Board of Education meeting 11 15 2021

001okay uh we're a little late but i'll call the meeting back to order after closed session uh first thing we will deal with is the consent agenda items and i had the consent agenda item so i would make a motion we approve those and is there a second second sure all in favor say aye aye aye we are going to change the agenda a little bit because we have our school perceptions gentlemen here to give us a report and he's got two more to do tonight i do appreciate the uh the virtual sign up for this evening between my boss and i think we have a half a dozen board meetings tonight so um so i do appreciate your flexibility and i want to launch right in so a little bit about me a little

002bit about who we are as a company very briefly uh my name is rob dimice i serve as the research director at school perceptions and i happen to be the lead on are the lead project manager for your particular survey we at school perceptions actually we just celebrated our birthday so we're now officially um in our 20th year so we were founded in 2002 and our mission in that time has never changed we help educational leaders such as yourselves uh do three things primarily gather organize and use data to make strategic decisions we've conducted more than 10 000 staff parrot student and community surveys all in the name of school improvement and those 10 000 surveys have actually spanned all 50 states now and over 800 districts we've done these in all in the name

003of strategic planning and referendum planning processes just what you are doing tonight in terms of your specific survey a little bit of the survey logistics here so the survey was conducted in october and november of this year in 2021 and just as a reminder for the avenues for which people could take the survey um households were mailed a paper copy and then they really had one of two options so they could mark up that piece of paper as much as they wanted and then we purposefully removed the district from that process so in order to keep people's data confidential that went directly back to us at school perceptions and same thing with the other route that people could take to take the survey um on the front of each paper survey there was a 16

004character alphanumeric code again that data went straight back to us at school perceptions nothing went through the district um and the benefit of that was once somebody used that code and they hit submit and finish that code expired that went away so that they could not continually take the survey over and over again and skew your data for the most part people do take the survey online although we have heard that a lot of people like to have that tangible piece of paper in their hand uh when they're actually taking the survey but nevertheless um about a quarter or so of your survey respondents decided to take it on paper and send it directly back to us for a participation rate that was just a hair under 20 so uh really good news there we

005feel very confident about making um accurate predictions based on this participation rate so nothing on this slide is concerning i feel good about it and then in terms of who took your surveys um so what this slide is showing here is the percentage of each uh person or the the percent of each bucket that identified themselves as being part of that age group in other words one percent of your survey respondents identified themselves as being in the 18 to 25 age group and then out what i like to do as the as the research director i wouldn't be a good researcher if i didn't go on to the census bureau website to compare what your survey takers look like compared to the actual proportions of your community about seven percent of your population is in

006the 18 to 25 age range and by the way that's not just amory that's the school district boundaries not the municipalities boundaries um that's pretty that's pretty common actually um this number right here usually hovers about one two maybe three percent sometimes um which you know actually unfortunately is pretty indicative of uh election turnout as well the 18 to 25 age group is the least likely to vote and they're the least likely to take a survey so for better or worse you're actually right on track here with about one percent of your survey takers um being in that age range 26 to 34 uh was pretty on track actually eight percent of your turbo survey takers fell into this bucket and a little over nine percent of your community is in this bucket right here

007in terms of 35 to 54 um you were a little over represented in your survey takers here uh again that is neither surprising nor concerning to me um the 35 to 54 age group is really prime working age and its prime parenting age um and by definition your your staff and your parents are going to be the most connected members of your school community and they have thoughts and they have thoughts about the direction of the school so it's not surprising that they both take surveys and turn out to vote so over representation there is not at all surprising um your 55 to 64 was almost spot on sixteen percent of your survey respondents were here and i want to say let me write down 16.7 percent of your community falls in this bucket so

008again almost spot on and then you're 65 plus again a little over represented here uh about 23 percent of your community falls here but 30 of your survey takers um were in the 65 plus category honestly that's really good news uh unlike 18 to 25 year olds the other side of that coin are the 65 plus who don't miss elections um they are your most loyal voters we have to know what they think and they are the most likely to be on a fixed income so it's really really important to us that we hear what the 65 plus population is thinking we do a little bit more so than how they represented the population so that's a thumbs up i i really do like that from the survey respondent perspective do you live in the

009school district of amery was the next question that we asked um 94 of people said yep i do um six percent of people said no i don't um there are really three buckets of people that fit in here um because we always get the question about why would school perception send surveys to people that don't live here um so we did ask whether that whether people live in the school district of america so they could have property there um they could have a second home they could have a vacation home in the amory area but that is not their primary residence or staff who don't necessarily live within the district's boundaries but by nature of having their staff email address on file they received a survey and parents who open enroll into the district again

010by nature of having their email address on file receive a copy of the survey now however this is a big however here when we move forward with some of our analyses we are going to strip these people out because they cannot decide an election in the school district of america these people came so in the analyses moving forward we are going to focus only on the 94 percent of people who have their primary residence and vote within your school district's boundaries in which municipality do you live i did double check this with sean just to see if it was kind of what he was expecting and he said yeah that looks pretty much what i would expect in terms of population centers so um a little under a third of your survey takers were from

011amory itself a little under a quarter were from lincoln and then i'd say kind of the next tier of of proportional people is in black rock and alden and then so on down the line including a handful of people down there in balsam lake and clayton so i do see a wide range of representation but again sounds like the the areas where you'd expect to have people take a survey we are and then we asked are you an employee of the school district of america i want to say two pieces of the pie here but in terms of employees it's not surprising that one piece of the pie greatly over shadows the other frankly the majority of your community is not employed by the school district so the fact that over eight and ten people

012said nope i'm not employed by the district it's pretty much spot on but nevertheless um i did check the denominator here with uh with sean and it does sound like you've got pretty good staff representation as well so that is excellent and then we said do you have a child or children attending the uh school district of amory school again i want to see some two hefty pieces of the pie here and we do again we have to know what parents are thinking because they are your most connected members of your school community but again most people in your community are not parents of somebody that had a of a school-aged child so the fact that we're a little over half over here at 57 fairly normal nothing stands out to me either i want

013to see both groups are presented i do uh then in terms of background information so some of the slides that you see here are going to be absolutely no different than what was on your survey and we do that very much on purpose we want this report to be a one-stop shop for um for you moving forward so that you don't have to dig a paper copy of your survey out of a desk drawer or scratch your heads a couple of weeks down the road and say you know what did we say or how did we describe that or whatever the case may be we want you to be able to look at just this report and have all that information ready to go and we recognize that not everybody chose to take the survey

014and you may have people moving in and in the name of transparency we want to be fully open about what was on the survey so you could look to this when it's posted on your website and see what exactly was on the survey itself so in the background information here we talked a little bit about how you're doing academically and the fact that you've exceeded academic expectations according to the latest state report cards we talked a little bit about how you were doing financially both relative to yourself over the last couple of years and relative to other members of the middle border conference and then in your survey we shifted a little over to the facility background and we said really there are three major themes that came out of the facility study um one

015of them being the buildings and grounds and those improvements needed there the outdated classrooms and labs and the support areas that also need to be improved and support areas in this case were defined as places that are only places like your cafeteria in your kitchen with our children but they're not necessarily learning environments and then we asked would you support the school district of avery pursuing a referendum to fund the issues identified above and here we get to our first important set of data now at first it looks like there's a lot going on here and there is but let's take this one column at a time so again uh i'm gonna purposefully sound like a broken record here these are district residents only so we stripped out that six percent focus on them at

01694 percent and a little over two-thirds of all respondents said yes i support you pursuing a referendum but the issue that is that that over uh over represents a little bit staff and parents so we wanted to segregate this a little and look at how different groups are feeling so your staff over eight and ten or eighty-six percent said yep go ahead and pursue a referendum and parents who are not staff were right around three quarters or so 76 said yes go ahead and pursue a referendum now to reiterate what i'm saying in any given community about one percent of of adults in that community are staff about 25 are parents of a school-aged children so yes these bars are high but there aren't there simply aren't that many people that are included in these

017categories now i want to take you over to the purple people um these are non-parents non-staff so in any given community about 75 percent of people fall into this column right here so when you do see these colors up on my screen the first place i want your eyes to go are to the purple bar because the proportion the majority of your community the largest proportion is going to be included right here nevertheless over 50 support coming out of the gate 57 percent of non-parents non-staff said yep go ahead and support or excuse me we support you pursuing a referendum um then moving down um the other hump that stands out to me a little bit here is um 28 of non-parents non-staff said no don't pursue a referendum to contextualize that a little bit

