Verona Area School District Board of Education Meeting June 16, 2025

001All right. Good evening everyone. It is 6 PM Central. So we'll call this meeting to order. Um let's establish please that we have a quorum beginning with a roll call vote. Joe here. Corby here. Juan Carlos here. John here. Thank you. And I am here as well. We do have a quorum. Corby, has this meeting been properly noticed? Yes, sir. Thank you. To help ensure that we are centering our boardwork 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 your agenda. Uh Corby, would you please be our reader for this evening? Absolutely. Thank you. In the Verona Area School District, our mission is that each student will acquire the

002knowledge 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 and value and affirm 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 Perona Area School District is committed to disrupting these systems of inequity and the land acknowledgement. There are currently 12 tribal nations who call Wisconsin home with the Hosan Nation being the primary group living around Madison. No matter where you are in the state,

003you are on the ancestral land of a tribal nation. As we begin our meeting, we honor the land upon which we stand. Thank you, Corby. Good to have you back, too. Hope your travels went smoothly. [Applause] Um, board members, if you wouldn't mind drawing your attention to the rest of tonight's agenda. There's any questions, amendments, please share those. Otherwise, I'll accept a motion to approve the agenda as written. Thank you on Carlos. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Corby. All those in favor of approving tonight's agenda as written, please signify with I. I. Any oppos? I gota wait for the lag. Thanks, John. Any opposed? All right, the agenda has been approved. So, just looking at a few of our slides here. wanting to honor again we'd elevated this at our last meeting um

004but honoring the fact that we are in June pride month um and just sharing our district's commitment to living our equity statement through this month in particular yeah so glad to share some space for that and then also recognizing that this week is Junth so another slide just honoring that that holiday is happening this Thursday um I know some of the municipalities around us Fitchburg did a flag raising today in honor of um Junth. So elevating again the importance of this day and the meaning for our district and holding that day. Anything you want to add, Dr. Clarity? No, thank you. And also just in we want to make sure we you know not just recognize Pride Month but live it out in our as through our equity framework that I appreciate our board for

005always continuing to hold us accountable but also uh have those high expectations for our work here. And secondly, with the Thursday being June Junth, uh this will be the second year that the Broner School District has um recognized this as a day off for staff to fully embracing uh the meeting and understanding of of Junth and we like to thank our work with VA and Vespa for coming to that that space with our our comment discussions. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. and we'll move ahead to our agenda is a little bit different this evening. So, thanks again board for approving that. We're going to move to some board action on just some second readings that we had from previous work. So, the first thing you'll see um is the second reading of the act 20

006promotion policy. So, some reminders for board members and the community that that policy is linked in board docs not only for this week but for last week as well where we spent more time at length discussing and having um Amy Angelkins kind of surface some information about that policy. Um board members, any additional questions or thoughts you have for the second reading of the proposed promotion policy related to Act 20 and um Wisconsin state statute? Okay. Hearing none, then I would um accept a motion to approve the presented promotion policy as the method in which the district satisfies the requirement of Wisconsin statute 118.33 sub63 pro prolgated. My math brain had to have a moment there for that one. through 2023 Act 20. Is there a motion? Thank you, Joe. Is there a second? Second.

007Thank you, Corby. Uh, all those in favor of approving the promotion policy as presented by district leadership signify with I. I. Any opposed? I'm not opposed. I said I, but nobody heard me because I said it too soon because I was kind of trying to time it sooner. I waited really strategically, too. But we'll I literally said it while you were still talking because I figured that was the timing. We're gonna get this, John. This is so great that you're here. All right. Um, yes. Any opposed? The promotion policy has been approved. Thank you, board. And then similarly, we have a second reading. So, last board meeting, we spent some time um in discussion around our GC policy around public comment. Thank you again, Joe, for your work on that. Um, which has been named

008GC11. And then simultaneously within the same vote, we do have just the revised public comment actual sheet of paper that is linked as well. So when folks come in person, we just have an updated document that they'll fill out again to acknowledge and reflect what we have um created in GC1. So based on the little bit of feedback that we had last meeting, any further comments or discussion around this second reading of GC1 and the um public comment document. That's enough. Okay. I know I'm kind of reading the room and wondering if it's rhetorical. Um, with no other further discussion, I would accept a motion then to approve GC1 as presented. So, thank you on Carlos. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Joe. All those in favor of approving GC1 as presented, signify with

009I. I. I. I. Nice. Any opposed? All right. Our public comment policy has been approved. All right. A little bit of board business out of the way and back to celebrations. I kind of like this back and forth of some acknowledgement of exciting things including we have some student recognition which is our graduation ceremony. Absolutely. So again, thank you. Uh we have many of our high school staff here. Uh Principal Cox, we had the honor this Sunday of celebrating our 478 right on the head. 478 graduates of the Broner uh Bron Area High School. Uh just a phenomenal SE ceremony and uh also 97 minutes. Nice job Mr. Cox and born 78 the biggest class but still 97 minutes again. Nice job Mr. Cox. Uh and uh thank you board of education for joining us

010on stage. Uh we also had an opportunity to celebrate one of our uh former staff members but uh heart of our community um and Miss Pat Worley and just being able to acknowledge her as a distinguished guest was definitely an honor within itself and then the smiles on the face of our graduates. Uh we will definitely want to give a special thank you to Epic uh for allowing us to use the the phenomenal facility. Puts us in this position not only to have a great space for our graduates, but also allow us for all family and staff to be there without worry about tickets and things of that nature. Uh so we can all have that part of that celebration. And to the many uh workers that um came there on Sunday uh and really

011helped to be a a a really smooth event. Uh we're really excited for for that day. um a year out we Sunday again June 7th of next year uh we'll be uh ready to go for the class of 25 26 and planning is already underway takes a little bit of time to get that right yeah it's a it's a big deal it's a big deal but really um want to give the student appreciation for just the not just the experience but what it meant for each of our graduates as they were honored when they when they cross the stage. Yeah. Added shout out to just all the staff members, district members that were helping with parking and district staff members that helped clean up water bottles, etc. around the epic um space when the graduation

012ceremony was done with just all the countless number of people that put it together. It was a lovely, lovely day. I think I only jabbed you about 17 times with diploma covers as we tried our smooth little handoff scenario. So, we're going to keep working on that, too. When you watch the video, you can't tell at all. She's nice and small. Keep a nice Okay. And then staff recognition. Absolutely. Absolutely. Are you saying I Are you voting to say yes? Thanks, John. Uh today we're honored to recognize two of the dynamic staff members here on Veronire School District. Uh first, Erica Gallagher, who How you doing, Erica? She has been acknowledged for Wisconsin Council of Teacher of English uh diversity and inclusion award. Uh when you think about not just her work in the classroom

013uh her impact but also the alignment with our strategic framework and our and our and our focus to be honored in a world of diversity and inclusion award uh and it just everybody knows how my stance on this bill when it's trying to be dismantled. We continue to stand up and stand stand up and show out and I and I appreciate that among our staff. So, congratulations to you and definitely want to on behalf of myself and our complete district uh want to uh give you a round of applause and I'll turn it over to our board of education for any comments. So, I absolutely love working with you with the GSA. She does an amaz just amazing job um keeping us on task and together and just the improvements just the things we've done

014in such a short amount of time. You're just amazing. So congratulations and looking forward to working with you again this upcoming year. Absolutely. I just want to say thank you Erica. I'm truly we are so blessed to have you here and I want you to know that that's reciprocal. So your desire to stay in our district obviously with the work you're doing is so incredibly meaningful. So this is where as board members to continue to hear from staff members on how we can keep elevating the work that you're doing. So please know that we are absolutely in support of what you are doing, what you bring to the district and we hope that we can stay a place that you want to be um because of the work that you're doing. So thank you. Thanks.

