001All right. Greetings again everyone. Uh I will go ahead and call this meeting to order. Appreciate all of your attendance this evening and those of you listening in at home. Um I will begin our meeting by establishing that we have a quorum beginning with a roll call vote. Joe here. John here. Meredith here. Juan Carlos here. I am here as well. So, we do have a quorum. Uh John, has this meeting been properly noticed? It has. Thank you. We'll pass that to our second in charge. Uh to help that we're centering our board work around our shared values and serving our students, we begin each of our board meetings by reading our district's equity framework and the Ho Chunk Land acknowledgement, which you can find at the top of our agenda. Uh John, would you
002be willing to please read those aloud for us this evening? You know it. In the Verona Area School District, our mission is that each student will acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to achieve their personal goals, thrive in a diverse global society, and lead a healthy, self-fulfilling life. To meet this mission, Vona Area School District will ensure that every individual has access to the educational, social, and emotional support they need to feel valued and affirmed in their unique identities and experiences. We acknowledge that inequities of power dynamics exist in our system such that some individuals on the basis of their identities face barriers to accessing the opportunities they need to experience success. In acknowledgement of such, the Verona Area School District is committed to disrupting these systems of inequity. Land acknowledgement and the land said
003talk slow with great pause. Our land acknowledgement. There are currently 12 tribal nations who call Wisconsin home with the Hochuk Nation being the primary group living around Madison. No matter where you are in the state, you are on the ancestral land of a tribal nation. As we begin our meeting, we honor the land upon which we stand. Thank you. Greetings, Corby. Um, as we move along then looking to adopt the agenda for the rest of this evening. Board members, if there are any questions or changes to the agenda, please speak up. Otherwise, I'll accept a motion to approve tonight's agenda as printed. So, move. Thank you, Joe. Is there a second? Second. Thank you on Carlos. All those in favor of approving tonight's agenda as printed signify with I. I. Any opposed? All right, the
004agenda has been approved. So, we're moving on to a student recognition moment this evening, which you can tell I'm already grinning ear to ear because we love being able to start our board members with students faces. And see, we needed all the board members here. Um, so I'm going to turn it over to you, Dr. Clarity, to be able to start our celebration of a very uh honored, esteemed student in our district. Absolutely. So, welcome everybody and um as president Murphy has stated, it is always our honor to be able to recognize uh the amazing scholars here in the Roninary School District and today it is uh our distinguished honors to recognize Sharia Bartlett on her uh scholarship award-winning uh for the National Flight Academy. And we are dyed that we also have the esteemed
005president of the 100 Black Men of Madison, Wisconsin, Dr. employee Rose uh who will have some opening words to talk about the scholarship process and to give our full recognition to to Sharia Rose. Thank you. Sharia has been awarded the scholarship to attend the summer program at the National Flight Academy sponsored by Delta Airlines and 100 black men of America. and in the terms that they have presented me for a 2025 deployment taking place June 29th through July 4th at the National Air Station Pensacola, Florida. The National Flight Academy offers the exclusive learning experience designed to enhance STEM exploration for students in grades 7 through 12. Their goal is to inspire you by showing them the amazing things they can achieve when they believe in themselves. This is an amazingly highly competitive situation. Uh it
006involves for the 100 black men alone 102 chapters all larger than the u 100 black men of Madison of which tongue and cheek we just below and we are up against New York, Los Angeles, Denver, Dallas, Houston, all of And we come up with amazing situations for youth because we are blessed to have such amazing children that we work with. And a school district like Verona who's truly embodies what you can be rather than what you are perceived to be. And I can't say enough about that. You do think differently. God bless you. keep doing things differently because the students that I have interviewed after they have graduated pretty much say the same thing. They expect me to learn. Think about that. That's pretty deep. Um, that said, we are very blessed to have Thrive
007represent not just the 100 black men of Madison, but more importantly, the Broad Area School District and her community and family. This is u a touchstone moment that we hope will be replicated by those that will see and say I can too because that's half the battle. When you think you can usually thank you. So on behalf of the Broner School District, it is my esteemed honor to recognize Shariah Barlet as a National Flight Academy scholarship winner. Thank you. Congratulations Shri. Do you want to say anything? Here you are standing. I know for this group of people though we'd love to hear if you want to share anything. Thank you all again. I would like to thank God that on your day and I brought my mom Cheryl Kimmons and my dad was me and
008my sister Charielle Kimmons, my stepmom Smith and Princess Miles. Thank you. I'm proud to be here and I would like to thank Dr. Clarity and Dr. Ro and Mr. even though he's not here. Um, I'd like to thank you all for the opportunity opportunity that you guys today. Thank you, Dr. Rose. You Robert's rules, whatever that is. I I really don't know what that means, but it's I I have a question for you. Yes. Uh, what are you going to be doing June 4th through the 8th before you deploy? How would you like to come to the 39th annual convention of the other black men of America and Thank you. And so that somebody say, "Yo, who's paying for it?" We fly with everyone else that'll be going. We have lodging. We have shaper rooms.
009We just want you to enjoy it. We also kind of selfish thing. We want all the other chapters to see Wonderful Shai. We would love to hear after the fact if you want to send us a note or let us know how pictures. Yeah, please do. It sounds excit and thank you to all of the family, friends, um yeah, support team of Shereai. We appreciate you all being here this evening. Thank you so much. I think it goes without saying, but you can speak for all of us that we are proud of you as well. That's awesome. Yeah. Uh, so again, we love to thank you so much for being here. Um, this time we we're not going to make you walk sit through a whole budget agenda for for today unless you really really
010really want to hear two hours worth of budget work. I'm going to come off here just a second. Just meet me in the hallway and I'll be I'll be right out there. Okay. Thank you. Thank you all. I like Chad, but just give us thumbs up. Yeah. So, moving along in our agenda, we're going to also have a staff recognition moment this week with associate principles week. So, again, Dr. Clarity, I'll turn it to you. Absolutely. So again, we, you know, we I really appreciate that our board of education is really um uh has an expectation that we honor our students and our staff to make sure that, you know, beyond the weeks that are recognized nationally or around the state that they know the appreciation that we have for for their great work. So
011this week we have the honor of um of having associate principles week where we have eight uh assistant principles who uh function on their title and just their service to their to their building service to the community. Um I think everyone can speak to the uh their impact on our students both academically and behaviorally and they're just generally really great people uh as part of the bonary school district. So, we'd like to recognize Sean Harris, David, uh Tamara Sudter, Michael Murphy, Kirsten Hogan, uh Paul Paula Orango, Shayla Glass Thompson, and Sarah Ozonian for the associate principles week. Thank you to our associate principles. Absolutely. A key part of our site teams. So, we'll move along into the superintendent report. I know our first piece is related to finance and operations. So, we have Pete and
012Chad here. I believe then Dr. P you're gonna step out for a few moments. Yeah. So chat will be in dual capacity. Okay. Sounds great. We are ready. Just plug the superintendent to go down. Safety first. Oh yeah. You got Okay. There we are. There we are. There we are. Hey everyone. Greetings. We have a a brief kind of three-part budget update for you. Number one, we're going to go through a a progress update on where we're at with the 2425 budget. A quick update kind of where we stand on year end. Uh and then also probably the biggest uh agenda item in our world tonight uh is a a vote on defeat a defeasence for out of this year's budget that we built in the budget book. Pete and I will talk you through
013that. Second, we're going to go through a 2526 budget update. Since the last time we you saw the board where we were guessing we had a 1.6ish million dollar budget deficit, we've made lots of great strides. Uh the board's been aware of a few of the things going on behind the scenes to get us to more of a balanced budget as we're looking ahead to uh the next bianium budget and then we've got a co-op agreement uh for food nutrition review. Certainly stop me at any time as we work our way through this if you have any questions. Uh so number one 25 uh 2425 budget update a work in progress as we continue to try to close out this fiscal year. Uh Pete, myself uh and Pete's team uh continually monitoring 100 plus major
014budget lines to make sure that we're going to finish up the year end in good shape. Uh which has been the case here the last three to four years. uh we continue to shoot for uh one or two% uh un uh unspent uh resources at the end of the year uh so we can continue to build up fund balance uh in a responsible way. We've got some uh estimates on kind of how we're going to finish up the year related to staffing. Uh this has been kind of the case in in recent years that we've been able to get our ourselves to a spot that we feel get to May, get to June, uh that Pete feels like we can be in a spot that uh we can finish the year in the black. Uh
