Prescott School District April Board Meeting

001District of Prescott's Board of Education regular board meeting. I will call it to order subject to section 1983 Wisconsin statutes. We're going to go into the pledge of allegiance here. Helen, would you lead us? >> I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Go into the public comment section. Recognition of visitors. Rules for public comment. Please approach the podium one at a time stating your name, municipality, and topic you'd like to address. Allotted time is three minutes per individual. Six if you're representing a group that's present. Comments should be directed to the board and not to other staff or participants. The board will not act on any comments that are made during

002the meeting. The presiding officer may direct the district administrator to follow up with that individual at a later date. And the public comment section will be limited to 30 minutes unless board action is taken. And as always, please refer to our public comment policy listed on the agenda for the full description. Anybody care to be recognized at this time? >> I care to be recognized. >> Yep. Come on up, Roger. State your name and municipality, please. Thanks. >> My name is Roger Holy, and this is the first school board meeting I've attended since I retired 11 years ago. So in a different side of things, uh, I want to compliment the board for taking their time and making their decision and allowing the public to speak. I think that's very good. The thing I wanted

003to speak on, I thought I I' I'd mentioned it cuz if I didn't, I'd feel bad about it. My issue is grade configuration. You know, experience I have at least though I'm old is elementary kids. It's a good place to have kids in elementary schools. Elementary teachers teach kids, not just subjects. The longer you can teach kids in elementary school, the better off you are. And so I would think that Malone, if you look really close at it, serve K through four. And I think the middle school could comfortably serve one more grade, be a 5 through 8, and keep this a high school for grades 9 through 12. I think you should at least take a look at that. It's more than numbers. Yeah, your numbers can fit. But instructionally, a use of space

004and kids together and education, I think instructionally, a better uh makeup is K4, 58, and 912. Thank you for listening to me. >> Thanks, Roger. >> Anybody else care to be recognized? All right, we're going to move on. Thank you. Next up is good news. We go to Kate. Kayen here. >> Mhm. >> Kayen first. >> Good evening. My name is Kayen Hillibbrand and I'm the school board representative for the student body within the high school. Spring fling week will take place during the last week of the month. This celebration includes dressup days, games during the week, and a schoolwide assembly titled Battle of the Subjects on Friday, probably the following Saturday. Students who participated in the Lock Du Flambo Indian Reservation trip this past summer had the opportunity to present at a conference in

005Madison and a conference in the Wisconsin Dells. These students organized educational presentations centered around what they learned on their trip. Additionally, many members of our speech team made to state which will take place in Madison this Friday and Saturday. Furthermore, the community service club coordinated a visit to the Prescott nursing home on April 7th. They donated a portion of their tie blankets and helped set up and play bingo with the residents. Within the middle school, students participated in a school activity last Friday that was coordinated by the salt team in recognition of their hard work done during quarter 3 and during the Wisconsin Ford exams within Malone. The school carnival will take place on Friday, April 17th. This annual event is put on by the Malone parent committee. Thank you. Thanks, Kaden. Got Rick coming

006up. Jim M. >> Good evening, board. Kaden mentioned quite a few things here, so there may be some repeat. I apologize, but we're going to start with uh Malone. Um, as Kaden did just mention, you don't want to miss the Malone Parent Committee Carnival this Friday night from 5:00 to 7:30 at the Prescott Middle School. Come have a load of fun and bid on some great baskets donated by our 4K through 5 classrooms and staff. Please also join us on Thursday, April 23rd for our Malone Elementary School spring music concerts. First grade will perform at 5:00, second grade at 6:00, third grade at 7. Artwork will be displayed in the high school commons, and you will be able to purchase books at the Scholastic Bookf Fair. Speaking of concerts, the intermediate school invites everyone to

007please join them tomorrow evening, Thursday, April 16th, for their spring music concert. The performance begins at 6 p.m. in the Performing Arts Center. Mr. Cosmoski states that we look forward to welcoming families and guests for an evening dedicated to our students artistic achievements. From coral arrangements to dance and instrumental showcases, it promises to be a memorable celebration of the arts. Prescott Middle School and Mr. Igel would like to share that they will be finishing up Wisconsin forward testing tomorrow. Yay. Congratulations to our students. They worked extremely hard during the assessment window this year. And in other good news, the middle school leader student leadership team did a student led activity afternoon on April 10th. Word from Mr. Iggo is that, and I quote, "It was a great success." A couple additional things to share from

008the high school begin with a huge thank you to the Prescott Lions Club for generously donating $500 to support our community service club and their tie blanket initiative that Kaden mentioned earlier. And let's also celebrate an amazing run for Amelia Berg and her role on women's team Wisconsin while competing in the National High School Alpine Western Championship. Her team took second place overall again nationally and she individually placed ninth in slalom and 30th in giant slalom out of 110 women competitors. Incredible job. Familia student services would like to share that the preliminary joint federal notification packet which rates our performance on federal indicators for students with disabilities participating in things like state testing was perfect. More to come in June from Sandy. And last but not least, in activities and athletics, state speech is this

009Friday in Madison. PHS had 18 talented students qualify to compete. Best of luck to all. And if you haven't yet, check out the new dugouts and shed at the Borner Fields. A huge thanks to the Prescott Fast Pitch Association for doing these projects for the district. Very well done and appreciated. Thank you. Go ahead. Uh so from the superintendent's uh office, my first thing is the cardinal champion. Um again, this is selected each month. Um Gary Hartung is our cardinal champion. Gary is considered to be tender-hearted and caring in every sense as he drives the bus every day. Over the years, Gary has been someone many families and students count on daily, and he is missed greatly when he is not present, which is incredibly rare. He is extremely dependable with seldom a day off

010for anything. Gary is the most compassionate person. He is a constant caregiver. He loves the children and thinks of them as his own. There isn't a route change or a task that he hasn't been willing to take on. The route he drives is an everyday evolving door. Each day has its own schedule and on top of that not even Monday, Tuesday, etc. is the same each the same as last week. Each kid has a different calendar that he keeps track of each week. One of Gary ele one of Gary's elementary age students when asked what he liked about Gary, he said, quote, "Gary helped me carry my lunchbox and backpack at the bottom of the steps. I like that he gives me a ride to school." Another student said, "Gary has silly names for me

011and he is always nice to me. Congratulations, Gary. It's the Garry's of Prescott that make us a special school district. Um, I'd also like to mention digital safety and awareness night. This is for all of our Prescott parents next Wednesday from 6:00 to 8:00 at the Prescott Performing Arts Center. Uh, Officer Jacobson along with investigators from Pierce County and our school counselors are putting on this digital awareness night. Topics that are will be covered include sextortion, Wisconsin AI laws and considerations, social media scams, um cell phone use, developmental considerations. You'll also have a lot of resources for the parents that will help support their kids healthy technology habits. Our social media report card, as the board knows, uh we've been working with social school for edu uh for the last several months. Uh over the

012la between December and February um we grew to a total of 3,691 followers on Facebook. That's a growth of 134 uh people with an average monthly viewers of 44,696 individual people. A lot of that comes from sharing. If you're watching on YouTube or you're listening in the audience, the more you share, the better it is for our uh part of the algorithm and getting all the great news that we do out um that we do at Prescott sent out into the world. Uh Rick already mentioned this, but here are the 18 students that are being going to state on uh Friday and Saturday. Uh the competition is Friday night. A huge shout out to coach and all 18 of our students um for all their hard work and all their success heading on to state.

01318 students for a school our size is simply amazing. And lastly, thank you Ellen. Thank you for your years of service on the school board, your dedication, thoughtful decision making, and a teacher perspective that have truly made a difference for our students and staff. I've only known you for about 10 months, but uh we're so grateful for the time and energy you've given, and hopefully you've earned that little extra free time now. >> Oh, I'm going to put you on the spot. >> Do you have any words that you'd like to say, Ellen? >> Sure. Take my picture down. >> Okay. Um I, you know, just thank you. I mean, this has been an experience, that's for sure. Um we've you know it you don't know until you know and I know and it's a

014good thing the work that this whole team does is amazing being a teacher in the district and then coming on to the board. Um my eyes were opened to all the great things um behind the scenes and so that was amazing. Um, the way that I was able to see this team and be part of this team, um, through challenges and through successes was amazing. And I can't say enough about our teachers. And I'm not going to say anymore cuz I'll cry. But, um, I am ready for a break. But, um, I my heart is always in Prescott and so I'm here. Um, I'm just taking a break and you guys going to be good. So, I'm excited. But, thank you everyone. You guys took me under your wing and I appreciate that. So, thank

015you. Thank you. >> Thanks, Helen. >> And I have one more quick last thing. Um when when we go through board action today, we'll have a fully staffed custodial staff. That's been a discussion the last couple months. Um we have a second grade opening. We currently have 20 applicants as as of this morning. That number's probably changed already throughout the day. Uh Mrs. Ducek has interview scheduled for May 5th. We've also posted for a business office coordinator. Um, and that would be 70% bookkeeper, 20% HR, 10% office, uh, just general office work. And of course, that's estimated. Um, we're posting that around $45 to $50,000, which will be about a $30,000 savings to the budget. That's going to close on April 24th. And uh since it is hiring season in Wisconsin for educators, uh we

016had an elementary special education position uh open up about 9:00 this morning. So um that'll come to the board uh technically in May, but we're on it. It's already posted and we're already searching for the best candidate for our students. >> All right. Thanks, Jim. That's good news. We're going to move on to business. Item number one here is consent agenda. In the consent, we have the March 11th, 2026 regular board meeting minutes and the April 8th, 2026 work session minutes, finance reports, personnel report for non-licensed staff, and accept the re accepting the receipt of signed and notorized official oath for schoolboard candidate Brad Stewie. Anything in the consent that anybody would like to pull out? >> All right. So, with that, we can take a motion to adopt the consent agenda and adopt or

017approve the consent agenda and adopt the the regular board agenda. >> I move to adopt the agenda and approve the consent agenda. >> A second. Sorry. >> All right. That's a motion and a second. All in favor? >> I >> opposed. That carries. going to move into personnel reports. >> Um so the board has one retirement uh Doroth and the resignation of Riley Green um as certified staff. Um both of these were kind of expected. Um so um we've already planned for them and and we're working on them. We're absorbing um DY's position and uh as you as we said we're looking at uh filling an elementary special education position. >> Anybody have any comments or questions here? >> Is this Riley's is in addition to the one from 9:00 today? >> Yes and no.

018I technically can't really talk about one, but yeah, we we did have um a long-term sub um in for Riley. Um we knew Riley was probably not going to come back. Um, so that is part that is part of the conversation, but yeah, technically we're supposed to post things 24 hours away. Ashley's waving me off. >> Flip-flopped. Sorry. So, >> okay. >> But we know for sure Riley's not coming back. >> Okay. Thank you. >> All right. We can take a motion here. >> I move to approve the personnel report for the certified staff listed above. >> I'll second. All right. We have a motion and a second. All in favor I >> I >> opposed. That one carries. Item C is the nomination for board delegate for CC1 annual convention. So in the past

019it's been Vicki. Vicki, do you have anything to say for yourself here? You can do it. >> Well, I'm before you get nominated. >> I I am up for reelection. So, so no, I can I can easily go since my seat is up. >> Anybody else want it? >> Do you like coin? I mean, is it okay to keep going? >> Did I have ever asked that question? >> Can I nominate Vicki? >> Second. >> We have a motion from Tanya for Vicki and a second by Pat. All in favor? >> I >> oppose. That one carries. Thank you, Vicki. >> Thanks, Vicki. Thanks. >> Uh, item D is the accepting of a anonymous donation. >> So, one of the nice things about my job is I get to work in Prescott and Prescott really

020supports education. Um, we had a husband and wife come into our office and they asked to meet with me and uh Courtney as my notetaker and they wanted to talk about how they could inspire teachers to be innovative and how they could provide kids the opportunity to really have experiences and they talked a lot about how when they were students how much they loved field trips and experiences and they've asked to remain anonymous so I'm not going to give details but they talked about how some of the stuff they did as an elementary student, middle school student, high school student really determined what they wanted to do with their lives and how they spent their entire working career. And then they decided to donate $10,000 and they wanted to call it the Archie Awards. The

021Archie Award is a um named after something near and dear to them. So, they are giving four $1,000 awards, one per building for the teachers, for the teachers to think outside the box and be innovative. And we promised as a district, well, we won't match dollar for dollar. We told the teachers and the teachers are currently applying. So, the teachers in the room, if you haven't applied yet, apply, but the district will gladly, if you come up with something that's $1,200, $13, $1,400, we'll find the extra $300 or $400 cuz we want to honor this donation. And then we created a separate fund 21 account with the Archie award for $6,000 that's going towards student experiences. So this is for the students who can't afford to go on field trips or participate in activities that

