001uh i had those this month and everything left in ship shape order for the vouchers so i'll go ahead and make a motion to approve the consent agenda items as presented okay in a second all those in favor say hi we'll move on to community comments uh do we have anybody signed up yeah one thing yeah as long as i give it back to becky all right um i'll read the guidelines for uh community comments welcome to this meeting of the board of education the school district of emory we are pleased that you are interested in school district educational issues your input may be very beneficial to the development of appropriate educational programs you may address the book only during the community comments time on the agenda the damery school district residents district employees and
002guests 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 the following guidelines to be followed by anyone wishing to address the board of education for those wishing to speak before the board a sign of sheet will be available prior to the start of the meeting if the topic noted on the sign up sheet 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 law added for community comments may also be extended at the determination of
003the presiding board member comments and suggestions related to the school district operation are welcome personal criticism of members of the board of education or its employees of the school of image school district is out of order please stand to be recognized after being recognized please give your name and address for the record the board normally receives citizen input and does not respond or debate if there is need for an answer or response to a concern or issue the district administrator or another of the other of the administrators may get back to you within the next week if your concern requires board action it may be placed on the agenda for a future board meeting i'd like to thank you for that and it is joan written can you hear me yeah yeah my name is
004joan written i live in the blackberry township okay i'm going to start from june of 2020 there was a a presenter i would call it who the name she she said her name was soon gunther or gunther i'm not sure the name she said she represented amory united and she went on to offer some resources books speakers if we wanted them the school district and she would be available if anybody needed them and when i listened to this video it was like am reunited that sounds like a really good thing sounds like we should all get together and have hot dogs so i popped in just recently last couple board meetings because a few things have been going on so june 22nd joe bierkant a parent and a law enforcement officer came to speak at
005the board he spoke about the books he read some of the books and i think a lot of people here remember that so a week later there was something in the paper aimery press from soon gunther commenting on and i'll read you one of the paragraphs in there what does it mean what does it demonstrate when local law enforcement repeatedly bring the latest conservative boogeyman talking points to our school board they've been swept up in the latest trend to reject the truth and want to pressure our school district administrator and educators to revert to teaching a watered-down and whitewashed version of u.s history that's insulting to our local law enforcement and law enforcement everywhere signed by soon gunther who is amory united a video with and so i figured who is amory united who are
006they so i looked on the internet my phone has a world of knowledge in it all i have to do is plug in a bunch of words i'm old school i usually don't do that but this really i started to wonder who is aimer united i popped in aimer united and this is the part that really got me a video was put together by someone by the name of ken kennygunther and right on it it said abolish police hmm well so then i looked up the word just to make sure i had it right abolish the police the action or an act of abolishing a system practice or an institution so here's the thing i'm only hoping that our school district isn't affiliated with abolishing the police and as you can tell i'm pretty upset
007about it right now just talking about it i've lived here for over 30 years i brought my kids to the school because i wanted to get them out of the cities and i wanted them to go to good schools and all those years my kids were here we had great education i loved the teachers we got to pick up the phone and talk to them there's not a problem i want that the same i want the same for all the kids in our in our district i want it for all of them not just for one or two so i go back to abolishing the police i'm hoping that this school district doesn't support that by any means by being affiliated with amer united it's it's upsetting it's discouraging i hope it's not happening i
008would like a phone call from the administrator please i'll give you my number after the meeting i want to talk about it and um i guess thanks for your time thank you thanks joe and we'll move on now to uh administrative reports section well it was a sign up before the meeting okay lately sure you could hear me you could still sure if you could give your name so you can get it on the list sign in if you would yep yep just put your name on the list there so we got you so we got you voted for all right thank you it might go about a few moments over five minutes but it's not going to be much so please all right please be patient my name is james dodge i'm here to
009talk about critical race theory in the school curriculum i don't know that five minutes is going to be enough uh really to dig into this topic but that's what i would restrict in my speech to i have three schools in the three students in the emory school district three kids some of them aren't school age yet but i also went to amory schools i'm graduate of the university of minnesota i have an undergrad in history my main focus was on the intellectual history of socialism the french revolution marxism 20th century communist and socialist experiments and in particular i focused on the soviet union the reasons i studied this were to ask why the outcomes of communist systems in the 20th century were so tragic and they were one of the reasons i studied this was
010because i thought that i wanted to salvage the reputation of socialism from the horrible reputation of communism and in my studies i think the main thing that really comes as the common thread through all these movements was that identity politics or a common enemy narrative is what underpinned them it was the same narrative of course in nazi germany the common enemy narrative the scapegoating of jews of course in germany it was also the identity of the aryan that they were elevating in the ussr as well as in uh communist china and in various other communist movements uh across the 20th century the identity politic was the proletariat versus the bourgeoisie so that would be the owners of the means of production versus the workers that was the same identity politics just like in nazi germany
011which led to the holocaust 10 million dead 60 million dead in the ussr 90 million dead in mount cultural revolution crt and i think i have some authority to speak on this subject knowing the intellectual origins of communist movements and marxism is embodied identity politics it centers racial identity in fact intersectionality which is promulgated by critical race theorists like kimberly crenshaw center's racism race of course this is an adaptation of marx's conflict theory which of course is an indication of the oppressor versus the oppressed that would be in marx's classical marxism the bourgeoisie versus the proletariat this has been translated into cultural identity race this common enemy narrative of intersectionality and critical race theory flies in the face of the civil rights movement it flies in the face of martin luther king and his teachings
012it in fact it doesn't expand at all on the civil rights movement it rejects the civil rights movement martin luther king taught a common humanity ethic he taught an aspiration to a colorblind society a society that would transcend mere identity categories like skin color he taught radical love he taught loving one's enemy he didn't teach a common enemy narrative he taught a common humanity narrative crt is in fact again i have some authority to speak to this subject a far left marxist utopian belief system richard delgado one of the og's or old guys of the critical race theory movement who's written one of the main textbooks on the subject of critical race theory says that critical race theory questions the foundations of the liberal order he says that critical race theory rejects neutral constitutional principles
013he says that critical race theory rejects equality theory which is of course the belief that everyone is equal in society and their identity shouldn't matter he says that critical race theory rejects enlightenment rationalism i saw soon gunther giving the speech before this board the video of it she's my sister i disagree with her vehemently arguing that critical race theory was about teaching critical thinking it is not it is quite the opposite it rejects enlightenment rationalism it rejects scientific methods it rejects evidence-based arguments it rejects critical thinking wholeheartedly in fact it calls these things white white supremacist critical race theory is a utopian belief system critical race theory is overtly marxist it draws on philosophers like jacques derrida antonio gramsci michelle foucault herbert marcusa and max horkemer all of our marxists in contemporary context leaders of
014the black lives matter movement the three women who started hashtag blm and run the movement call themselves in public interviews trained marxists they call for the abolition of police they also call for the abolition of prison systems another example of a utopian belief angela davis another popular critical race theorists has publicly referred to herself as a communist my point is that not that marxism can't provide us any insights i have at times called myself a marxist i think it's worth considering economic inequality this is why my project as a college student was to look at the history of socialism communism in the intellectual history history of the ideas that's not my point my point is that critical race theory is clearly a biased belief system it is a far-left belief system frankly i think it's
015basically a religion i don't see what distinguishes it from religion other than that it's about politics in reality i would be just as upset to hear and i don't know the extent to which crt has been adopted i'll get to that by the curriculum in public schools here but i would be very upset if i was to learn that creationism was going to be adopted in the curriculum of amri public schools or any public schools i'd be upset if i learned that evolutionary theory was going to be banned from being taught in public schools because of course it's not upon the public schools to teach students what to think it's your job to educate students teach them how to think to give them the tools to think for themselves in closing the largest school teachers