015and we'll kind of go through some of our large outstanding expenses uh as well. So, a few uh four things in particular uh we have been monitoring uh that all in the end kind of balance out uh to put us in a decent spot as far as finishing up this budget year. One uh our interest earnings are up primarily because interest rates on both short and slightly longer term investments uh that we do through our financial advisor uh are those are trending in a positive direction. Uh Pete sees them uh coming in right now at $235,000 over what we built into the revenue line on our budget, which is a good thing. Number two, our special ed aid uh kind of wipes out all of that extra interest, earnings, and more. Uh and the main
016reason there and I think all of you have been tuned into this uh with some degree or another relative to what goes on uh with the state budget. The last two-year state budget was passed uh and they put money into a pot uh that essentially they were estimating uh we were going to get somewhere in the neighborhood of 32% uh for special ed reimbursement on fund 27 expenditures. And that money has been dwindling. In fact, Pete uh is a is the in my opinion the state leader uh in trying to help schools estimate at the end of the year how much we're going to end up being reimbursed compared to that 32% target uh that the state gave us in the last two-year budget. Pete has us right now $250,000 short, closer to 29% than
01732. Uh Pete, I don't know if you want to talk a little bit more about that work. Pete's been actually speaking to this on a statewide basis. Uh when WGO does uh weekly money talks webinars, uh WGO brought him in in a couple of times uh just kind of talk through how we doing those calculations. Yeah. Uh thanks Chad. Um one of the things I wanted to say though is when the state did set up the budget, um a couple years ago, they set it up with 33% is what what their goal was. And last year we ended up getting 32.4% reimbursement. So while I was setting up the budget for this year, I thought, well, let's be a little conservative. Let's go at about 32%. Right. Well, I needed to go down a bit
018a bit further because the way it's turning out is that um although the statewide pot that Chad was talking about, which is about 560570 million, that went up by about 3% this year, but the amount of expenses that the state has put in there has actually gone up by about 10%. So therefore, our percentage will go down a little bit. It's actually to the tune of about 30 point uh 30.3 is where I'm guesstimating where it's going to be. It's still not finalized yet. DPI has not put out a final number on this yet and they won't do that until sometime in May or maybe even June. Uh but when I saw how last year was 32.4% and um I thought let's do a little research on this and see if we can start guesstimating
019as to where we were going going to be. So, I think I might have been the first one who ended up doing this and then Wasow caught me into it. Uh, the Association of School Board, I'm sorry, school business officials. So, I've had numerous talks with their executive director about how we can start communicating this out with other districts because I have a file where we look at every district in the state where they are for what they have in their budget and where we think they're going to be. And there are some school districts that are millions of dollars short because of how they built their budget. Yeah. Can I make a quick comment on this? I don't mean to do you really have a question after that because this ties or a statement.
020Yeah. This ties back to the advocacy that we did with the with the Wisconsin Association of School Boards at the capital as they're beginning to and it's especially important for members of the community as they're starting to roll out, you know, those statewide budget hearings. But that uh one of the things that we are advocating for when it comes to special education funding in in addition to increasing the total amount of funding is changing the way they do the funding from some sufficient which is like that pool of money and then everybody just they guess at what it's going to be and then what's in the pool is what you get to what's called some certain which means if we say it's 35% it's going to actually be 35% no matter what that dollar amount
021ends up being. And I I think just for the reason we're talking about that, we find ourselves, however far we are through the year, talking about $250,000 less than what we budgeted, and we budgeted even less than what the state said we were going to be getting. So, well said. So, I was going to ask, you said um the the state put more money into it, but then there are more expenses into it, correct? Can you elaborate on like what those expenses are at the state level? Um, the expenses that we're talking about here are for special education teachers for anyone who has a u special ed license. And maybe Michelle will probably be able to explain this a little bit better than I would, but it's for like our crosscategorical teachers and our learning
022disability teachers. They have to have a special ed license and we're able to recoup well supposed to be 33% of um of what we pay them in salary. Uh it turns out that it's a little bit less. Um the statewide the dollar amount on that is about $ 1.9 billion is what all of the school districts are spending in the state on this right now. And like I said, there's about $574 million in the aid pot that they are going to be allocating out. John, I think it's a factor. Uh it's the uh there are some benefits to a two-year state budget that there are some known that once we get past this fall, we have a much better idea of where we're going to be for two years. Uh but the state took a
023guess, yep, it's going to go up 3% in year two. And then inflation was much higher than they thought when they built the budget. And all it takes is paying staff more or having more staff. And all of a sudden, their 3% guess to Pete's point was 7% off. And that money is already set aside and all they do is everyone submits their claims in terms of fund 27 spending. Uh and then they redisperse it as evenly as evenly as they can and that percentage goes down when they guess wrong. So that's how that's how they ended up here. And that's that's Joe's point around some solution if you're sitting on a multi-billion dollar fund. Set it where you think it's going to be and then pay it off. And the other piece we talked
024about with this too within our um kind of cross district work locally as well with our consortium is just the idea that funding special education these are following federal guidelines, right? These are places where we're committing to support students with what they need. And so that aspect of these budget pieces too feels just very burdensome to districts in ways that we are showing up and doing the right thing for students. and the way that these particular budget line items, the shortfalls just feel particularly impactful in a very uncomfortable and disturbing way to me. No question. Through our advocacy work, we actually got kind of got a little history lesson at the state. Uh this used to be close to 60% reimbursement uh and has slowly dwindled to the point we're at right now and now
025Wisconsin is one of the lowest reimbursing states uh in the nation when it comes to the federal mandate related to special education. Yeah. And we that there was at least some buzz at the capital on both sides that if there's a spot they're going to move in this year's budget. We're kind of sensing it might be special ed. We'll have to wait and see. But this year it's a little bit of a hole for us as we wrap up this fiscal cycle. Uh last two we are trending in a direction and this is related to open enrollies in and out uh uh in terms of where Pete put our best guess for uh where we'd end up with a margin there. So that's good news. Uh an additional $100,000 of open enrollment revenue that was
026wasn't necessarily accounted for in our beginning budget. And then lastly, our biggest one, 70% of our overall budget uh is staffing and salaries. And we monitor that. Uh Pete is on that uh and and Teresa along with Michelle on a weekly basis when we run payrolls in terms of where we're going to end up in July. So all in all, no giant uh oh my goodness, we're going to be in rough shape as we wrap wrap up the fiscal year. Wanted the board to let let you all know that we're watching it. Now, the bigger of the agenda items tonight, uh we are here again, I believe this is the fourth iteration in the history of the school district, uh of debt defeasence. Um I'm not going to read this slide to you. Uh in
027general, uh the board can kind of think of this. We took out bonds in 2018 to pay for the building that we're in. Uh those bonds come due at different points uh in terms of bond life. uh we have paid off all possible capital debt uh that was what they call callable meaning we can pay it down to this point and when you have extra money available to make a payment on capital debt the only way in the public sector to do that is to put it into something called a defeasence which is essentially an escrow account that we will write a check to our financial advisor they will set aside $7 million and when that debt becomes callable able, they'll hand it over and we'll save a whole bunch on interest. That's the big
028idea in terms of what we're asking the board to do again tonight. Uh there are um multiple benefits to what we're uh there are multiple benefits to what we're doing. Uh interest savings and we've got a little spreadsheet our financial uh advisor sent us. uh we uh will at a future date when capital spending is needed again and we have to take out more bonds uh to pay for let's say an elementary school. The work we're doing right now relative to defeasants will actually offer us more flexibility on how we layer debt into the future uh to make sure that there isn't some big tax hike uh relative to the next time we go to referendum. So uh this is all good. The board has also used this as a tool to level mill rates
029where if anything we've ticked them down, but we're not in a spot that next year's budget, Pete and I are guessing uh that we we're going to have to do this to mill rates, which the board has tried to continue to tell us to stay away from. So, the taxing ratio stayed relatively consistent. Uh we originally built $6.78 million into the 2425 budget. uh after meeting and conferring with our financial adviserss with a few different options uh this year uh we are recommending essentially two funding sources uh the additional levy that happened in fund 39 and that's what we've used to level our mill rate a transfer from fund 10 uh in the form of $800,000 uh and in the end we have a $7 million defeasence that we'll need for approval this evening uh
