Prescott School District June Board Meeting

001Welcome everyone. This is a school district of Prescott Board of Education regular meeting. We've been in close session since 5:30 and we are on item number six, adopt agenda. Uh Rick, is there any changes to the agenda? There are no changes from administration. So we'll need a motion to adopt the agenda. So moved. I'll second. We have a motion, a second. All in favor? I posted that carries. Item seven, pledge of allegiance. Would you care to 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. Next, recognition of visitors. Uh, rules for public comment are as follows. Please approach a reporting one at a time stating your name, municipality, the topic you

002would like to address. About allowed time is three minutes per individual or six if you're representing a group that is present at the meeting. All comments should be directed to the board and not to staff or other participants. The board will not act on any comments that are made during the meeting and 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 to expand the full policy. Please refer to our public public comment policy list on the agenda. Anybody at this time could be recognized. All right, we're going to move on. Thank you. Good news. We're going to start with Matt Smith, our activities director. We just finished our spring sports

003uh activities and we have amazing stories to tell. We'll put some of the things up on the um projector and we'll have students coming up and coaches. Mr. Smith. Well, thanks for having us. I appreciate it. A couple of the coaches couldn't make it here tonight, so I'll be representing them. I'm just kind of talking through some recaps, some celebrations as we've talked about. We're going to start off with an announcement here. As we talked about prior, our one act play, A Murder of Crows, is bound for Nationals this upcoming week in Indianapolis. So, they're fired up. They're ready to go. They'll be leaving early Sunday morning. Uh they will be performing up here at Performing Arts Center Saturday night at 7:00. So, if anyone wants to see a fantastic cast, um just an incredible

004show one more time before they hit the road. Um stop on by. They're led by Thomas Felts and Britney Camrath and just extremely proud of them and you know, a great opportunity for them to showcase what they have at the national level. So, as I said, just thrilled for them in this opportunity. So, Saturday night, if you're around 7:00, come check it out. Um, then I want to go to a huge thank you. Our PFA group, Prescott Fast Pitch Association, their work they've had on on Border Fields. If you've driven past there recently, uh, Kellen Swanson's out there working on the dugouts, getting new covers on them. They're then going to go to the North Field and do a similar approach. They're going to add some concrete and whatnot to that, lengthen those out. Um,

005they're paying for that out of their own pocket, just a a true donation from a great group representing the community. Obviously, really um, supportive of softball and the youth in general. They um our class with Mr. Schmidt, led by him. They started that shed up there and now Kell's finishing that off. So, just a huge shout out to them. Kudos for their support. Um really truly we talk about Prescott being a a great place, the communitywise, people like that, PFA and that group and all the support that they have. So, just a shout out to them um for that work and and their continued support there. Um some spring season celebrations to go over. We're going to start with with softball. Coach Johnson, he's at his son's Becket uh Beckett's baseball game tonight. And just

006some notes on the year that that we wanted to share with them. Uh overall 21-7 for their record. Second place in in conference. Um some cool celebrations. Uh Coach Johnson got his 100th career win. I think it was like his 102nd game maybe. He only coached I think only two losses total. Maybe give or take a little bit, but uh unbelievable for him and he'd be the first to tell you it has nothing to do with him. It's it's a great staff, great group of kids. Um they secured the program's seventh straight regional championship this year and overall just played a very challenging schedule. their non-conference opponents winning percentage was basically 70%. So the non-cons that they're playing already in a tough middle board of conference, their their schedule's unbelievable. Won their last six games

007going into playoffs just kind of were hitting their strides and then ran into Fall Creek who would go on to be the the state runner up. Um and just kind of wasn't our date. That game could have went either way there. Uh six seniors graduating. They uh left a tremendous legacy on the program. As coach Johnson wrote here, they'll be missed tremendously. five allconerence players overall uh led by Leah French. She was the co-player of the year for the middle border and then Rory Zuldorf and Talia Roth joined her on first team and then on second team we have Kelsey Sterroo and Candy Hill and Brandt was honorable mention. So a softball season outstanding year overall for everyone involved with that. Now into baseball u coach Ryan he's down at the state tournament. Um so

008he he gave me some stuff here. Another 21 win team. They're 21 and five overall for the year. Outright conference champs. Um, that was the first time since 2012, the state championship team, uh, that we won one outright. We shared it in 2017. Uh, regional champs, that was the first time in a while. Huge comeback win over Altuna there in the regional final, down two runs going into the seventh for anyone that that saw that. Just an outstanding day uh, to be a Cardinal there. And very similar to softball, just a really tough schedule. If you look at the non-conference games, uh, we beat a couple conference champs in Elk Mountain and Fall Creek. And then a lot of the other teams that we play are taking second in their league. They're 15 win teams.

009Um, just a very tough schedule overall. They had a great experience with the Field of Dreams trip and just a really exciting opportunity for everyone to be involved with that to go down there and then play the double header with Platville after get both those games. Uh, huge senior roster, nine seniors on the team. Uh, the impact that they had on the program, obviously their success speaks for itself. Just great people overall. Another conference player of the year we have. Uh, so Dane Pachic was conference player of the year. Um, that's two years in a row. Prescott's had that. Colin Hooper was last year. Um and then first team also was Barrett Timmers and Cole Platson, both seniors. And then second team representation, we had Aiden Dro and Max Monteth. And then also, uh very

010fittingly, Coach Ryan was named the middleboarder coach of the year. So um those two programs obviously doing things the right way. Not only their winning games, but their high character, their true integrity, and a lot of it comes from that leadership with our coaches, our staffs, and then our kids all the way down. Um so now enough about me and and everyone else. We're going to have Coach Hamilton come up. He's going to speak about historic boys golf season. Then we'll follow it up with our track and field program to share some of their highlights um involving some gold medals this year. So, thank you. Thank you. We'll talk about golf a little bit here. Um we started our season kind of at the end of last year when we missed state going to state

011by one stroke. Um the boys really put a lot of work in. They they put those goals out. We're going to get there this year. Um but they also wanted to cuz our little our banner up there for boys little bear. So they said, "We want to put some numbers up there." That was kind of their their main focus of this year. Um, and that's what they did. So we ended up uh overall we started off a little shaky because we had some missing. We had a couple injuries, couple sicknesses, and a few other things went on. Um, but after that, we kind of got go got rolling. Um, we had a really good uh strong schedule. went down to Milwaukee to play in uh the MAC fun tournament which is to raise funds for

012childhood cancer which is really good cause to do that as well. We get to golf lock label which is one of the top I'd say 10 courses in the state. Uh kind of get a just to get some experience at that type of a thing. Play at Troy Burn and St. Cry National and the border battle. Um and then just our conference tournaments and everything else and ended up winning the Bloomer Invitational. Um, I think that was the first time we've won that as a team. Uh, Tyler Ryder ended up the he was the champ the medalist there for the second year in a row. He gets this plaid jacket. They kind of do it kind of like the master jacket. It's kind of cool and the bloomer colors everything. His name's uh put on

013there. He went to his grad party. You can see it's hidden on his in his garage there. But and then we ended up going. So then we had to go uh finishing a for our conference. We took second there. But throughout the season, we were able to accumulate enough points to win the conference for the first time since 1979. So that was really cool. The boys like that, they enjoyed that a lot. They had a kind of a shirt made up kind of joke with some of their the conference team. So they they enjoyed that. Then we went to regionals which was at which was right at Clifton Highlands here Prescott and we won the regional for the first time ever in in uh school history. Then we went to Hayward at the sectional tournament

014and won the sectional shooting the best score in division 2. Um the the strongest sectional overall end that for the first time in school history the sectional and end up going to state. So that was the second time we ever went to state. 1989 was the first time. So it was good to get down there again. So overall it was just a wonderful season. Um we we had five seniors was our main uh on their main five. We also got some experience with some of our underassman. OMT Stoko, Miles Maul, Shia Parer, all got to golf a little bit of RC this year. So, that'll be looking forward to next year. A little hopefully we can keep them rolling. Kayen Johnson also played a lot of RC last year. So, we'll we'll have something going

015there. But, this senior class um like Mr. Smith said was kind of an awesome class overall. The sports from fall all the way through spring. And these those five boys were going to be a lot to miss for sure. Tyler Ryder was player of the year again in the conference, the second year in a row. Uh Sam Gresman was second team all conference. Luke Kinnman was on mention. Harris Lindholm was also on mention. So four of our five are in the top 12 of or top 15 of our of the conference. So they they put forth the effort and did wonderful things. So hopefully we can keep it rolling now as this, but it's kind of hard to to top that with this kind of a group. So it's great. That's be it. Nice season.

016Nice job. Thanks, Scott. We're going to have Emily and Carl Calibies come up. All right. Uh, Prescuit Force had an exciting spring. So, congrats to all these programs and their athletes on successful seasons. Today, we brought a few of our athletes with us to help tell the story of this spring's Prescott track and field program. Uh my name is Ethan. Uh this spring we had 86 athletes including 19 seniors out for high school track and just under 80 middle school athletes. It was a crazy year again sharing our tight space down at the down at Laney athletic complex. But on the bright side, it pro provided some opportunities for our middle school and high school athletes to work and learn together. This year at the high school level, we attended a total of 18 meets

017where we set over 300 personal records along the way. My name's Kira. Um, we had 19 varsity allconerence award winners and as a team, our girls placed fourth and our boys had the best showing we've ever seen, placing second in a hard-fought battle against our track rivals and good friends Oyola. Our conference is like a little family and it's really fun to run every time we have a conference meet. At the regional level, our girls came out with a runnerup finish and the boys were one point shy of that. Throughout the season, 14 athletes were involved in setting a total of 10 school records. Our season culminated at the state meet where Prescott was represented by 11 hardworking athletes, many of whom are here with us today, and a couple of the others who were

018invited are off at football practice and we're hoping to make it in time, but they're busy there, so that's all right. Um, Kira Dixs set the school record in the 3200 meter and finished 14th overall at state. Will Packard placed 15th in the 300 meter hurdles and leaves the program as our school record holder in that event as well. Uh, the boys 4x4 consisting of Packard, Jack Kger, Kobe Russell, and Andrew Russell, made it onto the podium with a sixth place finish. Ethan West, also with us today, uh, meddled three times at the state meet with a fifth place finish in full vault and got to do the fun back flip at the end of the ceremony. um a fourth place finish in the 200 meter and is also leaving as a school record holder

