different end of it was very interesting and I had nothing positive to nothing but positive things to say about it afterwards. But those are discussions we're still having to try and figure out what the what the best fit is. um you know it's only been a month but trying to learn a lot. >> Thank you. >> I just want to elevate a piece of

044gratitude that I was hearing that I know was a big part of the discussion as a board when leaning back into the relationship as a with an SRO partner of relying on school admin security team to ensure that we're not jumping to policing where policing isn't necessary for adolescent behaviors. that might just be the nature of kind of Chad what you said 2,000 humans interacting together and teenagers are going to maybe make some poor choices. So I just I appreciate that I heard you elevate that piece of just really ensuring that everyone's role is clearly defined and utilizing the team that we've had and where your presence um and involvement makes sense. So I just I want to share that gratitude because I know that's something that we talked a lot about. Um and one

045clarification and there'll be a question later because I know we're going to talk more broadly about things. So, the dangerous weapon at school was intended for use at a fight planned for outside of the school day. >> Yes. >> Okay. So, I know I heard the part of rumbling in the community on the weekend, but that was the intention at least of the student was keeping it to use it later. >> Correct. >> Thank you. >> And if I may reiterate the point that you just made, um, having that combination of police and security is really imperative. So from my perspective as the police chief, I think officers still in the police department are in a better situation having that relationship with security and the way it was previously it was just the the we

046call them a PSL back then police leaison and they got involved with everything um and and that wasn't um advantageous at times and so having security um is key to this relationship working. So I'm very pleased with how it is working. >> Thank you. Chief, you got the floor. I I believe this was even going to be your slide. >> It is. I took a few notes here. Um, today we're talking about school safety and responsible gun ownership enhances school safety. Uh, each year the city of Rona signs a wear orange proclamation to keep the issue of gun violence in the public forum. Be smart is a non-political organization which encourages responsible gun ownership and keeping our communities safe. Um, if you can see the acronym for um, smart is secure your weapons. U model

047behavior. Ask questions. And I can't stress that enough. If you're having, you know, sleepover stage and you're sleeping over at somebody else's house, asking questions. Do you have firearms in the house and are they secure? Um, recognize and tell. Um, I would like to change that to encourage, but then the acronym wouldn't make sense. more like smear. We'll keep it with tell. Um I've been told that the Ron Area School District um is also involved with this program to some degree. And so we want to be a partner uh with that messaging as well. And u I've advised Officer Stole that I would like to get him um involved in whatever kind of messaging or education that we can um for keeping the guns out of the hands of juveniles. Um, there's a gun culture

048in the state of Wisconsin. I don't have to tell any of you that. Um, it makes accessibility to guns far too easy. By applying trigger locks and locking guns in safes, we can prevent accidental deaths, suicides, and homicides. Um, I got some stats um I'd like to share with you that every day 125 people in the United States are killed by gun violence with an average of more than 19,000 gun homicides every year. Wisconsin has an average of 741 gun deaths every year with a rate of 12.5 deaths per 100,000 people. Uh onethird of child gun deaths are suicides. More than 700 child gun suicides each year. One study showed that over 80% of children under the age of 18 who died by gun suicide use a gun belonging to a parent or a relative.

049That's why this is so important that we encourage uh gun safety, locking guns. A national survey of high school students found that 22% had seriously considered attempting suicide within the last year. Uh unfortunately, suicide is very close to me, losing two family members and two former partners. So, this is very real to me and I know what the pain feels like. So, um, we are a board. We'd like to, uh, promote gun safety, and this is one avenue to do to do that. Um, there's a couple other slides here. Firearms are the leading cause of death of American children. I did not know that. That was surprising to me. The leading cause that that just it still shock. Just above >> motor vehicle traffic accidents. And then threearters of school shooters acquired their firearm from

050a home of a parent or a close relative. So again, there's that nexus. So access to guns. Uh the data is staggering. We gladly encourage responsible gun ownership to prevent tragedy from occurring in our community. Uh the Verona Police Department does provide gun locks free of charge to anybody who asks and maybe we'll have Officer Stole bring some to the school in case he's asked for some. Um in summary, in my opinion, the best form of school safety is a balanced approach involving physical security and security-minded staff. And that's staff who's willing to challenge visitors if um they don't have a visitor tag or if they don't look like they belong. Um, most importantly, knowing the students, watching for concerning behaviors, addressing bullying and other toxic behavior, having easy accessible reporting methods such as apps

051that you do, and having mental health resources available for those who are struggling, keeping guns out of the hands of juveniles is a critical component of school and individual safety. So, that's just a a word on our stance on that and we'd like to partner in the best way we can um to keep our our children safe. Um and then at the very bottom of that slide, um it seems like it's a transition point, but we also do have a cadet program in the with the Corona Police Department. Uh years and years ago, I was part of the Explorer post. It's pretty much the same thing, but back then it was through the Boy Scouts of America and it was police, fire, EMS. Um, now the cadet program is just police related. So if there

052are students who are interested in law enforcement, that is a great opportunity for them to to learn about um the the career. However, I will say the majority of the kids that participate in the program do not go in law enforcement. They go into the military. They go medical careers. They do everything else but law enforcement. It's supposed to be a recruiting tool. Yeah. Um but it is a really good program and so uh we we are interested in recruiting and and getting more involvement with our our cadet program. >> Chief, thanks for that and some sobering stuff related to gun violence in in America. President Murphy and Dr. Clarity had lots of conversations around the fact that there if we had a turnkey solution to make all this go away, we would. Um, and

053again, I it's a comprehensive approach with uh our adults knowing our kids, lock your guns up and make sure these guys are on your side and have your back and and do the best you can every single day to kind of bring those worlds together. >> It's just a reminder that it's beyond just the schools. I just I appreciate the elevation of all this so much because I feel like as school leadership, when tragedy happens, the eyes zone in on schools. What are schools doing to prevent tragedy? It is wider than our buildings. And just the pieces that you shared there about gun safety is so impactful. It is impossible for this weight to be strictly on the shoulders of schools. Um so thank you for just surfacing those things, those horrible and awful statistics

054that are a reminder of we have to be collaborative. Our entire community is part of keeping our schools safe. Well, >> can I add as well? I appreciate raising mental health awareness and I think that's one thing that collectively we need to do more of. I think we're seeing um pressures uh many pressures not only in the pandemic but immigration issues um at the federal level adding pressure and and um the need for additional mental health support. So I think the more that we can continue to elevate that and destigmatize the the need for mental health, I think that's another piece of the puzzle that you brought up. >> Society is uh very challenging these days and we as adults, you know, are supposed to have the tools to cope with all these moving parts.