015Congratulations again. Next, we are honored uh with Jamie Morris. Jamie Morris was uh won the Voya Unsung Hero Award. Um Jamie is where I want to say FFA, but it's so much more than that. um there's not a space that you you go anywhere and she's there and and she's working with students and she's continues to uh just be a highlight of of of our high school and in our district in in multiple spaces. Uh the uh when you see our students that just galvanize and just go to her because of the impact that she has on them is just just amazing to see and at the high school to get to see it firsthand and I get a little snapshot of when I get to come into the space. So, congratulations to to Jamie

016for your um amazing work uh for the boy unsung hero award and we like to give you definitely you deserve far more than a round of applause but give you a round of applause and I'll turn it up back over to the board from there. Congratulations to you. [Laughter] Thank you. Oh, go ahead, Joe. Yeah. I just want to say we talk a lot about kind of how we can as a district stand out from our peers and I I I think the way that we do stand out is in the quality of our staff and in the ways that they find creativity and I mean innovation is a word we've been using a lot here at the board table and so to be to honor that from our staff members when they're showing it

017is is really exemplative of exactly what we're trying to do here. So, thank you very much for representing us so well, Jamie. And thank you. I know at the board table we talk a lot about how much we value beyond the core academic subject areas. Um, this building reflects the value that we have as a district in that the work that you do, the space, what you bring for course offerings, how you support students. So how we continue again to elevate that because we hold that in high regard and how we can continue at this table to really show value to you as an instructor in those noncore academic spaces. So again, however we can help elevate the work that you're doing, we are so appreciative because we really hold value to the work that

018you're bringing. Thank you. Congratulations staff members. You're more than welcome to stay for as much of the meeting as you like, but we certainly appreciate your time. Have my own type of budget numbers. Budget update on the way. Here we go. We will continue on with the superintendence report, some finance updates. I'm shocked. Thanks team already. So great we get continuous updates. This will be brief at least on I think both on the finance and the HR side. So we've got uh Pete and Michelle here for an update on state budget, an update on our budget projections, and then Michelle's got a quick hiring update. So we're going to do a little look back. Uh, as mentioned pre uh board meeting, we have the very exciting central office move going on uh where the downstairs

019at central office had to be cleaned out. That meant cleaning out my office uh where I uncovered a 1993 budget book. So, we're going to do a little back to the future tonight. Now, we're going to look at our budget calendar. We're going to take a look at the state budget line and we've got an update. There's some news coming out of Madison. Uh we're going to refresh assumptions in line with what we're hearing out of Madison. We've got a quick update on where we think the this year's budget cycle will end up. And then Michelle's got a staffing and hiring update. So let's start with Back to the Future. All of you folks who were this is like my heyday. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Michael Jordan on Three Peaks, 90210, the original Jurassic Park, Dr.

020C. Things were good back in 1993. Mr. Easy, let's not ever say 90210 again. I believe we uh we watched 90210 and Melrose Place. Uh Oh, yeah. Instead of doing the day. Yep. Yep. All right. We digress. A quick little history lesson on how how much this district has grown uh in that period of time. Uh 1993 um we collected $11 million uh in property taxes and 2526 we're projecting 61 million. Uh state aid was 4 million and now it's all the way up to 28 million uh in our estimate. and we clipped and cut a little balance sheet from that budget workbook. I also thought the next slide was potentially even more interesting uh where uh the district back in 1993 uh was setting a mill rate of 2134 uh $21 in property taxes

021uh for every thousand of property value. Uh we're basically half of that now. Um, so I think the kind of the continued mantra around uh being taxed out of your home is certainly a thing and we understand property taxes, but I also think u perspective is important that only 30 years ago uh the taxing rate on property uh in our school district was was over $21 uh per thousand and now we're half of that. And this is the year that the revenue limits went into effect. Yeah. So, 1993, right? There are some other interesting things in there, but we didn't really need to get bogged down in 1993, but we thought we'd just include that today. Um, our uh budget calendar, again, we're still treading water a little bit until we get ourselves uh a

022two-year state budget. We've got an update on that tonight. uh a reminder to the board uh that we have a busy fall uh when things all come together. We'll present to you a draft budget book. We'll then print it, deliver it uh and uh then we go through the whole process again of an annual meeting with a budget hearing and then finalize our levy in October. A little update from uh what we're hearing from the joint finance committee which uh had shoved through what they call an omnibus uh just late last week uh it is appearing at least the first go from the state uh the joint finance committee at the state uh is that even after calls from around the state um and even our own local advocacy that Dr. clarity actually led um

023it appears that uh the prioritization of special education reimbursement from the state um at this point is falling on basically deaf ears. Uh so the money at least put into uh the original budget from the joint finance committee was about $300 million in extra spending uh on public education. Tony Iver's original budget was about4 billion dollars of additional spending on public education. So obviously uh woefully short it looks like there could be another investment in school levy credit which again is tax relief is not new spendable money uh for schools. It does appear that $325 a student is holding. Uh at this point, we do think this budget will be later uh than uh the chart we've got up here where typically uh we get a signed budget from the governor in early July. Um

024but the joint finance committee is still uh busy right now and uh the governor's not had a chance to to take a peek. We did detail some of the things we're hearing in terms of what did get passed uh from the joint finance committee just so the board understands uh the updated assumptions we put into next year's budget. Uh so uh number one and again we were uh we we essentially had a flat budget for special ed funding. Uh we were not all in on the 60% reimbursement. Um and at this point they did um include a slight increase in special ed categorical aid uh where um they're claiming that it will go from 35 one year to 37 uh the next. But again that is based on a pot of money that ends up

025being passed eventually if the governor signs his budget. Um so from our very conservative assumptions which was 32% maybe even a little less uh there is a slight increase in spendable money because we'd get reimbursed slightly more uh but that is woefully short of 60% which would mean a couple million dollars for our school district if that got passed in the budget. Uh at this point the general aid pot at least in what got passed by the joint finance committee appears to be flat and Pete and I did not project that when on every other year basis they typically do increase what the state kicks in for uh for aid. Um and remember that is not spendable money for us. That is taxpayer relief. But we use tools uh in terms of fund 39 and

026maybe a a potential uh operating reform down the road where aid is quite helpful uh for our school district. So we took an aid hit uh where we think we're probably down $2 million uh the following year if all this goes through. This is not set stone. the um the lawmakers uh through the joint finance committee did prioritize highcost special uh reimbursement which is something that wasn't even on the books for our joint advocacy in southern Wisconsin um and I think statewide from many of our state organizations uh where they are where they've got a two-year plan to actually get up to 90% reimbursement for high cost special ed and those are those are students uh with um uh more staffing, typically staffing in intensive uh needs related to their IEPs uh where um once

027they reach a third certain threshold, the state reimbures school districts for students that have that essentially are more costly to staff. Um and that if all that went through would be an additional uh $275,000 of spendable money uh for our school district. So, all in all, about half a million dollars, I guess, to the good, but still wofully short of what we were hoping to see uh in the next two-year state budget. the drop in aid potentially if we continue to have a mill rate flat uh um way of drawing up the budget which has worked well for us uh over the last five years or so. Um that could mean we have a few less tools in the tool belt for prepayment on capital debt related to fund 49 because anything we don't get

028an aid we have to tax for. And if we have to tax for it that means that's fund 10 taxing that we likely would not uh have our mill rate increase um at a rate that would cover for the the prepayment of debt that we've done in the past. questions on the state budget before we work through just a quick update on our where we think the five-year assumptions headed. Okay, so for me very disappointing news from the capital in terms of what the investment in public education is quite frankly uh it is nowhere close to an inflationary increase and we'll continue to put school districts on referendum. That's if this two-year budget passes. And I was just going to, you know, pile on to your comment because you you're going to see districts across

029the state have to go to referendum, including eventually we're probably going to have to. And I I want to make sure no one out there who's listening thinks there's a narrative where that's because of how we're spending the money. It's because they're not giving us enough money to be able to operate our school district in the inflationary environment that we're in right now. So we everybody keeps falling behind. And you know, we did all this advocacy where we went and talked to legislators of both parties and everybody all seemed to agree that special education funding was the one thing we could all get behind and that affected every school across the country or across the state in different parts of the state, rural and urban. and uh and still nothing. So, it's very disappointing. Yes,

030it is quite disheartening. No doubt. And you you'll hear this. I don't think Michelle has details in her HR update. Uh but we smelled this coming. We're like five and a half people leaner, seven people leaner than we were the year before where we used some, you know, essential staff nutrition for us to continue to kind of get leaner uh in prep for the next two years. Uh we went through the headaches of of going out to bid for health care to try to also make this budget a little bit leaner. Uh but it does appear um things are things are not super over the next couple of years if any portion of this goes through. So the board's super familiar with this five-year projection. We use it for two purposes. One, a look ahead

031to the budget we're building for next year, and that is the fiscal year 2026 budget. and then a look ahead to the the next three or four years down the road. Uh we had Pete build in a a relatively flat meal rate uh like we've done in the past. A couple of things in there that we'll want to highlight. Uh fiscal year 26, you can see a drop in state aid. That is different than the last time we shared this with the board. If that does hold true and the budget uh is eventually passed, uh you can see our levy increase uh is uh the the lowest it has been uh in quite some time uh with a levy increase of only 3.4% uh with inflation uh from the year before at 4.12. Where do

