001thank you everybody for uh being a nice meeting we'll start the meeting off with a roll call to establish a forum starting with John hi I'm here here Joe here Corby here and Nicole present and I am here as well um we Nicole has the meeting to properly noticed peace okay I'll start by reading our Equity statement each student has access to the resources and educational rigor they need at the right moment in their education regardless of race gender ethnicity ability language family background or family income and our mission statement is each student will acquire the Knowledge and Skills necessary to achieve their personal goals thrive in a global society and lead a healthy self-fulfilling life and if we can take a look at the agenda are there any questions about tonight's agenda it is
002very short I know that's not jinxing it though it's a factual statement there's some things to talk about right here so do we have a motion to approve the agenda as presented a motion from Joe is our second second or a second from Nicole all in favor signify with i i i the agenda has been approved um Chad you are filling in tonight as our superintendent in Residence can you uh kick us off with the superintendents update absolutely uh well first we've got uh as a part of the superintendents update and I think some board action uh we have a welcome and a swearing-in of Corby white yes uh Corby was here last week at a special meeting and I'm selected by the board so certainly welcome Corby on behalf of the district the community
003and certainly I believe we've got your new board colleagues thank you for your willingness to jump into this work and serve our school district so welcome aboard thank you it's great to have you I think we have a few things that we have to do as far as an official procedure here so you've gotten the administrative welcome you've got the boards welcome it's really good okay thank you for doing this and we are going to do the um the swearing in so it can be um or on record okay Courtney if you can just repeat after me I Corby White having been appointed to the office office of Corona area school board member at Large square or a firm that I will support I swear or a word that I will support it the Constitution
004of the United States and the constitution of the state of Wisconsin and the constitution of the state of Wisconsin and will faithfully and impartially and will faithfully and impartially discharge the duties of said office this charts the duties of said office thank you [Music] so welcome aboard before we now officially have April Lord once again and with that um Corby we look forward to getting to know you and for our community to get to know you over the next few meetings so yeah as uh Meredith stated uh the superintendent's report in particular uh is I think probably as short as we've had uh since I've been in the district so uh no results policies tonight to either set indicators or actually go through our initial iteration of handing those over to the board and we
005just have a few a few things we wanted to discuss tonight and it should not take long at all so to start this is our first uh full board meeting since the November 8th election so I wanted to take the opportunity to review at the board I'm sure they've seen it the final results but start with a a huge thank you thank you to the school board for all you did to make sure that our community was as informed and involved as possible along the way and yeah I don't until you actually get into the work of uh leading up to the writing of a referendum question and then eventually all it takes to make sure that that folks have what they need by the time they head to the ballot it kind of takes
006over everything we do for a half a year period of time it did that again and we're certainly immensely thankful to the community with the resounding yes vote that we saw as a as a result with Marcy in the room I wanted to make sure Marcy was a key piece to all of this in particular an operating referendum is really all about communication we had to do all of the hard work up front to make sure we knew what numbers uh needed to be in place and make sure we had the right question and after that was that it was three and a half four months of non-stop work related to our one person Communications Department so Marcy a heartfelt thank you and I know our community thanks you as well for all the work
007that went into getting us in a memory chat if I can interrupt you for a moment I also on behalf of the board just want to thank you because the other important part outside of communication is that numbers too um and all of the work that you do YouTube did was really fantastic and we super appreciate you coming here and explaining it to us over and over and over again yes and all the working hours without a doubt um I I certainly appreciate the thanks and yeah the uh it's interesting it's interesting we have we had a group of business directors actually we hosted on Friday um from Dane County the bank account area many of which uh recently passed a referendum and now uh the the work is still hard it just it changes
008uh now we have the community has trusted this group uh to uh to manage new spending Authority system and we have to deliver on that that new permission that we've got and it is uh we'll have uh easier budgets to discuss in the future with the permission that we've got but we'll still have difficult decision to make and discussions to have so yeah certainly thankful that we have a new problem and that's that the problem is making sure that that every penny is spent to do the right work for foreign yeah extraordinary hours uh we did yeah absolutely we did want to share the results uh um uh we were one decimal point away from getting to 70 but um the old football coach and Dr Clarity and myself certainly would have loved uh to
009have us get to 70 but uh it was like I said a resounding yes from our community this was uh this was I believe uh for sure in our area if not the state uh the um the biggest uh you know the the biggest support of the vote in terms of an operating referendum uh that the state had so that's uh that was pretty spectacular in terms of folks that turned out uh related to the Past referendum we had a very busy week last week in particular in HR payroll we just wanted to make sure the board was aware of all the work happening behind the scenes so um as promised we notified our employees of all of their new salaries communication went out the very next morning and then follow-up communication regarding that 4.7
010percent cost of living increase and all of the new salaries were the folks were notified regarding what their new pay increase would be and now all of the future job postings so Rochelle had actually held off a few openings that came up just prior to the referendum was hopeful it would pass and then we would be able to update new salary information in new postings going forward we've updated our website and all the associated documents as well so Rochelle and that small But Mighty team has done the outstanding job there there's been some behind the scenes systems update so we've updated all the salary tables make sure that we've got money built in the budget to pay everyone's salary and benefits for the year as of November 25th the first payroll will go out with
011all those new salaries we've we're working on calculating the retropay we discussed all of our hourly staff will have their salaries increase on November 28th and that you know I can tell you Doctor Clarity and I know our principals have received you know uh heartfelt thank you for in many cases our hourly staff the you know it's life-changing to get to get an increase like that um and instead of them having to peek around for additional employment opportunities elsewhere or maybe that second job they were considering this is a really big deal for our office and then lastly the process for payroll and all the final salaries for the new CPI increase will go on the paycheck on December 8th so HR and payroll have been super busy super busy Chad do we know yet
