001out of this. Sometimes he was just a guy. All right. In my years as an educator and facilitator of trainings, you listen for the lull and then you talk. And so, thank you for writing a lull. Um, welcome. We're so glad to have you all for our schoolboard meeting this evening. This is one of our favorite meetings of the year just because we get to celebrate scholars, artists, educators conveniently with educator appreciation week. So, we're so glad to have you all here. Um, I will call this meeting to order by beginning with a roll call vote. Joe here. Corby here. Joe, John here. Christopher here. And I am here as well, we do have a quorum. Corby, has this meeting been properly noticed? Yes, it has. Thank you. To help ensure that we're centering our
002board work around our shared values and serving our students, we begin each of our board meetings by reading our district's equity framework and the Ho Chunk land acknowledgement, which can be found at the top of the agenda. Uh Joe, would you please read for us this evening? Yes. Uh the VASD educational equity statement is in the Verona Area School District. Our mission is that each student will acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to achieve their personal goals, thrive in a diverse global society, and lead a healthy, self-fulfilling life. To meet this mission, the Verona Area School District will ensure that every individual has access to the educational, social, and emotional support they need to feel valued and affirmed in their unique identities and experiences. We acknowledge that inequities and power dynamics exist in our system
003such that some individuals on the basis of their identities face barriers to accessing the opportunities they need to experience success. In acknowledgement of such, the Verona Area School District is committed to disrupting these systems of inequity. And the Ho Chunk land acknowledgement reads, "There are currently 12 tribal nations who call Wisconsin home. With the Ho Chunk Nation being the primary group living around Madison, no matter where you are in the state, you are on the ancestral land of a tribal nation. As we begin our meeting, we honor the land upon which we stand. Thank you. Uh War, I invite you to glance over the rest of the agenda. Um and I'd actually like to make a motion to make one change to the agenda as printed. Um, I'd like to move that we shift what
004is currently in um, board consent part B, the on-site healthcare clinic proposal, and just elevate that back into board action. We're going to have a presentation from our team about that. And I'd like to bring that back into board action, probably as item A since it will flow a little bit nicer to bring that to A and then we'll do OB12 as B. Any other changes, suggestions? So, I'd accept a motion to approve the agenda as amended. Motion to approve. Thank you, Christopher. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Corby. All those in favor of approving tonight's agenda with the amendment as presented signify with I. I. Any opposed? All right, we got the business settled. So, let's shift our focus to our distinguished art awards for 2025. So, Dr. clarity. I'm going to turn
005it over to you and our amazing art department team of educators to celebrate some art scholars tonight. Absolutely. All right. Good evening everyone. We are extremely excited as President Murphy stated um and we'll just go ahead and say it is our favorite night to be able to uh uh recognize our art scholars and part of the presentation if you're able to do the gallery walk um earlier on today just the way our artists were able to describe their work uh their personal connection to what they uh what they have either drawn or painted or um and really just being able to uh take their thoughts that they have formulated within their mind, whatever whatever inspired it and bring it to the world of art is just something that just continues to amaze me on a
006on a year-to-year basis. There's that piece of me that wonders like where did my art gene go because I I don't have the talent to be able to do with our amazing scholars do. And that's okay. That's part of who we are that each of us are so uniquely different in in what we do and what we bring to um what we bring to the table. I also want to want to say this. When you look at the art that's out there, and previously you saw us read our I heard uh Member Haynes read our equity framework, you see that come to life in our art as well. You see it come to life u and what they've both been able to put in front of us. the way they tell the stories, the diversity
007that you see from our our our winners and just the true authentic connection to the Broner School District, to our broader community and our ultimate goal of helping every student thrive in a in a diverse global society. So, when I talk about this is just not a day for us. It's truly deep and meaningful in knowing that this is part of a legacy that we uh plan to continue long into the future. It was here before I got here. We wanted to make sure that it was elevated, but we want this to be part of who the Bronary School District is. And it's because of our scholars that are out there that hopefully come back and maybe be in these seats as as teachers, as parents, uh, as educators that are bringing this continue to
008bring this work to life. So, I'm going to stop talking because I I get emotionally caught up in it because it's just so vitally important to all of us. But I humbly just want to say on behalf of our full Bron School District, our staff, our our community, thank you to our scholars who have presented who have be receiving awards today and thank you for everything that you bring to the world of education and making our experience better every single day. I also want to thank our amazing staff and our our leaders who continue to continue to guide our guide our youth. You know, the magic of education doesn't happen at the superintendent table. It doesn't happen at the board table. It happens in our classroom. and our classroom is where that magic really comes
009to life in the form and today we'll celebrate that through the form of art. So thank you to our staff as well for all you do and bringing our our our scholars before us today. So with that I'm getting ready to just for process I'm going to uh read a a quick paragraph around each of of the award winners. uh at that time that scholar will come up and turn to the crowd with their with their piece of work and as I'm reading uh reading their their paragraph behind them and then we'll go through with all the all the scholars today. We will then come and receive an award towards the end. They want to make sure you recognize you and your art first and then do the award presentation after that. Okay. So, our
010first winner today is going to be our writer, excuse me, writer. Ryder [Applause] Hzel's writer is a fourth grader at Glacier Ridge Elementary. As Miss Feiner began thinking about all the deserving students at Glacier Ridge, Ryder instantly came to mind as a top selection. He is the embodiment of one whoically exudes exceptional character qualities. He is eager to learn, attentive, highly respectful of adults and peers, responsible and very mature. Writer is also a leader in school, a student council member and one of one of who cheers on peers and is met with admiration by others. His response to situations is a reasoned, thoughtful and logical approach. Yet he has a great sense of humor and sees the fun and joy in situations. coveted yet rare qualities in one individual. Then there are his art skills,
011attention to detail, high quality craftsmanship, and a willingness to experiment with all media and styles and helpful to fellow artists. Miss Finer feels very fortunate to have had Ryder as a student for so many years and is looking forward to one last year with him. Congratulations to [Applause] Ryder. Our next winner is Edward [Applause] Kenny. Edward is a 10th grader at Broner High School. We've known as uh instructor writes, I have known Eddie since his first days at BHS. From day one, he has been coming to the art department with in progress drawings, ready for show and tell, seeking feedback and looking to build his art skills. Eddie burns through sketchbooks as fast as he can get his hands on them. He is an insatable creator. I chose Eddie for the Distinguished Art Scholar Award
012because I'm so proud of how he yearns to improve, how readily he soaks up and absorbs any and all feedback he can get, and how much he pushes himself to grow. It has been a joy to watch Eddie's evolution as an artist during his first two years at VA VHS. I look forward to watching his trajectory as he enters the second half of his time here and then as he heads out into the world at large. Thank you for always bringing your eager smile to the art department. Enjoy. Congratulations to Eddie. [Applause] Next we going to have u Namwi [Applause] Humonga is a fifth grader at Stoner Prairie Elementary. It is a joy to have her in art class every week and I always look forward to seeing what she creates. The thought and care
013and attention to detail she puts into all her work is admirable. Naka is always up for a new artistic challenge and enjoys working with a variety of different art materials. During every art class, her willingness to help and encourage those around her is evident. I'm excited to see where Naka's artistic drive and talent will take her in her future. Congratulations, [Applause] Our next award winner is Trevor James Washington's [Applause] Wall. Trevor is a fourth grader at Sugar Creek Elementary. I'm honored to select Trevor to represent Sugar Creek Elementary Schools in this year's Distinguished Honor Scholar Award. Trevor's unwavering passion for the arts, coupled with a natural enthusiasm that inspires both his peers and teachers alike, allows his art to shine through every project he undertakes. His willingness to take creative risks shows his commitment to
014growing as an artist and his desire to push the boundaries of his learning. His infectious joy in creating is creating is evident in his eagerness to try new things. In addition to his artistic talent, Trevor is a kind and helpful classmate, and he often assists his peers when they encounter challenges in their artwork, sharing tips and offering encouragement. His enthusiasm not only makes him a standout student, but also a role model for his fellow classmates, inspiring them to embrace their creative journeys. Congratulations to you, Trevor. [Applause] Our next winner is Saraphino Ray. Saraphina is a fifth grader at Rona Area International School. She was chosen for the distinguished art scholar award due to her exceptional creativity, unwavering dedication, and impressive growth throughout the year. Saraphina not only has a natural eye for color, but also
015quickly masters new techniques with ease. Her technical skill is is set skill set is strong yet is her passion for exploring different mediums and artistic styles that truly sets other apart. Beyond her innate talent, Saraphina consist constantly goes above and beyond to refine her work. He accepts constructive feedback and is always excited to tackle new challenges. Working with her over the past three years has been an absolute pleasure and I'm excited to see her continue to evolve as an artist. Congratulations to Sarah. [Applause] Our next winner is Jackson [Applause] O'Shea. Jackson's a third grader at Cornell Charter School. We are honored to select him for this year's distinguished honor scholar. It is absolutely joy to have him in our class and has been a pleasure to watch him learn and grow over the years. Jackson