032we get that from? That's redoing healthcare and and carrying seven fewer people than we did the year before. The board should know we've still built at least into this initial budget um an inflationary increase for staff. Uh but we need the state budget to be solidified before we're uh comfortable making that recommendation through the collective bargaining process uh to the board. Uh you can also see at the very bottom there uh where we did pass a deficit budget a year ago to purchase land. That's that $7.9 million budget deficit. We we believe we'll have $645,000 of extra spendable money, but that's the first year of a two-year budget where you can see the following year, all these assumptions held true, all the way down to how many students we have, uh there would be a

033$2.2 2 million budget deficit for the second year of the state budget. Um, and then that would cascade forward uh through probably tougher years if those types of things held true um over the next couple of uh two-year budget cycles. Questions on that? Not super excited. I can tell you right now, uh, if 60% special ed reimbursement kicked in, uh, I think we'd probably be in the positive on both fiscal years. Just that simple one, they would have funded that, we would have needed. And another thing to reiterate, when we're talking about, if you see these red numbers here at the uh, uh, you know, the shortfall, that's when we start thinking about or talking about an operating referendum. But what that doesn't mean necessarily and in most likelihood not is a tax increase because

034when we did this three years ago or whenever it was we did we we got more um revenue authority and ended up lowering the bill. Okay. And it's very likely we'd be able to do that again. That is true. So we did not highlight the fund 39 line of that budget forecast. Uh but we have a annual minimum debt payment on our capital debt of about $10 million. And that flat mill rate Pete and I have built into the budget we'll present to the board. Uh an uh an extra debt payment of next year uh you know another five million and the following year another six million. uh that would give us the possibility of using the same strategy in the event we had to ask taxpayers uh for more spendable operating money through a

035through a referendum, right? If we get there and we'll see what the where the next two-year budget cycle does end up and we'll continue to double down for folks if we end up in that spot. Uh we've saved tax million taxpayers over $10 million in interest using the strategy and we have not yo-yo taxes um at the same time. So, we positioned ourselves well. Uh, but no one uh our voters aren't in love with it. No one wants to see that on the ballot box. Certainly, it's it is um not what uh school boards and school administrative staffs get in the work for. Uh we're about kids and we're not necessarily around uh information sessions and pitching another operating referendum. Uh but that's that's a nature of the of the work in public education now.

036That's all there is to it. Uh especially in Wisconsin. So that's what we've got for the next what we think will a lot of those could potentially hold all the way through our budget book. So Chad, I first thank you for the uh for the update. you know, I've been sitting here obviously knew the numbers, uh, read all the articles, but just feel like it's important just just to say in and name this is that there's there shouldn't be any doubt in anyone's mind in our society that public education is the greatest equalizer that we have in our country. It's the one thing in our country that allows anyone to reach any bar. And you look right over my shoulder and you're looking at it. We know and believe in the Broner School District that

037education is the only platform to true freedom in our country. So when you think about those two significant things and then hear the message from joint finance that we are not going to invest in our most vulnerable students and not invest in public education overall in a manner that is sustainable for our students to truly grow and thrive is I I heard the word disheartening. I think it's, you know, I think it's deplorable, you know, and I'm just speaking my truth as a leader of this district, but also saying as someone as all of you are invested in every single child that comes in our hallways and every single child that we have have the opportunity to stand up for, advocate for, and give the honor of educating to send this message that you don't

038deserve a a high quality education and have not funded is just really a message that, you know, I I think I know that we're better than that as a state. Um, I just just got back from visiting my my mom, flew in, flew back in, just did a quick weekend trip. Every headline in the state I was in was the one of the biggest spending bills in public education, you know. and I walked back to our state and not even uh a worthy percentage of what actually should be funed towards toward toward education. You know, we have amazing staff. You're going to hear numbers around some of the highest uh sales of beritacy numbers that we that we've ever had. We've had two award-winning staff members here. We have the Wisconsin principal of the year

039sitting in sitting in this space. and you're telling us we don't want to fund it when the our students are able to excel with the amount with the staff that we have to be able to deliver a world-class education here. That's, you know, so just wanted to put that out there. You know, anyone wants to listen or record it or send it. We've been in the spaces, we've had the conversations, but and I'm not going to give this doom dooming and defeist attitude. We're going to keep fighting until we're funded in a way that our students deserve. So, I just thanks for opportunity to just be able to put that out there. Thank you. And I just want to elevate too that this community has shown over and over again that you all support our

040public schools here monetarily, philosophically, all of it. And I just I feel like it also throws in the face communities, individual homeowners who live in communities that are willing to take and do what they can financially to support schools, but their state representatives can't do the same thing. Um, I just Yeah. if as community members I just I hope there's a level of frustration and understanding of the ownership that we're doing on an individual level compared to the lack thereof at the state level and I appreciate your word deplorable. I'll use that too if that's okay. Okay. Thanks. Yeah. And uh and Dr. C, I think in some regards your statements uh almost ring more true to the landscape of our entire state. Uh we're super fortunate to be sitting in this room with an

041incredibly uh supportive community uh and a school board that believes in our work. Um and uh to have a state budget passed like this and have many of the communities in the state actually not even have a board or a community that can pass an operating referendum. Uh those are really the school districts where all of a sudden it is not free and appropriate public education anymore. uh because you're not getting the same thing uh in some of the communities that don't support public schools like you. Um so that's part of the other piece that in my words is so disheartening because the gap continues to widen because if this hangs true, we'll likely be having operating referendum uh conversations within the next year. That's that's really we wouldn't have a choice. All right. Hate

042to be a downer. Uh, but we're going to do a little bit of good news on the way out here. Uh, our year-end budget is wrapping up better than we thought it would. Um, as a reminder, we started the budget with an $8.5 million budget gap. Uh, a a deficit budget because we bought land. Uh, Pete currently is projecting right now that number will land at about anywhere between 6.6 and 7.2 million after we do last run of payroll and end up paying uh the rest of our bills. and we would have an update to the board once we get past July one and Pete and his team can clean everything up. True, Pete. Exactly. All right. Good segue to Michelle. Um and a couple of our board members uh certainly mentioned the the fact

043that we we are in a good place as far as us locally and supporting our public schools from afar, which you're going to hear tonight. um I think does represent um a strategic framework taking hold, having a superintendent that's here and here to stay. Uh a school board that believes in our staff and has voted to compensate them appropriately because life and human resources in my opinion uh is better than it was three or four years ago. Um and I think you're going to hear that from Michelle. Um I think we are a desirable school district. I think we're getting some amazing people that were able to interview and eventually hire with our students. Michelle, I'm going to turn a quick staffing update over to you. Perfect. And thank you, Chad. Um, you know, one

044thing that we really prioritized this year is knowing an unknown state budget. And so, while we have been very strategic in how we work through hiring and staffing, we knew we needed to support Chad and Pete and you and balance budget at the end of the day. So, all of the moves that we've been able to do this year have not been have been through attrition, have not had any layoffs um or surplusing, which is very good for our staff. Um we've prioritize that. Like Chaz said, we have seven FTE held back at this point. Yet, our class sizes are still very small. We have desirable class sizes. We have support systems in place to support our staff. We're doing all the right work. Um, one thing that we didn't celebrate too much and I

045want to thank our SAS team tonight is really some of the hard work that we did in October, November, December, and January diving deeper into how we staff across the district using data. And that was in collaboration with academic services and student services and how we rolled it out to our leaders so that our leaders understood what a staffing allocation process looks like based on actual data and how each department is able to make staffing recommendations and how that holistically applies across the district. Um we've also done like I said some internal moves to really help with class sizes. No one has been laid off. Um there's been no one that has been surplused, but as we're seeing attrition, we are seeing needs from other buildings maybe vary. And so we're trying to um do

046some equity based staffing through attrition and moving folks around in the right spaces so that we've got the right supports at the right time. The one thing I want to just call out in this space is that because we don't have a state budget just yet, base wage bargaining has been put on pause and handbook updates have been put on. And I know a lot of our employees really um at this point of the year are looking forward to understanding what that looks like for next year. So, we've been very clear with our unions. We're all in this together, but we can't really make decisions just yet until we have a better idea of what the state budget looks like. Um Jen, can you move me forward? Oh, you're already great. Here's the exciting work

047that's going on. We have posted 56 positions since March 1st. It's actually 58 as of right now. Um, when we put the slide deck together, there were two teacher positions open. We have four now. So, we had two people um put in their resignations today for really amazing opportunities. So, we have four teacher positions open and eight hourly staff member positions open. That's really good. We are sitting in a better spot now than we have had in the past and we fully expect that we will be fully staffed when the school year starts with top quality, high quality folks that align to the district. Some of our successes this last year and even just in the last couple of months have really um been about what's happening in our buildings. We have amazing instructional leaders.