030we took a screenshot of kind of the cover sheet uh relative to our defeasance history. Uh the big numbers on there will be tonight uh we're going to take a vote to pay down $7 million of debt when that debt becomes callable. And in the end, and this is a big number, uh this is becoming quite the big number. Uh the work of this team, including the school board, uh having the vision and giving us the permission to do this will save the taxpayers of our school district $10 million in interest. Uh which is a huge number. Uh we we do a couple more iterations of this into the future. We're starting to pay off a third of an elementary school down the road uh because we don't have the interest to pay on the
031debt schedule we've got. So this is uh really becoming a fruitful activity uh in terms of making sure that money our taxpayers are paying in the form of their property taxes to support our school district is going to all the important work happening in our schools and not going to pay interest on a loan. Um and that's really what's happened through all this defeasence. I am here to answer and so is Pete. Questions relative to any of the things we uh discussed relative to defeasence this evening. We do have board language for an official vote uh at any point here. Jen, I think I do have a question. I know we've had this conversation before as you've talked about. We've done um and have these discussions around defements in the past. If if we were
032to end up in some horrible scenario, the next two-year budget from the state just looks grim, basically the the quick question is any money that we've committed to defeasence, do we have the option to yank back if we decide, oh my, we actually don't quite have that 7 million to put in defeasance this time. We'd like to just stay back a small bit to help us. The only money uh that would even be um available to us to hold back would be that fund 10 transfer and the holding back would only happen in the form of a surplus budget and a fund balance deposit. So it would be onetime funding. Yeah. The $6 million that was the additional levy in fund 39 uh that can only be spent on capital. Innesota when that big referendum
033passed, they gave that school board and all future school boards into the permission into the future permission to manage the 150 plus million dollars uh that went on the ballot. However, the school board decided to manage that debt. Um and that's that fun 39 additional levy. Uh the the g we'd love to be able to make a fun 39 to fun 10 transfer. Can't do it. Yep. We made a legal obligation to our taxpayers that uh we would only spend that money legally in fund 39. Yep. That makes sense. Thank you for that clarification. So the the only real options for that fund 39 is either defeat amount or what you just carry a fund balance in fund 39. Yep. And you can carry a small fund balance in fund 39, but uh DPI will
034start to ask questions if you're carrying over significant fund balance in fund 39 essentially taxing without purpose. Um so it's the reason you did it because most of the times it would be so sorry this um I don't usually get this in interested in things um but I love saving money on interest. Yeah. in particular. Um, but I'm noticing here and I wonder why this is the case that the percentage the savings the depth savings service savings column the percentage of that related to the amount applied to prepayment actually goes down. And I'm wondering why that is. I'm imagining that it has to do with the maturity of the debt that's being called or canceled. the maturity of the debt and the interest rate we're paying on that chunk of borrowing. Okay, those two things,
035right? It's 4% in case that's right. I I one comment I want to make kind of about about our our kind of debt management strategy that's that's yielded this, you know, 4 point or $10.4 million in interest savings. It's not as if we've we've also been lowering the mill rate. I mean, just in the four years that I've been on the board, we've dropped the mill rate, I think, by about 20%. Over that period of time. So, we're kind of it's a fine line you have to walk like a tightroppe, but we are managing to do both things. We're easing the tax burden on our residents. At the same time, we're saving over $10 million in interest to help ensure the future, you know, financial stability of the district is is strong. No question. and
036and we've been transparent with all the budget to be built. Uh that the strategy also does eventually give us a little bit of wiggle room in the event that we ever had to go back to an operating referendum again like half of the state did uh over the last couple of years. uh that additional levy that we've been using in fund 39 just like we did the last time we went to operating referendum. We would in the future have the ability to ask taxpayers for permission in fund 10 versus fund 39 and potentially not have to increase the mill rate in doing so. Uh so it's allowed it's it's the interest savings is probably the the lead story on this, but it's also allowed us future flexibility when it comes to managing our budget. Um
037I was just curious how did we arrive at the 100,000 that was transfer from 10 how did we so that was the remaining revenue permission we had with the combination of the per pupil revenue limit of 325 that was an increase and the $19 million related to the past operating refer. So that's that's really the two big buckets that we use to to figure out what our permission is in fund 10 and that's where the transfer came from. All good questions. Anything else on that general you and Dr. Se to decide when you call the board vote. You wait till to the uh board section or we can step in and out right now. It's totally up to you. Board any thoughts about taking action on this now that it's kind of fresh in our
038minds? Any further discussion about this specifically with Chad and Pete being here? I think we should just be voting right now. Yeah, makes sense to me as well. Any further questions before we move toward a vote? Okay. And you can see in your slides um we do have a resolution being offered right a proposal from the district. So I would accept a motion to approve the resolution authorizing the transfer of funds, the establishment of an escrow account with respect to and the defeasence of certain of the general obligation corporate purpose bonds series 2018 dated November 19th, 2018. So moved. Thank you, Joe. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Juan Carlos. Any further discussion or questions? All those in favor of approving the resolution as stated signify with I. I I any opposed? All right,
039resolution has passed. Thank you. Perfect. Thank you. Uh now we'll turn to next year's budget 2526. Uh we've got just a few reminders relative to calendar. Uh we've got an update on where we're at estimating uh things staffing costs. We have a refreshed uh number of assumptions and related five-year forecast. the board should be very familiar with. Uh this is a slightly edited uh calendar that w that we included in a version of this in our budget book uh for this last year uh with updated 2025 dates. A couple of things I want to make sure I call out on here. Primarily uh two things that are kind of running into each other uh relative to the uh the fall here. Uh, so if you look a third of the way down there, it says
040from anywhere from July to September of 2025, we're expecting to have the state finalize their final budget. Uh, and I I won't go down a side street here relative to what's necessarily happening at the capital, but we have certainly heard uh from uh from both our statewide organizations and our lawmakers that this year's budget likely won't come like it has the last couple of years in July. It could be stretched out longer. There were some things going on uh in the Supreme Court uh that may stretch this out and there is a chance this stretches out into August or even September uh before the state calls a vote, gets it on Governor Iver's desk and the things finalized uh which can be slightly problematic as we work our way into the fall. I just want
041to give the board a heads up. Uh we will have a finalized budget by the time we get to October. uh our budget book uh could be some best guesses here uh because we won't know what's going on with the state budget. Um but that's just the way it is on two-year budget cycles and everything going on with at the capital. So I want to make the board aware of that. Uh that we are certainly closely tracking that. Our work in putting together a draft budget book for all of you is a lot easier when we know what's coming from the state. Uh but we can still put together a draft budget book if there are unknowns. Uh and then by the time we get to the annual meeting and finalizes in October, we will
042get there. Uh but it means potentially taking a more conservative approach to what we're doing post July 1 than we would in the past because we may not know what's in the budget. Want to make sure the board uh was aware of that and we're tracking it all and hopefully they they pick things up at the capital and we get some answers uh before we get to August and September. So that'd be that's a big deal big deal statewide. Uh, I appe and update our um budget assumptions relative to salary and compensation. The comments I made before relative to what we end up with a 2526 budget not getting out over our skis relenders for 2526. Salary and compensation is a giant piece of that. Uh but uh we have used this slide in the
043past just to make sure the board uh and the public's aware of the money we will have to add to the fund 10 revenue line uh and eventually the fund to fund 10 expenditure line uh to get to CPI. Uh so um a step uh to move everyone on on our salary scale with credit for a year of service right now is about $1.1 million additional money uh out of the 2526 budget and CPI in the end was set at 2.95 uh and Pete built that uh built that into the chart so the board's aware of kind of the big bigger numbers we're dealing with as we're starting to build the 2526 budget. But uh certainly here to answer any questions. I'm seeing lots of head nods because the board has seen this slide before.