016was chosen for his award not only for artistic talent but also for his hard work and determination. His passion for the arts shine through in everything he creates. He frequently brings his sketchbook and marks to class, eager to share the work he has been practicing outside of school. Beyond art, Jackson enjoys sports, spending time with his family and friends, and being a proud big brother. His dedication, enthusiasm make him a truly standout student. Congratulations to Jackson. Our next winner is Grayson Dulo. Grayson is a fourth grader at New Century Charter School. It is rare to come across a student who demonstrates both dedication to their work and genuine commitment to the people and environment around them. Grayson is one such student. As a passionate artist, I've had the privilege of watching him immerse immerse himself
017deeply in his projects, consistently showing a focus and determination to refine his skills. What truly sets him apart, however, is his ability to balance this commitment with an innate desire to support and uplift those around him. Grayson often collaborates with peers, providing insightful feedback and innovative ideals, which helps elevate the work of others around him. We've had the we've had the opportunity to see that Grayson and Grayson his joy coupled with his positive attitude and dedication to both his craft and the people around him make him a standout student. It is without hesitation that we recommend him for this recognition confident that his contributions both artistic and personal will continue to make a lasting impact. Congratulations to Grace. Our next winner is Nolan Bubbers. Nolan is a seventh grader at Savannah Oaks Middle School. Nolan's
018trusted dedicated artist. He works with an intense focus on the quality and craftsmanship of each of his pieces. He is always seeking advice on how to improve upon his work. Nolan is also a kind, respectful student who models responsible work habits. When the class is learning new material, Nolan participates well and often contributes to the dialogue. His peers look to him as a role model. Nolan has been a pleasure to work with uh these past two years and I know he will continue to shine in the years to come. from [Applause] Tesl. Our next winner is Lola Fortnney. Lola is currently an eighth grader student at Badger Ridge Middle School. Her drawing of the crane is being recognized for the exceptional quality and control of her line work, as well as the intricate details and
019an expressive splash of color in her composition. A dedicated artist, Lola often spends her free time practicing her craft outside of school, drawing inspiration from the world around her. As she looks forward to high school, Lola is excited about the increased freedom and responsibility that comes with it. Outside of her artistic pursuits, she enjoys volleyball, showcasing her ability to balance her creative and athletic interests. This award is a testament to Lo's hard work and determination. I'm looking forward to seeing what the art she produces during her high school years. Congratulations to Lo. And our next winner is Juan Caceres. [Applause] Juan is a fifth grade student at Country View Elementary. Juan was chosen for this award because he follows the Country View Wildcat way expectations for being safe, being compassionate, and being a learner. One
020is creative and focused on the process of bringing his ideas to life with thoughtfulness and care. He shows great interest in project ideas and techniques and demonstrates his learning without worrying about what others around him are doing. In our class, Juan is a quiet leader. Congratulations to Juan. [Applause] Take a moment. Yeah. Say a few words and I'll get ready. Yes. We'll let Dr. Clarity transition from all the speaking and get ready to present awards to all of our art scholars. So, art scholars, if you want to stand again and start to make your way maybe toward your art teacher, we'll take a few moments. If anyone needs a photo opportunity, feel free to move as well. Then we'll do a group photo outside afterwards. Perfect. We're going to go in order. They're here on
021this uh here in front of me. So, we'll begin with one Hold [Applause] it. Lower. Right. [Applause] Edward coming. [Applause] Jackson. [Applause] You want to take a good round of applause. So, we're going to head outside for a group photo. And if you would like to do other photos as well, we'll be right over here. I know about the budget review. Yeah. Thank you everyone. This part is over. Our board meeting is continuing. Gota go, right? We'll do those things. Thank you. Thank you. I know. We'll be staff recognition. Yeah, we'll do that, too. I just said I know. I thought Yeah. All right, we will continue on with our meeting. We do have some staff recognition as well. Um, as you heard us say on and off already, it is educator appreciation week and
022we do have another um staff member, another award-winning staff member. We've been celebrating these almost every meeting, which just speaks to again the amazingness of what we have for educators in the district. So, Dr. Clarity, do you want to speak to our um current award-winning teacher? Absolutely. So, it's our honor to recognize uh Rachel Hunady uh for Brener High School chemistry teacher. She is the winner of Wisconsin Society of Science Teachers Frank Zerner new teacher scholarship. And so, we want to definitely recognize her. I think she may be uh at home watching and I definitely want to congratulate her on the way that she continues a trend of really high highly qualified staff here at the Bronier School District that are awardw winning staff. But we know that means that our sta that our students
023are receiving a world-class education because of the efforts of our students. So congratulations to uh to her and uh congratulations to all the people that have supported her on her journey as well. And I'm assuming with the new teacher scholarship that Rachel is one of our beginning educators in the district newer. I mean so just that that accolade just highlighting and not only from the organization standpoint from one of our educators too, right? Being early in their career and being able to achieve such amazing accolades. I think that speaks to the mentorship program we have, the supportive colleagues and the amazing educators that we're able to continue to bring in at the beginning parts of their career. So super excited about that as well. And congrats to Rachel. Absolutely. As as President Murphy stated, uh
024we are doing we are recognizing all of our educators as we do um educator appreciation week. Uh we began with uh some activities at the various schools today and we'll continue those throughout the week. And thank you. uh this doesn't is it's lack in comparison to what we know you need and deserve and we want to make sure we recognize you on a daily basis for your work. So with that I will close student and staff recognitions and turn it over to board of education organization. Okay. So yes reorganization or just reminders of organizations. So this time of year shortly after within the time frame of after the election we take the time to just ensure that our following year we have roles and responsibilities designated to board members for the different facets of our
025work. Um so we'll start with election of officers. Um we'll move through from president through deputy clerk and I would just accept nominations as we go. Um and I may elevate and nominate myself as we move through. Um so I would accept a nomination for role of president. I'd like to nominate Jen Murphy. Thanks. Uh, are there any other nominations for the role of president for this next year? I will accept the nomination. Uh, and then we'll go ahead and take an official vote, I suppose. So, all those in favor of Jen Murphy, aka me serving as president for this next year, signify with I. I. Any opposed? Okay. Moving on to vice president. Landslide Victor. Yeah, landslide with our four above five. Um I I nominate John to continue on as vice president if
026you may be willing to do so. Any other nominations? Do I need a motion and second? Nate for election officers. Do I need a motion and a second? Can we nominate and vote? Yes, you can nominate them. Thank you. All right. So, we just did. Thank you for clarifying. All right. If there's no other nominations except uh we'll take a vote on John serving as vice president for next year. All those in favor signify with I. I. I. Any opposed? All right. Treasurer. Nominate Joe to stay on. Sounds great. Assuming the thumbs up means you are a willing agreeable participant for that role. Any other nominations for treasurer? Hearing none, we will take a vote. Uh all those in favor of approving Joe to serve as treasurer for this next year signify with I. I.
027Any opposed? Okay. And then moving on to clerk. I would like to nominate Corby to continue. I feel as though you've done an amazing job with the clerkship. Thank you again for the election time. I know it's a busy time for you. Uh if you are willing to accept such nomination. I accept the nomination. Any other nominations for clerk? Hearing none. All those in favor of Corby serving and role of clerk for this next year signify with I. I. Any opposed? So this will be the fun one. I will confess I did have a conversation. We do have a missing member that I'd like to nominate for deputy clerk and that would be a continuation of Juan Carlos who has served in the role this past year. Any other nominations? All right. Well, this group
028of five will take a vote. All those in favor of Juan Carlos serving as deputy clerk signify with I. I. Any opposed? All right. We have our officers designated for this next year. not calendar year, not academic year, election year, however you want to frame it. Um, so moving on to WASBY, the Wisconsin Association of School Boards, um, delegate Corby, it's my understanding that you are willing to continue to serve as our delegate to the WASBY convention. Absolutely. Wonderful. Um, and I believe alternate um, again, I had a conversation. I believe Juan Carlos is willing to serve in that role. Um, Nate, do these need formal votes in terms of these officers or the WASBY delegate, etc.? Yeah. Okay, we'll take those separately. All those in uh any other nominations for either of those rules,
029delegate or alternate to the WASBY convention. All those in favor of approving Corby to serve as our WASBY delegate, signify with I. I. I. Any opposed? And all those in favor of Juan Carlos serving as our alternate to the WASBY convention, signify with I. I. Any opposed? All right. Moving on to CISA 2, our cooperative education service agency representative. John, you've been in that role. We greatly appreciated your service. Might you be willing to continue? Sure. Any other nominations for CISA 2? Okay. All those in favor of approving John to serve as our CISA 2 representative signify with I. I. Any opposed? Okay. And then I DAC representatives. Chad, I ask you this every time. Do you remember the acronym for IDAP? I was just trying to Right. We do this every time. I know.