022inspire them to dream and be special. As it's over uh the required amount, uh this requires board action to accept and approve. Awesome. Uh any questions or comments down here on the side or Helen or >> uh no questions but again I just comment this is why this is why I joined the board. This is why I worked here before. This is why we love Prescott because people like this. Thank you. >> I just have to say thank you to the community members who did this. We will def our teachers will definitely put it to good use and and yeah, I I think it is invaluable. That was all part of my school experience as a kid. You just you remember those field trips, those the ability to go to an overnight for band or

023something that you couldn't have afforded otherwise. So, very cool. >> Awesome. Tanya, >> um just echoing my colleagues over here, I wanted to add to that the $6,000 is especially dear to me just because there's so many families that um would like their kids to do activities and stuff, but it puts quite a hardship on the family to be able to um provide those opportunities. So, it's great that some of our kids that um maybe couldn't have participated in things like theater or, you know, whatever it might be um has those those opportunities now. And that that is life-changing for some of our kids. Yeah, Pat. >> Um, no, really, really cool. And I I also just wanted to, you know, when I was walking in, I saw the Afton Apple crew here. We had

024a donation by the Lions Club. PFA was already announced. We got the RG Awards. And I know we're going to talk about Harley and Premium Plots here in a minute, but it's really really cool and and special in need to uh to see everybody and and how generous and what a what an awesome community uh that this is. >> Awesome. Uh Jim, just really quick on the schematics of everything. So the money is going to go into fund 21 or in a separate account in fund 21. Is the goal then to try to spend that money for the next school year or is it how does that work? Like what do we what do we have to do there? So it's going to sit in its own fund 21 and it'll and it'll earn interest.

025Um I don't think we're going to try to artificially fund spend it out of fund 21. We're the principles and the guidance counselors know the kids the best, know the support, the teachers will know about it. The principles will get the word to the teacher, you know, um if they have a kid who is in need of something, whether it's, you know, even if it's something as a kid simple as I want to go out for track, but I can't afford track shoes um type of situations or um you know, I want to go on a field trip. Um so the $6,000 they were looking that one to last. the $4,000 is going to get announced at the end of the school year. Uh we have a lunchon with the entire staff. So, okay, the

026staff have until May 15th to submit their applications for the $1,000 awards and then the admin team will sit down and decide who the winners are. Uh the anonymous donors didn't were offered to be part of the process, but they asked to have the principles do it. So, we're going to honor that. >> Okay. So that six that 6k that goes into that special account that can roll over from year to year. There's no >> Yeah. >> Okay. Thank you. Agreeing with all my colleagues on on all the generous donations. I mean, it's just it's one of the it's one of the fun things about being on the board and accepting this cuz there's a lot of people in this town and outside of the town that that support public schools and in particular Prescott.

027So, thank you very much for for the generous donation. We can entertain the motion. >> I move to approve accepting a $10,000 anonymous donation towards teacher awards and supporting student experiences. >> I'll second. All right, we have a motion and a second. All in favor? >> I I oppose. That one carries. Item E is accept another donation for lumber. So, uh, Harley H. Hotchkus has, uh, been a longtime supporter of R5 and our whole teched program. Uh, he is part of, uh, Premium Plots LLC, uh, throughout the course of the year, uh, July through October. Um, and then with an additional one that I guess is just coming in, um, he's donated $6,740 worth of lumber. Uh, as you know, we are uh in the process and Mike H will talk about in a minute

028of looking at building the RFI uh shed outback. Um, and his donations go a long ways towards building that program and, uh, funding our and supporting our in-house businesses. So, uh, we'd like to recommend that you accept Harley Hotchkiss and Premium Plots donations. >> Any comments down here, Pat? >> No. all done. Thanks, Harley. And yeah, >> yeah, I remember it was probably about a year ago that we accepted another donation from him. So, it's it's wonderful. It's exciting. We have a really great R5 program. So, uh thank you. >> Thank you. >> Um just thank you. >> Yeah. >> All right. We'll we'll take a motion. I move to accept a lumber donation for the Prescat High School Tech Education Program of 6,740. Motion of lumber. >> I'll second. I got a second. All

029right. Motion and a second. All in favor? >> I >> opposed. That one carries. And now we are on to item F. Consider second reading for the Neola Act 57 special update policies. So these are titled Neiola Act 57 because Act 57 is a state law that passed in December and the school district has been following the state law since December. These are the state laws that uh you may have heard a lot about as far as grooming, reporting inappropriate staff behavior, etc. Um basically what this does is this re this align our policy within Act 57. Um it gives a little bit more direction in our policy uh direction to staff on what is acceptable behavior and not acceptable behavior. Uh as we speak, the DPI and WASBY, the Wisconsin Association of School Boards

030are working together on um coming up with a set of mandatory trainings that'll be used statewide in August. Um so we'll be conducting those trainings when we return in August uh to make sure we're in compliance with the state law. All right, Tanya, any questions on here? >> I didn't. We talked about these last month. They were um I thought most of them are pretty obvious changes that needed to happen just to make sure that we uh protect our students. So, good. >> Yeah, Pat. No questions. Thank you. >> No questions. >> All right. We can entertain a motion. I move to accept the second reading of the noted policies within the Neola Act 57 special update. >> I'll second. >> That's a motion and a second. All in favor? >> I opposed. That one

031carries. Item G, approve academic and career planning report. Mr. Cosmosi will be up to speak about this and I'm going to get the castling there. Mr. calls off. The clicker is right there. So, >> beautiful. >> Hopefully, it'll work for us. Make sure we're live and working here. Oh, yeah. Going fast. All right. Well, uh, good evening board. Um, last month I came to you and talked about our academic and career planning, something that's been a state statute since 2017. Um, we're working, um, on updating our plan and then looking for formal approval of our plan, which will become a yearly agenda item. Um, most likely moving towards when we do our academic planning, um, yearly in July and August is probably when we'll be coming back to you in the future on our plan.

032Um but just a couple things about our plan itself is this slideshow along with another document which is our really our laid out plan. The slideshow has a lot of our data on those things that that you were asking me for um last month of how does this really play out for kids. But our intended outcomes is for our academic and career plan is that we are preparing our students for postsecary success whatever that looks like military workforce two-year technical college or four-year college. Um, and really it follows those four parts of academic planning. Getting to know yourself, exploring options, exploring labor markets, what are those things? Um, how do that how does that plan? Creating a plan. Um, not only just your four-year plan when you're in high school, but your four-year plus plan,

033and then go and delivering on that plan and following the plan, and then making adjustments along the way, um, in both the coursework that you're taking and then also in future goals. So that's really what academic career planning is. The mandate only is that we talk about grades 6 through 12. However, we do a lot of these get to know yourself activities and start to introduce careers to students. So that way every time you ask a kindergartenner, what do you want to become? It's not always a firefighter or a teacher, right? There are other other options out there for them. So we start this at an early age. Um, we had all of our departments the the go through and reflect on in our grade levels, look at what current activities do we do, which

034ones do we guarantee that all of our students are getting and then which are those that maybe only some of our kids get and where areas that we could look at um building up and that's part of our plan too is sort of what are our goals, what's the next things that we're going to be going after. So really getting to know yourself is that K5 journey. We continue to get to know yourself in the middle school, but now it's more of that focus of now starting to explore. So, we have a careers class in sixth grade, um the skills class, excuse me, and then careers classes, dedicated careers classes in seventh and eighth grade. And part of that is starting to look at the high school course offerings, but also looking at different professions

035and aptitude and and things like that. So, really getting to know yourself and now just starting to explore. And then at our high school level is where we put those all four components together. So now they started some exploring. We continue that exploring. We create our four plus plan and then we start delivering on those plans. And we have um coaching one-on-one with our counselors both in 9th grade and in 11th grade with all of our students to make sure that those plans are being um delivered on. Top of that we do activities either through special days or even during our cardinal time with our counselors as well. Um one of the things of going through that process of having K12 look at what are we currently doing was just the discussions that came out

036of it um had a discussion with one of our fifth grade teachers of we do this but we it's by happen stance and if it was more intentional we could definitely take this to the next level. So, it it really did help our um PLC's, our PLC members to look at what are we currently doing and and where are some areas that we could improve upon. Not that we're doing anything wrong necessarily, but there always are areas that we could um involve the students more, involve parents more and and bring it to our classrooms a little bit more. So, that's kind of the plan itself. And then some of the things that the board was asking for is really I'm kind of shifting gears within the presentation of um what is this what have these

037activities done for Prescott students. Um so one of them is first thing here is just youth apprenticeships and youth apprenticeships are students going out into the community and doing some learning. Um part of the requirements of youth apprenticeship it's 450 hours. They need to be paid hours. Um there has to be a career and technical education connection for the kids. Um they they work on employab employability skills. They need to be evaluated by the employer. Um they get some money for work uh uniforms or shoes or things like that. And this is funded by the department of workforce development. So, as you can see here is over the last four years, we've had a great increase from 3 to 30 students in youth apprenticeships. Um, along the side here is a list of our local

038apprenticeships that we have kids doing. You know, anywhere from Pax to the Prescott Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, Hearts and Minds, New Adventures. Um, so there's a whole list there of these are where those 30 kids are doing those hours and doing that work. And that's just a great um testament of our counselors working with our kids to get them more of that um hands-on learning and occupational area. That way they can explore some of those things and get some of those soft skills prior to leaving high school. Um post-secary enrollment. So what portion of our students are going as undecided leaving high school? Um and these are percentages on this table. You can see um this last year if we look at 2025 four-year college 57% of our students are going to four-year college you

039can see it was slightly lower 48% in 2024. Um if you look at the technical school we had 18% last year that graduated said we're going to a technical college 25% the year prior. Um worker military 20% last year 15 and then undecided 5 and 11. So percentages we look at those. Um and then one of the questions the board said is well do they actually do that? So that was part of their plan. Do they actually do it? Um my next slide is we have something used to be called tiers but it's we call it the oneear out data. One thing that we've done is over the years we've started collecting students contact information a little bit differently so we get a better response rate. Um so what you're looking at here on these

040charts is the percent of students that after one year out of Prescott and we just did this um for our last year's graduating classes. Are you still at a two-year college? Are you still at your four-year college? Have things changed? Um one thing I can say is like anything with data, it's only as clean as the data that you get back in the 2022 2023 numbers. We are only getting about a 20% response rate from our students one year later to connect back to our school district. Um Mr. Kir um spearheads this. He changed the way that he collects um their information. So in 2024 is about a 70% response rate. This year already we're at a 80% response rate. Um so we're getting better data to know where kids are and are they staying

041in those programs? Are they moving on to something else? You know, are they are they making changes? All right, next piece of information that I have up here for you. Um, we're really going to start jumping into now um our dual enrollment and those classes and what we do here up at the high school for them. So, the first one is transcripted credit. These are CVTC because they are local college um that we um in Pierce County. Um these are certified CBTC teachers. Majority of these classes are taught at Prescott by Prescott teachers, but not all. Some are at CBTC by their instructors. Um, and what this year, what the graph that you're looking at here are these are the students that are earning transcripted credit. So, these are just the count of students and

042you'll see it went way up and now it's starting to come back down. And part of that is through retirements and the fact that we have people that were certified to teach like when Miss Padre left she was certified to teach physics and she was certified to teach um chemistry and now we lost that certification. So that's part of it is that there we don't have quite as many opportunities because we're losing some of our local talent. We are working with some teachers. We do have one teacher right now that's going back. did shift the rules a little while ago about you have to have a master's degree or believe it's 18 credits in that specific area of master's level work. So we are working with some of our teachers um and CBTC has a

043partial meeting grant also to get our teachers certified. So we are working to bring more of those classes back um as well. So those are our numbers over the last eight years and really in the data we looked at the last eight years and what impact has that had. So, our students that get a C or higher in these classes, they earn college credit. That college credit has come out to about $1.1 million in savings for Prescott students and families. And that is transcripted credit alone. I I'll give you a total at the very end here. Um, but over the last eight years of data that we've been looking at, um, that's where we're at. Sticking with CBTC, this is the Start College Now program. So these are this is dedicated or meant for students