018it's pretty close to what we normally see it might be a hair high but really nothing that really caught my eye i would say that in any given community right around a quarter of people on average um say no without seeing what the details are any any given quarter of a community is going to be against uh raising the property taxes through your mill rate at the district so the fact that this is 28 again not surprising to me a hair high but really nothing that's sent off any blinking lights um and then finally over here 16 of non-parents non-staff said i'm not sure i need more information um i'm going to come back to this in a second in terms of how these people fall but for right now note that coming out of

019the gate a little over majority of your non-parents non-staff are supportive of you pursuing a referendum and then we said well if the community does support pursuing a referendum the district put together the following plan the following recommended plan and we noted what was in it um so we talked a little bit about some of the high school projects that could go in there again screenshots straight out of your survey and then noted that the recommended plan would also include following projects at the other schools and then made certain to call out and disclose the cost of the recommended plan at the bottom of that page for 35 million dollars and then we asked arguably the most important question we said would you support a 35 million referendum to fund the recommended plan as described

020in the previous page we disclosed what the annual tax increase would be and also wanted to disclose that these were interest rates that had the assumption of between three and a quarter and three and a half percent and then noted what that would look like in terms of tax impacts related to some of the previous years in amory so same breakdown here all residents um two-thirds of residents said yes we support the recommended plan as it was described staff over eight and ten um support the recommended plan as described that was parents who are not staff about three-quarters 76 said yep we support the recommended plan as described and then 55 of non-parents non-staff again most of your community is contained on this slide right here um over the majority so obviously as you know

021in any given referendum um passage is 50 plus one um right now you're looking at 55 um coming out of the gate of non-parrots non-staff that that are leading towards yes for a recommended plan but let me revisit what i said before down here in terms of the undecided folks so i was telling um telling some of the amory team earlier this week that for better or worse people in the midwest are too nice which is great because they're nice and sometimes not always that handy for survey results people know that when push comes to shove and rubber meets the road when they enter that ballot box they know they're going to tell you no but telling you no feels mean it feels rude it feels like they shouldn't tell you that right now even

022though they fully know that's how it's going to go later on so they check undecided but in our 20 years of experience what we've learned is that about two-thirds of this undecided count right here these gray people are gonna fall toward the bottom in red and about one-third are gonna move up to the top towards your green so even if i low-ball that and say that that's four percent uh right now that you're pushing upwards of 60 support for your recommended plan um which relatively speaking is quite high um 60 support for any given referendum um you know it's not surprising to see a great deal of referendum results lying between 45 and 55 um so the fact that you're pushing 60 does show me that there is a pretty substantial support uh for voters

023for the record uh but it's not the only thing we tested in your survey there were two other projects that could be included in the facilities referendum so as we turned the page then for survey takers the early childhood center was next and we talked about what that would do and what the estimated cost would be and then we said would you support expanding a referendum to build an early childhood center and again disclose what it would cost um and every month uh what the cost would be every month for every 100 000 worth of property value same breakdown here the same order so in terms of all residents uh 54 percent said yes we support expanding the referendum for that early childhood center splitting that apart your staff residents were at approximately 77 your

024parents non-staff were at about 60 and then we saw a decline here um so non-parents non-staff in terms of the early childhood center that was at 42 so that is now below your 50 threshold and if i carry over my undecided again you know let's just say that's ballpark about five percent or a little under five percent uh even at my tip top for the moment then i'm looking at about 47 support for for the early childhood center so relative to the recommended plan it is lower and unlike the recommended plan now you're on the other side of 50 um now you're looking at your non-parents non-staff um who do not break the 50 threshold for for support for for the early childhood center and then finally there was the swimming pool um in this

025particular question said would you support the district exploring partnerships over the next year to build a swimming pool um and this this turned up some interesting data here again district residents only um the there are two humps that stand out uh in terms of parents who are not staff members about two-thirds um did say yes we would expl uh support you exploring partnerships um but that was the highest group um in terms of parents and recall that they're about 25 percent of any given community otherwise the other bar here that catches my eye is this 50 of non-parents non-staff why does that catch my eye well not only is it at 50 already but i want to draw your eyes back to what the question actually said so right now this wasn't necessarily for a

026tax increase um this was me as a survey taker offering you permission as a board to explore partnerships um i can tell you explore to the cows come home and that doesn't affect my wallet so the fact that we're already at about 50 percent here in terms of exploring partnerships i would say that that's kind of high coming out of the gate and again undecided if you add about um you know two-thirds of people here that are undecided say that's you know about nine percent that'll switch over here to no uh now you're looking at almost the flip side of your of your recommended plan now you're looking at over majority that are saying no non-parents non-staff um from then don't explore the partnerships so let me uh go through some of the other metrics

027of your survey and then circle back to some of these data surrounding your projects and i'll review them a little bit and certainly take questions from you as well but i do want to finish off the other elements of your survey in terms of your communication uh the best way to read this is close one eye and turn your head to the right uh we asked how do you like to receive school and district information and this is ordered in descending order by non-parents non-staff so um kudos to the amory free press it's nice to see that a local paper is still around in your area um over 70 percent of non-parents non-staff said yes we like to receive information from this local paper um and a little little less than that but still pushing

028around 70 percent of your non-parents non-staff said i like to receive my information from district newsletters and then you see a little bit of a drop-off here so that in terms of non-parents non-staff to some extent they're looking at your website and social media but that's really not surprising in terms of non-parents non-staff it's kind of a push-pull here non-parents non-staff would rather have information pushed to them because they don't currently have kids in school whereas your parents are a little bit more willing to to to do some pulling here and seek out the information so parents on the other hand like to see some information on your website uh social media and then again i would say tier two for parents are district newsletters and the amri free press now chances are a lot

029of communication that you do anyhow is probably through most of these channels regardless but i like to see this because it does kind of give you an idea for for the bang for your buck here uh and then we did ask a communication section for parents only so now these are just my blue people how do you like to receive school and district information so in these school specific channels nearly nine intensity emails about two-thirds of text messages and half said i like the teacher and classroom newsletters and then i would say there's kind of a second tier of go-to sources of information for your parents things like conferences family folders public schools seesaw and phone notifications not a lot of draw however for parents in terms of google classroom and now this is actually

030the part where it's fun to be a messenger uh your overall satisfaction so if you do have a board packet in front of you um this is actually about i don't know a couple of hours on a date uh but we had a couple of surveys closed today and when i happened to look at your results earlier on i actually went up and that's pretty darn impressive considering there wasn't even a whole lot of room to go up here um so i only have two thumbs but they're both up for right now because this is the best part of my job is presenting data like this to you because these are so so high um these four metrics which are standard on all of our surveys now said how well are we doing in each

031of the following areas lowest i can be is one at four highest i can be is great at four so my range has to be in there but i want to draw your attention over here to the far right hand side so in terms of a percentile um a percentile is uh it tells you how many districts are below you and above you so if i'm at the 50th percentile i'm at the median meaning half the districts are doing worse than me and half of districts are doing better than me when you're at the 99th percentile here you don't really get any higher than that 99 of districts according to survey respondents are doing worse than you in terms of how they perceive their district to be delivering a high quality education that leaves us

032pretty darn pretty darn small pool of people that are above you same thing as we go down the line you're at the 81st percentile for building pride in the community 83rd percentile for keeping the public informed and 70th percentile for managing your funds appropriately um i got out of a meeting earlier this week when all of these were barely pushing above the 25th percentile that date is a whole heck of a lot less fun to present here i mean i don't even this is this is flabbergasting to me i mean i recognize that somebody has to be the 99th percentile um but it's fun to let you know that you are so i won't dwell but really this is this is some really really awesome numbers here um and then this is kind of some

033of the corroborating information on a scale of 0 to 10 how likely would you be to recommend the district to a friend or family member the way i visualize this is if i could pull this chart out of my computer and set it up and make it into a little 3d stand i want it to be top heavy i want it to fall over and it would um so you get a lot more green a lot more yellow and a lot more orange than you do down here at the bottom in terms of red and maroon in fact i passed along to sean that i'm not sure i've seen this bar any longer in any survey that i've seen since we instituted this question in spring um the fact that almost exactly a third of

034people are giving you the highest score that they can um on this i mean it's it's good news your average is 7.71 and i think it speaks to how you get to these percentiles here as well so overall lots of satisfaction so let's bring it back together then in review um would the recommended plan be supported um i want to dig into this one more time and show you a little bit on paper so to speak about what my calculations are here so resident population assumptions you heard me say this a few minutes ago but non-parents non-staff are about 75 of the community community parents are about 25 staff are about one percent so when i go back and i weight these people proportionally according to their level of support this is what i'm seeing

