Verona Area School District Board of Education Meeting April 21, 2025

001Please. Greetings. Good evening everyone. Good to see you all. Thanks for joining for our school board meeting on this Monday, April 21st. Uh I will begin by establishing that we have a quorum beginning with a roll call vote. Corby here. John here. Meredith. with Christopher here and I am here as well. We do have a quorum. Uh Corby, has this meeting been properly noticed? Yes, it has. Wonderful. To help ensure that we're centering our boardwork around our shared values and serving our students, we begin each of our board meetings by reading our district's equity framework and the Ho Chunk Land Acknowledgement, which can be found at the top of the agenda. Christopher, would you please read those aloud for us this evening? Yes. In the Verona Area School District, our mission is that each student

002will acquire the knowledge and necessary skills to achieve their personal goals, thrive in a diverse societ 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 supports they need to feel valued and affirmed in their unique identities and experiences. We acknowledge that inequities and power dynamics exist in our systems such that some individuals on the basis of their identities face barriers to accessing the opportunities they need to experience success. In acknowledgement of such, the Verona area school district is committed to disrupting these systems of inequity and the Ho Chunk land acknowledgement. There are currently 12 tribal nations who call Wisconsin home with the Ho Chunk Nation being the primary group living around Madison. No matter

003where you are in the state, you're on the ancestral land of a tribal nation. As we begin our meeting, we honor the land upon uh which we stand. Thank you. Uh board members, let's take a peek at the remaining agenda for this evening. There are any questions, amendments, please surface those. Otherwise, I'll accept a motion to approve the agenda as written. Motion to approve. Thank you, Christopher. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Corby. All those in favor of approving tonight's agenda as printed signify with I. I. I. Any opposed? Okay, moving on then. Uh, agenda item number three. We had an election a few weeks back and we have two board members that are returning for service for another three-year term. And so Corby as our clerk is going to administer the oath of

004office to both Joe Haynes and Christopher Pagarero. So we'll turn it over to you Corby. All right. I will start. You want me to go first? Since you're closest forever. Repeat after me. I, Joe Haynes. I, Joe Haynes, having been elected or appointed to the office of Having been elected or appointed to the office of Verona Area School District School Board member at large. Verona Area School District School Board member at large, but have not yet entered upon the duties thereof. But have not yet entered upon the duties thereof. Swear or affirm that I will support the Constitution. swear or affirm that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Wisconsin of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Wisconsin and will faithfully discharge

005the duties of said office to the best of my ability. and will faithfully discharge the duties of set office to the best of my ability. Congratulations. Traveling clerk. Raise your right hand. Repeat after me, sir. I, Christopher Pigo. I, Christopher Pigaro, having been elected or appointed to the office of Having been elected or appointed to the office of Verona area school district board member portion two, city of Pittsburgh, Verona Area School District, uh, school board member portion two, city of Pittsburgh, but have yet not yet but have not yet entered upon the duties thereof. but have not yet entered upon the duties thereof. swear or affirm that I will support the Constitution swear or affirm that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Wisconsin of the

006United States and the Constitution of the State of Wisconsin and will faithfully discharge the duties of said office to the best of my ability. and will faithfully discharge the duties of set office to the best of my ability. Congratulations. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Corby. And thank you again for your continued service, Joe and Christopher. We're excited to have you continue to serve on the board. Um just a quick note that we do have um our equity statement in our two other languages spoken in the district by instructional purposes. So, Spanish and um Mandarin. So, just wanted to make sure I called attention to that as well. Moving on through our agenda, we're moving to staff recognition. I have a hunch that may be why there's a large number of folks in the audience. We

007have a really rich agenda tonight. However, uh so I'm going to actually turn that over to Dr. Clarity to start to provide some context for us on the number of amazing staff members that we're celebrating this evening. Great. Good evening everyone. I'm again I'm Dr. Tremenary and I'm proud to serve our community as superintendent and um and I also get the honor of our board of education to uh bring staff celebrations uh before our board uh to be recognized in this uh occasion but also recognize the great service that they continue to do uh throughout our district on behalf of all of our families here. And so today we have the honor of of multiple uh award winners from uh across the state and across the area. And uh it's going to be my honor

008to uh begin to begin with Lumé Hang uh excuse me, Lum Huang. I apologize for Lum. Sorry about that. Um she is the Her Cole Teacher Fellowship Award winner and I want to say congratulation and she's here with her team from BIS and Miss Sparks, you want to say a few words? Well, just that we're really fortunate to have Lumé uh on our staff. She works with our kindergarteners and our first graders in Mandarin. She does a great job of welcoming our brand new Mandarin learners into our school. She has such kindness and compassion. Um, she is not hesitant to be silly and fun with the kids. Um, which really makes uh learning Mandarin, which can be challenging and difficult language to learn, really a fun and exciting time for kids and really gets them

009started off on that path. And I know there's a lot of families here celebrating her also and we are just really fortunate to have her there. Absolutely. Thank you. [Applause] Thank you, Kim May. And I was excited to come see you in action two weeks ago now where you learned about the award kind of surprised. So, thank you for everything you do and you just you're amazing with your students and you just bright up the space everywhere you are. So again, we we greatly appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Next, we have a two-time award winner in the same space and he got it on the same day. Uh Mr. Brian, Mr. Brian Cox. How you doing, M Mr. Cox? [Applause] Mr. Cox uh received a dual award. Um, first he received the

010Herb Cole Principal Leadership Award and as a winner of the Herb Cole Principal Leadership Award, you're also going to and are nominated for the principal high school principal of the year. And Mr. Cox uh last week in a surprise celebration uh in front of the staff, students, and many of his friends and family learned that he's also the state of Wisconsin High School Principal of the Year. So, a double celebration for Mr. Brian Cox. All right. And as the award train keeps rolling on, uh we are also, and it's a great day. I mean, it's great to be a Wildcat these days with all these celebrations. Uh we get to honor three of our amazing staff members for the Wisconsin Association of Bilingual Education uh Educators of the Year Award. And we are going to

011have Miss Rosa Maria uh do a do a presentation for our three award winners. So I'm going to read this in Spanish because we have guests in the audience who are here this evening and support their loved ones. Wisconsin. We are Fore. [Applause] Again, I would like to extend uh definitely congratulations to these amazing and dynamic educ educators. Um, this Saturday, no, excuse me, Friday night and then into Saturday, uh, we will have the honor of being able to recognize them in the Wisconsin Dells at the uh, weave uh, conference. So, we get to celebrate a little bit more at a recognition ceremony. So, we look forward to seeing many of you there in in that space and then I also do some deep learning myself as as part of part of the conference so

012I can continue to be a better leader in support of our multilingual uh, programming. But again, congratulations uh to to Daisy, Andrea, and Diana Kelenos. Congratulations [Applause] again. And we're going to keep going with celebrations. Uh was it about 10 days ago, we learned and were able to recognize that we have the Wisconsin Technology Education Association award winner as well. and our and that honor is we are proud to rec to recognize Mr. Phil Smith for winning that award. [Applause] Congratulations Mr. Any words for Mr. Smith? Yeah, absolutely. Mr. Smith is a staple of our career and technical education programming. Um you can see him in every facet of our building in one fashion or another. um he has been a huge component not only attracting students to our career and technical education field but

013also creating new pathways, new coursework, new ways to engage them in um an art form that is highly needed around our building, around our community and around our country. So Mr. Smith, we appreciate one of the things I want to elaborate on with with Mr. Cox and his rep and what he says Mr. Smith. You know, in just the short time I've been here, well, four years now I've been here, I've noticed a just a a new and inspired group of students that are really uh galvanizing around career tech and education. I notic an intentional work to work and wanting to be in in the presence of Mr. Smith. I'm also seeing uh that space be far more diverse and especially more diverse in comparative to other spaces that that I've been in. And that

014really speaks to our equity framework and equity statement to see a diverse population representation in uh in in career ticket. And when you think about the opportunities that uh really our students are able to engage in uh in that space, but also when they leave the space uh often walking away with licensing and skills. If you ever take a car in or have to get something worked on, we know we know how much that costs and and the skills that our students are developing are are just dynamic. So again, congratulations and thank you so much. You're well welldeserved honor for you. [Applause] All right. So our our next celebration is our congratulations on uh just an amazing team of educators that have uh really uh served our community uh with with with grace and honor

015and integrity and they're just great human beings to be around. uh cul culminatively uh in our retirement for this year, you have 333 years of service uh to the Verona School District and to the education that's going to be uh uh leaving us to enjoy uh and just the well-deserved retirement that that out there. And so while you know technically it is a loss for the runner scholarship is actually a celebration. That's why we're calling it such uh congratulations on being able to to move forward. So, we've done a video montage uh in celebration of our our retirees and as you see see them some of them here in our spaces. We just want to make sure we recognize uh the years of service for for our retirees. So, we'll begin our video. [Music] [Applause]

016[Music] Yes, I do. [Music] Look at me. I [Music] don't ask Steve. If I could please ask our our retirees that are here in attendance and and know they're very humble don't always like to Barb I know but please stand please stand and be recognized for your great years of service to the Broner School. I think it was was it just the last board meeting where we actually get as a board to approve the retirement? And I feel like it's a combination of reluctancy and celebratory kind of moment as board members to just take that time to really honor, reflect, and celebrate the folks that have served so long in this district. So, um, we took a little moment to take pause at that last meeting, but now to have some of you here and

017have a larger audience to really just share our gratitude. And I always appreciate just elevating, um, the gratitude of all the impact not only that you've had on kids and families, but on colleagues. Um, just the impact that we kind of have as staff with one another. That loss is highly felt. Um, and your mentorship to future educators and new educators in our buildings has been really impactful as well. So, thank you again to those of you here and those not here for the 333 years of service to VASD. Congratulations. And I think I said last time on then starting to look younger every year now hereafter because it is to anyone do you notice this? Oh my gosh. So looking forward to seeing you all go through that as well. So with that we