044who want to start um technical college Wisconsin technical college. It's um opens the doors for those students to consider technical careers um start early um potentially have some of that post-secary course work taken care of um before they leave. And you can see here um the graph that you're looking at this is the total course credits. Um I know the board you have a a much fuller document that has some of the numbers of how many kids were these and and whatnot, but here are the number of credits that we've done through that start college now. Um the savings from Start College Now is from 2017 to 2025. So about year eight years of data is about $18,000 um from just that program as well. also the start college now program which you guys have

045to approve every year when we have those uh enrollments come in the other um through CBTC we have these things calledmies so this is a series of courses that lead to degree programs I believe our first academy um was a business academy they're typically multiple years and some kids might join their their senior year and only get a few of the credits into that academy some kids um and one of our celebrations I'll share is um Miss her a few years ago um graduate already had this already had the certification before she even left high school. Um so she had completed that academy. So these are kiddos that typically these are offered at CBTC at their campus. Sometimes they're our high school location. Um some of these are multiple year dedicated um we have but

046like the welding academy that is held in River Falls. We have students um participating that that itself is 18 to 20 credits in one semester and they leave with two certifications. Um some of these are in a nursing academy and maybe they're doing a CNA class and that's the only class they get here but then they continue that academy later on. Well, from the credits that they earned here so far in the last eight years, we're looking at about $52,000 that again students and families have had in deferred cost because they're be able to get those credits here. Early college credit. So, this really is for um four-year um college classes. So, institutes of higher education typically for our students almost all this is W River Falls. We do have a dual enrollment agreement with

047W Green Bay for some of our kids that take First Nations. Not all the kids um do that and they get that at a reduced rate, but families still pay for those credits. These credits families are not paying for unless your student doesn't pass the class. Um we've had a really good rate, but we have had some kids that have not passed classes. Um but I'd say percentage- wise 95% or more. Um but that does happen from time to time. Um the Prescott School District does pick up the cost of these, but we get it at a reduced rate as well. And because it's a dual credit, um we're only paying like 25% of the cost where the state is paying 75% of that reduced rate for our kiddos. If we didn't do the dual

048uh credit, we would have to pay a higher percentage of that. Um but as you can see here, what you're looking at is um the number of credits earned um through that program. And that has saved our families $315,000 um of tuition costs that otherwise um students would be going to college and then taking those classes. And now if you think about all these classes that we've been talking about and credits that kids are earning, that also is putting them ahead in line for one registering for classes. So, maybe you go into your freshman year and um Kaden doesn't have to have the 8 a.m. English 101 class like all the other freshmen have to have because she already is uh has more credits, right? So, she can register earlier. Um also, you think of

049how many years it takes to get through four-year degrees, which I myself did not go four years to college. Um takes a little longer sometimes, especially for us slow learners, but this gets them jump head start on that as well. So overall, as the other last thing that we really have that really helps our kids with deferred costs are AP classes. And up here you're looking at a graph that has the number of students um that scored that three plus and then the number of credits. So if they scored five, if they scored a five, typically you're going to get five credits at a university. If you scored three, you're going to get three credits. Um depending on your major, it may or may not count towards your major. But when we look at that

050and we look that typically these are for four-year colleges. If we look at the WRF rate, those credits earned over the last um several years has added up to over a million dollars of credits just from AP. And we have a number of AP classes. And we thank those teachers that take on that extra um the extra stresses and things that come with teaching an AP class along with the trainings that they do and give up their summer time to do. So we appreciate them for that. and then the students for participating in those as well. And they fluctuate a little bit from year to year of what course offerings do we have, but typically we have kind of a standard of like seven or eight classes that are offered every year. Um, so if

051you look at what are we CBTC, we're at like $1.1 million saved. Um, AP is just over a million, WRF 315. So over the last 8 years, you combine that all together in in deferred costs, this would have cost Prescott families and students 2.48 million um that we've been able to save through our ACP planning, through the courses that we offer, through our student or our teachers being certified either through CBTC or to be an AP teacher. and then our students taking advantage of those opportunities and more and more students um going into that start college now or early college credit program um as well as more and more into thosemies. So, it's been a we've had a great story. I'm glad I was able to come up here and tell that story. Um before

052I get to the very end of my presentation, which really is the plan and the approval for the board, just want to stop right there because there's a lot of numbers, a lot of dollar signs. What questions do you have for me? >> Yeah. Yeah. Let's start down here. Any Pat, do you have any questions? >> Um, very cool, very impressive. We're seeing we saw a little spike and maybe some of the numbers were coming back down just a little bit. Any any >> what's what's the data telling us? >> D is telling us we still have kids. We're still offering those courses. We just cannot offer them as transcripted courses in particular because we just don't have staff that are certified. So, some of them we are looking at, can we get reertification or

053get a a support a teacher in that? The other thing is some of those we are actually looking at potentially shifting to an AP course. So example chemistry and physics. Um Miss Hoody that we hired to replace Miss Padre is looking at do we actually not do transcripted chemistry is an AP chemistry something that our current student body is more interested in. So that's one of them that we're looking at. And then depending on how AP chemistry goes then we'll look at the AP physics. right now to ask a teacher to go back and get 18 credits in chemistry and 18 credits in physics with a young family. She's on maternity leave right now like that's just really tough to do, right? So, we're looking at how do we fill those. We still are offering

054the classes. They're just not that dual enrollment right now. >> Thank you. >> Uh great great information. It's super great to see all the different things that we do to um offer different opportunities. I know we're talking about career planning and stuff. So, goes directly into that, but also saves our families money. Um, I really like slide 13, which is our one year out data. We do ask about that a lot. And what I noticed about that was um even though the response rate was really different, it was really consistently um the data was still really consistent. About 13 to 14% of our students end up not attending some post-secary institution. That's been since 2022. So, it's good to kind of have a little validation that, you know, kind of what we're doing. This is

055pretty consistent with um what's happening with our kids out once they leave here. So, I appreciate all this. It looks great. I do know the change over and staff and stuff like that is one of the things that we're going to always have that eb and flow and um and that's okay. So, thank you, >> Vicki. >> I don't have any questions. Seeing the total numbers since 2018, that's a That's a big number. And yeah, I echo the the one-year data. I think that's amazing that here we are, it's April and we've already got 80% response, which is amazing to see that yeah, those kids, those numbers are consistent, but that Mr. Kirk has been able to get >> right, capture more more students, >> get that data and keep track of those kids. So

056that's amazing. >> Um, no questions really, just a statement. This and speaks volumes to our entire staff because even the UW, um, I just speaks from personal experience cuz my kid, even the UW, she went to college, but her her teachers here supported her. Her the staff here supported her as well. So her being able to do that and like still have that safety net underneath while they cuz yep, they want to go to college, but they're still 18, right? So or 17 or whatever. So, it's just a great program that our staff does amazing. Um, supports amazingly. So, yeah. And we can save money. It's just a great thing. So, >> um, yeah, I feel grateful to have had the opportunity to advance my education through these dual enrollment programs. So, >> yeah, good

057job, Michael. What else we What else do you have for us? >> So, now the plan itself is linked here. The plan is a multi-page Google document. Um, it was a template that were given by the state. They have different things like who is on your team, how do you and I'm just going to pull out a couple of them. So, a couple things I wanted to talk about. I don't know if it's delayed or if it just uh went to sleep on me. >> There you go. >> Okay. So, community partnerships. So, this is this is a big one, right? How do how can we support all it takes the whole community, right? So, here are our community partnerships that we have this year, you know, from Wisconsin, First National, Casco. Um, you know,

058I'm not going to read all of them on there. our partnerships with the universities and technical colleges, the Prescott Public Library, DCTC, right? We've got a lot of great partnerships. So, for me to be able to stand up here and say it's great staff, it's great students, it's a great community, right? It's a it's the community that puts this on. So, again, we're going to continue to work on building out those partnerships and even more partnerships and get more regional partnerships. Um, but we have a really great base and a great start and a lot of support from our community. So, we thank them for that. Um some of the other part is just what does ACP really do for our kids. I just have a few highlights here of students that have been recognized

059either um you know uh Mr. Ro there at Cesaw 11 uh was recognized within our you know all of Western Wisconsin AJ for the youth apprenticeship and the things that he's doing there. um you know we have the Prescott technology um technology education and what are we doing with R5 manufacturing and those things and then I was talking about Sydney her here this was Chipo Valley Technical College this was in their own um out uh what they put out is their newsletter about how we have this high school kid from Prescott that is gra before they graduate they already have a business management program under their belt like just great things that are happening and for our kiddos that don't go through a whole program there's a lot of great benefits to that too, right?

060These are just a few of them that I wanted to highlight. Um, and then the last part that I want to talk about in the plan is really that family engagement. And as we met as a group, as we looked at our plan, our plans fine. We are covering the things we're supposed to cover, but there's always room for improvement. And this is one of those areas of our family engagement. How engaged really are our our parents, right? So, we have back to school activities, freshman orientation, financial aid nights. Um, are we really capturing our family? How do we get this story out to our families, right? And how do we get them involved in it as well? You know, we've had a number of parents that were at Mad City Money this year. That

061was great to see that we have community members that are volunteering and doing those things. We have the academic breakfast. Our community can be part of scholarship night. Um, so there are other opportunities for our staff and part of the plans is if you are interested, reach out to us. We'd love to partner with you. We'd love to have you here in one capacity or another because there is a lot of expertise in our community. Um, everyone's got a career and being able to share that career path with our students is very important. Um, you know, one of the things we talked about is looking at different careers um and and former graduates. And I was just talking this morning with Miss Mayo and Miss Vanessa Mayan, one of our high school counselors. Um, she

062did the lion share of the lift on this. She was fabulous on this. But we were talking about areas where we could potentially improve. And we talked about who are recent Prescott graduates and and River Hughes and Rihanna Hadler came to mind for me. And those are both Prescott graduates, former students of mine that are artists. And how many artists do we have come in and talk about a career as an artist? And here we have two within our own community that and I'm sure there's more than that, but those I could come up with off top of my head cuz I'm Facebook friends with them and pops up every once in a while, right? So, you know, what are those and can we be reach part of that one year out survey? You know,

063can that be part of it where we have those kids coming back and our kids learning from them. Um, last part is again the ECP plan that you you guys are actually approving is this whole slide deck, which a lot of the other stuff refers to this slide deck just because we didn't want to make it that way. Just so you know, um, CISA 11, Mike um, Zamadus up at CIS 11 does the academic and career planning for us. He reviewed our plan and we asked them to review it in terms of compliance. Are we compliant? because a lot of a lot of schools did their plan back in 2017 like we did and then co hit and it kind of sat. Um so we had we shared our plan with him. Um and this

064is the uh feedback that he gave. He said if I had to rate this plan I would rate this plan as exemplar with Wisconsin DPI plan. He goes on further to say he is interested in having DPI is interested in using our plan to post on their website and use an exemplar for other districts if the board gives them permission. >> No. >> So I don't know. So with that, do you want to adjust or change anything within the plan? >> I feel you should read it over even more carefully. No, I don't think I think this, >> you know, so two so so and really this goes back to our staff. Yes, Vanessa Mayo did a big heavy lift, but really all of our staff, all of our P pl PLC's were part of

065this. We started this two months ago of this review and then updating our numbers and pulling that data from, you know, multiple different sources and whatnot. But really, our all of our staff are reflected within this plan. We're all part of it. It's not just the counselors. It's not just the CTE teachers. It's everyone. Um, and that's part of our goals going forward. And you see that part of our plan is to make sure that we all understand just like we talk about all students are all of our students. ACP is all of us. All of us get kids ready for what their next step is out of out of Prescott High School. It's not just the high school. It's not just a particular department. It's everyone all the way down to kindergarten and 4K.