048We have top compensation and benefits packages that help attract and then retain our employees. We've had huge successes in some of our jobs being posted. 15 years ago, you would hear about pools of candidates of hundreds for a job. This year, we hit over 78 candidates for one position. That's an amazing accomplishment to you and to all of our employees about why Verona is such a desirable place to work at. Um, our hard to fill positions are filling quick. We are working together and collaboratively to find folks in the community. we're reaching far to hire the right person. And our teacher mentor program, which really focuses on mentoring our teachers in their first through third year, has really expanded and has been um really providing the right resources so that new educators that come to

049the district are not leaving. And so we are kind of looking at this from all different angles to make sure we're retaining and growing our staff. A few things that I want to highlight. Um, when we talk about top candidates, we are always making sure that we align our top candidates and folks that we hire to our strategic framework and equity framework and we're prioritizing that in our decisions. We're doing multiple reference checks once we get to the point where we're ready to hire someone and we've taken it a step further and we're also doing employment verifications. So, reference checks typically are who the candidate wants us to talk to. Employment verifications are who we determine who to talk to to make sure that those things align. And the other thing that we're really prioritizing

050this year is immediate onboarding. So those folks that we're hiring now for the beginning of this next school year are already getting their feet in the door and they're starting to do onboarding. We're getting their computers earlier. We're getting them connected to people here so that once the school year starts next year, we're not crawling to get ready. We're going to be running because everyone is going to be on board and ready. So that it's a really good hiring update at this point and we know that there's continued successes that we can continue to celebrate. Any questions? Just Yay. Oh yeah, go ahead. I was just going to make a comment tying it back to what we were talking about with Chad. like this is everything that we're working towards because none of what we

051do matters if we don't if we don't have an ability to attract and retain the best staff out there. Um we we're sitting in this beautiful building, but that's not going to do anything educating students unless you put the right people in it. And we we need to keep doing what we have been doing to keep attracting and retaining all the people that we do. And that's why when we look at, you know, if if we do get to a point in the future we have to go to an operating referendum, it's so that we have room in our budget to be able to do that without raising that mill rate, which is what we were talking about being able to do. I mean, I got so much to say about this. Um, first of

052all, the mentor program. I just want to let folks know like that the programmatic shift that has happened that we now have full-time people dedicated to running that mentor program back when it was a different structure and we had amazing educators kind of coaching in a one-on-one way. Just the the way the district has rallied around a restructuring of that mentoring program, I think is really speaking to the impact of that and the amazing folks that are running that program. So just to elevate how key that is because the data still around retention not only just in a district but in the profession in general is still you know really dismula at times. So what we can do to really support and empower our beginning teachers I appreciate so much the district rallying around that

053because it's so important. Um the reflection of our staff I think is directly a reflection of what we hope is happening. I mean right keeping amazing teachers here and having people desire to come here that to me is the true reflection of all the work that we attempt to say that we're doing. the um the data dives in terms of where staffing is going. You know, we've talked about at the board table, your money goes where your values are. And so being able to really dig into that and articulate to staff with concrete numbers why staffing is where it is and to families and communities. I think that's so impactful that it isn't just a mysterious shell game. Um that staff are involved in those conversations. I mean, just so much of the culture of

054the district, all the things we try to do financially to compensate staff is also directly married to how it feels to work here. There's only so much that any district can do to compensate staff. So the fact that the school culture here can be created as such that people want to stay and come that all of that I think just speaks a lot of volume and just want to share gratitude across the district and how excited that makes me to to stay and be a part of things. I think that was all. All right. Thanks everybody. Thank you. Oh that was the end of the update. That was kind of expected mic drop I guess. Okay. Wonderful. Thanks team. Uh moving on to public comment. I am not aware of any. Lori, anything that's coming

055for you? Okay. Thank you. So then we'll move on to board action. So we have two monitoring reports this evening board. So we'll start uh with OE1 instructional programming. We were given materials ahead of time, a video. All of that is linked as well in board docs. So we'll get some highlevel reminders from the team and take some time to process the report. And all of these are hard copies for you as well, board, if you're kind of perusing your pile. So, as we get ready for Thank you, uh, President Murphy. As we get ready for, um, our two monitoring reports, you know, there's good thing about our calendars when we're able to do two monitoring reports in same and on the same meeting. Um but also it is in his name a challenge for

056all of us to completely move our mind to to two distinctly different styles of monitoring. Right now we're specifically in the operational expectations which are as compliancy as compliance can be. That's why we often do the videos in advance because it's purely did we do it? Y here's the proof that we did it not and it is not the result of the the indicator it is did the indicator get done? Yep. Right. Um and so and then we will move later to monitor reports. Well, okay. So, here are the indicators and what are the results and the impact on on our cell. So, right now we're purely in operations. Uh and we'll turn that over to Dr. Hawkins and to Amy. Uh I know each of you enjoyed the uh video that was put uh

057put out in in advance and thank you Dr. Hawkins for for doing that. And uh I think everybody's always scared about making a face on there on the prison one. You suck the landing. Nice job. No face on that one. I appreciate the pace. That was a great pace. Like I absorbed all of it. So thank you. You did a great job. Thank you. Well, thank you. This evening tonight we're going to go over OE1. And as President Margie said, we did share the video for your review. Um what it says as the superintendent shall maintain a program of instruction that offers challenging and relevant opportunities for all students to achieve the outcomes defined in the board's results policies. And so what we're going to lift up tonight is that um the leadership moves that

058we want to share with you all for this year 24-25 would be the opening of K8 foundations. And so on June the 6 we had an exhaustive presentation where we had um our director uh Dr. Hellberg as well as Carly Adams came and shared the um evolution and the growth of foundations. Um that is one of our key strategies this year. And then our second strategy was ensuring that student voice was reflected in course offerings at the secondary level as well as at the elementary level. And at the elementary level, you that was seen through our status curriculum and that was designed um through the whole process of the adoption process. It was designed to ensure that the text was diverse and reflected the interests of our diverse learners. When we think about our moves

059for next year, we're going to continue to expand our continuum of supports. What you'll notice is that we tied each one of um our instructional moves to the indicators. So, our first one is tied directly to 111, but we're going to continue to expand our continuum of support, more importantly to secondary um 912 and that will include students with IEPs and students without IEPs. So, we want to provide options and pathways for students to prepare them to thrive in a diverse global society. We're going to continue to refine special education service delivery model to fully define the least restrictive environment and work to ensure that students are supported in spaces that meet their individual needs. We're going to continue to explore ways to capture student voice. And we're going to focus on artificial intelligence. And

060we're going to be intentional to think about jobs that don't exist. We have to think ahead. We're also going to expand our acceptable use policy to include guidance around ethical and purposeful use for AI for both students and staff. And then we're going to further develop opportunities for talent development through advanced learning programs. OE1 um directly aligns to strategic framework priorities of student agency. Hold on, I lost got ahead of myself. Uh, the priorities of value and belonging, student agency, and inclusive teaching and learning. Um, and what I will say is that we're fully compliant in all eight categories and the 12 indicators that are outlined in meeting the board's expectations. And so just to highlight again um OE15 um and that is the one where we talk about new and innovative programs. And so

061again just to uplift the work of foundations last year it was truly um still uh a thought. We were still trying to figure out space. In fact, President Murphy just last earlier tonight we said something new will take the interest of people. Last year we were looking for spaces for where foundations was going to be and so we had um looked at several spaces in our district and we landed on um using the former registars's office and then we moved the registars's office to Badger Ridge but again we recognized that there was a need to support our students with complex profiles and so with that um the evolution and the beginning of foundations elementary through K8. So that's um OE15, but that specifically supports innovative and instructional innovative programs. So again, we're fully compliant and

062I'll pause and allow for questions and or questions. So thanks for saying thank you Dr. And before the board goes into discussion, I just want to remind that normally and I'm not going to if timing was right, we would have done the pathways presentation on the same day as they but we weren't going to have our staff members available. So we did it two weeks earlier. So if you could try to mentally connect that conversation with what we were elevating as one of our highlight leadership moves this year to this one. Understand there is two week gap between that. as we can continue to go through these reports just kind of year after year, right? That cadence admittedly is helping me as a board member to just revisit and I feel like I see things

