CFAUSD School Board Meeting Regular Session December 17, 2024 Source

001To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. Thank you. And now we will have our mega statement read by our student representative Zimmerman. All students will graduate prepared with the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviors necessary to achieve their personal goals and make a positive impact in the world. All right. And Miss Zimmerman also has a representative report which interesting about the report. Mr. Olsen, tell us what is special about Miss Zimmerman's report before she reads it. Well, what I just complimented her on is, you know, in the past they would go and do this stuff, but Mr. Zimmerman with her leadership skills is able to approach the principles, ask them to give a brief

002report to her, which then she submits. So, she's actually using highlevel um empowerment to help get her reports done. I think that's pretty impressive. Delegation skills. The only problem with that is when we say brief to a principal, you're going to be stuck with what you get. With that though, go ahead and give us your student representative report. Okay. Um, good evening members of the board. I'm pleased to present an oral summary of activities across our school district for the month of December. A more detailed report uh written report will be available for um all CFADS stakeholders in the public minutes and in the board's monthly newsletter board considerations. At the high school, parent teacher conferences were on the 11th. We also had a representative from UWC speak on both financial aid and how to

003fill out the FAFSA for parents. Um, DECA is hosting their 9th annual wish week to raise money to grant a local child's wish for camper. Coming up this Friday is our annual all school holiday concert. And um at the middle school, all parent um excuse me, teacher advisory groups are working on holiday door decorating, which they've made into a contest. A group of middle school students interested in the healthc care profession um had an opportunity to explore this more through a schools to skills tour on December 5th. and students and staff alike are excited for a week full of holiday themed dress up days leading up to winter break at Homestead. Um they recently hosted a canned food drive and they will be holding a holiday shop later this week. And then on the 20th

004they will be taking a um trip to MCON. And then at South View, students raised a um impressive $370 in um during their pajama days, which all proceeds are benefiting Sleeping in Heavenly Peace. And then um Hillrest fifth graders participated in their annual volleyball tournament which was hosted at Stilston on December 13th. and second graders attended a show at the Oaklair Children's Theater. At Stillson, they recently worked together on an all school service project, which was coloring lunch bags for Meals on Wheels, which I got to participate in, which is really fun. And um they also hosted a family openhouse and or excuse me, are going to host a family open house and sing along after school on December 19th at Park View. Third graders had a community service project that collected items to make

005birthday cake bags. And then um first graders uh first grade is going on a bowling field trip and kindergarten will be taking a Polar Express trip to the movie theater at Gym Falls. The Deck the Halls fundraiser was a success um setting a new record for donations for over $4,000. And then moving forward through the month, they will be having first and second grade music performances. In conclusion, our district is excited to spend time with their family over break and spending holiday and spreading holiday cheer throughout the community. Thank you for your time and attention. I would be happy to answer any further questions. Court members have any questions for Mrs. Zimmerman? And I know in your written report you have um just about the evacuation last week and I'm just curious, you know, what

006would you say are the lessons that that we can continue to apply unfortunately if these things need to happen? Yeah. So, um one thing that I would say from a student standpoint is I never felt unsafe at any point. Um you see a different perspective as a student. I, you know, I was there in class. We were told to leave. My teacher told us where we were leaving, what door, made sure all students left the classroom, made sure everybody got out, and then um there's a police officer who was blocking the intersections for us to walk. There was staff at the uh middle school telling students where to go, what grade levels were. There were staff in there immediately. um if there were any concerns or comments, they were open to that. If students needed

007to use the restroom, they were moving students where they needed to go. Um and uh one of the things that I spoke to Goodman about when writing my report was one of the things that kind of sped up the process of the um remember it says exactly. Thank you. Um that process was students in their cell phones. They were able to immediately after Goodman said, you know, we're being evacuated. What happened? Everybody, hey, mom and dad, you know, we're getting evacuated. Come pick me up. And so that's why, you know, kids aren't even getting to the middle school yet and there's parents there to pick them up. So that was one of the things we had kind of talked about is, you know, 20 years ago it would have been an email that got sent

008out and then parents were like, "Oh, I got to go get my kid." But now it's just a text away and your parents on the way. you know, so that's kind of one of the things we talked about, but like I said, it was handled really well for the circumstance and I never felt unsafe at any point, which is a great thing because Yeah. Thank you. to build off that. I need to know what's been the mood like since yesterday because y'all are living in a completely different world than I grew up in. And if you could explain to me and the board and others in the room, what's it like? And what does it feel like after you see those things occur? Um, I think realizing that I mean it's it's a different situation

009than if it would have been a real threat like it was a real threat, excuse me. Like if it would have been, you know, there would have they would have found something or whatever, then it would have been a different concern. But from my standpoint and knowing that we were safe at all point, you know, and at all times, it was not a concern to go to school the next day to show up and go to class like I had the day before. And um the teachers have done a really good job of that fourth hour class that we missed. you know, teachers are just slowly, you know, some teachers did have to cut material because the break's coming up and we have tests set and things like that, but I think in all honesty,

010I went to school just like I would any other day. All right. What yesterday's events in Madison? Was there any discussion among students about what occurred and what have a sense for what the mood was at the high school at all? Um, weren't really too many kids that were on edge about it. I do know that um through social media I have seen a few kids concerned saying, you know, it it's close, you know, um especially um just some comments and things, but I didn't see anybody in person who seemed too concerned and there wasn't any like visible, you know, like it wasn't like half my class was gone or anything like that. So, I wouldn't say that there were too many people on edge with what happened, but I do know that there's a

011lot more of a social media aspect that plays into it. Here's the word I would use. Do you feel like people are becoming desensitized to these kind of things? Do you know what I'm talking about when I say desynthesize? Um, I think it would depend on who you ask. I do think that students just I mean my perspective on it is um I mean I go to school like I usually do every single day if something happens I mean can't really control it but I know that we have resource officers and things in place and we have protocol and things are you know things are set up not that we want it to happen but if it were to occur. Um, and I think that there are probably some students that go to school and

012they're like, "Oh, yeah, you know, just another one." You know, and and it's it's it sucks to say because it it is really sad that, you know, we're looking at this and we're like, "Well, you know, one of the things that I do have to build up build upon is we're going to have to I'm going to have to have a conversation with Miss Goodman tomorrow. Mr. Olson made me aware of something again. Y'all are some of the most polite students I've met in my entire life. Y'all need to quit opening the door for people that walk up the doors. I know that we have a lot of friendly faces that walk up the doors and there's instances where you may know some of them sometimes, but make them go through the office and our

013secure entranceways, please. So, if you want to remind your friends and your classmates and others about that, please do. Yeah, we do have um I have noticed that there are staff that stand by the doors quite frequently. Yep. Um and we do have there's certain teachers that um will let students in after lunch, but it's against students that they know. I mean, it's a senior class. you see them every day, you know, and we've been here for four years. And so that's that's um they never did that until it gets cold enough outside that they don't want to miss being out there. Um but yeah, there are quite a few students that are like, "Oh, you know, sorry you're cold. I'll let you in." You know, and it's like do that. But there are staff

014that stand there. Um especially in the mornings once the bells ring um if there's students that didn't get in but um yeah there are staff that stand there every once in a while to make sure they're not letting people in after the bell rings. Thank you. Board members have any other questions? All right. Thank you Zimmerman. Next is public comment uh section of the meeting. Do we have anybody signed up for public comment? We do not. All right. We will move on to 5.01 is consideration of the audit report pursuant to OE7. Mr. Trobridge will do the introductions. Thank you. Uh tonight we have Kyle Guber. Kyle is the senior manager with Whipley uh that supervised the field operations and the preparation of our audit and he's here tonight to present our audit report to

015you. over to you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Um, have an electronic copy that you can pull up by any chance. I I didn't bring copies for myself, but I'll reference a few page numbers. Um, the 98. If you have one in front of you, that's probably fine. No, not really. I've seen it before. Hopefully the board members as well. Um, uh, as usual, I'd like to thank Chad and Jessica. Um, you know, they they do a good job of making our life pretty easy. School district of this size can take a ton of time um to put these kinds of things together and if the records were in shambles, it would definitely take forever. So, thank you guys. Um, certainly helps a lot. We have a few that we're still monkeying around with because things

016aren't in great shape. So, it's nice to be done. Um, and the financials, you're not going to see a lot of changes. Um, this was a year finally where there was there was no new standards. There was really no no new accounting issues. Um, not really anything significant as far as financials go within the district. Um, page one is just the basic opinion on the financial statements. This is same report as we have every year. Format's going to be the same as it's been the last several years. It's a good clean audit report. Um we had nothing nothing of note. Um unmodified opinion and as I said we had no significant standards. There was a small Gazsby standard that we had to implement but it's just it just changes some of the formatting in the

017report. That's not really anything that's worth note um to the board. Um I think I say this every year too. Chad and Jess can give you a better analysis of the books. So I'm not really going to go into it too much. Um total net position as a whole increased about a million. Half of that was related to pension and oped the WRS stuff that just kind of fluctuates year to year and there's not a lot that you guys can do about that. Um, as far as the fund back the funds, which is more local level, uh, the total increase was about 89,000. So, just kind of smooth across the board. Um, age 89, not that you have to jump there, that's the other one of the other reports that we issue. This is on

018internal controls. So, um, you know, if there was lack of segregated duties, significant things like that where one person had a lot of control over a certain area and there was no checks and balances, things like that, uh, we have no issues to report in that report either and really nothing that that came up during the audit that we were significantly concerned about. Uh, directly after that report is the federal and state grants report. Um again we do this every year same format. Um pages 94 and 95 identify the programs that we tested. Those do kind of rotate from year to year depending on um how or every three years or so. The bigger ones need to be tested. Um but again we had we had no findings, no issues. Um I don't recall any

019significant questions coming up during the testing. So, it was a good year from that perspective. Um, as far as next year, they couldn't couldn't keep it the same for another year. So, there's another another standard that's coming out. Uh, it's going to be Gazsby 101 compensated absences. Um, I know the district already has an acrruel for sick and vacation. Uh it's going to be similar. Um it's it's it would be a bigger deal for districts that didn't have a sick sick liability at this time. They're they're kind of bringing on districts that don't pay it out at retirement at all. Um so there may be some small changes uh just based on the wording and the new standard, but I don't expect that it'll be extremely significant to your district. Um but we'll deal with

020it as we roll into next year's audit. Uh, and in the management letter, I think if you look through that, it'll be basically the same format as last year as well. Uh, and we didn't really have anything new to put in there. Uh, I could have thrown in the Gazsby 101, but if I was going to chat with you guys about it anyway, I didn't feel it was necessary. Um, that's pretty much it. It was a good smooth year and that's what I like to hear. Any questions? In addition to Kyle. Thank you, Kyle. Uh, but I appreciate the work Jessica does to make sure that we have a very clean audit and it's neat process and we have good checks and balances and systems here and um try to be very transparent and extremely