018are what? second. Oh, yeah. Thank you. Okay. Um, we're moving through to our superintendent report and our agenda. We have library updates. We have all sorts of exciting things, but we also recognize you all have evenings. I know. So, please feel free to transition if you would like to. We certainly take any uh additional audience members if you'd like to stay. Thank you and congratulations. No, I didn't. All right. Yes. Congratulations again. Good. All right. So, we will move into our superintendence report. Um, starting with some committee updates from human growth and development. So, I think we have some staff and leadership representation coming to join us to hear some updates on how things are going. [Music] Thank you. Um this past week um on Thursday, our human growth and development uh committee u oh

019thank you once again um to uh to pick up from our last meeting that we had in February. Um and Katie, one of our committee members is going to share a little bit about what we discussed. Uh the team reviewed a summary of the themes from our previous meetings where we had observed elementary, middle, and high school lessons. We shared areas where we felt our current curricular resources are and are not meeting statute and our needs. The themes where we felt our current human growth and development instruction is meeting statute or our needs include a focus on the topic of consent using medically accurate language. Comprehensive and covering a wide range of topics including things like healthy relationships and social media risks. Providing resources and support for students either through confidential nurse forms or encouragement

020to seek help from trusted adults. Mindfulness of sensitive language accompanying this instruction. Different interactive ways the content is delivered. Accessibility of the materials in different formats such as work packets and canvas. mention of legal and ethical considerations like state laws and responsible online behavior. The themes where we felt our current human growth and development instruction is not meeting statute or our needs include inconsistencies and gaps in required content across grade levels. concerns about some of the instructional language and tone. Inconsistencies in the resources used and instructional delivered across grade levels. Concerns exist about the timing and format of the lessons with debate over the duration of the lessons, how to best group students to receive the instruction, and when some topics should be introduced. parent guardian resources felt insufficient and some of the information provided

021feels outdated or possibly inaccurate, particularly our reliance on external videos such as YouTube resources. So, at the request of our team to help judge current state understanding we're not a curriculum adoption team, we're a curriculum view team. Um there was a request to look at what else is out there that that without the opportunity to see uh some other options was very difficult to judge current state and so um we took some time to review some resources that are being used in some other districts and so we looked at the three hours curricular resource which currently is being used in MMSD um and looked at what Sun Prairie Area School District recently adopted ETR health smart and health smart and the reason we chose those was that actually hit at some of the questions that

022the committ we um had earlier. One was what might instruction look like if we looked more holistically kindergarten through 12th grade. Um and then uh what might more of a boxed curriculum look like that was aligned um across grade levels. And so we took a look at those and um the uh team uh at the end of the meeting just had some following thoughts that they wanted to share with our board. One was that there was a is the acknowledgement our teachers are amazing. They're excellent. Um but there were some concerns over just the variability in the current human growth and development model with a worry that does the knowledge leave with human um when people leave with so many of the resources being kind of gathered within um within those teams and that that

023dependence on some of the amazing teaching staff wondering about a shift to a common resource that's more standardized across the district. Um the other wondering that the committee had was around resources for families and guardians. Um who might want a clear picture of what's taught and when to support that instruction at home. Um and that something that has more resources for families was something that was a curiosity of the team to be able to support those conversations at home that we know families are having and that having some tools to help do that might make that a much easier uh process and something that our families are able to support the instruction at school. So with that, can I just interject? So I kind of want to frame this conversation tonight. So we started with

024what happened on Thursday. We gave you all an update in the report of what happened Thursday, but just to take you all the way back to where we started. Um our charge was to review. And so when we started in October, we spent that first meeting um making sure that the committee understood their full responsibility and what their charge was. Then we had our second meeting and that meeting we were able to explore our current curriculum and so we heard from our educators. That following meeting March we heard from our middle school which then brings us to this meeting. So we kind of took you all we started uh with Thursday and then walked back to um our current work and what our current charge was. And so, um, what was shared with you all

025tonight was just their thoughts, um, as of Thursday and then we'll turn it over to Nate who will lead us in the next portion. Can can team pause for a second? So, because I I'm not sure that it's clear. I want to make sure that the board is clear is getting this update the way we want it to be. The charge of the committee was not to look for replacement curriculum. Correct. It was to engage in our own curriculum. Correct. The purpose of going out and looking at other curriculum was so you had something to compare ours to but not to talk about replacements. Correct. Okay. And has the committee been functioning in that way? Yes. So we reviewed our current curriculum, what we were using and at the request of the committee just so

026they would have something to compare and to make an informed decision or informed recommendation. And as a as a point, they then wanted to look at what else is out there so that they can then say, here's what we have and here are our thoughts on what we have. So it wasn't necessarily to extrapolate, but it was to look at what we have and then make recommendations based on that. Thank you. All right, just going to run to board members. All right, Nate. So, for this next portion isn't really an update, but more of a request for me as a facilitator. Um, I'm asking that the school board send the committee a letter of continued expectations. And what this letter does is it doesn't change the committee's charge at all, but really just kind of

027clarify some past points that board members have brought up. Um, it consolidates uh questions and feedback raised by board members during previous meetings. It clarifies what the board would like to see addressed and what the final report would look like and then does offer one directive um for the committee to review as a point of comparison a specific resource. To be a little bit more specific, the formal directive is for would be for the committee to review these specific resources and to answer these questions related to representation in the curriculum, uh, mental health, family engagement and transparency and overlaying with the equity framework. Um, now the board today can decide whether they want to add to this letter or they can decide to not send this letter or they can decide to remove things from

028this letter. Um, but I will leave that for the board to discuss as to what they would like to send to the committee regarding um, continued expectations. Thank you for consolidating that. So, I think it was just to kind of address what you talked about, Dr. Hawkins, with our previous meetings and conversations we've had then at the board table about what we were hearing in terms of those updates after each meeting and to try to consolidate some of the things that we've shared as feedback and to overlay that with the current charge of the committee. Um, so Nate, thank you for putting this together. I think it's a nice summary to sort of capture what has been elevated at the board table thus far. Um, board members did get this letter in advance to have

029some time to kind of peruse and get a chance to read um any thoughts and feedback about what we may be sending back to the committee more formally in this way um and or otherwise. So, I'm certainly looking forward to hearing any thoughts and sentiments that board members had on how this the current report that we're hearing tonight, any questions that are out there and then things related to the potential letter that we send back to the committee. So, one consideration I would like to propose is uh using our our um another resource that's internal to our own community and that's our gender equity committee that meets um monthly. It might be an additional lens specific though connecting to our own community, our own student body. So is that something that for example would get

030listed in this letter as a as one of our expected resource touch points? That's what I would propose. Okay. So I I have I have some thoughts on this. I I'm generally supportive of it of the idea of giving specific questions that we want answered um from this committee. The the thing that I'm concerned about is it it's starting to run the risk that the framework of this committee is getting flipped. like this is an advisory committee that is supposed to advise the board and it's it's starting to feel a little upside down if we start advising the committee how they should be advising us. It it starts to feel a little bit backwards to me. So I I'm a little bit reluctant to give too much directive on saying this is this is the

031manner in which I think you guys should go about your task that we've delegated to you. I'm definitely okay with clarifying what it is we're asking them to do, like the questions we want answered. I think that's a a good thing and would be helpful, but I guess that's kind of the reluctance that I'm feeling. I would just add one kind of detail, I guess, and maybe some concern on why there was some specificities specifically around uh LGBTQ community. And I think the state mandate does not that's not an inclusive part of what the state mandate asks. And so that's a missing piece. We've got other parts to whether it's clergy or community members and defined by that. But I just want to recognize that as of right now as a queer parent with queer

032a queer student in the district. I think that lens um is something that we need to have inspiration for looking at this. This is incredibly important. um just my own personal experience in being queer, I knew and very early on and there was no support for me as a student. So I think that in addition to um politically where we are as a nation really targeting trans and the LGBTQ community and students, I think it would be helpful to have that lens. I think kind of to your point, Joe, um the the part that I found interesting with this process is coming into this as something that the board owns in terms of what decisions we want to make around this, right, given the state statute, etc., but also learning as as you all are

033learning. I don't know what goes into our curriculum. So, I I feel a bit like this is encapsulating sort of the learning we've done as a board along with you. Um, so maybe it's just kind of in the way it's framed and sort of packaged, but I feel like this is a reflection of what we've thought about and reflected because of the work your committee is sharing with us. So I hope it's a reflection back more so than a directive. And again, maybe it's just playing with the semantics of it. Um, but that's kind of how I see a bit of the pieces reflected here is things that we've now started to be curious about and wanting to ensure that those questions get considered and pondered as we hear back from the committee about where

034our current status is with our curriculum. I will say I appreciate the clarity and um giving us a clear target because we certainly could explore and there's lots of different avenues we could go down. So having these um bullet points does allow us to continue to focus our work and bring back the information that the board needs to make decisions to share with us so that we can move on to our next step. So I mean it is very helpful for us um as we continue this work. And even hearing kind of the summary of where you all are after just last week's meeting, that's super helpful, too, to kind of start to feel you all coming into some kind of poignant takeaways. Um, because I recognize how much this has been for your committee.