035of those responding definitely yes or probably yes you're at about 60.3 percent according to the proper weight when i include one third of my undecided respondents then i'm seeing about 64 percent uh support from your community in terms of the recommended plan so again quite quite high here in terms of potential support for the recommended plan what did we learn a majority of all key subgroups support pursuing a referendum to update the schools that's what i refer to as the permission slip question um this comes after okay i understand the needs do i support you pursuing something a majority of all subgroups said yes similarly a majority of all key subgroups would likely support a referendum to fund the recommended plan what else did we learn um i would say that there's support in concept

036for the early childhood learning center uh but it may be wise to explore the project in a future phase and focus right now on the recommended plan and then finally while parents would like the district to explore partnerships to build a pool your broader community does not share this support for those pool partnerships and then finally the fun bit the district scores above average in terms of the four main satisfaction indicators as compared to similar school districts so let me pause there i'm happy to take any questions that you have i know you have questions after that that was a really well laid out um presentation of the data and i think it really speaks to what this community values and what they want to see happen there and it gives the board a pretty

037clear decision i think of what we need to focus on going forward yeah the survey i think very complete very nice summary it shows i think pretty clear what the community is willing to support so it's a big help for the board my only question would be the participation rate i guess i was disappointed to see the participation rate at under 20 um i'm wondering if that's pretty average i guess i would like to see a higher percentage rate yeah i mean the higher we go the happier we are uh but i would say that even even with uh surveys that have been quite a bit below 20 um we still feel really confident in our predictions and um to be honest i would see that you see a great deal of fluctuation maybe during

038the first four to 500 550 surveys that come in and then after that and just as a reminder i think you were at 10 37 or a little bit over a thousand uh surveys after the first 500 or so um the deviations and respondents really quiet down and your dirt and your survey data settles down um so it's interesting even as more data comes in that the percentage points don't change a whole lot and the other reason why i point that out as interesting is um your participation rate went up quite a bit in the last couple of days and the reason the reason that's important to point out is because that's usually the non-parents non-staff that come in and by definition again because your non-parents non-staff are the least connected members of your community

039because they don't have kids there and don't have and are not employed by the school district they tend to also show the least amount of support so the fact that the the percentage points really didn't change a whole lot tells me that um what we captured is still pretty representative of your wider community and on top of that again you know i guess for better or worse when i scroll back here a little bit um there weren't a whole lot of people that were oops this is the wrong one there weren't a whole lot of people that were undecided um so yes about 33 of non-parents non-staff said no to the recommended plan again 55 said yes it's not uncommon though to see this undecided in the middle here sometimes push 20 um so you

040know for better or worse it seems like people have made up their minds in your community which is good data clarity uh and the fact that you know yes i love to see a higher percentage of participation rate it's not concerning to me and the fact that your data didn't change a whole lot tells me that we are capturing a pretty good bit of how your community in general feels would you say then that it would be a fair statement to say that um because when you look at the data that comes in initially that people that feel strongly one way or the other would be more likely to fill out a survey fairly quickly and return it and then once you see that data starting to calm down it's more representative of the general

041public even if they hadn't taken the survey they don't feel that strongly necessarily one way or the other but would be indicative of the survey results that we have i would say it's a matter of convenience as and connection as opposed to passion one way or the other in other words i think parents and staff take it right away because they're used to getting emails from the school and they look a lot um whereas your non-parents non-staff because they don't have a school email address and because they don't have those email addresses on file they are getting it through their household and it just tends to sit on counters a little bit longer which isn't a huge concern if people get it back to us but i would say that it's not necessarily your your

042most passionate people that answer first it's just a matter of who received it first is there a discrepancy in um support or non-support versus from email versus paper copy surveys do you have that data you know if you have that data i don't know if you track that uh you know we track we track how many come in on paper but i don't think that that is a making up a word here disaggregable that's not a metric by which we desegregate um so i don't know um either way i guess i haven't given much thought before but either way i the way that they're presented here are just the way that i typically think about it because it kind of falls in descending order of support so arbitrarily going to say this well that's a

043bad example um going back to one of my first slides here um usually this is the way you see it it's usually a step staircase down whereas staff are by far the most supportive uh followed by parents kind of being in the middle and then non-parents non-staff being the lowest level of support and usually there's a pretty good correlation between non-parents non-staff and and they have to take a paper copy um so i guess my thinking out loud roundabout rambling answered your question is i think my paper is probably capturing a great deal of these purple people any other questions speaks well for our staff here at school yeah as a former teacher myself i'm gonna go down this slide and leave it here because this is this is the happy one yeah there you

044go well they're all happy thank you rob yes of course thank you thank you all right take care have a good day okay uh next we'll go on to the community comment section and i'll read this can everybody hear me okay welcome to this meeting the board of education of the school district of amery we are pleased that you are interested in school district education issues your input may be very beneficial to the development of appropriate educational programs you may address the board only during the community comments time on the agenda emory school district residents district employees and guests invited by the board may address the board at the discretion of the presiding board member in order for the meeting to flow smoothly we would appreciate that the following guidelines be followed by anyone wishing

045to address the board of education for those wishing to speak before the board a sign-up sheet will be available prior to the start of the meeting if the topic noted on the senate sheep is deemed to be out of order the presiding board member will inform the person wishing to speak prior to the start of the meeting comment time is limited to five minutes per person however the time limit may be increased or decreased at any time by the presiding board member the time allocated for community comments may also be ended at the determination of the presiding board member comments and suggestions related to the school district operation are welcome personal criticism of members of the board of education or employees of the amory school district is out of order please stand to be recognized

046after being recognized give your name and address for the record the board normally receives citizen input and does not respond or debate if there is a need for an answer or response to a concern or issue the district administrator or one of the other administrators may get back to you within the next week if your concern requires board action it may be placed on the agenda of the future board meeting and i thank you for your cooperation and we have julie verkant [Music] julie beer camp black brook township the question are we teaching crt in our schools has been asked many times by many different parents of this of the sporting administrator each time we have been told emphatically no the language may be altered has been found that the concepts of crt are indeed

047being taught to our children in the school district tonight you'll be presenting vision 2025. as you go through this presentation i want to advise everyone watching this to notice the verbiage and review the new strategic plan as available on our school's website under people services and then social emotional learning labeled by castle there is a power standard set for each building in our district i believe everyone has heard of united states attorney general merica garland directing the fbi to target parents speaking up at the board meetings about basking our children and teaching of the crt for those who don't know the ties to a.g garland has with the teaching of crt i'll give a brief summary a.g garland's daughter is married to zan tanner co-founder and president of panorama education this is an education data

048mining company that promotes crt tenants because the term crt has become so well known they have changed the title crt to something much friendlier sounding social emotional learning keywords of diversity equity inclusion are common well no phrases in crt now they're the key words in sel you'll need to look at our back at our july 19th board meeting to the presentation that katie johnson and kate weisenbeck did the mental health grants scl is all over our school website as well as wisconsin dpi you'll need to search the keyword panorama and the search button on the dpi website to have all the trainings panorama has done for school personnel as well as surveys used at the middle high school level including our own district of amery if you look at those survey questions you should not

049be shocked to see the same questions our children were just asked on october 27th for the yrbs dpi survey we've been told that the surveys help get funding into our schools with these in-depth personal questions so let me ask you if we have students respond to the survey they have seriously contemplated suicide several times in the last few weeks how was that student going to get help it's an anonymous survey you aren't able to help that child it's another statistic used to get funding for our school it's only about the money not about the child that child is still left struggling if not showing over to tells for someone else to pick up on we're still failing that child now not only do we have that struggling child how many more kids are we going

050to add to the list because we've now put ideas in their heads of not only contemplating suicide but how to commit suicide some will say their website says we're adapting our sel program from the collaborative for economic academic social emotional learning castle castle is a leading sel provider and lists several crt terms as five core competencies with equity focus including cultural competency diversity and equity equity racial equity and inclusiveness psychological manipulation of a student's values and thinking is found in self-awareness core competency with the explanation awareness of beliefs mindsets and biases and how their influences one's behavior panorama is used by castle for the data mining of our children soviet style collect a collectivist worker training was brought to american schools by socialist john dewey it's found in the relationship core competency collaborative problem-solving pbl

051in 2015 every student succeeds act codified common core at the federal level and changed the primary purpose of education from academic to social emotional learning the essay mandates the inclusion of sel in schools make it very convenient vehicle for implementing marxist inductive marxist indoctrination with crt and let's not forget a link in the link to pcr children's being data mined looked at the collected survey data is used to plan sel lessons panorama is ranked the number one sel measurement tool and report from titan titan partners with the bill and melinda gates foundation it's time we follow the money we have asked respectfully and repeatedly for copies of the sr grant applications we've been told there are no applications for us to view yet we review any information on the dpi website it repeatedly states applications