021accountable for the money that we we run through our district. We do about a million transactions a month. Sometimes it's hard to be perfect when it comes to that, but we work really hard to make sure that things tie out and are correct. So, I appreciate Justin's work. Board members have any questions for our auditors or Mr. Trobridge? I do. Um, so I made a sincere effort to go through your report, but obviously, you know, 100 pages plus with other things. So, as board members, where can we look to summarize a good summary of what the report is about if we're in compliance and not in compliance or what needs we where would we go as board members to to get to the meat of this? Are you wanting like the the like the reports

022I identified or on the financial side? compiance and what are we not in compliance of and you know just important things that board members would would be looking for if we were looking at the support where would tell us if there's a deficiency um um if I would say if there was if there was a deficiency the the first place for you guys to look would be the letter okay that's where we would identify it in in the most basic and general terms and then if there was something identified in the letter then we would have at the very end of the finan financials. There's a section called the schedule of financing question cost. That's where it would be laid out in more detail and that's where you would want to look. Um like I

023think we have one item in there for financial reporting that we've had in there for ever and we b we have that in almost all of our schools where where we actually do the preparation of the financial statements. Um it's just kind of a you know just because you guys aren't preparing it in house. We just we don't have that intimate knowledge of what's going on within within these walls. Um is kind of the basis for that one. But it would show up a lot like that if we had another issue. Um if it was a grant issue or a controls issue or something like that, we would we would add another another numbered item there that would also be identified in the letter. And I look at your letter. I did look at your

024letter and you know a lot of is boilerplate. You're you're addressing everything there. So it'd be helpful maybe if you if there were ever were issues or things that if that were listed you know our district is a in compliance or we are in compliance but these are things that you know if it was if it was listed right up front so I didn't have to go through the legal ease that would probably be easier for board members. They keep they keep us pretty they keep us template driven for a reason though too. Um to make sure that we hit everything that's required in the letter. Um but I would say it it may not show up right at the beginning but if if there were items you could probably flip closer to the back

025then that's where you that's where you'd want to look to see those items. And I agree with Kyle. I think the management letter is pretty informative. The first 10 pages of the audit are going to tell you all the financial stuff. The last five pages are going to tell you areas we could get better at. And if it if it's boring to read, that is that's a great thing. Center is really center's really all the support that we want. All right, board members. Any other questions? Right. If there are no further questions, I would look for a motion to approve the 2023 2024 audit report as presented. I would motion to do that. Motion by Olsen. Is there a second? Second. Second by Martino. Any further discussion? Clerk, roll call, please. Steve Olsson, I. Dave

026Martino, I fear. Sherry Jasper. I Sharon Mum. Peggy McKill. Hi. D check I motion carries. The board approved the 2023 2024 audit report as presented. Thank you for your presentation. Yes, thank you. You're out of here so you're not stuck here. Thank you, Jessica. Thank you, Mr. Trobert. Next is 6.01 1 applied population laboratory long-term projection. Hard enough to say. Mr. Grobridge, you want to do the introduction? Yes, I would like introduction. I'd like to introduce David Egan Robinson Robertson, I'm sorry, from Applied Population Lab out of the University of Wisconsin Madison. Uh we've made a habit of updating our long range projection every five years. Uh it's very timely this year with the work that our elementary boundary review committee is is reviewing and our last five years or 10 years have looked different

027than they have in the past and David's research will tell us what our future might hold. So is that a good enough introduction? That's a good enough. Thank you. Well, thanks very much. Um um it's always a pleasure to be able to come out in person and and talk to boards about these projections. We we work with 20 to 25 school districts around the state every year. Um most of the graphs I'll be showing you tonight um are in the in the report themselves. Uh and I believe Angela I sent a copy to Angela. You probably got that in your packet for tonight. Um and you know if you want to get into more detail um you can certainly uh you know pour over the report. Um, what I'll be doing tonight is is just

028highlighting the results and and explaining a little bit more about our our methodology. Um, I do want to say I just got hearing aids yesterday and you're all sounding great. Um, but uh that's your forbearance if I start poking at my phone. I'm trying to adjust the volume. So, um uh anyway, but everyone is is nice and clear. I I didn't know people could speak so clearly before I did that yesterday. Um, so yeah, let's see. Yeah. So, so just to go over the what I'll cover here the next 20 minutes or so. Um, just start off with the numbers. How many students do we expect through our projections work over the next 10 years in your district? Um, and then how did we get there? I'll talk some about the uh methods we use

029to develop the projections which involve projecting bursts, projecting your 5K kindergarteners and then also a process we call grade progression ratio. Um and then just a couple general uh indicators about the population in the area um changes in the population and the age distribution in particular and then also uh some changes that have been happening in in terms of household composition. Um ju just to sort of fill you in on on where I'm coming from, the applied population lab. Um uh we we focus on being a clearing house for demographic data and products uh not just for the university and for professors there but for anyone anyone and everyone in the state uh and and we even do some regional and national work as well. The term applied and and when it's used in combination

030with demography um means our work is very focused on uh practical projects that um are meant to help support policy decisions um as well as helping you know we do help people understand uh population data and estimates and uh what they mean. Um, so we just recently um celebrated our 65th anniversary. Um, and this uh booklet here, the cover I put on here actually predates us. This was actually created in I think 1942. So it's over 80 years old. So you know, faculty on and uh staff at the university have been thinking and writing about um you know, the state's population for a very long time. Um, and you know, when I first saw this cover, I thought, "Oh, you know, it's it's um, you know, it's very, uh, quaint, right? It's it's a family

031sitting around their fireplace. Uh, you know, the dad's smoking a pipe and he's got a paper in his hand. Um, and they're looking up u presumably at a prior generation of their family above the mantle. Um when I thought about it some more though it's really telling a demographic story in that the family presumably their uh predecessors uh there are seven children in the family and then but the family being pictured looking at that family as only one child um and as I looked at this I started to think I've seen this picture before this is this is my uh greatgrandparents family and there are six children in the picture and they ended up having seven surviving children. This is taken back in the early 1900s. Here's my family, one child. So, it, you know,

032it just um we're all kind of living through this demographic story and particularly in as it applies to school districts and um school enrollments. Uh you know, we're living through this story. is, you know, not maybe not quite as extreme as going from seven children to one in two generations, but uh a big part of the story is just smaller families uh and fewer children. Uh and I should always like to just mention some caveats. So if you've looked at the report, we actually produce a range of projections. We don't try to land on some sort of a one- number uh projection because there there's just enough uncertainty um uh and and projections are uh kind of an imp I'll admit it's are kind of imprecise science. So we try to produce a range of

033projections for for districts to look at. Um we do have to make some assumptions about bursts because we can't always obtain bursts specifically within the boundaries of a district. Um and so we use a a a selection of m municipalities that are either fully within the district or mostly within the district and take that as being representative of the burst within the district itself. Uh we do need to make some assumptions about migration. There's not unfortunately at small levels not really good sources of data about uh movements of families. Um so these great progression ratios which I'll talk a little bit more about in a couple minutes um they they provide um what we we would say rather than explicit uh indication of migration kind of an implicit um indicator of migration. And finally um

034you know with projections um they kind of flatten out the volatility that you'll see in your history. um this kind of small graph here in the lower right that that's the birth history uh in the Chipua Falls area and you see there's variability over the last 18 years. Um so our indicator data bounces up and down. We can't always predict, you know, when those zigs and zags are going to happen in the future. So we do tend to just create a kind of a smooth trend line going into the future. Where'd you go? All right. Um, so yeah, I always like to start with the results. Uh, what what are predictions over um the next 10 years? And just to give the past 10 years to provide a little context, this has been your total

035enrollment for K through 12. uh over the last 10 years um as you can see it's been um particularly since 201617 it's been declining fairly steadily and the number of students in September of this year for your district was um 11% lower than um I put a plus sign there it should be a minus 11 sorry about that um right so you're losing you've been losing a little over you know 1% per year on average across across the last 10 years. Um, I didn't want to put too many numbers on this graph with your your elementarymentaries, but again, just to give you the visual representation, uh, and there's more detail about the elementary schools within the report itself. Uh, but you can see overall visually, uh, most of the elementary schools have been declining slightly

036over the last 10 years. And then, uh, by the grade groupings. Um so 4K in elementary uh over the last 10 years your 4K program is dropped by 100 students or about 25%. Uh the 5K through fifth has declined by uh or 16%. Um sixth and eighth grades uh there's been some loss there although not as as sharp. Uh sixth through 8th uh has dropped about 6% over the last 10 years and then the high school classes have dropped by about 3%. So uh you know in some the enrollment losses um have been occurring across all grade levels but the greater losses at the lower grade um don't bode well for um uh for the district's enrollment going forward. Uh and a couple other um items open enrollment you're you're you know as you may

037be aware you're getting kind of dinged by the open enrollment program. uh your the net outflow has nearly doubled over the last 10 years. Um and but when I did the projections I controlled for this. I don't assume because it's doubled over the last 10 years it's going to double again. Um I'm sort of holding that the difference between uh in the last year we have just holding that constant going forward. Yes. I ask a question. Sure. Are you seeing is this a natural trend throughout the state of Wisconsin particularly for districts this size? Um well yeah I'm you know it is it's a zero sum game right there are winners and they're losers. Um yeah some of the districts um so for example suburban districts around Madison are actually net gainers. Um it's the

038only place in the state really. Yeah. Yeah. Um so um yeah and but I mean I've seen in some other districts where the loss is really you know accelerated and like accounts for almost like a 20% loss of their students. So um so yeah you know your your difference is increasing but it's not it's not a super large impact on your enrollment right now. I would add too that opening almost doubled as well. So there's So that's just um some of the background. Uh and then just looking at the projections themselves. Um so again, here's your last 10 years of history. Again, this is all through grade 12. Um so in five years um we're showing projections uh dropping down about 4150 to about 4250 um from its current level of about 400 um so

039that's you know 280 to 370 lower about 6 to 8% lower and again remember over the last 10 years your total enrollment has fallen about 11%. Uh and then beyond the five-year uh period um the projections do uh continue to decrease out through the full 10 year uh horizon. We we tend to emphasize the the coming five years um because a lot beyond that point um most of the children either haven't been born yet and or they haven't entered the school system. So there's a little more uncertainty the further you go out in time. My question in regard to that particular and you may be talking about it later in the report. However, do you attribute most of that to birth rate and to state exodus? Um, yeah, I can see and I'll I'll show