035So, thank you for your representation tonight, sharing updates and just being a part of this work. Other sentiments from board members about just kind of anything at the moment, and we'll try to get a direction to Nate officially here on the letter that's been put together. No, I agree. I agree with Joel. I think that for me, some of my hang-ups are just semantics. Like I agree with asking questions. Um, fundamentally, we're just asking like, how is what we got working and what do you think we're missing? And then there's a lot of other language dressing it up, I guess. But yeah. So, I think I heard in addition to the resources, if that's something Nate, you're okay to add. And then I guess I just have a general question. There's officially one more meeting

036this school year, which was sort of the frame that was provided of let's see kind of how this review of curriculum goes through May. Do you want to just give a sense of kind of in general where the progress is and how things may look after that last meeting in May? So we um as we invited the participants um we wanted to give them some idea of what their time commitment what their time commitment for this year would be but that by no way shapes um the end of this committee. Um there is no end until you all tell us that there's an end. So this is the last meeting for this year. However given our charge we will continue until the work is done in terms of the review. So just in terms of

037that we're talking about again just a reflection back to the board about where we currently are. So then once we receive the letter um then we do have another meeting for this year. However, we will then be able to give some guidance and direction moving on into next year. So, I don't know that we need a formal vote, but I'm happy to do a vote in terms of the letter headed back to the committee. Nate, any insights on that or Yes, you can move to vote to send the letter as is. You can move to vote to send the letter with the addition mentioned by Chris. You can move to vote to send the letter. Um, removing the formal directive questions. It's absolutely Yeah, with that, I might just open it up to a motion

038then to see kind of where folks are landing. Well, maybe before we get there, just to talk it out a little because I'll I'll say where I'm leaning. Um, I don't like making a directive to tell our own advisory committee what resources they should consider. I'm okay with keeping it in there as it is, but just changing it to a recommendation. I I I'm comfortable with that like to say these are resources that we you know think ought to be considered but you know we've convened this committee for a reason so you guys use your judgment and then also please answer these specific questions we've asked including questions about how our curriculum handles inclusion and is consistent with our equity framework which are important questions to ask. Um that would be where where I'm at

039right now. I have a bit of a question. Maybe it's the resources that are listed here. Are these like local resources for us or local groups? Um, I'm not so sure about the last one, Adam. That last one I know is something that we reviewed or the committee reviewed during the recent Well, I'm assuming the last one has to do with the open source curriculum that because of the three Rs there. Yes. So, I'm assuming that that's on there because it's local as in other local school districts are referencing that material. Oh, let me So, I guess I should be clear like these these resources um none of these came from the committee. None of these came from facilitators. They only came from board members um during past meetings. Same thing with these questions. There's

040all all these questions and these resources. They were presented by board members as a you should take a look at this. But without the directive of the full board, it does exist as a suggestion rather than a direct or at least the majority of the work. If there's a support to amend to what Joe's reflecting in regards to recommendations versus directive, I'm supportive of that as well. Um, I think that makes sense. And I think the only concern for me again was when we look at things from an equity lens, we ask who's missing from the table and those communities who might be most impacted. And so that was really the the frame that I wanted to bring in in consideration. But the other part of that is I've also heard from families around that

041specific piece missing and being more inclusive around that aspect. So um if there's support I would move to change the letter to reflect Joe's um uh change that it is a recommendation including the gender. Yeah. Thank you. So I did hear there is a motion on the table to adjust the language to be recommendation versus directive with the addition of the added resource of the gender inclusion committee being another um resource for the committee to reflect with. I did hear a second. Any further discussion from the board? So I will note there is we don't have anything in the agenda explicitly stating board action on this. So if we need to make any adjustments in accordance to that because we are moving to take an official motion and a vote though that was not reflected

042in the agenda. Just if you're going to take a vote I would table it. I'm looking at me not to dismiss this question coming from you but because we didn't list this on the agenda as taking a formal vote. Um you can still vote on it um or you can table it again. Okay. So legal looking for the legal ease then looking for insights from the board if there's space to have further reflection. We move for a vote. I think we can go. I think we I think we have to I think we should vote. Okay. So there's a motion from Christopher and a second from Meredith. All those in favor of the motion to adjust directive to recommendation, keep the questions and adding the gender inclusion committee as part of our references or resources

043signify with I. I. Any opposed? Okay, we're learning. Thanks for being patient with me, too, as we learn about all these things that board members are responsible for. And thank you again for time, resources, insights. We appreciate all of you. Thank you. Thank you. See you again next month. All right, moving on to our district library plan progress report. Looks like a solid library team coming to join us this evening. Hello. Hi. Hi. Thanks for having us. Okay. Thanks for being here. Yes, we're excited to be here tonight. Annually, we get to share out about our district library plan. Just a small portion of the work that our amazing librarian team across the district is doing. So, last year at this time, um, please, our district librarian, came before you and set some goals. So,

044tonight we'll be sharing out the progress we've made on those goals, as well as the continued next steps. I'm excited that we also have Andrea Fry, our librarian at Glacier Edge here representing the important work with the team and even some some other team members in the audience. So excited to be able to share the important work that our librarians are doing to support our work throughout the district tonight. Thank you. So we appreciate giving this chance to do this. Um, as a team we really do find that our district library guides our work and it really works in conjunction with what are the goals that we have as our district. At our last meeting, we kind of talked about like what do we want our libraries to be seen? How do we want our

045students to kind of be able to use it? And the words that came out were welcome, seen, included, safe place for all, for inquiry, for learning about themselves, and really getting that opportunity to push that a library is for everybody. So, I think you'll see that as we go through that this is what our goals are. As mentioned, we oops, we have this is a part of um our Wisconsin administrative code. We are in the middle of our three-year cycle. Next year will be our last. Good evening. Um, our libraries are all grounded in service to our students and staff of our school district. We have eight librarians as part of our library team pictured on the slide. We have a wonderful team collaborates regularly together. We have nine school libraries for 11 schools. Over

0465,800 students are served and over 890 staff are supported. As a district, our library patrons have access to over 125,000 books that are available in our libraries. They also have access to Sora, our Wisconsin schools digital library consortium for ebooks, digital audio, and magazines. Also, access to many databases that students use for research. So we have created a district library plan with three goals. The first is around collection development. The second is around standards and our third is literacy and library connections. So our first really focuses on collection development and collection development at every level from books to the digital to really making sure that our collection represents um the current needs that we have of our students. breaking it down, we have um four sub goals underneath this one. And the first one is

047really looking at developmental practices. We have a district um budget of over $447,000. That's money given to us from the state that we have uh qualifications that we need to spend. But with that, we really try to make our intentionality known with what we are doing. Um, we worked hard at getting uh work around our fairy tales and folktales to really make sure that representation. It's an area that doesn't get updated very often and so we wanted to make sure that we were not um we just wanted to make sure that our pictures looked well. We also worked on adding Arabic books in the high school as one of our bigger things and then continue to work with new vendors as we go through. Um we noticed that uh it's been a little slow in

048in publishing for the last couple years, but this last two years we've seen a big push in diversity of authors, diversity of publishers who are willing to do more of the small group work and with that we are expanding what we have. Second part of it really focuses around selection and deselection. So, um, deselection means that the books are no longer in a space that they're good for us or they're good for the students anymore. So, as a team, we've deselected over 8,500. So, this was a couple weeks ago to add a little bit more. And we've added over a thousand books this year. So, oh, thank you. 10,000. It feels like a thousand, but 10,000. Appreciate that. Still more coming. And still more coming. Yep. Um our third part is really looking at databases

049and last year we worked on coming up with a guide to evaluate our data databases. So with that we looked at factsite and go this year we've also added swank and then we continue to look at new vendors and as we've gone through the new uh language arts curriculum we're finding some gaps and so we're trying to find some databases to best support um on a K6 K8 um levels for that. And then the last part is collaborate collaborating with the district school and our VA leadership. And this is really connecting at the public library. This is connecting um around how are we sharing access for all of our students um because we still have some gaps where we have groups of kids who are are not always able to um get the services they

050need and how we make sure that we can provide that. And then we're also looking at ways that we can be more flexible with our spaces and with the ways that we deliver instruction. And this is just all of these pictures are the kids with their books doing doing what we're hoping to do and enjoying what we have. And then the bigger statistic at the top is what we have for books currently in the district. Average age of those content is 2014 pretty darn good. So all right, our second goal is around the standards and the goal states that our Ron area school district librarians will complete our work around the districtwide library standards and K through5 curriculum. And the first part of the goal um was to develop K5 curriculum and a scope and

051sequence. and we have finished that main the main part of that up with um connecting our work to the American Association of School Library standards. We are working on refining our I can statements and we are also working on connecting our lessons to our school district's digital citizenship curriculum and we have required lessons as part of that that we teach our students in the library with digital citizenship skills. Our second the second part of this goal is to collaborate and co-e with our teachers in our buildings and we have led staff development on our resources and databases. We have connected our library resources and lessons with our students to our new language arts and social studies curriculum and research projects that our students are engaging in. We're helping get them the resources they need and

052teaching them research skills. and we have begun a project with surrounded around the work of act 266 um which is all about integrating AAPI which stands for AsianAmerican Pacific Islander resources to support our students learning and our last goal is wonder oh that's you go ahead and then our third goal is um around literacy and library connections Our librarians will strengthen student, staff, family, and community literacy and library opportunities. The first part of this goal is to strengthen collective connections between literacy and libraries. We hosted our third annual district-wide battle of the books field trip day here at the high school with over 500 students participating pictured on the slide. Our teams did very well overall in state competition across the district and our Verona area high school team placed first in the state of

053Wisconsin. Amazing kids. This is an an absolutely amazing program that we have um helped facilitate for our students that they thoroughly enjoy. Um, we also have our Bazd Reads book handout, which is what we do for family connection engagement. In the summer, we give out books to students and families. And we also have had the last couple of years a district-wide bookmark competition, um, which we use to help teach our students about copyright and creativity. And we had gifted you all some of those bookmarks this evening. And we also, um, do summer book checkout for all of our students and staff. They can check out up to 10 books for the summer. And we also had our first virtual author visit this year as part of our battle of the books program which was very

054wonderful and successful and enjoyed. And we hope to have more of those author visits in the future. The second part of this goal is to strengthen individual site connections between literacy and libraries. And some of the the things that we have done are to have guest readers in our schools. um have special activities to promote ant libraries during National Library Week. Thanks for the support around that and some nice social media and Marcy visiting our libraries was so nice. Um we also have partnered with the Madison Reading Project and the public libraries connected with authors and we offer personalized book bundles for summer reading. You can see some of the activities that have been happening in our schools and library spaces on the slide. And this continues to show the the differences that we have