066Really getting our kids ready. So kudos to the Prescott staff for what we have and again there's always room for improvement and you see that as part of the plan of you know better communication, more partnerships and then more professional development really for our staff so that they see themselves in it because this review activity really did help them with that and now how do we take it to the next step besides for it's just a concept or a plan. >> Helen, do you have any comments on this? No, I I don't I don't think you can have compliment. >> No, I don't. I don't think you can't top that. That's good. >> Down here. >> What a compliment from CISA 11 there. So, that's that's great. Um, this looks great. I read through um

067the plan and it looks like basically it's all these kind of slides put into um paragraph form, if you will. A lot of it a lot of it is that and then narrative of how are we supporting students in our counseling office and counseling programs also professional development for our staff and things like that. So it is very detailed and laid out and again there is a goal section and next steps for us and that was something that this group um >> we spent a lot of time talking about that because we know that >> we have all these great things we rake them together but we can always get better. >> Yeah. Yeah. I do think um coming from a high school and working here in a high school it you this high school

068does a really good job the middle school to high school um of having a lot of different opportunities that align with post-secary career opportunities. So um you know our R5 we've talked a lot about tonight that's just really one good example that are really career paths for students and um also it's really nice having WRF right next to us CBTC. So, we've got some really great opportunities. This looks great. Thanks to Vanessa. Sounds like she put a lot of work into this and that's that's great. Thank you. >> No, well done. No questions. >> Yeah. Um, none of this works without the staff and the quality of the staff that we have that have the degrees and the passion to do what they do um for especially for the post-secary classes that you need to

069have certain qualifications for. and I just I it starts with them and Michael, you do a great job organizing and getting it presentable for us. So, we appreciate appreciate every one of you. Thank you. >> So, this is the first time we're approving this one. I assume this is going to be an annual improvement. >> Kind of an annual next year. We'll just get the updates. >> Yep. No, be a lot faster. >> Yep. >> Okay. So, we'll take a >> I move to approve the academic and career planning report. I'll second >> motion and a second there. All in favor? I >> I opposed. >> That carries. Thanks, Michael. >> And the only other part I didn't hear a resounding no. >> Go ahead. >> DPI to use ours as an exemplar. So, go

070for it. >> My my encouragement would be a yes because the more people hear about the great things we're doing in Prescott, >> the more they want to come here. >> Yep. That was my thought. Exactly. >> You guys win. All right, we'll move on. Item H is the approval of staff compensation for 26 27th school year. >> More numbers. >> All right. Um so we've been talking about compensation for the last I feel like couple board meetings. And tonight we're here to um give kind of the general overview of uh what we talked about during the work session and do a recommendation for you guys. So, oh, you control the last time. Okay. So, as I go through this, one of the things I have continued to do is give you the overview of

071the pieces that are built into the Baron model. So, you kind of know where we're starting from, right? So, the compensation and benefits really represent the largest portion of the budget. And so that's, you know, one of our main focuses on making sure that that's going to align. Um medical increases are projected at 4.6% for this next school year. And going forward, obviously, we map out for years to come. And so I have a 12% medical and a 2% dental. Um, we also I put in the model a 2.5% annual increase for compensation across the board and that would begin in 2728. And just know like I put that in there so I can build out numbers, but that does not like mean I'm planning on giving this percentage as a recommendation going forward or

072would even be guaranteed that they would get that, right? Um, so that's just for planning purposes. Uh this also includes a $110 or $110,000 um dollar reduction for the intermediate school starting in the 2728 school year. um our normal like budgetary process. Uh we haven't dug into that completely yet, but that um as we examine all of our expenditures throughout this year and expenses going forward, such as diesel fuel um and our third party consultants and things like that, we'll be evaluating those numbers and making sure that they are up to date going forward. But as you know, compensation is the largest part. So, if we're off a little bit in that, we can still um get in alignment with our budget. >> Ashley, just really quick on the 110K for the reduction that we're

073just just for the public. That's that's assuming that building stays as a building within the portfolio. It's being used, but it's not used for academic purposes. >> Correct. >> Right. Okay. Um, and this model that we're going to showcase is like I haven't made any reductions or cuts or anything in the budget going forward at this time. Um, do know over the next couple years. We obviously don't know what enrollment will look like, but um, so we mapped out with the study and things like that, but there could be adjustments just to the budget and um, staffing and things aligned with that to come. Okay. So, in our workshop, um, we went through a variety of different packages and one of the the final package that I felt like you guys landed on um consisted

074of a 3% increase to um our pretty much across the board, right? And so with the 3% increase, we also wanted to acknowledge uh the bastard the excuse me, the mast's categories. Um and those categories we added an additional 63% to. Um we also talked about a longevity stipen and so that stipen is for $1,000. That would happen um starting your 11th year. Now with those 3% and 3.6 3% um we did increase the starting salary the base for that with a 1.5% with a bachelor's and a 2% with masters. This is the um the information we pulled out of the Baron model. That is how we have been uh working through our numbers in the um financial uh data out of Skyward and into the bar model. We uh work with them very close

075and um again after our meeting last week we followed up with them to rerun to make sure that those numbers were in alignment. Um when we had tax previously that number of 14.26 26 is where we end at the 2829. Um that was 14.75. And so that is a little bit of a different um number there, but we did have, you know, I I feel confident on where like the medical numbers are coming in and also just did um you know, I budgeted a little over for some of those stipens and things like that to make sure that um individuals who are going to continue to get their masters, we can plan for that accordingly. This is broken down maybe a little bit more familiar. This is what you guys have seen um previously. Um

076with this application, we want to be transparent as to how we are applying this, right? There is a variety of different ways that um percentages can be applied. So these increases are simply utilizing the 2526 salary schedule. So we took that and we applied the increase to the 3% and the 3.63 for the different lanes and across the existing schedule and then we adjusted all of the steps forward reflecting that progression. So each employee will advance the one step for total compensation of 3% or 3.63%. 63%. Um, so if you're looking at it for like an example, if I was on step B this year, uh, at $45,173, I will be on step C for the 2627 school year, and this is the bachelor's. Um, and I will be at $46,528, which is 3% more

077than last year. This concept was applied to all of the different schedules, the salary schedules, so everyone was even across the board that way. Um, this just digs into the longevity siphon that we have talked about. Um, so this would be during the 11th year, meaning you have been in the district for 10 years. This isn't just 10 years in education, it's 10 years with Prescott. And that is like we're still working out the logistics, but we built this into the model for you. So such as do we give that check every year in March? What does that look like? But remember that this will be an annual expense. So I have planned for this going forward for every year. Um also note during the workshop we did talk about uh combination of milestones and

07810 year plus. Um at this time my recommendation is to just go with the uh longevity after 10 years. Um but know that next year I would like to look into it more. Um, we talked about the salary schedule as well and maybe even combining them, but at this time I didn't feel comfortable uh changing all of that. And I also want to be able to map things out going forward too. And the support staff are not in this model as well. That will be something. Um I know or I'm under the understanding that last year there were some changes to some of those categories and this year it was more of the focus on masters and longevity. The handbook language um will be updated to match this um and that will be for June.

079And then I just the next two slides um are of the adjustments in the salary. >> Are we ready for questions? >> Absolutely. >> All right. Um, who wants to start here? Anybody burn any questions? Pat, do you want to >> Sure. >> Go ahead. >> Yeah. Um, looking at me. So, do you um obviously we had a a good workshop last week about this. Um, thank you for for putting this together and and tightening up some of the things we that we took a look at. That was um that's awesome. I I think you know for me, Mike, I don't know how many questions I have. Everything that has been modeled has been discussed. Um for me what we did is um you know when we look at the when we look at the

080bar model that takes us out you know into the 20 um the you know time frame. Just a couple of things to note right this um as it relates to our deficit spending and our fund uh balance at the end of the next bianium right as we all know we're at this 14.26 too sick. That is that is below um below the board uh policy. Um but it does get us to where we promised everybody we would get um at the last referendum, which was uh to get us out two more uh budget cycles to better understand how uh the state was going to continue to fund public education and um uh invest in our salaries and and I believe this model does it. So, it's it's I for me it's it's comfortably uncomfortable um

081frankly, but um it's where we said it was going to be and and uh I personally support the 3% across the board and the 3.63 for the masters. And I do like the fact that we're including the longevity. So, um I don't really have any questions, but I appreciate the information. Okay. >> Yeah. Go ahead. >> I like your phrase comfortably uncomfortable. Um that 14.26 26 makes me a little uncomfortable, but um I'm comfortable with the fact that um as people retire, we're going to do everything we can to um save some money and absorb some positions through attrition. Um whether it be somebody moving out of the district or retiring um as well as as much as possible adjust some of those smaller numbers. Um, you know, I think we can be I think

082we'll be at 20% in 28 29. I don't know. Diesel fuel's gone up from $3.60 a gallon to $5.20 a gallon in the last month. Um, so I I can't predict that far in the future. Um, but I I I'm comfortably uncomfortable that I think we'll be at 20% 28 29. Um, >> anything else? >> No, I I appreciate I think we share that >> share the sentiment and the goal. Yep. >> Tanya. >> Um, yep. I echoing Pat. We did a work session on this. This is kind of what we had asked for. I think the longevity was the one kind of question. So, I I hear your recommendation there. Um, I had a question. Uh you had mentioned just moving the starting for uh bachelors and masters 1.5 and 2%. Was that based

083on kind of compare our comparison districts to kind of get them to those similar starting areas or or why the 1.5 and 2%. Because if I took this year's starting >> Yeah. >> and I added the 3%. And I gave that to the new teachers Yeah. our brand new teachers for the 2627 would make the same dollar amount as our first year teachers in the 2627. And so while I I went with those numbers because >> I felt like half and two% for the masters. >> Um and Jim and I talked about it. Um I felt like there should be a step there. >> Yeah. Yep. And then um that kind of leads onto the next kind of I guess question, not really question um just uh for people that weren't there um last week.

084You mentioned that that salary schedule, that overall being charted salary schedule that that's you know, we notice that there's some um movement that's less equal than other spots throughout that. And so that was something that you were going to look at in the following year um to kind of wrap your head around that a little bit more and maybe even even that out a little bit. Is that still kind of the plan? >> 100%. And that was part of the reason why, you know, we decided to shift down instead of add and and adjust because there were differences of like a dollar and $1,000. And that didn't make sense. It wasn't connected to longevity or things along those lines. And so, um, this allowed everybody to get that 3%. And that wasn't the case, um,

085if we would have done this. >> And I think that that's just something to share with staff, too, that there's still more to come with the work within our salary schedule that, um, kind of that first part of differentiating with our masters and our bachelors and kind of giving those increases, but also we recognize that this is a little wonky. And, um, that'll give you some time to look at that. And then the last thing I bring it up all the time, but I didn't hear anything about the specialist degree. Did you guys talk to anything else about that? >> So, we we reached out to CISA 11. >> Yep. >> It's a small group of people. Um, so it's possible to discuss that in close session coming up in the next couple months. But,

086um, >> CI1's putting a field in the a poll in the field for us on that um on those specific positions and where we're at. They don't currently have data for us, so we're waiting for that information to come back. A quick note on the M's bump. Um, half of 3.6 is 1.8. We did go with 2% on the base because one of the things the board communicated to us and our staff communicated was we needed to pay extra attention to the mast's uh column on that. So it's a little higher than than what it would be if you just did the math and divide it in half so that the masters going forward will will carry that through. But yeah, we will >> perfect. >> You may hear on that. Yeah. >> Yeah. Thanks.

087>> Good. >> Yeah. >> Um I sorry. Um I I support the three and the 3.6. Um time to kind of ask some of the questions that I was thinking. So I don't think I have much more. Vicki. >> So when I'm looking at the bear forecast model, what I'm seeing is which we hadn't seen before is we see our enrollment numbers go down with each year. Are these kind of based off of you're you're looking really at the grade grade that's graduating and just kind of a rough estimate of what we think is coming in because I know as far as 4K and kindergarten like we're our staff and especially the uh they're really good at tracking who's got little brothers, little sisters, who's coming in. So, is that based off of what we

088have right now and just kind of shifting all of that with the graduation? >> So, yeah, jumping jumping back a few months, um, when we did the APL thing, they gave us three different ways to calculate our numbers. Uh, working as an admin team, we double weighted our actual counts. So we took the we took the APL projection counted that as a third of the weight and then took our actual counts and our actual little brothers and gave that twice the weight. So 2/3 of the weight and that's what we use for projection. Um ideally you know every kid state of Wisconsin system is broken. and it's been broken since 1995, but every kid that comes in would cut our deficit um by roughly $12,600. So, um we're being conservative a little bit, but those

089are the numbers that the experts gave us. Well, and that's that's what we didn't have before. And and this, I think, is super helpful, I think, to have those numbers and to see that fluctuation with those student numbers worked into this budget and and what we're looking at because just like the fuel costs, all of that, we see those numbers moving around. This gives us an indication of that moving around. This is, you know, this might be the worst case scenario in 2829 that we're down to 1,115, but what if we do have all of a sudden houses, interest rate goes down, houses sell, people are like, "Yay, here we come." And we do get five, six, 10 more kids. Like that helps us out right there and makes that 14 26 a little less.