019in that event. And finally, as a member of the 4x100 meter relay, consisting of Ethan, Andrew Leso, Andrew Russell, and Wyatt Budworth. Um the 4x100 meter relay ended their season as state champions and the new division 2 state record holders in the event. If you have not watched the video, I highly recommend you look that up. It's pretty fun to watch. Ethan kick it into an extra gear at the end. Overall, Prescott Track and Field had a very successful season. Uh, filled with lots of hard work, a little bit of heartbreak, um, which led to some very important life lessons about resiliency and overcoming adversity. Um, and as a whole, just a lot of memories were made as a team this year. Uh, we are very proud of our season. Um, and we want to

020thank our community, our awesome board here, all of our admin, um, for all of the support that we had for the team throughout the year. Thank you. Thanks, guys. Thanks, guys. Good season. [Applause] All right, Sarah Dusk, and I'm here today just to give a quick little update on summer school. Summer school started a week ago today, so we have a full week under our belt. Um we have approximately 550 students participating in summer school this year. Um and every year it just gets more streamlined and easier easier to flow um with being able to keep the same protocols in place. So um lots of fun classes. um a parent that moved here from a different school district um came in the other day and was talking about how excited they were when the course

021booklet came out because it looked very different than their previous school district and how their kid was actually really excited to sign up for summer school instead of um at their previous district. So that was kind of fun to hear that they love to they love it and just being in the hallways even at passing time there's just kids everywhere and it's just laughter and fun and lots of walk in the hallway because they like to run to get to their next class. Um but it's overall going really really well and that will wrap up on July 1st. Thank you. And Sandy Strand with student services. Good evening members of the board. Um, do you have this presentation, the one that I shared with you on joint federal notifications? Yes. Um, this is really exciting.

022It's almost as exciting as athletics and the arts. Um, so I'm I'm going to try and throw in some phrases like um our team, which was mostly Michael Cosmolski and myself, but also all of our special education teachers in the district, our front office staff and all of our buildings um and our building administrators. Um, every year the um, federal government requires that DPI um, verify that local education agencies are meeting the requirements of IDEIDA part B in terms of um, certain factors um, which are called indicators. Annually this um, we receive a report and the report is usually based on the data from the prior year and in some cases it's based on data from two years prior. Um, and it helps us to strategically target and close gaps and improve outcomes for our

023students who have IEPs. Um, and determinations are are comprised of both compliance determinations and results indicators. Um, so the designations that you can receive on the joint federal notification are you either meet requirements meaning that you are at 80% or higher of compliance that you need assistance year 1 meaning you're 60 to 79% compliant needs assistance year two. So two consecutive years if you show that you need assistance ultimately then you go on a corrective action plan which requires um regular meetings with the department of public instruction. It requires um us to create a smarty goal and to um have that corrective action plan then implemented. I am very very pleased to share um first of all some of the areas that we are um we are rated on are our graduate exitors. So when

024we have students that remain in school between 18 and 21 um we actually kind of get dinged for that even though those decisions are based on student need. Um, so we generally receive just a score of one out of two for that because we always have one or two students. Um, and our N is so small in a district like this that one or two students can throw the whole thing off. Um, dropout exits, math assessment participation, ELA assessment participation. It looks at our math and ELA proficiency for students with IEPs. It looks at um discrepant discipline practices. It looks at our educational environment codes. So, um how fre how much are are students being um uh are are how frequently are students in the regular classroom versus how frequently are they being pulled out

025of their regular classroom. Um the goal is that our students are spending 80% or more of their day in the regular classroom and we do a really good job with that. Um we also look at disproportionate categories, uh timely evaluations, preschool transitions, etc. my first year two years ago or three years ago, um we were at um year 1 needs improvement or needs assistance and um and that was because of our um the previous year our math and ELA assessment participation. Um and then last year we also were needs assistance and that was needs assistance year two again based on prior year data. Um, and so we created, Michael and I, a corrective action plan and we met quarterly with the Department of Public Instruction to um, educate our staff and our parents about the

026importance of statewide testing. And um, I am proud to say that for last year, based on last year's data, the report we just got, we meet requirements. We're off of our corrective action plan. And this year, so that's based on last year's testing data. We know that this year we had zero optouts for statewide testing. So we will also probably meet requirements for next year. So what we know about this is that our teachers are doing an excellent job talking to parents, coaching parents in IEP meetings about the importance of the participation. Um and it's really good information for our PLC leads to be able to talk about um how are we differentiating instruction for all of our students in our classrooms. And um yeah, and that is my good news because I don't have

027to deal with DPI and a corrective action plan again next year. So there you go. Congratulations. We won. We're not a runner up. And uh um if you are looking on TV and reviewing this meeting, if you look to my left, just by the podium, you will see Jim Reef, who is the ARA parent. um and will be taking the reigns as of July 1st. And so I wanted to welcome him to Prescott. He has been um uh just a barrel of energy. He sat in with the administrative team for our two-day retreat, helped uh facilitate day two. He's been meeting with all um supervisors, the district office. He's been um I do not know how he's uh being able to stay awake. um came off his last board meeting I think earlier this week

028and then came right into the office by 7:30. So um Jim, I'll just share that it was my anniversary last week. Uh Josh Figgy and Amy, it's their anniversary tonight. That's why they are not here. But 32 years ago, um my wife's family just said she's perfect. So don't ruin her. So all I'm going to say is Prescott's perfect. I know it'll be in great hands. So, welcome aboard. Thank Yeah. Um, also I just wanted to share that um uh as we get into uh the summer, there will be opportunities to kind of have um great uh events and engagement with the community. National Night Out is set for um August 5th, which is a Tuesday, and that's from 5 to 8. And I do know that Jim Reef will be in his sweats ready

029to uh participate in the color run that we'll have a 5:00 start. So nice. Enjoy. Did you just find out about that? Breaking news. Um yeah, before we move on, we just wanted to take a second, Rick, and um I don't normally read stuff, but I I'm on an overunder tonight, so I'm going to read this. Um but tonight um at Dr. Spuzza's last board meeting, we have the distinct honor of recognizing his vision, integrity, and commitment to public education. And then during mark he has left on our schools and our entire Prescott community. And I know um this is off script guys, sorry already, but um last time we went over something like this, you shared it with your family and so I'll send this to you so you can just give them a

030copy as well. Very good. Thank you. But Dr. Mr. Spakuza joined the Prescott School District 10 years ago and has faithfully served as our superintendent since that time. In that time, he has not only led, he has lifted. He has guided our schools through seasons of change, challenge, and incredible growth with steady leadership and unwavering belief in the power of public education. Under Dr. Spakuza's direction, our district has consistently ranked among the top 10% in almost all academic markers in the state of Wisconsin. We are academically strong, community focused, financially stable, and currently reinvesting in our strongest resources, our staff. He led us through more than one complex referenda, ensuring that our families match the quality of our that our facilities match the quality of our instruction and increased our building footprints to offer more

031opportunities to our students and community. Most recently, he led a successful referendum with the priority of maintaining our high quality staff through competitive pay and benefits. Dr. Dr. Spakuza helped shape our culture of student- centered learning where staff were supported through a strong PLC structure, collaboration Mondays, and leadership incentives. Through Dr. Spakuza, students were seen, families were valued, and our students were invested in through resources, time, and a commitment to getting better within every aspect of our district. During unprecedented times when the when many districts were losing leaders from the challenges of a global pandemic, Dr. Mr. Spakuza remained calm, thoughtful, thoughtful and principled in voice during the ch changing educational landscape. He dug in and advocated for staff and students. He has worked tirelessly to ensure our students continue to learn, grow, and thrive

032no matter the circumstances. But beyond his achievements, his character stands out the most. Dr. Spakuza is a listener, a researcher, a collaborator, a leader who asks hard questions and gives honest answers. Dr. Mr. Fakuza has put together our entire leadership team from the office staff to each administrator and director. As much as he values research and growth, he thrives at opportunities to mentor and lead his administrative team. Dr. Spuza leads not for recognition, but because he cares deeply about the future of our children, the future of public education, and the strength of our community. Tonight, as we mark his final board meeting as our superintendent, we don't just celebrate years of service. We celebrate the lives he's touched, the trust he's earned, and the future he's helped build. On behalf of the Prescott School Board,

033our staff, our students, and our families. Thank you, Dr. Spuz Dr. Spakuza. You leave behind not just a record of success, but a legacy of heart. We wish you joy, family time, and well-earned rest in your retirement. Thank you. Yeah. Well, yeah. Do you want to say anything any words? I do, but I think I'm going to just let that be. Uh we're going to have an opportunity uh next week um to uh to share some comments, but uh thank you for everything uh uh that you've done. Uh you've been here um my entire time on the board and even before I was uh on the board with sitting through some various committees and everything. So thank you for everything and um uh enjoy. Thank you. Yeah, I'll keep this clear because I know we

034got to keep her moving. But Rick, 10 years, it's it's been a journey um together a lot of the times here. Um but I will I I I said I said this before, I'll say it again. It's, you know, it being a leader is tough. You have to make tough decisions and you're not always going to make everybody happy. Usually you're making some people not happy. Hopefully, it's not over half the people, but you're making tough decisions. And Rick has had to be a leader in the good times and the really, really tough times. And we know what the really, really tough times were. The whole country went through it for years. And in those times, that's where the leaders rise. That's where the great leaders rise up. And we needed a leader through the

035tough time. And Rick was there for us. And I and I I think the proof is in the administration. We've had an administration that went through that with him. Nobody left. Nobody did. And that tells me that the leader at the top has the trust and the people under him and they would run through a wall for him. So that is the type of person that Rick is. Jim, you got some big shoes to fill. But I will say this, he's also left us in an amazingly financially stable position. We are we are really in a strong spot right now financially and we'll talk about that later tonight. Um and that's a tribute to Rick's uh just his his his general attention to detail and he's he's he's one of his wheelhouse we always set