052what are we trying to hide from the we the parents and taxpayers we've heard the term follow the money well we are we don't like words leading us we send our kids to school to learn reading writing and arithmetic instead we have kids in elementary school and intermediate school learning four ways to solve a simple math problem and being told we have to do what how school teaches us and how you guys were taught i have children who don't know the times tables like the back of their hands i have children who can barely read cursive and definitely don't know how to write it as we teach them at home history civics what about those i asked my nephew what they were learning about the arizona audits and they had no idea what was going

053on in civics class is our american past perfect no far from it we need to know and understand our past so you don't repeat it in the future it's exactly what we are doing but our kids don't know that because they're no longer being taught it you next is steph jansen stephanie jansen um garfield township i'm here tonight on behalf of moms for liberty of polk county a nonprofit organization who works to empower parents and are committed to holding elected leaders accountable while also focusing on preserving crucial founding principles of our nation limited government personal responsibility and individual liberty mom for liberty moms for liberty currently holds more than 152 chapters in 32 states and over 60 thousand members i'd like to thank you for discussing the subject of the sr grants to the sr3

054grants tonight i only wish that i could hear the presentation before i made my comments this is something that i have i have quite a few questions about in september i submitted an open request requesting a final copy and complete essar application from the district containing all required written responses including but not limited to the details of program planning and participation i received an email later from the district attorney stating that the district has not completed or submitted an aster application at this time public law records do not require the production of existing documents or only require the production of existing documents i understand that this application could have been done through wise grants you could be plugging your information in to the application but i'm not sure or why there wouldn't be an option

055to save or print the final submissions of why or how we're receiving these grants part of if you look on dpi all over um the esser grant information that's put in there there's three esser grants each essar grant has clearly stated applications will be available in wisegrants in april of 2021 for the sr2 grant that was for the sr2 grant for the sr-1 grant applications for lease become available grants will not be they will be reviewed as they come in part of the conditions in the application you will tie cost to one or more of the following program types preparedness and response to kova 19 outreach and services to special populations addressing long-term closures education technology mental health support addressing after school and summer activities continued staff employment i think julie touched about some of

056the concerns that parents have as far as social emotional learning and what that looks like as far as being tied to same concepts or ideas as critical race theory what do i need to do to get a copy of what was what we or how we took that money on what terms did we take this grant we're looking at almost three million dollars i asked for the application um i don't know if i'm not using the correct words according to the requirements section 427 highlights six types of barriers gender race national origin color disability and age that needs to be explained in order to receive the grant one of the examples in the it's all on dpi as an applicant there's four different examples these are just examples as an applicant that proposes a project

057to increase school safety might describe the special efforts it will take to address concern of lesbian gay bisexual and transgender students and efforts to reach out to involve the families of lgbt students and there's another one in here about an online group we've also requested information pertaining to oops sorry uh curriculum books that were available to our kids i met with two members in this room a few months ago with my concerns about what our kids have access to not banning books i know that's been a concern but are the books that our kids have access to age-appropriate i think it's not just the responsibility of the school i don't think it falls directly on the principal but there are books here that are concerning and i'm going to read a little bit from one

058it's me and earl and the dying girl by jessie andrews this book is in the high school i checked this on the online and from the hard copy that i was the hard list that i was given so the this is one of the books that is concerning i think that if this book was made into a movie many of us would not want our kids to view it i'm not here to tear anybody apart i think that we all need to work together on this i think that it's we have individuals in positions in our school that change hands you're taking on somebody's position and the rules and what they accepted the years before i'm just asking that we take this seriously and that we address some of the books i have an entire

059list if anybody wants to look and see what we have concerns with thank you next we will go to our administrative reports josh all right for the end of october into november um our ffa crew returned from nationals in indianapolis with an extremely successful trip mr meyer was very proud of all the recognition and awards that they received the yrbs survey was completed in connection with wisconsin dpi on october 27th our girls cross country team finished 10th out of 16th out of 16 teams at the state cross country meet for those that had the chance to go attend the school musical mary poppins november 4th through number 7th to quote the musical itself it was practically perfect veterans day we had our annual veterans day ceremony on november 11th at the high school wonderful day

060had a former ahs classmate our class of 1986 david porter was our guest speaker we began our term two on this past tuesday november 9th last week future events all winter sports practices are officially rolling as of today so all of our sports teams are going we had our first competition tonight our girls basketball team had a scrimmage at the middle school we have a practice act test coming up for our 9th through 11th graders on thursday november 18th we're trying some new things out with the company that we've been working with with act our ninth graders are going to take something called the act 8 9 and our 10th and 11th graders are taking what's called the pre-ect so from that test we're hopefully going to be able to get some good data about

061areas that our kids are doing well in areas where we need to focus on our target growth and then students will get individual reports as well so it's usually about a two-week turnaround for when we take the test the goal is for students to be able to see how they did in english math etc and then they can find out what some of their areas for growth are and those that are really intrinsically motivated basically have three four months to try to get those areas up tomorrow night we have the fall band concert and the baked potato dinner fundraiser i believe that starts at five o'clock erin for the potato fundraiser the band concert starts at 6 30 high school and middle school on november 29th we have new member induction for the national honor

062society at the high school and on december 13th we have our winter choir concert all right as josh mentioned we have the band concert starting tomorrow and we're excited for that we follow that up at the middle school in december with a christmas concert and so that by that point then um our seventh eighth grade bands will be playing in november and then our sixth grade band our jazz band and our choirs perform in december and uh oftentimes our students don't get to see their peers perform so we have a a second concert during the day on december 17th in the afternoon so that the students perform in front of their peers which has always been fun and we follow it up with kind of a warrior way celebration to talk about how we're doing

063we started our middle school food drive and um i was incorrect on my when i published this to the board um our actual food drive has started already and we're involved in it and it runs through the middle of december and the food will be donated to the amory food shelf we're excited for that program we've been doing it many years we have come some great theater field trips coming up our sixth graders are leaving on thursday to the minneapolis children's theater to see the production of annie and we're kind of excited for that because it ties into some of the great depression and things that they're learning in history class our seventh and eighth graders will see the gift of the magi done by the festival theater and the festival theater started having some

064issues with their own theater up in synchroy falls and so they are under were under construction and they have been coming to our auditorium to perform and it makes it really easy for us to get in and out to see a show so we'll be seeing that on december 14th also coming up this friday is our human growth and development day that's for eighth grade students and the human growth and development day is centered on how to prevent unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases and the boys and girls are separated for that presentation boys are with a male staff member and dr gary williamson and the females are with the female staff member and dr hayley combs and they're split into small groups and just able to hear a presentation on on that the direction

065from that comes from the human growth and development committee which is made up of staff parents students members of the ministry and medical providers that help divide design and direct programming for the district we have some great staff training coming up we have a pdh tomorrow night on discovery education which is an online source for staff that they could go out and pick up materials for math or english or just a way to see lesson plans that other people are using we have some mrs d ambrose and i are doing a leading training complaint with their staff soon on the plc and understanding assessments and standards and basically how to help increase student achievement and then finally our last day for the trimester is coming up on december 1st and so at that point um

066students at the middle school will be will be changing math and english teachers and then their applied arts or their term classes switch once more so they get a chance to see lots of different people so that's the dates that are coming up at the middle school any questions all right thank you good evening um the english language arts 4k through grade 5 ela adoption is ongoing k5 teachers met virtually with a representative from houghton mifflin interreading as their program next week teachers will be meeting virtually with american reading company we have a reading specialist that will be presenting on that curriculum the halloween carnival offered by the ipo was a huge success it's a wonderful fundraiser here for our building and we thank the community for their support and it was fun to see

067all of the students and children in their costumes it was a very busy night so thank you to the ipo for that third grade through grade 5 students were able to preview the high school musical mary poppins on november 3rd and i agree with josh it was absolutely wonderful so we appreciate our students being able to go over and watch the first half of it the is data team met today actually to review our new data regarding just our school so we've come up with some action plans and set some short-term and long-term goals the is has formed a trauma-sensitive committee that aligns with the district's mission and vision goals we will meet every other month on supporting staff and students aim classrooms visited the saint croix falls hatchery and interstate park students collected their

068trout eggs and they are thriving and growing in the aim classroom neighborhood if anyone is interested in seeing them aim is a member of the ice age trail saunter program and incorporates hikes into our curriculum as often as they can and finally some upcoming dates on november 23rd all students will participate in a school-wide celebration of swimming at the center and then finally we have thanksgiving break any questions thank you okay um an update on our elementary fundraiser our it was our second year using cherrydale as our company of choice and again it was very successful we raised eleven thousand one hundred and twenty four dollars and five cents for profit so um nine thousand six hundred twenty of that was on online sales and we several years ago added a cash donation possibility option