055that we are trying to do. And then last, what is our work for next year and the true sense of it for goal number one, which is collection development. Continue to work and examine our collections. So, this is an ongoing, always needed um opportunity. We're going to continue to um work on our representation in our libraries and really make sure we're looking at it through multiple lenses. Working on making sure our students are be able are able to access our libraries and then continue to look at our databases. Um for that, goal number two is expanding collaborative co-eing opportunities. We are just still getting our foot in there and as we continue to learn the curriculum better and and have ours, we're finding our natural connections and how we can be supportive. And then um

056wanting to go back to our elementary curriculum and seeing if this is if it matches what we thought and what gaps potentially we have. And then the last one is strengthen our connection with literacy. It's it's an ongoing thing. So with that, that is the end of that. Do you have any questions that we can answer for you on district library plan? Well, I'll get that to you because you know I might touch that. Can you just remind me what happens then after next year at the end of next year, right? That's the end of this cycle like what does this work mean the updates for us seeing this work transparent for the district is so amazing. What does the work mean for you all? Then as we're going to come up with another three-year

057goal and we'll come back to you and say here's what we believe our goals to be and and you'll have to say yes or no and then we submit it to the state again. So we'll just start a brand new cycle. All right. But that can be a continuation of existing goals that we're working on. Absolutely. Can be. Yep. They could look somewhat the same. Yep. really appreciated that the library team has really um embraced our curriculum review process. As you see, they've worked really closely with language arts and social studies curriculum to make sure that the library resources match and enhance the curricular resources that we're adapting in the classroom. Later tonight, you'll hear about secondary science materials. And it's awesome to know we have a library team that will come right alongside with

058us after we make those decisions and make sure that our libraries also further enhance those experiences. So, hope to see those goals continue in the next Thank you for all your excitement and energy and the co-eing, right, the developing just the whole all of the learning and teaching that happens in our spaces. Please send our gratitude to all of the library staff. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for your support. All right, moving on to some budget, finance, and operations updates. a nice revolving table this evening with all sorts of expertise and insights today. Greetings, Chad, Pete, and Michelle. Hello, Verona Board of Education. Good to see you guys tonight. Uh we have two, I think, very related um updates here for the school board tonight. Uh and we have previewed both of these

059both through your approval of us moving to Dean SSM Health for our uh health insurance provider uh and the budget update that Pete and I gave you I believe at the last board meeting in terms of all the kind of interrelated parts uh we have going on here tonight. Um, I'm actually going to turn things over to Michelle to start because we first wanted to make sure the board had a little deeper understanding of our proposed plan for an on-site health clinic. Uh, the why in terms of what we're doing with it and kind of some of the moving pieces logistically. Uh, and then we have a budget amendment we're asking for board to approve tonight. uh that uh actually does tie right back into uh the defeasance vote we did at the last board

060meeting. We've got some funding sources we want your approval for in hopes that you'll support the on-site clinic. Um so I'm going to turn it over to Michelle. We're certainly excited to answer questions if you folks have anything any questions regarding the on-site clinic. We're quite frankly just excited about the possibility of this becoming a reality for all of our staff here and families in the near future. Yeah. So tonight we're hoping to share a little bit on the path that we've taken since we came to a couple of months ago with the board approval to switch to Dean Health Plan. As a part of Dean coming in and starting a relationship with us, um they also provided some opportunities for an on-site or nearsight clinic available to our employees. And really, this would be

061for us to continue to find innovative ways to um increase our overall health of our employees, focusing on the the wellness part of our strategic framework, as well as helping us find a better way to stabilize our insurance premiums year-over-year. So, it's a it's a a both and. Um so tonight we're going to hear about the work that we've done up to this point on what a clinic would look like including what we would say is a 1.2 um AP advanced practitioner that would support the clinic uh 1.0 medical assistant as well as a 6 behavioral health provider that would be available to our employees and their immediate family members. Can while you're Can we We had a Can we clean that up into our community language? They don't know what 1.6 means. Oh, yeah.

062Yeah. So 1.2 would be a fulltime AP and then another person that would be available for one day a week. So 1.2 FT. So that would allow the clinic to remain open from about 7:00 in the morning until well after 5:00 in the evening. Dr. Z. And then the only other piece I'll add is the board will really have three cracks at the at the approval process here. Uh tonight we're asking you for a budget amendment related to the construction of the space. Once that moves forward, hopefully we will actually build into the 2526 budget the staffing related to the on-site clinic. And then the in between piece will be you approved the monies to build the clinic. We'll actually have to bring it back to the board to have you approve the actual construction.

063Uh so you'll have three steps along the way that we'll need your approval for this. Um this is really the first downward to follow this evening. Chair, I'm going to hand this over to you because you talked a little bit about the budget piece. Sure. So, we uh what we've got up here is a sample floor plan of of what uh Dean essentially presented to us when we kicked off this project. Uh Michelle and I and a number of team members uh both from the district and from dean uh are meeting with uh meeting as a team on a weekly basis to keep this moving. Uh this will be a substantial project when it's done. uh and this was kind of their idealistic floor plan in terms of um uh spaces that the clinicians would

064need uh to meet with our staff and staff's families. We have done some initial estimates in terms of the renovation uh costs and we believe that will be somewhere between $500 and $700,000 uh until we are to the spot that we've officially named a spot in the district that we're renovating. Uh and we have a full uh plan to move forward with. We will not have an exact dollar amount. the related budget amendment that we're recommending to you tonight. Uh we would essentially put money into John Bremer's budget uh that did not exist when we drafted the 20 the 2425 budget that's held aside for this. In the event that we brought this project home for $450,000 and had money left in John's budget, that is not money that will go to waste. Uh we

065have uh uh John's work working on a roofing plan right now for a leaky roof section at Badger. Uh there are roofs that continue to need to be repaired, windows and parking lots. Um and our facilities will certainly be able to use any additional savings we find from uh the construction and renovation of this space. Uh so that's our initial plan is essentially providing a funding source for you to approve the spend down the road. That's helpful. Relle, the the bottom piece I do want Michelle to speak to because this does have to do with what we believe I think in a nutshell Relle and I have said all along uh if this was a budgetneutral long-term investment or even had a slight budget uh ad in terms of us having to spend more resources

066on it, I think we'd still be here recommending that we would do this. um in terms of convenience, in terms of uh ease of care, in terms of our staff members being able to hop on a prep period uh to run to an on-site clinic and get back to class and not have to take a half a day sub uh to do it. Uh but these are examples that that Dean provided us in terms of potential savings when it comes to claims reduction down the road. Uh if we really get good at this, incentivize employees and families to use it. every time someone goes here and does not go to urgent care, that is a claim that does not hit our books when it's renewal time. And that's the big idea other than it just

067being an amazing convenience for our staff and families. And so when you think about return on investment, we talk about the buildout piece. Um, but there's also an ongoing piece that we are contracting with Dean SSM. So, it is expected that we budget and hold back about $700,000 every year and we cut a check to SSM for the operational piece of the work. So, that is paying the people that they hire, um, tying into the Epic system, uh, the facility usage of lab supplies and the beds, all of those pieces we're paying SSM to manage. So, when you think about that, that's a cost that's going out the door immediately. But like Chad said, on the back end, every time someone uses the clinic for health care, there's no claim that's associated with it to

068our health insurance plan. And so there's an immediate return on investment there when we see our claims go down. And what Dean is projecting is that in the next four years, we should see a 10% reduction in claims. That will help us negotiate our renewals a whole lot better. On top of that, there's other savings like Chad said, um, for staff missing work that should be minimized now because they should be able to quickly drive to the clinic and we have less lost time in our classrooms. We're also seeing other pieces of the puzzle that are really good returns. Um, new employee physicals and onboarding. Our new employees are going to be going to these providers and making relationships when they join the clinic and they join the school district. So we've got relationships built

069already. We will see workers comp claims hopefully go through there which lowers our workers comp claims. So there is a large return on investment on top of the 10% savings that is projected to see within our insurance plan that increases the overall wellness of the district holistically just immediately off the top. So just quick before we move off that off that slide, just reiterating that the sample floor plan you've showed is sort of something that we are getting as like this is what an ideal space would look like, but location is TBD. This is really just the initial movement from us as a board to be able to give you permission potentially to start using the funds that would be necessary to keep going down this path. This is just a hey, an ideal space

070would reflect this kind of floor plan. Exactly. Right. So when we meeting with Dean, they've essentially said they've done these in anywhere from 1,200 to about 2,000 square foot spaces. Uh they said, "Here's what we need for the staff where we need a receptionist. Here's what a computer closet looks like and the square footage we'll need. Here are the rooms that need sinks. here's an area that we might need for um staff to break away and and meet have individual meetings uh with uh the folks that are coming in and gave us and really what they call a program in the construction world and you hand this over to a team of designers. Here are the non-negotiables in terms of what's going to make this work. Um and that's that's really where we're at right

071now in terms of cost estimating to renovate a couple of the spaces we're looking at. Um, next time we're here with the board, uh, we will share where where we ended up in terms of our recommendation with the space we're going to renovate. I think we're close to that. Um, we're continuing to kind of have behind the scenes meetings with um, a design team and a contractor uh, to hone in on which one's going to be the most cost effective and which one's going to work the best um, in terms of displacing people. Uh, this will not be new square footage in our district. This will be a place that we already own and need to renovate and essentially turn into our own little mini urgent care, our own little mini clinic in the district.