055Um and you know, our our youth, they don't necessarily have those tools. So we we do have to watch for the behaviors and then make sure we have resources available. And a lot of times there are signs, you know, they'll they'll flag the behavior, you know, to watch for it and teach the community to watch for it. >> I have a very brief kind of update in terms of our practices start the school year. So, I'll zip through these paws if you have any, but I'm going to kind of try to paraphrase to keep us on time tonight. Uh, we have been working on emergency preparedness. Officer Stole did mention that. That includes a lot of training uh and uh communicating training with students and staff and drills and kind of getting reps to make

056sure we're ready for uh events in the if they actually did occur, including classic fire drills and tornado drills, uh but also emergency planning. Uh so this summer we made a slight shift uh to um our standard response protocol. Um, and this is a nationally uh endorsed program uh that um for the most part um we we were exploring previously. I I had uh Lieutenant uh Hatfield, Lieutenant Dart uh and the Fitchburg Police Department uh hip-to-hip with our district in implementing this uh this summer. One of the main reasons we went to a slightly different standard response protocol was that Oregon school district and the Madison school district used the verbiage in these methods and we had there's the Fitsburg Police Department supporting three individual school districts and we had our own slightly kind of

057Verona twist to this protocol. uh and it didn't make any sense to to make uh Pittsburgh kind of learned the Verona way uh when this is the most common protocol that is researchbased um and we've implemented it with uh with tabletop drills uh and partnership from our law enforcement. So standard response protocol is what you do in the event of uh you name it a a gas leak uh a fire uh an outside threat. Uh we had one just this week that officer stole was like just be aware there's a a tricky arrest going on uh three blocks from school that uh these folks in the past have had a history of potentially running. Uh and it was so great to have him in the building talking with principal Cox. He had his radio on

058and in the event that things three blocks away went sideways, we we could have made sure we locked all the doors and had no inside presence. Um that would be an example of standard response protocol that we have uh the ability to secure from the outside and have the same verbiage. Standard reunification would be there's an event that happens at a school. Could be a gas leak, could be a fire, could be a tragedy like we see on the news that we are not allowed to be in the school anymore and we have to have a new place to take our school and then reunify that school with family members. And that's the standard reunification method and we've been working on that. uh at length to make sure we're ready in the event that that

059would occur. I wanted to give a quick reminder more of the community. The board's aware of many of these things uh in terms of us having uh recently upgraded um uh secure entry sequences at all of our schools. We made a million-dollar investment in Fitchburg just a year and a half ago to make sure that those spaces were ready to go. Uh and all the other things that all of you are familiar with if you uh come and visit our school. Uh we've got um a uh we've got essentially a sex offender database that got all guests run through a security camera, shatterproof glass. Um ID badges are required when you come to visit our schools. We've got welcome centers uh districtwide and we teach with locked doors. I remind myself that that was even

060a big thing two years ago. Uh making sure that everybody in the school had their door shut uh when class was going on. And uh we were uh questioning whether or not that would be a change that would would be hard and it has been. Our schools during the school day teachers shut their door. Um and it's just our way of working. Uh we've got um cameras districtwide that are valuable uh tools for us. I a lot of times can be just a preventative tool that uh students and staff members know that uh we we do have the watchful eye of surveillance cameras uh districtwide. One small thing that we've implemented this year is patrol points. Our security team uh we've got them uh we have uh checkpoints around the high school that um our

061security team check in on a regular basis. Many of them are checkpoints on exterior doors. Uh so um they they essentially have an app on their phone. they hit a um a toggle uh that's mounted to a wall around the around uh the high school and they can monitor the fact that they're checking essentially a patrol to make sure our doors are shut and bathrooms are checked. Um and that's new this year. Uh Officer Sto did mention we've implemented a little bit of new technology. Uh so we've got um a new app and software package called Navigate 360. Um, I took a screenshot for the board on uh the next page, but this is our ability on my phone and for that matter, actually, I know for sure Jeremy and Brad's phone, you have school

062safety plans, maps, uh, and the ability to do a mass notification to everything, every single staff member at a site uh, in an instant. Uh, we've had a few funny on occasion growing pains with this. Uh, so this app has the ability to take your phone over and a siren goes off. Uh, so at some of our schools it's gone great. Tight little elementary schools, little bit of peer pressure, they test it, it all goes off in a staff meeting, people ask questions and they've got it down. Uh, Glacier and Country View and Sugar Creek, all our elementary schools have done great. Our middle schools, slightly bigger staff, potentially slightly more uh, free agent staff members as you're working their way up the continuum of academia. Uh, they've met a couple of hiccups. the high

063school, Brian can admit, you get 200 uh high school staff members in there, some of which might be uh multitasking during the staff meeting, and we've had some growing pains with setting that alarm off, but much better recently. So, uh, but the the the entire idea now that we've kind of been trained on this is we do have the ability in a moment that if there is a third floor teacher that sees something that we need an instant alert on, they have the ability to lock the building down and every single staff member like that, the siren goes off and it literally says lock down. Um, then with while while that's going off, they can take roll on their phone, which is amazing. So on the next slide, uh we um this is a lockdown

064drill that officer stole attended just a week and a half, two weeks ago uh at uh Country View where 355 of 355 students during a lockown drill in six minutes had perfectly accurate attendance taken. Um and we can do this for a fire drill uh in the event. This is really be a valuable tool in the event that we ever have a day where we have to reunify a school for any reason. We can take attendance in the school and then we can actually use this software to reunify families to say this teacher has accounted for this student. Now we can check a box that this student has been handed off to a responsible adult. Um and we can do that in our pocket. So, I think we kind of cast ourselves forward to 2025

065with a few growing pains, but this has been a a valuable new tool. We've kind of added uh to the toolbox to make sure we're we're as safe as possible. I skipped over a little bit. We do have a tip line. Um I think you heard from the chief that uh um certainly see something, say something. Uh there there isn't a day we don't get at least some type of tip. Um, sometimes it can be something like I don't like music during lunch, principal stole or or principal Cox or open up the filter on uh on the website. Uh, some of them, but others are super meaningful. We had one last week. Um, I've noticed a kid uh in my first period class that seems to be bullied be getting bullied uh and uh and

066I don't know if the teachers noticed. Um, so stuff like that's awesome. Assign it to an assistant principal. Pull the kids. What's going on in first period? can I help you with it? Um that we would never give. Officer Stolen mentioned so stuff on social media. So the tip line's invaluable and we use it all the time. >> Uh kind of moving uh in terms of where we're at now and moving forward, we've got monthly meetings uh going on with uh the Fitchburg Police Department, Vermont Police Department, EMS uh and Fitchburg Fire Department. Uh, Lieutenant Hatfield, I don't know if you even want to mention I think kind of a a a fruit that was uh that that came out of these meetings is that you got an upcoming uh you got an upcoming training

067uh with with a multi-jurisdictional training that's been happening uh at the high school here. >> Yeah. So, talk to that a little bit. Part of like I mentioned before, my responsibilities are um emergency preparedness for the city. So, I work closely with the county emergency management. um they reached out and said that they received a grant that they're able to do a largecale active threat training um and asked if the Verona school district would be interested in hosting that. I reached out to Chad right away and we talked about how this could be so beneficial for the school district itself by bringing in our law enforcement partners from other jurisdictions and having them train in our building. >> Um heaven forbid uh they are called here to assist us. They have already been here. They

068see the layout. They've participated in these exercises already. So the first time they do something is not the first time they do something. So, uh, we're fortunate to have that. We just recently had a meeting. Um, I worked on some of the details on that, but we're very grateful that, uh, the school district's allowing us to train here. So, um, it's on October 23rd. School's closed. Uh, but you and the what did you guys call it today? What what do you call it if you bring the fire truck? What do they call >> apparatus? >> An apparatus. Yes. >> Are you bringing an apparatus? So there's a chance there's a bunch of apparatus parked out back on October 23rd apparatus >> like like nuclei. All right >> and that will be shared more broadly right

069I mean I know there's no school but I can only imagine a community member who lives a few blocks away seeing >> right many apparatuses right it's going to be all back so Marcy's working on communication probably in the high school newsletter and then our districtwide newsletter. Okay, that is great >> website as well leading up to so anyone who goes on our website for any reason >> see the popup okay >> and a lot of that training kind of sitting in this is actually you know the tragedy that happened in Mount Horov a few of these guys responded and one of the biggest just that the event was over in 30 seconds uh then it is all the communication that has to happen between media the school district and 15 different agencies are coming