016union in the country the national education association has embraced publicly embraced critical race theory and it says that they will be teaching critical race theory principles in 14 000 schools across this country my concerns are not unfounded this is a real phenomenon i don't know the extent to which critical race theory principles have been embraced or are likely to be implemented in the curriculum of emory public schools and that's not really the point the point is that there's a constitutional prohibition against the state establishing a religion this is a public institution it's the first amendment i think the board of this school and the administrators of the school district have a fiduciary responsibility not to violate constitutional law to open the school district of america to litigation under constitutional grievances i think it's also your
017responsibility not to utilize taxpayer money for purposes for which it was not allocated specifically i think i speak for many when i say this first and foremost purposes for which that money is not allocated is teaching a belief system to our students i also think i speak for everyone when i say i want transparency about the curriculum that's all i have to say thank you thank you that's it for that so uh now we'll move on to administrator okay well typically the administrative team has had off the month of july um jessica de ambrosio is here she is extra dedicated no she's on for a different item on the agenda so there aren't any administrative reports for the month of july is there anything you wanted to update from their reports and the update i
018have will be done later on when we talk about the budget okay sounds good next up will be tracy hendrickson with the community education and district communication report hello i'm here for my uh yearly scintillating report about community education slash communications slash um community engagement sort of all falls together in one it's kind of hard to separate the three so i will start by talking about just a basic summary review of community education in the past year what you see on the screen is very basic very simple and community ed looked a lot different this year like everything else that we did so last fall i pretty much knew by this time of year that i probably wouldn't be printing a community education catalog because i just didn't know that people were interested or what
019the fall was going to look like to be bringing people into school so i plan to still do what we could do but we didn't print a catalog probably the first time in between 25 and 30 years the school district of emory did not have a printed fall community education catalog but i was going to do what i could do and then was hoping that by january we would have the second catalog well january came and people were still very reluctant and we still were following a lot of guidelines so there were no catalogs last year which was strange but still managed to do something so i'll just quickly go through kind of what did happen in community education even though it was a smaller program than usual so 62 total offerings combination of classes
020workshops youth rec camps recreation opportunities on a normal school year there would be three times that so glad we were able to kind of still put some things up out there 57 education enrichment classes workshops youth camps a couple recreation opportunities we tried for part of the winter to where i shouldn't say we tried but toward the end of the winter we did open up open gym for basketball for i think maybe six to eight weeks we did open the high school gym up for pickleball part way through the winter we were planning three trips um the orpheum was very hopeful continually hopeful and then kept canceling and postponing and canceling and postponing before they finally said we can't do this hold off um but i think we have we will be going to um
021frozen this fall finally um we will probably will be going to hamilton but not till 2023 and we are going to come from away in 2022 so things are coming back things are happening but a lot of postponing a lot of refunding um so i actually had 62 things that we put out there still ended up canceling 36 of them but or 26 of them but we actually completed 36 which i think was pretty good during uh during a covered year and when i actually crunched these numbers i was i was a little bit surprised myself that we actually served over 800 people i worked with 30 supervisors leaders instructors and we still brought people into the school buildings to share our resources and our buildings for over 200 hours during the school year so
022we did what we could people were happy that we could do the things that we could do and i have some instructors who are very eager to get back at it and to get going again and then the financial piece i also was surprised at that but i guess when you don't pay to print a catalog or to mail a catalog then i was surprised we actually came out ahead i mean just a little bit and that's just basic basic numbers that's this is what people paid to take classes and this is what went out as direct class expenses and i um didn't think we'd come out ahead and we did so i was pleased with that so i mean we did meet the goals of community ed sharing our school resources making the building
023accessible fulfilling needs of the community doing what we could do working with local organizations all those things still happen just on a much smaller scale but um like a lot of things with colbit and a lot of us in the past over a month many months here we kind of look back at what we were forced to do and re-evaluate where what things are going to look like moving ahead and i think community education is going to look very different as we move ahead so this fall i i am not going to print a catalog again i don't think i've been working with some instructors i think rather than working on usually what we've done for years every fall there's anywhere from a 14 to a 20 page catalog in the winter there's another one
024and it sort of traps me into two big projects i'm going to spread that out throughout the year we're probably going to print maybe rather than this big catalog we'll probably print a one-page document card stock front and back with just minor details directing people to go to the website for their online registration something more of a hang this on your refrigerator put this somewhere you can see it rather than a catalog that might get buried in a newspaper pile and rather than doing that twice we'll probably do it three or four times per year and then we still will continue with our district newsletter that includes community education materials and we still work with the free press and we use the family folders and we use social media so i'm thinking we're going to
025give that a shot this year we're going to make it look a little bit different um change is kind of planning things for me it doesn't tie me into two big semesters we can spread it out makes it a little more flexible so i think that'll be really nice so i'm looking forward to that looking forward to the change and still doing what we're doing just it'll it'll just be shared a little differently and i think i think it'll be good so um any questions on community education must have come to my house knowing that i was sorting through the newspaper are you saying that my catalogs are in your newspaper they are in my newspaper file but i keep them i heard good things about the um the recreations on the um people coming
026in uh playing pickleball basketball with their masks fogging up their glasses and they were there but the gym was open and they were playing so yeah you know adherence to all the guidelines that we had so thanks tracy for for making that work yeah we did and it all you know we had babysitter training classes our barn quilting we still did some dnr some hunter education following dnr requirements we did a blacksmithing class we did a lot of different things and it worked and people were willing just to participate and do what they had to do so it was good all right so district communications i truly believe that you know as a district we work really hard um so that families community members anyone who wants to know what's happening in the school district
027of amery should know what's happening because it's all pretty much out there um this list that i that i put up here for tonight is just um sort of an overview of our communication channels that i pulled from the district communications plan which we finalized last fall and i'll just kind of go through the key things on here some things have changed some things are changing the communication plan is a work in progress that will continue to change but i want to start with the most exciting part or i think it's the most exciting part if you have not been on the district website in the last two weeks you need to do that because it's a completely new template it's been updated i started working with cms for schools so that's just a screenshot
028of the front of the home page but if you go there and you scroll down you can see it's very interactive does a lot of neat things and everything's just kind of laid out a little bit differently but we did that for four reasons um cms for schools is through cs6 and they are that's who we contract with for our website um first of all it just needed clean up um when you have your website years and years you have pages that are deep and deep and lots of links and pdfs out there so a lot of updating um we made it it's obviously more modern but the two keys were accessibility and responsiveness so accessibility means that now for the most part our our website is much more accessible for those for example if
029someone has vision impairments and they use what's called a screen reader to read the website to them our website is now cleaned up so that someone using a screen reader knows what's on the page they can access the information and that that happened in a lot of different ways removing formatting removing tables using headings so that you can direct the screen readers to go through a page from top to bottom and that's something we have to do by law so our website has come a long way with accessibility and then the little blue button in the top left corner if you click on that for people who need to change fonts who need to change colors because of disabilities that is a tool that allows them to do that and then obviously we have and
030you can't see it on that screenshot but um the entire website will can be read in any language so fully accessible and i'm sure that i can still go through and find some pages that aren't quite there but that will always be the case the other thing responsiveness if you go to our website now and you open it on the computer it fills the full screen and then you open it on your phone and it all automatically adjusts or you open it on a tablet and it adjusts so it's responsive to any type of device so it's very user friendly um so i don't know maybe i'm the only one that's excited to open it in a lot of different places and see how things look but i do that so anyway those are the