040some of the uh graphs about birth how births have been dropping in the area. Yeah, it what I'm what I'm seeing well this is in conclusion but I'll show you all the way through is that um you've got smaller cohorts entering the system larger cohorts graduating and moving on. So it's kind of just that that in effect I guess a natural process that you you're just going to have you have smaller birth co cohorts um and you know that's generally true across the whole state. the number of bursts has dropped by like 16% over the last 17 years or so. Um, and that's showing up in in virtually all districts um um uh you know around the state. Okay. So, um just again by grade groupings here um so the your elementary grades um right

041now again a little above 1,800. we're showing them dropping down to right around 1,700 um in the range of of that uh decline of you know around 195 to 130 or so about 5 to 7% and again showing decline beyond the five-year uh time horizon. Uh the middle school classes um again showing a drop. Right now you're at about a thousand dropping down you know around 900 maybe a little bit under. Um so again a loss of 100 to 120 uh students or about 10 to 12%. and then um uh a decline for another year, but then it uh the population of the middle school uh kind of stabilizes uh for uh years uh sort of 7 through 10. And then at the high school, um again, kind of a similar pattern. You're up about

0421440 right now, dropping down to around, you know, 1310 to 1350. uh 90 to 130 fewer students in five years or about 6 to9%. Um I didn't didn't want to put a whole whole lot of uh uh lines on on the graph, but so I took the average of the different projection methods that we use for each of the elementary schools. Again, showing a slight uh downward pattern for all of your individual elementary schools. So, so the losses here range from like uh 3% uh at Hillrest to about minus 12% at Park View. Those are kind of the the summary of the numbers. Just I'll talk a little bit here about um the projection models that we use. So, we've got three primary building blocks. We've got bursts uh we've got five uh K kindergarteners

043and then uh the grade progression ratio. So the birth history um so this is showing it since 2006. So that was the year roughly when your seniors were born. Um and see there's a bit of a bounce up and down. You had one high year about 460, a low year of about 330. Um but in 2023 there were 100 fewer bursts than there were in 2006. Um and you know so even without laying a ruler on there you can see okay you've got a downward trend happening and when we uh calculate um trend lines for the different models that I'll talk about more in a little bit again we're showing a drop from uh the current level about 330 uh down to uh you know anywhere from 284 to 300. So, um, a decline again

044per year of birth about 35 to 50. Uh, the five-year kindergarten, um, here here are the counts, excuse me, for the last 10 years. And not unlike birth, you've got up and down variation, of course, as time goes along, but you're down about 60 over this time period, uh, the last 10 years. Um so then projecting out um we show a decline continuing of down about 30 uh through uh the uh fivey year time horizon and down about 70 through 10 years. So the grade progression progression ratios are whole bunch of numbers on this screen. Um I hopefully I can help just step through this. This is sort of our final building block uh of the three in a nutshell. What we're trying to capture here is the change in class cohorts as they age

045um through their schooling from year to year. Um so we do this on a year-by-year basis and then we average the changes over three different time frames 10 year the entire 10-year period, five years or the last three years. And um so just to give you a sense of this so for example the these were your enrollments for uh first and second grade. Um so in um 201718 your second grade class was 365. The prior year first grade was 364. So almost virtually equal only added one student. So that ratio is just slightly above one. Um, another example down here, 2022 23 to 23 24. Uh, the second grade class was 321 in the second second year and the prior year was 332. So, you had some loss there. So, the ratio is down below

046one. But is in in your district um and and this holds true for most of your classes as they progress from grade to grade. These these um grade progression ratios end up very close to one in most cases. So that again is an indicator that once students enter the schooling uh enter the Chipua Falls School District, your class sizes pretty much stay uh very similar from one year to the [Applause] next. Okay. Okay. And yeah, just a couple other uh indicators about sort of what's going on with the population in the district. Uh particularly uh the change in the age distribution that's happening. Um yeah, first looking at population, it's maybe a little small for you to see, but uh the district actually and this is looking between the two federal censuses uh 2010 and

0472020. So in the district itself, the population grew at a pretty healthy amount about 8%. um which was better than Chipwa County as a whole. And um the rate of growth was almost twice what it was for the state. Um but and and it was interesting also when you look at breaking out the distribution by age, the 0 to 17 population is very similar, almost exactly the same size, a little bit smaller in 2020 than it was in 2010. But when you look in detail at the 0 to 17 population um particularly the age 0 to4 group um that fell by over uh about 300 children uh or about 15%. So and again so this was a census taken 2020 those zero to four year old kids are now at the age where they're starting

048to enter the school system. And then just um looking at households um again you had really uh decent growth in in the number of uh actual households in the district it grew by over 10% and that was uh compared to the state which is only 6 and a.5%. But uh again f households with children even though you gained nearly 1400 households you actually had 200 fewer households with children under the age of 18. uh a lot drop about 5% which was pretty close to what happened statewide too. So then put all this information together um as I showed initially you know in terms of your past trends um you lost about 600 students or about 11% over uh the last 10 years um and a particular uh con concern I I try not to attach

049any value to the numbers but um what I these are just some things I saw uh when I looked at the numbers um you know your 4K through 2 grades are more than 20% smaller in the current year than they were 10 years ago. Uh and again there's been an increased uh net outflow under the open enrollment program. Um as I point out burst and area trending down uh 5k kindergarten has also been declining across time and there as I said 15% fewer zero to four year olds at the 2020 census than there were at 2010. Um oh and and finally just you know as I point out the grade progression ratios are all right around one excuse me. Uh so it's indicative of steady class size as as your class cohorts age forward but

050smaller cohorts reaching school age. Um enrollments likely to decline because of that. And finally just a a slide to sort of summarize all the projections. Um again as I mentioned um the projections are showing over the next five years for the whole district loss about six to 8%. Elementary schools down about 5 to 7%. Uh middle schools uh you know predicted to drop about 10 to 12% and finally the high schools um about 6 to 9% down. And and again beyond sort of that fiveyear time horizon all the models are generally predicting declines as they go forward. So that's that's the summary of the report and see if you can track me down. I provide my phone number and email. Uh but any if there's time for questions or comments. Thank you though. It's real

051informative and it does help. I mean, we can't change it, but it helps to understand kind of what where where we've been and where we may be going. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's been interesting over the years, the different districts, particularly the open enrollment program, which, you know, for us, I'll admit, has kind of created the wild west of, and maybe it feels this way to you, too, the wild west of school enrollments. Um it was interesting one district you know I did a presentation they were showing a decline and they did make a policy decision to try to attract through changing their curriculum and stuff um to draw in more draw in more open enrollment students and they did actually succeed. So um you know it is it is one area that um you

052know it makes our our prediction work harder to do but um uh something like that you know again you're you're the the policy makers right I'm the numbers guy and um you know if if you feel within your district that you might want change policy in some way or curriculum offerings or whatever um that's one a at least one district that I'm aware of was able to really maintain and even I think increase their their total enrollment. We're seeing a influx of new private schools starting up. I imagine statewise that's happening. But shouldn't they be concerned about these numbers too because they are drawing from the same pool and maybe whatever projections they have could impact what they're projecting for enrollments also. Yeah. Um it is I and I think I did notice I think

053I I put some information in the report that um the private schools in your area have actually been increasing their enrollments. Um which I I guess I can imag even though you can't necessarily say you know, all the kids who attend private schools located within Chipoa Falls district live here, but chances are most of them do, right? Um so, um right, the even even private schools could be could be facing just this demographic change that's happened in terms of fewer curse uh occurring David, thank you very much. Okay, you're quite welcome. Anyone has any other questions, you can you can follow up with me. So, thank you. Okay, presentation and thank you, Mr. Trobridge. Next is uh 7.01 Jim Falls Elementary School and it'll be Carrie Keenig and Ellie Johnson. Okay. So, I'm Corey Kanig,

054the Jim Falls principal and we are doing English language arts today. And so, we'll just kind of start with a little bit of Jim Falls and their student population. When you look up here, we're at 14.5% of students with disabilities. Um 27.4% of students economically disadvantaged. And then we do not have any English language students at our school, but they all all of our elementary schools, they do go to Halmstead for that programming. Now, if we're looking at some academic achievement and looking at English language arts just within Jim Falls, our scores are not really where we would like them to be. We'd like to see that continued growth. Um, it is does show on here that we are still above the state average, but we are hoping to continue to grow and as a

055whole, we're looking at our curriculums and maybe potentially making some changes there. And then we are on year three of our universal wisdom curriculum as well. So hopefully that we can start seeing some of that growth and it is growing but not to where we would like them. So, I'm going to kind of go through some of our universal curriculums that we use and how we are using those to show our students learning and how they are able to demonstrate some of their learning in different ways as well as how we are showing our families and connecting what they are learning to home and letting them see the different things they're learning. So in kindergarten um one of the things that they do to demonstrate their learning is they create podcast to share what they

056learned about one of them is about farm animals. So they choose a farm animal, they drew a picture of it. Um they wrote a fact about it and then they recorded themselves sharing their knowledge in a podcast. I don't know if it's going to play or not, but we can try it. might not and that'll be okay. I don't know why it's not letting me have access. Okay. Well, we can just skip the little podcast, but there are two videos there that show the students and the podcast that they created and they're just short under a little minute clips of the students and um our teachers put them on Class Dojo so the parents can see it. So the paper goes home, but they also get to see how their child explains their writing in

057that in Dutch and kindergarten. Um, yeah, it doesn't want to play. Okay. So then we'll kind of move on to second grade and kind of walk you through their progression of writing through Witten Wisdom. So they use various strategies throughout the curriculum. During Witten Wisdom, they use um notice and wonder charts whenever they start a new book. So this allows students to notice observations about the story and ask questions by wondering what is happening. So on the chart you'll see that they write like I noticed this when we were reading and then this is what I wondered while I was reading. So it's working on that comprehension of their reading and Whiten Wisdom has a lot of that knowledge base. So it's really honing in on some of their background knowledge and they're able to

058share right away what they're noticing and wondering. Um then they kind of the next progression in their witten wisdom is students um as they're learning and gathering information to help them write an informative paragraph um to ensure that they are comprehending in second grade what they're learning, they can be asked some questions and then the teacher can help assess if what they think they're learning is what they are. So before they get to the actual writing, they get to kind of um assess the students. Okay, are they comprehending? Are they prepared to prepare their writing? And then they move to their focused question task. And this particular one is what challenges did the pioneers face and how did they respond? So here are two examples of second grade informative paragraphs that students have written. In

059this particular one, they're focusing on using a topic sentence, two to three sentences with evidence to support the focusing question and ending with a conclusion. So, one of these has all of those pieces, and the other one, the students are still working towards that, but here you get to see how much our second graders are writing and what they're expected to do within this curriculum. um to help our students with their writing. They get these checklists for success or we call them our success criterias. Um they really work well with Hadtie's research of effect size and the importance of teacher clarity. So that is knowing what students are expected to learn for the teacher and then helping the students monitor their own progress. So, in here, the students get this before they start their writing.