044We just have updated numbers for all of you to understand what we're working with for next year's budget. Uh this is probably the biggest slide here on 2526 because as I mentioned last time we did a 2526 budget dumping we were we had $1.6 million in the red. We're here today to tell you uh we've done a bunch of work primarily health care uh that uh has made a swing in the right direction to the point that we've got a balanced budget. So these are changes uh from the last time the board had a 2526 uh budget update. I'm going to run down this list real quickly. All of you are aware of the fact that we saved $1.5 million uh by switching from GHC uh to dean for the 2526 uh year. So that
045was a the biggest player in terms of what's going on with the budget. Uh we are behind the scenes uh putting the pieces together to potentially have an on-site clinic uh for our employees and their families. Uh and there's some planning. Michelle and I have a standing meeting Mondays. We just had another one today that's on track. None of that happens without school board permission. we would bring it to you uh in the form of a formal presentation any board vote uh when the whole package is put together. Uh right now we're working on contract language location kind of some stipulations relative to the type of staffing we'd like to see which uh employees even potentially uninsured at least by the district uh um potentially could have access to that. So all of those pieces
046are going on behind the scenes. We'll have a fullscale presentation for the board uh when that is fully put together. Uh but right now we're putting a $700,000 placeholder in our budget. So the board understands the employees that work at the on-site clinic um we we essentially pay Dean to pay them. Uh but then in the end, a physician's assistant or um a nurse um a a front desk person, a mental health provider, uh uh would be all things that we would pay dean to have them employed. But in the end, every time uh an employee of the school district goes to the on-site clinic, it does not hit the books uh with our cost per dee. Uh so what has happened in many other school districts is if there's high utilization for that on-site
047clinic, none of that hits the books at the kind of the year-end update uh that Dean will give us in terms of how we're running. Uh if the board's seen updates before from Michelle kind of want to be running at 90% or below. Uh and this will be a big help for that and it's going to be an amazing convenience for employees. So, more to come with the on-site clinic, but we've had Pete build it into the budget as a a likely expense. Here to answer questions if you have any of those tonight. Small tweak on what we did with CPI. The board saw before we had 3% the last budget update. Now, it's official. It's 295. Slight savings there. Uh we did make some adjustments as far as staffing. uh we'll be down about
048five and a half or six FTE uh either through retirements or staffing reductions. Uh and Pete and I have been behind the scenes uh working on a few fund 10 adjustments. There are a few things we're charting to different funds for next year uh to free up some more money there. We will have an SRO contract built into the 2526 budget and a few other things that that have been changed budget lines in the end that gets to a $1.8 $8 million swing to the pasta. That was a lot. I went fairly quickly. Questions on anything on there, but these were the big changes we made uh since the last time we updated the board on this work. Look forward to the on-site clinic, further discussion. I think we've talked about other intangibles like you're
049talking about of cost savings to the district, right? Of sub costs when folks have to travel toward Dr. I mean, right? There's so many layers that we've kind of dabbled in. So I look forward to that further discussion even for the sake of the community to understand the investment piece and the potential payback to the district. Um and then with the staffing reductions is it fair to say so for example if someone retires we don't fill that FTE but obviously right there may be shifting with existing FTE amounts that we have. Exactly. Right. Yeah. We uh we scrutinized every uh every opening we had all spring uh and found about five and a half positions uh that we ended up not filling. Uh but we feel like we're in an amazing spot staffing wise. Uh
050but with the board was aware of this. We only think we had a handful more students than we had uh the prior year and we were in a position that uh we could just get efficient and we needed to. And also just wanted to put into the space mindset wise was to really have an eye on positions that were are uh farthest removed from the classroom mindset when we're doing that. So we're talking about positions like um that have a lesser impact on direct instruction with our students. Okay. Thanks Dr. Sig. My question was like how would that impact student teacher ratios? Uh, anything else like se SC sea counts that you know I know schools are relying on? Yeah, our classroom ratio should be almost identical to what they were last year. Um, so
051we feel like we're in a really good place as far as staffing. Uh, this is a little screenshot out of Pete's magic spreadsheet in terms of some changes to our assumptions since the last time the board saw us. Um really uh the three big ones we just mentioned, this is just in a different format. And lastly, this has kind of been our go-to one sheet snapshot uh that has a whole bunch of information. Uh but uh we've kind of boxed out two main things. Uh that mill rate that Joe kind of spoke to before. Um at this point, we're we we've got it pegged at 1095. We don't have a state budget yet, so this is the best guess we've got. Uh we do have a balanced budget for 2026. Uh and we'll have if
052all those numbers and assumptions hold true, which they won't, uh we would have a budget surplus of $138,000 for 26. But 27 if all of our assumptions hold true, inflation, property value, how many students we have, how many what we get per pupil, uh we might be looking at another red budget that we'd have to work our way through. It is uh it's too early right now for us to do anything with 2027 until the bannual bud budget's passed. But uh this is much better news than we've had uh the last time we updated the school board and we're relatively confident we'll be able to present a balanced budget to you uh when we hear from the state. Can I ask you a question? Can you explain just the um the shortfall under fiscal year
05325 just so people understand what that means? Absolutely. that is our land purchase. So that's uh the that was a planned deficit budget where we spent fund balance uh to purchase land. Uh so the board and the community can essentially think the of that we still have a fund balance now it's in the form of an asset that is property instead of cash. Um so that's the that's the property we we purchased it. So it's not a short budget. I think when the fund balance is underneath it almost looks like yeah those those two things went locked up as you can see but our fund balance took a hit but we ended up with a valuable asset. Yeah, we had a very healthy fun. We did. Yep. And that was an amazingly appropriate use of
054fund balance uh for us to spend onetime money on. Good question Meredith. Any others? as we're looking at things being just really predictable right now financially, how are we kind of shoring up for the possible appeal of the future? Uh well, I think one I think the the actually the work we're doing relative to uh managing debt and flattening the mill rate uh it puts us in a a unique position that uh in the event that the state budget bombed out. Uh and we had to have real discussions uh with the community and the school board to ask for extra permission uh from our voters. the work we've done on leveling the mill rate, widening a little gap with a little bit of extra levy on fund 39. To me, we are as well positioned
055as any school district in the state uh to weather a bad budget. We've got slightly growing enrollment. we've had that extra levy built into the fund 39 and we can we've reduced our staffing even this year where we've kind of proven to folks that uh we can get efficient when we need to and we try to do it every year. Um to me that's really our um kind of ace up the sleeve uh so to speak uh in the event that the the budget really bombs out. I think just knowing um for our community to know that there's been a lot of proactive work that we're assuming things that are going to be straightforward and go well. However, that's not the plan is also the rainy day plan. there's a lot of uh assumptions that
056you need to put into creating this budget and um I think especially as we see some uncertainty in the markets at this point um knowing that uh we are we have been positioning ourselves financially for years to be a good place is important to reiterate Merida I think even the work that went into our healthc care renewal is an example of that uh that uh we uh the easy and almost lazy work there would have been all right GHC let's roll another three years oops sorry taxpayers of Verona we have to go back to an operating referendum and not do the hard work relative to pulling $1.5 million out of our budget uh and our employees have to go through the headache relative to changing healthcare providers uh but we also owe it to our