069for families and that number was one thousand five hundred and three dollars and fifty cents so that fundraiser is proving to be quite successful for our school um some of the money are the parents as partners committee um tells us how to use that money and basically we use it for transportation to our big all school fundraisers such as the pumpkin patch that we just did and this winter will be going to trollhagen hopefully we also support classroom resources playground equipment books for our reading incentive program and prizes for our warrior way pbis behavior program so thank you to the community the parents everybody who has supported that fundraiser for lean elementary school our parents as partners has a meeting this thursday november 18th at 8 15 a.m uh we have a special guest speaker

070again it is dr durfler john defler is going to be there do you remember that mr derfler and um it's just going to be a deeper dive into the school's perception survey so if you're interested in asking questions and getting more information you have the big guy there so he and he does a nice job so um if you are unable to make that meeting but you would like to join via zoom just contact the elementary secretary gina and she will set you up with a zoom link just we need to know that by the night before it's christmas time so we have some fun things coming with i'm not skipping over thanksgiving but we're just planning ahead and so um because the next cooper meeting will be after all of these things begin so

071we have an every penny count salvation army red kettle campaign that we will be getting and we've done that every year and it's kind of fun for the students because every ten dollars that we raise on our interactive whiteboard in the lobby we create a scene so in the past we've built a snowman or we've built the characters of frozen and so that kind of gets them encouraged to participate and it's so fun to see our littles come in with a handful of pennies and they just are so proud to to contribute so it's a good way to teach our kids um the importance of giving we also um do a collection for the food shelf in our building so along with that holiday fun night is is the first week in december and parents

072can come and don't our families donate food for the food shelf in our community so that's exciting um as jessica said that we are continuing our research of ela programs and we are now on our third program now we haven't exited any at this point in time but we are just doing a really really thorough search and so i'm so um excited that we are doing that and that the teachers are really vested and want to make sure that they make the the best decision that is for our students um and one last thing is our school pre-k through grade five is looking at transitioning from a targeted assistant school with our title one money to a school-wide school it is a year-long process to do that but the purpose of doing that is title

0731 provides support services to our students in reading and math and if you're a targeted assistant school which we are and have been for several years we're very locked into the students that we can serve we always have more students that need help than we're able to serve in the targeted assistance school because it's based on data with a school-wide school it's also based on data but it opens the door to be more flexible so we can do different kinds of programming with our students such as instead of a complete pull out program teachers can go into the classroom and provide support to the entire classroom so it's been a process and a big decision as to whether we wanted to move in that direction and the other day we had a representative from sisa

074come to our district and uh she pretty much convinced us to start heading in that direction so you'll perhaps hear more information about that transition as we move forward any questions thank you all right good evening here i'll be quick um whether you're a special education teacher or administrator you're always looking at some sort of timeline some sort of report that's due or something around the corner that needs to be submitted so to carry on with that practice here a couple updates on indicator 14 and indicator 11. so indicator 14 as you know is our surveys that we do with exited students that have disabilities or kids that have graduated already and we simply ask their parents or them what they're up to what are they doing right are you in college are you competitively

075employed are you at northwoods technical college and we're happy to report here i'm really glad to stick with the theme of positive numerical data for the district 15 out of 18 of our exiters are either competitively employed or in some sort of higher education or training so that's 80 is pretty good number so i'm really pleased with that thanks to jen helbig and dana prindle who do those surveys and reach out to those parents those students then we also have indicator 11 that basically measures our initial referral timelines we have 60 days once we get consent from a parent to conduct a special education evaluation and um we only were able to find three files that needed an exception to that timeline they were really most of them were covered related one was just a

076calculation error input into the system so really again feel pretty good about that would i like to be perfect i think we all would but especially in the era of covid here which were a couple of the reasons why we missed our timeline with people being out we feel pretty good about it the november 8th uh staff training bloss boys was really great just initial feedback was great this training emphasized a continuing need for the integration of both academic and social skills for kids a way to re-teach and shape positive behavior so just got a lot of positive feedback on that from teachers and then finally collaboration we've got um kisa martin of the aging and disability resource center i'm going to be meeting with our high school team and this is more about transition

077with kids that might have more complex disabilities and needs they might not be going to higher education they mean may need to get support through their family with either a guardianship or respite care those sorts of things that are real practical matters for families not just for kids but for our community because we know that some of these kids are going to have higher needs and they're going to be citizens in our community and uh so this is important work that you know collaboration that we're doing with the the disability resource center so that we can prepare these kids for what's happening down the road and support them in our community thank you did you have anything sean uh just a reminder of the community meeting for the survey results this thursday evening high school

078auditorium 6 p.m if you're interested in seeing the presentation of the results and your opportunity certainly for feedback about the results okay now we'll go to the 2021-25 strategic plan okay thank you keith this is a continuation of work that was done back in the year 2016-2017 at that point it was vision uh the 2016-2020 is a five year time frame in this one thereby is vision twenty twenty five so this is a continuation of work done by many of the folks that are still in the room here with us still the strategic plan process is intended to provide a disciplined and thoughtful process that links the values missions and goals of a school system with a set of coherent strategies and tasks designed to achieve those goals you'll see here our mission why we

079exist the mission of the school district of amery is to foster academic excellence lifelong learning in citizenship and our vision what would we like to be we are about innovating leading and succeeding and then our values what we believe in we believe in public education being a safe and respectful environment that every student can learn and grow that staff are valued and respected and that we have partnerships with families and lastly having a healthy school and community partnership fosters economic and uh community success there are five parts of the strategic plan so rather than have you wait all the way to the end i ask your questions or make your comments if you have either i'll pause after each and every one of the sections and then you can chime in if there are specific

080questions there are action plans that go with each of these but it would simply result in a very long presentation the good news is the point person for each and every one of these uh strategic plan goals is in the room so we can help you with any specifics you may have so starting with the first strategy in strategic plan 2025 is student achievement in technology in the area of student achievement and technology students in the school district of ameri will demonstrate academic success as well as college and career readiness through a continuum of diversified academic opportunities encompassing real life opportunities and alternative ways to demonstrate success i'm not going to read every word to you there are measurable objectives that go with each in this case there are three measurable objectives i'll paraphrase by

081by saying first of all we're looking at preparing our kids for life for a life of success after high school whether that be the world of work or the world of school and there are a variety of things we do here in house to prepare them for that success the second measurable objective is to continue to provide traditional programming and increase non-traditional offerings we are a district that has things like project based learning in montessori and genius hour and cte academies where we're building houses and doing school farms we are a district that does those things and we're committed to continuing to do those things and lastly the district will expand and upgrade resources and access to technology for all students we're always seeking to do that it's a moving target because technology is a

082very fast moving target we're simply trying to keep up to speed with what we have and how kids are using it so that's the first area and i'm going to turn it over to you if you have any questions or comments if not i'll continue to move forward so one of my questions was under the first first measurable objective it says to better prepare pre-k through 12th grade students for life after high school the district will increase the amount of time each student has access to maker space rooms and all buildings and i guess i wondered why why was makerspace chosen and how does that how does access to maker space prepare students for life after high school well if you could come up to the micas no one will hear you sitting there thank

083you jessica maker space is a classroom in each building that has access to stem materials so focus is a lot on science technology engineering and math variety of activities are always in there teachers are well aware of how to use those materials library media specialists also facilitate that learning as well so just another avenue of learning in just a different environment for our students is so i saw on the school district feed that recently like the fourth grade students were making i think boats um and so is that like i don't know that they went to the makerspace lab but is that considered maker space because they were using some of those materials or it's not that actually was science um and so we have engineering kits that are part of our science curriculum so

084that actually is in addition to our maker space maker space for example here at the intermediate school is the building right next to us and so we have materials that are just specific to makerspace that learning can be facilitated by the classroom teacher or it can be facilitated by our library media specialists such as annie brayton here in this building okay so are they usually going as a classroom or are they going individually or in groups as a classroom it's a designated time throughout the week it was every other week i can speak for here at this building and so it's become a primary focus for us that they have access to it every week and that those engineering kits and those materials are being rotated out yeah i suppose it would be different maybe

085other schools um my other question underneath that one was um specifically about um the percentage of juniors of students in our junior and senior class who complete the requirements to obtain college credits via transcripted courses ap courses and the start college now program i go for a jessica i guess i kind of struggle i taught ap english and i and i think it's a great class but i struggle with um that that's a test at the end of the year and for some i mean like right now my daughter's in ap us history the test is until may but her class is going to end in january i guess i would like to see more options for students to get college credit without having to rely primarily on bonnie you should bring that up we