036his finances and and he's and we'll we'll go through tonight, but I big shoes to Phil Rick. Thank you for the for the time. I know you put in over the over the last 10 years. It's probably been I'd love to do the math on how much time you actually spent over the 10 years thinking about school district stuff would be staggering, but thank you so much and you're going to be missed and actually enjoy retirement and hopefully you get to enjoy retirement and uh hopefully we didn't ruin you for for uh your wife. So, she'll remind you next week. I know I know any but but thank you Rick. Do you have anything else to add or I um beyond words and I did ask uh privilege to have the last word tonight. So

037I'll I'll reserve comment for then. Um but two things that you pointed out is that you can't do it alone. You lead with and so um Jim, you inherit an incredible school board and administrative team. And I think uh the time I've gotten to know Jim Prescott, you're in good hands. Um, and I look forward from afar to be able to see um, the trajectory continue to go offboard. So, thank you. All right, let's go to school business, get some things done. The consent agenda is first item here. So, in consent, we have the the May 21st 20 25 regular board minutes, May 29th work session and special business meeting minutes, finance reports, clarification on anonymous donation toward Angel Fund and R5 manufacturing from May 2025, personnel report. Just point of interest, it uh just

038make sure that um it was a $6,000 contribution. 5,000 of it went to Angel Fund, 1,000 went to 5-hour manufacturing. Right. Okay. Y personnel report for non-licensed staff, Alice training drills, nursing annual report, nutritional services annual report, annual community education review, girls golf, football, and cross country overnight trips for the summer and fall of 2025. increasing life insurance coverage from 15,000 to 25,000 for eligible employees. And finally, approve the hourly rate chart for admin assistance, library specialist, food service, and custodians. Anything in the consent that anyone would like to pull out? No. Okay. I will adopt the consent agenda as presented. Are there any objections? No objections. Uh consent agenda is adopted. Thank you. We're going to go to personal reports for licensed staff. First one is hires. Yes. Uh for special education, we have

039an inter intermediate crosscategorical teacher uh that will be filling a one-year um leave and that's Riley Green. And then it's is uh Sarah helped me on the last name, but it's Brianna Mikllo Mikllo who will be a Malone third grade teacher. Uh resignations we have there are three. Angela Schmidt who was Malone speech language pathologist. Uh Tracy Budworth who was an English language arts teacher here at Prescott High School and Chandler uh Jookcom uh middle school cross categorical special education at this time. There are no additional retirements. All right. Anybody have anything to comment on or or add questions here? I don't. I I hope the best for all of our staff that are leaving us. Yeah, I I'll just comment because I Tracy and I have gotten to know each other for for many

040years now. I just I want to wish her the best. Yeah, I know it was a tough decision for her. I I hope I hope it works out. Um she's always got a place back here. You know, she calls us home and and I'll I'll miss her. My kids love her. They the senior class obviously had her at the senior graduation. She was the speaker at at the so at the at the graduation ceremony and so she's held within high regards and we're going to miss her. So thank you. So we need a motion to approve the personnel report for licensed staff. I move to approve the personnel report for licensed staff listed above. I'll second. That's a motion second. All in favor? I opposed. That carries. Item C. consider the second reading of the

041updated Niola schoolboard grievance procedure policy. So, uh they're back toback as you remember for Niola there are two series. Um the 3,000 are for license, 4,000 for non-licensed. Um the the procedures are the identical um mapping. It's just to the class and role of the individual. 3340 grievance procedure. Um as you look up on the screen, um there are no changes from last week. Um the questions that you asked were specifically about kind of um how the judgments were made. What we're really doing is just trying to make sure that um it's fair on the superintendent with regards to um anytime there's breaks, holidays. Um the 5 days uh turnaround just wasn't really um I think appropriate. So what we've changed it to is that there's 15 school days um allowing for that grievance in

042connection with the employee to occur. Um and then there was language at the end with regards to um what the three definitions of workplace safety no changes termination no changes employee discipline understanding that there's a continuum um and how that plays out. The first rating occurred in May and there has been no um updates to the district office or to myself. Um any questions? Any questions on here? Vicky Helen? No. No. No. Okay. We can take a motion here. I move to accept the second reading of policy 5411 with the following or with the above mentioned edits and considerations. Shoot. Sure. Yeah, that's the wrong one. I move to accept a second reading of policy and 4340 with the edits mentioned. Good. Yeah, I'll second. All right, that's a motion to second. All in favor?

043I opposed. That carries. Item D, food pricing. And so Nicole Lensner um our director of nutritional services um had a great end of year for our staff also uh she and her assistant um hosted and catered the endofear lunchon for our staff with a pasta bar. Thank you from the Italians. And uh it was outstanding. It was the most efficient um that we've had in a number of years. and um the work that she and um Courtney did to make that a good event uh was outstanding. So, thanks Nicole and welcome. Thank you. Right. Perfect. So, we just wanted to touch base on a couple of the slides from the day that you all were sent. Um, breakfast, we wanted to showcase that the meals served, the participation, and it's really important to note that

044we did go up one even with enrollment down. Um, as a reminder, St. Joe's did not participate in breakfast. So, those are really accurate numbers. So, that leaves the 3,590 meal gap due to enrollment drop. um that is roughly a $6,000 difference. And then when we go to lunch, so this is the first year without St. Joe's. Um St. Joe's did serve 12,000 meals last year. So that leaves the 9,000 meals due to the enrollment drop totaling roughly $25,000. And I just wanted to remind everybody that the reason we parted way was with St. Joe's, we weren't breaking even. So I still stand by that. That was a really good decision and they're doing amazing. I talk to Alice when she she calls when she needs we actually get some of her stuff sometimes and

045we drive it over there. But so they're doing super good. Um so there was a difference from the enrollment. So I just wanted to showcase that but our participation did go up on their 2%. So that was really awesome. So milk breaks. Um so St. Joe's serves served 4,000 but if you see that's not a $4,000 difference. So great job Prescott kids drinking milk. We partnered with um an adopt a cow program that will only get better from here to kind of showcase the Wisconsin milk and all the fun things pictured. We had a gender reveal for the cow that we adopted. It was an Earl and I got to tell you my family will be mad. I didn't know all the answers that all the little kids had on the cow stuff. Like we

046had they were dairy farmers that sad. But then we just wanted to point out um the past themed events that we had. So there's a couple amazing ones. Um B showcased our cookies. That was kind of fun. Um but I think they really enjoy that and it's a good kind of way to give back to them cuz it's their lunch. It's their break for the day. But the more we can get them involved in stuff, the more they feel that they own the lunchroom. So that's our favorite stuff. And then we'll move to the price increases. So, we did the back to back to back and then I did put in a note section this year. So, I just wanted to say anything that went up more than a quarter, I just noted that hey,

047like prices rose on everything on this list except for one thing, which is Cheezits. So, as I as I was breaking it down, I was like, oh my gosh, Cheezits stayed the same. Am I sure? So, that one, that was it. But we did get rid of the naked juice and we did get rid of Tropicana only because I couldn't validate to myself raising it enough to make it more than the break even. So we did find that when we did a price comparison from Pepsi to IFD that there is a 10 to 20 cent difference on the things that we listed were changing. So we're just going to go straight to them and if that changes we'll shift back. So we're going to do that quarterly instead of annually. So, if I need to

048come and say, "Hey guys, do you mind if we kind of switch back?" We'll do that. Um, but with all of the changes that we have, including the breakfast and lunches going up a quarter and then 10 cents for the milk, it is roughly $50,000 in additional revenue if everything stays in the same trajectory. But, you know, it's food, so it kind of like it does its thing, but it doesn't it's special is a good way to describe it. But if you guys have any questions, I'd love to help answer them. Vicki, you have any questions for Nicole? No, I don't. No. I don't have questions. You have tons of information in here and it was great just to kind of see all the stuff going on. So, thank you. Yep. Yeah. It's unfortunate we

049have to raise prices. We were talking about this a little bit. It's unfortunate that we have to raise prices, but we we all buy food at home and we know the cost of food is increasing and it's just what we have to do once in a while and unfortunately we're there. And um I saw that there was a free and reduced we're in the above 20% for free and reduced and just encourage families that as prices increase and things get tougher at home um we have we have some supports for that. So reach out. Um, we also had a big donation to our angel fund and stuff like that to help support some of our more struggling families and students. So, absolutely, Nicole, I know you work really hard to keep prices down and and

050and and year over year and and make it affordable for everybody. I've always So, why not though, even though I know you want to keep them down and affordable, why not why not consider um higher increases to the alle cart items? Is there is there what's the concept there? Yep. So, some of them did increase. A lot of them only increased by a couple cents. And I I definitely can if that's what you all decide. I can go back and kind of adjust them. But it's one of those things that a lot of that we do a market basket case. So, it's with like 32% is usually kind of where I gauge it to. You know, some are higher, some are lower. So, we kind of make it overall the big picture try to look

051nice and buttoned up. And we definitely can raise prices, but if we raise them too much, they're not going to eat them. And on all cart, I wish we could do away with all cart. I wish I could get kids to eat more vegetables. As a matter of fact, parents, if your kids say that they're hungry, they can get double vegetable and double fruit and it doesn't cost anything extra. So, there's no reason why they shouldn't have a full plate. Um, but the allocart stuff is just kind of the stuff on the side, so it is a choice. So, I feel like if we kind of increase that, we might reach that ceiling a lot quicker. Sure. No, I mean, I would I would trust your data and what you see and then what you

052think is marketable. Well, I've just always kind of Yeah. Sure. the cost. Um, yeah. Spreadsheet, too. It's a DPI. Maybe that'd be interesting like at a later, you know, at a at a board meeting down the road if we, you know, depending how we're doing, right? It it could be worth it. You have like a light agenda. You just let me know. So, We've got some projected fund increases. Um and and I don't you know are are the projected fund increases Dr. Spakuza is that are we are we closing the gap or are we projecting to close the gap fully? No. Uh it would not close the gap. Um we're still trying to um in the board reports for finances right now we're negative 85,000. Um we have no new revenue coming in. um from

053students. Obviously, schools closed. Um we still have invoices to pay because it's net 30 and net 60. The there are Nicole and I met this week. Um there are still, as you know, the state and federal funds come in at different times. One's a coupon uh to reduce your costs in the future, and then there are some commodities, and we're waiting for that last payment. Um, one thing that we learned, however, is um, we budgeted an expectation, um, learning more about the formula, it's about meals served and number of students. And so, we are getting, I think, 75% of what we thought we would get in commodities back. And so, um, we're working with Cara to make sure that we adjust that to be a little bit more, um, uh, aware. I think obviously Nicole

054has been looking at and I think for a district, right, that's one of the big things you have to talk about is we're running four kitchens, right? And have the the um fewer students than we have had in 15 years. So that's always going to be the drag on the system. Okay. All right. Thank you. And just so you guys know, to close that gap, too, we just received the the breakfast equipment that I just received today. if you are on board, you can come help me set it up after the um so that we got for free for a grant and we're going to do a breakfast after the bell essentially here. We're going to do it right out here so that way it won't cost any extra labor and all the food will

055all be ready. So, it's kind of a really awesome way to get kids to be able to touch it cuz you know high schoolers aren't going to get here early to eat breakfast. So, that's one of our one of our pushes. And then another of our staff members um she agreed to go down in hours too. So, we are kind of trimming as much as we can in that as well. All right. Thank you. This is a baseball game. Yeah. All right. I took a nap. We'll take a motion. It's great. Uh, I move to approve the updated food pricing for the 2526 school year as presented. I'll second. We have a motion, a second. All in favor? I I oppos carries on the athletic handbook code revisions. Thanks, Nicole. Thank you. Welcome again, Mr.