057taxpayers to do that very hard work uh in in the event that we ever would have to go back and and ask relative to oper. And to that point, I think it's also just important just to reiterate that we're looking at no rates that are decreasing each year. Um, so it's not just doing the hard work for the district to make sure we're also keeping an eye on the taxpayers and recognizing that this is a huge hit to our taxpayers if you know if there is a uh financial uncertainty in the future that we are keeping that in mind and hoping to offset the burden on our our taxpayers as well. No question. Anything else at 2526? More to come is the best guess. Yeah. All right. I did uh do a slide uh for
058an item that has been on the consent agenda I think likely for decades in our school district. Uh but it is a a big budget number. So that we we spend well over a million dollars as part of this co-op on an annual basis. So, it it does require uh your endorsement because we're spending it and it's over the $250,000 threshold and it actually requires schoolboard president to sign uh this purchasing co-op. So, I did decide to make a slide just to update the boards on board on this and see if they have any questions. Yeah. Uh so in a nutshell, the uh the co-op we're asking you to endorse tonight, a a number of large school districts in the in the state and some smaller ones uh build a consortium of buying power uh
059that allows this group uh to send our purchasing out to bid uh for all school districts. So if we take an example of let's say bulk bananas uh and uh we say we have uh we're we're guaranteeing a purchase of this many pounds of bananas over these 60 school districts. Uh you're able to get bulk pricing as part of a bidding process. Uh the past few years this has been through Gordon Foods. Um I'm sure you've seen their semis on the road all over. uh they're also backing into high-end restaurants and all kinds of other places that they serve uh for kind of bulk commodities. Other competitors would be like Cisco uh is a is a pretty common one. Uh but being part of this consortium allows us to get the best pricing uh when
060it comes to commodities that we're primarily federally reimbursed for. Uh and the board needs to sign off us on us being part of this. Uh the food is sourced uh in line with uh USDA guidelines. Uh this is separate from uh our uh local farm purchasing that we do on an annual basis. And Robin uh does some oneoff things uh like we purchase yogurt from Clinic Farms out of Monroe uh instead of just buying it in bulk uh from uh from India and Gordon. Uh but this is the the majority of um our bulk purchasing milk and a lot of the things that would end up uh in a in our freezer end up being purchased through this cooperative purchase purchasing agreement. Uh it does also offer um some big advantages in terms of collaboration.
061Uh, so, um, Robin's able to, uh, they they have annual meetings and I think even quarterly meetings, but she's able to pick up the phone and call the food director in Jainsville and discuss menu items on kind of the list of things uh, that comes from Gordon Foods. Um, so we're asking the board permission for us to be part of this uh, purchasing cooperative. Again, um, I am here to answer questions if folks have any about um, what this purchasing co-op is all about. Thank you. And to Chad's point, this has been something that's been in consent, but just figured with discussions that we've had around just wellness and nutrition and conversations recently that it was worth just elevating for the sake of the community again about what this is. Um, can you remind me
062again how long we've been a part of the consortium? A version of this for decades. Okay. That's what I thought that it's really longstanding. Going on forever for sure. As long as I see Meredith nodding. I think Meredith, you probably been going on as long as you remember the school board. Yep. Yeah. So, thank you for just giving us again the the one sober as newerish board members to the decades of this consortium and agreement. I enjoyed nerding out about this actually. Uh it's Yeah, it seems super advantageous. I was wondering like do they usually what do they RFP and compare Gordon and Cisco and other providers or have you just gone to Gordon? No, this is an open RFP. So, yeah. So, it's it's an essentially an open bid. The reason you have to
063do an RFP if you're doing chicken breast, they um one might serve whatever 5 ounce packages and one might do 6 ounce packages. So, you have to put a proposal together versus a hard bid. Uh but yeah, all all the major providers in the state of Wisconsin are allowed to respond to this on an annual basis. No, I was just wondering because there are a lot of advantages, has Robin ever mentioned any disadvantages to the co-op agreement or anything that's happened in decades past where I know sometimes with these pooling of resources where you get the economic benefit. Sometimes the number of members can create um maybe not ideal outcomes for specific schools. Is that is that something we're concerned about? Anything you've experienced like that in the past? Yeah, Robin said the only time
064this went sideways was co and that was actually because of uh Gordon being able to actually supply food because of supply chain issues. Uh the uh being part of this purchasing cooperative doesn't mean that we have to order every menu item from Gordon Foods. It just gives us access to greatly reduced pricing, meaning we can make the most of our federal reimbursement. Uh so Robin said there there really is no drawback. Uh if anything it's again she's got the benefit of uh being able to collaborate with other uh folks large school districts uh making menu items uh out of the purchasing they're doing here. I I just met with Robin today. She's like we wanted to give chicken tiki marsala a shot uh last week. It it was not listed on It wasn't listed at
065one of the bulk items relative to this co-op. It went off like gang busters. The kids absolutely loved it. We're doing it again next month. Uh and Robin's going to make a pitch to see if we can get that on the list for Gordon. But what actually has to happen, what you see, I think they have to agree that something like 50 pallets of the goods have to be we're essentially signing up to purchase as this co-op. So she has to get a few other school districts excited about chicken tiki marsala to get reduced pricing. Got it. Got it. Y but she can she can pick off them. She doesn't have to always go through. Got it. So she she has flexibility to go outside of courts but for things that obviously we buy in
066bulk and as a single school district that can't get advantageous pricing going out on its own. That's the great money savings is pulling our resources and getting to your point bananas for 50 cents instead of a dollar. bang a bunch. Yeah, that makes sense. Thank you. So, there's that cost savings, but also we're not giving up flexibility if we want it. Exactly. Because we want to try different things for our community. Okay. Next time we put a slide together, can you get a picture of 50 pallets of chicken? I'm just really trying to wrap my head around what that looks like. That That's the beauty of a consortium. I'm guessing we only get eight pallets. We are backing up a full semi. That's a lot of curry, John. It is. You bet. Thank you. Um,
067so board members, this is still in terms of for voting, it's still in consent, but again, we just wanted to have a kind of pull out conversation. So, thank you again for the time and voice to all those pieces team. Absolutely. Good to see everybody. Good to see you all, too. Dr. handing back. All right, thank you. Yeah, all sorts of things afterwards. Okay, moving on through our agenda. We are on to public comment. I do have a slip here from Tim Larson. Um, and Tim, you're welcome to come up to the table or talk where you are, you know, wherever you're most comfortable. Thank you for being here. Uh, thank you, uh, Dr. Learning School Board members. Uh my name is Tim Larson. Uh we've lived in the Verona School District since uh 2019
068and we moved here for the bilingual education options that are offered here. Uh that's something that's quite valuable to us. Uh our family has been separated, but we are getting back together this summer. And because we have seven children, uh the house I live in right now is too small for us all to live in. So we need to find a new home. Our two youngest children, Caroline and Elizabeth, are currently in learning Spanish at the tweet program at Glacier Edge Elementary. And it is a fabulous program. We're quite pleased with that. Uh I'm here tonight because I'd like your help to ensure that they can continue uh learning Spanish in the tweet program after we move somewhere else in the district. The challenge we're facing is related to how half the district feeds into