030Intergovernmental. Don't know what the D agency committee. Yeah. And we review this just for this. Yeah. For the sake of development. Yeah. The community. It's it's a four times a year meetings that are leadership of the district, leadership of all the municipalities that the district serves just to come together and share updates about construction growth. chamber chamber. Thank you. Um the mayors. So yeah, um great touch point for just that collaboration with municipalities and the district. Um and I would like to nominate John to serve as a board representative, which you've done before. Um and then I'd also like to nominate Christopher so we'd have kind of representation boardwise from the Verona side of things and the Fitchburg side of things if you two are willing to participate in those meetings. Yes. Anyone else to
031nominate or interested? So I don't miss anyone. Okay. All those in favor of approving John and Christopher to serve as our ID deck representatives for the board signify with I. I. I. Any opposed? Okay. Moving on to approval of the 2526 board calendar. So this is linked in board docs. If you have not looked at this yet, um, this is basically approving our board meetings for the 202526 school year. Um, I think the only thing to h Oh, you do have one printed for us, too. Yes, thank you. As I look up for my screen to see Lori waving in the background. Um, I think the only thing to note just in conversation that Lori and I had in looking at calendar where we might have staff days where there's no school on a Monday
032or holidays, um, we're going to extend a bit of a longer break between the last meeting of December and the first meeting in January just to honor the winter break and to give leadership staff a week to come back to school before we have that first meeting. And that means as we follow the cadence, we will have a backtoback set of Mondays um February into March. That was going to be necessary no matter what. And we decided to kind of offlay the longer winter break with that back toback then being February to March knowing that we'll have spring break coming as well. Can we just do I 99% sure this is correct. We just want to make sure. Can we check the date for Dr. Martin Luther King holiday? Yes, I think we did do
033that. It is the 19th. Yep. January 19th. Yeah. 19th. Yeah. So, we'll do second and fourth that month. Got it. Y. Thank you. Yeah. So, I think we've cross-cheed enough hopefully that all of the dates. So, just to surface that part of the discussion, but otherwise I don't think there's anything particularly controversial about the calendar, but certainly if anyone did look closely and has any questions or things to elevate, please feel free to do so. Okay. Um if not, I would take a motion to approve the calendar then as presented for 2526. So move. Thank you, Corby. Second. Second. Thank you, Joe. All those in favor of approving the 2526 board meeting calendar signify with I. I. Any opposed? Okay. uh vote to designate the Verona Press as our official district newspaper. Any other suggestions
034or conversation about that vote? All right. All those in favor of approving Verona Press as our official district newspaper signify with I. I. Any opposed? Okay. Similar setup for retaining Lake Ridge Bank is our fiscal depository for the general fund payroll accounts and debt service fund. So that's keyword retain continuing with Lake Ridge Bank. Any conversation or questions about that? All those in favor of approving to retain Lakeidge Bank as our fiscal depository for the district signify with I. I. I. Any opposed? And then finally, our vote to retain legal counsel. And we do have a number of firms that are listed here that are used for various reasons that we may have to use legal counsel as a district. Um they're in the agenda. I'm not going to read the full list here. I
035think I'll save the time and energy and the voice for that. Um but if there are any questions again that board members have, please feel free to search those now. Okay. Can I just make a clarification for a moment? Yeah. Nate Edward still serves as our in-house counsel. These are outside partnerships in the event. We need some additional supports in the legal world. Clarifying our legal counsel and we appreciate as you even saw in this board meeting moments ago, we appreciate having in district council for those moments that don't require the external use of another firm. All those in favor of retaining the legal counsel for the district as listed in the agenda signify with I. I. Any opposed? All right. Well, if anyone feels like we don't take enough board action in a meeting,
036there we go. So, we will now turn things over back to Dr. Clarity for the superintendent report. And we have some esteemed colleagues here as well to share some updates. Thank you. I will quickly turn it over to uh Chad Weezy and John Bremer uh as we actually both will be directly involved with two uh potentially both both of these but while they aren't superintendent support they do have a lot of logistics in terms of uh one being our partnerships with the uh with the city and what we see as a very great possible solution for serving all of the students in our city in a second in terms of a healthcare clinic and construction proposal knowing what that may be for the staff and families of the Bronary School District. So with that, I'll
037turn it over to Mr. Weezy to get us going. Thanks, Dr. Clarity. This may be one of my favorite agendas of the year for at least my corner of the world. It's a little uh grab bag of all things operations tonight. that we will try to merge together and make sense of like um in some regards kind of some random topics but also work related to maintaining our facilities and OE12. Uh so we've got in the superintendent report portion of the agenda uh a an initial look at a a potential land sale uh along with uh a proposal for how we'd like to go go ahead with uh the construction of an on-site clinic which we discussed at the last board meeting. And then in the board action portion we have OE12. we made the
038decision to include in OE12 because it is part of that work both a a comp a sum a summary of compliance related to that board policy uh and then also a re-up capacity study review uh that did have some changes from the last time we presented to the board in 2022 uh and updated enrollment projections which should be of interest to all of us and connect right back to IDAC uh that the board just tabled on previously. Uh and that certainly stopped me along the way if folks have questions because again we've got kind of a varied agenda related to the world of operations. Uh so the first we wanted to go through tonight uh is a proposal and really an update u on some conversations I've been having with the city of Verona uh
039for about the last six months uh regarding the possibility of selling uh our the softball fields that are north of Hun Elementary. We've got a map to kind of orient the board in terms of what that looks like uh really for a variety of reasons. I'm I'm going to open up by saying uh I was actually the one that approached the city. Uh and part of that was John with a little bit of John Bra's urging uh that we had so basically softball fields that uh we were not using for district purposes. Uh potentially a little bit during the day at Country View, but nothing uh to support our varsity athletics because we built a new high school that has a couple of amazing softball fields that are put to use uh for that purpose.
040Uh and there have been some developments with uh that uh that conversation that did start about half a year ago uh that we're obviously quite excited about and we want to share to the board what what we think is possible in terms of a a true partnership with the city uh to not only preserve that space but make it better uh into the future. So, a little bit of background. We've got two existing softball fields, a parking lot, and some green space north of Country View Elementary School. Uh we have tonight uh an initial conversation we're interested in board feedback on uh potentially selling those softball fields to the city of Roma. Uh it should be said from the get-go uh with these conversations with the city, it was important to us that we figured
041out a way to essentially lock in that we didn't want to uh we didn't want to have the the city or our district lose access to those softball fields in the future. Uh so we did not approach anyone else about the possible sale of those two softball fields. Uh and if anything, uh we believe if this comes together, those will be ball diamonds in perpetuity uh with some of the pieces that we're putting into place with the city. And quite honestly, I think get better attention in terms of maintenance uh than they currently are. John has essentially the same grounds screw he had uh pre uh referendum for this building, and they're stretched thin uh to maintain all of the acreage we've got in the district. Uh so our initial conversations had talked about a
042a a price that could still be negotiated of about $250,000. Uh the city's current and we want to get into this a little bit tonight. This just developed uh over the last month and a half, two months. The city without us knowing we were having these conversations has been approached by the Miracle League of Dayne County about the possibility of having a presence here in the city of Verona. We've got a short video uh to show show the board shortly on what that might look like. Uh so as Jamie and I kind of my counterpart with the city uh have been having these conversations, this just kind of got dropped in his lap uh about a month or six weeks ago. Uh but this group is very serious about this possibility and we're excited about
043what it could mean to Country View Elementary. Uh, if the Miracle League of Dane County raised money, I think it's in partnership with the Rotary Club of Dane County, what would happen? Jaime's thinking possibly by the time we hit summer of 2027. If all of this comes together, the district's comfortable with the sale of the property, the city and their city council uh is comfortable with it as well. Um, and they ink a deal with the Miracle League, which seems like it's it's inevitable. Uh, if this came together on our part in terms of us, uh, selling the land with that, uh, just north of Country View, they would have a brand new poured rubber uh, field that is fully accessible. We got a video to kind of show you, uh, what that looks like.