056Smith. It's you are a busy day. I'm glad you wore those uh sneakers. Yep. Here comes the rain, right? Um yeah, just kind of following up from the last board meeting. As we know, the WA has membership voted and some I'd say some big additions, two of them here for uh as we move into summer months into next year. So, it's kind of some new language that we're going to be adding to the handbook. Um just to make sure uh everyone's on the same page. Um the first one would be with the NIL, the name, image, and likeness rules. Um so now students basically they they're they're permitted to profit off their name, their image, and their likeness. We cannot mandate that they let us know. It is kind of them as an individual. They

057can decide what they're going to do in terms of that. Though there are rules with the WA that they could stub their toe and lose their eligibility. So basically what is this is saying is we strongly encourage them to keep us in the loop with everything that they do. And the biggest thing is just for education and not necessarily for them but the business that they're working with cuz there are stipulations um that if they're alumni if they are already donating their booster to the school that then it's a a nogo in terms of sponsoring an athlete through this. So the biggest thing would be the education part. Uh keeping people informed of what it looks like and that's our our plan with parents with athletes. And then if a business says, "Hey, we would

058like to go into an agreement with with one of your students that we can walk through and make sure all our tees are crossed, our eyes are dotted." Um like I said, we cannot mandate that, but we can strongly encourage it. We can make sure our athletes are educated and that our parents understand. And then hopefully the businesses are willing to work with us also, so no one gets into hot water and we're not costing a kid eligibility, which we're here to help them. and that's our job and we hope the businesses obviously are on the same if they're looking to to do this but hopefully they're looking to help them also. So that'd be the biggest thing is adding this to our handbook. This would be things that we'd go through thoroughly with our

059coaches, our parents, our athletes at our our meetings. We make sure they have the information. There's a ton out there influential athlete who we worked with. They came up with kind of word smithing this other schools in the middle border conference to put this together to make sure that everyone's informed and get the resources in their hands to make sure we're making good decisions that are are can be profitable but making sure that our athletes understand what we can and can't do along with our businesses there. So that'd be the first one there with with the NIL I guess. Any questions, concerns, comments on that? Questions on it? I I did have a question just um I was wonder because I think we share the same kind of concerns of just that so much of

060this is about education and our um and education of all those involved businesses uh kids families and it's our kids that are going to get hurt if something happens not the business or something like that. So I was wondering if there if you've thought about or if you have something in the works where maybe you reach out to the chamber of commerce and have like a meeting on this so some of our local businesses that are interested can come and learn. Yes, my plan was to reach out to Quantis and and see what we could do is maybe attend a meeting with them, put something together, a slideshow, a quick video that they can take a look at and then obviously be there in terms of communication. But yeah, we're parallel with our thinking with

061uh being proactive and not reacting. Yeah, great. Thank you. I guess that was like an um meeting with the chamber would be good. they can get that information out to the chamber members in the community who then share it with other businesses in the community which would be good but I guess my bigger concern is so you've got this page that we're adding in should we put something a little more I don't know in bold that says something along the lines of don't jeopardize your eligibility please follow I I mean I I truly want kids and parents to understand that this is great, but if if you misstep here, you're no longer eligible to play in your high school sport. So, I guess does that need to be more of a I we could definitely

062bold, underline, make something stick out. um you know, yeah, maybe just at at the end there, um competing or you know, to prevent the loss of eligibility that we're the hard part is is we have to um we have to encourage and we have to walk through these things, but then also we are the jury. If somewhere were to go wrong, we can't just brush it under the rug. We have integrity and a character that we have to abide by. Yeah, I agree. Something in there of jumping out like this isn't taken lightly by the WA if and my hope is the WA will work with us. Let's say a student stubs their toe and does something. They're like, I didn't, you know, this business told me that this was no big deal and, you

063know, I got excited that they would work with us to correct it instead of just drop the hammer. Um, but we're at the mercy of their their judgment there. So, yeah, I I agree something that and that's our plan to drill home with students and parents that this is a big deal. This isn't something to be taken lightly. Um, yeah, you could lose your eligibility if we don't follow what we need. If we if say someone in our district finds something, then that's on us to deal with it and take care of it. But could other community other um Oh my gosh, what am I trying to say? Like report Yeah. report to WIA that I believe this is a violation. That's probably will be most likely how it'll Yeah. Um and Matt, you guys

064do such a great job of having really consistent meetings prior to every season with all the kids and coaches. And I think like this is maybe just something that's really important to highlight with families there too. This will be our our number one first new thing. Um and most of the families they've they've heard about this the last couple years that it's been voted on. It got voted down then obviously it passed now. So some of them may not have ever heard of it. What's what's NIL mean? Um some of them it's okay it went through now. What does it mean? What does it look like? Help us here. So uh that's my hope. This will be the first thing we hit on with with our parent meetings and athletes there to make sure that

065they understand the importance of it. Yeah. And unfortunately there could be consequences if we don't follow the rules. And really like it's unfortunate. We're a small town. That's the beauty of it. But I look at this and the definition of who is um associated with the school district. There's very I almost can't think of any business around here that probably would be eligible to support. And I think that's just the awareness that needs to probably happen. Yeah. You're hardressed to find a business that is related, which is a great thing. which is a great thing because we have people that donate and part of boosters and our alumni but also Yeah. So, okay. Thank you. Matt, next one. Uh the second one here is the unlimited summer contact and basically this is just wording in

066there more a a reference for our coaches and looking at what we have planned for this year that I haven't seen a outrageous uptick. Um, like I said, a lot of things were already happening, but it was more of just an open gym where other coaches from other districts were coming in. We were swapping athletes. Um, basically this was kind of just put together just to make sure our coaches continue to understand moving forward that uh our activities office were informed of open gym, skill sessions, camps, etc. Just so we can maintain a healthy, well- balanced calendar that we're not overwhelming our students. And I think just some of the, you know, the terms in here um in terms of their mental and physical health is important to highlight. coaches are still encouraged to have

067these days and and to promote them, but respecting time, respecting overall well-being being our top priority. And then kind of the asterk there at the end that if we do see, I'll call it an issue moving forward that we're getting overwhelmed, we're losing student athletes to becoming, you know, they're playing, they're they're participating less because of things in the summer here. Um, you know, having the right to limit those. um kind of right now it it's very tough for me to not know what we're doing to mandate and say here's the cap you can't do any more than that um but just to really trust the people that we have in the right spots to continue to do things the right way but if we do see I'll call it issues popping up that we're

068abusing this new policy with the WA that then I'm ability my ability to step in and try to write the ship there to make sure like I said the well-being the physical mental health of our our students is at the top priority there moving forward So this would be more of a guideline comparative to uh you know a restriction or a procedure. I guess it's a procedure or policy. Uh more of just kind of a guiding light for us as we move forward. And if it's a thing that we see it become an issue we we all have the ability here at your tables to say hey going into 26 27 this needs to be re rewarded. This can be big bold and all caps. I mean ultimately we could put a policy in place

069if we wanted to. Absolutely. and and nor do we want to we want to trust coaches and stuff. So, I appreciate the asterk there. I think that just puts it out there that we still have we value that our kids are wellrounded. Yep. There's there's a lot going on in their lives and that you you can step in if needed. Yep. We're going to trust the people that we have in spots. That's why they're there. Um but if we if we need to intervene, then we'll we'll look at that with the case by case basis. Anybody have any other comments on this one? No. All right. Yeah. Thanks, man. Thank you. Take a motion. I move to approve the athletic handbook code revisions for the 25 2425 school year. I'll second. We have a motion

070and a second. All in favor? I posted. That carries. All right. We are on to item F. Consider an administrative proposal for reclassification of AIDS instructional assistance. Yeah. And before um I'm going to have Sandy with student services and Sarah Dusk, our principal at Malone. I also want to recognize that we have three of our aids um that are in the audience. Um Michelle, Cheryl, and Heather. Thank you very much. I had the um privilege of sitting down with them and talking to them as well. Um what I wanted to share is that we um have a proposal tonight that really has been in the works for over a year. um it didn't follow kind of your typical um guiding change document, but it is something that um Sandy and Sarah have been working on

071for over a year. They kind of brought it to my attention for consideration and thoughts both at the administrative um Tuesday morning meetings, but also then with me individually. Um I think it was in May where I went and spoke with the aids over at Malone. We had the general ed and special ed a aids in the audience. Um I understand that Sandy and Sarah also then met with um the general ed aids and then special ed aids on different uh occasions so that they could share their input. Um and it continued to be refined um I would say over the last six weeks. Um I'm going to turn it over to Sarah who's going to kind of lead the discussion. Um what I do want to share is that uh currently on the what's

072in the um pay scale is that we have two different pay scales. Um this is kind of also coming out of a layer of looking at and benchmarking um making sure that we're paying our staff a competitive wage for the work that they're doing. So this reclassification is not just about the dollars but it also is about the actual role and job description and that is um of equal importance. So Sarah without further ado if you want to kind of talk about the journey um how this is crystallized and walk us through the slides. Right. So um like Dr. Spakuza had mentioned we Sandy and I had been talking about this for about a year and then we did go to the AIDS I think it was probably March more March April. um to talk