060And this is kind of the checklist they're going to use as they're doing their writing to see, did I start with a topic sentence? Did I um put those two pieces of evidence? Did I do anything on here? But each one of these success criterias are written per each module. So, our CNI, our curriculum and instruction department, has worked very hard to create these for every single module for each grade so that it's not just one checklist that they're using for every piece of writing, but that these checklists are geared to each module. And so, as the task gets a little harder or more pieces, so does the checklist. So, students know exactly what they are being asked to do. So that was part of what we were doing as our whole group. But um

061for our reading and writing, we do more than just our whole group. We also do small group time. And it looks different in every classroom. And throughout the six buildings, they're all doing similar things, but it's on individual student needs. So, our small groups might be working on free reading, fluency work, partner work, you fly, phonic instruction, word connection, and here's just some pictures of students working in their groups. Um, here is a chart from so with part of our ACT 20, our teachers did some online training. I think you got to maybe see hopefully the news article that went out about how hard the teachers worked and how well they did with their Ames pathway training. And this is one document that came out of that training and it really helps to tailor how

062these small groups are being made to meet the individual needs of our students. So they're using in the fall they're using their fall benchmarking assessments and then they're doing some more diagnostic testing and they're using this chart. So with our younger students they're starting at the bottom and assessing that phmic awareness skills and if the students don't have those skills that right there is where they're having the group. But now if they have those you're moving up and assessing their decoding and then you keep moving up for the younger students. But with our older students, we're not starting at the bottom because they should have some of those skills. Um, and so they're starting right at the top at that comprehension. And if the students aren't performing well with their comprehension skills, then they're moving

063down to the fluency. So they're really finding that target spot. And so those small groups that you saw on the other slide, they were built by some of their benchmark scores and then where they lied here. so that their group is working on those skills that they may be missing or enriching some of those skills if they have all those skills. Beyond our instruction and our small groups, we want to make reading fun. You know, we try to make reading fun within our lessons and the knowledge is really rich and the students really like to learn about it, but they also have extra things that they can do because we really want to encourage students to read a variety of text and really have fun with reading and have more free reading. So they have

064Battle of the Books and um the library media specialist, they kind of run this at our school and I know Don Tatsky has been here before and kind of competed if you were on the board at that time with you and the students, but the students really love doing this and it really helps them love reading. You know, we want our students, yes, we want them to comprehend, we want them to be able to read, we want them to perform well, but we also want them to love to read and read for fun. So, this is one of those ways that we can really encourage the students and they do this and it's before school and during their lunch. So, it's on their own free time and if you're in a classroom and they have

065extra time, they're like, "Can I do my battle books? Can I got to read and prepare for the battle?" So, it's really fun to see how much they are excited about reading because that's what we want our students to do. Um, other ways that we get them to be excited to read is by extending some of the lessons that they do through Witten Wisdom. Um, connecting them to the students and building upon their background knowledge. So, I have Ally Johnson, one of my new fifth grade teachers at Jim Falls, and she is going to share about how she has extended um, one of her Whiten Wisdom lessons to really um, be exciting for the students. And I I do need to just a quick correction. She is the fifth grade. Yes. Not one of my

066fifth grade teachers. The only fifth grade teacher. Yes. Um so like Ki said, I'm Ally Johnson. I'm the fifth grade teacher at Jim Falls. Um and module one of Whiten Wisdom for fifth grade is all about Native Americans, the United States government, and then the conflicts that they had during and after westward expansion. Um, and a large focus for us was the Nespur tribe um, out west, but obviously being in Wisconsin and being in a area like this that has a lot of Native American culture and history here, we were able to learn a lot about the tribes that have been in this area as well. Um, and so our students were really, really interested in this. And so we were fortunate enough to have a speaker um, talk to our class. And so we

067had Monica Eisham and she's a member of Ludare band um of the Ojiway tribe. She is the first female and Native American judge in her county and one of the first in Wisconsin. Obviously there's other ones but it's not super common here. And we were able to spend two hours with her um over Google Meet. Yeah, Google Meet. There you go. Um and we learned about her native language. She taught us a lot of words, some that my kids still say pretty much every day. Um, we watched pictures and videos of her culture. We got to see some pow-wow videos of their tribe and then we heard a lot of her stories as well. Um, but the cool part was that the majority of the time was spent with my kids asking questions and her

068just answering all of them. And one that really stuck out to me that's still this was like a month ago and it's still in my head because it showed that the kids were learning what we wanted them to learn and they were applying that to this. One of them had asked how has being a Native American impacted your journey to being a judge and that was just like whoa you're 10 and you're asking these really cool questions. Um, and so then I asked my students recently about what this meant to them. Did they enjoy this? Was this a fun thing for them? And these were some of the quotes that they had said. It was fun getting to see a firsthand Native American and see what it is like now. I loved learning a new

069language and learning about a new tribe. It was cool to hear what it was like to be the first of something. And I loved hearing her perspective on both sides of the conflict because a a large part, like we had said was the US government and Native Americans. And it was really cool to get to hear both sides of it from her. We already gotten to Chief Joseph's speech. We Yes, we did read Chief Joseph's speech. And they we're through module one now. We're on to module two. But they did really really well with that. Yeah, it was really cool to see. We probably have it memorized at this point. Have to read it a lot. But yeah, so that was a really fun experience for us. All right, and that is what we are

070doing in gym falls around ELA. Any questions? I guess I have one for Miss Johnson who happens to be a good friend of mine. How is the first year going and how are your expectations with what as you sit here at the almost the halfway point? How is it going? It's going well. Um I even though Jim Falls is a small school, it's got the same amount of support that I would expect to get at any of the other schools. Um and like uh Mr. Holmes said, I'm the only fifth grade. And so that's been definitely one of the bigger challenges is I can't just go next door to another fifth grade teacher and say, "Hey, super quickly, how do you play this math game?" Or, "Oh, how do you do this?" Um, but everyone

071in the school has been really helpful of trying to help, seeing what they remember from previous years, saying, "You don't know how to do it. Let's try to figure it out together." Um, so it's been really nice to work with them. And there's not one other teacher in the building that hasn't reached out and asked how I'm doing. It's pretty much every day they're like, "Hey, anything I can help with today?" So, it's been really nice. Members have any other questions? I have thoughts, but I'm not going to ask them. And again, congratulations and kudos to you and all the other elementary teachers in the district on achievement with the AS pathway. Ames Pathway Ames Pathway. Thank you for your [Applause] presentation. Right. Fitting in with that is 8.01 R2.1A academic performance ELA. Members of

072the board have received the CEO's monitoring report on R 2.1A. It is now the board's responsibility to consider the the report as evidence of reasonable organizational progress in this area. Superintendent Holmes. Yes. Director of curriculum and instruction Sue Kern has developed this monitoring report for our review. At this time, I will ask her to provide an overview of the report. Thank you, Superintendent Holmes. R2.1A academic achievement results report focuses specifically on the content area of English language arts. Based on the results criteria that I will share in this monitoring report, it is my determination that we are making reasonable progress with noted exceptions in English language arts according to each of the articulated targets set forth by the board. Coming to this conclusion is challenging because there is a variance in our data across grade

073bands and grade levels as you will see in this report. Let's explore the first two targets of reasonable progress. Increasing the percentage of our students meeting ELA proficiency on state assessments in grades 3 through 11 while decreasing the percentage of students not meeting proficiency in ELA on our state assessments in grades 3 through 11. To begin, I would like to share our results from the 2324 district state report card in the area of English language arts, which combines the results of all of the state assessments taken by our students and the measurements that are factored into the calculation that include the Wisconsin forward, the preac, the ACT, and the DLM exams. There are two priority areas that are measured in the overall district ELA scores, and they include achievement and growth. The purpose of the

074achievement priority area is to show the level of knowledge and skills of the students in the district as it compares to the academic standards. The achievement priority area summarizes our district students in grades 3 through 11, how they performed on the state assessments using a pointsbased proficiency system that gives credit for basic performance and extra credit for advanced performance. In the area of English language arts, our overall district achievement score was a 60 out of 100, which was 1.7 higher than the state average. Next, the growth priority area measures a year-to-year student progress on statewide assessments. It uses a value added model that seeks to control for circumstances that are beyond the influence of educators. A high value added score means that the average students in the district are progressing more quickly than other similarsized

075districts. Growth is scored from a 0 to 100 to match the other priority areas as a conversion from the roughly 0 to six value added score. As a district, although our growth score was lower than the overall state growth score compared to our growth score from last year, we did improve our score by 1.2 2 from a 61.3 to a 62.2. Um, as indicated last month, as we build in specific actions to narrow in on our students who need additional support and resources to accelerate their learning, we are seeing incremental gains in our high priority demographic groups, proficiency levels over the course of the last three years, which gives us an indication that the targeted efforts that we are focused on in the area of curriculum, instruction, and assessment, as well as the professional development

076that our staff are engaged in, are having a positive impact on the student achievement and growth rates of our students. Now, we'll hone in on each of the state assessments uh results independently. We'll start with the Wisconsin Forward exam. The Wisconsin Forward State Assessment is taken by our students in grades three through 10. However, in the area of link English language arts, only students in grades three through eight are assessed using this assessment. It should be noted that in the 2324 forward assessment were up the assessment was updated to align with the newest state standards. Therefore, the performance level percentages for 2324 cannot be compared to prior year years because the performance levels have been recalibrated and renamed. With that said, the graph that has been shared with you over the last three years of

077proficiency scores in ELA compared to the overall state averages in ELA. Our student overall proficiency percentages in reading and in writing as well as the overall ELA proficiency percentages in comparison to the state average have shown a favorable trajectory in grades three through eight that we are pleased to see. As the data tables that have been shared with you show, at the high school level, our students are assessed with a preacct secure exam and the ACT. The PREACT is a state assessment taken by our ninth and tth grade students. 2023 was the first time this assessment was administered to our ninth and grade ninth and tth grade students. It replaced the ACT Aspire assessment that was administered to our ninth grade stu grade grade students from 2017 through 2022. The preACT replaces proficiency scoring to