012when that uh retropay will get paid out yeah so the retro pay checks I think actually go out um the um I think the same payroll or the following week of December 8th so it will happen before the holidays it will happen in the month of December there there's uh complicated texts and benefits and everyone has their own story so I think HR they can't just uh press process on 900 employees I think every individual needs to be looked at and scrutinized to make sure the right amounts being withheld and get all that in place so they've done an amazing job at will eventually that was my question I think yep and I just wanted to make sure the board was aware of you get a little break from the chat and Peach show but
013but it won't be too long so we will be back at our next uh I think will be our next board meeting December 5th and we will have police sex to go through and our Associated audit is due back I won't be able to go through that with the board and present to the board and everything associated with OE six and then December and January we really start to already look ahead to the next school year so our staffing review and our team internally has continued to go through not only what's possible with some of the new flexibility built into that past referendum But continuing to scrutinize the positions and the people that we have currently working in our school district to make sure they're doing uh the right work so lots of times it's
014this time of time of year where if there are staff position changes or Shuffling from building building that we're starting to get an eye on that and there's uh there's heavy work to do around the master schedule in particular our middle school and high school so and lots of moving pieces as far as the nominal effect Transportation alone I I went you know I talked to the board maybe two months ago a month and a half ago around Transportation so we've had initial meetings with Badger Bus to consider going back to double looping which would be a really big deal for all of our schools you know I was frank with the school board I think our high school gets out too late and I think our elementary schools start to work um so um
015so that um we're we're working it's uh we're hopeful uh that Badger is going to be in a position with many of the things they've done around driver hiring you know that they will be going to be able to give us a commitment that we can pursue going back to double looping which would be a really good thing for our for our district as a whole and there are Master scheduling and start time implications with Transportation that's where it all starts do we have an anticipation about the wind that they might have be able to commit to Staffing um I think within the month yeah so um we had a meeting with a badger here two weeks ago essentially put them uh notice that we want to move back in this direction and they are
016working behind the scenes to make sure that they would have the drivers to do it and then Michael account who's that amazing who works on the operation is working with Badger to actually put together a mock schedule of the students and the routes we have this year which is a lot of work into a double to make sure we know how many buses we would need if we were running a double Loop this year once that's done we'll get together with our academic Services team and start to talk about Bell schedules and school date length and then get back with the badger team and make sure we can pull it off but it's uh we're very hopeful we can do it the difference yeah and then parents would give me given plenty of heads up
017with that type of timeline yeah for that today giving uh Mark Marcy kudos for the second time today uh we got our uh 23-24 calendar out to families last week which was earlier than normal uh Marcy and Dr Flaherty had lots of uh kudos for getting that out as early as they did and we told families uh likely uh later this winter or early spring Valentines would be out but that that's uh there's more work to do there and what we don't want to do is uh put together a bell schedule and find out that we don't transportation to back it up and then have to change it but we're hopeful within the next couple months all of that I'm sorry no probably not yeah we uh we built um uh Transportation double Loop Transportation
018into a single reference that we would have pushed hard on this with a failed reference on them uh it would have we would have to make a budget adjustment oh yeah it's a it's a big deal yeah for sure I think it's great for our voters to understand what their goal means and they could have just bought their kiddos some extra sleep and some extra release time right and so it's nice for voters to understand what they want to help us help them without a doubt yeah it um you you forget in a hurry that it um you know no pun intended it it drives our whole school and our families have been amazing uh in understanding the Triple Loop this past year but um I think we'd like to move that to more reasonable
019school starts so we think the shared timeline about the Staffing review I'm assuming that means FTE calculations and moving I'm just curious from a process standpoint about who's involved in the conversations you know if that school-based leadership teams or how that sort of like district-wide dialogue happens when I'm sure there's this tug and pull of schools feeling like they could use more FTE and how the the weighing of the variables I guess in terms of Staffing yeah um certainly there uh there's no perfect um way to um to go through that process I think having strong school-based leadership teams that are very informed around what's happening with the master schedule and the why behind the decisions that you're making we hold monthly principal meetings so we've already held January 18th to start to have a
020better idea where FTE will land and then our directors and academic Services team will have to be working hand in hand with the budget office and Human Resources with the available allocation that we've got and you know I think even the discussion item later that we've got around the district Equity statement it continues to be important to ground our staffing decisions in our current student data and making sure that we're making decisions as a district to put the resources where they're needed the most yeah but I I shared with a few members today just I was here Friday and in my short time here Friday um you know I was John bremmer who explained you know we're we're currently cleaning this building at 59 000 square feet per pistol which is a lot uh and
021um there's there um if we had all the resources in the world we considered and we may adding some money to the operations budget I go down and I meet with Deb uh in in the Aquatic Center who explains it's really there was potentially some promises made the last referendum around Staffing and editoring during the day um and go down and we'll be talking to the board about this I meet with Joel who explains that our coaches haven't had a raise in 10 years in this District um and that it and that we haven't even begun discussions around uh really full class sizes at the middle school and taking a look at making sure that we're properly Staffing and have the appropriate teacher prep and continuing to look at class sizes at the at the
022elementary school so it's a it's a huge team effort and it'll be important for our principals to continue to be really understand why but I think this is where you started we also have to continue to take a look at making sure that um you know I uh you know from from my seat to continue to talk with our team about how important it is uh not just to continue to layer on FTE existing systems without examining the systems you have that can that's the easy thing to do just you know enough another layer of frosting but making sure and sometimes it began to develop a two three five year plan to decide that maybe there's positions that should be phased out or repurposed or maybe There Are Places we've been spending too much allocation