063I just learn as we go, right? So, every time we go through these reports, there's just different things that I think about and land on. And kind of the point that you made, Dr. Clarity, as we came into this, that the OES are kind of a little bit more checkboxy, right? Did the district do what you know we've asked you to do in terms of just running the district? And this one is interesting because it's about instruction and so instruction bleeds so closely into results. And I and this is maybe more for the board. I just I found myself getting a little bit stuck on 11.3 as a policy statement looking at the indicator as well. The policy statement says that you will effectively assess and identify and address significant things that you notice because

064of those tests. And that is really to me on the results side of things, right? What to do with the data. This to me feels like did you collect the data to be able to acknowledge what's happening instructionally. So, I'm finding myself proverating over that just in and of itself because there's no indicator that addresses the results of the testing, nor should it be here in my opinion. So, does that mean that that statement needs to be adjusted on a policy side because we ought not to be looking at the results with OE1? Do you all kind of see where I'm getting a little tied? because that's where I've been in this space of as we talk about what we want to see for data as a board, there's a lot of data we're not

065seeing with that 11.3, but it really shouldn't be here in the first place. So, I think that's just a space, you know, as board members as we think about taking that time to revisit policy and have those discussions. That's something I'm going to flag for myself and I'd just be curious if that brings up any responses from anyone else. But just to delineate really clearly, right, what is operational or what is results? And that one I just found to be kind of interesting. I agree with you. In other words, the report itself, I think, is really living in what you all described, right, of just trying to ensure that, you know, structurally is the district functioning to be responsive to setting up the programs and then where do we kind of see the impact of

066that work? Yes, this one really allows us to create the conditions so that the results can follow. And so that's without this you can't have that, right? And how do we tie the two together? It's almost like you can make a map of 11.3 leads to a connection with R2.1 and yeah, which could be kind of an interesting crosswalk, you know, for more work to do for someone. Right. Otherwise, I think yeah, the report I would agree with compliance in my sentiment um and appreciate again all the links and the data for ourselves, the video, all the things to really be able to let us process before we come to the board table and for the community to have access to any other questions for the team before we start to shift OE1 to board

067ownership. Okay. All right. So, uh, members of the board, we have received and discussed, uh, the superintendence monitoring report for OE1. Um, I'll accept a motion now to approve the report as presented and we can just engage in any further discussion around compliance. Is there a motion? Juan Carlos, is there a second? Second. Thank you, Joe. Um any further discussion then board members as we approach a vote toward um approving the monitoring report as in compliance. Okay. We have a motion from Juan Carlos and a second by Joe. All those of approving OE1 as being in compliance signify with I I. Any opposed? Just pausing for John. He said he may be in and out. So we do have Yep. We got four. Yep. So, we are we are approved. Thank you. Thank you team.

068Thank you. And now we will do what we just kind of prefaced. We'll flip the narrative. Um board members reminder the checklist is also here on paper if that was something hopefully that was used in engaging in your review of results policy world languages. So now we are shifting more to reasonable progress not to compliance with our analysis and discussion. Well, thank you for that segue, President Murphy. Uh this will I can't read that. There's a chat from John. I couldn't read it. This will uh be new for us um in in terms of uh the not just the process of going over the results but this is our work based off you know kind of months now work on reidentifying how we're looking at results policy beyond quantitative data into the full story of

069of leadership move which has been the I think the rightfire of the board what you're going to see because um what should stand out for to you is that you notice that we did not check a box on on this because we really are curious or listening for discussion on what what you know complian not yes actually compliance looks like in terms of results or progress means results not compliance I'm sorry uh secondly you know the team has really looked at um and how do we bring in the voices of some of the metrics that we formally looked at. How are we looking at some of the metrics that were not originally uh identified in the past because it tells the whole story of world language and how do we bring the voices of our

070students into the space so they so the board can hear of the exact experiences and be able to determine where are the specific leadership moves that you will hear identified by our team relevant to reasonable progress for one for for for one year. um and and how did those how did those uh leaders come to be? So, uh with that um I'm going to ask that we kind of erase our minds of formal resource policies uh practice monitor reports and kind of go into our our new way of working. Uh we I don't want to call it a cheat sheet. You shouldn't say cheating education but a guide. Cool. We have our scaffold. Yes, we have our we have our our scaffold in front of us to allow uh to make sure that all the

071requirements that the board put in as for expectations are put put in place. Um, we will name that while there was discussion at the table. Joel, thank you for doing so about I want a solid summary page unless you wanted four point. We could not get it down to to to one page, but I think it it because there's we got to a space where everything was important. So, uh, we we we we heard the message and didn't want to have everybody put on, uh, um, readers to have to read it, but also wanted the word to get out there. So, I just want to explain that in advance as well. Do you mind if I just add one thing? This is something that I've shared with Dr. Clarity and board. I think this is

072something we can kind of talk about, but um, with results monitoring in particular, you know, part of the process of this is determining reasonable progress. And I I do struggle just a little bit with having a recommendation from the team. Um I kind of appreciate a bit of the authenticity that comes with the board having to do that grappling and determine what it is that we think of the report without the check coming to us in the first place. Um so I just want to elevate that. It's just something I contemplate because this is really right the board's decision about do we think you're compliant or not. And I appreciate you might have a thought about that, but I don't know if I want to know that coming in. Um, so I'm curious how this

073goes because we're not doing this somewhat accidentally because of how you all were positioned with this report, but I that's something I've kind of been dwelling on. So just to put that out there. Okay. Well, thank you. I'm excited to be joined tonight by Rosemary Larson, our director of multilingual programs, and Diana Rogers, our sea of bi literacy advisor to share a bit more about um, world languages. As Dr. Clarity shared we've taken a bit more comprehensive approach and to the the monitoring report and to our interpretation of the indicators. So previously we've just given you the enrollment data. Um the conversations at board workshop and the feedback that we've gotten from the board really pushed us in exciting ways to go see how do we compare with the rest of the state. What does

074this look like in Dane County? What might our students say about what they know about this? So excited to provide a bit more comprehensive look tonight um with some other data sources and hopefully a more holistic picture. One technical note on the monitoring report which is another area for feedback. We did struggle a little with in the the current in our new way of working how we color code numbers. Right? So in the past we had often colored we said it was going to be yellow if it was plus five within plus five or minus five range. It was going to be red if it was a drop of 5% and green if it was above that. So, we still followed that um that color coding, but could be another shift in our ways of

075working in the future depending on how we think about what reasonable progress um actually is defined as. So, with that, I'm going to turn it over to Rosemary to talk through some of what we've learned about our world language programming this year. All right. So uh to start us off just this is a reminder of what the results policy states currently and then the interpretation um they want us to focus on the phrases preparing students to compete in the global economy because that lines up with what um we say in our equity statement that we want in our tagline preparing students to thrive in a diverse global society. This is the interpretation of terms and the definition of terms. So I want us to think about that world language courses very much focus on language

076development. So we uh emphasize individually and appropriately challenging levels unlike other content areas that have academic standards at certain grade levels. uh we we have academic standards. However, they also have that added uh layer of proficiency and being able to develop language at different levels. We want to take a holistic approach and going beyond what the indicators say and give a a more comprehensive view of what we how we are operating within our world language department. So the context and considerations sorry we are um I believe us to be a leading world language program among peer districts in the county um due to the high number of students that take world language courses as well as variety of languages that we offer. Um students want to continue learning languages. uh they name things like college

077career readiness, deeper understanding and enjoyment of language and and their teachers and teachers are wonderful. Uh they want to apply their language skills in different ways whether it be in clubs, service learning, projects, different events and we do have indicators that do show that our students are progressive. So here is the uh one consideration that this is a percentage of high schoolers that took a world language in 2324. Uh this is the latest data that I could get from BPI as you can see from area um school district is we we looked at high school they are about 1.69% um and want to keep but we are further ahead than other school districts. I wanted to also uh call out that we the data that we're presenting today has focused on the high school because

078that's what we have been doing in years past. And then the number of world language courses that we offer at the high school, the different types of language, French, German, Spanish, and Mandarin, we have four. So Madison Metro has two more. I think it's Arabic and American Sign Language, but we aren't competitive in that way. Um we were not able to offer American Sign Language this year because we were not able to find a teacher that is that is a you know a challenge that we're trying to overcome. I thought we offered air. Okay. For some reason I thought so indicator one shows participation rates. So participation rates in both um overall and then in advanced courses. Advanced courses we are naming level four and above AP dual credit and uh 2A immersion and as