044Um, and would have a brand new, fully accessible playground. So, we are talking a couple million dollars of upgrades to the the the facilities north of Country View if this all came together. Uh, a piece that I've been working on with Jamie uh that we would likely include as a checkbox in this deal would also be the fact that the city would designate this as a parkland uh when they took it on. Meaning that is it. That's what that place can be uh in perpetuity. they would not have the ability to sell that ever uh for redevelopment or anything else. So, I know we've certainly heard from some of our folks that are involved in uh Veroni L softball wanting to make sure that that would take place. Uh and we believe that there's a
045win-win to be had here, better maintained diamonds, more access to little ones getting access to uh summer programming related to softball, and a really nice new playground for Country View and the community after school hours. So, it's uh it's it's exciting if this all came together, continued. We've had again months of ongoing discussions with uh the city of Verona. I met Steiner met with our head softball coach. He's in favor of this. Our girls softball numbers are down a little bit. Um and there's a variety of reasons for that. Um but one of the what our softball coach said and one of them is just um access in terms of uh young girls playing softball at an early age. Uh the city would be committed to more accessible uh cost-effective programming during the summer uh
046if they had the facilities to do it. So again our grounds crew is stretched. Uh we've had a favorable meeting with the club softball president uh and also have a parks and rec director who's super excited about this possibility. Uh so to lay this out a little bit um I did the best I could to draw some general lines in terms of what this might look like. Uh so the yellow lines on this diagram uh that the board can see would be the outline of our existing property at country. Uh and the orange line would be our new property line uh at Country View in the event that this sale went through. Uh in a general area, you can see this the city owned property that's to the northwest of Country View there would likely
047be the new Miracle League field. Uh, and then we just sketched in a spot that we would guess um a brand new fully accessible poured rubber uh playground would go uh go in as well. Related to the miracle of Dne County, uh the city's also interested in uh taking on that storm water pond. Uh that will help them in terms of uh any of the new hard surfaces that would go in at that site. they have control over that just to make sure that uh storm water would be handled appropriately in the event that all these upgrades go in. Again, stop me if you've got questions. And I think Lori is going to help me with a video here shortly. Where's Lori? Oh, working the magic. All right, here we go. Miracle League of D
048and in love with a game of baseball. The only thing in the world I wanted was to make it on our little league team. I went through all the triyouts, hitting, fielding, throwing, and my friends told me I did a great job. The commissioner in the league walked up to me and my parents. Even though I could play well, he told me I could not be on the team because of my artificial leg. I could get hurt or hurt another player. I was devastated. It hurt like nothing before. One day I was on the field and the next day I could only watch the game I loved through a chainlink fence. 66 years later, it's time for a new field. It's time to let everyone play. It's time for the Miracle League. The Miracle League
049of Dne County provides children with cognitive and physical disabilities the opportunity to play America's favorite pastime, baseball. But it's not only about baseball. In addition to hitting the ball, making their way around the bases, and crossing home plate, these children get to experience lifechanging moments that will forever impact them and their families, volunteers, coaches, fans, and the community at large. The Diamond at Bakan Park in Cottage Grove has a flat rubberized synthetic field that enables children with wheelchairs, walkers, or poor mobility to play baseball. Each child has a buddy who is by their side as they play the game and to help them as needed. But it takes more than the love of the game to run the Miracle League, to operate the league each season, to support kids and families, and to provide even
050more incredible services. We need help. This opportunity becomes a reality for so many kids in our community thanks to volunteers, sponsors, and you. To learn more and donate, please visit dneountleague.org. Thanks, Lori. Tony Barrow once said, "Love is the most." All right. If that doesn't like bring a little tear, check yourself for a pulse. Yeah. Um, so yeah, we're we're excited about that possibility and think it again is a win-win for the city and for the school district if this all came together, but we're also very interested in board feedback. Uh, so next steps for me, board feedback tonight, uh, continued uh, discussions with the city. Eventually, we would have to uh review and have it voted on uh by the school board. Uh if if I get positive feedback tonight, I'll continue to work
051with Jamie. There would like to likely have to be survey work done. we would work on a shared use agreement, meaning that during the school hours, similar what we had set up at Glacier uh that we'd have access to the facilities north of Country View, and we would uh we would eventually get to an offer to purchase from the city of Verona that they would present to us. Uh it should also include uh parkland dedication and in the end all of you would approve it. So, uh, questions or feedback on this topic for this evening? Yes. I mean, to your point, it really feels like a win-win. Partially the win for us to not have this land. I mean, right, I'm I'm really hearing you say that there's just a lot of maintenance and things
052perhaps that we just don't need the access to these fields from a district perspective. Um, so being able to give this back to the city and have these as as the plans. Um, and just to clarify, obviously once we sell the land, you know, all of these things that you've highlighted, it's not anything we are doing as a district, but it's ideally the aspirations of what the city plans to do moving forward. And maybe there's this piece within a contract that would say keeping that dedicated parkland piece just so there is kind of that promisary note, I guess, so to speak, that some of that comes to fruition. Correct. I guess I don't know if I had a question in there. Yeah. Or if I was summarizing even related to OE2. So our we have
053a yellow check tonight. The yellow check came from and we'll we'll get to this uh came from the fact that last year uh in July, John's budget was slightly over spent uh by the time we got to the end of June. Primary reason was some bills came due on a big roofing project we had due. John already knew he had the money in front to cover it the next year. But I I do think it is that's kind of a signal. Uh Mr. Bremer go through twice his budget every year. Uh handily um we do a good job, not great, but a good job in this district giving John enough money to maintain the sites and the facilities that we have. Uh but really uh I we get feedback on occasion regarding the maintenance of
054those softball fields. Uh, and it's up to John to to try to ba do the balancing act of where we're putting resources uh that we need to use to maintain our own sites uh for a field that's relatively if not very low usage for our own students during the school day. And that's kind of where we're at. And and am I remembering somewhere in the conversation that there still would be access though for Country View students to these spots. So even though they become city owned, we still have the ability to utilize as maybe desired during the school day with students. Playgrounds are non-negotiable. That's going to happen. That they would have a fence. Uh it it looks like there'll be a fence for that the the poured rubber field. Jamie already reached out to
055Miracle League and it sounds like that would be open to Country View as well during the day which would be an amazing asset uh to the elementary school. So brand new upgraded playground and then the softball fields are still there. uh we'd had access to those during the day as well. Um so yeah, again I I do believe it's it's a true win-win uh for all involved in this to come together. Any other question or feedback? I'm seeing lots of nods that we should continue these conversations uh with the city. I certainly would expect uh the board to ask questions around the shared use agreement and the parkland dedication uh next time we come back to you. Um, and then we'll have more information when we've got an official survey put together in terms of
056acreage and so forth. Um, and we're hoping who knows even in the next couple of months this all comes together and we can bring it back to you for a portable. So yeah, I think in that interim if there's anything that we are missing or board members now that we'll be kind of out and about to with this information to just there's anything obvious that I feel like right the win-win feels so clear. So just ensuring that there isn't obvious um tidbits that maybe as board members we ought to know to be concerned about. It doesn't seem like there's anything now. We would certainly surface that for you if if anything. All right. And vote to come but carry on I guess is what our nods are saying. Yes. Perfect. Great. All right. Next a
057slight left turn here. Uh but still related to the world of our grounds and facilities. Uh we'd like to bring a proposal to the board tonight. President Murphy already pulled this onto the uh board agenda for a vote this evening, so it didn't have to get pulled out of consent. Uh we did type up John and I typed up a consent memo to stay uh true to the process related to OB6 uh in terms of board approval. Uh but we do have a proposal for you tonight uh to uh to build an onset clinic for our staff, which we're super excited about. So we presented this at the last board meeting. Uh there was uh some questions around where it might go. We asked the board to be patient so we can run a little
058bit of interference behind the scenes because some of us are going to have to move where we work uh for the on-site clinic. You're looking at one of those people along with our superintendent that will actually end up moving related to this work. Uh so uh we ended up uh after some exploratory work uh in terms of the square footage we have around the district landing on a proposal to have the ground floor affectionately known as the garden level uh at central office uh come become our on-site clinic. It's fully accessible, has plenty of parking uh and we felt kind of the hub of the original Verona Area School District campus. Uh so we've got a a over half of our school district in terms of adults would be within walking distance of the on-site
059clinic if we get board approval tonight to move forward with this. Uh so this is an initial first sketch that we did share uh with some contractors in terms of some of the modifications that would have to take place. What we're proposing to you this evening is a little different than say uh when John and I brought a hard bid package to the board to do the welcome center at Savannah. Uh this is a little different method in terms of building. It's actually the way we built the high school. uh where uh the um school board along with uh previous district administration came up with a budget in terms of square footage cost to build the high school and then did what they call a design build where they got input uh from both the
060builder and the designer from the get-go to build an efficient onbudget project. Uh and this is actually more advantage for us here uh because we've got a tight timeline uh and we believe that there will be some efficiencies in terms of bringing this in well below the $750,000 maximum price uh because John will be at the table. Uh Findorf, if you approve it, will be at the table and the designer will be at the table from the get-go. this initial design after we even first took a pick with uh with Findorf, they're like, "Why don't you put the sinks back to back on the uh east side of that building so we can save on plumbing costs?" So, you can see in the exam room kind of on the north picture side of that. Uh