023that we can pull back a little bit maybe places that were just we've been under funding forever that need additional resources and just continue to look at it every year one even circling something that you offered when it came to busing is even how we schedule our days what do our structures what do our Bell schedules look like and like and what iterations of that can help and support different things our um our high school staff since we have since we began uh late start Mondays it continued to wonder about the possibility of district-wide late start Mondays uh we're um currently we can't do that at the secondary because of instructional minutes we have another chance to go through that again let's see if that's doing lots of work with lots of interchangeable and connected
024pieces yep all good questions then we will be back with the board and start to do um budget forecasting I've shared the state timeline with the board we won't know uh what the next biennium budget will look like through this summer but now that we've got additional spending Authority essentially the board has been given a state budget for the next three four five six years for us to manage now anything additional we get from the state will allow us to continue to stretch out that 19 million dollars of spending Authority into the future we will definitely have our ion uh categorical and Equalization Aid numbers anything more we get in the a pad means that that is money that we would not have to pass on to our tax spheres so that'll be really important
025but if we get increase per people that also means that we don't have to use the 19 million dollars as quickly as we may have to as we um that can continue to work back and forth with the decisions we have to make so that will be we'll have a forecast in January Staffing workbooks will be released to schools in February you've got a matter of three months to make sure we've got the right FTE put into place again action Transportation on the master schedule go hand in hand we end up doing with Staffing and then early in the spring we do our first mass posting vacancies we're expecting for the following school year happens quickly which is what I was thinking you Marcy the rest of the administration was a nice break yeah done
026over back in it okay yeah um I think from afar people think you uh you work on the budget for like uh a month in the fall and Stamp It uh it's year round yeah the the budget is is your own as quickly as you uh pass when you're already peaking and starting starting the next one that's certainly the nature of the work uh we have next uh two more quick updates so uh we have um Dr Clarity wanted to make sure we got this out out into the public and I believe there'll be some uh some more public postings related to this we've got some important dates ahead of us so December 1st uh as far as Board of Education uh December 1st is the earliest date that we can circulate the nomination papers
027used to be me so I'm happy to be mentor and support yes yes uh so uh December 1st we can start to circulate nomination papers between the first and the third candidates have to follow uh uh I have to file the following items campaign registration Declaration of candidacy and nomination papers and the 23rd is the deadline to have all of that put together for the spring elections make sure everyone knew that so members who have to go through this having been sure circulation of papers can't be any earlier than December you have until January 3rd to do them yes but you want to make sure you get them in maybe a little bit before that because it is not uncommon for some signatures not be accepted you want to either have time to get additional
028signatures or you just don't want to be turning it in at five o'clock on the third because if there's anything that needs to be fixed you're out of time so the first of December to January 3rd incumbents if there is uh non-candid if incumbents aren't going to run again December 23rd that I'm certainly and so if there's any questions um you know please people can reach out to me or Jen or Nicole happy to help and I think we can get um you know I think there's there's a process there's quite a bit of stuff that seems like there's a lot to do but it can be streamlined but thank you to advance to Ms Stanley because I'm sure you will be helping us also and we greatly appreciate that and just to remind everyone
029the deadlines are hard they're not ours these are State Statewide yeah so there's no room for flexibility there is okay and lastly for the superintendent's report uh just our next few uh board meetings so we uh we here we said tonight we meet twice uh in December and those are back-to-back meetings uh so we'll see you on the fifth and that's where OE six will take place begin on the 12th and then uh I think we're working on scheduling I think I just heard uh some type of Google poll going out to try to nail down a quarter tree yes January feels far away and sadly so okay sounds good is there any anything else that's all we have any questions on the board oh I will just comment again it's been commented because I
030did spend a lot of time election night and thereafter looking at referendums all over the state and ours didn't pass if not the widest margins certainly close to it I think it was actually the widest Market Statewide which speaks to you know Community sport which I'm very grateful for but it also speaks to I think the work that your team did in coming up with a budget that has an ask that is reasonable and continuing to work the numbers so that the mill rate on the taxes went down in a pretty significant way so that all right you know the people that I've talked to This was um something they're happy to support because it was very well reasoned out it was very reasonable requests and um yeah and I just really appreciate the time
031and repeated effort by both of your teams to give that message out there and um yeah so just great yeah to add what to what John's saying I think the margin also speaks to the fact that we identified early on that our biggest challenge with this was communicate skating that this operating referendum did not come with a corresponding tax increase and I think judging by the margin we we did that and also I mean that was what we found talking to people in the community too that message got out there so you guys did a very good job not only of setting up a situation where there was no tax increase but in communicating that message effectively to the public and one of the other things that I wanted to add and commenting on this
032is that as I was kind of looking around the state you know over the past year or so there have been over two billion dollars in ask from schools across the state um while the state sits on a four billion dollar Surplus like that's not a coincidence yeah yeah John I got uh I got updated this afternoon yeah there'll be a press release tomorrow morning 6.6 million dollars 6.6 billion dollars not a coincidence and I think people will realize that um you know this is not an unreasonable thing that money has been withheld not an unreasonable thing from school districts perspective in other words so thank you again for your yeah absolutely and I also think that a number of that size isn't just a Financial approval I mean I hopefully can maybe anecdotally draw