079you can see uh the numbers have there was not a significant change in the percentage of students that are taking these courses. We did give a survey which I will be showing you the results as to why students are not um once we once we get there I'll share that to you. This is the number of focus group students or percentage of focus group students enrolled in world language courses. As you can see um enrollment has stayed fairly stable. Uh the exception of our black and African-American students that one did decrease significantly. Um although the students uh going in two or more races did go up quite a bit. Okay. Uh another consideration is that for the students that are enrolled in our world language courses. um for students enrolled in advanced world language courses,

080our numbers have not changed. Okay, something I want us to consider is that uh for more than half the students enrolled in world language courses and this actually is 78.4% of students are earning an A or B in these courses. So the vast majority of them are having success And then I did break it down um by focus group and what percent of our students are passing the courses. So notably our English uh learner group shows the greatest opportunity for growth. Uh this will be an area of focus for us next year. when asked if they will students so I I took a survey of your uh survey and 500 students did respond and out of those students the vast majority of them 76% said that they want to continue whether it be here in

081Verona area high school or in college or in other or other opportunities they might have in the community. 24% said no and then six% said maybe. Uh we wanted students to tell us why do you want to continue? Vast majority of them noted that they wanted to increase their college and career opportunities including college credit have deeper understanding of the language and increase fluency and because they enjoyed it, they're interested and they like their teachers. students who said no that they would not um be able to were willing to take the next level of language. Many of them said scheduling conflicts so they wanted to take other courses. Uh there's no room in their schedule. Some of them did say that they did not enjoy the class or it was too difficult or stressful. And

082then others said that they uh felt they met the requirements they needed to for college entrance or they didn't need it for their college major or they were graduating and they just were not going to continue in university or college. Okay. So where we did have an increase was with uh the percentage of students who are passing the stamp test. So the students who take the stamp assessment, this test is a proficiency uh with reading writing the students speaking in another language. And uh what we define as proficiency is whether or not they would qualify for the CO5 literacy if they were junior. So it it's an intermediate high. It's on a scale of nine. So it' be level six. Um, we had a significant increase, 32.1%. We did have fewer students taken, but a

083high percentage of them did did pass or that requirement. On the end of the survey, um I did ask students whether they knew what the stamp test was. Uh with one being I don't know what this is and then five being I can explain this to others in general terms. Most more than half the students said that they did not know. So that is a learning for us and something that we want to include information and presentations made to students as they go through their world language uh journey and then also encourage participation in se literacy. Okay. So with that in mind now we'll we'll turn to the seal by literacy. I wanted to u make you aware that there was a significant change at the state level last year. Uh the seal of by

084literacy is now recognized as an industry recognized credential um in eight of Wisconsin's 10 academic and career planning pathways including advanced manufacturing, architecture and construction, business administration, digital technology, hospitality and tourism, patient care, non-direct patient care and transportation, distribution and logistics. So CO pilot is considered uh industry recognized credential for all those areas. Can you explain that one more time? I'm not sure if I'm understanding that means like they're connected or there or skill by literacy is another one among the list of I can leave high school and have myself be recognized with an industry standard credential. It's a credential with it. So I could leave as a hospitality and tourism credentialed person or I could leave with a seal of bi literacy credential. Right. It's it's added to that list. Yes. Okay. I'm just

085making sure an indicator industry recognized is actually an indicator within our CTE results. Yeah. Yeah. And and recognized as an important part of that based on students language skills and the industries that basically require or benefit from students having that level of language. So you put on their LinkedIn correct? Yes. There you go. The next indicator. Awesome. Yes. So this past year uh we had 52 attempt and 80.8% of them did achieve the CLI literacy. And then when looking at our focus groups where we had a a significant number of students uh participate uh we also did have increases uh this year. Um I wanted to let you know it is the first year that students who are identified as English learners were included in the script had enough student participate. Um it because a

086seal of literacy requires not only proficiency in a partner language other than English. It also requires um a proficiency in English. So that is a significant jump. And then now I'm going to pass it over to Diana. She is going to speak to some of the students responses and the voices that they Yeah. So one of the requirements that um students must achieve for their portfolio is to do um volunteer service to be immersed in a like in a different country or they can write an essay. And so many of our heritage speakers will write an essay talking about what being bilingual means to them and they reflect on this process. And so I just wanted to share a couple of the quotes that they um shared with me. One of them is having a

087foreign accent is not synonymous with shame anymore, but rather strength and courage. So being able to reflect on that and being proud of that. Um, another one was I think that what it means to be a bilingual student to understand two worlds to realize it's not about being divided between them, but about being the bridge that connects them with pride and love and with certainty that in the that union lies my true home, which was amazing. Um, and then finally, this one was was pretty um amazing to just her experiences. She said, "I've accompanied my mother to her medical appointments to interpret for her. I help my mother pay the rent, deposit her checks online, order her medications from the pharmacy. All of this has felt so normal ever since I could speak English that

088my ability to translate and communicate in both language has become invaluable. So just being able to recognize um those students and that achievement um has been kind of amazing. Um, also Mara Kinsman Calderon, she spoke last year. Um, she did an essay for the language testing institute and um, she won $500 as in third place for this scholarship um, uh, scholarship that she applied for. Um, I'm not sure how we can get it up on here, but she did um, do a video. If there is a way I can share it on the next board update. Okay, perfect. I can share that with you too. So hearing her voice too is really amazing. Thank you. Okay. So when um on this end of year survey when we asked students uh to rate their knowledge on

089seal by literacy again with one being I don't know what that is and then five being I can explain this in general terms. We found that around 40% of our students didn't know what seal literacy is. So it's it's something that we have to work on is increase in increasing awareness. I have a question. Is that high school level? Right. That's all high school. Okay. Got it. Out of the 500 students that responded. Got it. That's the percentage. uh the most recent data we have from the state as far as how many students across the state uh earned the sales by literacy here's the total number it's not percentage total number of students um out of all the school districts that offer the sales by literacy um Verona area it's a little higher this year

090because it shows below 50 there but we are higher um so it's it shows that in comparison to other school districts. We're somewhere in the middle. So, and is that the total number of districts offering the seal by literacy or there are more? This is just the top. There are more. Okay. Although, not all school districts will have recipients every year. Sure. So, there will be some years that a school district who has that ability to conceal might not have any funding earned. Well, it looks like these this is just raw numbers and most of these school districts I'm seeing out here are pretty good. Yeah, exactly. The percentage wise further up the scale. Yeah. Yeah. To that point just quick snapshot of our similar size you know as part of the large district caucus.

091I see we see all these superintendent. So we would be in the comparison of Blake Middleton um Watoss Manasha those are when you're talking about population of school of high school or districts that's those are those are our peers. So these are the leadership moves that we made this year in response to student needs. Uh with SEAL by literacy, we continue to increase um outreach especially for students um who have home languages other than English and those enrolled in advanced world language courses and we encourage them to pursue this bio. um instructional alignment across languages during Worldike Mondays uh to develop to develop common rubrics for interpretive reading and presentational writing. These are aligned to the Wisconsin world language standards and uh we are moving towards having them be consistent across all languages and grade

092levels based off of the level of the course. Um and then uh focus support for multilingual learners because the seal of bi literacy also requires proficiency in English. Um we worked on um our bilingual teachers, bilingual resource teachers and two-way immersion teachers have been engaged in learning more standards. Actionable steps um for the coming 2526 school year is um just continuing to gather student feedback. is valuable to know what their experience is and uh how we can continue to encourage them to further develop their language. Expanded learning options. You asked earlier about Arabic. We want to get to a point um in the future. If a student wants to learn Arabic, how are we supporting them? So or any other language and looking at alternatives such as virtual learning or support them in language study

093in other ways. Expanding efforts to increase high school enrollment and uh ahead of the course selection process, having students know about the world language program at the at the high school. Continuing to promote the stamp test and seal by literacy here. including that information as well in beginning level classes and then continuing to strengthen curriculum and enrichment opportunities. So students having access to well teachers being able to continue to find common rubrics and then have a role like Mondays that investment in time for teachers to really get together and just work together on on the world language opportunities we give to our students as well as uh our two-way immersion program having an opportunity for students to take uh to complete a capstone project that's starting in this next school. So, we believe we've uh

094provided compelling evidence to show that we have a high quality world language program um in the Baron area school district and we've done work to provide students with these opportunities. We believe that we've achieved reasonable progress uh as related in the spirits of the results policy spirit of the results policy even if not all existing indicators have increased enough. So, at this point, I think we're ready to turn it back over to you all just to think about um what questions do you have for us and help us to grapple with where are we in terms of our monitoring report and continuing to resource practice. Dr. Clarity has heard me say this a million times, so I'm sorry in advance. You know, I didn't go to high school in Wisconsin, but what I what I