086are exploring partnerships currently with the university of wisconsin river falls to do that very thing that you are describing there are some catches to it the teachers that are teaching these classes have to have a master's degree in the area we're working on getting approval right now for two staff members at the high school one that would give us english credit where we would no longer have to take the ap english exam and the other area we're trying to get credit for right now is physics we think we have two teachers that are covered students would not have to take the ap test they would have to take a course which is taught to the standards of the university and upon successfully completing that course like we have with our current partnerships through witc dual

087credit courses they would get a three credit core or three credits through the university of wisconsin river falls now the students the families have to pay for the credits it's a hundred dollars a credit three credit class but that's three hundred dollars for a probably a for sure thing if you pass the class compared to approximately a hundred dollars for an ap test that yes you know as a parent i've lived that myself the stress of you know students working very hard but at the end of the day it comes down to that one test so i brought it up to the high school staff at recent staff meetings and talked to several them about if they want to explore opportunities to get their master's degree this is a great path to go down because

088it's got benefit for our students plus river falls will pay a stipend to our teachers that are willing to participate in this program so it's a win-win and as far as we're concerned so yeah we've been in communication with river falls and we hope to have something on the table here within the next month hopefully finalized for next school year good i just i you know i taught in minnesota and um and i just feel like there's so much with pseo in minnesota and we don't have a lot to compete with here and um and i mean i i like students to be in in the building and in the classes here at the school and not not having to you know some of them can do college uh start college now yeah right but

089then they're usually not in the building they're taking them online or they're going to to a school um there is the cte kind of stuff but that's not necessarily if you're interested in a four-year degree yeah no i would agree with everything you're saying and i would also say that i've had some private conversations with staff members who have came to me since i began talking about this and they are interested in pursuing master's degrees in these fields seeing the possible benefits from it okay strategic goal number two community and family collaboration the school district of amy will advance strong two-way communication and collaboration systems to ensure all district stakeholders including parents students staff businesses industry etc are informed and engaged partners there are three measurable objectives first by december of 2022 the district will

090analyze current parent outreach communication and engagement the second by the spring of 2024 the district will build and maintain new relationships and continue the existing relationships and lastly by 2025 the district will partner with local businesses and industry to positively impact the local economy as measured by local municipal and district data any questions thoughts comments on strategic goal number two i believe tom was the point person on that one with tracy hendrickson's assistance yes i got it right any questions or comments yeah i'll i would just like to see you know more details um about how we're going how we plan to um impact the local economy or create new partnerships so but i can look that up those details are in the action plans that go with the strategic plan this is draft version

091so when we have this is a postable item on the website the action plan goes with it so you'll see those details there i think we have them from previously we do some of these goals have changed over time but all the action plans it's material that they go with it because those are the the point a to point z and how to make it happen okay the third strategic plan goal to achieve a financially sustainable district that maintains quality educational programs in instruction andy and i both worked on this one to increase student enrollment in district to achieve a total number of students equal to that in 2019-20 by 25 this last year we took a dip there were many kids obviously that went virtual based on covid so last year was not an

092incredibly good indicator so thereby we picked the year before to hold the referendum specifically stated by the board of education in april of 2022 to address the facility needs of the district we've been talking about that for a while now and lastly to increase the district fund balance from 16 to 20 of our overall budget by 2425 and if you remember correctly this has been a recommendation repeatedly for as long as i've been here by our auditor we'll see it again this coming fall i'm sure that will be a recommendation it almost always is so that's the third of the strategic plan areas any questions or comments on that one i guess um just so that public is aware i think we've talked about it a few times at prior board meetings i think it

093serves as a reminder at this point as we're talking about possibly proceeding into a referendum um that district fund balance is important to have at twenty percent because i if i'm not mistaken that it impacts our credit rating is that right keith yeah um and that we did have money uh that was in excess of that fund balance but that money was moved into a fund that we can't touch for a little bit so that it's coming up soon available and 180 000 is how much is there and that was um not the doing of of anything that we could control at the time but that would help i wouldn't think um if we could move that money back into our fund we can we simply have to do the paperwork to get that done

094and we already have some thoughts as to how that might be used but that's going to be obviously your decision but not yet because it's not come time where we can use it yet right i just wanted to i guess kind of remind the public that financial um discrepancy has been used through the years that we that we was worked on to have that fund balance and for circumstances that we couldn't control is went to a different place but we can we still have access to that coming up and being fiscally responsible is what puts us in a position to even think about doing a referendum and we've talked about that as well so that will always be priority one to make sure we are okay student engagement the school district of amery will improve

095the learning environment for all students in order to increase student engagement both socially emotionally and academically i believe brad and people on the pupil services staff were central to this effort there are three measurable objectives by june of 24 each building will show an increase in student belongingness and engagement based on data over a two-year cycle second by june of 24 each building will decrease the number of students showing three or more at-risk factors as identified by building level criteria and lastly by june of 24 each building will increase the number meeting their individual targeted growth rate among the group of students receiving tier two and three reading and math interventions based on the data over a two year cycle and i think that is it for that one are there questions or comments on

096that area student engagement okay and the last is personnel cheryl meyer has been the point person on that the school district of ambry will strive to create the conditions that will build and maintain high quality staff in order to provide excellence in education for all students there are two measurable objectives the district will continue to maintain and enhance workplace policies and culture to create conditions that will build and maintain highly qualified staff and the district will maintain and improve a system for staff communication collaboration planning preparation and feedback any questions comments on personnel you've actually been involved in that each april march into april we have met with members of the certified staff met with members of the support staff it's been recently dale and char um and heard their feedback cheryl and i meet

097with them every four five six weeks we have meetings coming up on december 1st and 8th meeting with them once again on the topics of the day and wage and benefits are topics of the day as is workplace conditions during a pandemic so any questions or comments that you might have for me that's been a very rewarding and insightful process to be a part of as a board member um we've sat through several meetings um where we've listened to well thought out wants needs in order to better facilitate with our staff and it really gives us a look into things that they do that we don't necessarily think of or we hear of as a board it's been a very rewarding process to see the camaraderie for people that speak up for each other but

098it's also been a very pleasurable back and forth experience that as a board we have financial responsibility and due diligence to the community but we also have that responsibility to our employees and to retain employees and it's been a good it's been a good experience on both i couldn't agree more there isn't a certified staffer support staff i would rather work with they're fantastic to work with and the answer isn't always yes but we have good conversation about what we're seeking to do and we want to treat our employees right it's very important the last slide is the action steps each of the five strategic goal action plans as further detail including action steps timelines in evidence sought the new strategic plan will be available on the school website once these groups then reconvene and

099take any feedback that you have provided and then it's a final document and we'll have it out there on the website for us to use as our guiding document on the decisions that we make and that is it and there's no action needed on this it's simply an informational item setting rules is important we all need to do that next up will be the esser money okay and i have been in conversation um on this george sigsworth as well we have been on far more zoom calls than we care to remember about trying to figure this puzzle out when you have the 400 plus school districts plus state agencies plus federal government all trying to figure things out it's it's not the easiest process so there's a lot of question marks out there and most

100of them not of our doing so what this presentation is is a summary of what we have done with s armani rounds one in round two a and b and then what are we set to do with round three nothing's happened round three yet and you'll see that when you get to the material that that are in that's in this presentation first what is an esser allocation it is the elementary and secondary school emergency relief fund that's where you get the acronym ester that's all education needed was another acronym that's what it stands for on to the next page you'll see there are three rounds round two has an a and a b the first round of esser this seems like forever and a day ago was you could spend this on the list had

101to be a hundred deep in regards to what you could use it for we received one hundred and thirty five thousand one hundred and seventeen dollars remember esser is a grant from the federal government and then disseminated through the state to you we use that money to pay our clubhouse child care staff remember in march april and may of 2020 they weren't here none of us were here and all of them were basically set out to pasture without work to be done if we hadn't paid them they likely would have went and found other work and we would have been really in big trouble in child care again we could have spent 135 000 in any way shape or form in that hundred we simply chose to pay our staff that was the choice we

102made for s or two round a and round b some 546 thousand in round a some 302 000 in round b again from federal government through state to us every district receives a different amount so that puts us at about 848. we used every bit of that money to pay for the hvac system at lean elementary the system we've been talking about here now for six months if we hadn't replaced that system there would be no heat at the elementary and if we hadn't used this money we would have been using district funds that we ordinarily would have allocated other things for that it could not wait we couldn't wait for a referendum to get that done because i imagine the elementary would get awfully cold so we used that money and it was well