033that that feels like the community so it's in support of the direction that our district is going is philosophically on board is trusting of the work that's being done so I took that as an anecdotal side note to the financial pieces and just to tag on that like I I agree I think it really speaks to the uh the trust that's been built over the last year and a half or so I realized you know it's hard times to the pandemic and the transparency that the administrations run things with in communicating this and in other issues that have come up has really built up a Wellsprings trust I think that your Rachel would point out but thank you and thank you Dr clarity okay so thank you absolutely um we're gonna move on to next
034item is um discussion of our um Equity statement so just kind of preface this I know we have some questions and there's been discussions between board members from community members from staff members are Equity statement so glad we have many statements however I think we all know that there is maybe some incomplete aspects to this Equity statement um at this point this is not up the board action tonight it is simply just a discussion so we as a board can talk through it um again it's not an action it's discussion we also know that as the Strategic process goes through its its whole process the Strategic plan goes through its whole process at the end of that there will be something brought to the board that is an an updated Equity statement that is coherent
035with the Strategic plan however we have this interim time and I think as we've said when we know better you do better and we are in a in a limbo place of what what do we do again I want to having an equity statement in and of itself is critical and so that's where we're at we're kind of at the and part so um Jen did you have anything that you wanted to add to that um no I think you said it well about this sort of interim space right that the process that's happening through strategic planning with the multitude of voices and perspectives being brought through that process that the equity statement that will be shared eventually I hope will be reflective and something that we can really um get behind his board but
036between today and whenever that point comes for the new Equity statement that's where I'm at too is just what do we do with that I've heard from a lot of various folks around our district and Community kind of wondering the same thing because I feel like I'm in contemplation mode and I appreciate the discussion space because I certainly don't have anything to offer as a solution but I'm just curious what everybody else Jeb do you have anything from demonstrate point of view or do you want to wait and weigh in who would you yeah um I um and I know I'm certainly reiterating things like her a an equity statement uh isn't involved making sure that you have the appropriate number of uh commas built into it in terms of hope we missed something uh
037it's uh it's more about beliefs and what's most important is actions and you know I was having this conversation with Meredith before we started the meeting there is almost something built into an equity statement that inherently means it's going to change again that even if we get through the strategic planning process and the board passes a new Equity statement we feel better about because we learned uh from this one it's not the last one I'm not calling John bremerhub to Chisel this into the walls of the high school but um Equity work is about continuing to learn about yourself and others and it's never finished we're not going to stamp it when it's gone we're certainly had expectations that all of the community voice and school boys we've heard through the Strategic plan process and
038what we've learned from this statement makes the next iteration better but the works numbered up so we're excited for the next iteration but I know that we all have Equity work to do in our own personal journey and that will continue as a district so we'll kind of open it up to the board this is truly just discussion time I'll share my view on this um yeah I think it makes sense what we've been saying up up until now which is we're going through this strategic planning process and the outcome of that is going to be potentially an updated version of an equity statement but at the same time if you look at things that are going on both Nationwide and locally I I think it's important that we not wait to make some effort
039to show the lgbtq community that we support them and including them in an equity statement it's largely symbolic but symbols do matter when it comes to inclusivity and students and staff feeling welcome so I don't know whether it needs to be updating in the interim like just adding gender identity and sexual orientation into our Equity statement or if there's some other way we can do it to show that support but I do think that it's important to do something to demonstrate to that community that or to our community as a whole that this board supports the lgbtq community both our students and our staff to tag on to Joe's statement I couldn't see any framework work work that we do negating that right I couldn't see us going into the framework I could see us
040going into that work and maybe coming up with um either more inclusive or um more language that flows a bit better in this statement um to which again to jad's point I would say then let's update it right we're not we're not talking about chiseling this into into stone um so I would agree with Joe in that we don't if this statement means something to students and it's saying you are not included in the statement I would guilty guilty and so gender identity sexual orientation whatever phrase or phrases who I think should be done and leading it open to that being updated I do have some thoughts on this um um I agree with with Dr Clarity is coming from sharing it and I don't want to speak for him in his absence but I
041agree with the position that these sorts of statements run a certain danger when it becomes a context of how many commas you can have no because it gets away from the meaning of the statement which is really about um giving the educational leaders We Believe regardless of the historical biases that we inherit as a community um and the systemic viruses that we inherit and that the focus of these statements should be less about creating all of these categories and more about explaining um how Equity is going to run through this organization and how we're going to address some of the inequities that we inherited um and that's really what it's about it's about uh confronting the systemic biases and economic inequities and social inequities that have been created for us over hundreds of years um
042often intentionally but often today felt unintentionally but still felt quite a bit and I would hope that that sort of sentiment or focus on the action of equity unless the categorization of people that we feel are agreed by the inequitable processes that exist today I would hope that that Focus would run through the strategic planning result in a statement that is differently focused than this one at the end of that process but that's not my thing to manage here though we've got a bunch of comments and um and I agree that um to not say something about uh sexually gender sexual identity here in light of the um powerful biases that are revealing themselves in action today I mean every Community um is uh something that really ought to be fixed immediately wow so so
043I think that that's important uh but again I I don't think that we should be trying to to list everything and that's not because it doesn't exist it's because it makes people feel like they don't exist if they're not categorized and listed and so it's about asking the question that invites everybody to see themselves in this statement and that's what I hope happens um mm-hmm I would agree with that John I think especially as we're you know looking to find a better statement that truly encompasses you know the equity that we want to infuse into our school the comma list is gonna hopefully not be continued and yet the comma list is what we have right now and did not to not recognize that and to continue to not name especially a group of a