072So, this is this will have like healthc care standards uh built into it when we redo the space. A couple things that I'm just curious about. Um if we're building this inside presuming the high school, that we're looking at No. Okay. I guess that's going to be a big reveal when we're ready. So that may be where my question will land once there's a reveal, right? Yeah. Um we and we'll be um part of the board approval when we come back to uh recommend the construction project. I guess in essence will also be the site. Um but we're we're confident that that the two that we honed in on are going to work in either spot. Um, and again, uh, we we're keeping in mind what's going to be best for our staff, but also

073at the same time, uh, we have to make sure that we're not, uh, taking away student programming space that couldn't be replicated, uh, well, when when we do it. So, I think we're almost there. Yeah. So, just that that does kind of lead into just like in broadstrokes, I want to make sure that we're not introducing, you know, any security issues. um if we're having this open to family members that there is dedicated entrance exits. That is all part of what we're actually talking about with Dean every every week that they're pushing on where's handicap accessible parking. How are you making sure this space is isolated from the rest of whatever else is going on uh in the space that you renovate. And Dean has Michelle's next slide uh will show this. They've successfully implemented

074this in a number of school districts around the space around the state with essentially this kind of standard uh that they're continuing to push on. So they'll have heavy input on the um the design in the end and what it looks like. So one thing I would just imagine that if people are listening to this and we're talking about having a medical clinic inside somewhere in our district, we're not introducing illness and germs into a space filled with children. So we can rest assured we are not doing that. Very careful. Yes. Okay. Um the other thing do we have some guarantees from Dean that um future premiums will reduce based on number of claims? No, it's almost impossible to get. Yeah, that's been um I think they're actually sick of me asking that question. Uh

075in the um world of healthcare uh and we have got I think a couple of board members who live in this world as well. uh they will tell you it is uh it's impossible for them to project two or three years in the future uh in terms of the cost of healthcare. Uh that next year there could be a brand new medicine to treat a certain disease that someone in our school district gets that could be uber expensive that isn't we insure for and we have no idea what year three looks like in terms of our claims and they will never give us any guarantee in terms of what that looks like. I think it gives us leverage when it's our time to renew a contract with Dean uh that look at how well we're

076running in terms of our claim rate compared to where they projected us. And that's the best we can do at this point. They will point us to other school districts that have seen a reduction or a flattening of claims when it compares to other school districts that have not gone forward with an on-site clinic. Um so that's that is the best we could squeeze. I like I I'm like, Michelle, can we just get them if we have 7,000 visits at this clinic next year that the guarantee on the dotted line is going to be a 5% reduction? They won't touch it. Um because in their world, they just have too many unknowns uh that they will give us any guarantee, but we're kind of been locked in with the if we're putting this type of

077capital investment. I mean, realistically, not not necessarily. We don't know what this landscape looks like in four, five, six years. Uh if we felt like we had to go back out to competitive RFP uh because Dean's rates uh we didn't feel like they were giving us a fair shake, uh we could write into the RFP uh that we've already had this set up. Uh we already have we've already proven that this is a valuable asset. Write us an RFP with this part of a package. Um so I think that's in the mix as well. That's great to know. Thank you. And I think just the other uh the other investment returns that we're seeing from um subs and time and travel and all that employee units. Yeah, there's a there's just a huge piece of

078just staff wellness in general to this. Um so that we will certainly have to work with probably Sydney Peach and Michelle likely Marcy and likely many others will have to put together plans for incentivizing uh folks to use this space. Uh we met with uh the some prairie wellness coordinator uh just last week and that's almost all she does uh is try to push usage at the on-site clinic for various reasons to promote staff wellness. Thank you. But to make sure I'm understanding, there's no there's no impact on our medical benefit spend until renewal time. These are two completely separate contracts. Um the clinic is through as I said insurance is through Dean. So narrative to your question if if down the road Dean were to change we still have the contract potentially with the

079onsite clinic to still run simultaneously. Right. What I was asking is there's no connection in like years one through four of our agreement with dean that reduction in our claims impacts what right so you already touched on this but I just want to make sure I'm hearing this so and I think this is a good idea but so we're talking about spending say $500,000 to $700,000 to build it. We have numbers from Dean that show that the outlaying of expenses that they would do over 10 or over four years is 10% about $4 million. We would see a benefit when we potentially renegotiate our contract with them. And the only way to see if we're getting a return on investment on this is if we can get some kind of data presumably from Dean that

080shows that the clinics that they've dealt with that or the the the organizations that they've dealt with that have on-site clinics on aggregate have a lower increase than their other clients might have had in the same years. That is true. Michelle, let me take a let me take a run at answering this question and you can check me for my understanding. Uh, so number one, on an annual basis, we built into the dean contract that there's a rate cap that they can't raise our rates any more than 7% I believe it was. Uh but that is an annual discussion we have with one of the pieces of evidence they use to bump up against that 7.9% cap is here's the money you paid dean SSF Health. Here's how much it cost to ensure your school

081district. And if those numbers the magic number in that world is 90%. Uh and if if we are running over 90% that gives them evidence to say Chad it's 5% this year because you cost us more to ensure then you paid Dean. If we are if we are on the other end of that and running at 87% that is 13% profit and that gives our team an opportunity to say we should be a zero uh this next year because you ran a profit of 13%. Uh and you do not there's no way we should be anywhere in the neighborhood of 7%. Um that's kind of the annual game of cat and mouse uh that goes with negotiating a healthcare contract. And from a healthc care contract negotiation standpoint, we cannot see individual claims on what's

082driving our health care rates. So we don't know, you know, so and so had a heart attack. What we see is our total aggregate for what we get from the clinic is we will get more detailed information on the clinic side. not specifically who is visiting but the number of office visits seen the types of claims that are avoided and some of the preventative maintenance or preventative things that have happened so we can take that data back to dean to say here are all the things that we've already been able to manage in the clinic that is not counting towards all of the claims that need process for us. Question as we're talking about this just the um convenience for staff having a clinic on site. What's the status of the uh Dean South campus?

083I think that's fairly convenient too. I just don't want something to be built here and then be obsolete because of a specialty center. I believe that will that will eventually happen. So from our understanding actually at IDAC uh the um Dean SSM Health is working through the permitting process to do that build. I think there's a few little check boxes in terms of traffic flow and eventual expansion of that intersection that's kind of right there uh that they're still working through with the city of Verona. Uh but we they haven't told us anything but it's it's full steam ahead and eventually will exist. Uh we also uh we believe that that is um in some ways a double win. Uh that in the city of Verona uh we'll have um access both with our on-site

084clinic uh and being assessment health that will have a much more wellbuilt out um you know opportunity to get care outside of what we could do at an on-site clinic. So we we believe it's it's a good thing. And the on-site clinic is actually set up to be a $0 co-pay when someone visits the on-site clinic. And if you go into Dean, it's a $20 co-pay. So, we are incentivizing folks to come to the on-site clinic as a no cost option rather than a cost option if they were to go to the dental clinic. And after talking to some Prairie's wellness coordinator, there will also be much more kind of ease of use. My guess would be you're not calling and getting a touchtone map. Uh for this option, press nine. Uh you're going to

085get a person. Uh and you're going to say, "Here's my prep. When's the next two times in the next couple of days you can squeeze me in." And then you actually our goal is you'll build a relationship with medical care providers that work in our school district, understand our work, and actually begin to know our 900 employees and families. um and that we we believe that will happen as well. So on the next slide, which we can't see up on the screen just yet, is um some of the successes that Dean and SSM have had within Dne County and within their network. So specifically within Dne County, there are three other school districts that have built out on-site nearsight clinics that have been wildly successful. Sun Prairie School District, Wani Wanaki Community School District, and

086the Middleton Cross Plains Area School District all have these on-site clinics. We've reached out to them, have asked them lessons learned, things that we should know, and have received um amazing reviews from all three school districts. Specifically, Chad's mentioned Karen a little bit from Sun Prairie. Sun Prairie is kind of the leader in their on-site clinic, and we had Karen just provide a short little quote. And I think the the piece that stands out to me is she says that their clinic strengthens their ability to negotiate healthcare costs through claims avoidance and lowered medical loss ratios. She states that um the clinic has saved them $450,000 per year over the last couple of years. And she calls it a cornerstone in both employee well-being and financial sustainability. And those are things that I think we

087can feel comfortable saying with Wanke and Middleton Crossplanes as well as well as many of the other clinics that they've seen in partnership with other school districts. Um, so we've talked a little bit about what this looks like holistically. I think there's some important pieces to also think about as this relationship potentially moves forward. There are things that SSM is going to manage that we have no control over. That's the staffing of the clinic. It's the clinic model. It's the appointment structure. It would be the technology that the school district will not have access to medical records. That is that is through Epic. That is completely handsoff from us. Um and then kind of that invoicing piece. What we get to control is really the eligibility piece. Who has access to the clinic? Um the

088clinic and wellness opportunities. Um, we've learned that there are great opportunities to do wellness days. A derm day, a blood pressure day, a men's health day, a women's health day. Those are all things that we would partner with the clinic on. Um, all of those operations pieces. The collaboration is the most important piece. And I think we um haven't stressed enough how important it is to find the right providers that are hired for this space. And so while SSN will be responsible for hiring, we get to be a part of the process. So we get to help um mold the way that we want the providers to work. What who are we looking for in a provider that will support our employees? How do we want them to interact with our employees? How do we

089want them to reach out to employees during downtime and during those times where we're really thinking more proactive than reactive? Those are all the exciting pieces that make this such a success for us. Um the the things that I think are important to also align to is our work with Hey, check it out. Um operations expectations and results policies. We know a wellness clinic um focuses on our strategic framework. It focuses on our equity framework. It focuses on the financial piece. There are so many pieces of this puzzle that holistically make us a better district. And so for us, we're asking tonight for the board approval for the budget amendment. We still have to do a couple of things. We have to finalize the location. Um we have to continue to work with you for

090the budget amendments. We have to build in those ongoing costs. We have to sign a contract with SSM. Um we have to figure out the construction piece. And then really the biggest piece is communicating once we're ready to communicate. What's a reasonable timeline for all of this to be done? Michelle would like that ribbon cutting in August. John Bremer attends these meetings and there's some eye rolling and some teeth gritting. So I I think I think we're hope we're hoping sometime in the fall. Um so we're uh we have a tactician that is leading this from the dean side and she is a very good project manager. Um we we're going to we're going to do it as quickly as possible to test the quality and we get to be sure we follow all the

091right steps. Another question you have on here that we get to control who's eligible to go. Does that mean that we could allow staff members who don't participate in our health insurance to use the That's correct. Interesting. [Music] exciting. I have a clarification maybe a bit on ongoing costs and then just I guess looking at that slide 40 about staffing and the hiring. So early on we were talking FTE and we got a little clarification but I think I wrote down what you said and it's approximately threeish total humans right full-time humans that would need to be staffing this. So are we paying their salaries SS? So can you just clarify kind of where that they send us a bill for the staffing? So So they are SSM employees uh and we are paying them.