031four reasons we updated our website um and it's a work in progress it always will be because there's just so much information there that we're constantly finding pages or pieces and parts that we need to be updating and changing um and we'll and we're about we have tools now where we can flag it will read and tell us this page is accessible this one is not you need to redo the sentence so that's just kind of always happening so anyway that's the the biggest thing the newest thing we've updated the website because the uh the website is now mobile friendly we are going to non-renew the app so um if someone i i'm probably gonna have to teach people who don't know that they can take the website and you can save any page of
032the website onto the home page of any device and you can get right to all your favorite pages without the app the app we basically was just a link to lots of things within the website so we're going to get rid of the app we're increasing our use of powerschool parents k12 4k through 12 using powerschool for daily bulletins and trying to streamline our communication that way continuing to use bright arrow switcher studio was new this year with our live streaming and our video recording which i'll talk about in a little bit and then social media obviously we have our school district facebook page um i also oversee the we are amory live streaming facebook page along with the we are the we are network instagram twitter youtube so those things all continue um and
033we're doing quite well we'll continue with our district newsletter three of those going out per school year to over 7 800 mailboxes so within our district and beyond district calendar printed this summer and then we have great relationship with free press cable tv local radio and was something i found that's that has been very valuable not just recently but i feel like it's happening more and more as i make connections with some of the other important social media pages within the community whether it's the community club what else would it be that what is it the aedc shop amy whatever it might be they share our stuff we share theirs and things it's just huge it's a community effort using social media across the board to make sure that we're all sharing our information and
034sharing our news and for us with our social media really our number one goal is to celebrate our kids it's about look what so and so did we're celebrating our ffa kids just had this amazing accomplishment um just today and i haven't even retweeted it yet we have a current student koi hopke is on he just won another national title today as a sophomore he's wrestling out in fargo if he wins one more i think he wins something called a triple crown i'm learning so much about wrestling um alicia munson you know our alumni today today the eau claire news station was out here to interview her parents the day alicia took third at the olympic trials i threw it on the school district page like we do all of that stuff and within a
035few days and i just printed this now today but that post off the school district page has reached 136 000 people was shared 571 times 198 comments and was liked or loved by 1 600 plus people so i don't know i think we're getting the word out who we are and and what we do and just sharing that our kids do some great things and then at the bottom video recording if i it probably was good that community ed kind of did this this year because video recording did this this year and i don't know that i could have done them both at once so thank goodness we had um connected to we are amory before coven because we kind of already had an idea how it worked and what we needed to do but
036it was a crazy year i learned a lot about video recording about live streaming about ios devices video editing video publishing and i just was off the top of my head trying to think we did at least eight concerts that we recorded we edited we published graduation ceremony the senior walk senior awards night the very first thing we did we did a recording of the homecoming field show so that we could play the video during halftime on the live stream of the field show or the football game grand march virtual veterans day and a minimum of 55 athletic events so it was a lot i learned a lot i enjoyed it i don't ever want to do that again never we don't ever want to have to go back to doing that but that sort
037of took over our communications this year like how who's doing what and how can we take what these kids are doing and share it with their families with our community when we can't put them in the gym and we can't bring people into concerts but i think our music teachers our coaches our athletes our students did an amazing job so it was really rewarding it just was it was huge very huge so now that we know how that looked now once again we'll move ahead with this year and kind of decide where we go from here and what we will be recording and streaming because people still expect live or athletic events to be live streamed but i think we'll just do varsity and we'll get a little better better handle on it i guess
038so moving forward you know this is kind of where we are right now i mean as well as there's lots of other projects and district things and working with dr driffler and um and becky and making things happy and happen and we're strategic planning and um but these are the ways we get our word out there and we'll keep working with all this stuff so do you have any questions well thank you so much for all your work and yeah i mean i i you know i have parents that are not near and they loved that they get got to watch games and concerts and events that you know they wouldn't have even been able to attend even if they would have been allowed because they lived too far away so it was really fun
039that they were able to watch a lot of those things so thank you for all your work and i know we'll have to figure out how how and what we uh what we stream and put out there but they really enjoyed it and appreciated it so right we did we did make our faraway grandparents and snowbirds very happy so now we need to balance that out that it's not all going to be there but we'll keep doing something we were going to do it before copen anyway so yeah even aside from the live stream just updating um updating the the facebook pages the social media pages that you've done with the pictures and celebrating all the accomplishments and just some of the everyday things even that's going on in the classrooms and great picture takers
040and things that we have employed in the district and and go to these events and provide you with pictures and you're you know right on johnny on the spot putting things out there that's a lot of work and thanks a lot for doing that because it really makes a difference to celebrate our kids i enjoy it and i have i do have a lot of help doing that that can't be done by one person yeah absolutely we have a lot of good picture takers out there we do if you people know share the information we'll get it out and we have some good systems to get information to me because i can't be in all the classrooms i can't be in all the buildings so we have a lot of really superstar teachers and people
041did a here job that was it's been uh it's been great to see the progression of all of that so it's been fun now you'll have to work on online concessions so the boosters sell stuff online yeah yes that's not happening automobiles yeah thank you thanks tracy next we will go to our informational items and that could be katie johnson and kate weisbeck with the mental health grant um day hi i'm katie johnson i'm one of the school psychologists here um and i'm kate weisembeck i'm the counselor at angry middle school we just wanted to share a little bit as we wrapped our two-year grant cycle up kind of talk about what we did and what our goals were and then moving forward what we're going to be looking at um the first thing is
042just to make sure that everyone understands when we're talking about school mental health that's not just about kids who are in crisis or have been diagnosed with anxiety or depression school mental health is really all of these supports and tools that we use to make sure that we're supporting all kids good mental health structure and framework helps kids who are thriving to excel they help all kids and so as we talk about school mental health just make sure that you're understanding that this is really about all kids and what's best for them and all these school mental health supports help all kids and also if you guys have questions you're more than welcome to interrupt um so how do we improve student mental health basically we use this triangle here as our foundation for what
043we try to do with students um there is a link on there i think it's an awesome publication it's like 30 or 40 pages long but it really explains what the framework looks like what's it what is it intended to do and answers lots of specific questions and so just like any model you really have to make sure that the foundation and the base is strong so when we want to support students who are struggling or having challenges that we have all these other things in place to really make sure that they have what they need one thing that you might notice on here is it specifically talks about trauma sensitive practices and also integrating school mental health with have positive behavioral interventions and supports or pbis so trauma-sensitive schools tss and pbis are two
044things you've heard a lot over the past few years so those two strategies and schools of thought fit really well with the school mental health framework um and so that falls in line with what we've been trying to do as a district with focusing on those too far too big or two of our big three initiatives so again what we've done with the grant is really looked at best practices evidence-based research and curriculum and we're really focusing on the bottom of that triangle we really want to make sure that our students feel good about coming to school that they feel safe here that they feel that the staff cares about them has their best interests in mind and so we really want to make that foundation stronger and we'll continue to talk a little bit
045about that later in the next grant application which katie will talk about soon but really focusing on that foundation our goals for the two-year grant cycle we're number one to improve the district's overall mental health framework so that triangle model that we just looked at there's a needs assessment that goes along with that and we've been working on that as a district um to kind of identify and make sure that we have all of these pieces in place so you have been using that mental health framework and needs assessment to really examine what we're doing make sure that we're using those research-based methods and then our other goal is to you know see a reduction in the amount of students who are experienced depression and anxiety we've talked to you before there's a lot of