044group of individuals who is truly as Joe we pointed out here in our community and Nationwide experiencing significant ly um but but I will now that I've been invited to interrupt um sorry this is like yeah I'm talking I guess anyway I'm interrupting with my hands all right um I think in this particular case it's particularly poignant that the the battles that are waged over creating more inequities are about omitting from existence any mention of people that have different sexual identities so leading them off of this feels more emergent because of that relationship um I forgot what else I was gonna say because that was very important [Music] oftentimes these discussions around Equity uh and opportunity are rooted in kind of childish assumptions that we have about this being a zero-sum game that if somebody's
045listed and somebody else must be left out if somebody gets an opportunity then that's not the case for somebody else because after all there's only 24 hours in the day there's only so much budget so you must be taking from someone else and I think we need to really acknowledge through this sort of statement that that's simply not true that in so many cases that are backed up by evidence a rising tide does lift all votes um the problem historically is that that argument has been used to lift the best boats first with the assumption that the other boats will come up along with it and in actuality the evidence shows that if you work hard to raise the least of those that then all to all mode survives and that's and that's really something
046that's important to get out there if we're talking about messaging this is not about a zero-sum game we're talking about creating acceptance and safety and ultimately opportunity for our kids and the more we recognize where our kids that are most fret threatened are being threatened the better we're making it for all of our kids um and and uh you know just like when you make the hallways and the streets more accessible for students in wheelchairs people trip less often you know it's the same thing and so um all of this is for you remember me to say that there is a profound philosophical argument here around this that we should really get at the heart of that this is not a zero-sum game um but also this is me saying that I feel a certain
047amount of urgency about this um so yeah and I'm done so when I look at this I think back to I mean this is you know we did not have an equity statement s the fact that there's an equity statement that we open every meeting with to me is our signal to our greater community and to our our district community that this is a priority for us this is what matters this is something that we believe in and we as a board are united in our beliefs in US I also um want to make sure that we are all aware that this could be viewed as performative if we are not enacting the policies and making sure that we are um working to actually Infuse equity and decisions into every aspect of our district so
048this is a statement this isn't going to change except for John what you said if somebody is not seeing themselves here that feels like an erased an Erasure and I think right now we do have a We Know Better so to continue to leave it as is feels intentional then we have an interim period of time again I don't want our Equity statement is not our performative piece and then we are done with Equity we welcome so I think this is where crafting the perfect Equity statement means so very little if we aren't doing anything more and if this is our starting piece and it's already causing hurt we need to address it so it can be a better Equity statement in the long run so we have an interim period according I know I'm
049the new guy here but I I have to say this um I know uh tablet serves on the parents The Advisory Group yes we actually took a look at the equity statement parents want to see it expanded and so the commas that we have there I'm going to be the contrarian here they want to see more commas they want to see inclusion of LBGTQ they want to see you know it expanded that was the basic gist of of their arcade add more to this that would attract from it but I get the point we want to quote unquote simplify it to make it all inclusive so that we get rid of the commas but I'm saying when parents take a look at this they want to see comma and comma and and if this thing
050gets blown up we're include it's a living document we can always change it alter it amend it add to it but I I drove that out there just to say what we're saying here tonight is not the impression I got when uh discussing it with the parents group and I don't know if I if you remember that discussion at all or not Cory I think that is super valuable I think that's very helpful also to for us to remember at the board table that this is going to be a a a statement that is crafted through our community through our staff and through our student voices and then eventually brought to us so what we may sit here as you know six tonight with seven Minds what we may think is best will not be
051representative of all of the voices in our district which is why I see Great Value in waiting to have a new Equity stock statement crafted through that process because what we think is not the end the end of the statement for our districts I think that's really important to to point out um and it also kind of highlights again what we don't want to keep doing is adding commas but maybe that's really less important than adding the commas to make sure people feel seen right I think it's by the that's a perfect thing to think to support the table like I have other data points that aren't these have been people um yes please always do that um and I I do think it highlights in the meantime if students are asking for it and
052parents are asking maybe it's worth adding now so that we help and we avoid any hurt that this statement is causing while acknowledging that we feel like there's a better overarching way to allow it to live and breathe or actually do some ask again in some of the parent groups and some of the student focus groups from now until April what do you guys feel about coming up with some mock language right like like John has laid out and saying do you feel more seen with the commas and all of these nouns so I I think it's actually like a both I think it's okay to take action now to include words that we know will help reduce hurt and say let's also let the framework process take place and be really thoughtful about well
053parents which one resonates better with you students which one resonates better with you what and not to get too pedantic on the warning but I think when we're talking about a list the way it's phrased right now it's phrased as an exhaustive list it says these are the criteria on which we are not going to be discriminating against you on which is far different than saying uh including but not limited to here are some examples but we're not going to discriminate based on anything so that's one of the reasons right there will always be and that's one of the reasons that it feels so exclusive exclusionary to not have them listening is because of the way it's phrased so I hope that the end result down the road is that that issue is fixed but
054again I think there's an urgency like John said that there are people who are feeling excluded right now today so if I could just take just a I think hearing the kind of um yes John I'm sorry I just want to push back a little bit um and Corby I'm so glad you're here and bringing that up because it makes me think and and here's my thought one of the reasons that bodies like this tend to get nothing done and the parent groups focus groups come up with ideas that don't actually affect change it's because we muddle things and then you look around and all these places have like diversity equity and inclusion statements and that's kind of what this is is it diversity is it Equity or is it inclusion it's labeled as an