095for the life of me, what bothers me is that DPI does not make world language a requirement to graduate. I think it should be. I think um students who don't take advantage of being able to to learn another language is doing a huge disservice to you by the time you graduate, by the time you go to college, you enter the workforce. it it can only open doors and help you and it expands your mind in so many other different areas as well. I just I'm baffled that DPI does not have it as a requirement to graduate. Does anyone know why they have it as a requirement to graduate? That is your political talking. decisions. I will name that when we were digging into and and looking at some of this comparative data that the board

096asked for, we did look back at some of the other districts to see is it a graduation requirement in those districts and we did not find that it was either. So found that interesting. Also very promising though that we do have such high student participation even though it is a graduation requirement and we are performing um right up there with many of the larger school districts when it comes to the number of students we have earning the ceil literacy and the clear value they're finding in that process. Clearly some work to do and making sure all students are aware of it but the students who are aware are passing at higher rates have wonderful things to say about that experience. Um yeah really making us a leader within districts of smaller sizes. Yeah. Even if

097we can't control uh state state level decisions. I mean Lisa lives here and I think if we're going to say that we you know we're trying to encourage students to help them thrive in a diverse global society having a world language program is crucial for that because beyond language an introduction to a language is introduction to a culture and it's introduction to an expand expanding view of the world and the differences and the things that we do while we live our lives. So you're creating better global citizens by offering continuing to offering and continue to build a world-class world language offering. It's so important beyond hopefully you can add more languages but it's so important because it's so central to our our mission our equity statement. So um thank you for this work. I I

098did have a question around how early do you plan on promoting the paths that exist for multilingual students in regards to the sealed by literacy and the stamp test? Is this something you're going to introduce in grade school? Are you thinking middle school? How do we kind of start uh promoting this uh to students but also their families because they also need the families also need to be aware of this amazing benefit at home to be able to further support their students and believe the story the truth right but they have to be they have to have that knowledge at home as well to guide their students and guide their thinking and continue continue through this process. Yeah. in sorry that was very longwinded but and Diana can share what she does at the high

099school in middle school we do uh during our two virgin family nights we do share the information about the seal by literacy to families uh there as well as two other means middle school does that start is that middle school or sixth grade okay did make a video last year based on um some feedback from the boards we made a video about the seal of b literacy that we also shared in our multilingual um from a newsletter as well. Um and we know that families get a lot of information. So what are the other places that we can really target and highlight this thinking about intentional recruitment in those classes to make sure students understand the benefit of that next year? We will also have our first graduating tweak class that we'll go through. Um

100and so getting their feedback about how we can continue to build programs will be important as well. Um, and I'm working with the some of the BRTs and the English teachers. Um, especially Susana Alvarez has shared it with her advisory group. Michael Jensen, um, does a great job of sharing with his students, especially after they pass the access test. They're like, is that all you can get? Now, you can get your seal of literacy. So, um, working with those teachers, too, to get the the multilingual students more involved because sometimes they come mid year and they miss out on those, um, first meetings that we have. So, just using those, um, teachers as resources as well. So, as we're talking about this, I'm curious. I feel like last year you shared the different languages that

101students earn the seal in. Like, we had a deep, right? We tend to talk a lot about tweet programming multilingual as it talks as we're talking about Spanish and English, but I know we had SEAL recipients last year in multiple languages. Can you share with me? So, I'm I'm curious like the likelihood if I am a native English speaker and I have not taken a language until I start high school. What is the likelihood I could earn the seal? Or is this predominantly native non-Englishspeaking students that are being able to elevate to this? Do you get do you kind of see my question? because it kind of goes with all of this of how do we give access and the leadership moves I'm hearing you all say to elevate this like what is that pathway

102for a student that maybe just didn't have the opportunity space interest until they're a freshman to navigate a second language is this achievable um if they're taking Spanish one as a freshman um the way that learning or French one or yeah the way the language works um normally to reach an intermediate high they would have to get at least five years and that's when you lots of studying, not just every other day seeing their teacher. Um, this year I believe I don't have the exact numbers here. I can tell you that um our students that were neither multilingual or twe we had 25 take the stamp test and the reading scores were 6.5. So an average of 6.5. The writing scores were a little bit lower, 5.7. So very close to that intermediate high. Um

103listening was 6.3 6.26 and speaking was the lowest at 5.13. So they are getting close and we did have at least let's say seven achieve six or higher in all five categories. It is possible. my Spanish five class, I really um we practice those writing and speaking those productive skills a lot so that and especially right in January and February to prepare them for the stamp test. And I do recruit, you know, I I say, "Please take the stamp test. Please take it. Just see where we're at, you know, so we can help our program get better and see that we're doing our job." And so I did have uh 25 students take it this year and um overall they did pretty well. But usually it's like I said it's it's about five years to

104get to that level. That's helpful to know just in thinking about right how we offer things younger, how we really live the fact that we've committed to being a multilingual district despite not having forced parameters to make us be that. You know, just what that looks like to create that um interest, passion, availability earlier on. I know it's a hard piece. Right. As Rosaria spoke to, we do have more language programming in our middle schools and are excited about being able to offer that to um our students. And so I think that's something that we'll continue to think about how we also help them right away to see this is a pathway that that could be for you as a part of that process. Those numbers aren't reflected here because we wanted to compare apples

105to apples and we've been using just high school numbers. Um but excited that we're able to offer that to our international students. Thank you. I I I I have a lot to say, probably too much, but it's all on the process side. Uh so all I'll say is that I I definitely feel like we have a high quality oral language program. It's something I think I'm I'm proud of and I think our district should be proud of and please don't take any of my process comments later as a criticism at all of the programming because I think it's terrific. Mhm. Well, with that segueish, Joe, any other questions, I guess, about the report itself or things related to world languages that would be helpful to surface to the team before we shift it more then

106into board and process and analysis. Yeah, I think it's hard, right, in the in the process that we follow up to this point, like we usually someone makes a motion first. I'm not I' I'd like to talk about before I'm in any position to make a motion or support a motion honestly because I I'll tee off some of my comments. I mean this is going to be repetitive of things I've said over and over again. One of the one of the criticisms I have of our governance model is the rigidity with which we do monitoring. It seems like it's strictly indicator-based. And when we were creating and approving these indicators, it it in hindsight, looking back, it feels forced like we were thinking, oh, I need to have lots of different indicators here. So, we

107ended up creating some that frankly are not useful at all. Correct. And so we end up with these monitoring reports that are filled with data, a very low percentage of which actually tells me anything I want to know. But like at the same time, we have a governance model that I I'm feeling like I can't just re reject the indicators because if I do, then what do we even do them for? Mhm. Um, but I I'd love to see us going forward get just get rid of the indicators that are useless to us, even if it means we have only one indicator for a result policy or frankly no indicators and all of this comes to us as evidence and I get to make up my own mind about whether we're in compliance. If the

108board tells me right now we don't have to do another enrollment indicator, I will. I can't speak for the board, but I can I can speak I know I can speak for me too, right? Especially indicator gone. Especially when we're talking about compliance and the yellows and the greens and the reds. It's all so I'll tell you the data that I found most useful in this entire conversation was what you just said about the standards. um that because it feels like what we're supposed to be monitoring is the effectiveness with which we deliver world language instruction, not the effectiveness with which we get students to enroll in world language instead of enrolling in CTE or you know or or in music and art you know uh uh I also liked I definitely like the data

109around the silo by literacy and the stamp test and all the focus groups because that tells us again that's about performance performance. I even like the data about course offerings relative to other districts, not relative to what we did last year. Um because I feel like that tells a story to of us compared to our peers. How because I mean in addition to how well we deliver the instruction, we need to offer it too. And some of that feels maybe it's a little OE 11 stuff. And that's where that blend that Jen mentioned before comes in. Yeah. Um but uh my struggle I'm dealing with right now is I very much want to say that that reasonable progress is achieved because I feel that reasonable progress was achieved but we got these lagging indicators that

110just useless. So with that Joe, how do you feel like this is working in terms of guiding you know to giving a frame not only to the leadership team but to ourselves in terms of what we really want to kind of see in process because nothing on here speaks to indicators that talk about enrollment. Um because I feel like a lot of the narrative was guided by this which I found incredibly helpful. You know all of the leadership moves and the summary pieces within the document. Yeah. I mean, I feel that it's one of the reasons I liked what John put together most of all is I don't know that you see the word indicator on here at all. Right. Right. Um uh and if we all as a group decide that we can just