078ACT predictive benchmark scoring. In ELA, our overall student benchmark score was a 15.7 in grade nine and a 16.5 in grade 10. The college readiness benchmark for AC English on the ACT is an 18. and in reading a 22. Our students underperformed on this assessment compared to the state average benchmark scores. However, the increase in our average benchmark score from grade 9 to 10 showed a favorable trajectory. We are seeing a steady decline in the average benchmark score of our 11th grade students in English language arts on the ACT exam. We have experienced a decline over the past three years for the first time in the past four years of our average benchmark score has fallen below the state average benchmark score. So this is an area that we are watching closely. Our third target

079for reasonable progress focuses on student proficiency grades at our local level. Formative and summitative classroom assessment results are generated by common classroom assessment that are analyzed by our instructional staff to make instructional decisions in the classroom at the classroom level which is the most impactful on student learning. This source of student achievement information also provides us insight to the which students may benefit from an intervention or an enrichment. A strong universal level of instruction programming meets at least 80% of our learners needs. The data chart that I have shared with you has the final proficiency levels for the required ELA courses in our district. This includes 21 22 23 endofear ELA proficiency grades compared to 2024 endofear ELA proficiency grades. The percentages indicate the number of students who had met proficiency on endofthe-year standards that

080were taught and assessed by our staff. At the elementary level, we did not meet the needs of 80% or more of our students at each grade level. We are optimistic that with the fidelity of the implementation of our new resources and the calibration of our assessments in the the standards that are being assessed across the buildings and classrooms that will we move in the direction of meeting that 80% benchmark at the middle level. We continue to strive to have 80% or more of our students meet proficiency on all end ofear state standards assessed. As we continue to review and revise our existing curriculum, we are finding areas where we need to improve, including skills in writing, vocabulary, as well as grammar and conventions. Students at the high school level are meeting 80% benchmarks and all

081required courses in the traditional grading system. With regard to our commitments to improvement at the elementary level, all of our elementary educators and leaders have been engaged in rigorous learning and implementation of cutting edge research on reading instruction, often return referred to as the science of reading, which is a driving force behind Wisconsin Act 20. Wisconsin passed Act 20 legislation, also known as the Right to Read Act, with the goal of improving early literacy skills for all students in Wisconsin. The requirements for PK through third grade have developed to reflect similar legislation that has been enacted in other states, yielding positive gains for students. We have embraced this challenge as an opportunity to align our efforts with urgency and focus. Communication regarding our work to meet the demands of act 20 is being shared with

082families through elementary newsletters. In light of the challenge the changing demands of our pre kindergarten through third grade teacher leader group, they have begun a full foundational skills curriculum review cycle. The process is being informed by analysis of student benchmark data in preK through three as well as the study of alignment between our current universal foundational skills curriculum which is foundations for PK through3 and our understanding of our the research through our new training. Under the leadership of Katie Coppenburgger, assistant curriculum director, and the dedicated curriculum and instruction professional development team, our teachers have gained advanced skills in implementing science-based reading instruction, early literacy screening, and targeted intervention strategies that are all crucial components of ACT 20. Our teachers are have distinguished themselves by achieving exemplary performance status from the AIM Institute, surpassing standard benchmark

083in completion rates, average course scores, and final test performance. This achievement underscores our educators dedication to implementing the most effective research-based literacy instruction meth methods in their classrooms. And that was shown tonight. Report card statements and guides for reporting progress have been revised to align with learning from the training of all of our teachers that they have engaged in. Increased K5 progression coherence align to ACT 20 implementation and improve organization and language to be more parentfriendly. Our instructional specialists, reading specialists, academic chairs, principles have all been committed to supporting the work of our teachers in every classroom. All are helping to lead and facilitate and collaborate discussions focused on evidence and student learning goals for instruction and meeting individual student needs in English language arts. We are committed to decreasing the number of students who

084score below the 25th percentile and thus require a personal reading plan and we are committed to continuing to increase our proficiency rates on the Wisconsin Forward exam for all of our students in grades three, four, and five. At the secondary level, our ELA team that includes all teachers who teach reading and English in grades 6 through 12 have been continued their curriculum revision journey throughout the last year and the beginning of this year during our district schedule professional development days designed and facilitated by Charlene Kulvin, one of our reading specialists. As we have journeyed through the first two phases of the curriculum revision cycle, we have unpacked and prioritized all ELA standards, developed a secondary scope and sequence aligned to the standards. We have reviewed our current data and longitudinal data. We have learned from

085each other and with each other about research supported instructional practices. We have vetted potential resources and have engaged in resource pilot this fall. Engaging in this work has been time and thought heavy work and I wish to thank all of the staff who have been a part of this engagement up to this point. During this year's October and November professional development days, a determination on how to proceed with our secondary ELA revision was made through the collective agreement process. Our sixth grade teachers will be continuing their implementation of work by adopting my perspectives texts and supplemental resources moving forward. Support moving forward with the implementation will be provided by Savis literacy consultant who will work in tandem with our district instructional support team including Charlene Kovven and Amanda Hill Hodley. Our 7th through 12th grade

086ELA teachers have made the determination to engage in a revision process with our existing district created curriculum. The process will entail a text collection audit to ensure that our students are engaging in rich grade level complex test texts both informal and literary to increase the amount of knowledge our students are building and exposed to. Our PLC teams are also engaging in a thorough analysis of the existing curriculum and assessments utilized as a curriculum review tool. Based on the analysis, adjustments to the existing units and lessons that will be made to ensure all students are engaged in a universally aligned viable curriculum at the appropriate level of rigor outlined in our adopted standards. The high school English department has made adjustments for this year adding ACC style prompts to their 10A course and the target argumentative

087writing and understanding perspectives in text. This work will be supported by both our curriculum department experts as well as the literacy consultant from our CISA 10. This work is expected to be completed by the end of the year of 2526 school year and we look forward to the positive results that will occur. At this time I am open to any questions that you might have with regard to this report. Uh thank you Miss K. I appreciate that. Your final ELA R2.1 reportly appreciate it. At this time, I ask for the board's acceptance of the monitoring report. Board members, I would look for a motion to approve this uh report as our own. Make it our own. We can discuss it further. I move to accept the R21A monitoring report. Motion by McKillip. Is there a

088second? Second by Jasper. Any further discussion on the acceptance? All those in favor say I. I. Opposed. Motion carries. The 2.1A monitoring report on ELA academic performance is now ours to discuss further. Board members have any questions before we decide using our results policy motion language if the district has made reasonable progress. I would like to remind the board even though the report does indicate that there's reasonable progress in all the areas associated with the report that Miss Kern was recommending um reasonable progress with noted exceptions which was during the course of a report. I personally as superintendent do agree with Miss Karn's assessment that it should be brought forward to the board in that manner. I guess I've got a question kind of in that same line. So, we only have about three or

089four targets for our monitoring port for the ELA and we know that there's other things that weren't part of the targets. So, going forward, do we have to have more targets on here so we can better monitor this report? because we're really don't have this. This report won't reflect the specifics that our normal monitor report would have if it had all the targets. Does that make sense? It does to me and I'll look to Sue to expound on this, but from my perspective, given what I know about the act 20 legislation and then what it's going to do uh for grades certainly K through three, but also because our other teachers K through five, our other teachers four through five received additional training in regard. Yes, I do believe that adjustments are going to have

090to be made to our reports. I also know that at the high school there's being significant work done in regard to curriculum reviews and and material reviews and all those types of things. So my assumption is I didn't see a need in this particular cycle to make adjustments because we're going to need to see what happens with act 20 moving forward and then we need more solid information in regard to what's going to what are the outcomes going to be from that curriculum redesign at the high school level. But yes, I do think it's going to have to be adjusted. Members have any other questions or comments regarding the report? So, I'm just um because I know you guys do tons of work around, you know, not only preparing teachers, but looking at data and

091matching things up, but um what have you determined is happening in third grade? because it just seems to be a year after year concern. And so it's not a group, it's a so it's interesting. Um Katie has connections and um we were able to get a hold of a um a spreadsheet that narrows every question on the Wisconsin forward so we can look specifically at which standard and which questions and type of questions that our students struggled with. Um when Katie and I sat down and did a deep dive into that spreadsheet, um we recognized that the students that part of our scope and sequence, right? This the test was revised this year. It was it was a scope and sequence issue. So our students in third grade had not been exposed to the content.

092We had it at the beginning of fourth grade. So now we know that shift needs to take place and we can accommodate that. Honestly, moving forward, I I don't know. It seems like this is year seven for me and we keep changing state assessments. We we keep changing so many things that it makes it really challenging to get any kind of longitudinal consistent data. My hope is that the state doesn't once again change the forward to something different, but it seems like once we finally so the new ELA standards were out two years ago that the state assessment just gets caught up to it. There'll be another review in three years. So, it's just it's very challenging and the way that we have the um the results um the targets for success written. It's right.

093We're going to increase the percentage of students who are in the proficient band and decrease. To me, that's just one the same thing. That's one one area. Um I think we already know that for next year, the state is changing their criteria for assessment. Yes, we don't know if they're going to change what's the the the contents of the assessment, but we do know already that they're going to rethink and change how they do the assessment. Yeah. and the the scoring. Uh, a part of me wonders if one of the measures that we used um I think the Wisconsin forward is a good sense of I think that that's a a solid measure to use. Um, I think that looking at how the percentage of our students who are requiring an individual learning panel or

094falling below that 25th percentile may be a better indicator at the elementary level, but that really is 03. So, Wisconsin 4 carries three through eight. And then you have another set of assessments, preacct and then ACT. So well but it but I see that you know in our district standardbased assessments too that chart on page nine it's again it's our third grade and it that struggles in more so compared to the other groups. So even when it's our own assessment that grade level struggles and so third grade you're shifting from learning to read to reading to learn right and so that is not uncommon. What I look for specifically is how we are doing in comparison to the state um and and looking drilling down into how our students did and looking for growth within

095the cohort. So if if our third grade when they move to fourth grade are above the state average right our students are growing and that's the most important aspect. I think for me the thing that is the most concerning is the decline in at the high school level on the preac and the ACT. Um, and I think that as our students from the elementary continue to move through the middle and high school, you can see the level of rigor that our kids are performing at second grade, third grade. And our middle and high school teachers haven't necessarily um experienced those those skills and um knowledge that kids are going to be coming with. So we've been doing a lot of professional development conversation around that so that we are making sure that the curriculum at

096the middle and the high school level are at the right level the depth of knowledge and the right level of rigor um because our students will come and prepare this anecdotal observation. It is the science of reading. everything has become so focused on the science piece of it. I can tell you what I appreciated most out of the gym falls presentation was you bringing up the fact that I my assumption is it's not just happening at Jim Falls and I don't think it is. It's that you're looking for ways to make the reading fun, that the kids enjoy the reading, that it's something that becomes a something they want to do, not something they're compelled to do, you know. So, I do appreciate in our settings that there's an emphasis on that because if we