092It's it's contracted service almost like hiring bus driver that got it. We have some control and they make sure it's the right fit but we would pay SSM and then obviously keeping the lights on doing all the things right of any other of our sites. We have the ongoing cost of just having that space protocols and all that type of stuff. Yep. Got it. Okay. And I'm guessing those will be more concrete numbers as well as we continue going because right now we're just talking about the physical construction of the site that we're talking going on behind the scenes. Nate Roelle are negotiating a potential contract in terms of maximum percentage of staff salary on an annual basis and everything else. And so again, there's there's lots of moving pieces behind the scenes, but we'll

093get it all in a tight package by So, as board members, we can feel fairly comfortable that this is one piece of an ongoing budgetary conversation that's being talked about for what this obviously means full on in terms of commitment and the fact that you sign off on the healthcare contract, you sign off on every purchase over $250,000, and you approve the budget. Um, you guys will have multiple cracks at making sure that it's exactly like we we all all want it to be. All right, Dr. C gave me the look. We've got a long night ahead of us. Are there any other questions? All right, we're gonna move on to the budget amendment piece. I'm hoping the board can follow me with this slight change. Uh this is the exact slide we used uh

094when we had the board approve a defeasence for debt management related on capital debt. Uh as a reminder, we had about $6 million set aside uh with fund 39 fund balance money that we carry over on a basis that can only be used for capital spending uh for the purpose of managing pre-approved referendum debt. and we recommended an $800,000 fund 10 transfer that was originally built into the 2425 budget. That was prior to us getting the project kicked off with Dean SSM Health and them telling us this is likely a $500 to $700,000 buildout. Um, and we needed to make sure we had money in the budget to do it. Uh so tonight we're actually recommending a different funding source for that $800,000. Uh instead of using fund 10, which is spendable money we can

095use any way we want, uh we're actually recommending we use more of the fund 39 fund balance if all of you are following me. Uh so this is a U and this is again in our budget book on an annual basis. Uh to start the year, we had a $5.5 million fund balance in fund 39. We're we're recommending after um our levy this year and all of the moving pieces related to tonight's budget amendment uh that we would end up finishing this year with a projected $4.3 million fund balance uh in fund 39. Uh and that would include uh the payment on the debt defense and the additional $800,000 that we're recommending this evening that would not come from fund 10 would come from fund 39. I'm going to try to beat you to a

096couple questions. Uh why do we hold on to a fund 39 fund balance? One of the main reasons we continue to do this in the event in the future the board needed tools to manage our levy. we have some one-time funding to pay down capital debt and make our at minimum required debt payments. This could come in handy down the road if we ended up going back to referendum and had to build out a debt schedule that was waiting for property value to catch up to the board wanting to level out our no rate. meaning uh that we could put a little bit more money towards a scheduled debt payment because we've built up a little bit of fund balance. Uh so we're we feel very good about the spot we're in with our fund

09739 fund balance and we feel very comfortable recommending spending that additional $800,000. Uh we do have a few other uh budget amendments uh that we are going to go through rather quickly that we're going to ask the board to approve tonight. Um, and as a segue uh to this, um, I'll hand it over to Pete. Uh, this is essentially big buckets of money that are, um, ending up in a different spot this time of year than they were in October when the we asked the board to approve the original budget. You've already done one budget amendment this year. Uh, we we had TID come in, which is a new revenue source that we did not project in the 2425 budget for $360,000. We're here tonight to clean up a few other pieces in our budget

098to make sure we're as as accurate as possible when we get to July. Pete, I'll turn that over for a highle summary of what we're asking the board to approve tonight. All right, I've been up here a while. It's haven't talked in a while either, too. So, I got clear the throat. So, good evening, school board. Thank you and thanks for turning it over, Chad. Uh, one of the things we want to bring up about uh, budget transfers and budget amendments though is you're going to see a lot of school districts doing these um, strategic moves at this time of the year. And what they're doing is they're trying to estimate how school districts are going to end the year financially is what they're doing. So it it's it's good for the local uh taxpayers

099and organizations to know, but it also helps statewide too because everything that we through go through here on the budget, I report to DPI and then DPI does a equalization aid estimate on July 1st where they try to guess where everyone's aid's going to be. And our aid amount is about 26 27 million. So, it's a pretty sizable number out there. So, every bit of accuracy we can get out here, it's going to help everyone in in the state. So, hopefully all the school districts are listening in and hearing that right now. Um, first thing I want to talk about is the difference between a budget transfer and a budget revision because we we use the terms, we use them to mean the same thing, but they're not actually the same thing. Now, what what

100a transfer is is if um like a principal or someone who runs a department is just moving money around like um our award-winning Brian Cox um principal here. If he w if he wanted to move some money from his principal account to our other award-winning um teched department, I forgot the guy's name right now. So, if you wanted to move something there, that's a transfer. What that does, it doesn't change the amount of money that was allocated to the school. It doesn't change the amount of money that's in our whole budget. It doesn't change the revenues or expenses. Now, what we're looking at tonight is revisions. Now, revisions does change the bottom line. It's either it's a revenue, like Chad was saying, something we didn't expect to come in, or if there's expense that we

101just didn't know about. So, it does change the bottom line. So, if you look at the table on the right of the slide, you can see how the bottom line will be changing by um these proposed budget amendments. Um, I do want to point out though on the left side when I have a green arrow facing up and a red arrow facing down, that's a monetary transaction. That has nothing to do with what I think about Dean costs going down or something. So, thought that as I was sitting up here, we should put dollar signs there or something. So anyway, um there every everything that we are talking about for the revisions tonight was brought up a couple weeks ago when Chad and I were up here because we had talked about the special education

102aid. We don't think we're going to get as much as as we originally anticipated, but we're also going to be getting more interest earnings and more open enrollment money. So those will be canceling each other out. Uh the dean clinic, we just talked quite a bit about that. And I also have some revisions for cleaning up our defeasants, which by the way, that payment went out today. So, uh, we officially sent a large amount of money to, uh, prepay some debt just this morning. Uh, and also, um, doing a budget revision to fund 49. That's the fiber project that uh, Jason and his IT staff have been working on. Uh, we have a different way of of being able to account for that. So we're actually able to carry over some of that money so

103it can go over from year to year in 549 just based off of the way that uh the revenue source came through. So anyway that is it. Um the next slide I'm not going to read all of this because I yeah this is this is the detail. Yes, this the detail of everything that went in there. So this is the way DPI wants us to report our budget changes. So that uh simply what it is is it's broken out by the funds. There are four tables here. So you can see the four different funds that are being affected. So the only piece I'll add and then we'll turn it back over to the board. I believe is just in general good news. We projected an $8.5 million budget shortfall primarily from the land purchase. We

104passed the budget. Now that's down to 7.9 million with these fixes. That was one thing I wanted to touch base as we're looking at this. If I'm just watching this for the first time, haven't you been tuned in in meetings in the past? Yes. I'm now shocked because we're operating, you know, in the red. Can you clarify that, please? Yes, that was a planned deficit budget because we've built our uh fund balance up for one-time purchases like the Fitsburg land purchase. uh the the board approved this from the get-go uh that essentially we took uh $8.5 million of the district's savings account to buy another valuable asset that now is just land instead of cash. Um so that was a planned budget shortfall. That was the only time uh since I've been here that we

105haven't passed a balanced budget. Uh but uh we did so and Pete and I have hoped to be back up here at year end to tell you as usual we spun off one or two percent uh in terms of our annual budget and can make another two or three million uh deposit back into fund balance uh because we didn't run all of our budgets in the red throughout the year. Uh so that was a onetime purchase out of the district's savings account that we planned for. That's why it looks like that. And correct me if I'm wrong. If you subtract out the cost of the land purchase, we're actually running a surplus. We would be. Yes. Exactly right. Jan, we left you with a potential vote and I'll let work out the logistics there. While

106we have the team here, any additional questions from board members then because we are facing a vote then about the proposed budget amendment. Just to be clear, so what are we um when we're voting on we're voting on the amendment. So it's just really the transfer of funds. We're not voting approval on anything that other than just the So there will be more information coming when making that specific voted on that slide that had all those blue numbers previous. Yeah, Meredith, you will have a board approval for the Yeah, you'll have a board approval for the construction of the clinic and then you'll have the annual budget as well. But that is helpful because the language just strictly talks about the budget amendment with that shift from fund 39. Correct. Additional questions from the board.