111set aside indicators and and make our own decisions about whether or not we think a report is in compliance or not or reasonable progress is achieved or not. I wholeheartedly 100% will support that. I think the next question would be why do we have indicators at all? And are you speaking with indicators specifically to results? Do you feel the same way about indicators for operational? I think I feel less strongly about the operational ones. Um, but I'm not in that mindset. Okay. Maybe I maybe I'm sure and we don't have to go down that road yet, but I was just [Laughter] um but uh yeah, I mean I think you're right. Following this checkbox, I'd be very comfortable saying reasonable progress achievement. Sammy, I really like the data on the question around taking the next

112level in your current world languages. I think that speaks to are we uh promoting that message of what this means to you beyond just being a course what this means to your long term you know beyond high school to college career readiness. So, I love that question. That to me is a powerful uh indicator that we're doing something right if a lot of students the more and more students say yes to that and I plan on continuing more and more students understand the value of stamps and sealed by literacy. I just see this story playing out in a really impactful way. And I I totally agree with that and I love that about this report too is that you all went out and gathered data. Yes. wasn't directed to you by indicator because you're like

113we're going to go and get the data that actually tells the story we want. Yeah. And that it came straight from the students. I mean I find myself I think we've talked about this before that um these ideas when I was helping run our mentor program living in the data of implementation versus data of impact. It's so easy to talk about data of implementation which to me feels OE right like what's the instructional design? What's being set out and implemented? But that this is data of impact and who better to talk about impact than the students themselves who are feeling the impact of the instructional design and the data like you shared Diana about the stamp test. I mean right that's what is the story that tells us what is happening to the students as

114a result of all the work that's being kind of structured. So I found the report and all the narrative to do exactly that. Like it really centered for me the student experience and the impact and that feels like what a results report ought to be is the data of impact not implementation and enrollment data kind of lives more in the implementation side to me. I think we've sort of hammered that concept that we all loathe it. So yeah. So with that said, I also agree that I would find this report to be achieving reasonable progress because of this all of this holistically and the narratives and the data that you all shared in the report and here um sort of in lie of some of the indicators that just have kind of carried over. Same.

115I love what we're doing when we don't have requirements nagging at us. It really says a lot about the district, our students, families, the commitment to this idea and this belief in the value of language when it isn't forced upon by a requirement. Not to say that that's not valuable, but really amazing to look at that how you elevated Corby that it's not dictated by anything else external. And I love how in this report we heard the voices of the students. We heard that qualitative uh feedback that that really tells the story. And I think in in a lot of our data, we need to get more of that or continue on that trend because there's nothing like hearing the voice of the students. We can, you know, extrapolate data and numbers, but hearing their

116voice also adds to that. Well, board, we have discussed and analyzed our monitoring reports. So, at this point, I would accept a motion. Can I just ask it real quickly? Okay. Around the reasons to not continue, which do you guys think is the easiest kind of lowest hanging fruit to address? All I heard you say is that I have to do enrollment. Woohoo. best board meeting ever because it's just and al and as you were speaking Joe when we while we knew this was the right model for us in terms of what our community expected in terms of understanding accountability between the superintendent and the board we were we're hitting the mark very well in those areas the district that we most relied on to train us how to do this actually doesn't use indicators

117and results policies I didn't know that which is interesting little nugget. Yeah, I saw where you but they they use a report card type system. So this could almost now we're talking question. Oh yeah, that was about the world language the reasons to not continue. Yeah. Um I you know not enjoying the class and too difficult stressful hurts. It hurts me. Um you know uh just you know continually um talking with students and making those connections. Um we've had quite a few new teachers move in to these positions and now they've settled in their second third year here. so it's easier to make those connections and they're not as stressed and and so hopefully we can we can talk about this and I want to bring this data back to um my team as well.

118Um, I think focusing more on the culture too and um, I know that when I interview I always interview my Spanish 5 students and at the end it's their speaking exam that I want to know what they enjoyed about the class and they always say the culture and what I learned about other other countries and other people and that is always there and the history that that is the part the grammar they don't care about. They don't they don't care about the grammar but it's the culture and the history that they really enjoy. So, um just sharing some of those with my colleagues, I think, um and talking more with the students and how we can support them throughout the year. Yeah. It's funny because my son, um he's in only in fourth grade, but

119he came home fifth grade, fourth grade one day and just he had kind of an epiphany and it was basically that cultural comment where he was like, "Dad," he's like, "Yeah." I was like, "I really love being taking Spanish." Like, "Why?" ing because it's opened up a whole new world to me of people that I can talk to and it's like a whole new world of just living a different life and seeing how different lives are lived and like he really kind of got it and to me I was like that's super deep for you know fourth grader um and I have to say that he went from doing okay um you know not being you know speaking Spanish at home very much um to like hitting like a level of proficiency at Breeze that

120like I don't want to embarrass him now that he'll probably never listen to this meeting, but just like I was just floored at his level of proficiency and how much he's grown. And that growth happened because of that moment of realizing how his world just became larger by learning a new language and being able to speak to his only Spanish speaking classmates and that was beautiful to me. Mhm. So I your comment made me think of that because I think the more students kind of that have that experience, they're probably going to realize the same thing. It's just like, wow, my world just opened up much more much further beyond than what it was yesterday. Sorry to be. No, I I also really appreciate the connection back to what we were talking about earlier in

121the meeting about staff retention and how important it is that we retain our high quality staff because it does take a while to settle in and to become and have students become full teachers and teachers become comfortable with the students and once you get that we we want to keep our people here as long as they want to be here. Yeah, I think the work even just you know we named it as a leadership move that just the role like Mondays also making sure that we're building rubrics common assessments and helping support teachers to collaborate together to then um think about what is it that we've heard from students how do we make um we make learning fun how do we connect to the culture and I think what you're speaking to college is really

122student agency helping students to understand um and feel like they have a level of agency in what they're learning and to feel empowered by that and just how how important that is to this journey as well. So, it's exciting to get some of that student voice and I appreciate the team really leaning into even some of the data that wasn't necessarily what we wanted to hear or see. Um, but recognizing that those are that's the invitation and our next opportunity to lean in and make sure students are aware of the opportunities and and those are the places that we continue to grow and support our staff to do the same. Thank you. readable. Well, I know. I mean, I feel like I'm willing to make a motion to accept this report as um reaching achievable

123or reasonable progress. So, I'm going to make a motion. Is there a second? I'll second. Okay, Joe. Thank you. Um any further discussion? No, thank you. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. All right, so there's a motion by me and I don't usually make motions because I'm usually talking. Uh and a second by Joe. All those in favor of approving the results monitoring report for world languages as achieving reasonable progress signify with I. I. I. Any opposed? Thanks, John. John gave me an I via text. And thanks for the note, John. We will continue our conversations, but thank you. Does that count? Text. Yeah, I say so. Robert's rules, Jen's rules. Okay. Thank you. Um, so moving ahead. Oh. Oh, I went I shouldn't have done that. You should. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I already went ahead.

124Thanks, Amy. Um, moving ahead to 08. Um, any updates, board members, just communications? Anything anybody wants to share? Junth parade going on this Saturday, Dan Park, 10:30 a.m.ish. Awesome. Thank you. Yes. Students, families, everyone's welcome. All right. An exciting. Yeah, that's great. Thank you. Okay, I will share. I'm finally going to follow through. You're all going to get a doodle poll soon about a board retreat. Oh, wow. We're doing a doodle, so be prepared. Um, and that's all I have for what? No beach. Beacher. Uh, Christopher has said he's gonna make paella, right? I heard it and I'm holding. Yeah, like multiple times I've heard that echoed. We have a workshop retreat. We're having paella. So that's what I'm regardless of time of day or day of week. I'm going to hold them to that.

125Um then moving on to superintendent consent agenda. Please again make sure you've looked that over. Are there any questions including all the hiring updates. So that's great. Uh hearing none, the superintendent's consent agenda has been approved. Oops. Should be There we go. This is fun. Uh, looking then to board consent agenda. Any questions? Nope. Okay. Hearing none, the board's consent agenda has been approved. Future dates right now are just the board meetings that take us through the summer, which is just kind of eerie to look at and think that that takes us through the summer. Um, but again, stay tuned. We'll hopefully get a retreat in here before the start of the school year is my goal. All right. With that, I would accept a motion to adjurnn. So move. Woo. That was also a

126tie. We'll give that one to Corby. Is there a second? Second. Juan Carlos. All those in favor of adjourning the agenda signify with I. I. Any opposed? No. John. Thanks all.