097ever get to the point where it is all compulsion or compelling kids to learn something, it won't stick in their brains. They've got to want to learn it. So, I appreciate what was brought out in today's presentation. It's at some point you've got to make the kids want to read. You can't force them to read. I guess that's my question with the preac and the ACT and maybe Addison can reflect on this too. I mean, is it the fact that we're making them do a test that may not have value? And so, is it is it a true representation? And is it more of a testing situation than it is our actual skills? I think I think Well, I'll let you you've taken the assessment. Sure. I was in that grade where we took the

098preac as um sophomores, but not as freshman. We took the Aspire is it? Yep. Okay. Um I will say at at a high school level, you have the kids that care. They want to do well. They want to get into a good college. They want to score well. And then you have the kids that are like, "Well, I'm here. You know, they told me I had to show up. If I didn't show up, I had to do it at the retake day, you know." And so it's hard because like in my grade right now, I have kids in my I'm in AP stats and I have kids I mean that's a group of kids that want to be there. they want to do well. Um, and just recently the conversation has come up of retaking

099the ACT because their students were like, "Well, I scored, you know, two points below what I wanted to." And, you know, but that's again, that's a group that wants to, you know, they are in that class because they want to go to college. They want to do well. But there are students who are like, well, you know, I'm just here to take the preac. It doesn't matter anyways. It's not even the ACT. Then you get the kids who are like at the ACT and they're like, "Well, you know, I'm going to tech school or it doesn't matter because, you know, it and it it sucks cuz but um there are those different and it's not a good atmosphere for the kids that really want to do well because now they're sitting in a class where

100a kid simply doesn't do a section. So now the kids being a distraction teacher has to work with that kid. And so the atmosphere for those students that see themselves going into college who want to do well on those two tests are fighting distractions that they normally wouldn't have to have if they were in a different setting. Uh part of it is as teachers at the high school, we try to tell the kids that there even though it's the ACT, which they see as a collegeonly test, that there are tests that they're going to have to have to give into other places like ASVAB or right to get into a technical college that anytime that you can practice test taking, which is an art in itself, that you should take it as that. But um

101we're still we're still fighting those students that just well, I don't feel like doing it, so I'm not doing it. And I can agree with the um the distraction piece because me personally, I'm a slow test taker. I want to be thorough and I want to make sure I know what I know is on the test. Um so I took the full time period for every section and that's just how I am. I was that way through all grades, forward test, um star test, whatever it was. I was that way. And so, um, I can attest to, you know, students who are like, "Okay, see, for every answer, close my Chromebook. Now, I'm gonna, you know, play with this piece of paper I have and tap my pencil on the table the whole time." You

102know, like become a distraction to students who want to take that full time. Board members, we need to make a motion at this time. I move that the district has made um reasonable progress with noted exceptions on R21A ela. Motion by McKillip. Is there a second? I'll second. Second by Olsen. Any further discussion? All those in favor say I. I. Opposed. Motion carries. The district is found to have made reasonable progress with noted exceptions in R 2.1A. Thank you, Miss Kern, for your last presentation. All right. Next is O7 Financial Administration. Members of the board have received the CEO's monitoring report on OE7 financial administration. It is now the board's responsibility to consider the report as evidence of compliance in this area. Superintendent Holmes. Yes. Director of Finance and Operations and Facilities, Mr. Chad Trobridge,

103has developed this monitoring report for our review. At this time, I will ask him to provide an overview of the report. Thank you. I always like to say it's kind of unique to have our audit report from the prior year before this because this report references the 2022 23 audit quite frequently. So you'll see that show up a lot. Uh and I just think it's a little bit unique. uh for financial administration. Uh this is superintendent shall not cause or allow any financial activity or condition that materially deviates from the budget adopted by the board cause or allow any fiscal condition that is inconsistent with incon with achieving the board's results or meeting any operational expectation goals or places the long-term financial health of the district in jeopardy. There are 14 indicators of compliance of

104which uh noted in this report uh with the artifacts presented we are in compliance in all categories. I'll just highlight each of the 14 indicators and then summarize. OE7.1 is assuring that our payroll and debts are promptly paid when due. OE7.2 is assuring that all purchases are based on comparative pricing. OE7.3 is using a bidding procedure uh that's competitive in nature for all transactions in excess of 50,000. OE 5.4 or 7.4, excuse me, uh that we coordinate and cooperate with the board's appointed financial auditor. You met the Whitley folks earlier tonight. Uh 07.5 superintendent will make all reasonable efforts to collect any funds due to the district from any source. 07.6 uh that we keep complete and accurate financial records in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles or DAP. Uh OE7.7 is publishing a financial

105consi condition statement annually. OE7.8 is making sure that we do not expend more funds than have been received in the fiscal year unless approved by the board. 07.9 is making sure that we don't obligate the district for any short or long-term expenditures that would indebt the district. OE710, making sure that we do not expend monies from reserve funds. OE7.11 uh making sure we don't permanently transfer money from one fund to another again without board approval. O7.12 not allow any required reports to be overdue or inaccurately filed. That is something we take very seriously. We do file our reports on time and they are accurate. Uh OE7.13 uh is not receive process or dis disperse funds under control that are insufficient under generally accepted accounting procedures. 07.14 and the final uh is to fail to correct

106any negative findings to the external financial audit and report corrective actions to the board. Um for the past year uh financial administration in my opinion has been very good. All obligations both assets and liabilities have been received and paid. All reports and necessary findings have been done on time and filed accurately and there were no audit findings for the year 2022 2023. Uh we are committed to continually improve our process so that we don't have negative audit findings. There are additional reporting responsibilities and requirements related to ESSER funds. We'll work to make sure that we remain compliant uh in all of those areas. And I will say it it does continue to be speculative about what effect future state budgets, federal budgets, I guess at this point will have on our future fiscal obligations and

107financial statements. Kyle mentioned some of the accounting standards that that do change periodically. It's difficult for me to for him to predict what what would come our way in terms of changes, but generally they make our audit report a little bit longer and probably a little bit more money. That's all I have tonight. At this time, I Thank you, Mr. Jo. At this time, I ask for the board acceptance of monitoring report. Right. Board members. Anybody would like to make a motion that we accept this report as our own for further discussion. Now would be the time to do so. I would make a motion to accept it. Motion by Martin. Is there a second? I'll second. Second by Olsen. Any further discussion? All those in favor say I. I. Opposed. Motion carries. 07 Financial

108Administration is now ours to discuss further. Board members have any questions for Mr. Turbridge. Thank you. You're welcome. There are no questions. I would look for a motion using our operational expectation policy motion language. I move that the district is in compliance with OE or what are we on seven? Yes. Motion by Martin. Is there a second? Second. Second by McKillip. Any further discussion? All those in favor say I. I. I. Opposed? Motion carries. the board finds the district in compliance with 07 financial administration. Thank you, Mr. Turbage. Thank you. Next on the agenda is the board's consent agenda. Is there a request by any board member for a removal for separate consideration any of the uh items on the agenda? Hearing none, I would look for a motion to approve the board's consent agenda

109as presented. I move that the consent agenda be accepted. Motion. Motion by Martino. Is there a second? I'll second. Second by Olsen. Any further discussion? All those in favor say I. I. Opposed. Motion carries. The board's consent agenda is approved as presented. Next is the superintendent's consent agenda. Is there a request for any of the superintendent's consent agenda items to be removed for separate consideration? Hearing none, I would look for a motion to approve the superintendent's consent agenda as presented. So moved. Motion by McKillip. Is there a second? Second. Second by Markno. Any further discussion? All those in favor say I. I. I. I. Opposed. Can you interject for testimony? I thought you were saying nay. Oh, no. No, not at all. Again, on that consent agenda item was the calendar for next year. And

110again, that was Sue's last calendar that she helped bring forward. And I just want to recognize her for all the work that she's done over the years to get must have done a good job if it's a smooth process like that. Tell the truth. Is it a smooth process? It's gotten to be smoother. It's a It's a collective effort. So, it's been good. She's managed it well. Thank you. Thank you for that. Um, yeah, I think we did. So, we we didn't say nay. So, motion carries. The superintendent's consent agenda is approved as presented. Next is matters reserved for board action. No items were removed from the board's consent agenda. No items were removed from the superintendent's consent agenda. So uh consideration of the 2025 proposed WASBY resolutions. Take it away. All right. On November

11127th, the Wisconsin Association of School Boards reported the policy and resolution committee had wrapped up its work and decided to put forward 12 proposed resolutions. um that will go before the delegate assembly in January. Each school district does have a vote and I am your representative. Unfortunately, an error occurred in the mailing packets in the initial online publication of the proposed resolutions. Um and so that has now been updated and you've had that information in front of you. You also have administrative viewpoints because we do ask as a coherent governance board to have the insights of our administrators as we look to the resolutions. Um, at this point, rather than going through the 12, are there any concerns as far as our voting um, approval for each one of these resolutions? All right. Well, that's

112efficient as well, I guess, because you've made proposals which ones we're going to go with, right? Um, what I'm I'm reading and hearing is that um we will in essence vote yes on all of the um what we've been given here. You know, when you're on the floor, amendments happen and we can make amendments. So, sometimes things change, but you're entrusting me to um understand the district and make the the vote that would best fit our community. Think on the fly. I've seen amendments. I'm good. So, I think what we do need though is a motion in We need a motion. We need a motion uh to recommended action is a motion. The board agrees to support the following proposed 2025 WASBY resolutions at the WASBY delegate assembly during the state education convention and authorize

113our representative to do so. I so move. Motion by Olsen. Is there a second? Second. Second by Maro. Any further discussion? All those in favor say I. I. I. I. Opposed. Motion carries. Thank you for doing this. You made the motion because you're not it. Four hours of my life. I'll never get back and I don't mind doing it. I know. I know you didn't enjoy it. People whoever votes nay gets the position next year. All right. Uh 12.04 04 policy committee meeting notes. Uh see Mr. Fear is not here. He's not here. And so he asked me if I do that. Um and honestly we met to kind of follow up on a few different items. Um and you'll see in the notes that things we looked at was just something that's come up

114with our electronic audio and video recording. So having to look at that in a few different ways. um continuing with no changes on the drug-free workplace policy. Did a revision to the vacancies um that you we will be voting on next and then continuing to work on our 3139 and 4139 staff discipline policies just for clarity on timelines and support and that is a work in progress yet. Board members have any questions or Peggy have anything to add? No, no, just the the vacancy policies, the previous language stated something um that internal candidates there was like a five additional days before it could be posted external. And that puts the district in a tough spot when somebody leaves either during the year or whatnot because it So it's the recommendation is that internal and external