070to try to figure out how to help the school. Um, so that's a big piece of this training is figuring out uh how to do that the most efficiently during a time of chaos. Um, so we're we're super thankful to have them here and being familiar with our school district. I'll wrap up. I'm not going to read these slides to you. I think the school board is familiar with act 143. Uh this is simply proving to the state of Wisconsin that the school board knows this is going on, that the schools have safety plans and that our officers have been through the schools uh to do a safety assessment. So we will compile a giant document within the next couple weeks, but we is almost like I have a mouse in my pocket. It's really

071Nate's in my pocket. Uh so uh he Nate will compile with Michael and I helping uh all the school safety plans. We'll share them with the board and then we'll ask the board to endorse the fact that this work's going on. Um, and that will come within likely within the next month. There will not be another presentation. It will be the board simply signing off on uh the work happening related to act 143. It's on a three-year cycle and we have to do site assessments. We have to have safety plans and we have to do drills. And we've talked to you tonight about all that. You'll just have to sign off on it. >> Nate, am I missing anything on Act 143? >> No, that's pretty much the gist of it. >> Yeah. All right,

072we're going to close with any final questions that you might all have or we'll turn it over 95. So, I have a question. I'm trying to think the right way to ask this. We we get reachouts from community members all the time with suggestions about how to implement certain safety protocols that they think will help prevent some of these, you know, highprofile school shootings that we all know about. One of the hardest things we have to do as a board because we operate with limited resources is try to determine what the most efficient use of our resources would be. And it's it's difficult when it comes to school safety because one of the things people advocate sometimes for is like advanced weapons detection systems at every entry point. But like from my standpoint, if we

073spend half a million dollars on that, that's a half a million less dollars we don't have to spend on something else like this really interesting sounding software that we have that helps like secure our buildings. So I kind of the best thing I want to do is ask you all as the professionals like what is the most efficient use of our resources in terms of securing our buildings? >> I think I'll I'll start with that because I think I already kind of answered that question with my balanced approach. >> Absolutely. Um, you know, and that has to do with, you know, the partnerships on the inside. Um, you know, the starting with the hardening of the building, and you've all done that. Um, you put the layers on the glass, you have camera systems, you

074you have the physical security in place. Um, and then having, you know, the trained personnel from security to school resource officer to all the teachers, you know, that are trained in what to look for and how to react and having access to the app. So that that balanced approach because I I don't want to come across as negative but if if somebody has an intent to cause harm they will find a way >> to cause that harm and having this additional high-tech security is not going to stop them. Um you know there there might be some benefits but at at what cost? So um Jeremy I might defer to you because you're more of our our expert um on on teaching active threat. Is there anything you want to add to that? >> Yeah, I

075I think the most important thing is relationship building. Um, and the fact that you guys have these resources for students to reach out and and report something they're they're seeing. So, when we look back at all these tragic incidents that I've heard in the past throughout the nation, um, it kind of we learned that, hey, there was red flags at certain stages along this process and if somebody would have come forward, then maybe we could have stopped that from happening in the first place. So while putting all this technology looks good on paper, is it is it practical? Uh there are I think we talked today there's 80 uh external doors leading into this building. How do you secure every single one of those? Um and then if you put equipment there, you have to

076man that equipment and then potentially take action too. So you have to have someone that is manning that equipment that is trained um and and self-defense potentially too if the person's uncooperative. So for me personally, it's about relationship building and having these resources available to your staff and your students to report something when they see something just just like Officer Stole coming up to the school. That zero citations in the first month to me is a great accomplishment because I hope that he's out there creating new relationships that people feel comfortable coming to him and telling them what they're seeing and what's going on or if someone's having a bad day themselves, they can reach out to him for help. So relationship building for me is the number one thing to keep the school safe.

077>> And one of the best examples that I already heard here tonight from Chad was the use of the the app that a student was being bullied and they wanted to report that. That that was huge. >> Um because for for years that's been ignored and those students haven't received the the help um that they they've needed, the support that they've needed and you have a system in place where that student did get help. Um and you know the majority of times it won't rise to you know a critical incident but we do know there is a correlation. Um and so you're already ahead of the curve there. say hearing all of this so much throughout the presentation. It's been communication has been highlighted just by everyone sitting at the table and I'm just so

078heartened to hear that. It's um you know, Chief Dresser, I know that's your philosophy in policing and that's just clearly carried through um with the relationships that you have built with the school district and with the school district. I appreciate all of the outreach that has come from both sides. This has been a a beneficial partnership um on behalf of our students. Um, one thing with the amount of communication, you know, that we have where students can reach out, I feel like the weekly is the parents and I'm speaking, you know, for myself, like how do we get parents comfortable with um talking, you know, asking a friend about do you have unsecured guns? There's like a maybe a reticence, I think. Um, you don't want to be intrusive, but yet there's safety issues. And

079how do we help, you know, parents uh navigate some of those conversations in ways that aren't awkward? and maybe help normalize them like that. It should just be a a conversation that could be had, but also um and also how do we get input from parents about maybe parents don't want to get friends and kids in trouble and they don't want to get their kids in trouble, but if they need help without escalating it to a police issue, is there some ways that we can provide outlets for those type of outreaches similar to the tip line or even utilizing a tip line? >> I don't know. >> Yeah, I don't I don't have a perfect answer for that. I I can tell you that our parents do actively use the tip line. >> That is

080great. They um I would say maybe a quarter of our tips are coming from parents. Uh and they could be screenshots from social media. They could be my daughter came home and told me this today. You should know this. This happened on the bus last night. You should know this. So the tip line is used a lot. Marcy's very good about anytime we have a um any type of communication related to a safety issue in school. The tip line is kind of the footer on that reminder. See something, say something. This tip line's monitored essentially 247. So I can tell you a quarter of our tips do come from >> and I think that's actually like a good thing to put out there for parents who are again maybe more reticent in communications. This isn't

081a weird thing to utilize as a parent. It is a fantastic thing to utilize as a parent. >> Yep. And maybe I'm just the one who's reticent, but I am sure there are other parents who are like, what do I something that rises to the level of actually saying something safe? Yeah. >> And and I think as we move forward with the smart initiative as well. Um and we partner with you guys. Um just the redundancy of us mentioning this and talking about it. And there's probably a lot of parents aren't out there that aren't aren't even aware that maybe they should be asking these questions. Um, obviously me being a police officer when my daughters had friends stay over when they're younger. That was a question we got. The first time I got it,

082I was like, "Well, okay. Yes, we do. They are locked away. They're secured. They do not have access to them." Um, and it I never even thought of asking that question. And here I am a police officer that carries a firearm on them. So, um, I think just us getting that message out and letting the community know that those are okay questions to ask. >> Yeah. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you for all that you're doing. I really appreciate this. I think this is a conversation that you know has been um through the years you know growing and really uh just how it has come to pass and how it has come to be in the schools is really um commendable. I appreciate all the work that has gone into getting to this point >> and

083you know we have questions. Do we get stickers if we ask >> I think we >> we appreciate the trust that you you put into us and the partnership that you're willing to have. Um and you know we're willing to do more um because what's more important than the safety of our community and you know we're definitely part of that. I just want to reiterate the importance of relationships that you pointed out. I know that coming from a larger urban space in Seattle. One of the things that we worried about was getting more police officers on on the um the sidewalk be making sure that they knew uh different neighbors neighborhoods and rather than policing and and that's our focus too that it's relationship we're really focused on safety for all students and it's not