073about the proposal of getting of doing away with the differentiation. And really where that like where Sandy and I finally came to like yes, we agree on this wholeheartedly. Um was the implementation of act 20. Um the implementation of act 20 brought personal reading plans for students. um any student who performed under the 25th percentile um was required to have a personal reading plan that was um carried out by our intervention teachers and then that ended up being K3 wise 75 plus kids and that 75 plus kids that need a 10-we intervention they have attendance taken every day during that intervention they have their personal reading plans um that have to be followed and then um every tw 10 weeks those teachers then have to share those reports out to families and it's either we

074continue the student on the personal reading plan or the student has met the guidelines to be removed from the reading plan. And then in talking to our intervention teachers, we just kind of were talking about how we're we're thinking about having a classification of instructional assistance. And both of them were like, "Oh my gosh, I could benefit wholeheartedly from having somebody that's assigned to me to help me with my work that I can say go work with this group of kids or push into this classroom and work with this group of kids and push into this classroom and work with this group of kids." Um whereas historically those um those aids were aids who were assigned to classroom to grade level teams and it was they did some push-in work or they did some pull

075out work but they also had times where they were supporting the classroom teachers in material prep or other things like that. And under this plan, that would go away because they would have then all of our instructional assistants would have a case manager that they would report to that would kind of build their schedule and it would be based on the students that they're serving either through their interventions and their personal reading plans or through their um IEPs and and sped students. We're essentially taking taking away that general classroom prep piece and making the focus solely on student progress. Can you go to that next slide? Yeah. So, I already just kind of talked about this about um the impact that act 20 had with the 75 plus kids um that ended up on personal

076reading plans and then just the paperwork and then all of those kids either weekly have to be progress monitored or every other week have to be progress monitored. So if we have intervention teachers who have to progress monitor 30 kids a week, that's a lot of time in instruction that they aren't able to deliver to those students um during their intervention time or they're having to give they also do our intervention teachers also do enrichment activities with kids who need a push or they do just even bubble kids who aren't in that 25th percentile. They work with them through our title programming too. Um, and so you can go to the next slide, Bernie. So that's when we talked about how Next slide. Oh, yeah. That's Oh, sorry, Rick. It's Rick. He does it all.

077It's just a point to show. He does that, too. That's about how really like going to an instructional assistant program really is more student first focused. And the students that we're focusing on first are are students with IEPs. We're going to make sure that our students with IEPs have their um sped teacher minutes and their sped aid minutes met. And then from there, we'll have instructional assistants then that are assigned to our intervention teachers who would work with those intervention teachers to help with those 75th percentile and those PRP kids um so that they can have even further reach into them. So instead of just maybe meeting with them during Cardinal time, those um instructional assistants can push into a classroom and support a small small group of kids within the core instruction of the

078classroom. Um just doing that. So it's really just shifting to student first programming instead of having it be that classroom teachers have somebody that's going to help them do material prep for a half hour, 45 minutes, hour and a half, however long a day. um that's going to go away and all of the instructional assistants will be with a case manager who assigns them to students that they're going to be working with. Um small groups of students that they're going to be working with and then all of them would also have um supervision support throughout the day that we also already have to we have to have covered to lunch recess supervision. Um but we would have the case managers of all of them work together to build that supervision schedule. I give them a

079skeleton that says I need this many people at this time and they would look at their schedules and who am I supporting at that time? Okay, I don't need an aid at that time. I could have them do that supervision part of it. Um, and those six case managers, the intervention teachers and the forcefed teachers have already said that they want to work together to build that schedule based on the needs of their kids. I plugged their names in before and they were like, "Well, wait a second. That doesn't necessarily work because I need her to do this at that time." Mhm. Um and so then we just said, "Okay, well then I'll give you the skeleton of what we need for coverage and then you build that schedule based on what what they're doing

080with other students during those other times as well." So Nope. Nope. I think we're we're on track. The last slide is just our final recommendations. What questions do you have? Uh Helen, do you want to start? Do you have questions here? Yeah. How many of those you So you said it added 75 students um that have those plans, but how many of those are actually um special education students are already in title? Only like 10. Okay. That have like we the only way we had this teacher um also take over their PRP is if they had a reading goal in their in their IEP. If they didn't have a reading goal in their IEP, then it just went to the intervention teacher to support them. So if we had behavior kids that didn't have any

081reading goals, um then the intervention teachers were supporting them in their in their PRPs. So I it ended up being under 15, I think it was. So more along that that required pre-referral intervention. Um yeah, you've got the the catchall of once you have an IEP, you program based on needs, but um we try not to just throw the kitchen sink at our kids. we like to do those pre-referral interventions to determine whether or not they actually have a disability in that area. I'm just asking because I know that I because some of those students are already being serviced by the special education teacher and are already being um or already have um built-in minutes that they need param minutes that or adult additional adult support within their IEP. So that right and when we

082took those students out and we did how many students the intervention teachers supported it was like 35.6 each. Okay. So this was so say the other 65 was that number a lot more than you expected with implementing? I think it was. And then also like we have been working with Michael through teaching and learning to determine um what is our what is our number for graduating out right like where do we like if they're 25th percentile what do they have to achieve in progress monitoring three times above the bar in order to be dismissed and originally we had set it at like 40%. Well, then you're taking kids who are super low and trying to in 10 weeks bring them 25 percentiles up, which would just work having success in graduating kids. We don't want

083to arbitrarily change that number because we don't want it to be like, well, we're just going to dump it down so that we can graduate kids out, right? We want them to graduate out and know that they hopefully aren't going to be back on a plan because the interventions that we did. Um, so we're still playing with that number. Um, but at the end of this year when we redid it, it ended up still being 72. Mhm. Well, and and you'll have some graduate out and then you'll have some that repopulate and the law doesn't um give any flexibility for those students who just performed poorly on the day that they did the games web testing and so suddenly they'd have to be on a PRP anyway with all these requirements. Right. Yeah. Okay. Well,

084I mean this sounds like with you've had good discussions with everybody and and for sure the Yeah. the implementation of Act 20 and and where we're at with the reading and how it looks like we need to to work around and and get this figured out for sure. I mean, we know we need our interventionists, but that's a lot to add on. Well, it just makes it that the interventionists aren't able to also do more kids above the 25th percentile, those bubble kids that we when we talk about forward data are the ones that we have those growth outcomes for. or just even the kids who they just need some enrichment. Amy Figgy does, you know, two or three enrichment classes a day, too, where she takes kids who are really high achieving and she

085pushes them even further than what they're able to do in the classroom, too. And so, some of that stuff would have to go away without giving our intervention teachers some of that relief valve as well. And then we also have one of our intervention teachers that does go to St. Joe's for part of their day, like an hour each morning. it'll end up being to service and support them in their interventions as well. So, great. Thank you, Tanya. Yeah, I I uh really like that we're shifting to a student focused lens with this. Um and so I I can really wrap my head around the idea that these um PRPS are very similar to an IEP, although short-term, right? So, we're doing all of the same kind of stuff in a 10-we period. Um, so

086that really resonates with me that it it makes sense that we're asking um our teacher aids to do very similar things with our general ed students and our non-general ed if we keep it with a student focus rather than a prep focused if you will. Um, so so I I think it's a I think it's a great plan. I know that um there's some cultural pieces and stuff going on with it and we want to kind of elevate where our aids are. I mean everybody within our system and so this seems like a really appropriate way to do that. Um my probably one of my questions was um you mentioned interventionalists and specifically call out reading. Is this would like our math interventionist more at the secondary type levels also have somebody working with them

087or are we really focusing on PRPS elementary level it's really we only have um we only have like what we call general education aids um at the elementary level. So really that culture piece was really an elementary. Um we we only have um aids that are 100% special ed at the middle school high school level. Okay. But with a reclassification we can shift and then we would have to do personal activity reports to track time and make sure that an appropriate amount of time is built in general ed and specialist. So that's natural and that's one of the conversations Sandy and I even yesterday were on the phone talking and we talked about one place where this is going to really be fil f fil f fil f fil f fil f fil f fil

088f fil f fil f fil f fil f filled is our classroom teachers because our classroom teachers are used to having a a tray outside their their room that says you know like hey in your downtime go do this well that's not going to happen any right like it's going to be they're going to go check with Amy Figgy or Megan Smith and they're going to say go pull this student and work with this student now or go assess this student or go do that So there won't be that anymore. It's going to be the classroom teachers who they're going to Yep. have to find that time to do that now. Yeah. And and I think you guys did a good job of saying that this um reclassification, although we recognize that there is a

089need to do something, this reclassification isn't about um not valuing what some are doing or what weren't doing, but really like this the these PRPs are driving us to have to shift how we're using our staff. And so I think you guys have done a great job um thinking of it that way and and putting um staff in front of our students. I don't think we should really have any staff within our district that aren't working with kids and so this makes a lot of sense to me. Um there's a lot of management pieces there. I think those will be some tough conversations, but you guys have got this and yeah, I I support it. Yeah. No, no additional questions. Agreed. Thanks. Thanks, ladies. If we're good with discussion, we can take a motion here.