046kids who are really struggling the statistics are somewhere like one in five and we definitely see that that is not just specific to haemory it's it's all over um so we're continuing to see students struggling more and more with mental health um so that was our two goals for that two-year cycle can i interrupt the needs assessment that you're talking about to iv the kids for um and to build that foundation could you just talk a little bit about those needs assessments when are they given who are they given to um and then what what does those income what does that okay i think are you asking about our screeners uh yeah student screeners yep the needs assessment just i mean i guess to refresh our memories yeah so um having a universal screener for
047students is something that they recommend in the framework of mental health um and so right now the high school has been doing a depression screener and that is offered to ninth grade screwed students um that's with parental consent and i don't know for sure what our participation rates were this year everything was lower with coped obviously and we had kids who just weren't here too and then in the middle school we do an anxiety screener for seventh grade and that's pretty similar it's parent consent and the first year we really kicked that off we had really really high participation lots of kids saying yeah i'm worried about anxiety i'm not sure if it's what i should do about it um so we had really good interest in that middle school screener as well so those
048two things will definitely continue okay and those are the two assessments that we use so what about like sixth or eighth grade students um encompassing in the in the middle school at that point so what about sixth and eighth grade is or do we just kind of take that general seventh grade and kind of extrapolate from that well we started with with um the ninth graders and so we thought well it kind of makes sense to maybe get them at seventh grade um you know i think we would love to try to offer more of that but when you're doing a screening you also have to follow up with interventions and support and resources so that means offering support groups for students small groups it means referrals to mental health counselors it means yeah we
049individual counseling so there is the assessment identifying but that's there's still work for us to do as school professionals and those assessments and i know the ninth grade one for sure is anonymous correct is that anonymous those are done individually so it's just one-on-one with the screener and nobody outside of that screening knows that the student took it or what their results are so it's not necessarily anonymous but it is confidential gotcha okay and that's the same for the seventh grade one as well okay so all right so what we accomplished this year again it was a different year but i think we still accomplished quite a bit a lot of what we did is provide resources tons of staff development and trainings we bought lots of books we bought lots of book study books
050sets of books looking at behavior management looking at trauma we did some online book studies with staff which they really liked because they could do it kind of on their own time and respond to questions versus showing up once a week and doing it you know in an evening or something like that our goal is to create a professional library of books that staff can check out on on trauma on positive behavioral supports on those kind of things we beefed up what we're doing for evidence-based universal curriculum we have second step in place now day care through eighth grade so daycare including the littles and we also provided some resources for the after school program and then all the way through eighth grade we have that in place so that kids are getting that good
051solid social emotional curriculum that's kind of when we hit kids hard without social emotional learning in high school we also have some social emotional um lessons those are more targeted they're more small a lot of them have to do with study skills or you know how to support a friend or you know if if you're not feeling well what do you do and they're shorter more targeted skills rather than the big curriculums that we do um pre-k through eight um the high school did some great work with stigma reduction mental health campaign this year they also did some great work with the transition to high school video so lots of things looking at stigma reduction it was a hard year for staff learning new technology coming off of kovid we know that so trying to
052support staff in wellness opportunities in that kind of thing um and then as always integrating pbis and the trauma-sensitive schools into everything we do i think kate touched on that we're constantly working on how to take those principles and weave them into what we do on a daily basis so future funding we submitted a new grant application it's again a two-year grant cycle like it was for this year these last two years we have not heard yet whether we have received it i think we'll probably hear in late summer at some point we're hoping for the whole amount of 150 000 over two years um and the grant writing cycle is it's a pretty intense cycle we really look at all of our data we look at everything we can mine from the district and
053put together to show what's our need for supporting our kids but we've had great success in the past and we're really looking forward to hearing if we can continue that work but the programs that we've started with the grant will continue whether we have the new grant or not we've created those programs so that they're self-sustaining and that we're able to do those things regardless katie with the with the 150 000 grant were there certain stipulations that we had to implement with that grant money or they really wanted to follow that framework that kate showed you with the triangle so really we we wrote the previous one and the new one looking at where are the pieces on that framework that we could use some some holes to fill yep and there's very specific action
054steps for each of the goals um so all the funding has to specifically tied to those actions okay yes okay good yeah um and then looking um [Music] to the future with the new grant we've really spent a lot of time in the last few years especially this year looking at collaboration with our community partners we meet really frequently with behavioral health from the amory clinic looking at a partnership between those clinicians and our staff and our students we meet with the police department we've developed a good partnership with them in supporting kids mental health and also the mental health task force of polk county working with all three of those we hope to keep keep going with those creating some kind of coalition type thing to support our kids mental health in our community
055um still going to look at social emotional learning that's that's that foundational piece that all kids get understanding emotions understanding all of those kind of things are that's going to be the underpinning of what we would do continuing staff development we would we learned a lot this year about how to do some innovative staff development we'd like to keep that up and do more in-person classes as well meeting the needs of individual educators or the whole staff and in more of compassion resilience staff wellness we want to keep up with that we we're hoping to get back to a staff wellness day where we can provide some support to that and and helping staff to learn some resources and tools they can use and continue the stigma reduction working on making sure that everybody in
056the community knows that you know mental health having mental health difficulties is okay it's normal and it's normal to receive help and we'll just continue that that work as we go um could you just give a couple examples of how the collaboration that you have with the um the partners that you mentioned like the police department and our mental health coalition and things like that can you just give a couple examples of how that partnership has worked with the school and um and building relationships with the kids here and our staff here well we could go back to pre-covered exactly of course it's really kind of the track we're moving to um we did start as a group of kind of those key players and we all kind of talked and said you know what
057we're all really facing these mental health struggles let's work together share resources you know understand what you need and understand what we need and work together and so we had a nice kind of system set up for that um the amy regional hospital was kind of running that and coordinating it for us and then kobet hit and so all those meetings kind of couldn't happen anymore but that's really our hope that we can get back to some of those partnerships and meetings and just having those conversations with some of those key players we'd love to get some more you know like parents involved and parent reps um and kind of push that further than we were able to this year we do meet with the police department quarterly i believe um and collaborate and discuss
058you know things that are happening in the school so that's been very valuable um we meet with behavioral health probably quarterly as well um either online or in person to discuss that and going back to parent training and parent involvement we're hoping to this coming year and we'll talk more about this in the future partner with um the mental health task force to do some parent training here in amery like kind of a big day of parent training and parent involvement around mental health and wellness and that kind of thing so we're excited about that idea but we're just in the the planning stages for that okay thanks that's too bad that covered kind of sidetracked that but uh building those partnerships are super important in debriefing each department the behavioral health resources people along
059with our police departments when they've certainly been here to help in our district at every level and then to kind of debrief what those incidences are what we're seeing how they're helping how we can help prevent some of those things from happening i think those are huge things that we have on the horizon that we need to really focus on it sounds like you've got a great handle on starting that pairing with those partnerships is amazing so we did have a prepared training which is like a school safety crisis management and we were able to have a rep from amory police department there so that was wonderful for us to understand and the hospital um so for them to understand kind of how our crisis system works and give us their input so that was