115dates will be the same coincide. Yeah. Yeah. So they don't run into that. How do the current staff feel about that? Isn't that something that's sort of a benefit or advantage to them? um or a disadvantage if they're trying to replace a colleague and feeling like they have to pause for five days before they can move because not always do they want to move internally. Um it also does state that all applicants will be considered in the same manner. Um just because they don't have that fiveday pre um time to apply. Um we still can internally hire our or transfer our people. Um, so sometimes the way that we are reading it too would be might be posted five days internally and we have some applicants but we also then post externally and so we're

116interviewing all of the people at the same time anyways. So it's essentially just a forced fiveday wait for everyone. I think in practice we we've we've seen a lot of transfers happening in positions across the district. So, it's certainly and the the other piece of that too is I think um if we determine that it's in the best interest of our students to make the transfer, we we can we have that opportunity as well. Um and then we know who our candidates are for a next opening. Um so like this summer when we posted for just elementary positions, we didn't necessarily have a specific school or grade level on them as we were anticipating some potential shifts. um that just allowed for us um some more flexibility in making making decisions as quickly as we

117could. So that's just that's not something that we're approving here. That's just kind offormational for the next in the notes. Y right board members have any other questions. Otherwise, I would look for a motion to approve the December 5th, 2024 policy committee meeting notes as presented. Motion by Martin. Is there a second? Second. Second by Olsen. Any further discussion? All those in favor say I. I. Opposed. Motion carries. The board approves the December 5th, 2024 policy committee meeting notes as presented. Next is consideration of policy 3132 and 4132 vacancies. And I think that's what you just spoke on. Um was the new is there more on that or did I really jump the gun on that? No, it's just Neola rewriting. Yeah. Okay. We work to rewrite to better fit what our needs are currently.

118Okay. Um, well, I'll leave it up to the board. Do the board members have any additional questions before we make a motion on these policy? Otherwise, I the recommended action is to approve the revised policy 3132 and 4132 as presented. Motion by Jasper. Is there a second? Second. Second by Marco. Any further discussion? All those in favor say I. I. I. Opposed. Motion carries. The board votes to approve the revised policy 3132 and 4132 as presented. Thank you, Mr. Dur. Next is 12.06, consideration of employee handbook provisions. And again, that would be by Mr. Dur. Thank you. Um so I have um brought before you some timely changes um that I feel would be appropriate um in in the best interest of our staff and also have um sought feedback on these uh specific changes

119from our most our last developed our people pillar um group and so we met um few weeks ago uh got their input and then also they were able or charged to go back to their buildings and connect with the individuals in their buildings about these proposed changes. is um the first three lines, page um 20, 22, and 22 um have to do with just um cleaning up our language. Right now, our language reads that our compliance officers would um both a male and a female compliance officer. Um I would recommend that we just have two employees designated as that and not um call out gender um for our compliance officers. Uh the second one um on page 22 is um having more specifics um and including uh five business days from notification um for respondent

120of the um for for deadlines. Um that then plays into page 22. Um on page 21, uh it states that we have business days, but a further down in the reading, it was read as calendar days. And I think it's important that as we're following a process, um we're talking about the same days, so there's not confusion about when things should be expected to happen or be completed by. and questions on those first three as they're tied pretty closely together. Um, on page 31, it was just again matching the the language of our flowchart in our handbook to the language that was written out in our handbook. um you can see the current flowchart in the link um for the handbook and then you can see the updated one that again makes sure that the

121language calls out the same days or types of days, calendar versus business versus school days. Some of those are used interchangeably, but they mean different things. Um and then page 41 is around our remote learning days. Um currently our uh handbook states that our student support um teams or individuals as well as um our food service individuals are to not be able to work on remote learning days um and rather could be provided the opportunity to make those days up at the end of the year with us moving to remote learning days. um there isn't that opportunity necessarily to make up that time with kids in front of them in the buildings uh at the end of the year anymore. Also, with the way we have our remote learning day is set up, it would

122allow for our staff who may not um come be coming into work or who may not have a a direct assignment with students for the the entire school day. um that they would be able to leave work prepared to take work home from our our work room or prep work that they would do for our students um within their classrooms. It also gives the opportunity for our people to come in and work on site if they deem it safe uh to work financially. Um we're we're in the same place. It's giving them the the access to the pay that they um were under the impression that they would be getting with their not their contract, but their agreement of the number of days on their calendar that they would be working. So, it won't ne

123it won't cost us more. And in the area of food service, um, and talking with, uh, Susan, our director of food food service, um, she would actually be able to potentially have a little reduction in cost because of the trainings that she would like her staff to be able to engage in. Um, they only work many of them under five hours a day. Um and so instead of ex uh extending a day so that they could engage in training through um online sources that Susan has, they could do that in place of serving kids on remote learning days. And there's a collection uh form that those people would have to complete to be able to turn in for Susan to sign off on to see that they engaged in that learning. But they too, they

124being food service workers would have the option of taking a a personal day or um or a day without pay. Um they also have the option if they want to make it up at the end of the year, but um not all of our right our hourly staff are are paid sometimes differently than our certified staff and are counting on that income. So, we felt that it would be in the best interest of our people knowing that wouldn't impact our budget and knowing that it would also allow for work to be done when kids are going to be back in the building right after a remote learning day as opposed to in June when the kids won't be back for a few months. Um, so questions about the remote learning day and being able to

125have um our student support staff as well as food service have the opportunity to uh work on those days may not happen again. And I I think it's a great idea, but what was it four or five years ago when we had nine snow days? I mean, are they going to find nine days for them to to fill in? I mean, that would be the exception to the rule, but that would be the only thing that would cause finding more jobs or something like that. Yeah. And I guess it would I'm hoping that we don't have that experience again. And I can't predict that. Um I feel like again the the work that they would be doing in if we were in session is still going to exist such as that prep work or some

126of the training opportunities that they would have. Um, so I I don't know that we would put it on at the end because the remote learning days are are counting towards our our minutes. Sarah, when you brought these changes up to the committee of staff, how was the feedback that that you were given? Um, it was very positive. They felt like it was the right thing to do for um colleagues and um co-workers. And that was the same feedback that was shared with me by the committee members after going back into their buildings or departments that they were appreciative of um having the conversation and having that be an option. That was also one of the topics for compensation for the support staff last year was exactly what you're doing there. I mean addressing losing

127days, not exactly the format, but yes. All right. And then um there is just one more on page 58. Um and the proposal is just to update our educator effectiveness language to coincide with our practice as well as um the changes and expectations from our state. U we will still be in in compliance, but uh a PPG is no longer a state required component. And so we've put that into our SLO. Um, so we're still talking about professional um, performance growth. Um, but we're just folding that in and having our our teachers have one fewer form to complete um, throughout this process. So again, I just thought it would better reflect our handbook would better reflect their current practice and what's expected of us. Board members have any other questions regarding the employee handbook uh

128suggested revisions? Oh, quick question. Are we are we kind of looking to twice a year or or as needed? I know we've I guess I the committee appreciated um the timeliness of the remote learning days knowing that that could be upon us sooner than later. Um they didn't their feedback wasn't necessarily that we should be meeting often and discussing. they felt like if it was something that needed to be changed and would be in the best interest of our people in our district that I um reach out or they'd reach out to me and then we'd discuss and I'd bring it forward if I felt that was appropriate. But they they did prefer or want to make sure we kept the the one overview for sure. Um which happens usually May June is my understanding.

129All right. U board members, if there are no questions to approve the recommended changes to the employee handbook. Sorry, I've seen the pending legal review down below. Is that part of the motion or No, the Legal review has been done. It's complete. Thank you. Sorry, Mr. Martin. No, that's okay. I make a motion to accept. Motion by Martin. Is there a second? I have a second. Second by Olson. Any further discussion? All those in favor say I. I. Opposed. Motion carries. The provisions suggested to the employee handbook are approved. Thank you, Mr. Right. Communicating with the board 13.01 is the early compensation study findings for district services, school nurses, OT's PPS, SLP, school clurric. Thank you. Um so hoping to give you just a brief overview of where we're at um and answer any questions

130that you may have. So as you know, we currently are in a four-year rotation process. Um Mr. check highlighted all of the people that we are reviewing this year. Um just a reminder of the 10 comparable uh school districts that we are um using to compare um our salaries or wages with those 10 school districts. This was um and is the mission that was developed um as part of the teacher compensation study. Um and I I do feel that the this mission still upholds what we are wanting to do um through this work. Um the next one is the board core values. This two was developed or these two were developed at the onset of this uh compensation study process back um in 2014. And so, um, I would just ask that if there are

131any changes that you feel should be made or highlighted or anything struck, um, the this committee comes back together again um, in January. And so if if there's any differences that we need to um update or change from the core values for the board, I could share those at that time with the not the compensation people that are being currently studied because we're under these core values, but for rather the group that's looking at the process to bring before you. Um that may shift and change. So if there's any changes to those core values, please um let Mr. Holmes know and he can communicate that with me. Uh this is the comp study timeline that we are following. Um we are making decent progress. Um a lot more happens after the new year um with

132making sure that we are running our numbers, coming up with our proposals, running things um through Chad and his department um and seeing how that falls into our staffing plan. um more meetings with the individuals who are being currently studied um with any final feedback um with an update again in uh January to the board and February to the board with the final recommendation in March that would be part of then um the balance budget in April. Um so just to highlight part of this process is another look at job descriptions. All of our employees are expected to review and sign off on their job descriptions at the start of every year. And then we dive even deeper in with uh supervisors and the HR department to um look at the job descriptions and make

133sure that it is that the job descriptions are matching the positions of our people. Um and so that that process has gone well and is um I would say just about complete. there were just a few follow-ups that people wanted to to uh talk about and it was more about the format as opposed to the content in the job descriptions. Um so we are looking at developing um pay scale for these various groups. Um and we will again use our 10 comparables to produce that. Uh we're also reviewing the co-curriculars and so we've met with a small group to um review the process that was currently or has been in place um make some recommendations. their charge, right, is to come back, get some feedback from the people in their own buildings, departments, and then

134um once we kind of have uh an idea of where we're where we're at now in the compensation for co-curriculars, um then we'll ask for some additional feedback for those involved in co-curriculars. We did expand and are working to include some more elementary representation. Um there's one paid elementary co-curricular at this point in time. Um and so we just wanted to have u some elementary representation around the table um in addition to our secondary. So again, costs out in February coming your way. Um board action in March with a balanced budget in April. Questions around the compensation study that is currently underway. Well done. I think you've settled in. Thank you, Mr. Thank you. Next board information is the staffing and budget timeline. And again, Mr. Nur and Mr. Trobridge, we'll have Mr. Trobridge speak