084policing students. to think I didn't receive comments from concerned uh families who didn't want to see police officers if it was going to be policing. And so the longer that we the more that we can reiterate that I think the the more that we'll build trust within some families that might have some reservations. So I just want to reiterate and thank you for that. >> Yeah. And I think um as part of doing this, I went through certifications, your NASRO, the National Association of School Resource Officers, and that's kind of one of the big things that they push is the differentiating between like law enforcement policing and school administration enforcement and how those are two very distinct things. And whenever you're in the school space, you really need to be aware of that distinction between

085the two. and you need to leave the school related administrative security team context to those to those individuals whereas you're doing the relationship building and the law enforcement type contacts when you need to. And so one of the things that I have been doing is my office is usually in the atrium. I see Chad there quite frequently actually. Um and I just sit in the middle of the atrium and I say hi to kids as they walk by. They stop ask me questions. I'm not giving them a hard time unless there are some that I've gotten to know now who I know to be skipping class and I encourage them to get going. Um, but I'm not giving them a hard time or like demanding to see a pass to see where they're going. If

086they want to stop and talk to me, stop and talk to me. I will answer your questions. I'll talk to you. I'll have a conversation with you. And at the end, I'll probably say, you know, you should really get going back to class. So, that's a great idea. I should get going. And then they move on. And so to the extent possible, I've really enjoyed having the atrium area of the high school kind of be my office and not actually just tucked away inside the main office. And I think that's been really beneficial. Um because I do see the hall walkers tend to be the kids that I'm going to have the most contacts with. >> Um and getting to know them and know them on a firstname basis um has already shown some benefit.

087when uh those students are elevated and there's in those situations where they may be making a bad decision, they see me and they be like, I don't want to deal with this. I'm just gonna walk away. Love that. Love that for you. Don't just walk away. Don't get in a fight. Don't create a disturbance and just walk away. That's all we can ask for. So, >> and when we had this conversation six months ago, one of the um points I wanted to stress that it was about building relationships and that we felt um that there had been a void there for, you know, four or five years. And so I I think we have held true to that. Um Brad has built quite a few relationships, handed out quite a few stickers, and we've issued

088zero tickets in the first month. So if we can keep that balance going, I can't promise you we won't write any tickets. Um but I think we have a good balance. And we really do want to address students who don't trust the police. We want to build those relationships as well. And Brad is going to get in front of some student groups. He's been invited by a couple of teachers. something you shared with me um to get in front of some student groups um and you know humanize the badge as we say um and you know answer questions that they have um and so you know when they you know I hate saying the real world because we're all in the real world but you know when they're independent and on their own that you

089know they they've had a good experience with the police officer they kind of know what to expect >> and Chief Dresser I want to add you opening your door having your doors open for parents to ask questions has also been huge. >> Absolutely. >> When the SRO issue first came up, parents were very worried and and some of them how do I find out more information of how this is going to work? So, I just want to >> hats off to you for opening up the door for for the community for parents to actually ask those uncomfortable questions. >> Thank you. I appreciate that. and come talk to me. Take a tour. We're always happy to be able to >> you don't mind. I just want to elevate. So, we had the looking ahead slide

090and I I think for a lot of community members potentially, I think all the energy we've given to the tip line and the relationships. I think that can feel very invisible. Certain things look visibly safe to community members and holding those up. And I will sit on this seat and speak for myself that I think the tip line and the relationships and knowing students is a number one to safety because you said that right. Any narrative, any story, any tragedy we've heard has a through line that was missed or ignored. >> Um, and we get questions as board members about what is the next visibly tangible thing that we see. So, kind of piggybacking off of what Joe elevated. So, I've heard questions about clear backpacks at school. Um, I've heard questions about safety on

091the playgrounds. Do we put a wall around a playground? I So, I just I want to give air to that because I think those are things that people are thinking about that >> they see safety not the way that maybe we in right within the system experience it. So, I think there's kind of a question there about, you know, right, some of those things that we know schools are doing clear. What I mean, >> I can share with you my my wife went to high school in Milwaukee. They had metal detectors in the school in Milwaukee. she just shared with me yesterday she did not feel safe even having those metal detectors. Um some of it really comes down to the culture of the facility that you're in. And that's I think where the energy

092needs to be placed is building that culture and building the safety on the inside. And then also I think you need to differentiate there's a difference between an internal threat and an external threat. Um, and you know, metal detectors, yeah, you might you might catch an internal threat. Um, but it's not going to stop an external threat. Like I previously mentioned, there's always ways to defeat it. >> It's it's helpful, I think, for us as board leadership, too, to as we think about resources and next steps and looking ahead of how to continue to be as safe as we possibly can. I really appreciate your insights as professionals right beyond the scope of education so we can be thoughtful about what that is. And thanks Joe for bringing that up earlier as well. >> Thank

093you. >> So I I have another question too that gets kind of a hard turn because it's not about school safety in the sense of safety from violence, but it is something that I think about a ton over the last couple of months. And I have a suspicion I'm not the first person to bring up to you guys the threat posed by these electronic bikes or powered scooters. Uh even just being at a school football game, you see kids riding by on these things going, it sure looks like 30 miles an hour where kids are walking around and I'm just I I'm I am very worried that there's going to be some incident where someone's going to get hurt. I'm wondering if you could speak to number one, is that the kind of thing that

094you can um do something about on a school campus? like is that something that can be cited if it's observed on school property? And then maybe just generally what what maybe is being done to kind of address what what at least I've seen as a a growing problem. >> Well, you're right, it is a growing concern. Um and for the analogy, it's gone from 0 to 60. Um as far as the complaints um and we there is a real concern um about the safety of the students are on those um ebikes, ecooters um and so we've been doing research. We're looking at our ordinance. We need to update our ordinances. We're actually coming up with uh some some training material. Brad's already been involved with some of that. So, Brad, you want to talk about

095what we were already working on? >> Yeah. So, I've been in contact with district office, some of the surrounding districts and stuff. Um there was already anformational flyer that went out in the first month, superintendent report kind of about that. The way things kind of stand right now is a lot of these regulations um are purely based on state statute, which is regulation of rules on the road, which is just if you're on a public roadway, um you know, stopping for a stop sign, speed, uh right ofway, things like that. Um in terms of once you get off the roadway, um unfortunately, as the chief kind of mentioned, those are things that aren't really regulated right now. Um, and so the city is taking steps to kind of draft those ordinances to address those concerns.