060really great um and you know we're just hoping that there's more opportunity to do some of those things now when we have the grant monday um it's so much easier to make that happen so hopefully it's going to be a normal year yes great well we'll pray for that grant money to come through and continue all those the work of the it's really important work that we're doing here i think the last thing was just um you know to thank the administration of work for supporting um you know these things it's it's tough work it's a huge project um it's very time consuming and it's it's hard to know what the right thing to do is and there's a lot of work to be done so we're just very happy that it continues to be
061a priority in the district yeah you guys have been here a long time so you've seen between the two of you how many years without giving out too much how many years do you have between the two of you know it makes us sound really good 34 35 you guys i think i'm on something yeah katie you were here when my my wigs were little so yeah i got a couple years on kate i'm not older than her at all i just i i it blows my mind to think how many years you've been here still because it blows my mind to know that my kids are that old so thank you yeah thanks ladies and now we'll continue with you dr durfler okay jessica's here for that no i don't know she said she
062was here for some time last month you don't you're coming clean now i knew i knew better i died you clearly don't teach math i was gonna let you off the hook summer last month john heunik from kraus anderson our professional services contractor was here to prevent deferred maintenance needs in the school district of amory again think of deferred maintenance is that which needs to be fixed there are level ones level twos level threes in regards to priority ones are something that needs to be addressed within the next two three four years then the priority twos can wait some six seven eight years and then priory threes are very much on the back burner 10 plus uh remember again we have a high school that's uh built in 1976 in an elementary school that was
063built in 1967 so they're not new by any means they're pretty heavily used i promised last month to come forward with some opportunities for the community to engage with us in regards to how they feel we should proceed again the spectrum is to do nothing to go all the way through to do a referendum or something in between so there will be plenty of opportunity for folks to weigh in so if you could head to the next slide becky you'll see uh the plan for for an opportunity to weigh in so on june 28th which was our last board meeting we did the deferred maintenance presentation that's completed done on monday august 30th there will be a community meeting that will be held at the high school in the auditorium we'll review the deferred maintenance
064needs and secure feedback from those who wish to be with us to provide it presentation on the educational adequacy for the district now what is educational adequacy that's things such as the feasibility of teaching science and outdated science rooms at the high school or safety and security issues that exist at the elementary school those are educational adequacy pieces those all obviously come with in many cases the reconstruction of buildings and classrooms and price tags so that's in addition to deferred maintenance but it's all items that need to be discussed up to and including and i'll give you the two topics that come up rather frequently child care or clubhouse and also i've gotten inquiries from a lot of different parties about a pool so that's happened many many times it's been brought up over the
065decade and a half that i've been here and i'm sure it'll come up here on august 30th so that'll be part of the conversation on september 22nd there will be a second opportunity to gather feedback um and we will also share our financials at this point we work with baird financial who gives us the rules of the road in regards to taxation and mill rates and revenue limits and all the rest of that fun stuff and in order to talk accurately and transparently about this issue we need to talk about what is it cost and what does it cost the taxpayer so we'll have a presentation that will include that and further we want to get input from our community members in regards to what questions should we ask our community because we are going
066to do a community survey you'll see that at the bottom of this page on september 29th we'll do building tours they'll be led by george sigsworth our our maintenance guy lhb who is our contracted architect in cross anderson who is our professional services contractor there are no three more knowledgeable people on these buildings than those three and that they will show you what we have talked about in the previous meetings because it's one thing to hear about it's another thing to see it the members of the board actually went and saw it there are some spaces in these buildings that will make your head shake and you'll wonder what's going on so we'll go ahead and take a look at it community survey we work with school perceptions we have for a long time now
067they will do a community survey that will span the month of the first half of the month of october from the 4th to the 15th that would be something that a person would have the opportunity to complete right from the comfort of their own home they don't have to go anywhere and do anything to complete it and we'll see what our community thinks continuing we'll have some more tours on the sixth for folks that couldn't make it the first time around or wanted to see something again on the 25th this is a regularly scheduled board meeting we'll discuss the survey results of the survey that took place a couple weeks prior so we'll see what people say about specific items on that survey community meeting regard in regards to the survey results to find out
068how they feel about what was returned for results and then next steps at the november 15th board meeting could be next steps on a referendum it could be next steps in a different direction altogether and then a community meeting with the same purpose on the 17th to discuss where they think we should go anyone's eligible to come to the community meeting and we hope that you do and we hope that you share you could also just show up and listen and learn and offer feedback in another way too it doesn't have to be there at that time so that's the timeline for community gate engagement over call it the next four or so months questions or comments that the board would like to make the community survey um the last time school perception survey was
069sent out uh it was sent out by mail i think there was also an online option right is that planned for both again this time school perceptions is the outfit that does that and they have a great deal of experiencing and experience in making sure that people have access to offer their feedback um they'll also have the ability to give us some longitudinal data as in questions that have been asked on multiple school perception surveys so we can see where people stand if for three consecutive surveys you get the exact same results from the same community you could probably make some conclusions there you could also identify an aberration perhaps so they'll help us make sure that people have access and there'll be plenty of time for people to weigh in are we sending that
070out by mail they will send that out yeah we don't send it out it would be by mail and via a link that you would go and complete it okay mark your calendars mark your calendars and this isn't the last time this information will be presented people will not be in the dark in regards to when they get the stuff okay if there isn't any other feedback that's all the information i have on that topic now we're going to go to our preliminary budget okay uh it would be convenient and much easier if the budget timeline from the state of wisconsin matched up with the budget year of a school district in regards to having all the information that you need to know when you get to july 1st i'm here to tell you that's
071not the case we have a signed budget but there are still a lot of unknowns there is apparently a per pupil increase that's going to happen for districts in wisconsin we don't know exactly how much we don't know who it's for exactly which districts it's for if it's the same or if it's different we don't know when it's going to arrive and we don't know how it's supposed to be used so that's a very nondescript proposal from the state at this point in time thanks for the non-update that's a non-update on that front we do have a signed budget we do have officially uh have in place the ability to receive esther dollars in the state of wisconsin and then districts will subsequently receive those but uh there's still a lot of unknowns so i'm
072going to walk through the first couple we're not mentioning that typically this time of year we never know these it is it's pretty common that we don't know when we are in the part in july and august but usually we know more than this there have been years where we haven't known much into september in october those get a little sketchy because you can't really know how to spend if you don't know what you have to spend that's not the way any of us conduct our personal affairs probably but that's the politics of the day in the state of wisconsin and madison i guess so it is what it is and quite honestly we disre this preliminary budget usually comes out a couple months previous to this each year but we tried to wait as
073long as we could to know as much as we could and i don't think we know much more than a couple months ago and a lot of things it's been on the april may june and july meetings it's just been stricken until we got here today i just we just weren't ready to do it and we're sort of still not because we don't know a few things so the beginning slide that of the slide deck i will walk through this is a historical enrollment trend running back all the way to 11 12 so it's 10 years worth of data you'll see the most recent number is significantly lower than the number at the far left it's also lower than two years ago the entire state of wisconsin witnessed approximately 15 to 20 percent enrollment drop
074much of that drop had to do with home school and students that enrolled in virtual options because some of those options aren't within district some of them aren't even within state so there was a significant enrollment drop we are actually in the middle of the curve in regards to the amount drop there are neighbors of ours that have dropped hundreds of students in their district and uh that makes for difficult situations so our enrollment is down and our hope is for it to be back up so that's enrollment open enrollment we have never brought more people in and we have never had more people going out we have looked at this and looked at this again and looked at this again the trend that we have seen rather consistently is that we are having students