069Twe at Glacierge and half the district feeds into Twi Sugar Creek. Uh after consulting with the registar uh we learned that if we buy a house on the other side of the school district uh our daughters would have to transfer to Sugar Creek's tweet. Uh however there's no space for them there. So in so doing our girls would effectively be kicked out of Tweet. Uh this is my request. Uh, in the event that we do buy a house that feeds into Sugar Creek's Tweed program, I ask that our daughters be allowed to continue attending at Glacier Edge Tweed until there is space for them at the Sugar Creek TW. I don't expect any special busing arrangements. We'd be more than glad to drive them there uh until they able to transfer. Thank you for your
070time tonight. Thank you. Thank you very much, Tim, for coming in. Thank you. Um, Lori, any other public comment that I may have missed that you have wind up? [Music] Okay. I didn't see anything over email either, but just thought I would confirm with you. No. Okay. Thank you. So, we'll move officially into board action. So, we did already take care of um item A under board action. We took our vote on defeasance. So we will move into OE9 monitoring report communicating with the public. Absolutely. Uh so as Marcy makes her way here to uh do the vast portion of the presentation for operation expectation number nine. Um, as we noted in our messaging, our communication at the end of the week last week, we did try uh wanted to do a dual format of
071a presentation where the board uh received a a video of the presentation with key talking points, but also given that the context is 09 communicating to the public, we we needed to communicate to the public as well. So we are doing both in the circumstance instead of uh the uh general video for OES and then Q&A from the from the board about those. Uh we're also thankful to Marcy and also want to recognize her um and as she's humble and won't do it herself so I will for her. uh many of the things that you have seen in terms of the leadership moves uh also garnered the team of her and Karen uh awards at the state level uh for their their communication uh uh to the public and in some of the artifacts that
072are attached to our monitoring course. So, I'll turn it over to Marcy to give voice to what you've already heard in the video and open it up for discussion on our compliance. Thank you. Thank you again for the video though. I think it's helpful for the community again to have access and for us that preview. So, thank you for putting that time in. Absolutely. Yeah. I wanted to start out by kind thanking the board of education. It's been an interesting process to go through the board being deeply involved in redoing the indicators or redoing speaking about what they were hoping for from the indicators which gave us the information we needed to redo the indicators. Um, and hopefully the evidence that we've provided will lead to good conversation and it's giving you what you want
073so that you can learn about what we're doing for our communication efforts. In terms of the indicators for communicating with public, we start with indicator one, which holds that the district district provides VISD families the opportunity to take parent uh caregiver career experience survey that includes feedback on communication and develops a plan of action that incorporates data gathered from the survey as necessary. As part of BASD's continued efforts to understand the experiences of students, families, and staff, we invited everyone to complete the survey. And based on previous feedback, this year's survey was shorter. It had more opportunities for open-ended questions, and it gave folks the opportunity to respond to questions about their personal experiences rather than um asking them about the p their perception of the experience of others. So families and students took the
074survey in December and staff completed it in January. We had 4,214 responses overall and 420 of those were from parents and caregivers. If I could quickly add on to the key point that Marcy just made. Uh we did do some test runs with our family uh advisory um in terms of what some of the questions would look like and make sure we they were in alignment with board expectations as well as what the survey partner provider could uh could could produce. We also cross reference those with our student advisory as well as our staff advisor as well. So while this is particularly talking about parent and community uh uh survey there um before we produced a new survey for the for the board and to our community those are some of the venues in which
075we kind of I would say tested it out to make sure that we had the proper questions. Absolutely. And then the first part of the presentation will focus on the survey results and then we'll talk about the leadership moves related to that toward the end after we talk about all of the indicators. So this slide shows total family and parent survey respondents by year. And we saw a tiny bump up this year with the the new survey and we hope that we can get the word out about that and continue to encourage families to participate in future years. And these next two slides show respondents by year and school. And again, you'll see that at seven of 10 of our schools this year, we had a slight increase mirroring the trend, the overall trend as
076well. And you can see that the number of responses kind of roughly correlates with the size of the school as well. And then we'll be reviewing survey questions that focus specifically on communication. There were other survey questions about academics and so forth. These focus specifically on communication. And because this is a new survey, we'll have year-over-year comparative data starting next year. So this year we just have one year of data. And um in that information 70% 77% of our respondents agreed or strongly agreed that I feel district staff keep me informed on important issues and 83% agreed or strongly agreed that I feel the communications I receive from the district are easy to understand and that they focus on students. Those were two separate questions both at 83% agree or strongly agreed. And at the
077school level, our respondents said 65% agreed or strongly agreed with I believe communication from my child's school meets my needs. 81% agreed or strongly agreed with I feel I receive responses from school staff in a timely manner. And 86% agreed or strongly agreed with I believe school staff are responsive to my family's culture and language. And we received many replies in response to our open-ended questions. The prompt for the first question was um what else would you like us to know about communication you receive from PASD? So the bright spots that emerged from that were that communication is frequent and timely. Uh folks appreciated the transparency and thoroughess saying that VSD is transparent when there are district-wide issues or important updates. They appreciated parent, teacher, and staff engagement. They felt that newsletters and updates are
078helpful and that VASD listens and adjusts communication methods. BSD has evolved its communication over time and continues to refine its approach. And the areas for growth that emerged from the open-ended responses were that families feel overwhelmed by the number of messages. They want communication to be streamlined into fewer, more meaningful updates. There are multiple platforms that create confusion. Canvas, Powers School, Remind, Seesaw, etc., etc. Um, parents want more timely and personalized updates about their child's academic progress and well-being. And email needs better proof reading and accuracy to avoid corrections and broken links. And school websites and digital tools need improvement to be more accessible and intuitive. And moving on to indicator 912, which holds that the district will offer five or more ways for care careers to provide appropriate input on the direction of the
079district during each quarter of the school year. We've got a slide here that shows multiple ways for this um information to be shared and indicator 913. You're about to learn more about social media analytics than you may have ever wanted to. So, buckle in. We uh are looking for evidence of compliance that the district will maintain an effective online presence and we have um communicating we are communicating news and information of course through our website. We have multiple uh social media sites. Each school and the district and VSD aquatics all have a Facebook page. The district has an Instagram page and uh we are we use LinkedIn to promote district level job vacancies. And when we look at our analytics on Facebook, well actually let me let me step back. This these analytics cover a
080time period between July 1st, 2024 and March 18th, 2025. During that time, Facebook had 935,200 views. And this refers to how many times people looked at our posts and videos. At nearly a million views, if each view were a step, we could walk from Verona to Louisville, Kentucky. We'd make it pretty far. And then uh for reach, we had 131,800. And the entire population of Verona and Pittsburgh is 48, a little over 48,000. and we're reaching about 2.7 times more than that. Um, our reach did decrease by 7.9% compared to the prior 7-month period. Um, but younger demographics ages 13 to 17 have continued to move away from Facebook to Instagram and other social media platforms and we estimate that our decrease may be due to that. And Facebook's base continues to be users ages