090I move to approve the administrative proposal for reclassification of aids to be instructional assistance. I'll second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. All in favor? I oppose. I All right, motion carries. Thank you. Item G, proposed an hourly wage increase based on board's decision of one tier or two-tier job class. Okay, so this one obviously uh we had three options for you to consider. Um it was all contingent on what you uh decided at the beginning. So I'm going to pull up um the current hourly wage scale for you. I was going to say, Courtney, if you could click on that for me. There we go. All right. Um, at this time, what we're looking at is line 31. Um what we would be proposing based on the ARA job study um is

091that we are as you mentioned we are trying to um adjust something that we thought that the status quo wasn't uh working. We did want to make sure that all staff had support and that management had um the flexibility for placing the staff where the greatest needs were. Um, as we become working on that, we're going to reclassify the title to be an instructional specialist. Um, we could have gone with a percent increase. Um, we do know that the work that um, our aids are doing when it's working with uh, students who have been identified or on an IEP or students who are pre-intervention um, or pre-IEP and we're kind of monitoring through interventions. um and enrichment is going to be um raising the game for everybody. So, at this time, uh the administration, we've

092looked at where we were in benchmarking. I'm proposing that we would have a dollar an hour increase for steps 1 through five um over and above what occurred last year. Um the increases for AIDS last year ranged um over 7%. And this raise would add uh a range of um 8 basically 8.5 to uh just under 9%. Um as you know we have five steps. We have staff that have worked with us um in this arena um for over 20 years. And so whatever we've done either with regards to a percent increase or a fixed amount that gets added on to their um hourly wage. Um because there had been a historic um differential for special education. Um anybody that anybody that is going to be classified as an instructional assistant, the numbers in red

093on row 31 would be the no new hourly wage. And that's, as I said, a dollar increase above where those cells were a year ago. Any individual that's above step five would get the dollar. Um to make up for any individual specific to general ed, um they would receive a $1.25. And that would be a one-time adjustment to make sure that they're on the same uh tier. um with um the pay increase as we consolidate from two tiers to a one tier pay scale. Pat, do you have anything on this one? Questions? I don't. All right. I don't have questions. I just want to call out that this is in response to the LERA job study um and our um specifically uh some of our aids being underpaid compared to our neighboring districts. Ricky, I

094don't have any questions. Huh? No. Rick, I just want to echo Tanya's comment here with the Lara study. So, does it this we were we were pretty close to being at market value with the general aids, but we were under the special a special ed aids. Now, with the this additional increase, does that get us at market? Um, do we remember? I can't I can't recall if that got us how close that got us to or within the the range where we were shooting for. We're getting closer. It's still not quite there yet. Um but I think that um so next year we could be looking at something similar where we're trying to close a gap. Right. Exactly. And I think interesting Marty Coyle reached out today to just say he wanted to know how

095things went with the board. Um and I talked with Chantel and Jim. I think that it would be nice to get a refresh on the databases. um whether or not it's every year or every other year but um this is our competitive data. Yes. Yeah. And I don't think this will not uh completely close the gap but very similar to the teachers. If you look on columns G through um H you can see kind of the decisions that we've made. We knew that our administrative assistants were below market and so they got a 4 1.5% increase. um our custodians were um near market and so those increases were three and a half food service both because of where we are financially but also they were at market and CPI is 2.95 they received a 3%

096increase so the differentiations were all market driven um historically we've been it would be uh everybody got the same amount but now what we're trying to do is put the money and to make sure that all staff and all uh roles are competitively priced. Great. Thanks for calling out cuz I I think one of the key decisions that we that we're trying to make here is to target areas that are under market investment and that's that's that was the point of the study. That's why we're targeting these groups. Uh Rick, one more question here. Uh when you mentioned the uh we had a 7% increase last year. Are you referring to this 2425 school year when we gave the dollar increase in the middle of the year? Well, we get from correct. So um that

097raised um kind of uh it's on this one you mentioned that we had a 7% increase last year and then we're going to do a 8 and a half or 8. 48.9 or whatever this year. So these were um in yellow um based on um and we'll go into this with more detail when we talk about end of year, but when people ask about um how the operation levy um dollars were spent. Priority one was to make sure that we were investing in our staff financially. Um so when you look at the increases for hourly from 23 to 24 based on um both the fall increase and then the midyear increase it basically ranged from 7 to 10%. So, we're continuing to try to um we're not there yet, but in a similar way um

098that we did with the teachers is that I think that it's a multi-year journey, but I think that we're making a pretty big bite into the apple. Okay, that's what I wanted to point out. Okay. Anybody else have any questions on anything? Can we're good with it. Make a motion. I move to approve the proposed hourly wage uh increase based on the board decision of a one-tier job classification uh consisting of $1 added to each step one through 5. General aids who are currently above step five will receive a $1.25 raise for fall of 2025 to adjust for the consolidation of a one-tiered instructional assistant job classification. I'll second. All right, we have a motion and a second. All in favor? I opposed. That one carries. Next item is H. Consider the bus driver rates

099for next year. So, we had Oh, we have a special gift coming in. Oh, how does she get married? That's awesome. I'd give it Um for bus drivers um you know that uh we do a multi- um tiered uh payment scale. Uh we have a guaranteed base rate that is given to every driver and then it also differentiates based on their route, the number of miles and how long that they um drive. Um we've been gathering information. Um Cecil 11 has presented the information. Um know that some people report it on a two week uh salary basis. Some reported out on miles, some reported on hours. So it is always apples to oranges. Um we had a really nice opportunity where uh Veronica and Chantel payroll and HR worked together. um went over a chart

100with uh Jim uh late last night and then we revisited it again. Um we believe uh based on our uh comparisons, we had River Falls and Superior and some other information is that our bus drivers when you look at their base pay plus they get 44 cents uh per mile. Um, so we ended up calculating into an hourly wage for their driving and they drive 3 hours a day and then for their base pay um they are market competitive. And so given that um we believe that uh historically we've put um increases on different parts or all of the components, we're recommending a 3.25% 25% increase on their overall base which would um I believe increase it from 1,500 guaranteed uh to 1552 52 um that would go into effect um July 1 um since

101they some of them drive year round. We know that there are some extracurricular um so when they drive for sporting events when they're overnight trips um when there's special specialized uh transportation we did not have time to go through all of that. We've kind of peacemealed that but I thought that that was something that Jim Heather uh Rick Montreal who uh supervises Heather and um Chantel could work on and come back to you before August. So, um, right now we're looking at that we're pretty well set, um, in the market with our bus drivers and, uh, suggesting that a 3.25, which is slightly above, um, inflation, uh, would be appropriate. Vicky, any questions on this one? No questions. No, Tanya. Um, no, I I don't have any questions. Uh, no questions. All righty. We can

102entertain a motion. I move to approve the bus driver wage increase for the uh school year of 3.25% added to the monthly base pay. And can I friendly amendment? I just got it. Um, we do have four individuals that are um working on smaller routes for special education are paid just by the hour. And so if you can right after base pay, let's review that. Yeah. I move to approve the bus driver wage increase for the 2526 school year of a 3.25% added to the monthly base pay and for the four unique hourly only drivers an increase of 3.25%. I'll second. All right, we have a motion and a second. All in favor? I opposed. That carries. We are on to item I, new ECA category payment for music digital technology. Yeah. So, this one

103we're going to have to come back to. We were unable to um meet the deadline. We had put it up there on the agenda. Um ECA stands for extracurricular activity. It is printed at the back of the handbook. Um we have created a whole new class for 612 called music digital technology. Um there is a proposal where there will be garage band and events that will go out into the community into the coffee houses and things like that. So that will be supervised by our teacher. Um one of the things that we've noticed I think Mr. I go I think there isn't uh I think we have an incredible uh number of students that are uh enrolled in this class and then at high school for the 9th graders because they've had it in middle

104school. So um the only thing is I wanted to say you don't have to act on it because we're unprepared. Um we put it in as a bookmark um hoping that we would but it'll be coming back to a uh agenda. Um and there is a promise that it will be made. We just don't have the details for you. All right, move on to item J final budget year expenditures. All right. Um, we kind of alluded to this in our conversation um as we were talking with uh about uh food service. Um, I just got to get to the right spreadsheet here. Um you had asked last month um for us to kind of um maybe summarize a little bit with regards to what categories and how have we spent the dollars that we've received

105um from the voter approved uh referendum of $1.2 million that occurred on November 5th. If you look across the top of this spreadsheet um what we've done is that we have that up. Yeah. Let me start. I just realized that we should really start with the financial model and go one. Oops. All right. Um, this is something that you have seen in multiple work sessions and at the board meeting. Um as you know we are ending the last bienium uh for funding and that is in blue for the current year. The biggest thing that we're kind of looking at is what will our uh are we running a deficit or are we running a surplus. Um last year as you know we lost over $600,000. We started out with a projection of 1.2 million. We

106were able to make cuts but only 50% and it would have been um we would have run through our fund balance which is on the very bottom at $5.2 million. You have a board policy and that board policy is very specific. It has three components. That board policy first and foremost says that we do take a line of credit based on how money comes from Madison and local taxpayers. That it does not come in all at the same time. So there's a cash flow issue. Um, many districts do this. We take a line of credit. We're proud that we have not had to touch it in multiple years. But one of your criteria is that we don't that we have enough fund balance that we have the cash flow so that we don't have to

107borrow have extra interest that are taxpayers are paying for. Second, we wanted to make sure that we never go below 2 million. And then the other one is that we are able to have three to four uh months of expenses. And just to know at a very uh 30,000 ft uh level, we spend about 1.2 million per month on salaries. So if you multiply out by 4 months, that's about 4.8. And then we have other expenses and operations, right? So utilities and things like that. So right now, uh our target is to be at 5.5 um with regards to a fund balance. See if I can get this a little bigger. There we go. And for the way the budget is um coming in, we will be able to hit 5.5 million if we um

108come in and we'll have a surplus of 300,000. We have started, and this is all contingent on, you know, enrollment and the funds that we have. We have one more month um to pay out. Remember teachers are paid through August but it's booked to fiscal year 2025. Based on the work that you have done starting the next bianium um we have um teachers make up over 50% of the um staff in our district and we gave them a 4 12% increase. We are looking at um based on preliminary all things being equal we had some good outcomes with regards to healthcare um showing a 2 and 12% reduction not an increase and some other savings that uh Jim and I as we kind of continue to partner and pass the baton um we should have

109a surplus of about $600,000 that won't be the surplus at the end of the year. um that will be uh kind of what happens through August and um October when you adopt the final um uh budget. But as you can see, we have planned um four to 3% increases the rest of the way for 27 fiscal year 28 and then drop it to 3%. Um historically inflation has been about 2.5. So, some of these numbers are higher and that should then allow us to close that gap where our staff have been behind other districts. Um, note that uh SR Central, one of our districts um that has been in the news and also has been um has a really nice uh operating levy that actually is stacked and an increased over time. they're projecting a