055equity statement but what we're debating is an inclusion statement right and that gets lost because now we're trying to categorize talk about all these groups and we're not talking about the system so that the actual organization of of opportunities and power that exists to keep recreating inequities um and so I realized I understand but what I'm saying is I I agree with Nicole that we need to do something about where we're at with commas now but my hope is that through the strategic planning process we're parsing out that is listening Equity statement is it an inclusion statement and what when we talk about Equity what do we want to mean like what are the systems that we want to change regardless of the inclusive statement that's going to have um like a more exhaustible list
056or whatever and so um so I just want to say that I'm sorry no thank you I appreciate it but I want to make sure from the board s and then we're going to make sure that everyone else is doing you know we're not doing work that is others work um crafting the next statement that resides with the strategic planning um and and the voices and that is going to be a very large and inclusive group and I think that is for the best um what we are you know I think the the equity um the way that we want to see Equity infused throughout all of the that's our Administration is coming to us with those amazing things and we our job is to support in that same way that and then our job
057tonight is we read this every night it is built into our policy do we want to change it and I wanted so what I wanted to do kind of is just to get a informal uh sense from the board and what I my informal sense seems to be fairly unanimous across the six individuals here that we see that there is a uh there feels like an exclusion by not pulling it out and naming uh gender identity and sexual orientation we see that we recognize it and to do nothing about it feels then intentionally harmful is that true yeah so uh knowing that and recognizing that um I think that if with the board's lesson that I will talk to Dr Clarity Jen and I can meet with him at our next board meeting we'll have
058maybe some additional updated language that will be an interim possibility and that would be the um unofficial direction that the board would like to move is that fair without weighing in or limiting what the Strategic frame is this is yeah this is strictly from now until the Strategic plan yes comfortable with that as a Direction okay it's an important important conversation to have I absolutely I think it's been weighing on all of us in different ways and um it needs to just be spoken about here so okay so with that next on the agenda we're able to move on we have a communicating Community yep ironically I was putting update in our acronym there um so our Communications team admittedly was on a tad of a Hiatus during referendum time I understand um but we
059have regrouped and re-gathered and thanks to the input that all of you had shared and admin and Leadership you know kind of the weeks prior we have finalized sort of initial draft of key communicators and thought leaders and Marcy has drafted an initial sort of invitation email so we're hoping the Monday after this long weekend to blast out initial invitations to folks to participate in key communicators groups and thought leader groups group meetings yeah that so just to see what we get for responses um and then our hope is perhaps then from a timing standpoint that when we have a board Workshop in January we could collectively sort of think about what kind of questions we may want to use in those first go-rounds with those groups get some thoughts from all of you as
060a board about just what would it look like then to help post and just to try to put some commitment behind the invite we are including a doodle poll right away with some dates at the very end of January first week of February to see yes I'll be in your key communicative group and I can come on these days just to kind of get a feel for times of day people's interest and availability fantastic okay thank you awake the timing of that is appreciated with holidays I know it doesn't feel like it's almost January as we have a very hectic next few yeah yeah um when we first started this I was more concerned with how we create uh systemic like logistics for How We Do Outreach and communicate as a board um and I
061remember how some of that process played out with this notion of key communicators and that but what I'm really anxious to get to is kind of an organized This Is How We Do Outreach in a way so that we're not tripping over ourselves uh this is how we communicate with people so they feel like they're getting their information referendums what's standing about where the districts are at and where they look at um and so I don't know if I just want to like sit out on meetings or if it's I'm assuming that that's not where you guys are at yet I think that's a good thing to bring up the board of retreat because I think now that like not saying that the the key communicator and the thought leader group is done but I
062think we can focus on to Jen's Point what type of questions we want to ask and then talk about the next topic for the group to take up because I was kind of with you of like how do we come up with a schedule we put together a whole flowchart of like who answers what and when and we're like hold on let's focus on these kind of key focus groups but then get at more of the operational and intentional communication and focus so we haven't gotten there because we wanted to focus on and thought leaders but I think that could absolutely be our next step and we just need to get really clear about what that delivers so I agree with you so do you guys have a meeting between now and January so first
063we're thinking with the committee meetings if we have more than three then we have a formerly to mention um so we want to make sure that we're keeping you know our committees I also want to make sure that we're going to be kind of using the committee to get our key communicators and our thought leaders group kicked off I think that is fantastic maybe at our board meeting then we kind of talk about do we want to continue to use the communication committee uh yeah because I think at the time when we talked about using the committee and remember this is the we've abolished committees for the most part but the the key to um and the reason for abolishing committees was that we tended to have um silos of information and it's not the
064board work it's board members right you know so as we are um looking to what's next for communications is this a test that resides with a committee or do we now bring it back a lot going on last time well and I think the distinction maybe being you know I feel like there was a little bit of worker bee like to this process of yes communicators and thought leaders that like a few of us were the worker bees that just did kind of logistical things behind the scenes it was less philosophical it was less broad or communication we just we're trying to put these groups together and got Insight but I think we just did a lot of just working and tasking which feels like okay for a committee versus something that's more broad all
065of us discussion about how are we holistically moving forward in terms of broad communication with the community at large versus some of these other spaces that you know through some of the trainings that we've had was an encouraging kind of first step in terms of Outreach as a board to you know so I would like to thank you know you too and Christina as well for you really have put in a lot of work to kind of get a structure for us to kick off with him yeah Marcy you're just the star yeah wow um we circled back at possibly that board um Retreat and figure out how do we as a board want to move forward because I've quite frankly really enjoyed committee structure yeah I feel like I know more about things like