096Um, but we're in talks with making, you know, an educational video kind of about how to make sure that you're spreading safely, obeying the rules of the road and things like that. And then I'm sure there'll be an update to that video uh whenever the the city um updates its ordinances on whatever new route they decide to take. Um, historically we've been just taking these city ordinances and applying them onto school property since it's still all public property. Um, and like I said, right now there's really not much in terms of uh that for once once those e vehicles are off the roadway. Um, and it's a it's an issue everywhere. >> Yeah. We're not >> Well, good. I appreciate everything you're doing. It is been uh multi multiple times a week that it is

097a discussion that has come up to me, from students, from staff, from parents at a football game. Um it comes up all the time and >> we we promise we're hearing it and it's in it's in the works. I I've heard probably, not exaggerating, 50 different times from parents describing to me near misses where they almost hit one kid. Um, >> and I'm worried one of these days the near misses is gonna have the near go away. >> I mean, chief, it's come up at the city council level, hasn't it? I mean, you're you you guys are received a lot of phone calls at the city. >> So, we have. Yeah. So, like I said, 0 to 60, it went from, you know, what to scooter to. We're getting lots of complaints because I mean,

098frankly, it's a lot of dangerous behavior. Um, and you know, I'll I'll kind of bring it back to gun safety where we're asking the parents to be more involved. We're asking the parents to be proactive. And the same applies to these ecooters because they probably don't know what their kids are doing to be honest. Um, but they're blowing through stop signs or not wearing helmets or I mean, I I used to ride a a skateboard. You know, I was one of the skater kids. So, skateboarding is not a crime. I get that. But um I also have read the statistics of the increase in head injuries because of the escooters and of course once again we're about safety and we want to prevent those head injuries. So um we are talking about it. We are

099going to rewrite our ordinances. We are going to put out training material and just circling back you know I think there needs to be a educational campaign for the parents to talk to their kids about >> safety on the east coasters >> and just following the rules of the road like officer stole said. I believe it's also going to be with our community officer tied into our boat bike rodeo starting next spring um when they post the little ones for bike safety and things like that. I believe they're going to have a separate little uh discussion about ebikes and e scooters and e skateboards uh as well. We've been discussing that. So, >> well, I appreciate that. I didn't mean to take us on a hard turn. I didn't want to let you get away

100with that. >> Thank you so much. I this openness, this conversation, I look forward to having another one um when we decide a time is timely and appropriate for the community. But we all have open doors to be able to answer questions and support. So, thank you. Thank you all of you for your time. >> Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We are still within the superintendence report to start our act 95 revisit. >> And do you mind if I just offer a frame actually revisit this? So just for reminders to the community and the board, we've engaged in conversations around Act 95, the Wisconsin guarantee last year to create some tiebreaking criteria for our scholars that are going to be graduating and potentially having this um admissions possibility into state schools. We talked about

101this in August and kind of agreed to table and come back to deciding what we may be doing for tiebreaking criteria for this next graduating group. Um, so given that, you know, whatever you're going to present to give us a couple of gentle reminders, but I think for the sake of the conversation, that's really our task at hand. What are we doing in this moment around tiebreaking criteria, regardless of maybe the sentiments we've previously shared on our maybe general loathing about the fact that we're in this position? Um, and just kind of keeping that eye forward on maybe aggressively pursuing legislative pressure to remove this and or philosophical discussions that we see surfacing to kind of keep those as future agenda items. Um, and really focusing on what we're going to do right now given

102the fact that we are here and have to be here. So, with that, I hope that's all right to set that up for you all. >> Thank you so much for that, Freeman. I think we we recognize that act 95 was not a a bronerary school district board decision, right? But we are committed to being in compliance with that and we recognize at this point that to be of service to our families and be responsive to our families and our students who are interested in what our approach will be. Um it's important that we are able to inform them of what our steps will be um to move forward. And with that, we also continue to assert that we don't believe Wisconsin guarantee or F95 is the only way for students to gain admittance to

103our W system schools. And again, know that for some of our families, this is something that's important to them and of interest, and we want to honor that and be responsive and pursuing that. And so tonight, our goal, as you stated, Jen, was is just to remind us of kind of some of the conversations we've had previously. We know there's no perfect system. we would have already figured that out by now hopefully but reminder of some of the implications and then kind of some options for next steps forward. So the first slide here we have is is just a reminder of what the Wisconsin guarantee also called act 95 states. Um we are legally mandated to comply with this and it allows guaranteed admission for the top 10% of um the graduating class to any

104UW system school except for WMadison and then the top 5% are also guaranteed access to WMadison is based solely on GPA that is calculated after six semesters. So at the end of the junior year um the current waiver so last year based on the tiebreaking criteria that the board voted on we applied for a waiver with DPI and these are the three tiebreaking criteria again some years we've needed tiebreaking criteria other times we have not they would go in this order the total number of credits earned at VHS total number of advanced placement credits earned at VHS and then finally the high highest composite ACT score. And again, this type rating criteria would only be used for students who had met the 4.0 um GPA requirement and push us beyond the 10% or 5%. So

105that's if we have more than 10% of a graduating class with 4.0's, this has to then be applied because the state is saying you can only send us 10% of your names. Correct? Yes. So some implications of our current practice. So, as a reminder, by the time we voted on this tiebreaking criteria last year, students had already selected their courses for the year. So, we recognize that there's potentially some staffing and course implications here that we we don't yet know or we haven't played out through the whole cycle. Um, Mr. Cox tonight will speak to what some potential implications might be. What we do know is that we did go through this process. We applied this tiebreaking criteria last year and in looking at the students who um we applied the tiebreaking criteria with, we

106learned a few things. There were a few implications. One was that the total number of credits, which we have as our first tiebreaking criteria, some students had more access to earn more credits than others as a result of participating in youth apprenticeships, partner programs, summer school, etc. And so, some of those programs require applications and aren't necessarily available to all students. So, that was a quick recognition as we looked at that list. Based on access to certain programming, some students had an immediate advantage over others. Um, we also recognize that with AP credits that some departments offer more AP credits than others. Right? There's one AP class in the music department. There's numerous in the social studies department. So, depending on student interest, students may have access to more AP course work than others. We

107also know that some students based on the coursework they take in middle school may actually be able to access AP courses earlier in their high school career which then could also give them um a different advantage or um priority within the tiebreaking criteria as we set. So recognizing that when we set this criteria last year, it was important to us that um the board had shared the importance of total number of credits and AP credits as we've seen that play out and what does that actually mean for students. We wanted to bring those lessons back to the board whether those were intended or this is kind of how we've seen this actually play out in practice. And as I mentioned, we made these decisions last year after students had selected their courses. But our courses,

108the student course selection for OE1 drives how we um stack the building and how Mr. Cox works with his team to actually make the um overarching schedule and determine how many sections run, how many classes move forward based on student numbers. And so want Mr. Cox tonight to speak to some of the potential staffing implications of the current tiebreaking criteria just for us to consider as we go into this discussion today. >> Yeah. and some of the staffing implications that we run into when you're building a large schedule. You run into a few pinch points that are are somewhat unavoidable. Um, in many cases, you'll run into uh classes that may only have 10 uh students requesting to take that course. And in the case of like an AP class, I'll use music for example,

109we only have one AP music offering. And AP music theory this past year had 10 students request it. So if we're following our guidelines to a te, it didn't hit 15 and therefore it should not run. So we've automatically pulled that opportunity away and the only opportunity away should we not offer it. And so uh in working with our music department, they chose to have higher numbers in other spaces. Um but we have a band class of 70 students. Um and so if we don't staff that with multiple teachers, the onetoone feedback because we're trying to coach those students, it just isn't there. And so that pushes us into a space where we're having to create overloads and um stress Mr. Weezy's budget um asking for more overloads uh in order to cover those spaces.