110$600,000 um uh deficit for next year. And so it is really important and I think it's uh something that we stressed last month uh through the work sessions and then ultimately in the proposal is that you have to be conservative um to make sure that as budgets are based on the dollars based on the headwinds that we know and those are we have declining enrollment. We did not currently in Madison they have joint finance committee has given us zero let me repeat that no additional dollars for public education while they sit on billions of dollars of surplus. Secondly you know that we have built in $325 per pupil increase. Know that that 325 is not coming from Madison. That was an increase that was given for 400 years. It went to the Supreme Court. It

111will hold. But that is put on taxpayers, local taxpayers on top of the operating levy. At this time, I hope that people understand that special education we we had been talking about that were funded about 30%. They are only funding high needs uh students that uh exceed over $31,000 in costs. We have only a few students in the 10 years that I've been here that will provide no relief for the cross subsidies that every single district has to make from fund 10 to fund 27. The proposal by the governor DPI and the Wisconsin schoolboard association and superintendent was to get reimbursed at 60%. They are not making any changes uh to increase that and the only increase it is not some sufficient meaning as people draw for special education that money doesn't go higher. It's

112not a guaranteed amount and we have been witnessed to that. Sandy has seen that we get paid less than we were expecting to receive for special education. Rick, was there an increase to special ed funding for voucher schools or did that stay the same? Uh for vouchers voucher schools um I don't think well the bills aren't finalized yet. I think they I believe they did increase um private entities. Um but yeah, and the IO special um that's an after thing. So like right now I apply for high cost for last year this whole year. So it really doesn't benefit us. The other thing just to know is that with you can't watch TV, you can't listen to a podcast, you can't listen to the radio and not hear that students, adolescents struggle with mental health

113issues. The joint finance committee at this time has cut over $10 million um from mental health subsidies to all public schools. So we talked about getting you through this year uh and then looking at what the next bianium this is the worstc case scenario. You are getting no additional money and so what we'll be looking at is that the next bianium covers 25 and 20 uh 26 27. I talked a little bit about that there's a potential you know of a surplus. Obviously, that'll go away as we start um because you just approved a lot of um salary increases that have to go into the system by 20 fiscal year 2027 that drops to 30,000 and then the second year of the next or the first year I'm sorry of the next bienium we would

114be losing half a million. So this money goes quickly because we are people centered and salary centered. Um our goal right is to make sure that we could get you through the second bienium um and stay above the 5 million or $5.2 million. Um by the last year 2029 you would have $4.7 million. Now there's a lot of assumptions that go out there. So the further you go out the more risky our assumptions are. Sorry. No. Great. Um you said 5.2 but I just wanted to clarify that that's a 5.2. to fund balance based on like right now, but as we increase with our salary, it's actually from our bear models, it's um a 5.9 fund balance that we should be having starting the 2728 school year, we'll be correct. It goes up about 100,000

115each year. So, those are some of the things that'll happen. Obviously, um there there are cost containment. You um worked with um a study not just about wages, but we talked about healthcare and some ways to suppress that. That's the fastest growing and our second largest expense. Um it is astronomical and exponential for family healthcare. Um it has increased specifically for individuals but not at the rapid rate for family and right now we're about 50/50 of people that are eligible taking uh family. Um the other piece is that um the district office as you know um we had the same pledge that if there were uh individuals that left we would not refill. Um the district office is reduced to FTEES and um likely to have a slight reduction in hours um as well. The

116administrative team also had an individual that uh decreased in FTE. So through administration and the district office there are um decreases that are occurring both in salary and benefits. Um so those won't be sufficient but that's the other conversation and probably biggest conversation that you have is operating for instructional facilities and um we could talk about that but I'll save it for Jim. All right. So, um that's kind of where we are. And now it'll make a little bit more sense as I go back to um the 1.2 and cast up here. Um how those dollars were spent, the decisions that were brought to the board and the board was able to make. So, um fund balance at the end of the fiscal year 2024, we were at $5.2 million. um by the end of

117this year, we needed to be at 5.5. And so, um we currently um right around after we updated our budget um we had about $964,000 that needed to be spent and allocated. And what we did is each time we had a board meeting, we came back to the four priorities. Priority one was to make sure that we invested in staff, all staff, and that we were market competitive. The second was was to make sure second priority and it's on our website was to make sure that we invested in programs and that we were investing in the resources that our teachers needed. And so you've had proposals both from teched about expanding the floorprint. We are looking at making sure that our early literacy uh curriculum adoption will have funds and that'll be somewhat of the

118proposal coming forward. So what we're looking at is that we're running a surplus that you saw in the bar model of 300,000. That's intentional. It helps fill what I call the pothole of losing 600,000 last year and it makes us equal kind of baseline of where your policy is with regards to where we want to be. Then what we've done is any questions with regards to just kind of the top and how that is playing out. Okay. Then what we've done is kind of shared on the left hand side in red. Um let me get a little bit bigger. is that um any priority staff compensation license support. The first one was really a management decision. It we so it's not counted in the tabulations that'll come forward. That's why it's uh in black font.

119Um but basically we have some forfeitures that we could have used to pay off the 200,000. Remember we have a match for all of our licensed staff. We went with the money that's in the current budget. Um, and so we're allocating another 40,000 to that and not using forfeite because we see that you'll have tough times in the future and it'd be better to use the forfeitures then. um you made uh a decision uh last board meeting to assist with 10 staff members that were caught in the PDP process and you made um adjustments of $22,000 and that was allocated for them this year um but also heading into next year. We also made um early literacy stipens of 3,000 PLC teachers. Um and then we made decisions with regards to lead cook uh in

120the food service getting an additional dollar. Um we approved uh for license I'm sorry for our hourly staff anywhere from 3 to 4.5. You just updated um aids and that came in at um 8% and then um 3.25. 25 for our bus drivers. Um then we did uh go ahead last month we presented pays which is a instructional um content area. Right now for some students when we place them in outsourced um placements it was $30,000. This will be a curriculum that we can use for multiple years, multiple students. Um very excited. It should uh I think the ship date was supposed to occur here. It did get on site. I think it's on. All right. It's going to be so in August with the training and fantastic. And then um one of the things

121that will be after we go through all this, one of the pending questions is that we would like to allocate I've been working with Michael Ksmowski and Sarah Dusk. Part of act 20 is to make sure that you have um a structured curriculum and reading resource. We have bids that are out there. Right now the bids are $250,000. Um to make sure that we don't spend the same dollar twice, we would like to put it in, you know, that you have um an assigned fund balance category. Uh according to policy and to uh DPI, they prefer that you do use assigned more often than unassigned. That it doesn't just go in a big pool. So what we're going to be recommending is that we have staff that got trained in June. They'll continue through the

122um implementation of act 20. We would like to pilot if everything's on target. If I'm not mistaken, Michael, would be late spring starting to pilot some of the reading resources or is it spring we start process prior standards. Okay. Starting to align those two. Okay. And so, um, as they look at that, then they would be probably piloting in fall of 26. Yeah. Okay. And then at some point, you got to pull the trigger and make sure that you have the resources. We also have um some math curriculum resources. This is the conundrum that we have um trying to do all things all at once. COVID kind of disrupted our process. Um, but we have resources in place from grades uh four through high school. And what we're trying to do is make sure that

123we can kind of backfill some other resources for um Malone. Um that allocation plus um we did reinstate um C teams. You also added 4 1.5% to the extracurricular stipens and that came to 11,000. When you add all that up, the running total is just shy of 400,000. that was uh specific to um educational programs and lenture for the staff. Um we are the second request that I'll be making is that we would like to add another 100,000 to fund 46. Um every year forward it'll be harder for you to put money away. And so you put the money away now you get your interest. Um, and just to let you know, um, we just moved our CDs that were at We now have 100% of all of our money with PMA. They are the

124ones that are able to invest. They know the vehicles and they will maximize our returns. Um, with this investment, if you approve it, uh, you would have, um, PMA would have $1.2 million in your capital trust fund. um and allow you to and Mike to execute that uh 10-year plan. What I think Jim will be coming back um I met with Cara and Jim uh for a couple hours. Um you don't need 100% of all of your money to be in cash and right now 100% is in cash. Um this might sound odd, but right now the high yield savings accounts are paying over 4%. CDs aren't paying about the same. And you go, "Well, then why would I put money in a CD and lock it up?" Every probability chart that PMA is working

125on is that it's highly likely that the Feds will be lowering interest rates. It is highly likely that that high yield savings account is going to drop and likely drop to three and maybe more. So what they're recommending is although it looks like a push now, 6 months from now, a year from now, you'll be glad that you locked in. And so um they have given us rates for 18 months, um 6 months, and then I think it was 3 months. Um I think it would be wise to have a ladder. Um I don't think you should lock up more than 50%. Until you're done with uh uh market and Johnson and all those projects. Um, and we have one project I want to bring to your attention, but um, that would allow you to

126probably lock up maybe a quarter of a million dollars in 18 months. And it goes back to Pat's question. Um, of all of those projects, when are they likely to come due and how much money will it be? So then you would have a better metric to say, hey, we can lock up 75% of it. Right now, I would just say based on what we know, you could probably do short-term CDs, 3 and 6 months, you'll get 4% and then do one that's uh 18 months, but then you have 50% of cash if something uh happens. Um so, fund 49 is um currently uh we have fully paid out River Valley Architects. We have no uh current bills for them. We are closing out with Market and Johnson. Um what we have done is moved

127uh their they call them owner savings. So some of the rebates and things like that. Um we've closed out the intermediate school. We've closed out Malone. We have projects going on there this summer. And then we also have the bleachers that are coming in. Um we just made uh a $33,000 payment to Market and Johnson. we have another 83,000 that'll go out. Um and so when all that gets reconciled, we have one mezzanine that or two mezzanines over at the middle school that are still leaking. So we don't know. Um they engineered it. They stand behind their work. They're coming out. But whether or not there's a cost associated with that, time will tell. The reason I mention that is that we would suggest with facilities and grounds that you use fund 49 that's operational

128dollars for capital investments infrastructure at intermediate middle school and Malone um we just learned remember in 2019 is when we did the facility study that is if my math is correct how many years seven it's we just found out that Our air rooftop air handler uh is on the fritz. Um right now the rough estimate is somewhere about a quart of a million dollars. Um Mike Hoya uh asked Mark and Johnson to at least uh start to help us build a bid. Um we'd like to come back to with you with a proposal. Um, basically if that building is still in our portfolio, it has to be operational to make sure that the u middle school that has that. It's the Elm Street 125. So, sorry. Yeah. So, um, uh, so that that is a