103timed and it was stated reasons what you could use it for improving your ventilation likely since the day the elementary opened way back in 1967 the ventilation in the elementary has never been better so it was money well spent and these were both passed on board action these were both meetings absolutely and you saw we did we only had uh really one bidder on on the hvac project because it was almost a undoable project because you were putting holes in walls and deconstructing large units it was quite a deal to get that done now esther 3 the dollar value that is earmarked for the school district of america is one million two hundred and twenty seven thousand two hundred and thirty four dollars to be determined we haven't spent that money yet because there hasn't

104been an application to submit in order to determine how you're going to spend that money and you'll see here the money must be sent spent by september 30th of 2024 and the emphasis is on addressing and assessing learn assessing and addressing learning loss and we're just in the process now of assessing what that learning loss was remember our students lost five months of it five months of in-person learning three back in the spring of 2020 and two more in the fall of 2020. that's had an impact statewide nationwide and it has year two so the goal is four s or three as stated by federal governments all activities supported by sr3 must prevent prayer must prevent prepare for or respond to covet 19 pandemic the respond to is the learning loss piece and we're seeking

105to figure out how to do that so the details you have to have no less than 20 of the allocations so of the 1.22 20 20 of that is some 250 000 allocated for the purpose of addressing learning loss using the evidence-based interventions tomorrow in this room the administrative team meets it's on the agenda the first item is what is the measurement of our learning loss that we have determined to this point in the school year 21-22 what has been lost specifically what areas are lacking and specifically what kids or what groups of kids have met with that learning loss and then what resources are we going to target in order to make up for that loss that's what sf3 ultimately boils down to the interventions must be for academic social emotional needs of kids

106disproportionately affected by covert 19. special ed students were disproportionately affected by covet 19 that's been documented nationwide families that live in low-income households that those are our students that have been affected most by covet 19. those are just two examples so the application isn't open yet to submit for us or three dollars the underlining is not mine the underlining is from sr3 straight from the department of public instruction straight from the federal government including paying employees to the greatest extent practicable they want folks to be able to be paid as part of this plan we haven't had that issue since the spring of 2020 and hopefully we won't but that's something they want as an emphasis the plan must be developed in consultation with stakeholders that means members of the community we've got plans to

107do that there's must be a safe return to in-person instruction and continuity of services plan we've already enacted that we've already voted on that and we viewed it again two or three times in the budget including the description of the steps to be taken to overcome applicable barriers to ensure application access for all students that's part of the application you have to have a budget that goes with it so engagement with stakeholders engaging with students to determine the learning loss there engaging with families to determine the learning loss there school and district administrators and lastly teachers principals school leaders other educators everyone that works here to determine what would be the best steps and how to spend this money to determine so as to determine that we have addressed learning loss in an appropriate way

108which we can help kids thereby be successful so again twenty percent allocated for learning loss five percent on evidence-based instructions aimed specifically at that learning law such as summer school or summer enrichment extended day one percent and summer enrichment programs one percent on evidence-based comprehensive after school programs all of that's part of the picture identify here are our steps and i've sort of already stolen my own thunder identify and measure the degree of learning loss identify students who have demonstrated significant learning loss identify existing resources and then identify additional resources that's going to be the work of our district team with the help of our kids and our families and our community to figure out how to do this we've never done it before so our action plan is we're beginning that process tomorrow the

109process has already begun in light of determining where our kids stand we've been doing benchmark testing at the elementary and intermediate school the entire year already and the middle school and high school does their progress monitoring in a different way but we've already we've already identified we have loss that has occurred how we couldn't have i would have no idea work with certified staff and support staff to gather their feedback work with our students and lastly work with our community to gauge their feedback so we need approval first of all the state of wisconsin needs approval from the department of education to disseminate the yes to three dollars they haven't received approval yet the application is set to open on november 29th that is the monday after thanksgiving week and thanksgiving is next week so

110the department of education at the federal level is going to have to let the state know or i don't know that november 29th is a very realistic application date window open but that's not my call and it's no one's call in this room that's up to the federal government telling states when it's suitable yet once the window is open you got 90 days to submit your submit your application so if it did open on november 29th we would have until late february early march approximately to get that done so we would have to do the work that i identified in previous slides in that time if it's december 29th and it's late march early april i i don't know when that's going to happen that's this is information as of last week friday so it's

111not old information so the state of wisconsin remember this about esther dollars s or three we're talking a lot about learning loss we did not receive as a school district no school district in the state of wisconsin received any kind of an increase in per pupil aid the increase was zero dollars in the biannual budget which is 21 to 23. zero dollars and the reason stated is we're not doing an increase in per pupil eight is because you're getting esser dollars okay so that's money we're gonna have to use for our expenditures this is not we can't spend 1.2 million dollars on learning loss and not have any other money to spend on anything else or we're going to be in big trouble because we're not getting any money from the state in 2122 we're

112not getting any money from the state in 2223. what happens in 23 24 that's up to the next state's legislature when they do the 23 to 25 biennium i don't know what that looks like i only know what the here in the now looks like so we're going to wait and see mode but we have to be careful about how we use this money you can move on to the next one oh that's it so the picture it seems clear but there's a lot of confusion out there around this application from the department of public instruction from the state legislature from districts from sisa's i've never seen so many head shakes in all my life and friday at my zoo meeting with the cecil 11 superintendents and that was with information straight from the department

113of public instruction if you're asking me is this going to open on on november 29th i don't think there's any way that that's going to occur i don't know how much work's gonna get done next monday tuesday wednesday prior to thanksgiving i don't have any idea when it's gonna open but when it's open we're gonna be ready to roll we're not going to submit it the day after but we will do our due diligence to make sure it's submitted in a timely fashion with all the necessary feedback that is needed gathered so questions for me or unless andy has more clarity he can provide it to i just i hope to be able to claim funds by the end of the school year that's my goal so get the application i guess the confusion over

114what is an application versus was a budget that might be some of the confusion too is that a lot of times when we're submitting things there's things that we've already started to do you know collaboration with all the partners we have to collaborate with and that's out there on the uh on the website but beyond that you have to submit a budget for what you're going to be spending things on and that might be the confusion where people wonder about an application versus versus a budget so um i just want to put that out there that that might be some of the confusion on what they call an application at the same so you might consider an application so yeah i guess we forget um even as we go through as board members and we

115approve our vouchers every month and how much money the district has to spend and that that doesn't just all come from property taxes it comes from a wide variety of funding sources in the budget and the per pupil and and these grants and funds that we apply for and that there's always when the state gives money or the federal government gives money there's always stipulations tied to that money how we can use it and i think we've always in the last couple years we've been pretty open um trying to go through those things as we're conducting our business here um i think andy you've done a really great job dr durfle i think you've done a really great job of keeping the board informed of our our due diligence of how to spend that money

116what that money's for where it's coming from and i can't always say that that's always necessarily been the case balancing budgets and making sure that staff are paid and the doors are open and the lights are on is is a lot so at the end of the day when we're talking about how money is spent just to keep our people employed who obviously are doing a really good job i it really makes my heart happy to see that that school perception survey ranking up there in that 99th percentile of the job that we're doing as a district that's it's all tied to money unfortunately i mean if we could all do this job for for free and have an unlimited amount of resources it would make things a lot easier but unfortunately it's just not

117the way it is a lot of unknowns but we'll stand ready to do our work as we always are and be transparent about it as much you know as much as we can be that's our goal so any other comments or questions so you're meeting tomorrow to start kind of working on getting a plan ready well what tomorrow is we're talking about what law what learning losses occurred and we have standardized data in benchmark data to begin that process we have a lot of data what does it mean is the question and then to identify which groups of kids this is which specific subject area specific skills and subjects have have had the biggest dip and then identify the resources we still have in place that we can use and then identify what else we

118need the what else we need might be that 250 000. now i would hesitate when someone suggests let's add staff but when you add staff are you adding them for two years and then they're on their way because once you get out past two years there's no funding for additional staff and there's a can but you got to be careful about that and there's a big fear of you know the fiscal cliff when all this federal money is not there that they're saying backfill your budgets with and that'll be in the two years and that's that's scary when you you know if you add a lot of staff and things like i said yeah there's more likely not going to be there'll be hopefully additional optimistic additional funding the next biennium but that's not a

119for sure thing and i don't be in the position where you've got to cut staff because you don't have the funding for them so i think we've had that discussion a couple of times before when we talked about adding some staff and it's are we going to add these the staff members that we know are important key players um but then how long are we going to last and that that doesn't do anybody any service either as we know that kids really benefit from being consistent having consistent people around consistent services and those are all things to be mindful of um i see that on the learning loss there's a one percent for evidence-based comprehensive after-school programs um has there been any discussion in what those might center around yet or not at all no