075the number one destination of people that live in ambry that go to other districts is new richmond and it's been in word and in charting the data a work convenience issue they live in star prairie or deer park they work in stillwater or somerset they drop off on their way to work as opposed to backtracking and then having to go to work that's what they have reported to us the second third and fourth destinations are clayton clearwake and osceola they're our neighbors that's not too big of a surprise and those could be any number of reasons so that's open enrollment in one more word of mention in open room but the reason for the dramatic increase in open enrollment about five or six years ago there was an alternative window you used to only be
076able to do it in the month of february now you can do it year round any day of the year so that's the upsurge for everybody not just here in amory students with disabilities with this data comes a price tag when you have students that have disabilities you're obligated to provide specific services and with those services oftentimes comes increased staff or increased resource which comes with increased cost and we've never had more students with disability and i'm here to report we've never had students with greater disability with greater intensity and severity so that comes with even more resource so there's a price tag increase there economically disadvantaged students uh the picture of the school district of emory has looked rather similar for the last 10 probably more like 20 or 30 or 40 years we've
077always had 30 35 40 percent of our students that are economically disadvantaged in some specific buildings that percentage hits up towards the 50 percent range at the elementary intermediate it has at times high school kids and families oftentimes don't even complete the application so we don't even know there's an economic disadvantage there so that's a piece of the puzzle as well the preliminary budget i'm going to turn this portion over to andy sure thanks dr derfler um if you can look at us there's some history uh going back six years uh before this year on what we've had for budgets each year and how it's increased over time if you look at our fiscal year that just ended you'll see that we ended the year before audit with the surplus that will go into our
078fund balance um approximately 434 thousand dollars like i said the audit does change that slightly but we're gonna have somewhere around that area which is which is a good thing um some of the reasons for that are you know the the cost we didn't occur because the kova i think uh we're not as much as we didn't have as much cove expenses as some other districts had we were very very fiscally responsible on what we did to keep our kids safe and had some great great outcomes of that um then on to this year's budget uh like i said the first thing i'll say about it is this is not right so that's kind of kind of what you have to know about it so think of the grain of salt at this point we
079do have a lot of variables as dr durfer mentioned um cecilia come the certification of aid on october 15th we do have an estimate of that but they're still at this point a lot of unknowns rather than knowns so we did i did budget based on our enrollment going back up about halfway to where we were before pre-coveted to be conservative on that and then perhaps the year after this we may hopefully get back up to where we're at pre-covet for and stabilize our enrollment that's that's the outlook that i expect so um the next slide is our maximum remember basically what this is is we what we get for each one of our our kiddos um from the state for equalization aid purposes uh pretty straightforward on that the next one is our mill
080rate calculator what i expect to see for the mill rate this year um this will change slightly but i think it's a pretty good number um and basically what how your your mill rate is your total school levy divided by your equalized property value which is not your commercial value what's the their valuation of all the district property and then um basically that's spread out among the number of membership which is our enrollment and then you arrive at take that times a thousand you get our mill rate price per per for the mill rate so the next slide is another extrapolation of our mill rate um going back years and you will see here that we're expecting to go up from 7.75 to 8.30 in this next year the main reason for that is our
081equalization aid is down about 1.3 million the main reason for that is in dpi's eyes we're a much property rich because it's spread out under lesser enrollments down so it's spread out over less students that's how they calculate that and our revenue limit actually went up which means we can raise more money so naturally if it doesn't come from the state it comes from the other main area um and um beyond that i think uh like i said we're still far below the historical where we're at and good position going forward so any questions on that before questions two points of emphasis first the auditor has said repeatedly since i've been in this district and it's been this is my 15th year not as many as these two over here um uh has made clear
082that we need to put more money into our fund balance and that was a commitment that andy and i have made and i know you have indoor side as well on numerous occasions and second 8.3 in comparison to 7.75 is up 8.3 in comparison to the year's 2017-18 back is not even close that's hundreds of dollars per hundred thousand dollar of home that's five six hundred dollars over the course of a two hundred thousand dollar home so it is a world of difference we are a debt-free district who has buildings that are not falling apart but are in pretty rough shape in some cases in that they are 50 and 60 years old but we are not in dire straits financially and that makes us be in a good position to be able to address
083the needs that we have and we'll engage the community about that and see how they feel so that's how this connects to the engagement piece now you can certainly chime in with your comments or questions due to point of clarity also that this budget does include our known federal ester money that we're getting there's some that we still they have not figured out how much we're going to get and how we're going to get it and what we have to spend it on so that's still in some works and a portion of that so so are we looking at october before we get a more permanent realistic no the budget's due before that so i'd say you'll know a lot more by september maybe august october seems awful late to me been there yeah we
084have been there everyone's looking for the same answers in the state but there's a lot going on there too so we'll give them some grace but we really do need to know rather soon so we know how to plan it seems to just keep bouncing around so it does and like i said it's it's it's a big task for dpi to figure out what to to do with the money for all the schools what the federal government says you have to do with it and as you know with bureaucracy it doesn't go too fast sometimes so i'm so part of running public education yeah yes not plan for it then plan for it and not get it yes so and sean just to echo your comments while the projected mill rate you know potentially 8.3
085is up a little from last year it's still you know significantly lower than the previous what seven years it is so so let's talk about an 8.3 versus a 7.75 the distance there is 0.55 in order to understand it in real numbers that's 55 per hundred thousand dollars of home so if you have a 200 000 home in the course of a year it'd be a hundred dollar 110 increase in property tax bill or in tax bill from the school district if this ends up being the projection as it being actual we don't know that for sure yet but it could go up slightly but it cannot go up into the 11's that's not happening and keep in mind that we only can control our portion of the mill rate there's the whole all the
086other pieces that go into that from from the mid from the uh the government local government so townships and municipalities have every reason to raise whatever they're doing or do their valuations and things right which is independent from the school district there are some dozen to facets of your tax bill schools being one of them we are actually in a situation in the school district of memory where the school portion of your taxes in the school district of memory has decreased for seven consecutive years that's a fact this could be in eighth year where it goes up slightly but seven years in a row it went down yeah and you can see that there 11.94 to 11.92 and 2.29 it continues to go down that was some good planning based on all you old members
087of the board you're welcome it's just becoming an issue tonight all over again it's like i'm all over it trying to make myself feel better tonight now i don't know oh yeah a lot of experience in the room did today experience that's important take credit when the times are good and don't don't take the blame when times are bad exactly no it's it's it's amazing to be in this kind of a situation with our debt load and our finances it really is at this point in time yeah you i mean you've seen much different much different much better spot than where we have been yes other than i've never been part of a debtless district before for all instance purposes you know so it's yeah it's interesting so hopefully we can use that to our
088advantage to hopefully help for our buildings some tough conversations and tough uh choices that i know you guys have always that you've made in the past to put us in the situation that we're in now so i think we talk about that usually when we talk about the budgets yeah well we'll move on to our action items and we'll have our 2021-22 student academic standards and now this is a requirement for the state of wisconsin department of public instruction each and every year you have to have a in essence a board meeting where you go through your student academic standards and that's what jessica's here for she is not only in the intermediate school principal but also curriculum coordinator so this is falling under the umbrella of her responsibilities so go ahead jessica okay i
089i won't start with age um i know that's a touch being the new kid on the block good job good choice um ore presents every july and so as dr durkler had said that's what i'm here to do today um so this is our annual notice for the 21 22 school year or had a fantastic framework so it's probably very familiar to you i'll go ahead and read our annual notice the school district of amory has a responsibility for maintaining a minimum program of instruction guaranteed by the wisconsin state statute of 118.30 and for initiating improvements beyond that minimum professional staff under the direction and supervision of the curriculum coordinator are delegated the responsibility for developing curriculum changes and additions the school district of emory school board approves the adoption of curriculum standards on an