08155 to 64. Thanks for making us feel mature veterans. Sorry. And in terms of content interactions, we had 20,400 content interactions and that is uh in reference to an action that someone takes on a post. So in addition to just looking at it, they're liking it, commenting, sharing or clicking on a link. And then we had 47,100 visits. And a visit refers to the number of times people visited our Facebook page. And it's about sessions, not just single content pieces. So if someone goes to our Facebook page, looks around and leaves, that's one visit. So one person might view, you know, three or four posts and watch a video while they're there, that's counting as one visit. And then looking at our Instagram analytics, u you can see that we had 338,500 views and a
082reach of 18,500. Our reach increased 21% compared to the previous 7-month period. Uh this and the increases shown on the next slide align with the trend of younger users moving to and engaging more with Instagram. Also want to give a shout out to Kin Bareta who is our communications assistant who is a master at engaging with students, making fun videos, getting principles to be comfortable doing videos. I don't know if you've seen any of our um attendance short attendance videos, but they're fantastic. And the more we have kids in our videos, the more they're looking at what we're producing and creating. So, shout out to her for that. And um also on Instagram, we had 18,300 content interactions and 10,000 visits. Our content interactions were up by 100% while visits were up 28.5% compared to
083the previous 7-month period. And then looking at indicator 914, um that holds that the district regularly disseminates relevant news to families and other community groups. So this slide before you shows a list of the ways that we work to get information out to people. Indicator 95 refers to our communications audit report and that's something we'll do every three years. The most recent one was in 2023. So we'll be at this time next year looking at our communications audit report. And then moving on to indicator 921. Uh 921 holds that the board receives a copy of the annual academic report and outlines the um different content. And that report was mailed to 16,82 postal address holders for families and businesses. And an additional 500 reports were sent to families whose language preference is Spanish. We also
084drop them off at apartment complexes, the public library, the Verona area chamber of commerce with realtors and a few other places. And that report is also available online. And indicator 922 is referring to the budget and budget hearing and annual meeting book. And that indicator also outlines the specifics of what to be found in that book. and that was shared with the board on September 9th, 2025 and it is available um online and in print by request as well. That's a whirlwind tour through our evidence of compliance. And we um as with all of our uh monitoring reports have been focusing on what leadership's moves we want to make uh based on the evidence that we found. and at the district level um just as as evidence of really taking the input that folks provide
085to us and using that to u influence our decisions, we moved to this new survey and we shared a video summary of the results with all families so that they could see um what came up would that be asked from them and as Dr. Clarity said this the results will be discussed or have been discussed with the advisory councils and then not only are the results shared with them but then there's a conversation about what those results mean, how does it align with their experiences and what might we learn from that on a deeper level. And based on what we learn from the survey responses, we'll be taking several steps in response to feedback. This is where I get the chance to be tactical and make myself a to-do list and I love that. So,
086um, we'll be creating a BASD platforms and user guide for families and staff so that they hopefully have that resource when they get confused about something or wonder how many of these things am I going to have to learn, they'll add that right there to access. And the website team is reviewing each web page for things like broken links. Um, I'll be attending a website accessibility training in April and then cascading that information to our web page editors. We'll be implementing a checking protocol for things like headings and links and messages just to bring that to refresh that bring it to top of mind for folks and we'll be working to shortline and to shorten and streamline messages. And an example of this uh recently is how we notified folks of the construction that's underway.
087In the past, we might have just g given that message out to everyone, but we spent some time with first students really looking at which specific routes would bus routes would be affected by that construction and just communicated with those families and it just ended up being one. The bunny bus was the only bus that would be impacted by that. So, we uh it took a little more time to get the information out, but it was more streamlined. And then under 914, we will work to expand our information sharing with the community beyond our families. Uh we're planning to hold a state of the district event so that we can invite um Verona area Chamber of Commerce members and other businesses and organizations to our schools to learn what's happening. And we also plan to
088launch a board of visitors to bring people into BASC about four times a year uh welcoming them into our schools and sharing information on important educational topics. And the idea with that is it's a cohort of learners. So you have different folks coming and doing it over time. Um and you end up having hopefully lots of people in the community who are um engaged in and have had an opportunity to really be within the schools. and then our continued um improvement leadership actions at the school level. Uh we reviewed the data with each school and each school has started designing strategies to address families feedback and our directors of course work one-on-one with principles and each school also shared a student and family parent experience or a results video with their families specific to their
089school's data. Um, they've also shared with their staff that their school-based leadership teams shared the results with staff to help build a better understanding of the feedback so that we can be responsive to what families shared with us. That is our evidence of compliance. Happy to uh take any questions or feedback that you might have. Thank you, Marcy. Uh I just want to just quickly predominantly because we've focused on especially in workshops the last few months specifically on results policies reframe the board back into OE monitor reports and the which are significantly different than a result than results policies. So I just wanted to shift the minds back. So we're not thinking of compliance versus as compared to a results policy, but compliance as compared to an OE monitoring port. Thank you. I appreciate the
090just in the conversations that we've had the questions and then the survey results were included. That's really helpful and just to see the analytics for the websites. They I don't understand a lot of it, but but I mean it's nice to see that, you know, the decrease in the Facebook. You can see the increase in the engagement with Instagram. It's just nice to see um that all of that work is really um getting impressions and getting um eyeballs on it. So, thank you for putting that in there. I appreciate that. Absolutely. Thank you for highlighting kind of the leadership actions that you're noticing from some of this and I think I don't know if this is a process piece to just dialogue around but then I become curious to know okay so then what happens
091with those things that you're trying to implement so some of these things where is kind of our way of circling back on kind of the ways that you're taking the information from having prepared the OE things that you all want to try as a leadership team and then kind of closing that loop back of hey we you know tried to have less platforms for terms of technology and this is maybe what you know whatever that might look like to kind of circle the the loop with some of this I think is a really curious piece because we've talked about the impact of this of okay so then what right you've shared all this monitoring all this really interesting evidence so then what are you all kind of considering with that um so I look forward
092to maybe just updates or pieces you know you're learning in April things that maybe even just moment to moment that are worth elevating of gosh we've done this change on the website because we realized you know x y or z um I appreciate that kind of ongoing dialogue too if it ever feels appropriate rather than these sort of yearly moments. If I could jump on to t on to that because I kind of highlighted the like the chamber of the state of the district event and the board of visitors that seems like something that would really dubtail with 08 you know 13 and 14 that would be a great opportunity for the board uh to collaborate. So I would love to have you know insight on that and how we can you know participate because