107All right. Then I would accept a motion to approve the fiscal year 25 proposed budget amendment as presented. So move. Thank you, Joe. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Christopher. All those in favor of approving the proposed budget amendment from this evening signify with I. I. Any opposed? Okay. All right. We know we I'm positive the next two slides are going to take under two minutes under one minute. So this time of year we also are uh planning for our employee salaries for this upcoming year. Part of that is base wage negotiations which we are not talking about tonight. The other piece is additional compensation which is built into the handbook and a budget piece of this which is our annual step increase. Our annual step increases vary by employee type. So our VA

108employees um would typically see a 2% step increase. VESPA would be a 2% CTS is 2% and our administrators excluding the superintendent is a 1% step increase. But step increases because they are a budget ad is something that we need the board to approve. So tonight we are coming to you asking for preapproval to do the step increases for all of our staff excluding Dr. C and we will come back to that next month for him. And the reason why we're doing it early is because our teacher contracts go out on May 15th. And it would be great to be able to have the steps built into that as well as on July 1 to have all of our systems set up so if a step increase is approved, you don't have to worry about

109a retro payment down the road when the budget is approved down the road. Um you have historically approved step increases around this time of year. So this is not something different that we're coming forward to this year as in years past. Um so for us it's just going into that motion and we've got some language up here for the board to allow for that budget um amendment to be made early on so that we can do the steps for the people listening here. This was built into the five-year forecast. Pete and I shared with you uh last in terms of our budgets assumptions already. So we're we're we're comfortable this is an expense that we will be able to put into the 2526 budget. That was the clarification. This is technically going to land in

110the 2526 budget, but because of past practice, it's essentially a preview. Yeah, exactly. Y questions from board members. We will move to vote. I will just add um a comment that it's yes to honoring a year of service of our staff in the district. Just yes. So maybe you know how I'm going to vote, but okay. Uh if there are no further questions, then I would accept a motion to approve the fiscal year 26 proposed um service employee step increase as presented. So moved. Thank you, Corby. I will second. I realize I don't really first or second a whole lot because I'm facilitating, but I'm going to second that. All those in favor of approving the um employee step increases for the 2526 school year as presented signify with I. I. I. Any opposed? Okay.

111Thank you. Moving on to public comment. Anything I missed, Lori? I'm not aware of any public comment this evening. Okay. Thank you. So, then we'll continue into board action. We've obviously taken our first two votes if you're following along on the agenda. So, we're technically moving to um board action part C where we're going to be reviewing science monitoring report. So, we have another team coming to join us this evening. to check in on our progress in science. Greetings. Hello. Thank you for waiting. Sure. So, we're excited to be here tonight um as part of board action. We're here for actually the the monitoring report for science is scheduled for today. Um, so foreshadowing that that will be the action that we'll expect or we'll ask the board to take will be to assess our

112progress as it relates to our 2.1.3 our science monitoring report. As a reminder, our science monitoring report is currently in capacity building um and has been for several years. So on the actual monitoring report in the executive summary, you can see some of the leadership moves that we've been taking since the 22 23 school year when we began working to build capacity in the area of of science. You'll see here our on our slide we have our current state that we presented and at the bottom of that slide at this point last year when we were recognizing the lack of coherent instructional resources 68 the lack of aligned resources to support our multilingual learners and our students with IEPs. And then above that, you see the leadership moves um that we shared again a year

113ago that we were planning for in order to address those gaps and continue to build that capacity. And so we're excited to be here tonight. Um joined by Karen Spax Glover, our director of teaching learning innovation and Elise Hell and Steph Sims for curriculum planning specialists high school and Savan Oaks respectively, but have been key leaders in this work that have helped us um really lead this curriculum renewal team specifically for secondary science resources this year. At this point last year, we also made the important decision and the distinction that we were going to move forward with secondary science and not K12 science this current year because our K5 educators are currently implementing two new curricular resources this year in language arts and social studies. Our secondary educators are as well, but those are often

114different people based on our instructional design models. And so I'm going to turn it over to Karen and the team to walk you through the very thorough process that they went through to come to the recommendation that you're going to see today. And then at the end, you'll get the opportunity to vote on all of the steps that they took and whether that means adequate progress or reasonable progress for our monitoring report for science 2.1. All right. Good evening everyone. We are excited to walk you through our process for curriculum renewal specifically for secondary science as Amy said, middle school and biology, which is our universal 9th grade um science course. We began our work as we always do when we engage in curriculum renewal, making sure that we're grounded in clear commitments um that

115are aligned to our strategic framework for the Ronin Area School District. So, you see those five commitments there. Um, and in particular, we want to call out our our work of being standards aligned in curriculum instruction and everything that we do. So, you're going to see that theme repeating itself throughout the process. In addition, we wanted to um make sure that we spoke to the fact that we were aligned to our teaching and learning framework. We launched our teaching and learning framework this year for the Verona area school district and continue to find it to be a very robust and a useful resource for us both in the at the classroom level in terms of teaching and learning but also at this level of looking at resources and making decisions about what what those resources

116need to be for our students moving forward. I want to remind the board that three years ago, we had a team that engaged in a curriculum audit process. Annaise and Steph were a part of that process as well. The curriculum audit focused on the four core content areas of math, science, social studies, and English language arts. And those four questions that you see there were central to that curriculum audit process. We received feedback from teachers in those courses uh who teach those courses but also in the grade bands of K5 and 68 as well. The results from that audit for science um indicated that indeed science was an area where we needed to tend to um the need the resources for teaching the science standards. And so again those five items that you see listed

117there um were clear results from that audit. And you'll see that lack of repeated a number of times. So we had a lack of standards aligned resources and instruction, a lack of science essential standards assessed at each grade level to just make sure that the board understands what we mean by essential standards in the Vona area school district in core content areas and academic areas in general. We have been designing what we have been defining, excuse me, what are the essential standards in that core area from kindergarten to graduation. Um, so we're building that vertical alignment, looking at the standards first, thinking about resources later, making sure that we have that depth of understanding of the standards and that vertical alignment for kindergarten to 12th grade of what a student will be learning in terms

118of knowledge and skills. We also had that lack of coherence among greater alike schools. So we had that in inequity in terms of students maybe learning from one curriculum resource following one pacing guide, one scope and sequence at one school and then the same a similar school on the other side of town having a very different experience. We had no real universal curriculum for middle school. So hence our focus on middle school first this year as well as biology. and we had very few scaffolds for multilingual learners and students with IEPs. So those things surfaced as critical needs and that brought us to the process of getting to our curriculum resource model. The team for the science curriculum team is identified here. We had obviously 14 teachers, mostly secondary teachers, but I wanted to call

119out specifically that we also made sure that we had representation from our tweet program and also that we invited uh three uh K5 educators to join us. It goes back to what I was stating before that we're committed to vertical alignment. So, we didn't want secondary educators to be making decisions in absence of an elementary education focus and voice. and we were very grateful for their participation on the team and as a as a side note we will be looking at K5 science next year. So this was a way to ensure that we had that elementary voice there. Uh our process is very robust. Uh we begin in September and we end in February. This is the third curriculum resource renewal that we have done in the last two years. Social studies, language arts and

120science and quite honestly we're getting very good at it. Um so we're very proud of the process that we create and we um certainly came to some good results here. Um we also made sure that as we started to engage in this process that we went straight to the educators who are currently teaching these science courses in middle school and biology and asked them specifically for their feedback both to pressure test our own thinking about really where are the gaps and what are the needs according to the teachers who are closest to the work. And you can see some of the feedback that we got there. And then finally, I wanted to be sure that you just got to see this sort of overall schedule from September to January and February. But what's important to

121note in some ways is that we begin with depth of understanding of the science standards. and and what we want for all students to know and be able to do in the context of science instruction before we get to any looking any um any interest or any look at resources. We make sure that we are grounded in shared knowledge and shared understanding. And certainly before we make any recommendations to you, we make sure that we've gone through a thorough process including piloting the resources that we think are the most promising of classes. So I'm going to hand it off to Annaise who's going to walk you deeper into our process um and give you some evidence of our work. So this slide represents three um steps in our deepening of our understanding. We started with

122equity and specifically equity and science education. We started with our own equity framework and then you can see some of the other things that we referenced um including the national or the next generation science standards, the Wisconsin standards for science and some national publications um like a framework for K12 science education. Um next we looked very deeply at the Wisconsin science standards which are three-dimensional in nature and I'll show you what that means in a couple of slides. Um and we we really dug in there and then we put that all together to create our musthaves and to create an evaluation tool um that we had ready before we started looking at curricular potential curricular resources. So um so this is just an example of our uh creating our vision for equitable science instruction and

123um the team really grounded themselves in this work before we move forward. uh we wrote a vision for equitable science instruction and um I'd like to call your attention to the second to last sentence which says students are seen valued and empowered to have a voice in their learning as well as access and support to meet or exceed grade level standards in all three dimensions of the science standards. Um so this was a statement that we were able to come back to at the beginning of meetings to really again ground ourselves in our values and it was important that we were grounded because when we dug into the technical details they were rich. Um there are three components to the Wisconsin standards for science. One of them is the science and engineering practices how science

124is done. One of the dimensions are the disciplinary core ideas just the what science facts and and some skills. And then the third dimension is the crosscutting concepts. Each um performance indicator which is something that a student could potentially be evaluated on is is a weaving together of one of those three categories or each of those three categories. So we again spend a lot of time unpacking these things. And the next couple of slides are some examples of the types of work we did to unpack. So here's a slide we used to unpack a science and engineering practice. An example of a science and engineering practice is obtaining, evaluating and communicating information. Um there are also lots of mathematical um science and engineering practices analyzing data so forth. Anyway, so we would dig into this

125and look at what it means to do the practice. What kinds of knowledge and skills do students need? And then we turn to the next dimension which is which are the disciplinary core ideas. So these uh include things like life science, physical science, earth and space science and so forth. And one of the things we looked at um as a team was we we looked at vertical alignment. So how do the knowledge and skills progress across grade bands? And that's where we're very grateful for our partners from uh elementary grades who helped us understand, you know, what it what it might look like in grades one, two, three um as opposed to grade nine. And then the third dimension are the crosscutting concepts. One of the cross cutting concepts is patterns. And so uh another