110Um and again I think the the beauty and the curse uh of our beautiful space is that we have so many offerings. Um we have so many ways in which students can engage that u we sometimes have to prioritize where can we maximize our staffing to meet the most needs possible. Some of the other things that tend to uh pop up in this uh situation focus around students create four-year plans with very specific coursework that they want to take across those four years. And if we were to not offer a specific course that's in a direct line of course work or they weren't able to get into it because there were only 30 seats in that particular class and we had 35 that chose it. then we get into a space of really disrupting that

111student's long-term trajectory and plans. Um, and so those are a few of the staffing implications, but I also want to touch on another one that it is near and dear to my heart, and that's a climate culture of a building, the space that you live and work in. Um, when it comes to this space, we have a beautiful climate culture with with amazing staff. Um, and when you get into a situation where you then start um, elevating one staff member and what they teach over another, we run into a space where um, you now by proxy are elevating that one staff member over someone else based off what their certifications are and their ability to teach. And so I always keep that in the back of my mind that just um, as our students need

112to be seeing, value, and loved, so do our staff. And so those are the the main key pieces that I just bring to our conversation. Yeah, please. >> Kind of on the subject off the subject preparing prepare to thrive in a global diversity. The letters, the words up there. Brilliant. I love that. We should do something with the stained glass on the bridges up there as well. Thought I'd throw that out there. >> Ultimately, that's what it's about. >> I love that up there. I think soon as you come in as a as a scholar, you see that >> it does something. >> And so then kind of the last reminders of these were the implications what we saw kind of in how the data played out this year for students. Some possibilities that we're

113foreseeing may have implications for staff if we continue with these criteria. Then the last reminder here was just we already do have an admin role 434P that is the academic excellence scholarship that we've been giving out for years that also goes by GPA and requires tiebreaking criteria. Those tiebreaking criteria are different currently than the tiebreaking criteria for act 95 and we've gotten some feedback that that is perhaps confusing for families about why why we use one in one place and one in another. And that is simply the their first tiebreaking criteria for the academic excellence scholarship is the highest composite ACT. Um then the tiebreaker number two is a total number of high school credits earned after seven semesters. We need to do six for the um for act 95. And then the final tiebreers

114at um a chance drawing there. So just further context for some of precedent of what already exists within our system for these sort of tiebreers. So with that um possible next steps, we certainly could vote to continue with the criteria that's already in our current waiver that's been adopted by DPI. Um we could the board could vote to amend the criteria or the order of the criteria any of the above and we could apply for a new waiver or not voting which um has informed me would then default to what our current waiver is. So those are kind of the the steps forward. Just to understand the timeline, Ryan is currently fielding new course request options from teachers. Right now, those decisions will be made in November. We look to have the course guide to

115families in December and then they will begin thinking through what does this mean for my student with course selection actually happening in January. And so wanting to make sure that we can inform families of what to expect and how we will proceed with our compliance. So from there, we'll open it up to any questions um on any discussion. Those are really the reminders we wanted to bring back to the table. >> I I have a question. This may just be for Nate. Are we allowed? So when we're talking about aligning with the scholarship criteria, are we allowed to do just like names out of a hat as one of our criteria? I thought it had to be only academic criteria. It >> it should be academic criteria is what DPI has been telling us. Whenever

116we try to bring up something that's been not directly linked to like an academic number, they said, "Oh, it's not likely to be approved." >> So, we can't settle it with a 40 yard dash. >> I don't recommend. >> I have a quick question. I'm looking at the um scholarship. It's ACT or SAT. Is that is that how do you make a comparison? >> There there there definitely isn't a direct one one relation between the two and I think being in the Midwest we have some students who kind of >> set their trajectory to navigate to the east coast which is primarily more SAT. Um and coming from the west most of my life uh SAT was never administered. It was all ACT in that range. So, um I think where you see more of

117the articulation between the two different assessments actually happens within ACT versus SAT. They do have a pre SAT, but it's not as built out and robust and um geared to where you can make uh implications or um uh educating guesses to where when you're looking at a freshman with this score, here's where they should land given, you know, the next two years of uh you know, more general instruction. >> Maybe I'm confusing the terms um but I'm looking at the typewriting procedure for the um the scholarship. And it it looks like um it could be ACT or SAT. Is that >> that's how the admin rule reads. I don't know if in the past year we've had very many students who who submitted an SAT score. >> Correct. Yeah. And usually where we when we

118see students that are taking those SAT scores are the ones that already have in their mind they're going to the East Coast. And so for the ACT, because it's part of our accountability suite, every student has the opportunity to take that for free. And so that's really where where that's kind of been our hallmark. >> Okay. So if we were looking to streamline or you know to consolidate we would eliminate SAT as altogether from the Wisconsin DR criteria. Would that be >> I don't think we did we so I think it's not currently listed. We only have in our current waiver we have highest composite ACT score and I think Meredith the other difference between what we currently have in the waiver and what's in the academic excellence scholarship is we say it's from the

119statemandated test that we administer the one test that we administer in the spring. Whereas in the academic excellence we say the highest score reported. We recognize students might be taking the test multiple times. We initially in our waiver said it was the the one that we mandated because that one's free and accessible to all students. So I think what you're naming is that there is even if we shifted and and the board decided the tiebreaking criteria were going to mirror the academic excellence scholarship, there would be an opportunity for us there to align what we mean by which administration of the ACT and whether or not we would continue to include the SAT as an option. And I would say with this specific piece around the academic excellence scholarship, that SAT piece is there because

120that's how your national merit scholars are bound, right? And so that piece probably needs to sit there in the you'd hate to have a national merit winner and then not have them in that in that academic excellence situation because they are few and far between. >> This is such an interesting meeting because these are the two topics that I get questioned about the most. School safety and the Wisconsin guarantee. very diverse in um critical nature but nonetheless to the parents that and the students that are impacted this is you know very important. So um I I'm still I'm still struggling with just going with ACT. Um, but I think I'm also I'm also concerned about changing criteria and I think continuity has has some value too and I I feel like there's downsides to any

121tiebreaking criteria and I'm I'm trying to weigh um where there is more detrimental impact um and I consistency I think has some merit too but I I I I'm not going to reiterate what I would say. Thanks to Jen for our discussion. >> Yeah. I don't want to It feels like we just had this conversation and I don't want to like get on my soap box like I did last time except to say that we don't want to me the they're all bad options. The least bad option is the one that influences behavior less >> because I don't like the idea of student behavior being influenced by us having our hands tied and forced to do something. >> And to me, the the the criteria that influences behavioral beast, albeit imperfect, is the ACT score

122because everybody takes it. >> Not everybody though. That's why I wondered if the AC the SAT would also be able to be calculated in because I >> Yeah, that's a good point. And I I guess I don't have strong opinions about that. I I wouldn't be upset if we did just like how it's written in the administrative rule. I guess just the the idea of the standardized test as imperfect and oftentimes inequitable as standardized testing is and not a good metric to me. It's the only metric we're talking about that doesn't influence student course selection, doesn't lead to staff hierarchy like Mr. Cox is talking about. Um, and that's why to me it's the preferred option of all that options. >> But the SAT, we don't control the test. >> We don't get the SAT.