090annual basis the school district of emory establishes their own standards and locally aligns their curriculum and instruction school district of amory k-12 english language arts and mathematics are based upon the common core state standards all other program areas are based upon the most current wisconsin model academic standards the ngss which is the next generation science standards and the c3 which is the college career and civic life framework for social studies standards this shows our program alignment as you can see our english language arts and our mathematics is aligned with common core state standards our science is aligned with the wisconsin model academic standards and the ngss standards social studies is aligned with the wisconsin model academic standards and the c3 which is the civic college career and civic life framework for social studies standards and
091then finally our art music physical education health and cte vocational are aligned with wisconsin model academic and national standards now a word of a word of mention on that if you go back to that becky this isn't our choice this is what we're required to do and this is what we do because dpi requires us to do it this is we don't have six other choices to pick from this is what we are required to do so that's what we do and then this is a visual that's been presented in years past that just shows the phase by phase rollout of the wisconsin academic standards we are very solid in being in phase two and three you know we're looking at a new ela curriculum so as you can see on the bottom it just
092shows that it's a continuum and we are very very strong in our academic standard alignment any questions i have not are the standards um available online or for people to have parents to view absolutely yes all of our curriculum is available right off of our website yes newly updated website yeah there we go and you're in the phase two and phase three portions of this right absolutely yes okay and when do you expect to be done with the um this is this is for the new ela curriculum right well this this um visual really just goes through all of the academic standards but you're right and you know going through adopting a new ela curriculum um cheryl and i worked on it today you know we're really into the point that we're at is looking
093at two different curriculums how they align with our standards how do they meet our needs here as a district so um really you know we kind of go between that phase two and phase three at this moment with our ela you know and when we establish what our ela curriculum is then we move into the usage of it and then the assessment and instruction portion of it okay is the next order for curriculum the planning years now is 4k through 5th which is elementary intermediate thereby jessica and cheryl that's the next order yeah and when are we um set to put that order through then well it hasn't even been decided yeah you will see that in spring that's what i thought i mean i mean this is far i mean that's for next year
094that's right we're not even close right we're vetting programs right now looking at how they align with the standards and our needs and we're working with a specialist from sisa um to help us align those yeah this is but for the next year's budget right yep okay do we have a motion for accepting this i'll make a motion to accept this standards for the 2021-22 school year dale all those in favor say aye aye opposed home there we go okay now we'll move on to buying a truck yeah well we swing now gaming from one to the next don't we do okay there are three truck quotes what brings us here is uh the need for a new truck um it is now true that if you are interested in seeing the ground as you
095travel you don't need to open the window you can simply look down at your feet and it's right there so it yes it's stirred out of the flintstones it's approximately 20 years old so it is time and it is budgeted for we have three quotes as per the uh policy the three quotes are america hudson chev and rosedale chev uh what we're looking at getting there is a 2021 chevrolet silverado 3500 hd the uh part that you don't see here is that we don't have a picture of the trade and you don't need to see a picture of that but the trade-in value will allow us to get a plow for the front so we could help with some of the plumbing needs on district so those are the three bids and my recommendation would
096be to stay local and further my recommendation would be to go with the lowest quote and that same reshef and our trade-in value that we're going to get from that truck do we feel that we would get more on a trade-in than we would to sell out right based on the research and i was amazed what they gave us for the trade and so i can't not even question it yeah ryan andy and george all worked on this to get these quotes and ryan our new transportation director uh absolutely to trade in and to get the plow that goes with it that was his recommendation as well there we go so my concern is then you know if we're taking the 20 year old truck we're upgrading to this big fancy truck do we think
097that they'll know what to do to drive this truck i think they'll have to figure it out i know that seems to be a stark contrast yeah my concern is as soon as chuck retired we get a new truck you know he's going to be upset really upset and i live next door to the band yeah he's going to be throwing around that upset he's at home during the day yeah i have a hunch he's over it yeah he's okay he's gonna put those donkeys right out by my window and make him yell at me he'll probably go by the train you buy it so the 45-985 includes the plow or not the trade-in yeah created and pays for it okay i'll make a question that we purchased the truck from angry chevrolet at the
098second time and second all those in favor say aye aye all right goes no none all right we bought a truck and it was budgeted for by the way yeah and they haven't right we can get it yes yeah right we have it we can get it okay okay all right now we'll move on to our second reading of our policies okay last last meeting we talked about a non-district transportation policy the change that you asked be made was to change the only trips which exceed rather than 75 85 miles one way will be considered for non-district charter and mulch motor coach bus transportation in the logic beyond that behind that was some of our members of our conference move out towards the 75 with the addition of altoona we often travel to hayward 85
099would then encapsulate that the number could be anything that you want it to be a point of emphasis i would like to make is that please don't lose sight of the fact that the decision whether to use coach transportation or your standard yellow bus comes from a conversation in a decision from athletic director jeff fern in transportation director ryan pease and also please know whenever coach travel occurs in this district it's not the district paying for the coach travel unless it was a team going to the state meet and even then it might not be it is almost always a booster club paying for that transportation hockey and wrestling are typically the ones that have boosters paying for those endeavors because their tournaments are simply farther away than anybody else's because they travel to compete
100so those are my uh reminders and updates and you can certainly chime in however you see fit on this policy so i know we've had a few comments about maybe changing the mileage um we were originally at 75 miles we bumped it up to 85 and now i think some of our transportation staff would would like to consider radial miles versus road miles and in addition maybe changing that 85 miles to 100 or even 120 to give them a little a little more opportunity to make a few extra trips a few extra dollars for our own staff let alone um you know the coach bus yeah i think so when we talked about this originally last month i was under the impression that this policy was geared towards um always giving our employees the the
101first option of that um to make sure that they helped do that so um i think that we want to stick with that spirit maybe there's some yes yeah i think there was a little confusion over yeah over that and i think the spirit is that we give our transportation staff first dibs at it absolutely yeah absolutely we trust these um people with our kids you know every morning every evening all of our close events and just nobody does it better and that's part of the reason that we decided not to opt out and have not our own fleet and you're leaving that up to somebody else so we appreciate our transportation staff they do a bang-up job i think this is in that spirit i'd entertain the idea of moving those miles bumping those
102miles up to 125 radial miles because i think that's just the easiest cleanest way to do it was it i think they were looking at maybe road miles weren't they i think it was the easiest cleanest way to do it as radial miles to do that or at first but then you know i mean because road miles just seems all encompassing if you end up with yeah because radial miles could be closer than you might have more road miles than radial miles sure if you're traveling from here to durand yeah i mean there isn't any straight shot ever i've driven it it's not pun right um it's a totally different number yeah that's over 90. so i think if we're just comfortable i mean and obviously always that discretion is left up to the athletic
103director and in that spirit also um probably just for cleaner and clarification that it's left up to the athletic director and also the transportation director which those conversations obviously would occur anyway but it just in case i think it's just clean it up in the policy that we put that yeah so you'd like to see a change in the uh uh trips miles to 125. i would call it really they mentioned 120 but 121.25 220 is going to cover nearly everything other than a deep end of the tournament uh experience where you're traveling to marshfield or something right or going to state and there's not a lot of state tournament series near here you know at the same time we don't want to take away the opportunity you know i know some sports some teams
104or whatever might want to take a coach bus for a special trip or special weekend tournament or you know whatever it might be so you know we don't want to take away that sure if you're doing statements if you're doing state state wrestling in madison we can talk coach bus every day of the week if you're doing level three playoffs in osceola right we could probably drive a yellow one over there yeah i think so yeah yeah i think if we yeah if we bump the hunter the the miles from 85 that we originally had talked about and then 225 and then with the addition of uh transportation director after they shall be approved by the athletic director and transportation director and or maybe and or transportation director the first call jeff makes is to
105ryan as soon as someone comes up he doesn't know who's available and what buses are available so first call he makes i think it covers just in case somebody's on vacation somebody is and there's more than just athletic um covered in here as well so that would also cover all of the rest of our organizations that are going somewhere radial or death rate radial anything sounded i don't know what do you think because like you said i mean if you're going to duran i know and do we want the farthest one because i think radial miles you could duran might be 90 miles away but you might have to drive a hundred miles road miles to get there so but no i don't know probably not because i get complicated that's what i was going