061there's a sink there. Uh there's the possibility of swapping an exam room for behavioral health room. Uh and automatically finding efficiencies related to heating and cooling and plumbing and everything else. Uh so that's the proposal we wrote the consent memo around this evening. This is the essentially the features that will exist in the program related to the on-site clinic uh when it is built. We did receive three quotes um and those are embedded in the consent memo this evening. Uh we will we reached consensus on a guaranteed max price. uh John who um I um certainly commend for uh him making a dollar stretch in the Verona area school district. Uh sometimes to a fall I have to push him to spend money on some things. Uh we'll certainly be at the table to make
062sure we get value for these projects. So if you approve it tonight, then we get together with Findorf to get contract signed to build this. Uh and then actually coordinate final design and drawings. Uh and uh tonight we we we can't move forward with it without the board approving that guaranteed max price um and Tindorf building. Questions on that? Anything goes? And I'm glad Mr. Bremer's at the board table with me. If you guys have specifics, can you talk a little bit about you're being relocated to where? Yeah, good question. Uh so uh we we currently uh have a one-mon renter in the form of the painters union of Dane County at the facility we bought. Uh they will be out at the end of May. Uh they've got uh five small offices and a
063couple of larger kind of classroom size meeting areas and a conference room at their existing building. Uh and again this is this all does come together in some type of amazing way tonight related to our long range facilities plan our capacity study and our enrollment study. We actually don't think we will be uh needing to utilize the land we purchased probably until like the mid 2030s uh because some of the things I'm going to share with you this evening. Uh, so we have a perfectly usable building in Fishburg. I actually think it will be um a good thing for us to have more of a central office presence uh in Fitchburg. So I would be there with the whole finance team. We'd also have a satellite office for Dr. C. Um, and I think there's
064the possibility down the road of maybe having HR and payroll uh move out there for a little bit of time. That could be down the road. Michelle's already started to kind of talk to her team about that. That would not happen immediately. So in the short term it would be about six people would slide out of the the basement of central office. We have we'll move Dr. C and Lori upstairs for his main office. Uh and then Dr. C would also have a presence out in Fishburg. Good question. I I I just I think that's so important and such a great thing because if we hadn't been doing that kind of future planning with this land acquisition that we knew had a building on it that we knew had the possibility we could use it,
065we might not be able to do an on-site clinic. we didn't have the space to put our staff. Um, so I I think that's a key part of 100%. Yeah. I mean, and and we uh we definitely took John and Michelle and I led this project two months ago. Uh we took a hard look at our entire school district. Uh and there are some, you know, there's empty classrooms at Country that you're going to find out are going to fill up uh in the very near future. We took a look at some spaces at the high school and would have had to move some existing programming that's doing quite well here uh and really made what we thought was a student centered uh student first decision to move the adults around uh and we feel
066really came up with a good solution. Uh Dean SSN Health, they're super excited about where they're going to end up. They've got other comparisons with other Dane County school districts and they're they really think this is a good fit. So yeah, we're excited about it. And this I know some of the questions last time I don't want to speak for Meredith in her absence, but some of the questions that I recall her having about security, safety, not sort of interweaving a clinic in a school site and having just this cross kind of traffic that this is then purely isolated traffic within the sake of the clinic that we haven't kind of blended those spaces in a way that I could see right being extra layer of security concern. Sure. And we we've already begun with
067the design team. Uh this will this will be its own little bubble at central office as well in terms of how we do egress and access control. Uh so there will likely be if you're familiar with central office, there will likely be a door on the east side of the building kind of towards Main Street where we'll bring people into uh central office kind of on that stairwell on the stairwell. So we're already working on access control as well. that will be that will be important to us to make sure that that's the case with the remaining folks at central office. Uh but it certainly would have been all the more important if we would would have been bringing in unfamiliar staff and families into a school and now we don't have to go through
068that. And I'm sure this is maybe an obvious question, but just given the size of our district, the size of the staff we'd be servicing, this size clinic is reasonable for all of that. Yeah, Dean is super excited about it. Yep. They they feel very good about the space. Um I they they probably we probably could have squeezed them another three or 400 square feet smaller but didn't have to do that because of where we landed with the central office space. So it'll be more than enough to adequately serve there. Awesome. Isn't directly relevant, but I'm looking at this diagram and it shows unfinished space. Is that finishable space or is that just the utilities? Uh they label it unfinished space because they're not finished. Oh, okay. So, so current that if we end if
069we end up with a little scope creep there, I think most of it would happen in the unfinished space. John's crew would likely pick up. Uh it could mean a couple of wall moves. Uh but our our our tech team uh and the the brains of the existing IT room uh won't go anywhere. So the the central server for the entire district uh is in that existing IT room and then we've got uh three or four members from our tech team that will remain in the garden level of central office at least per the plan in the short term. So there could be some modest modifications back there. Uh you can see the door there. Uh this would be on the west side of this drawing uh on the exterior of the building. And actually
070the purpose of that door would be we would be to bring district staff and allow them to go downstairs and get into that kind of the tech area of the basement of central office. Have a question. So the main entrance sorry uh would be on the upper part of the the drawing here. The vest that's the main ent. So that will be the the same door you walk in to come see Dr. Clarity. That door won't move. the vestule might expand a little bit um once you have this level of renovation ADA considerations come into play. So, a couple of those toilets actually have to turn uh to make sure we've got the appropriate radius for a wheelchair. Um the corridor next to uh the toilet rooms may have to be expanded slightly. Um so,
071there'll be a a few ADA things that will work work their way into the renovation as well. Great. And we I know it was only the last meeting, but this is already covered by the budget amendment we approved last meeting. This this is this is the budget amendment. We approved you approved at the last meeting. The next portion of this will be the staffing related to uh because we essentially paid for the staff. We paid Dean SSM Health to pay those those folks. that will be built into the preliminary 25 26 budget that you will also approve. So there'll be a series of approvals. Once we have the space approved, Michelle and Nate can finally get to the finalization of the contract related to the four people that will work here and the services they'll
072be provided. So lucky you, there's a decent chance the very next board meeting will ask you to approve the contract for Dean SSM Health and that will essentially be pre-approval for the 2526 budget because we will put the cost of the staffing into the budget for 2526. Yeah. And then you won't hear from us again while on this. So the budget amendment last meeting was to free up the money for this, but today we have to vote on actually the where it goes, how it goes, which is a great reminder just for the community too of the meeting that we had last time in terms of just the conversation about justifying this as a thing, right? We've been that down that road, had that conversation as to why this is beneficial for the district and
073approving the funds to make this happen. We were without exact details in sight and bids. And so here we are as you can see in the consent memo which is listed that we'll now take a vote on just the recommendation that now the renovation happens at the garden level of central office. Yes or any other questions comments or so I'm sorry. Yeah. No I was listening to you talk about the unfinished space. I'm curious. This is mostly accurate, but in listening to you talk, it sounded like one of the things that might change is that the access to the existing IT room might be through that unfinished space instead of through the clinic. It it undoubtedly will be. So, there's currently a temporary glass wall with a makeshift meeting area uh labeled unfinished space and
074that will have to be moved. So John is already starting to figure out is there a spot potentially at the painters union building now our building uh that we potentially could utilize some of the hardware in the unfinished space. Uh but John will likely have to build a corridor that actually used to exist 10 years ago uh in the unfinished space to allow for essentially our tech team to get back to the area that they currently work work in. Uh but again that likely won't be related to the scope of this project. Sure. Good question. Anything else? John, I thought you were going to give me more like you're you're always renovating your house so I thought you were going to give us design ideas. So if the light bulb goes on, we're certainly interested
075in in hearing. Where's the salarium? No salarium at this point. All right. All right. Well, I'll have you linger team because I think we still but I we will follow the agenda and just step into public comment next in case there may be anything Lori that I'm unaware of that relates to some of the topics that we've talked about tonight. Okay. Okay. So, if not then we will shift then officially into board action. So, we did then bump from consent this memo in particular. So, we'll um go ahead and take an official vote then to approve what has been presented about the on-site clinic. So, if you haven't looked at the consent agenda memo, please pull that up. And now is the time for any further questions. Otherwise, I would accept a motion to approve
076the proposed renovation work for the SSM Health on-site clinic. So, move. Thank you, Joe. Second. Second, Corby, without even having to be prompted. Uh, all those in favor of approving the proposal for the renovation work for the on-site clinic for VASD signify with I. I. Any opposed? All right. And then moving to OE12. So, we are just getting the whole gamut this evening. So, let's talk a one-stop shop, right? Let's talk facilities. Perfect. All right. So, in in the uh board portion of tonight's agenda, we have OE12. We elected to include a re a refresh capacity study and enrollment study. So we're gonna do we're going to do all three and then I encourage both the board there's a 90page very well done uh enrollment study from NDR that gives you a a very good
077idea of what's happening in our school district over the next 10 or 15 years related between development and increased enrollment. Uh but we're going to start tonight with 12. Uh so a reminder to the board in a nutshell uh OE12 is making sure that the superintendent is planful and responsible related to maintaining our our buildings and grounds. Uh and we have a a full monitoring report that is attached to uh everything this evening. We are not going to go slide by slide on every indicator. Uh and we do have a little bit of a year and a review slide that I'm going to turn over to John here shortly. Uh and then we do have one uh um moderate exception related to compliance that we're going to get into uh a little bit more detail