090Yeah. And the other the other thing too is this assumes the uh per pupil mandate or per pupil increase, sorry, uh that signed into effect for 400 years and you've heard all about that of 325. But a lot of this depends on the November election and what happens after the November election as well. Um, but as of April 15th, these are by far the best numbers we can give you. And Ashley did a great job working with at least from Baird um and our CI 11 partners to get as close as humanly possible. >> Looks good. Thank you. >> Uh Ashley, I got a couple of things here. First, I I just want to call this out. None of this is possible uh without the support of the community on the in the 2024 referendum

091that passed. We we've been working on this for years. Uh this is a multi a multi-year effort uh by the board to try to close the gap as we kind of put it during the during the referendum. So we we took care part of it last year. We addressed I felt like we addressed last year most um it was it was increasing the pay across the board. But you know I think the the the entry level tier kind of benefited the most from that. So this year we wanted to focus most we wanted to put an an additional emphasis on the masters because there was a gap there that needs to be closed and that so the rationale on why why why is masters getting more than bachelors. Well last year we kind of addressed

092bachelors as best as we could to close a gap. Masters was was this year and um the the next piece I'll just comment on. And we we looked at many scenarios on this longevity thing. I think that was a thing that kept coming up is how do you reward staff that have been here for years and and this is a practice that other districts use. We like it. Uh we talked about many scenarios. I think we started this was the one that we felt we could accomplish with the with the funds that we have confidently moving forward and not have to make adjustments down the road if if things don't go well for us from a from a cash flow perspective. So, I think that the sweet spot for us to start with anyways was

093$1,000 after 10 years of service. Um, and I I I'm really happy about that because I think that's it's a nice a nice uh little little bit of money to to come in for for each person that's been here that gets that they get that that as one big check versus getting it spread out over many checks where it doesn't feel like it it's as big of a deal. Whereas, if you get a stipen, uh, it it it means something. So, I I I was I was glad we were able to to put put that in there. Um, a couple other comments here. The the three why 3.63? The CPI was 2.63, right? That's that's where we came up with that. So, people are wondering why why 3.63? What's that? >> 2.63 was the CPI.

094So, that was kind of the average. >> I don't know if it's the average raise that people get, but that's what we that's what most districts based off of, right? >> A lot of districts aren't even given CPI >> this year. So, there's there's quite a few of those that we learned about. Um, and I I'd also just like to comment, Jim, I appreciate you you calling that out. Every model that we want that we talked about last week kind of landed in that that 2829 school year was where we were going to really need to to take a look at. We're going to need a plan before that, but that's we we felt like we could get there with those referendum dollars to 2029, which is exactly what we had projected when we were

095going to referendum in 2024. And that's what we communicated out. I'm sure people are going to forget by 2829. And we we'll have to reexlain to how we got to that point. Uh but every model that we got to, we kind of last week we kind of played around how far down do we want to go. I appreciate Jim's comments about trying to, you know, we're going to, we think we can get close to 20%, which is where we want to, which is kind of the floor of our our fund balance. That's how we base all of our decisions off of or a lot of it is based off that that fund balance to have there. So, we'll we'll continue to hopefully track that over the course of the next year and or two years

096uh to get us to that point. Um, and lastly, the one thing that wasn't included in the previous projection when we went to referendum in 2024 was that enrollment decline. We we were able to push that put that in here because we did a a the applied math or what the applied math >> applied population. Now, I'm going back to my days of stout. Thank you. Um, the applied population study that that was done. So, and and the population study clearly shows there's a decline in enrollment. It's not just Prescott, it's everywhere. But we were able to take that data along with uh some of the other the other tactics that were used to to give us information to try to trend out the the declining enrollment in our projections. So hopefully that helps. I

097think you know it was planned th this data that was that was brought into us last week was so well presented and I'm saying this publicly because I want I want to acknowledge this but we have a new person here that that's speaking to us from finances. We got a new superintendent that's been here for 9 months and they presented some of the data to us in such a great way that we had such a healthy discussion. We were able to crank through at least five different scenarios. It might have been more as we kind of were going through it on the fly. And it it it really made it for a very healthy, productive workshop that we got to this point uh for tonight. So, we could feel very confident, as confident as we

098can be knowing the the structure of Wisconsin state politics and finance. Uh as confident as we can be to to make a decision to be comfortably uncomfortable. I love that, by the way, where we feel like we can try to do the most that we can do for the staff that we have that deserve this. And I just I think it was it's it's it's all coming together here. We'll we'll continue to monitor year after year until we get to this point, but I feel this is a this is a great step forward for Prescott to help us be competitive across the the the school our neighboring school districts. >> Well said. Good job. >> A lot a lot of words there. Uh it's probably the most I could speak at one time. So, um

099anything else anybody want to comment on before we move this? >> I'll just say that Ashley's been with us for not quite 4 months. >> So, so yeah, who knows? >> I mean, we threw her right into the fire. >> Yeah, we did. >> Well, thank you. >> And uh Yeah. So neither have been here an entire year and have done a fantastic job and have helped us out tremendously, given us what we've asked for and made it easy to understand, easy to follow. So appreciate the hard work both you guys have done. >> All right, that's great. Thank you, Ashley. If we want to make a motion here. >> Yeah, I'll let somebody else do it. Um I move to approve staff compensation for 2627 school year consisting of a 3% raise for all

100staff raising the certified teacher pay schedule by an additional 63% in the masters category and pay all certified staff an annual stipend of $1,000 starting with their 11th year of continuous service. >> I'll second. >> We have a motion a second. All in favor? I >> I >> opposed. That carries. Well done. Thank you. We're going to move on to info and discussion as we close out business. First one is summer buildings and grounds. I'm sorry. I feel like he's he actually is here. >> Yeah. Mike Hike is going to come up and talk a little bit about um as I mentioned earlier, we have our custodial staff in place. Um we've had some medical leaves uh but we're slowly transitioning to Adam roll as uh and Mike is working together. So Mike will see

101us through the end of June and then Adam will pick up uh July uh July 1. All right. I'll just kind of um little briefly go over um and our projects that uh are under the category of referendum fun 49. Um some of that have been completed. Um install a cabinet heater at uh the middle school. Uh repainted the gym floor. We did that over spring break at the Malone Elementary. Uh those projects have been done. Uh, another fun 49 project will be replacing the floor and five classrooms at the elementary and that will start taking place in June, June 8th, right after school's out. Um, some fun 46 projects. Uh, we had an air dryer in the shop here we had to replace. Um, maintaining our storm water pond, we can get that taken

102care of. Um, we had to replace the drive wheels on the bleachers at the high school. Some of these projects, we were able to get them in earlier than in the summer. Some of the contractors said we got openings right now. So, that's why some of these summer projects are already kind of done. So, uh, sand and seal the gym floor at the high school that will take care of in July. Some other projects that are, uh, pending out there, pricing, issuing appeal. Um, we got to replace the whole door frame and door assembly and hardware. Door number two, which is the heaviest used door in Mullen Elementary. Um, that will be this summer. Uh, annual gym equip equipment inspection might be this summer, could be in the fall, depends on we can get them

103scheduled in. Um Andy has uh a bunch of battery bad battery battery backup units that for his networking he needs some uh receptacles put in. We just went around with them today. We're going to get we'll get pricing on that. Should be within our budget that we can take care of. We always got a little parking lot repairs to do. Uh we got a bunch of dead trees we got to take care of. Um and actually we got those beds and they come under what we're estimating. So that that will be good. Um and then of course the the big thing the R5 manufacturing u uh storage shed up here. Uh cow reached out to the low biders on the floor uh excuse me on the storage shed themselves. Those prices are good. The site

104work prices are still good for electrical work looks like it's going to come in where we'd want it. Um we're still waiting on a big ticket item. pass the concrete for it. So, but even at that estimating we're still going to be under um in the fund 46 there was 125,000 earmarked for that shed and even with our contingency that we're thinking we still should be under that. So, >> okay. >> So, this is a project I think we should definitely move forward this spring. >> Does that include kind of an estimate on concrete, Mike, or like >> at the 125? >> Yeah. >> Yes. >> Okay. Yep. Yeah. Kind of right where we are right now. We're probably about just under 90,000 and we haven't had we haven't had that contract or any contingency

105in that. So, we should be should be fine. So, and uh um just another thing I kind of had put on that uh long range 46 spreadsheet stuff for fun 49 relating to the 125 elm. I just left it on there and just put it on hold until we find final determination of that building. So, it's it's kind of earmarked there. So, if we keep it, not keep it, we you know, that's determined what we're going to do with that. So, um >> Mike, that's the stuff in the green, >> but that that's the stuff. >> That's the stuff in the green. Yeah, that's that's all um on hold. So, um, and then some of the other stuff that's on there under the blue future pending projects, that's just stuff we're looking at. It might

106be this year, it might be next year. Um, some of what we have on there, we're trying to find some better pricing for. So, um, that's, uh, about it on that. Pat, you have any other questions? Really, no questions. just um just I know you will, but we promised Matt Wolf that we would make sure that we go through their permitting process for the shed, right? >> Oh, yeah. Definitely. Yeah. And we we reached out to them in the very beginning. >> Yeah. >> Um cuz about the the setback and stuff. >> That's right. That's right. Yeah. >> Yeah. So, we we met with them right away ahead of time to make sure that whatever we're discussing, we're not going to be in any future road rightways. So, yes. um permits we'll either uh go

107up there and apply for them ourselves more than likely probably be through the uh flooring contractor or not flooring the whole shed contractor. So all right thanks Mike. >> Yeah. I don't really have any questions. Thank you. >> All right Vicki >> I got nothing for you Mike but >> All right. >> Nice to see you again. I haven't seen you for a few months so it's been quiet. That's good. >> Yeah. >> No questions. >> Mike, with the middle or the the intermediate school stuff, the stuff that was highlighted in green. >> Yep. >> That that looks to be about just south of 800K. Does that sound about right? >> Yep. >> And so I mean it includes a a roof and and then it looks like some >> there's a Yeah. two two

108expensive things uh would be the roof down there, you know, and that's, you know, probably something, you know, if you kept the billing, it would have to be done probably in 2030. That rooftop unit, that's probably something that's more uh in the line of the next year or two that you'd have to deal with. So, >> okay. So, >> and that's the makeup air unit for the whole threetory part of the building with the humidification. So, so >> Okay. So >> yeah, just >> so if we continue on as an academic building, then we have to then we have to seriously look at that. If it's going to be used somewhere else, we can do other things for air exchange. So >> Okay, great. Uh the list is getting shorter. >> So yeah, >> all

109right. Thanks. Thanks, Mike. >> Anything else here, Jim? You good? >> I'm good. Thank you. >> All right. Thank Thanks, Mike. >> Thank you, Mike. >> Yep. And then I think we could move on to item B, virtual charter school exploration. >> I thought we did this. >> Mr. Figgy uh is putting forth this proposal for the board's consideration information now and possible consideration at a future board meeting. >> Josh, there's a clicker right there for you. >> Thank you. You guys are sad for a long time. Do you want to get up and do some burpees? >> Yeah. Half hour and a half. This is short. >> This is Well, there's been a lot of heavy stuff on this tonight, too. So, >> I know Kaden wants to do burpees. All right. Um, so

110let's see. We're We're coming to you again. I think we two two or three years ago, we actually explored this a little bit. Um, we did kind of a cursory exploration at that time. We didn't really feel like there was um it wasn't the right time. we didn't have some of the right pieces in place and and maybe our purpose wasn't fully realized yet. Um we're coming back tonight with more of a recommendation and I think a stronger purpose than we've had in the past. Um to explore and potentially um adopt a charter to add a virtual charter school into our district. And even though Mr. Cosmos and Mr. Reef have consistently asked me if I'm really married to the name River's Edge Virtual Academy, which I'm not. That's what we're going to call it

111right now for the sake of the presentation. Um, so just a quick overview for people who maybe don't know um what a virtual charter school is um and why you would need a virtual charter. Um, in this case, River's Edge Virtual Reva um would be a 6 through2 virtual charter um that would run virtually for students. So, um, it would be 100% tuition free, but it would also be 100% virtual. And the reason it's a charter is because it allows us to, um, recruit out of district students. And the only way to recruit out of district students that aren't going to set foot on your physical property during the school day is to actually adopt a virtual charter. Um, and so while our enrollment would primarily be looking at open enrolled students, it would also

112appeal to other students that we have in district right now that have historically even uh either open enrolled out or maybe have been homeschooled or even some of our own students who are going through um just a different educational pathway and could benefit from some of the flexibility that a virtual charter could afford. Um, so I'm going to get into some of of the um aspects of this, but I know there's going to be a lot of questions that come along with it. So hopefully I can um kind of hit the 5,000 ft level and then you guys can really just tear me apart up here for what this is. Um, why are we recommending a virtual charter in the first place? And I kind of inkled at this a little bit already. Um first

113off we have a number of students and this has grown at the 6 through 12 level in the past 5 years um really since co looking for flexibility. We have a number of students who yearly are opening out of our district and seeking um an education uh at a virtual school in small districts like Elmwood, large districts like St. Roy Central, um I4 through Gransburg, um because we don't currently offer the ability to have this type of flexibility for them. Um we also have some surrounding districts like Elwood who offer a virtual uh charter school who get an influx of more than $250,000 more in the per pupil funding because they simply offer a virtual charter. So, we're also looking to not only retain our current students, but we're also looking to recruit more students.