123The ACT is statemandated. So every student, every junior does take the ACT and it's paid for and it's administered here at school. So that's accessible. We don't administer the SAT is not a state mandated statemandated test. So not everybody would necessarily have access to it. They could pay to take it at a different time. Um but it's not part of the state assessments. So can I reflect that back there? Then every junior will have an ACT score >> unless their family opted out of the assessment. >> Okay. So that's I think the piece, right? Is like is there a gap if we don't somehow introduce the SAT? Do we have every student that will have an ACT score? >> I would have to look at the numbers coming after. >> Yeah. Or or if you

124know what happens in that instance where we have someone in the tie break that wouldn't have an ACT score. >> I can I can tell you that for example, you know, we gave the preac to our freshman year um just ending last week and we had two students out of the entire freshman class that were were not captured in that chose not to take that. And so, um, again, I think when given the choice and the opportunity to take it, knowing these implications are there, I I think that those may be students who have different pathways already set, but that ACT doesn't mean as much to them. >> And that may go to your point, Joe, of like the least detrimental behavior shift. If a behavior shift is, well, then I'll take that ACT when

125it's offered, is that, you know, the least restrictive in terms of greater impacts like the other pie. I'd be concerned if we added an additional an additional assessment, you actually could increase the likelihood of an ACT opt, which we don't want to have. >> Right. >> I think it's just the if we're if we're talking about trying to find consistency, then if the rule's written one way, then I think you would still be inviting questions of why is this for the rule and then why is this for the for the scholarship versus the guarantee. So >> that you kind of addressed there, Mr. And it's also true that Wisconsin guarantees all about admission to Wisconsin state schools which accept the ACT. So like it's >> it's >> that's an easy difference to explain in my

126opinion and the test is even if it's not administered to everyone it is offered to everyone. So, one thing I wanted to I did draft up kind of a proposal for uh centering our equity framework, not necessarily for this round because we're so close and I know students and families have been planning for quite a while um where we are, but as we center that and not to bring down our um expectations of excellence, but rather to broaden opportunity um through that and identify barriers where they may exist. So I think you know income has a lot to do in student success as we look at these tracks and how do we um less ofen that um that that reality for some families to uh barriers for access to transportation preparatory classes and courses planning

127in in middle school all the way up through the coursework. So, I'm happy to share that with I I don't want to go through each bullet point, but rather I've got a proposal that I've written and maybe we can spend some time as a as a board to look at that as we think further down the line in the future on addressing that. >> Yeah, thanks for that. And I do think there's future conversations depending on the reality of this continuing and living with us and marrying this to philosophical discussions we've had about what we think we want to do within our district regardless and or maybe in parallel too. So, I appreciate all of that kind of future thought to to dig into some of that. And, you know, this >> Mr. Hex High

128School's team have already taken some steps to try to make the ACT more accessible. Any student can take an ACT prep course, get the big test practice book. Um, and they've done some work with that. We also did just begin the the fall administration of the preac. So, our ninth grade students then will have score reports that will project what their ACT score will be and then have more practice with an assessment of that nature. So, just a few steps that the team has already taken trying to make that less feel less high stakes in nature. Just to clarify, you said that we're offering some prep, >> correct? >> And I I'll just ground this in and I'm a first generation college student in my family and um I I come from a very poor

129background and so that's always been kind of my anchor point in this is that with a single mom who quite frankly we learned about missing deadlines after they had already passed. So we navigated all of those pieces and so that's always very near and dear to my heart. Um, in terms of the ACT, um, we purchase a ACT prep book for our students that would normally cost them $40 to get, um, with multiple tests, online resources as well. Uh, we purchased that for all of our junior students. Um, we then offer, uh, specific afterchool prep sessions for two weeks um, throughout the school year. And we try to tailor those sessions specifically to the students who are coming to us. And so, our families will be getting a survey very soon. um to start signing

130up for wanting to be a part of those preparatory classes. Um that is all free. Again, you'd have to pay anywhere from a hundred to $200 in um the community space to to be able to access those. Um when I originally came here my very first year, I I walked by on a Saturday and saw just both doors of our our LGI open and I was like, what do we got going on on a Saturday? It was a prep class that that folks were, you know, paying money to be able to access that wasn't driven by our school. I was kind of drawn to the idea that if we have this space already and we were able to work with the textbook publishing company and get those books at half price for students and quite

131frankly just obliterate any barrier that a family would have. Um now it just becomes the time piece and getting them in for that uh 4 day training after school for an hour a day. Got the buses already locked in for it. Um snacks for the kids, the whole nine yards. So we try to take every care of everything we can. Um, we are working and expanding into our A+ time as well for some of those families that have work obligations and may have practices and so forth. Um, and we're also working Mr. Steiner and our coaching staff to um, free up a little grace during those periods where um, we are having those preparatory classes to maybe shift to a late practice in the winter um, if at all possible so those students can access

132the trainings. I really appreciate how you put thought into all of those different contingencies because those are, you know, it access for some is always just inevitably going to impact then there's not a universal uh I I still I still struggle with the one test. I mean, but I I really just appreciate all of the thoughtful work that has gone into, you know, making this playing field as as even as possible with access just thought so carefully. Um, that I just think is really I mean that's a value to our to all of our students regardless of this Wisconsin guarantee. this is just a service and um that the focus on eliminating barriers is just um in this is just represented here which I know is happening in so many areas. I really appreciate that.

133>> Thank you. >> When is the CT administer March March second? That's >> I should know. I'll have a few minutes. >> So, as we mull over any further questions and we shift eventually to what our potential voter action may be, there is intentionality here on the agenda that the space for public comment was left in between. So, I do want to make sure I'm not aware of any public comment, but I wanted to be sure there was space for that if it specifically related to this topic. Lori, am I aware? Okay. So just to kind of clear that through the agenda path. So then if we start to ship to a place that we've we've taken care of that potential space. Um so you see on slide 35 that our options are to take

134an official vote to keep our current criteria which as Nate has shared can be carried through for three iterations. So even if we decide not to do anything that would be the default we would remain with the criteria that we voted on last time um or we can someone can propose a motion to amend. I know this group and the intention behind this board in shared discussion and attempt to have kind of a collective vision but know that this doesn't have to be a 70 vote. Um right we can carry our philosophical pieces with this. You know the vote can truly reflect your perspective. Um, just knowing that this is something we're tasked to do. >> Can we just clarify one more time? This is for this would impact our juniors this year or would

135it impact juniors next year? What's the >> There's so many different >> moving pieces on timelines when the ACT tell me it's a great question. It it would begin with implementation this year. So, this year's junior class, which will be the graduating class of 2027. So current juniors would follow this criteria and would be identified at the end of this school year per this criteria, >> right? Okay. >> If the waiver was the way DPI would have to accept our waiver, >> we move forward with that criteria at the end of this. I just want to put it on record that I will be supporting if we remain uh true to what we've already established with the caveat that if we uh look earlier in the year um for next iterations and really focusing on

136identifying existing barriers that beyond what you've already identified um since our equity framework I'd like to do that work as a board or even a subgroup of the board. Can I build up a bit? I'm I am I'm struggling with this and maybe more so than I need to be, but I I also have the consistency concern. Is this something, you know, like we reorder it now from last year? Is it again, like I said, I'm struggling with this more so than I should be, but I I still am. In nonetheless, if we have this, you know, in place at the start of the year for this year, what we've already kind of discussed in the past, is there a way to then foreshadow that? Can we I don't know. I'm really having a hard

137time with this. And I just I just it feels like it's a lot to put on one day and yet I also very much hear the it's a lot to put on three years leading into it um with a fourth year as a result. So >> but we can change it at any time. It's good, >> right? Is that changing also? >> Three years of stress for students who are putting in um trying to build up AP classes, things like that. And I just I >> So go ahead, John. >> Go ahead. No, I was gonna I was gonna try and I was gonna make a motion to move us forward, but if John's got some comments, I'll >> So, I will say, Joe, that the the thing you started with about >> the decision

138that alters people's behavior the least is probably a good criteria. You know, not usually am I compelled to rethink my positions. The way you said that was really, >> as many of you might know. >> Yeah. >> Um, but that was a good one. >> Yeah. >> Um, >> I I made my opinion perfectly well known last time about how disdainful I feel towards the the ACT score. That being said, I think we can all recognize that there are some problems associated with the numbers of credits earned >> that we maybe didn't see coming. >> I also am very sympathetic to like I don't want to change this over and over and over again. Mhm. >> So I do think that if we are going to vote for a change that it's going to be