093I think that's exactly Pardon me it's on my list. Ah well there you go. too. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, the the um reflection part of the plan do study act reflect. It'll be nice to come back and look at the things we've done. Um and certainly we'll you know we can follow up about the award participation and how we can collaborate on those other items. That'd be great. Thanks. Any other questions specifically for Marcy before we kind of move the report into board hands for vote? Okay. So, just by process, uh, board members have received and discussed the superintendent's monitoring report for OE9. I will now accept a motion to accept and approve the report as presented for any further discussion as to whether or not the OE is in compliance. Is there a motion? So,
094moved. Thank you, Meredith. Is there a second? Second. Thank you on Carlos. Um any other further discussion now then among board members in terms of the board or the presentation for this OE being um deemed in compliance. Thank you Mark. Great work and your team award-winning work. Yes. Thank you. I'm really impressed with the work that and the the continuous improvement. Thanks. Yeah, I'll add that I feel like you're really doing a good job trying to meet everybody in the community where they need to be met. Um, so I hope that everybody feels that way, but certainly back on some of these things helps us share with the community or helps us share with everybody that, you know, we are listening to this feedback and putting it into action and there's There's things that I
095haven't experienced individually, but I'd love to hear everybody else's experience that I know are having better experience continuously having better experience with the communications. Thank you. My only question is can we put a diiocritic mark above soup in the loop of the soup to indicate the long vowel particularly? I'm all about marking things up. So we don't read it as sub. Right. I'm sorry. Subie. [Music] Talk for hours. Yeah. The E is the start of another syllable. Okay. All right. There's a motion by Meredith and a second by Juan Carlos. Um I would Well, yeah. Okay. And so I'm repeating all of those things. And so let's take a vote. All those in favor of approving the OE9 report as presented as being in compliance signify with I. I. Any opposed? All right. OE9 is
096approved. Thank you again for your work and your time. Moving through our agenda um into board updates. So, Merida, thank you for servicing a couple of OE8 kind of pieces that we can circle back to related to board communication and collaboration with the district. Anything else from board members um related to OE8 or just any any general board updates? Yes, I have one. Yes, please. Uh my fraternity, the great Omega Sci-Fi Fraternity Incorporated, uh hosted it talent hunt event. It's one of our mandated programs. Uh again, it happens annually. It's been around since 1946 where we give young people uh the opportunity to showcase their talents. Uh this year was held at Madison East High School. We had some amazing contestants and Verona was well represented as the winner was uh by Michael Kayla Kirch
097MJ uh won first place for her uh I I say spoken word. She she would say it's a poem, but to me it was more like spoken word. The way she uh she delivered the the masterpiece called the classroom where she talked about being what what it's like to be a black student at Verona High School and it it just moved the whole the entire building was at a standstill. Everybody's jaw was on the floor. We were just like wow. And uh Jaden McDow, if you you guys don't know, Jaden, who's also a student here at Verona, uh did some hiphop. It's the first year or second year that our fraternity has allowed hip-hop as part of this competition. And it's not because the fraternity is against hip-hop. Of course, we love hip-hop, but in
098the past, it had to be musical or written composition and uh you know, hip-hop that yeah, the lyrics are there, but with music they also had to have written music and so we got past that with international headquarters if you're watching and uh now it's part of the competition and Jaden was amazing. But I was so proud of all of our young people. We had uh singers, dancers, poets, uh digital art. It was just incredible. It's amazing. Thank you for sharing. I think uh we're interested in seeing anything that maybe came out of that day if you have anything. Showing you the video competition. It was incredible. Thank you. So if I can elaborate uh quickly on uh board for member White's um of MJ MJ's uh you know us way MJ uses as her
099her poem was in video video form um the classroom is was also used as a uh a teaching tool for our uh staff advisory where we've used it. we've used it in the uh additional uh advisory settings to help put uh her voice to the broader community and on Wednesday it is being used as our open air for to teach our principles of how to cascade that message into all of our all all of our all of our spaces. So, we're very excited to not just have her perspective be uh brought out in the form of of the talent show, but it's also being used as um uh our continued uh work to ensure that we do we truly have uh uh diversity and equity reminating throughout our uh throughout our system. Uh we've also
100and she's given us permission to do all of this. What has uh we're excited that uh as far as our onboarding of new staff through human resources, we'll be using that for the perspective of student experience uh for our onboarding processes as well in in in the fall. So almost feel like we royalties. Yeah, royalties are all but super grateful that she's willing. Oh, I I'd be remiss if I didn't say this because she won the competition, she gets to compete nationally at our uh uh district convention in St. Louis um May 2nd. Wow. So she gets to showcase her talent on the national scale. Okay. If I may ask also because I got to see the video, it would be if she's so inclined, it would be a valuable tool for board on boarding
101as well. I will regular boarding just Yeah, it's a it's a pretty powerful piece. Awesome. Thank you for sharing. Any other updates from other board members? I'll just say congratulations to Joe and Christopher um that will continue their board service. Christopher, we are missing you this evening and wishing you well. Um and thank you to Corby as clerk for needing to kind of put in the time and energy that it takes to take in all the local uh municipalities and do the tabulating and the verification of those election results. So, thank you Corby as well for your time. Thank you, Corby. and we will um let those folks Joe and Christopher will take their oath of office at our next meeting facilitated by Corby. So I look forward to that. All right, moving on to
102superintendent consent agenda. Please make sure you've looked over the superintendent consent agenda. Are there any questions? Hearing none, the superintendent consent agenda is approved. So moving on to board consent agenda. So we've um we've got our board meeting minutes. We talked about the co-op agreement. There are two other additional pieces there that are under consent that um are there because they're over the $250,000 threshold for board approval in terms of finances. Um but they seemed at least in your board president's opinion consent worthy. Um but please do elevate any questions you may have about those. Okay. hearing none, then we will deem the board consent agenda as approved as well. U moving on to future dates, we have mostly board meetings. A reminder about our May 7th um consortium meeting that will be happening in
103Middleton. There have been some updates there. We can continue remind you all about the format and to do any RSVPs as needed for that evening. Anything else board before we adjourn to close session? And please grant me your patience as I read through the various statutes as we have a couple of topics in close session tonight. Um we will be adjourning to close session pursuant to Wisconsin statute 19.85 sub1 sub to deliberate or negotiate the purchasing of public properties, the investing of public funds or conducting other specified public business. Whenever competitive or bargaining reasons require a closed session, specifically to discuss a potential transaction between the district and the city of Verona, we will remain in close session under the same law to discuss bargaining strategy, financial parameters, and negotiation direction related to the 2025
104base wage bargaining with VAEA and VESA. And finally, we will remain in close session pursuant to Wisconsin statute 19.85 85 sub1 subg to confer with legal counsel who is rendering oral or written advice concerning strategy to be adopted by the board with respect to litigation in which it is or is not likely to become involved specifically compliance with the Wisconsin open meetings clause is there a motion to adjourn to close session do I go straight to roll call vote I forget that's we do not at this point so we are good yeah those statements as is. So, thank you. Is there a second? Second. You got that. Lori will move into close session. Roll call vote. Joe. Hi. Corby. Hi. John. Hi. Meredith. Hi. Juan Carlos. Hi. I am I as well. We will take
105a quick um little pause and a break. Thank you for your pleas.