114And I think one of the themes we've heard tonight both at the listening session and in some of our numbers is we have lowering enrollment like the majority of Wisconsin districts and we're not in charge of building more homes. So this is a way that we could recruit more pupils into our district. Um one of the other things that we typically experience and I think it's more so at the high school and Mr. from Montreal can attest to this is we do have a lot of students who will seek educational opportunities through a virtual school outside of the district and then at the end of the year or a year later or two years later will come back to us credit deficient um because they're going through a system that is really profit driven and

115is not monitoring their academic performance like we would and then drops them before graduation and we're really scrambling to try and help those students get back on track. Um so it gives us some local control in how we deliver that program to students. Um so that's kind of our strategic value and our purpose for bringing this to you. Um and we think that we have a number of students who are currently in district even who are um already open enrolled or who are open or who are homeschooled students who would benefit from this. Um what does this look like though? Because I think that's going to be the crux of this and um we have kind of two two facets to this. We have an existing partnership with Ed Options Academy. That's something that we

116have had for about 8 years now. Um we have students who take ad options classes, these virtual classes that are delivered by a Wisconsin licensed teacher. Um because we have a course conflict because we don't offer that uh course inhouse because of the size of our district. Um so we already have a pretty rich partnership with them. We also deliver courses in the summer for students to take summer school or do credit recovery through ad options. Um, and this is something they've partnered with other schools nationwide to help deliver and they actually have a model of how to implement this into a virtual charter into Wisconsin schools. The other thing we have is we do have teaching staff that periodically based on schedules and student requests will have an open period in their day for

117certain terms. And one of the things I've discussed with our uh PLC leaders is um whether they would be interested in taking on some virtual management, some virtual classes and teaching some of those or managing the learning and communication of those when those um when those gaps emerge. And the response from our leaders was they they felt like a lot of teachers would be very interested in that and um doing some virtual teaching and that would keep some of our staff especially as enrollment dips down. That would be a stop gap to keep some of our staff that could be falling down to like a 08 or a seven um position. It could keep them at a 100% in the years to come if our enrollment continues to trend down. So, it's got kind of

118an ancillary benefit for some of our staff as well. Um there is a difference. So for the uninitiated into virtual charters versus traditional schools, um it's really all bets are off with a virtual charter and it comes down to how you want to structure it. So you really have to be careful of how you structure the the school. Um and you can kind of see the sideby-side comparison here. A traditional school is is very synchronous. It's teacherled. Um it's dictated by the Department of Public Instruction. We have a certain amount of of hours we need to meet each year. Grades are delivered a certain way. We obviously have a fixed bell schedule and on the other side uh a virtual charter is asynchronous. It's self-paced by the students although we have uh learner manage managers

119on our side and teachers who are keeping students on pace. But um a good example is I have a student right now who's working virtually who um works part of the day and then I can see that every evening she does 4 hours of work from about 5:00 to 9:00. And when we communicate, that's just the time of day that she says works best for her. Um it's more standards based and um students can work ahead and once they meet the standard, they move on. Um one of the things and we did an exploration call with a couple of different virtual charters that are operating across Wisconsin. Um really crucial was Glenn Webb who started two of these. He started one in St. Croy Central. It's got about 250 current students and then he's currently

120managing the one in Elmwood. um they have about 25 students right now. Um so really crucial is understanding what um the purpose of this is and how you can deliver the outcomes. And one of the things that he advocated for and talked to us about is the credits that go into a virtual charter versus an on-site school. So you can kind of see for a student to earn a diploma through Prescott High School and that is our on-site uh district-driven high school, it's 64 credits over four years. Um we have we're proposing a 40 credit diploma through this external virtual school. They would not get a Prescott diploma. They would get a virtual charter school reva diploma that it would be 40 credits. And the state of Wisconsin, the minimum, and some high schools actually

121abide by this, is 34 credits. So we far exceed the amount of credits on a traditional high school that are required by the state. We did not want to meet the bare minimum. So, we exceeded that by another six credits because we want students, if this is going to be something that we pursue, we don't want this to be, and excuse the term, the puppy mill of virtual education where we're just churning students through for a profit and we're not worried about academics. So, we wanted to set students up for um success that if they wanted to go to a 4-year or a 2-year or the workforce or the military um that they would not only have the skills necessary, but that their transcript would look good enough that they would be accepted into a

122UW school. And even the UW system will accept a 34 credit student application. It's not as competitive obviously if you graduate under the traditional system. Um so, again, we added the the six credits on top of that. Um, again, this doesn't there's no facility that needs to go into this. Um, and the geography is often is is really going to be for open enrolled students um offsite. Um, probably the biggest question that I'm guessing this group would have is what do we need to do for this? What are the what are the risks and what's the liability? How does this look? Um, it is a little complex. So, the way that Wisconsin writes their rules for virtual charter schools assumes that an external entity is approaching you as the school board to contract with them

123and allow allow them to operate within our school district. And that's just not the way it happens. More than 90% of the virtual charters out there are doing what I'm proposing right now. It's the school district trying to start their own virtual charter so they can recruit more students into the district. Um, but we still need to operate under the rules if we're going to do this that the state sets out. So, the state sets out that you as the school board would have authorization of the charter, which is the contract, and you would have ultimate oversight. And really what that means is that yearly the virtual charter would be would report to you on the academic performance of the students, the financial performance and management of that school and the legal liabilities or legal

124issues which would hopefully be none that emerge during the year. the rest of the operations actually falls to an external governance council that needs to be made up of a group of stakeholders within the virtual charter. Um so we again in talking with some of the people who have done this they recommended seven to nine members. My recommendation would be we would go on the smaller side with seven. Uh my recommendation would be that three of those members are actually made up of school district employees and I think like Michael Cosmolski would be a natural choice, an administrator would be a natural choice. I'm just I'm voluntelling him. He doesn't know this. And and then a teacher and hopefully a teacher who is actually working within the virtual charter um or at least part-time within

125the virtual charter. The remainder of the um members need to be made up of either a community member or my my recommendation would be three of those should be parents of students who were in the virtual charter. Much like you guys are stakeholders who have students or have students who have gone through the the Prescott School District. Um I think our best partnership model would be having parents who are tied into this virtual charter and have an invested interest in the success. um they have autonomy over the daily operations. They manage the budget. They get to look at the programming and chart out the programming and staffing within the finances that are available to them. Um and we can kind of talk about finances. I got like two more slides for you. Um because this

126was the one area that I think the last time we did this was kind of the holdup. We we didn't have we didn't have confidence that we had the best handle on finances and that the district office would be able to essentially run a separate finance operation for an external charter. And I think you saw Ashley doing it today and now she knows she gets to potentially take this journey too. We'll just throw into everything. Um, but we also have made some new partnerships of people who have done this and are running this and they have told us that while it looks more complex from the outside, it's actually quite easy as long as you don't fall into one pitfall that they said SEC fell into. And that is not following um the budgeting rules

127of the virtual charter. And that budget rule is up there 3070 split. and they said that most charter schools who get in trouble for financial mismanagement are just funneling all that money to the district and not leaving enough money set aside for the virtual charter. So in essence um when we get per pupil funding for those kids coming in under the open enrollment um 70% of that needs to be allocated back to running the virtual charter. That could be paying for ed options academy seats. That could be paying, for example, if um if one of our teachers was teaching a period of of a virtual charter of a REVA class, we could cover that period of their salary with this money. Um it could be used on technology and some of that can have an

128ancillary benefit for our students in the district as well. The other 30% can be utilized by the district for um the needs that they have. Um and then at the end of the year, one thing that we were told by Glenn Webb who's run two of these is there is a mechanism that like this year he said the 70% allocated to their virtual charter, they will spend about 30% of that 70%. The rest there is a mechanism to invest that for the future for both the district and the virtual charter school. So that is that is an option for us moving forward if we decide to take this step. Um, one of the things I think if you're doing the mental math in your head, if we go completely with Ed Options Academy, Ed Options

129costs $2,500 a year per student. That's unlimited classes. And Jim, correct me if I'm wrong, but for a student to come in, if they were open enrolled in, it would be about $12,000. And I'm just rounding. >> It's It's a little closer to $11,000. >> $11,000. >> So that' give us $7,700. You take the 2500 off that that puts $5,200 into the RVA coffer and 33 $3,300 into the district's coffer. >> Yeah. And that's that's after paying for the full spectrum of classes and teaching. So, um, so I do want to say that this is it's it's scalable. It's, you know, if we get zero students, we're out zero money. If we get one student, we're not going to lose. We we have no loss of money on this. So, it can scale up if

130can scale down based on the um the size of the program. Um and then the last thing is just kind of those the stakeholder groups and and what would go into this. You know, we have our district staff, we have our governor's council, and I'm lumping you guys in with the district staff. And then we have at options academy. Um not to get too far out over my skis, um but in the conversations with Mr. Montreal, Mr. Iggo, because this is a 6 through 12, Mr. Cosmolski, Mr. Reef. Um, you know, we would hope, we would envision a day that if this was popular enough, um, and we had teachers who were interested enough, one of the things that River Falls does is they they actually ask their teachers if anyone wants to be on

131an overload because they have so many students that do this. Um, and I think Helen, you might know this, that they they're paying an extra stipen um for for staff that are willing to do that. If we got to a certain point that we could reduce ed options contract down to just elective classes and we were able to cover their core classes, well then it would cost us $600 a year for ed options and we would be able to cover more of our teachers salaries through this. So again, I think one of the things that hearing from my staff, their worry is as they hear more about lowering enrollment, um they're they're worried about what is the longevity of my job look like? Is it going to be a full-time job? And um one of

132the large premise for me is can we problem solve through that now so that when we get to that point or if we ever get to that point, we have a solution that could help us mitigate some of the impacts there. So, I'm going to take your questions cuz I just threw a lot at you all. >> All right. Uh, who's looking at me? Anyone? >> I can start. >> You I Yeah. Was it already two years ago? Gosh, I I thought it was like last year, but um so I remember talking about this. My district has a separate school that is an online school. It doesn't have a great name like yours, but it is got a name. So uh ours is just so wash go online. Um so great but um I am

133pretty aware of how these models work and stuff and so my questions are maybe more just management type questions to think about and things that we've run into. Um, one is your staff talked about longevity and I mean to be frank we are losing staff alloc FTE allocations because more of our kids are going to online and so every department every year a couple staff so that's something I think we got to kind of work through. We're a small district and I think that it just um what we talk a lot to our staff about is that we have to make it more valuable to want kids to be here in person and like that's the experiences in the classrooms. That's the the you know all the things we've talked about all this whole meeting.

134Um that those are what makes kids want to be in school in person. Those connections, relationships, all of that stuff. So that's that is something though to consider and to plan for. Um, I was wondering, do kids have to be all in or partially in? Cuz my school district, they can take one or two classes or they can take full online and there's a different look for that. Have you guys Is it an all or nothing thing or >> if you're a Prescott? So, if you're a Prescott resident, if you reside, >> Yeah. >> you can do a hybrid. >> Sure. >> If you're open enrolled, >> it's all or nothing. >> And I mean, the hybrid works great in a lot of ways because I'm a kid that needs to work for whatever reason.