120not yet yeah it's part of the process did you have a question here and i sort of cut you off i'm sorry no i don't know because i truly did cut you off oh yeah i got so excited any other comments or questions okay much more to follow okay well that's it for our informational items we'll move on to our action items and first is the boys jv hockey co-op okay i'm here representing um jeff fern in the athletic department in this particular family jeff's doing a basketball scrimmage no rest for the weary weary we moved right into winter sports so what you see here is a osceola amory agreement to allow a student to play jv hockey as part of the amory team little back story and if i get it wrong josh you're

121going to correct me i hope osceola did have a co-op with somerset until somerset decided to no longer have a co-op so that left osceola hockey interested parties out to dry so they're looking for an opportunity for their jv son to play hockey here in amory so what this agreement spells out is that we would allow that to occur there's no wiaa approval needed to enter into a co-op for a jv kid this is simply a formality to make it happen here and on wednesday night osceola has a board meeting and they would have to also board approve and then we would be locked in and the student would be able to hockey our position i'll quote jeff any opportunity that we can provide kids to be able to be a part of athletics i'd

122be in favor of i couldn't agree more this is just one child one kid that's all we have right now is one interested party would this um cover if there were more interested parties if there was more interested parties we thought we now have a jv co-op for hockey if kids wanted to do that i've only heard from the one the important thing to realize right so once you get to varsity level then you got wia involvement yeah so we don't co-op for varsity for for boys we do for girls not with osceola clear lake and clayton and emory have partnered for a while now so you would need to take action in order to approve this arrangement if you see it necessary and how many members are on the the jv team today currently

123yeah like this season are we we have strong numbers it's always nice to have an extra one or two or three people we've had some boys that have had to skate a couple of shifts on the jv and then being a varsity or something okay any question that we approved there we go thank you and we have this second reading of the exclusion receipt restraint policy okay brad you could assist me this again is the second reading we uh got some feedback from you last time and you'll see on the second reading there is some blue that would indicate what has been changed so i'm going to turn it over to you brad and you could specifically mention what that blue is about yeah they're just a couple changes and it's on the second to

124last and last page um in reviewing the language here um the template language really which this is i noticed here that it was missing a designee here this says the school principles will prepare and present an annual report to the board in reality typically that's been my position doing that so just added that designee just to get clarity there and and uh unless the principals want to deliver that report i was just going to thank you on their behalf and then the last change here was really this disciplinary action for a violation of this policy this is really um you know would only be needed in the case of an egregious violation so there is some language here it's pretty strong language um you know i i feel fairly confident that you know if we

125were to run into a a scenario or a situation like this that our current evaluation system and structure would be able to address it um fairly well so i've struck that just out of concern from a previous reading but we could certainly change our minds and keep it in okay so this is a second reading so it would need action by you if you want to adopt this well i'll just i guess it was my concern in the the last prior board meeting about the disciplinary action being spelt out in the policy without strong standing if barring a you know a legal opinion on that i feel better that we've just stricken it out so that it's not specific and then obviously if those things were to happen i just i can't see it happening

126but if it did it would be handled on a case-by-case basis and it wouldn't be you won't be tied to it in any way so i would be in favor of just striking the language completely so with that i guess i would move to approve the use of seclusion and physical restraint with students policy as presented and do we have a second a second here all those in favor say aye aye aye and pose no emotionally carried and now we have the emergency school closings policy this is the second reading of the emergency school closings policy there isn't any change to speak of other than the fact that we did recently get snow so it's a reminder it's on its way yeah so um basically what this again allows us to do is the first

127three days of snow day weather events those are regular old go outside do your thing don't come to school days and after that it gives us the opportunity to do virtual days rather than make up days in june i'm sure you could probably well imagine days made up in june are not the most productive days so we would do virtual days starting with day four and onward so we need a motion to accept that sure i'll move to accept the emergency school closings policy as presented in a second second dale all in favor say aye aye aye opposed no emotions carried there's the second policy that's impacted oh yep the second policy it has old language master contracts and that type of language is just outdated and then the updated november 15th date make motion

128that we approve policy 321 i don't know that we can do that we don't have that on our agenda uh it's cross-referenced yeah so it's part of your first motion first of all we'll move on to the appointment of our law delegates the wisconsin state education convention that's 101st coming up here in january we need to do the appointment of a wasv delegate uh in recent years that has been aaron i haven't spoken erin about her high paying gig as delegate assembly person that's news to you so you would need to make a motion is who you want to delegate maybe aaron wants to make a motion that she does it i don't know and as of right now who's going to the we haven't discussed that but the usual suspects uh there hasn't been

129any change from last year this year other than being back in person same location same types of agenda same time of year it's still on i think aaron's been the delegate for the past couple years and i've been the alternate and then i was the delegate prior so it it's up to you i mean if you want to be the delegate and i'll be an alternate if for some reason you can attend i mean i've i've been the delegate for several years but it doesn't matter to me i plan on going yeah um and i plan on going to this to the convention also and i'm happy to be the delegate last year it was online and that was very interesting yeah that's not it i don't want to do it i don't have the

130patience for the hundreds of people yeah that's a long day on zoom yeah yeah all right do i have a motion to appoint erin i'll make the motion to have me be the delegate and chelsea be the alternate okay in a second chelsea okay char all those in favor say aye hi hi imposed no okay we've got our delegates now we need to review the kova 19 return to school plan okay this is the third or fourth time we've seen this the only change here is we've got more new numbers this tracks us through november 6th through the 12th and then the 13th through the 19th which is this week we've only got one day we've only had one case last week we had five we've been hovering around 8 to 12 in given weeks

131uh nothing more than that again the learning transition plan with the matrix there uh we need to be at 20 and in in one particular building in order to have any kind of a change and we haven't even come close to that yet and hopefully we don't so it's up to you if you want to make a change or no action and need it at all if you just want to keep things as is i feel like it's been working well do our principals feel like it's going well in your buildings yeah i i don't think you guys are she's probably the one mr golden yeah i don't know we're in school every day there are times when staffing has an issue because we've identified we've identified our learning loss the ones that tom's teaching

132yes there we go but there are times when we have like in five classes and rotating around just to make it work but it's the best yep yep yeah thanks to the staff for continuing to hold in there make it work making sure that kids get education and uh and a place to be here and and we all know it's it's important and i think we were talking before about identifying these losses of education and it's we can see it on test scores we see it i think cheryl's presented the information early shock presented information and and now this year it was um mrs d'ambrosia and we could see those reading scores going down in our younger kids and it's not just the test scores that we see that's the problem but really kids have

133checked out after not being in school for for five months and longer they're checked they're checked out emotionally it's hard there's a lot of things that these kids are grappling with emotionally i think we'll probably see it a lot at the high school and to get them back how do we get them back into the mode of coming to school being consistent every day being ready to learn those those things are important and that's probably something that you'll be talking about tomorrow when you talk about your loss of learning and i um to see the staff being resilient and trying to make that a go for these kids hats off to the staff no our speaker said something last monday that was i thought excellent analogy she said you know the pandemic's been like a

134flood and some of our kids they've been on a yacht and everything has been all well and good but some kids are drifting along the water just holding onto a piece of driftwood and that is true we have kids that are barely swimming right now based on what pandemic has done to households it's been really hard yeah yeah that's it it's a i'm sorry that was a not meant to be a downer but um it was it's it is it's and i think it's something that we just don't talk about enough and the reasons that we look at taking this money and the good that we can do with it and the surveys that we do and you can you can talk about the bad things about the surveys you talk about the good things

135but um either way we have kids that were struggling before this and we have we've parents that are struggling we have community members that are struggling and to see it to see it come into our kids um you know our staff has to look at that every day and uh make the best of it and i think it's a it's an opportunity to to really think about all of all of that and how it all works together and what we can do to make the best of it so thanks for pitching in and doing your doing your best to get these kids where they need to go yes you care and that's the important thing the kids know that with that uh do we need to do anything personnel and now we'll do the personnel

136well i know with the transition model i am just asking if they want to do something no change no no so personality new employee contracts for kendrick gunther bus driver extra c contract girls soccer head coach chris boyd resignation or reassignments i should say vicky heist moving from van driver to bus driver resignations for wyatt komonik justin shu and chuck wellman in middle school football nicole link in school nutrition and laura wernland in clubhouse for as an assistant teacher so those we need an action for to approve that personnel list the personnel action thank you char second aaron all in favor say aye aye aye opposed no okay we don't need to go into closed session and so i'll take a motion to adjourn second i suppose