126thing that the crosscutting concepts get at is the difference between the nature of science and the nature of engineering. So again, just to show you that we we really dug into all of these different elements, understanding trying to get a really deep understanding of what they all meant before we started to um look at materials. Um finally, we unpacked the performance indicators. So down at the bottom of this slide is the performance indicator. Apply scientific and engineering ideas to design, evaluate, and refine a device that minimizes the force on a macroscopic object during a collision. This is my favorite kind of thing. Drop an egg, make a cart, that kind of thing. Anyway, so you can see there there are three things that go into that performance indicator. There's a a practice, a concept, and

127then a disciplinary core idea. And again, we really grounded the team in understanding these nuances before moving forward. Um, and this is an example of the team's work to um unpack those three dimensions. pass it over to Steph. And so once we um move through our learning and growing together and our understanding of the Wisconsin state standards and especially those three dimensions, we grounded ourselves in our equity and our vision for equity in science especially. We developed our tool for evaluating curricular resources. So, we took all of that into um coming up with a rubric and what would it look like to see Wisconsin state standards aligned assessments, units, lessons in a curricular resource? What would it mean to have scaffolded and differentiated materials or to see disciplinary literacy living in a science resource? Um,

128we came up with the look fors, we refined the look fors, we tried them out and then we looked to see, do we have evidence of that? Is it clear? Is there some evidence? And what do we mean when we say some evidence? What do we see and what do we think might be missing? Or was there no evidence? We used that tool um to really hone down the many resources that we had collected in Anelise's classroom. And so um we were careful to also partner middle school teachers with high school teachers. So we continued to look at that um cross school crossrade level alignment um and really to get different perspectives on what people were seeing in the materials and spent several meetings immersed in resources. Um, we gathered questions for vendors along the

129way, things that we wanted to know more about or things that we wanted to make sure were in the materials. And so from there, we narrowed it down to our top recommendations and we had teachers pilot the resources in their classroom. So, high school and middle school teachers took the resources um shared with the students that we were um trying them out and that we wanted to hear their perspectives too on what they liked or what they thought might be missing in the resource, what they appreciated about the experience and the science learning. And from there, we um narrowed that down even a little bit further and invited vendors to come and present to us. Um, we came up with a list of questions that was quite robust um that we asked the vendors to

130answer ahead of time and gave the team time to look through their answers. And then we had a live Q&A session going where teachers were writing questions on sticky notes. We were asking the vendors. We were gathering all of the information. Um, the wonderful and amazing Laura took notes for us and um really helped us get all of our thoughts together. Um, but it gave time for the vendors to really elaborate and to make sure that we understood where pieces were in the curriculum. Um, that we understood how the three dimensions were represented, where inquiry lived, where the scaffolds lived. Um, just gave us that opportunity to make final recommendations for what we're bringing in today. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm not clicking. That was a lot of responsibility I did not want to take apparently.

131So our final recommendation for 68 is amplify science. Um from the committee we heard that the resource was comprehensive. There was a wide variety of assessment and differentiation seeing the resources. Um the resources were easy to use. The three-dimensional statements and standards were clearly represented. Um, and most importantly, they offer authentic translation of the materials in Spanish for our tweet program. Um, the students who were part of the pilot classroom for Amplify liked how they got to collaborate, how they got to see multiple perspectives on articles that they read, um, that they got to work in small groups, some positive feedback from students. And we saw clear evidence on our rubric with standards with um the availability of resources in Spanish and that strong collaboration and disciplinary literacy. And then for ninth grade we are

132recommending activate open sed. The committee is excited about um the standards alignment and truly equitable science practices coming to our biology classes in nth grade. Um, they're excited about engaging standards aligned resources that have lessons available in Spanish. Students liked how it was focused on real life issues, that they were actively working and coming up with ideas, um, and that they um seemed like the lessons were easy to engage and follow along with. And so again in our rubric we saw clear evidence of the Wisconsin state standards, the three-dimensional performance indicators inquiry and that disciplinary literacy was also present. So moving forward um with implementation of science curriculum resources and acknowledgement of how crucial PLC's will be to this implementation that we will use the cycle cycle of inquiry um as we analyze the curriculum

133as we look at the needs of our students and make sure that it is um meeting their needs and um embracing our equity lens. And then finally um ongoing professional learning that will be provided. We have a summer professional learning option in August for middle and high school science teachers, resource teachers, coaches to come to learn about um the curricular resources and then continuing to support PLC's um roll like late start Monday time um and time within buildings as well. So, thank you team. That really summarizes what we've been doing um to build capacity in the area of science for our 2.1.3. So, that's before the vote. Any questions for the team? I'll first just share a comment about the thoroughess. You kind of talked about this Karen and I'm feeling these little moments of

134familiarity with some of the frames in terms of how your work was started, right? about digging into the standards and really laying the framework for the resources that you analyzed, the piloting piece. I mean, all of these things, the richness of your work. Um, certainly as a board member to hear all of this is to not then for me to try to pass judgment on the process you did. This is exactly the point, right, of elevating the right voices in the room to be able to have this conversation. I admittedly I'm just curious about one lingering piece and I appreciate all the vendor questions. I mean, the depth and robust again nature of all of this. how like from a science curriculum standpoint when I'm thinking about phenomenon and all just the the nature of

135change and how how responsive is the curriculum to just changing landscape of what's happening in the sciences because I know that something math is a little bit different right math is sort of always math but with something like science I'm super curious about just you know how responsive how changeable is the curriculum what is the platform that students are accessing is it technology based is it you workbooks. Just a little bit of that piece because I feel like science just has that nature of change impacting curriculum. The open sed is a open-source curriculum and we'd like to get it through a vendor that would allow us to more easily deliver it in Spanish and also give teachers some some needed supports. the um because it's open source, there's a team of people that work on

136it and it it changes and then the vendor actually has to keep up with changes that happen. So recently there were some links that no longer worked after some things happened at the federal level and the curriculum did have to scramble to make make those appropriate changes to make the the lessons still work. Um so yes it is not a static science is not static and interesting to see how curriculum then can also be dynamic as well and I think the same is true for amplified offers both online and paper resources that we'll have to figure out if it is approved um what would be make the most sense but um we saw evidence in the sample materials but based on things that have been updated or have been refined based on improvements and changes

137I I think too Jen part the way that I'm hearing your question of protocol I would want to answer it too is that um the design of units of study built around essential questions through a phenomenabased approach really invites students to think um through an inquiry lens continuously and to be adaptive in their thinking before coming to conclusions about the questions that are being posed to them within the resources. And that was one of the things that was most fascinating to me about these resources in particular was the richness of that instructional design that's asking students to think through that inquiry lens in a really um methodical but also pliable way which is what we want scientists to do. And then interestingly when we had our K5 teachers with us, they called out the same

138features that they wanted in their curriculum as well for our younger students. So um overall we're very confident that these resources will continue to deliver in that way. Um additionally because they will be available to us digitally and those those um changes right where improvements are made in real time and in ways that are reasonable. Thank you. Doesn't everybody want to learn? I know. It's so exciting. I'll turn it back over to you, Jen. Yeah. And just to clarify, so with the monitoring report as being presented, it was being presented around capacity building and the process that you all just shared. So just reflecting back to you all to clear that we are voting now board to approve the monitoring report as presented not the curriculum recommendation at this point to just okay and just

139for clarification please we're approving it as capacity building as opposed to achieving progress. Yeah because in the draft that's in here it says achieving reasonable progress but there are no indicators. So I think that's it. We have to next if this is approved then our charge will be to start to build the indicators. Yes. To go but is this noted where the X is we would want. Yeah. Okay. So we can move ahead and we'll make that clear in the language that we're voting to approve as yes on capacity building. Excellent. Capacity building. Yes. Right. Just clarifying our Okay. Critique on that. That's right. But and Jen the purchases in the consent memo later. Thank you. Um all right any so with where we are right now any further discussion and questions we have the

140team here but I will accept a motion to um rep to accept the report as presented so we can just continue any discussion around capacity building. Is there a motion? So thank you John. Is there a second? Second. Thank you Joe. Um so any further discussion then board members around taking our vote around capacity building and having reached that benchmark in terms of what we've heard this evening. Okay modify that motion. Thank you. Yes. So I guess yes I'll clarify that with Is that fair to say that your motion is around? Yes. Okay. Um, so there's a motion from John, a second from Joe to approve this evening's monitoring report for science um, as capacity building as presented. All those in favor signify with I. I. Any opposed? Okay. Progress report as capacity building has

141been approved. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you for your attendance and time this evening. Moving on to board updates. Um, any general board updates from any board members? I'm still awesome. Just an update. Just noted. Um just a reminder to board members for attendance purposes, but then my um offering to maybe share outwardly within your own spaces about our upcoming Greater Dane County gathering on Wednesday, May 7th that is open to the community. So the frame is inviting in some of our local district representate rep representatives at the state level to come and be a panel to answer questions related to budget state budget funding postal education funding um etc. And the the hope is that we have broader community attendance to be able to listen in and just gather information that evening. So,

142I will forward to you the accurate updated flyer that was created by um Dana the superintendent in Middleton Cross Plains and please feel free to share as well. I know Marcy, thank you for starting to share that in the leadership letter Dr. Claire that you sent to families. Um but just sharing to invite folks to come and share space in Middleton on Wednesday, May 7th. Um and maybe just let myself and Lori know if you plan to attend as well. Dr. :30. Anything I forgot in terms of that announcement? Okay. Anything else? All right. And moving on to superintendent consent agenda. Sure you've taken a look at [Music] that. Any questions? Okay. Hearing none, the superintendent's consent agenda has been approved. And then moving on to board consent agenda, which we just got that little

143piece about the science curriculum as being a part of this as well. Any questions? Hearing none, the board consent agenda is approved as presented. And then just upcoming dates, we obviously just talked about the May 7th gathering. Otherwise just regular board meetings keeping our cadence of first and third Mondays. All right. So we will move into board workshop. I appreciate if you all are okay we take that kind of five minute pause to reorganize the tables give a um yeah just pause for all of us to move shift and reframe ourselves for some workshop discussion. All right. Thank you.