135now. Well, suffice it to say, we've collaborated on this project. uh along with our each of the members of our department. Uh we established a timeline just to kind of have a workflow follow statutory timelines keep our information in front of the board finally for preliminary looks and approval and it's the process that is very similar to what we've used used in years past with some adjustment in dates. It does feel like each year we try to start this a little bit earlier and I think that that is an aspiration that we have and we're entering into this uh with that understanding again this year. Just want to share the timeline with you moving forward. Anything to add? Thank you. Have any questions? All right. Thank you, Mr. Trobridge and Miss 13.03 is elementary boundary

136review committee meeting. And that what is going on all of a sudden? He's he's just he's getting lower and lower. Nick is almost up to at the next meeting of our posture committee meeting. Yeah, exactly. Somebody let the air out of your boundary uh review committee meeting. Let's see. Mr. Yes. Uh I did provide uh Mr. I provided you and constituents with a status update that was in your packet and I know that you've had plenty of time to review. Uh before moving forward, I would look to Miss McKillup and Mr. to make sure that Mr. Troj and I did capture uh the work that's been completed up to this point and then the upcoming work and next steps was that report did it meet with your not necessarily approval but did we accurately capture

137what's been going on thus far? Yeah. Yep. We've had two meetings um so far and It's we have a um large group so there's there's a lot of different stakeholders um and the meetings are very organized and going good. Awesome. And I think that this group is starting to understand what what the district is doing and why we're doing this stuff. The the next step is what's going to be critical. conveying it to this to the public, you know, what why we have to do these things and why it's essential to take a look at this now. So, I think that I talked to one educator there that said, you know, I know now there's going to be some decisions that have to be made, but you know, I it's important that we find a

138way to convey this to the public as we go forward. And one of the ways that we can do that I am excited to bring forward to the board tonight, I did with the help of Chad and Angela and um Kathy Striker and Cara Scheler, we we do have the website ready to go earlier than anticipated. So um tonight I want did want to show the board that we will be able to make this go live on our website tomorrow morning. Okay. Correct. Constituent is missing a T. Yes, it is. It's backwards. Got it. Thank you. That's a good catch. You say it fast. It sounds the same. Right. Thank you for catching that thought. The Constitution. Need to talk to the ELA people. I hate I need help. Clearly mind is not supposed to

139catch that. Yeah. I hate I hate those things just pop out at me. I'm My wife is the same way. Very detailed. As long as there's three of the correct letters in the right spot. Yeah, you can mix them up if you want. I just thought we're in education facility and we might want to spell I hate spelling errors. I can't stand them. Uh so for me, thank you for catching that because it doesn't go live until tomorrow. Uh right now when you said tomorrow, I thought I Right. Thank you. So and I got to give kudos to Cara Schuler. uh she essentially is the one that created the graphic uh there that we'll be using on the web page. So if you click on EBRC's purpose, it's just a a the statement that was

140determined by the elementary boundary review committee in regard to why they're doing the work that they are. If you can close that, please. This is probably the most important document that folks will find uh on the website when they're doing their reviews u based on car's recommendation to me and how to set this up. I did it is in a pageless format. And if you'll close that box right there, uh constituents will be able to go through and they can just click on a tab and it'll take them directly within the document. So if they're more concerned about one thing over another and utilize that tab on the left and just because in the end this will be an extremely long document. Uh for the board's note, in case you want to see summaries of

141the first two meetings, you would find those at the end of the document. Scroll down and you'll be able to see that work that's done. You could have clicked on the tabs. I can't read it. Oh, you can't read. Awesome. So, you any questions about that at all? So you can close that. And then the next two tabs would be the timeline so that people can keep track of that obviously and that's in PDF format because there's no adjustments that will need to be made to it. And then this is the first board constituent update. Um so which you've already which you've already seen. it was in your um report tonight. So, but the community will also be able to locate that very easily. Uh one of the strategies that came out of the committee

142committee the committee's work is that our communication strategy people will be able to find all these things uh through various communications that are going out uh through board considerations through um our uh building newsletters and also I'm going to do a email blast to all of our parents uh at the elementary level here this next week to you know just trigger for them to this will now be active and they'll be able to go in and and uh review all the materials and all the things that are being considered. This is also one of uh for our opening podcast that's coming up on January 8th. Uh this is one of our topics of discussion during the course of the podcast. So that's where we are right now with the elementary boundary. Board members have any

143additional questions. Thank you, Superintendent Holmes. Next is discussion of board activities. We only have one. December 10th was the board learning walk at the Chipoa Valley High School. This is an exciting one because this is one where we had constituents there. First of all, there's a background. Who was that that had that idea? It seems like we got some very Steve very positive feedback on that already. So, uh who was actually at the Triple Valley High School walk? Three of us. Yep. Okay. to go ahead or wants to tell a little bit about it. Well, I mean for me, one of um my former students at Hstead stood up and gave a speech and talked about, you know, her former self and how because she's in a situation that's safe and confidence and connecting for

144her, her whole world has changed. And it was so it was just so impactful. And her dad was sitting there. It was it was super cool. saying that small environment of that we're able to offer at Chipo Valley High School, how important it is for some kids. That was my big one. But the whole the whole event was well done. But I Yeah. And if you know of, you know, we're going to have a communication meeting coming up here shortly and things we're going to be talking about is, you know, going forward, how do we find additional people? very fortunate that we've had a lot of impactful constituents walk with this and it's very it's just eye opening for this to see what the district is doing and we did this because we wanted to

145a more positive approach to what our district is doing and give our stakeholders that chance. So um we will be meeting here shortly to to go and just little stuff like sending thank you notes in the future we do walk and learn. So, not only Kathy takes care of the constituents, but we need to send thank you notes to the administrators who are putting all that effort in for us and thank you and recognize their efforts and stuff. I think that administrators like it that we have five or 10 people rather than three people to make it feel like the effort you put in is worthwhile. So, thank you for all you guys are doing and I think it's important to our community that they see what you guys are doing. So, how I know

146when when Kathy's reaching out is looking at people that she just knows who have expressed interest, but also perhaps um local government officials in that area. Well, we're going to that's what our meeting is going to be about as far, you know, like I said, service clubs, um you know, chambers, um government officials, and then just public. We had um couple parents have already been part of it, too. And I think that's all important. So, we're just, you know, we have to find out is this going to have a life extending or how long will this run like this, but we'll keep evaluating. But there's lots of places we can reach out to get the word out. And um it one of the reasons we did this is to provide people education for future board

147members that want to run so they get a little picture of what the district is and stuff like that, too. So, there's lots of positives we can get from this. highlighting the good. Yeah, it was it was um really good. You know, I remember Mr. Scholler years ago when he came with asked the board, you know, would we consider alternative pathways to get kids graduated? So, um, having those pathways for kids to get their high school diploma who maybe they don't the large number of kids, they're just not comfortable there. Like the student that Sherry was was talking about, she just wanted Friday to come so she could go home and now she's taking on leadership roles and she's found her passion and what she wants to do after graduation. So, um, and and one

148of the things that, um, a stigma that we can't seem to shake is that it's a behavioral school, and that's not what it is. It's just an alternative learning environment for kids who, you know, it depends what their barriers might be that gives them. So, it's basically where they can get the credits they need to graduate. Yep. Well, good. Thank you all three of you for representing us there. May I add one additional? You certainly may. Now, I don't know if I was invited to this based on my former career or based on being a school board member. So, I guess I'll just say it. Um the Cardinal Connections virtual networking happened on December 7th and it used to be an in-person and it is now since co gone virtual but basically it's something that

149um Ellen Riley coordinates and she is our family um community partner and you know there's over a hundred slides so if you guys didn't get invited and get that slideshow you should make sure they get that sent out. It's over a hundred slides of different agencies and different people and places that network with us as a school district to provide for kids to provide options. And so it's now a one-hour virtual where you get the slideshow and everybody kind of is invited to update because people keep changing, right? But then you've got an hour to go into breakout rooms to just hear what what people are doing and their passion and their commitment for supporting kids. One more thing, you should be getting more emails. I know you like your school emails, but I've asked

150Superintendent Holmes in the future if we can every elementary school has their own newsletters and school, middle school, and high school. And I've asked that we as board members receive those because that way we can kind of keep contact with what's happening locally and stuff too. So if you see those coming, that's all my fault. And you don't have to just trust Addison's reports. No, no. We'll back her. All right. Sounds good. Thank you. Um, next is uh discussion of this meeting. Have any questions or comments? they want to make. Now's the time to make it. It was a pretty big meeting, but we moved through information pretty efficiently. You can No, one of these days might ruin what she just said. No, no. I I I want to thank y'all for moving through. You

151know, Angela's generally really really good with her assessments, but she was kind of off tonight. Darn the luck. I just wanted you all to be excited when we were done. That's good. So, unless we have another 30 minutes of filibustering, we will be must because Dennis and Sharon weren't here. You know, you know where we're in a lot of them aren't. They hear it, but it's not true. 1402 is future agenda items and upcoming events. December 27th is the deadline for incumbents to file declarations of non-candidacy. Thank you. Uh January 7th is the deadline for school board election candidate paperwork. Uh there are three seats for the spring 2025 election. January 10th is coffee and commerce at Culver's. The district is sponsoring this event. That's at 8 a.m. January 13th, throwing up lots for the

152ballot order. Uh January 14th, Chamber of Commerce annual meeting. Registration is required for that. That's at the Heidi Center. pretty special event. January 16th at 1:00 is a board learning walk at South View Elementary. January 22nd to 24th is Wisconsin State Education Convention. Registration is required for that as well. January 27th is the policy committee meeting. January 28th is our regular January board meeting. January 30th is the staff holiday and years of service recognition gathering at the VU. He's RSVP if you want to come to that. And of course, not on this list, we have some upcoming things such as Christmas and New Year's as well. So, enjoy those y'all. Any other things you want to add that are not on that list? All right, it says 950 motion to adjurnn. So, anybody want to

153make a motion to adjurnn now or we can wait? Just one comment on the January CFS UAD staff holiday and years of service recognition. I know it's holiday and everything, but I I'll be DJing the event again this year and I've made an executive decision that it's going to be a yacht rock uh celebration. Have to look it up. Yeah. Do we have to look that up now? Possibly. If you don't know what is I don't know what it is. I think they will. I don't think you surprised me. You want it? All right. Look for a motion to adjurnn. Motion tojourn. Motion by Olsson, second by Martino. Yep. All those in favor say I. I. Oppos. Motion carries. We stand ajourned.