135And so I I need my fifth and sixth hour off or um our kids that maybe have families at a young age. Like it does give a lot of flexibility for that. So um and then I was wondering about special education services cuz that is something that we have run into a lot of issues honestly with online um how those look, who's able to access it. You don't want to discriminate and all that stuff. So >> and Sandy and I have talked about that. That was something that we brought up in a meeting. Um because quite honestly, and I know um Mr. Mr. Weber would be okay with him talking about this. Um, Elmo had closed theirs. We're closed to special education students. >> Um, when when Mr. Montreal and I had talked this over

136and talked with Mr. Igo, we felt like we really didn't want to close it if we could afford to keep it open. And so we approached uh Sandran and um the consensus we had was we would want this to be available to everybody. Met options does have um special education services that they offer that are above and beyond, but we would also want to allocate um staff in district to say we're going to support you, but we need to know what your individual learning plan is going to look like as we build it together. >> And I think ed options is like really I think it's the the piece that makes this really doable in my mind. Um we don't my district doesn't have that, right? So we're all pulling from our staff for every

137class, every license area, we have to fill it where like when we talk about longevity and staff retention in person here like that is a really big impact cuz you can just do the ad options kind of class and do that instead which is which is great. So I don't I don't have a ton of questions. I I mean it is the way kids are moving. I feel like the high school I work at is a college campus. Kids are in and out all day long doing very unique ways of learning that are we've talked a lot in education. It's been the same for so many years. You just have the rosa desk and whatever. Um it it has shifted in the last since co and so kids are looking for something different. They're finding

138something different and if it's not something we offer, they find it. Um and I mean we experience that too. So um I think it's great. I I do you brought up homeschool. Um, yeah, this would probably help out a lot of our families that are struggling to teach chemistry at home. You know, like there's some other ways to do that. And and so, Yep. I I think it looks great. It's a big takeover. So, I know we're just talking about it now, but I know you're excited about it. I can tell. So, Michael is too on the board. So, um, >> yeah. Um, yeah. Great. No other questions? >> Pat. Um, I too know somebody who's from this district and um, first off, I want to I want to back up. Um, I know a

139lot a lot of our questions and comments make it sound like we're problem identifiers and we might not be. Thank you for the vision and for uh for being open and being creative and entrepreneurial. I mean, that that is that is awesome. >> Um, I wanted to echo what Tanya said. I think the feedback that I get um is that there seem to be a lot of maybe unintended consequences as it relates to staffing um and what appears on the surface to be a good thing and add flexibility is creating problems. Now that's in a that's at a whole different scale um and maybe not a great comparison to our district size, but it is something that I hear about a lot. Um Tanya did a really good job questions. Um, thank you for answering

140my question uh about how the charters are funded. Uh, that was a big one. Um, I think the last time this got brought up, we also talked about additional administrative costs and I understand that scale has a big part of this, but at what point in time, so let's say we just got out of the shoot and you said 250 students. >> St. Central has got about >> Okay. I'm sorry I misunderstood that. But like at what point in time do we feel like we would need to add additional administrative staff to to be able to scale this appropriately? >> Am I No, that's a great question. I think >> not to steal from Jim during the listening session, he said I can't forecast. Um I would say it's not in our vision right now

141to have to do that. I think right now with where we're at, um we've got a really good team. I think adding Ashley to the team kind of added that last piece on the finance that we were really looking for. Um, where I hear the direction going and and having conversations with the two people who are in the room administratively and then Mr. Igo as well with Sandy. Um, I think we've got kind of a vision of how we would divide what we have right now because the essence of this is not to add a cost. The essence of this is to make make it work with what we have right now. And um you know uh Elmwood's got 25 kids. They do they you know they're a smaller district than than we are. They

142have a superintendent and a high school principal that run the entire thing with with a counselor who does the testing for the kids. I don't think in the first year or two we're going to get 25 kids. That's just >> if we got 25 kids that would be amazing. But I think it's going to take a few years to scale up, which is one of the reasons why I think we the deadline to have this um approved year by year to get on the virtual charter list is January 30th. We missed that this year. Um instead of waiting until next November to start bringing this up, we felt like we bring it up now. if we can get approved sometime over the summer. Our experience is typically August and September have a huge migration pattern

143of students seeking out different opportunities. So even though we're not on the list officially for the open enrollment period, we would be on the list for the summer. Um and it would give us kind of that long on-ramp to learn what we don't know right now and kind of then refine over the course of next year. >> Awesome. Um you might have I don't know. I was trying to take a note. What So in order for a kid to enroll in a virtual like what's the vision of what would be required? Do they just get to sign up? Do they need parents to to sign off? How does that work? >> Yeah. So you have to go through the the open enrollment process which is dictated and managed by Wisconsin and DPI. Um, but let's

144just assume they go through all that paperwork. And there's a little bit of a different process for the regular open enrollment period, which is February, March versus the what they call the emergency open enrollment period, which is going to be every other time of year. Um, we would still take students and at that point then they would start to meet with myself or Mr. Igo and a counselor. Um, or if they had a special education need, an IEP, we're going to bring in a case manager. We're going to look at what that IEP says because that's a legal document. And the first thing we're doing is looking at developing an individual learning plan for every student. So, not only what does it look like for the next term, but what does this year look like?

145And if you're a freshman, what does your four-year plan look like? Because I don't want to go year by year. So, and that's something that we try and do with a lot of our students as well. Um, and we would map out their pathway towards graduation based on what they want their post-secary goals to be. And then we would connect them with a coach via ad options um who will keep them on pace and reach out to them. And then they would have somebody assigned here who would also be a coach um working with their parents, working with the student. Um that's all the documentation and that's actually something that we've written into a draft charter that would be then shared with this this board or this body um every June as kind of our

146share out of are we doing our job? Are we hitting our metrics? you know, have we done what we said we were going to do in terms of the best academics for students? >> So, there's a there's a process and some rigor that would prevent like Mike Matsick 1992 saying, "I just don't want to go to school today and I'm just going to do virtual cuz it's easier." >> Correct. >> All right. Perfect. There's there's also and I just not to be long-winded up here, but um if the virtual charters that do it right, there is a mechanism where whereby you release students who are not who are not academically meeting their goals and are our not so great partners and I'm not going to name them. They keep kids for years because they still

147get the funding whether those kids participate or not. >> Yeah. >> And I don't want that that to be our reputation, you know. So, we have a very a very uh defined timeline in the documents that we've got put together to say if you're not participating and you're not communicating and your parents not communicating, at some point when we get to the end of a of a term, we're releasing you back to your own district and we're communicating with them all the way through to say you're going to get somebody. They're going to be credit deficient by one term. You need to be ready for them because here's what we're saying seating. Uh, last question. Ashley, this might be unfair, but I'm not expecting it. Like, let's say we let's say we do this. We

148go a couple years and we say it's not working. Our enrollment just isn't there. Like, but we've got five students, right? But it just doesn't no longer fits our needs. What What kind of liabilities, right, that would maybe exist that would have to stay on our books, whatever that means. I don't even know what that means, but there's got to be some sort of liability that that we would be responsible for, right? that we would have to manage >> it. It should be a yearto-year cost for the most part. We're not looking at investing in, you know, physical building or much technology beyond what we currently have. So, with the fact that like Josh said, we get about $11,000 and 3,300 of that goes to the district right away and that's 7,700 for the for

149Reva, that leaves us about $5,200. So even if we're buying kids a $2,000 laptop, there shouldn't be a whole lot because it's virtual going forward. >> And we and we think it's a year to year. So the the commitment to the students year to year and the commitment to I forgot who our who the virtual partner would be, but um at options is a year to year. We think >> well and I and you're talking purely financial, right? What is our liability? >> Yes, but maybe not. I mean, is there other risks? So, so outside of financial, um, the the way that most of these charter contracts are written is a 5-year contract between the district and the virtual charter simply because you, you know, think about it. It takes three years to really get

150something up to speed. A year refinement. That last year is really your review process as a board to say, is this something we want to renew or not? So, that's the way we've got our draft written right now. Um, however, within that contract, there are six clauses whereby you as a board can terminate that contract and terminate that that charter at any time, and that's based on the Wisconsin statute. So, that's if there's a legal liability that you're not willing to take on, financial mismanagement, students are meeting their academic metrics that we've set out, you know, it's being mismanaged. Now, again, hopefully that doesn't happen because the management is happening in house instead of out house. Um, but you can you can terminate that. you can also take over the charter school at any time.

151So, the liability is actually fairly minimal because of those things as long as we're doing what we say we're going to do, which is reporting out to you and being very transparent. Um, the financial management, and this is where I would need to to work more with Glenn Webb because he's done this. Um, what he mentioned is there is a fund that at the end of the year, let's say we, you know, they have 25 kids right now. He showed me their books. They're going to have $180,000 left over. at the end of this year they're not going to spend. There is a long-term savings that they can they can put that into a fund and then it doesn't just need to go toward their version of reba after that. Then it can be utilized

152by the district for other means not any means but but for other means because it's under a long-term savings. So I think there is a mechanism where they've they've looked at that. I don't have that answer but I can certainly reach out to Glenn and get the answer for you. >> Awesome. Thanks. And I would just add to one of the things that I've seen in the past is when a student signs up for classes, we commit as to pay for that and then the student doesn't follow through. That is a commitment that we would have and the liability that we would have, but we would be planning for that. So we would know what those numbers are. >> Okay. Thank you, Vicki. Any questions? Um, first of all, a little I should say kind

153of surprised but not surprised um at you know Elwood has been very open with you which is great and the fact that it's through the school district or I mean that it's started by them and and they're running it and most of them are run by schools but that just kind of shows me why we do have the fly by night charter schools that open up because that's that's some 25 kids an extraund what' you say 30 >> well right we're going to get about $180,000 sitting around so I mean it if we can do this I mean that just if other schools are doing it which I know that St. Central. I was I think Jim had sent us something that they're actually adding to their virtual staff. They're having to cut their regular

154staff because they're losing enrollment yet their virtual students are going up. So, they're seeing that shift. And I know they've been doing it for a while. Um, and it I mean they've managed to make it work. the fact that Elmwood, such a small district, has been able to make it work. Um, I think, yeah, you've given us a lot of stuff and definitely a lot more than last go around. Um, and it the only thing that I am concerned about because of the timelines is you're talking January 1, so you'd like to work on something through the, you know, hopefully get us something so we could get a vote um for next year. Next year, we've tasked everybody with consolidating and switching and moving around buildings. I'm I I guess I'm a little reluctant to

155say, "Yep, let's move forward with this right away just because again, we don't know what all of that's going to look like. We hope it goes smoothly, but we don't know. and and I guess throwing more onto your guys's plates while we're right in the middle of making plans to do all that stuff. That is my only kind of hesitation with like >> Mhm. >> giving you that timeline saying, "Yep, get her done." So, I I know you guys will probably go, "Yep, nope, we can do it. We've got all this planning, but that's just it. We got to get Ashley involved. We got a lot of other stuff that we got to get involved." So, I I guess now knowing that we've got that January timeline, um if we're not looking at this year,

156at least we know where we're at moving forward. So, um that's kind of all I've got as a comment right now. >> All right. Well, I think they've said a lot, but um as an educator, I mean, I there's parts of me that are concerned about this. There's parts of me that get it, right? um education is individualized and it works best individualized and obviously there's a demographic of of students out there that this works for um and families that it works for. So there is um definitely the exploration of it is important. I the only thing I would say um that might be look good to look at is that REVA governance council how really that I would want to know how that's chosen that would have to be mapped out very specifically um

157because you have to your governing body is one of the most important things because they're deciding you know what goes um on that daily operations like you said. So that would be one thing. Um, and I get really concerned about the lifting that that's going to put do for the admin that I'm in charge of. I think this is a this is a lot. You did an awesome job and that's a lot, but I really like I do get concerned. So, I think um when you come back, which I won't be here, but when you come back, >> I might be out there. my honor when you come back like I mean for your for our staffs and our admin sanity um to really truly know what this lift is going to look like so

158we're not biting off more than we can chew >> this is the way >> I appreciate you looking out for me >> I want to note Vicki you said that it was really nice to see Mike >> and you didn't say the same thing to me so >> great to see it's good to see Let's do it now. Let's do it. >> Be here now, Mike. Um Josh, great presentation. It's fun to see uh this kind of come to a conceptual possibility here. Um I'm not going to regurgitate anything except I I was interested in about how the governance worked. I don't think we need to talk about it now. How how how you you know the the process for for selecting people. What happens if you get a couple of uh parents that just

159don't want to do it anymore and you get below that threshold of seven? You know, finding people that you trying to stay above that minimum. I don't know how how stringent that is on by state statute or if there's really any rules around that. It >> it's not what we were recommended is um at least for the the district positions make them based on truly based on not a specific person but based on the position itself. So, >> you're teaching and learning, your special ed director. So, regardless of who holds that position, um for the parents, they said that's the hardest part of staffing the council because >> because a lot of students who are in virtual charters tend to be moving from one to the other. >> And so, the recommendation we got from