066Finance because I mean just things that um having done things two different ways I see where there's things like kind of some busier work that can be handled off meeting um but I'm not sure that that's the best but we don't want to exclude opinions and thoughts yes can I ask a couple questions about this and they're not going to be well formed because this was also long ago I kind of even forgot um and you guys have probably already thought of these but as you're talking about sending out emails out to those groups that we identified is there a concern or I kind of have a concern about the messaging being important that because otherwise it can give the message to the community that we think some people's opinions are more valuable than other
067people's which is definitely not the case that's not what we're doing but I think I think the messaging of that initial Reach Out is so important in that regard and the second is whether we're prepared for what to do when someone tells someone who's not on that list and they email us and say I'd like to be a part of that which is also clearly you can't send a substitute so yeah and we thankfully Marcy is helping draft s thank you for the for them no but that's really helpful to hear out loud again to just things I just want to put out there before our January thing where I'm coming from so it's not like surprising in January when I come in that I'm much more interested in creating channels or Pathways for people
068to communicate with us um and this notion of like thought leaders and communication leaders has shaded with me from the beginning so I'm kind of antagonistic towards it uh and I just want to throw that out there I don't expect any sort of response but I just again don't want to walk in on January where did this come from but that's also because so when you are ready to send out email CC the board just so we have it like so we you know we're talking about usually the giraffes prepared and is that something that you guys want to look at before we send out uncomfortable I mean I trust you but just so we know absolutely because that it has been since yeah cotton Miller is like absolutely no clue what you're talking about
069so yeah keep us keep us just informed would you have a I feel like you were maybe wanting to just something I remember um hearing from the community when uh Communications do come out from the district do they only come out electronically or do we also send them and they perform I think we're mostly using it depends well mostly electronically I think the referendum would have been the exception Marcy is there other things I mean some things come out in paper but not many yet none of our communication goes out in paper except for some of the referendum stuff and I think we're required to mail paper copies of forward exam yeah results but other than that yeah I don't know if registration does that go out it's very little so yeah no it's very
070electronic and is that something that you're kind of heard yeah that is an issue yeah uh parts of our community that they simply don't have email you don't have access to it so a lot of stuff they find out by either word of mouth or participating in certain subgroups and then it comes up and they're like wow I didn't know about it something we really need to keep it in mind and I think as we're talking about kind of the um overall structures you know I think before we Verona press used to cover meetings where we had like a dedicated reporter but we you know we do need to look at that I think that is a bigger conversation that's another thing foreign American is there um a place where the agenda for the January
071meeting like we're kind of taking notes or aggregating ideas so we could take notes on things like this and I'll put them in a car uh we're kind of just keeping it in mind as we really need up in our leadership meetings and is anyone upset if I like I think we want to make sure that we are not doing a group that's right okay so everybody keep your own yes well let's go let's go back and see if there's just a good reiteration especially you know with a board member if there are things that are um that we want to have on an agenda on this agenda on a workshop agenda email me call me text me and it goes into the kind of the informal parking lot of ideas and we then triage
072where does it where is it relevant where can we best fit it in just because it's the first thing that I've heard doesn't necessarily mean it gets put on the next agenda but it's something that Jen and I will work with um you know Dr Clarity to figure out the best place to put it on the agenda but so agenda topics we will manage were you going to say something John no I think that's perfect you know I know I've talked to you before this meeting where I was like it was under 10. and here it is ah and so yes do that thank you very much even with people like me especially with him so um okay and then um as we are moving into you know the possibility of a board Workshop we're
073going to need to have some flexibility about times and we will look to schedule that um in the upcoming weeks weeks so I know we've got a lot going on we don't look forward this week let's just say that and then soon to be after that um was there anything else so we have on kind of on pause with the communication committee as far as expanding yeah but we are on track with where you're at with that to execute I do I am going to start to try to be more diligent as some of you know I am our board representative to cesa 2 which is our regional um quasi public but also quasi and private but mostly public um Educational Services Agency um we are in region two season two uh typically you see
074them do things like driver's ed and they also support schools providing extra services like services for hearing impaired or other special education services anyway uh and I'm on the border control for that group so we meet once a month and it occurred to me that often we're leading and talking about things they're usually medial that nobody's really help out um but then we're often talking about things that would be important to kind of bring back and say hey here's an update on what cc2 does um so I'm doing that now so this week or this month rather uh every month every meeting we have a presentation from somebody either like a consultant that says two employees to work with districts around bringing ideas into it and I'm going to be a little bit arrogant a
075lot of times these presentations happen and I'm like yeah that's the last year for our district our district is really uh kind of on The Cutting Edge of a lot of the stuff that they're bringing to places um but every once in a while they bring in some cool stuff and so I'm gonna share with you uh this month we got a presentation on 4K and what was interesting to me is um that the Consultants work with districts kind of throughout our region in providing the different ways that they can do 4K and every District does it a little bit differently some do it uh community-based 4K where they partner with providers in the community some places do school basic 4K where they provide all the 4K services in schools and now there's more of
076a push towards doing 3K even in some places yeah getting crazy yeah the tension that happens then is that people expect these 4K programs to be more academic in nature however the research that says there's a benefit to doing early childhood education really the benefit comes more from social and emotional development that happens it isn't necessarily attract or standardized very well even though the state Wisconsin does have learning standards and in particular you look at the model standards for early childhood education for the state of Wisconsin you will notice that they are mostly social and emotional goals not academic the goal is not to train kindergartners to read necessarily is to Train giving gardeners to like share and respect to their opinions do those things so they can have valuable classroom discussions that then show