139that way for a number of years to where we can maybe do some of the the deeper more philosophical work that we need to do um to revisit this like in three years or something. >> Um so that's really all I had to say. Um, so Joey go. >> Yeah, I was I was agree with Meredith's comment, which is that I'm I'm very torn on this and I don't like this. At the same time, I don't think more discussion is going to make me feel any better about any position. >> Yeah. And so just kind of for the sake of moving it forward, I'll make a motion that we have that we change the order of our criteria to have composite ACT score first and then total credits earned second. And because we can't, it

140doesn't sound like we can do the name out of a hat. We'll keep the AP credits as the third. That's my motion. Okay. >> So, if we're looking at slide 32, >> your motion, Joe, would make that list say 312. >> Yes. >> Am I reflecting that back accurately? >> Yes. >> Does that make sense to rest of the board members? The motion. >> Slide 32. It would >> as the numbers are there. It would go 312 is the motion. No is making. >> Right. >> Is there a second? >> I'm going to second it actually. You second it. >> I'm going to second it. I'll >> And it sounds like we might ready for vote. Any further discussion? Our >> thoughts are that we'll keep this in place for three years. >> Well, that

141was going to be a question of Nate. So, if we vote on it today, do we then restart the clock that this can stay for three years this year, next year, and the year after >> says to approve it. >> Yeah. >> Right. But if that >> Yeah. So, it really depends on what EPI says. So the the initial waiver that we submitted was actually a waiver application for one year and they approved it for four unexpectedly. >> Oh >> I see. So it's at the whim of DPI how many years we would get out of this. >> I think it's because if we were to resubmit the same criteria they would just approve again this year. >> It's a not exactly a large section of EPI the feeling of this. So they're probably thinking

142let me just approve this and not have to review every single school district submitting an application every year >> every year. Okay. >> Okay. >> You as a board, you can return and decide you need to submit another waiver at any point. >> Okay. >> All right. >> There's a motion by Joe, a second by me for 312. Any further discussion or questions at this point before we vote? >> Do a voice vote. I think I am going to do a voice vote just to make sure again that we all can vote how we want to vote and that we we have an accurate >> who provided dissertation >> right justification and summary. >> Okay. >> All right. So we'll take a voice vote to be in favor of 312 would be a yay or

143a nay. Joe >> yay. >> Corby >> yay. >> I am a yay. John >> May >> now I I'm gonna say I'm going to say yay because I do I just have a lot of a lot of confidence in the the work that's gone in and it's still the criteria just different order. >> Sorry a little dissertation but I >> So you are a yay for this question. Okay Christopher >> yay with copy. Yeah. >> One, Carlos. >> Yay. Yay. With the fact that we'll look at this and we really think DPO what's a better way forward. >> I don't know if you can add on that. >> Well, with that, the motion is approved. Lori, are you good on notes? I have some as well. Okay. Okay. So, we have the rearrangement 312

144of our previous criteria. >> Okay. Move forward. >> Thank you. Thank you. all of our you know angstydriven discussion over >> three criteria >> right but for the deep dive too as Meredith said I mean just that your team has been giving us all right the things that we're contemplating you've been able to give us some data to chew on about those things >> that's I wanted to thank you specifically for that for coming back with if we had benchmarks that was I think really important for me to see that the criteria like the benchmarks didn't meaningfully change anything and so thank you for at least exploring put my mind in ease. I can >> I would add another thank you just for offering all the extra help for the prep work. That's amazing. Something

145I wish I had access to >> when I was in high school. So that really shows you care. Obviously you do, but doing all that for our students and give everyone that opportunity to do as best as they can is really awesome. >> I will add you guys did a great job. I'm pretty sure if we just came in and voted without your presentation, I could have convinced enough people to vote that down. [Laughter] >> Well, thank you. Thank you team. Thanks board leadership. Um so moving on through our agenda. Uh board updates, anything specific to communication or general updates? Um, I will start with the reminder that we have our Greater Dane County Consortium gathering on Thursday starting at 5:30 for networking and food presentation at 6 at the Holesman Learning Center in Madison.

146Um, I think you have a calendar invite hopefully that has all that information. Let me know if you have questions. Um, and I'll just also elevate since it was a bit of a topic tonight that Friday is World Mental Health Day. So elevating that in a way that maybe works in your world. Can I put a motion out there, please? >> Yes, please. Yeah. >> I just want to uh remind our community and our board uh the presentation of the Play Hades Town, the teen edition uh opens up Friday and then also a matinea on Saturday. So >> I think it starts Thursday. >> Thursday. Sorry. >> Great. >> You're right. It's right there in front of me. >> It says They were just they were just on >> it's not Thursday. >> They were

147just on the uh I guess I should have said Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Thank you for correcting me. >> Wonderful. >> Did you hear you explain why we're doing 5:30 on the third and 17th? >> We're getting there, which I can do that now. We're getting future dates. Yes. So, if you look at future dates right now written in pencil, but everything is updated electronically. Um and all the round and round we've gone with having board workshops. Um, I'm kind of making the somewhat executive decision to hope that Monday starting 30 minutes earlier will just work for us. Um, rather than trying to find another week night or heaven forbid a Saturday to just be able to do some ongoing work for ourselves. So, November 3rd, we'll start at 5:30 with immediate um board meeting to

148follow. I'd like to try to keep the workshop to an hour, but if we finish early, we'll just shift straight into our um regular board meeting. The topic on November 3rd will be supported by Shaina and it will be navigating expulsion hearings. It's something that we have talked about at length and wanting to just have some time to really navigate philosophically and logistically um with the support of our legal council. And then November 17th um also 5:30 to 6:30ish um with Shaina to talk about some of the legal 101s of board work focusing a bit on contract and like the one-year extension piece because that will be really timely and relevant, but then dabbling into other pieces. I've spoken with Shaya about trying to do an annual legal 101 after every election cycle. So like

149Mayish. >> You're killing it, Jenna. Well, I feel a little kind of like we're doing this. So, that is the 5:30 p.m. start for the two November meetings. Um, so please let me know if you have any questions or thoughts about the topics like >> Right. Right. And we'll, you know, reasonable for the sake of team and and audience that would like to be a part of our regular meeting. But I just think that's kind of the least restrictive way to try to share space with each other. So, we can continue to develop and grow as a board on things that we've repeatedly shared our areas for that. And the workshop would be public meeting. >> Yep. It's open. Yep. Exactly. Yeah. So, we'll just plan to be in the same space. I know sometimes

150we've workshopped elsewhere, but because we'll feed straight into our board meeting, we'll be here. We might take, you know, just a quick recess as we transition, but that is what we'll try for the two November meetings. >> Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. So, we'll just kind of keep you posted or any questions can be sent my way. Um, so with that, if there's nothing else for any other general board updates, we'll shift to superintendent consent agenda. Um, please making sure again that you've looked over that consent agenda. Are there any questions? Okay, hearing none, superintendent's consent agenda is approved as presented. Um, and then board consent agenda. Just drawing your attention that this then is our first consent agenda that that has monitoring notes. Thank you so much Carlos for being our first note taker. Um, so

151we'll continue that process as we do monitoring. >> Are there any questions on the board consent agenda? Okay, hearing none. Board's consent agenda is also approved. So, we've just kind of talked about future dates. So, those will be updated times of 5:30 starts on the 3rd and 17th. And with that, I would then accept a motion to adjurnn. So, moved. >> Thank you, Meredith. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Thank you, Mark Carlos. All in favor of adjourning tonight's meeting signify with I. >> I. Any opposed? All right. Thanks, everyone. co- brewers. >> Thank you. Good job getting this