160two different charters was find parents that you can forge a really good relationship with that you can hold on that they're you feel like you can keep their kids there for multiple years. And it's not an election. It's simply right by choice. So it's not like a schoolboard election. >> If they do leave, you try and find somebody else and you reach out to them to fill the position. >> Um we get got feedback that there are there are unfortunately there are months when that governance council is meeting and you have your district people, you have your community person, and you maybe have one parent, but not all three or not all five of the parents show up. And so you carry on with your business. >> Do they kind of act like a you

161have to have a quorum? Is that all like or is that is it pretty loose? >> It's more loose than than what this body operates by. >> All right. And then from a like a Okay, we have governance oversight of the of the charter school and but there's as far as as far as like the the day-to-day operations. We're there's there's really no extra responsibility that the school board Prescott school board would have. It would all be run through that governance committee. >> Correct. >> And then they just report back to us and and and whatnot essentially. you would probably see only two times a year would you really recognize that something's going on and that would be June and then that would be at the end of July and you get your two report

162you get your financial reports you get your academic reports >> okay from the from the school >> yeah all right that pretty much oh extracurricular activities do do they do they get access to that >> no unless if you are so again it's weird and it depends on the activity but let's just take it as a blanket statement if you are doing a WIA activity and you're a virtual charter enrolly, you cannot participate in sports. Um, could you go to prom? You know, sure. There's nothing that holds them back from that. I I think that would be something that's so nuance we'd have to talk about. Could you participate in the play? It's It's only managed by us. Sure, you could do that. But anything that's WIAA or um Oh, shoot. to dance, you know,

163anything that's operated by an external board. No, they are they are not our students. They are the student of a different school that just happens to operate within our boundaries and it's under your oversight. >> Okay, perfect. All right. Anything Josh before you leave? So, um this is for information and discussion. Josh, you talked about trying to spend some time getting to do this so we're ready for January. Um, do you have should we have you back in May to do information and discussion again? Is the board interested in scheduling a vote in May or June? Um, type of thing. Josh, what do you what would work what would be your best timeline? >> I think uh timelinewise and and I think it really depends. the the group that I work with administratively, I think

164we felt like summer is when we go into the batcave and we can kind of work on things, you know, and um so if if you were able to feel like you were comfortable making a vote over the summer in in June maybe, um that gives us July and August and then in August is when you get a lot of open enrollies coming in. So that would give us kind of a first shot at seeing what we could do. If we wait until next year, that's okay. It just pushes us out a year to see what we can get for students. Um I think Mr. Montreal, correct me if I'm wrong, maybe once every 3 weeks we have a student and a family that's coming to us right now and saying, "We're going to go

165online. Can you do it? Otherwise, can you give us a recommendation?" So I I think we've probably lost or almost lost four or five students this year. Um and we've start we started to do more in-house virtual just because we're trying to stop the the float. And I think it's been all like all or nothing. But now it's like we want the whole >> Yeah. So preferably we would have some time this summer if you're willing to to meet that timeline. we would have some time this summer um to put together that governance council to put together the model to to shore up our relationship with that option to know that we might have more students coming in and to get our um I think Courtney's doing open enrollments now. So to get Courtney on

166on on board for what that's going to look like coming into a virtual charter versus on site um and then to be able to kick off August and September to see if we can recruit and retain some of our kiddos. So shoot for June, see if we can get there and then we'll make a decision hopefully. >> Do we want to keep this on information discussion in May and have Josh come back with questions that the board asked? >> Sure. If you have if you have information to share or Yeah. >> I think one of the biggest ones I heard, correct me if I'm wrong, Pat, it sounds like the the financial liability would be a big one. What happens to the money that we don't spend? >> What happens to the money? >> Yeah.

167Okay. I will reach out to Dr. >> Thank you. >> All right. Let's keep moving here. We got three more items. staffing levels. >> Um, so this is a little bit new, um, I guess to Prescott, but it's Thanks, Josh. >> Thank you, Josh. That that a lot of districts do. Um, this is printed out in the board envelope, um, so you have it on a paper copy uh, to make it so it's somewhat readable, we put it on a couple slides. This is basically a breakdown of what we are looking at for staffing for next year per building. Um, goals, a couple things. Number one, the goal is to really start to track where our staff at, where we're using staff, what are our pupil to teacher ratios at each level. Um, at Malone

168Elementary, we're looking basically uh three three teachers uh per grade level, four special education teachers. Um, that might drop down to three if if we don't replace uh Doroth. And it we're kind of trying to figure out exactly where the numbers between shared staffing between Malone and um the intermediate school would be. Um but it gives you a breakdown of exactly what we're using. And this is just for the board's information. Technically, we don't have a library uh or library assistant, but we do have um some literacy classes that are down down there. So students are getting in the library. Um and that is taught as one of our specials. uh shows you the administrative assistance, the um instructional assistance, those are individuals and not uh full-time staff. Again, those are part-time staff. Um then

169the inter intermediate school, um you can take a look at that. Again, a lot of those 33 PE teachers, guess what that person shared with Malone? They're 66 at Malone, 33 at the intermediate school, etc. Um again, instructional assistants are at 29 and a half hours a week. Um that one administrative assistant, that one principal are a little different because as we all know, Mr. Cosmoski does teaching and learning and Kathy works with him on that as well. Um at the middle school, those are staffing levels. Um sixth grade again is about 1 to 20 students. 7th grade is 1 to 21.25. 8th grade is about 1 to 23. Um, three special education teachers uh for 37 students. Um, you take a look at your uh health and PE. Um, we did our best to

170reach out to all these things. We intentionally didn't want to discuss staff members, but there are some like we talked about um in the listening session that are kind of divided up. um our occupational therapists, our um adaptive fied teachers, stuff like that are really kind of bouncing all over. So, we did our best to put those in there as well. And then at the high school, um these are our levels of um high school um where we're at. One principal, one assistant principal, two counselors. And again, uh, the reason we wanted to really put this out there is just so we can get a baseline, um, going forward. What are our staffing levels over the next 5 to 10 years, um, so the board can do a sidebyside comparison with student enrollment numbers and

171staff numbers. And most importantly, as a administrative team, we're making sure we have the right people, the right programs, and we're the right size uh for our kids and to be financially responsible. >> Vicki, any questions about this? >> No, this was pretty cool. I was slightly confused. I got it now. The 0.5 library got it shared between the two. Um, with the the Fizzad, I'm like, "Okay, I have one and a half." So, okay, I get it. Um, this is kind of nice to see though. We've got specific numbers in each school and how teachers are spread out. So, that's nice. Helen, >> just a quick question. If there's not a required or not a required bucket by it, is that just a position that we have that we ch like >> those are

172most those should be all the totals these >> so I just meant like so when you're at the like the athletic director >> yeah the athletic director is technically not required. Uh there's not another school district that I know of in Wisconsin that has a PCR or PCE director. >> It just goes through because we have >> we have they're on the salary schedule. So, we wanted to put them there, but but um you know, PCR, the vast majority of school districts don't run their you know, their extracurricular activities outside of outside of the middle school and high school level. >> So, essentially, they're not required, but >> yeah, they they should probably be technically not required. >> Okay, that's my only question. >> Can we just add that for this document? This is just

173kind of the initial run through of this is proposal and to be able to use this forward to help. So, this is not like 100% accurate and this should be >> Thank you, Pat. Um, it's good to see it all one document and it'll be great for trending in the future, guys. Yeah. Thanks for putting it together, >> Tanya. >> Yep. Echo Pat. I did have a question. Middle school. It just says like sixth grade. >> Yes. >> Or seventh grade. What is What is that? >> So we listed them by grade. We had that debate. Sixth grade, seventh grade, and eighth grade traditionally right now are taught as one is teaching all the English sections, one's teaching all the science sections, social studies sections, and math sections. However, you know, if we have a

174change in programming, that does doesn't necessarily have to stay that way throughout the years. So we did have that um discussion but at that grade level and at that licensing level as a sixth grader you can techn sixth grade teacher you can seventh through eighth you can technically teach all core subject areas. So that's why we list them that way. Once you get to the high school level you are a math teacher, an English teacher or science teacher. Um so I appreciate that question cuz I should have done a better job explaining that. Um, >> yeah. So, right now, if we wanted to break it down individually, I could tell you who the sixth grade math teacher is, etc. But that's kind of we're trying to kind of avoid that. >> Especially if we, you

175know, down the road have reductions and due to declining enrollment and we lose the sixth grade teacher. >> Somehow, we're going to have to figure it out somebody's teaching two different subjects. >> Yeah. Okay. Thank you. >> Yeah. Good information. I appreciate you guys putting this together and it will be useful for trending. Uh we can let's keep moving. Staff handbook. >> Yep. This should be 35 seconds. Um staff handbook. Um just an update. I promised I'd put this on every single uh board meeting. So I'm a little bit checking that box, but um we've been working continuously with superintendent advisory committee, the admin team, and um Vicki and Tanya as board members. Um, we included the staff survey results in the board's packet. Um, Ashley's been, as everybody's seen, diving hard into salary structures

176and compensation. So, I've been kind of leading this one. Now that we're past the compensation model, Ashley and I are going to sit down over the next couple weeks. Well, not next week cuz she has Skyward training on Monday and Tuesday, and I have the WASDA uh conference Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. So, the week after that, we're going to sit down and really hammer out the handbook language and hopefully bring all that to the board for the May board meeting. Um, but the areas we've really been discussing is increasing uh personal days that are allowed with a subsequent decrease in sick days. Uh, the briement language. Um, that's one's been somewhat of a struggle because it's hard to tell how important somebody is to somebody else. uh blackout days when teachers and staff can use their

177personal days or and not um a lot of technical changes. Uh that can be as simple as turning he she into they them um or something like that. And then the other one we're uh working with right now with our partners down at WA is our 403b vesting language. Um and as far as the listening sessions, Courtney, how many people did we have here at 5:00? So, we have 20 to 25 people here today at 5:00. Our next one is April 30th at 6 p.m. in the intermediate school cafeteria. Um, I did walk the twob block radius of the intermediate school and every door that I could find that would actually hold on to a flyer, I stuck a flyer in. We got flyers posted around. We've emailed flyers to all the parents. Uh, we

178put it up on Facebook. So, I was very happy to see 20 to 25 people. Courtney took notes tonight. We'll take notes again on the 30th and uh make sure that uh everything that gets to to us gets to the board in a summary document after we're done with those listing sessions. Also, I told people that if they want to email the board, just to email it to me and again, we'll compile all those emails into a summary docket for the board that you'll get for the Mason meeting. >> Vicki, any comments or questions? Yep. It was it was good. There was a fair amount of people showed up. Um there was a lot of really good back and forth. um a lot of the same kind of concerns that we have and you know

179we're hearing some of them um from heard some of that from the people who were here and I I think it's just more of a be out there in front of it and I think everybody who was here appreciate that and is glad that we're asking them for their input. Helen, >> have nothing. >> Tanya, >> nothing. >> Um, happy to see the handbook changes. I know we talked about it in previous meetings, but it's it we're good to see that we're way out in front of it this year. Uh, and and staff will be able to to see this in before this before the end of the school year. And, um, glad to hear the the listening sessions. I the the little bit of feedback I caught from folks that were here was just

180the transparency and and the ability uh that the decision for the for the board and with help of the administration to really kind of slow the train down and and and take our time um to allow people to have feedback I think was very appreciated uh to to learn more about it. So hopefully that comes out in in the some of the reports too, but just a little bit I heard. So, >> uh, last one is school consolidation progress report. >> That was just intermittent school listing. >> That's what we did. We're done. >> We kind of rolled through those last two. Yes. >> That means we can we can >> end the uh info and discussion. Go back to public comment. Anybody care to be recognized at this time? No. All right. We're going

181to board will consider a motion to convene in close session. Everybody's favorite words. Sorry. Under exceptions 1985 1C and 19851E in room 109. And do I see anything else there? I think that's it. Just got a list of statues. >> Yeah, somebody's got a >> So, we need a motion with a time. I move to convene in close session on exemptions 1985.1 in room 109 of Prescott High School at 8 to35. Yeah, >> I'll second. >> All right, we have a motion and a second. All in favor? >> I opposed. That carries and thank you everyone. We will be coming out of open session. We will have a vote >> and we will have one likely one motion that will be taken. >> Uh looks like the health partners agreement. So >> So feel free

182to stick around. >> Thank you everyone. >> Don't trip. Don't trip. General >> was hoping we didn't have to go in the slime. >> Wow. Oh my god. >> We're not going to go out and do shots after this.