077up in the database about who's reading better so they look back and they say well these kids have did 4K are better readers in fourth grade that's not necessarily because they're going to read earlier it's because they were socialized in a school setting earlier that's an important thing that kind of came out admittedly I brought that in when people were talking about this tension around like how you structure a successful 4K program because some of them look very successful but maybe aren't some of them look successful early on and then not later on and that's one of the key things that's often lost in this debate so that was a whole fun discussion on how 4K is provided I believe our district pursues a community model when we partner with providers in the community which
078allows us a lot more flexibility than if there's a school-based model um anyway so that was one big discussion that came up made me feel good about us there are districts that are still just offering him for the first time obviously with that perspective and there are a lot of districts that um are not able to afford to offer enough yeah because so what happens is um you're reimbursed from the state 0.6 of a student for your 4K and now your 3k2 if you do it so it's actually they're not reimbursed as a full student so the economics for making that program work aren't necessarily always there because the reimbursements from the state are really low um because you only get 0.6 for each student so um so a lot of smaller communities won't offer
079it because it's not there but like that now it's the case where smaller communities are losing their child care centers so there's no child care options and districts are having to step up and provide a 4K or even a 3K because no there's no child care in that community and kind of take the budgetary hits A legislature I'm sorry I'd love A legislature to hang out with a four-year-old and tell me that you should reimburse that person well it should be like 1.6 well it's interesting because that feeds into this debate or this kind of fallacy that develops where when people provide a service they want to measure that they're getting something out of it and they typically want those measures to be academic and injured and that's not what works at this level um
080and so it becomes you know when you look at it and you're like well they're playing most of the time and the what DPA instruct what DPI structures what season 2 provides is Consulting around play-based 4K which is which is actually a probably a better model because it's more social emotional in nature um it's going way longer than I wanted to but you're asking um so anyway so then it you know the budget I'm sure the budget debate gets to be about like well they're playing most of the time it's a 0.6 because they're not doing like academic rigorous stuff and then this also plays into achievement Gap issues because what historically has happened is when you recognize that students are falling behind the tendency is to say okay we're going to provide this service
081but we're going to measure the hell out of it and it's become this really structured rigorous form of Education that's like worksheets all the time and Stage curriculum and here it is and that's not what leads us to better Learners and so the the tension is about how do we provide this and not over do it anyway that all came out in this presentation I sent a copy of the presentation anyway the other thing that I wanted to get to the reason I was getting here is that one of the highlights they brought in This House season 2 is starting to use Street data as their model for all of their training with districts and their in-house training as well about how to look at data and so this is another area where I'm like
082Ah that's the last month for our district because we've already kind of gotten on that and then when I sent this in I noted the data modeled after um some other districts that have been doing this for a year or more and have some more experience in how that street data model works is like it's really good Cutting Edge stuff that kind of captures more of the qualitative and real world things that are happening that get lost in the numbers and so yeah so it's really cool to kind of see that this is this thing that we talked about two or three months ago um in one of our presentations here is now a type of people kind of seeming like this Cutting Edge thing and we're you know thanks to the administrative team here
083the head of the curve on that and and some of the stuff that comes out of that book if you haven't had a chance to read your book yet there's some really cool and good stuff when I pipe up in our OE reports and I'm like I would really like to hear a story more I would really like qualitative data more that's what this speaks to is kind of getting those real stories out of that so parade us that was the point of this update sorry if I got a little sidetracked um John did you share that season presentation with the motherboard the 4K one yeah it was just a slideshow so it might seem a little bit or no I sent it to you oh so maybe it's in there okay maybe it's important
084it's certainly public through the CSA website I think but there should be but it's it's gonna it's just slides so it might seem a little bit more scattered than my narrative would indicate uh and then the last thing was that cease is working on developing Health uh provider Partnerships around nursing with smaller districts in particular um across the region and that they're trying to find innovative ways to do that and that might be something that we might want to keep an eye is how we can find Partnerships to better provide Health Services but again our district is on it and usually way ahead of the curve on this so that's been really great before we close out board action I just wanted to Circle back to one quick thing and we're talking about moving forward
085and how we remember we have a whole set out to the board of governing um I can't think of any words it is Apparently after seven o'clock it's like Cinderella at seven o'clock it turned into a pumpkin I can't talk um we have our government commitments that's what make sure that if you if you have questions I want everyone to make sure that they read those those we need to know inside not because that is tells us how we communicate with the public it tells us our role it tells us what we you know so we're not stepping on toes because it delineates our responsibilities between our board and our our Administration and I think that's where we have had such success but we want to keep that respect clearly it is resonating with the
086community in ways that okay with that said moving on to public comment with our massive amount of people here and um we have our superintendent consent agenda are there any questions about the consent agenda and if not hearing none uh consent agenda has been approved as presented we have a board consent agenda are there any questions about the board consent agenda is there a problem that there are no interview Workshop minutes attached or is it just more of a notice in board docs but that occurring okay so any questions about that in hearing none board consent agenda has been approved as present future agenda items we've already heard about our future um meetings so we've covered that next one is on December 5th and then keep in mind with December it's not we have the
087fifth and then right away then the 12th then you get a break okay that said uh keep those in mind and with that is there a motion to adjourn Ed a motion from Nicole is there a second second from Jen all in favor and I we are adjourned thank you all so much thank you to Administration please enjoy your Thanksgiving holiday and break it is all right thank you