078and then we are very interested in answering any questions if you have others uh related to uh board compliance related to that monitoring report. Uh so we did we do believe we're handing over a report that uh does provide the evidence related to 16 of 17 indicators uh being compliant. All the evidence is linked with board doc links uh for the board uh related to that monitoring report and as I said we have one indicator uh that we believe was compliant with exceptions and we'll get into details on that shortly. Um I did want to turn it over to John for just a little bit of a year in review in terms of maintaining our amazing facilities. Uh, one bullet that did not make the slide was John Remer's crew uh, and John Remer's work
079made the highest score uh, on our our annual survey in terms of community members and how they feel. I think it was 83% gave us a gold star for how we maintain our facilities. uh the group that runs that survey said they never see that uh that lots of times it's the opposite that our community is feeling bad about how we maintain facilities and that's not the case in the Veron area school district John and his team huge piece of that John I'm going to turn it over to you for a year in review in terms of what you've got going on so three bullet points there uh the projects included uh new century and bis um it would have been the wasn't all of it. We still have a um steel portion of the
080roof over part of it that is served us super well. Um but the other portion had served us really well for a really really long time. Uh so to get the insulation updated on that roof, um we get to realize some more efficiency that way and then also just having a roof that will serve us for quite a while. Um we also did a section of Badger Ridge uh that needed some help. We continue that work this summer as well. Uh the window project at Sugar Creek turned out fantastic. Um if you drive by, you'll see the clear anodized aluminum windows that will serve for the rest of our lifetimes. Um and again, we I think we had 34 years out of some residential windows that were installed in that building, brand new and nothing
081but amazing feedback from staff. Todd, yeah, difference maker and I with part of like upcoming project had a great experience with the contract so we don't lose them again as well. Um HKAC project has been started and continues this summer and is basically putting new equipment uh heating and cooling equipment in nearly every space in that entire building updating it. Um, also the new controls and then probably our crew's favor part of it. We're going to be putting in an energy wheel similar to what we have installed in this building to capture heat rather than not capture it. Um, we'll end up getting a rebate for that. It's it's small compared to the overall cost of it, but it's something and everything helps. And then the efficiency is, you know, the real payback over 20
082years, 25 years. And every one of these projects had definitely energy efficiency aspects to them. Uh yeah. Then John, do you want to just talk through a little bit in terms of the improvement work you're doing uh to monitor open ticket time for work orders uh and reviewing uh I think more than anything student staff feedback relative to our climate survey. Yeah. So the survey results um well I'll talk about open ticket time. So when I started looking back historically um take a time response average 13 days. Um in the past I guess if you go back two years ago it was 10. Um in the fall we had an opportunity to establish some goals for that. Um made that known to our staff. Uh specifically our head custodians um as they do many of
083the tickets throughout throughout all our buildings. Um, and then it steadily creeped and continues to creep down uh to the point where I pulled our last year's worth of um tickets and I think we're averaging four days now. So, the improvement is great. At some point, we're going to reach a point where it's going to be hard to kind of squeeze more water out of the cheese. Um, and like and I'm like I want to keep it as low key as I can with staff. I do not want them stress out over doing a great job. Um, but the improvement we've seen is I think is remarkable because we weren't getting we don't weren't getting negative feedback about our response time. As a matter of fact, it's usually very complimentary. Um, but I think just
084an awareness of it that's in the back of our minds and they're acting upon them. So, kudos to them. I mean, they do a fantastic job. Could you give just a few examples of what some tickets might look like typical things that might get submitted? I'm just curious what you know chair so furniture repair. Okay. Okay. Um that little charging stand there is a high maintenance thing. The outlets get used and used and used and have to get switched out. Um tables, these chairs have been pretty good. So those that's typical. Okay. Could be a a a banged up wall that needs to get painted. Could be um a new dry erase board that needs to be. General things that it's a lot of work to fix it or 100%. Okay. Last week it was
085dryers and aquatics they got to fix for the right just because they're used and used. Sure. So it it really varies. I mean it's as simple as they need a key card for Saturday for so and so they get access for a basketball tournament to this wasn't a ticket. I mean there's like we're trying to capture everything that our folks do. Um which we can just try to improve that. I don't think we'll ever capture it all. Um it could have totally have been a ticket. It's not. But um we have the tally changing out um components in our lunch tables to make it so that the assist system for Jason actually works. Um so it's just all over the board that they do every day. Yeah. Which is a way to elevate and share
086gratitude for all the things that are being done every day. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks John. Uh and then I have in bold uh uh our capacity study and enrollment projections which we're going to get into a little bit more detail tonight. Interested if folks have uh feedback when we get there. So I did want to spend just a little bit of time on our one yellow check mark. Uh so again the uh there's almost uh counterintuitive uh uh OE12 policies related to uh evidence. One says make sure you spend all your maintenance money. The other one says don't overspend. So which is which is hard in it's hard for anyone to do that. It's in particular a very difficult mark for John Bremer to hit where uh 70% of his project money is spent
087in two months during the summer. Uh and he just mentioned we were on uh two different roofs la a year ago. Uh and we ended up having pay requests come in early in the month of June because they got out of the gates on time. Uh and John paid the bill and we told him to pay the bill. uh audit requirements say uh if the work is done in June and you get build in June, you pay it out of that fiscal year. Uh and we did. So John knew all along fund 41 has carryover possibilities and always does uh for the following year. So he essentially started July 1st $200,000 in the whole. that was fine because that was an expenditure John built into his budget when the budget turned over. Uh so we
088did want to be completely transparent with the school board. Uh the the budget finished $200,000 in the whole, but that was a essentially a planned budget deficit because fund 41 uh carries over on an annual basis and we had to pay the bill when it came due. the I think we're hopeful that the board is agreeing with this. What I would not want to have happen is John keeping uh5 or $600,000 rolling over in fund 41 every year. That is money our taxpayers are paying for us to maintain our schools. Uh and it should be the expectation of the board and our taxpayers that we're spending it on an annual basis on things like roof and new windows. uh which we we had done but uh uh in line with this we wanted to be
089transparent that we wrapped up that fiscal year uh with a little bit of a deficit. Questions at all on that? If it if the overrun we're talking about was because of a planned expense that we knew was coming but maybe just came a little bit sooner than we were expecting or in a different fiscal year. That is exactly what happened. Uh should we expect that then this year's budget will come in slightly younger? Uh not necessarily that it is this is John trying to thread the needle every year. He he he already mentioned we've got a big roofing project uh that will likely end up on board approval here uh in the coming board meetings at Badger. Uh and the same thing will be true. John is doing an amazing job spending his budget on
090an annual basis and his big summer project work. Uh he we could also have things like a $200,000 parking lot that Pay and Dolan calls him up and says we can get going a week early. Uh and John is doing that delicate balance between two fiscal years and he'll say go. Um but it also does mean there's a chance there's a yellow check mark again next year. Okay. The flexibility has to be there for that to happen. So, okay, that summer leads over that new century, by the time the summer was done and we end up with a rainy August, uh, uh, all of a sudden, we're putting the finishing touches on that roof, a couple of days before students are returning. So, timelines are tight and John will have do whatever he can to
091have contractors going the second summer starts. I had almost forgotten that, too. Yeah, that got a little stressful at the end. Yep. Any other questions on that? So, what what would happen? Let's pretend we have a a rainy June. We're out of the uh we're we're out of the gates slowly at Badger and John has $300,000 left in fund 41 because we didn't have any pay requests. That $300,000 rolls over to the next fiscal year. Unlike fund 10, fund 41 rolls over on an annual basis and then John would just spend it. So, it's actually one of the main advantages of fund 41. Okay. Uh, other questions on OE12. I think we'll have a board vote later. Uh, so if you guys have other questions related to the 17 standards embedded in that monitoring report,
092uh, we can certainly answer them now or when I think Jen opens it up to the board. Perfect. Okay. All right. We're going to keep going. All right. Now, we have two final pieces all closely tied together. Capacity study. Reminder to the board and the community, a capacity study uh is a study of how many uh how many students an individual site can comfortably hold in terms of programming. Uh and uh we took a slightly different approach this year. This work is never perfectly done and never will be. Uh so for to to walk through a school, let's take Sugar Creek, spend two hours with Todd, analyze how he's currently using the building, have indepth discussions with him that Todd, you got to set aside right now as a community space in the event that
093Sugar Creek picked up another 25 students. Could this turn into a classroom? Yes or no? Yep, it could. We kind of take all that data down. We back in our class size recommendations and the programming that's taking place at each school and do the best we can with a third party, an architect, to gauge what the capacity of a school is. Um, and it's not a perfect science. We believe it's more perfect than the last time we presented it to the board because we did just that. John, myself, Michael account, an architect, the head principal, and the head custodian spent half a day at every one of these sites to put the capacity study uh in front of the school board and we believe it's as good as as it's been. Uh we found that
094we picked up some elementary school sites and we kind of thought we would. John and I were having kind of behind the scenes talks like we feel like there's a couple spots at some of these schools that if we asked principles, could this turn into a classroom, they would say yes. Uh so our method uh was this. We had uh discussions with principles on spots that were currently not being used as classrooms and broke them into three categories. Principal Bruner, could this space be used as a classroom? He graded it a one, two, or a three. One, absolutely. That was a classroom two years ago. Could be a classroom again uh next year. Tier two, yes, we could, but we'd have to move a few pe people around and things could get a little tighter.