106to say yeah i know it depends on depends on what quest what you take right i would leave it at miles and let jeff and ryan figure it out yeah they're going to use their discretion they'll make the right call that'd be perfect just miles just miles yeah and then you know it says now only trips which exceed and if we say 125 miles one way will be considered for non-district charter and motor coach bus transportation is that do we need to clarify anything about state or would that like no state there's an implicit there yeah and in almost every case it's more than 125. i can't think the closest tournament series to here could could be lacrosse lacrosse is more than 125. yeah i mean you were talking milwaukee madison appleton green bay um
107marshfield green bay nolan's right down the road we're in the wrong part of the state for a close to state tournament yeah yeah and i think we'd want to use radius miles is what they would that was what they suggested so but we can just put miles miles whatever yeah yeah okay well we'll see that next time well that would be the second reading if you want to see the game they can bring it back i think if we if we all had agreed on those certain changes for this policy then we could go ahead and make a motion to adopt the policy with the aforementioned changes changes okay so i would do that i would i would be sure i would move to adopt the new non-district transportation policy with the aforementioned changes of
108125 miles and with the addition of the and or transportation director along with for approval okay in a second second dale all those in favor say aye aye aye aye opposed no nope all right that's passed and if there's a chance could we see that next meeting absolutely and just yeah so we have that one we'll see you all right now we're on to our wellness policy and i don't think there was any changes oh there was the top page three and blue oh that's right staff shall serve as role models for students and then what's been uh struck out is food should not be used as a reward and change that to teachers are encouraged to use non-food alternatives as rewards simple change yeah and that was the only change i'll make a motion
109that we approve the wellness policy thank you aaron sure all those in favor say aye those know okay motion's carried now we have our extra c contracts so we've gone all the way through the cycle of contracts which is support staff letters of appointment uh then teaching contracts than administrative contracts and the next item on the docket always in the month of july is your extracurricular contracts and that's uh needed obviously we fire up sports here in the matter of two weeks for the fall it's hard to believe if that's true and we'll be competing in a matter of less than two months so we need to get those extra c contracts out and that's also for student activities that are not athletic but yet co-curricular so all those contracts would need to be approved
110and we would send them out and get that all set in place i'm trying to think dale when was the last time we looked at this well we have a committee that looks at this tom benson jeff fern josh gould and myself uh we've we looked at it we've looked in we've oftentimes had other members of staff involved in that but those four individuals we look at it every single june and we did so again um but a change hasn't been made in recent years the last change is approximately three or four years ago um but there are some changes that occur internally typically it hasn't gone to the board but if you want it to be something the board weighs in on you certainly can the amounts that people are paid for various activities
111those have changed by that committee not by board action um and some have been omitted as in got rid of because the activity doesn't exist anymore and some have been added because it's an activity that didn't exist but now does so those changes have been done without board action you've just approved contracts but if you want to do it differently you certainly can i know we looked at it oh you know it's been a while and i think it's better than what it was it is we're not we're not all the way to where we need need to be but we're certainly not as low as we once were it's much better but it could probably still be looked at as i recall didn't we just put a lump sum of money into it and
112then the administration kind of did well the change that was made was the longevity pay okay and the longevity pay for someone that's coached a sport for x number of years when you get out 10 plus years you start getting extra pay we want our coaches to be able to coach for a long period of time in one particular area helps the program succeed so that was the change and then the numbers were rounded they all end in zero zero yeah um and again some was added and some was was taken off the list because it just doesn't happen anymore is there um for determining like coaching and uh activities i know some of like the activities not necessarily coaching because they're kind of expected in set hours but like the activities some of the
113um after school or weekends do our advisors turn in hours that they spend if it's an extra c like for instance you're close coaching chess club as the advisor you don't turn in hours you are paid an extra c sum of x dollars per activity so they don't have to fill out a time sheet so we don't i mean i i guess i'm not asking if they have to i understand that i what i'm asking is do they ever record how many hours that they are devoting to those particular activities so that we can see if we go back and look at their pay schedule of x number of dollars per year versus how many hours are being put in is their documentation payroll does assign for retirement purposes certain amount of hours for each
114of these so those are pre-calculated based on an average of or i like i said that's probably a question i find out for you with how twilight figures that out um not exactly i know how i did another my previous district but i don't i guess that i can check with her to seek it and i can email you that i guess i just i just ask because um well a long time ago if we're talking about age tonight when i was an ffa advisor i had like an hourly um contract not just a you know so i had x number it was it was this sum of pay but you had to put in this x number of hours to get that sum of pay so i guess that's why i'm asking if if
115that's something that we do if that's something that we have that the culture advisor hasn't attracted i would i think i'd be very safe in saying that if they did they'd all be working for about two or three dollars an hour that's why i'm kind of curious so we don't want them to do that i know i guess that's why i'm kind of curious as to that so that if we i mean you know i understand that budget that we have budget concerns in the next coming years and things like that but um i think that would be uh i mean even if we chose not to do anything about it financially for a hot minute it would be something that i would be interested in seeing and that i think sure the community might
116be easier the easiest solution would be to put x dollars into the extra c salary schedule and then you increase where the workload is heaviest because there are some that are have some areas that are heavier than others certainly yep and we could bring this and then the proposed increase back to you if you would like us to do that i mean i certainly feel comfortable approving the extra c salary schedule for tonight but i think uh it'd be prudent to just follow up with that a little bit more in depth if i certainly will with jeff fern i i would again be safe in saying there's no one on the list that's being overpaid i i understand i completely agree i guess that was my question when i'm really looking of course we see
117it when we look at the vouchers and and we do that but um when you're really looking at a list like this i think it really jumps off the page um at me to see that you know i know the number of hours like our head football coach puts in um and you're getting fifteen hundred dollars um i know that you know i know the because i coach football again we're gonna go back to age but and i was an ffa advisor and i know the hours that that that that entails so i think if we just look at those things absolutely josh gould our former athletic director now high school principal made a firm commitment to try and be more competitive and jeff has picked up that baton and is doing the same we're
118not where we where we need to be we're not all the way there but we're heading in the right direction yeah so you would need a motion if you wanted to approve those extra c would you happen to have the total amount i haven't totaled it up but we can certainly do that we can put it on the agenda for a future board meeting if you'd like yeah just to see where absolutely and if it would track it at all absolutely okay we'd like to go ahead and approve these tonight so that we can move on so i would uh move to approve the extracurricular salary schedule for the 2021-2022 school year as written and then to follow up at a future board meeting this year and i'll get to that information about what we
119assign kind of for wrs purposes and things like that because they do earn from that so all right that'd be great for i'll send all of you i would appreciate that i think that just deserves a little bit more looking into it i'll second that motion and since i have a family member as a middle school coach i will uh choose not to vote on this all right so what is it conflict of interest i'm assuming all right then all those in favor say aye aye aye and post no promotions carried all right next we have the personnel okay we have uh new employment contracts for special ed para jessica stoklan extra c contracts going out for amanda azapira for jv girls basketball allen carlson middle school cross country assistant carl granica moving from girls
120to boys for basketball jv lindsay myers di coordinator matt patterson for varsity softball jeffrey stoner for assistant boys soccer coach reassignments as in moving within district from one position to the other erin christensen from nutrition to apera michelle acero from pera in special ed to a para in 4k jennifer winchell from school nutrition to apera and resignations for becky dahlberg in school nutrition carl garanica for girls jv basketball kelly grooby and nicole clepotic her academic and behavior support pera and lastly susie faire high school guidance secretary all right any questions make a motion that we approve personnel second aaron and dale all those in favor say aye aye aye opposed no questions carry and now take a motion to go back into closed session i still moved second all right so we'll go into closed
121session considering employment promotion compensation or performance evaluation data of any public employee over which the governmental body