095And tier three, absolutely not. It would drastically uh impact the way we program uh in this school. And here's why. Uh we embedded tier one and tier two into the capacity study we're presenting to the board tonight. And we did not touch tier three. Tier three is getting close to like mobile classrooms where where you're you're putting classrooms in trailer form in parking lots and we did not want to get there. We did really had a coin informed capacity study from 2022 and we feel like this is the best the district has seen and we're proud of the work. So um this was a snapshot. I'm not going to read it to you uh but did want you to know that uh we we ended up in what we call recommended functional uh classroom sizes
096uh informed by our handbook uh in terms of uh where we end up with a number of students per section. And again, you'll never uh in a even in an ideal world uh get to a spot that every single section in a school is bumped up right against the class size limit. uh it's just not the way master scheduling works or even enrollment works. Uh but that those are the numbers that were embedded in the capacity study. In the end, the uh the this is a summary uh spreadsheet in terms of where we ended up with school capacities. We broke this down by grade level band uh in terms of where we're at at each site. Uh some of these buildings, John was a great historian. A place like Country View, a place like Glacier
097have had this many students in here before. Uh and we were able to talk to staff members that said, "Yeah, and when Glacier was 598 students, it wasn't perfect, but Teresa Taylor will tell you they made it work until there was more space available in the school district through the referendum." Uh so we we we took into some historical perspective as well. In the end uh as we netted this whole thing out uh we ended up picking up just over 300 students uh with elementary school capacity. Uh we actually dropped a few students uh at 6 through eight. I think that was primarily Badger uh where uh the the Badger core building class sizes came into play and how they were using the spaces uh came into play. Um and at the high school, this
098one is in my mind less important at this point. Uh but there were things like art and studio spaces that would never have 30 or 32 students in it because there weren't lab stations available for 30 or 32. and we ended up having a few fewer seats at the high school. Uh but the high school is decades away from being full and there will be five capacity studies between now and the time the high school is feeling full. Uh but wanted to be transparent with the board on where this ended up. And again, there's no perfect way to do this. Class size limits are in the mix. Uh there are always changes in terms of what's best practice in classrooms. Master scheduling is always in the mix. In particular, Badger Core is one of the
099more difficult buildings for us to uh fit into a master schedule because they share teachers across buildings. Uh but in the end, we're proud of the work that happened related to getting more exact numbers for school capacities. We did a little chart for available seats at each school and you'll see in the future here we're going to need them at Country View in particular and Badger. And that is it for the capacity portion. If the board we can do a a brief pause to see if you have questions on capacity otherwise we're going to roll into enrollment. We certainly come back to capacity, but they are very interconnected. Capacity tells us how many seats we have. The MDR study tells us how quickly those seats will be full. So, this is a good timing. Both
100these reports came this evening. Yeah. And maybe just noting right that these reports are available in board docs to your point, the capacity study 96 pages full of information. So very informative even to someone who does not have a a child that goes to our school district. I think it's just interesting reading. Yeah. In terms of what's on the way in our school district in terms of development. All right. So the enrollment uh projections uh we're going to go through and review the completed study at a high level. Uh there are some implications and things we wanted to highlight. Uh a little bit of discussion around the future of the Jenny farm option. uh middle school capacity popped a little bit more than it did three years ago when we did the capacity and enrollment
101study. Uh and a revised timeline on when we think we may need a new elementary school and then anything else the board might have tonight that they may want to discuss. A little bit about Mark Roer's work at MP Roers. Uh again, this was a a 90page study with all kinds of incredible uh data that feeds into uh some of the summary stuff we're going to talk about tonight. Uh they interviewed our team, the city of Verona, the city of Pittsburgh. We went the extra mile on this one. We we mailed 250 paper surveys to the 250 newest homeowners in our school district to find out, do you have students? Do you have students on the way? How many do you think you're going to have on the way to make this as accurate as
102possible? And we got very good return uh in terms of that. And Roers actually contacted developers in terms of what they um are planning to put in uh in our school district in terms of the building. Uh so very thorough report. And by new homeowners, you mean a combination of new construction with new homeowners and like sold and bought? Yes. Both. That's Yes. Yep. Yeah, both. We had we had one uh and I can't remember exactly how it unfolded. Uh but it was either a renovation or a change in address. Uh but they were they were in the house like 32 years that they and they they ended up the way the data got compiled. Yeah, I've been here 32 years. Said four kids through, but I've been with the school district forever. Uh so
103yeah, it but it was data worth collecting. So big ideas from this report. We continue to be a growing school district. As a reminder, threequarters of the state can't say that. Uh so that's a good thing, especially when we are pushed against revenue limits on a perutable basis. We are growing slower than expected and we reported this to the school board in 2022. There are three main factors in my mind for that. Slower housing growth. There's actually people at this table who live that uh that um getting contracts and permits and going through uh the um all the headaches related to a new home uh or a new apartment building in our school district uh has been slower than we thought. The economy is a thing in terms of what uh what's getting developed higher
104than normal interest rates right now. Uh and the biggest one was that uh people are just having fewer children. uh that they found uh in the study it takes a hundred bedrooms in a multifamily setting. Many of the new apartment buildings you are seeing go up to produce three students. Uh so we are seeing an increase in tax base but you are also seeing either millennials or retirees moving into those apartments that are not bringing students with them. Uh, and we also found that new three or four bedroom homes that maybe 10 or 15 years ago produced three, three and a half, four kids, and now it's one and a half or two because people are just having fewer fewer children when they're even buying kind of your classical single family home. Um, so the
105result of that is an extended. We we believe in a slightly extended timeline for that new elementary school, which is fine. We're going to we would bring it to the taxpayers when we felt it was time. Uh and uh we think middle school capacity may need a little bit of attention. Uh maybe sooner than that elementary school conversation highlights freeze you here. Yep. I need to be very clear to anyone that is listening to this report at this time. This this is a a third-party partner with us making recommendations of if I were in your space, here's are some ways I would suggest this. This is not the superintendent or any of this team making a recommendation to the board of how to address this issue. Clarification noted. Thanks, Dr. Steve. And then likewise, this
106is not the board doing anything yet either. This is simplyformational from our reliable things for us that you want. Great. Correct. Right. Want to say it one more time. So I will reiterate it again in particular. I think it's on bullet point three uh that uh that we there are some things we actually have to look at. Uh all right. So I'm going to go through this rather quickly. I'm not going to read this verbatim to the board. Big idea um in terms of a highle 7point summary with that 90page report. Uh we um are continuing to be a growing school district. Uh we um have growth largely driven by new housing development and you'll see that on a map down the road. Uh K12 enrollment, this should be interesting to the board. Uh we
107are predicting uh K5 that there'll be 600 new students to our school district by the time we hit 2040. That is a big full elementary school. Uh so that is a thing we're going to have to work through uh in the coming years. It's just not immediate. Um our middle schools will gain 250 to 300. Middle and high schools 250 to 300 each by 2040 as well. Um and again middle school will get tight. So a couple things to consider. Uh Badger and Country View and Stoner will be the sites that will get the tightest the quickest uh by kind of early middle 2030s. So, we've got we've got some years to watch these things uh come into come into effect. Uh Savannah, according to the Roers report, will continue to be under capacity uh
108and will grow slower than most schools. Uh that uh capacity concerns are less urgent than the last time I presented this to the school board because of the factors we talked about before. both we increase the capacity of our elementary schools with this thorough study and we aren't getting as many students as quickly as we thought we would three years ago. So that's two big ideas out of that. Number three, again an MD roers recommendation and certainly potentially worthy of conversation. Uh we may have to rebalance our middle school enrollment into the future. There's a couple of ways to do that. One's a boundary shift. uh and Mark and his team who he's got a 15ear school uh history with the school district uh said you're going to get the majority of your growth at
109the elementary school level north of Country and we'll show you that in a on a map. All of those students end up funneling to Badger which is our tightest middle school at this point. Uh so there could be something there for us to eventually consider in terms of school boundary issues. But I think once you kind of start to peel that onion, uh you can take a look at boundary issues districtwide. Uh but school boards and school administration uh have to be very planful when that work goes on. Uh when people get very tied to their own school, as they should, we want folks to be uh passionate about their school community. So if we start to surface those discussions, we'll have to be very planful on how we do that. But if we did,
110one of the main reasons would be your core is getting moved full. Another way to do that would that wouldn't be a boundary change uh but is certainly a possible alternative. Currently all of the twe students that go to Glacier funnel to Badger. Their classmates who are not TWE go to Savannah. Uh that's the only place in our school district that you could have your kindergarten to fifth grade experience uh and uh have uh you're you're peeling off uh into a different elementary school just because of your twee. Uh so a possibility for us to have discussions about would be potentially having a twe core uh in pitch and having both of our middle schools support twe programming. Uh that would be come along with planning. John and I would have far less of that
111super exciting work uh and we'd have to engage tweet families, the Savannah community, uh and make sure that it's something that would be worth us uh considering. But that was one of the recommendations embedded in this third party report. Uh again, elementary school capacity needs. Uh we believe by mid2030s this is going to need some attention. Uh we have two sites uh that we could expand into. We don't believe it would be a practical move uh for us to consider because of transportation and how our buildings are currently laid out to consider major expansion of our elementary schools uh when we would own two lots that we could break off and start another site. So, we think a new fifth elementary school will likely be needed by mid 2030s, which means potentially pre-referendum talks start
112four or five years from now. Uh, by the time we end up building that in the mid 2030s. So, that was another one of the big bullets. I'll keep going here. Uh, a reminder of the property we own. The heral site uh is 18 acres and would be suited for an elementary school down the road. Uh we just bought nine acres on King James Way. We believe suited for elementary school and we bought nearly 60 acres at Lacy that we believe would be suited for a future high school or potentially could support two schools down the road uh with like an elementary or middle school uh pairing, but we've got lots of flexibility with a site uh that big. Uh Robert's recommendation would be retain all three of these uh sites as we continue to
113grow. Uh the sixth is the Jenny farm. A reminder to the school board, we have an option uh that was signed, I believe, in 2019 uh on the Jenny farm, which is a uh 164 acre parcel that the district pays $25,000 a year to hold purchasing rights to that property. rawers um for really two reasons. Uh is recommending that we consider abandoning that option. Uh and eventually sometime this spring we would require a board vote uh to make that decision. Uh one we purchased the Lacy property. to where the Jenny property is uh is really kind of now the bullseye of Fitchburg. Development is happening from the outside in towards the Jenny farm. Uh and uh Mark after talking to city planners believes it could be one of the last places in the city of
114Fitchburg proper uh that ends up having urban improvements to actually develop that site. Uh so we're a few 40 acre farm fields away from that even being a reality. Uh and Mark would have Mark has concerns that uh in our growing school district that if we needed that land, let's say for two or three elementary schools from now or eventually our third middle school, it might not be ready for us to build on. Um so um the combination of those two things, we own a decent amount of property. we bought a site for a high school and how it's going to develop. He is recommending we consider abandoning that option uh and then kind of keep in our rolodex. Number seven, so no immediate need for us to buy additional property right now. Uh however,
115we should keep an eye on the South Stoner Prairie development uh that is uh currently going through the city of Fitchburg approval process. I can point that out to your map here shortly, but that is essentially the uh west far west side of Lacy Road uh is going to be developed in Fishburg next. Uh will eventually produce an elementary school worth of students. Uh but that again is 10, 15, 20 years out. Uh but similar to kind of what we did with purple property, uh the time in the next five years to approach land owners just outside of that development may be appropriate for an elementary school site. And that's what Mark's recommending. But we don't need 164 acres and we would need something closer to uh areas that have been improved via the urban
116development zone. All right. And I hope you guys have questions because a lot of talking. Uh in closing, uh I think we just have a few more slides. Uh here is a summary of what's going on with housing uh in our school district. I I think it it is it is interesting that uh in the next 15 17 years, uh there will be 1,600 additional units of single family homes. Uh that there will be 8,000 new housing units in total. Many of those will be multifamily bedrooms uh but averaging 500 a year uh with faster growth happening uh in uh the 2020s than did in 2030s. Uh and over 50% of the new housing growth is going to happen in country and we'll show you a map of that shortly. You can see bulldo bulldozers
117there now and some new um multif family homes and single family homes. So I think this map's interesting. You can see the dark red area north of Country View. Uh that is the main one of the main areas uh Mr. Roers was concentrating on in terms of growth. Uh and will eventually uh I think eventually cause us to have to build that elementary school and in the near future likely have us make some decisions around Badger Core. But that is the hottest spot on that map in terms of growth. I think we're getting close to the end. Uh I find this to be a very useful chart. This is projecting a couple of years out, five years out, 10 years out, and 15 years out in terms of what Mark believes at this point uh
118will be the enrollment at each of those sites. We had the new capacity study handed over to Roers and he was able to take a look in terms of where we'll be at with functional capacity. Uh and you can see there are a few sites that will get um will get pretty tight uh into the future. He color coded those yellow keep an eye on it. Red your over functional capacity. Um so I think that's valuable for us to have an eye on in terms of the sites that will need some attention here in the next 10 or 15 years. And that is it for me in terms of talking on all of these wonderful topics here to answer questions or take feedback from the board. It's so it's so fascinating all the information and
119super helpful. I mean just to have this partnership like you said at least 15 years with Mark Rogers and his team. I mean to have access to this, I mean what a rich way to be as concretely crystal ball readers as possible. Um this data is just super helpful and a lot to chew on. Other thoughts, questions or comments? Just on that last slide, slide 49. Is functional building capacity also by definition a school perspective, not just a statistician perspective? I mean kind of alongside those conversations you had at sites of realistically what does functional mean in terms of the educator's view on functional? Do you get what I'm saying? Versus just a bodies in a building. 100%. So the EUA study carved that up a couple of different ways. They did it based on
120square footage and even looked at spaces like cafeteria space uh when things start to get really tight. But the principal involvement was very important uh in terms of where we're running with class size limits and how we're utilizing each space. Uh so that that report got detailed enough in terms of how many students we can fit in a science lab and so forth. And I um I think even just the does this feel right test? Um I um I think John and I and I tell you right now Steph and Dr. Love would tell you Badger Core feels full. Uh it is a busy full building. Uh and the combination of this capacity study along with where we see enrollment going kind of proves that with with some hard data. Uh and there are other
121sites you walk through. You walk through country view with Jess and she had a decent number of of classrooms that were empty. Uh but uh very good long-range planning from the school district seven or eight years ago saw this coming that there was going to be a development north of Country View when they redid boundaries. They left some empty classrooms and pulled a bunch of kids out of Country View with redistricting. Uh and that will fill up in a hurry once all those once all that housing development takes off. Other questions or comments? Again, I encourage you uh it's uh it's not super light reading. Uh read that enrollment study because I think it's there's some pretty fascinating stuff in there. Thank you. Thank you for sharing thirdparty recommendations and data that we will chew
122on and further proceverate over. Right. at the very least. Right, Jen? I believe we're turning it back over for a board. So, board members, we have um heard all the information reported to us about OE12. So, I'll now accept a motion to um approve the report as presented so we can just engage in any further dialogue about compliance. Is there a motion? Motion. Thank you, Christopher. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Joe. Uh board members, any further questions, comments, thoughts about um our vote to approve OE12 as being in compliance with the one exception that was noted, but the report has been shared to us as being in compliance. Somebody else going to say something. I'm fine with it being in compliance. I think um it's interesting to me to listen to the exception
123because I wonder if there is a more reasonable indicator that because it seems like it's just going to consistently given that our fiscal year ends in the summer and the projects happen in the summer and um right you know that's not really the the board's purview but I would given what was said today I would question the reasonleness of that indicator going forward. But that's not a commentary on the report as of submitted here. Thanks. Thanks for that, John. I been having conversations with John Bremer and Pete. Uh we also have other fail states built into board policy in particular OE5 and OE6 uh that require us to appropriately manage the overall district budget. uh that um we um I think we would be willing to engage in that conversation if the board would like
124to potentially take a look at a tweak of that policy, that portion of the policy. Any other questions, thoughts from the board about OE2 report? Okay, we have a motion by Christopher and a second by Joe. Um, after this discussion, is there, let me just rephrase. All those in favor, there we go. Too many votes tonight. All those in favor of approving OE12 as presented as being in compliance signify with I. I. Any opposed? 12 has been approved. Thank you. Thank you guys. Thanks for bearing with us. Same. Right. Yeah. And again, super lots of information and from OE2. Actually, I didn't elevate that to all of the data that's in board docs as well about all of the pieces for OE12. We've talked sometimes that that is a little checkboxyish from a board perspective
125and the kind of year in year out, but it's really helpful to have all that data. So, thank you for that. And again, I think even an example of John taking a closer look at survey data and ticket time, that work does not come to life without court policy making us prove it every year. Yeah. So, even though it's checkboxy, it's all worthwhile. Thank you. All right, moving on to board updates. Um, anything communications specific team that anyone wants to elevate? Um, just a couple of reminders. We have our Greater Day County Consortium gathering on Wednesday evening, open to the community, um, starting at 6 p.m. at Middleton High School. So, hope to see some of you there and community members as well. We have seven state legislators coming that represent different areas of the
126Dayne County area. talk a bit about school funding and other current concerns related to public schools in the state there to that regard. Also, if you're talking to community members and you want to have a flyer for you, I can submit the copy of the flyer to each of you so you have that in hand or just hand it directly to a community member as well. Great. Thank you. Um reminder to board we have end of year visits coming so thanks for taking time to sign up and thanks in advance continued to leadership at the various sites. Um super excited to be able to go school of school and hear in real time the data that we get to talk about at the board table and see it in practice and get to visit classrooms.
127So excited to continue those and of course celebrating educator appreciation week. So educators look forward to a small token from the board as well later on this week. Um and then do we want to talk a bit about the training that we few of us went to last week on Wednesday? Um yeah, we had a coherent governance training workshop where there was time to collaborate and work with other districts. I was just there for the afternoon more workspace piece, but um folks that were there if anyone wants to elevate and project clarity were there. Amy Engelins, we had um Adam Zingshime, myself, Lori. So, we just kind of each, I think, had takeaways from that time in terms of just talking about leadership and board partnership around coherent governance. I appreciated the opportunity to hear
128from other districts who also have a coherence governance model and learning from them along the way, especially with the idea that we've been trying to rewrite some indicators and make sure that our results policies are actually measuring and aligning to our values. So it was wonderful to be with other districts who are also engaged in some of that productive struggle but also to learn from. Yeah. Thanks. Uh in linement uh the it's good to be able to network with uh districts that are trying to uh determine much like we are how to appropriately measure uh what we we just deem soft skills. um things that are outside the realm of our core uh academics. Uh things like um critical thinking um reasoning skills and things that we talk as we talk about we develop a
129student for a um to thrive in a diverse global society. Uh I feel like the partnerships we were able to make and just think about this as a collective with uh other boards and districts across the state uh uh will will enhance our ability to collaborate with the board and what that may look like. Um and I think we we're the resources we were able just didn't feel like we were having to build it from scratch um in terms of understanding and a little bit felt like okay well multiple people were grappling with the same area on on this and so um um while while it didn't we were definitely more behind in a sense as as a district we were just trying to figure out how to best uh assess for those things that
130aren't frequently assessed for or not reported to to the state. Yeah. Yeah. And I enjoyed the conversations from board members about just some of the functionings of boards and continuing an ongoing development as a board. So things all the same that I heard from Amy and Dr. Clarity and then ways that we can continue to do some of our practices in different ways better streamline etc. Um, so I'm excited to workshop again and share some thoughts on things that we can continue to do in elevating our work as board members. Thanks for those that were able to attend. Anything else that anyone has for any general updates? All right. Uh, superintendent consent agenda. So, the only item remaining would be personnel items. Um, just make sure that you've looked that over. Are there any questions?
131Hearing none, the superintendent's consent agenda is approved as presented. And similarly, the board's consent agenda this evening. Are there any questions? Hearing none, the board's consent agenda is approved as well. Um, future dates on your calendar, again, the Greater Dane County meeting is listed there. Graduation as well. I'm sure we'll have to soon RSVP, but keep that date. It's always great to be able to celebrate our graduating scholars as a group. um this year on Sunday. Yes, June 8th, which was per family feedback. Perfect. Then we will adjourn to close session under Wisconsin statute 19.85 sub1 subg to confer with legal counsel who is providing advice concerning a strategy to be adopted by the board with respect to litigation in which the district is likely to become involved. Specifically concerning recent federal agency enforcement actions.
132We'll adjourn to close session with roll call vote. Joe I. Corby, hi John. Hi Christopher. Hi. I am I as well. We'll adjourn to close session. Thank you all. We'll take a short recess break.