129big ticket, but I can tell you right now is that we uh likely have the money to uh pay for it. So, we're going to ask that's a uh complicated. It would require engineering architect and um a vendor to come in and a big crane. So the way that we would look at it is Mike's budget supplies. We learned you can't really cut supplies because they one the costs are going up and he needs supplies. Where we can reduce his budget though is on mechanical because we can for three buildings we can touch infrastructure fund 49 and then you can touch fund 46. And so those things um we'll update you next uh over the summer through Jim. But that's just how we would start to kind of build next year's budget. The third ask,

130so right now there's three asks. One would be setting aside for early literacy of 250, adding another 100,000 to fund 46. And then the last ask, this is more about educational programming. That's why it's in red. was one of the top priorities. As you have heard presentations by five manufacturing to extend their footprint. Um we do not have all the bids in. We did get another update that we shared with you, but there's still a lot of things like once you have a structure like that, you have to ensure it right. Um we have to define what kind of building is it. Is it going to is it a year round building? Is it uh an unheated pole shed? Is it really just for the sawmill and the kiln? Um, so this one you could

131put money into assigned and say we've invested in you guys. We believe that teched is on the right path, but it hasn't checked all the boxes to release it. Or you could not spend it. Um, so I just wanted to let you know that that's what we would recommend is if you want to keep the carrot there for that, if it never materializes, you can always remove it from assigned. Um, but that was kind of what we were talking about. Um the later uh just to kind of share with you, you have a proposal that I wanted to walk you through is that the bus radio system for all of our buses, it's kind of like uh end of year uh I'm sorry, end of service. And so the hardware no longer is um able

132to be kept up. The software for that is um would cost twice as much to update on things that are no longer are beyond life use. So, we did get two bids. Um, we believe that that um is about 7,300. This bus radio commission uh system, I'll talk a little bit more about it. It can come out of fund 10. It could also um potentially fund 46. Um we do have an Excel bill that we're still trying to work on. This is something that we identified um right after construction. They took off um all of our meters during construction. We were running on um generators. Um when all the generators went offline, we were paying Mark and Johnson for the generators. Um the meters weren't activated by Excel. Um once they activated them, the bills

133came in, but they were for the wrong buildings. We just know that somewhere in the vicinity of about six right now it looks like uh about 65,000 to 100,000 is owed but we're still trying to work that out. Um so it whether or not it falls in this budget year or next um there is an unpaid and then for a bus garage ex uh expansion that would fall uh in fiscal year 26 uh but it's 10,000. So all in all what that means is that you um this on the left hand side is the residual. Once all of those things are taken it would leave about um a buffer of about $53,000. So um the one so really what we're showing is where did the money go? A prepoundonderance of the money went to staff

134wages and programs. Um, we do have some additional money that we would like to hold for resources for curriculum, invest in capital, and potentially put into five manufacturing um, expanding its footprint. Any questions? It's a mouthful. Anybody want to start here? Pat, do you have questions or comments? It's it's it's probably peanuts, right? But just maybe just a couple of observations. I think everything at the top is we've been talking about it for a long time. Uh no surprises there, no questions there, just some little things, right? Like like the lost XL Energy bill that should have already been budgeted, right? So that should, you know, I I I would hopefully that that buffer of 52 grands a little bit, right? And then um I don't think the word frustration would be appropriate here, but

135things like the bus garage, radio system, and all that as we continue to talk about the 10-year plan and getting, you know, our our our capital um uh equipment or, you know, whatever on a one-stop I I don't want to say document cuz I know there's better systems out there, but and and truly start we've done a good job managing it, but that's how we're going to avoid some of these surprises. So, we we continue to get better at it, but just maybe a little frustration on that, but the good news is is uh we're able to cover it. So, um that's that's what I got, Mike, for me. Um I don't really have any questions. I just want to um this presentation, this document piggyback, you know, fell right after we just talked about

136some um headarters that are coming up on our budget and stuff. And I just wanted to call out that um as a board we're very aware that that 20 we talked about this at a work session. So that's why we're aware but the 2027 2028 school year is a school year that we have to have some cost cutting decisions made by so so they go into place for that year. And so although we're like showing this and um and people that are looking at this and not really aware of some of the other conversations that we've been um having is that we know that we're investing a lot of money here. Some might say why do that? You can see that in the future, but we we're really aware and we have ideas already of

137what we need to cut. So um we've talked about um with our declining enrollment, we currently operate with four buildings. Um do we need those four buildings? So that's a conversation. We talked about kitchen. We talked about just all the things that we save money on. So that's a conversation that um needs to be decided on prior to that 27 28 school year. The other big one that we've talked about um and the study helped us just really call it to attention was healthcare. And that's another big um those are some of our top expenditures. Um and healthcare being one of those. And so we have some ideas and things that we're going to um start looking at some different ways of maybe doing business um at at least putting it out there and seeing

138how we can save money. So um we we are aware that we're putting this out there. We are aware that we're investing and and we're purposeful in that. These are the promises we made to the community. Um we we believe in our staff, our programming, and so we have to do this. Um, and we know that in the next, you know, year we're going to be looking at what we're going to do for some long-term costs to continue with this. So, that's all. Yeah. Yeah. I just reiterate what Tanya said is we're very aware of where we're currently at and where we're going to be and we know that we have decisions to be made. um this gives us that little bit of buffer and we purposely made that a point when we asked for

139this referendum was don't you know give us that little bit of time to plan instead of making a snap decision. Um, so we see that in here. We know that's in the future. So, it's just moving forward. We have to start doing some planning. Have you back? Yeah. Um, I think that's probably a good takeaway, Rick, is like we have we're going to have some schoolboard parties for next year's uh fiscal year. And, you know, I think we just talked about the four buildings, right? That so we're going to need some workshops. We're needing to figure out what that looks like and how to frame that up and get some proposals kind of ready to be presented to the board sometime in the next fiscal year here. uh with with some of the ways to

140reduce our expenditures uh whether it be building consolidation talks or you know different different types of healthcare options whatever you know I think those are the things that we need to be kind of looking for for next year as we go um but we do end the year strong I think this is a this is a huge win for for our district to be where we're at we're fiscally We're financially solid in our in our fund balance and we're handing out sign pretty pretty significant raises and we're we're projecting to hand out a a decent raise next year for more of the the idea that to close the gap which was the point of the the whole exercise with the and the goal of the referendum that we were able to secure from the community.

141So, um it's good it's good news. It's just we have to be diligent, right? I mean, we're not getting money from the state. So here we are again, $0, right? So there's no help. Yeah. It's great news. We're we're forecasting a potential issue 4 to 5 years out that we need to start solving today. Yep. Exactly. And that's exactly where we wanted to that's exactly where we were hoping we would be and and here we are. So So it's time for us to continue to to keep rolling forward and and get to work on how to on how to trim the trim the budget as we can as much as we can without impacting staff. So we can do it. So, anything else? Right. Enough for me. So, what do we need here? We need

142a a motion here to approve the final budget expenditures. And what does does that include everything on this list? Unless we took something out. Yeah. Unless you So, there really are three asks that are different. Um, we're asking to put in an additional 100,000 above what was already budgeted. We can do that with an asterric and that is that um our audit um contributions to fund 46 are the only expenditures allowed by DPI uh to occur in July and be booked to fiscal year 2025. So very often when we're getting the audit, we'll say we're running a surplus. Do you want it to go into the fund balance or do you want it to go into fund 46? So, what I would say is we're asking to be able to put up to 100, not

143more. And if we can't, like if it comes in and we only have 80 or 75, we would make that and then update the board. Um, so that's one ask. The second ask is that um we would be putting 250,000 into assigned for curriculum resources. And then whether or not um the third one was whether or not you wanted to include 100,000 in assigned for five manufacturing. Yeah. Does that make sense to everybody? I mean, we're talking about it's in the fund balance as assigned dollars and then we can choose if it's something we want to move forward with or not, right? Yeah. Do we have to call that O? Okay. But it just protects us from next year having that dip. So now we have we have the money set aside. Mhm. All right.

144Any any questions or further discussion here? Uh we're looking all over. Oh yeah. So, you want to take a crack at it? Sure. I move to approve the final budget year expenditures meeting schoolboard fund balance end of year end of year threshold for policy addressing fund 46 to include up to an additional $100,000 contribution per audit outcome. fund 49 to address additional infrastructure needs first and the final 20 2526 budget allocations align to board priorities as presented tonight on the school board spreadsheet presentation that includes $250,000 for curricular resources K5 reading and math and $100,000 assigned to five manufacturing sounds great I'll second. All right, we have a motion second. Any further dialogue here? Are we good? All in favor? I I oppose. That carries. All done. All right. Uh, last item. Transportation upgrades. Yes.

145So, sort of. Yeah. So, I kind of put it in there. So, I'll just be really uh brief. We got a couple We got two bids. We currently work with Rashbach. they uh tested out these radios on the buses the last month. One of the nice features that is added is that we will get a rebate for the current devices that we have. In turn, we'll end up with um more we'll end up with 25 radio systems, meaning that every single vehicle, including some of the vans, will be outfitted with this. In addition, it has a GPS system on it. So, um, Heather will be able to know where each built, uh, bus is at any one time, which, uh, you know, during when we had the tornado warning right at dismissal, um, and when

146you have winter events, um, or a breakdown, that is very helpful. Um, in addition, um, it has this save and send feature. So, one of the things when we're driving down to uh Diamond Bluff, Aaron Marshall is uh losing connectivity, um it will basically keep whatever he stated and as soon as it hits connectivity, it fires that message u to the base station. So, there's a first infrastructure, we have to update the antennas and things like that. Um and that comes to I think 7,300 on that. And then there is a monthly fee. It's kind of like a sell service, right? Um and so that will be um basically about five just shy of $500, which adds um $6,000 annually to for operations. So that will be added to fiscal year 2026 as a standing

147item. So remember I showed that you had $600,000 surplus. Well, here's an ad that wasn't We didn't have this. And that will be something that would be uh featured in the upcoming budget. Rick, did you Okay. Yeah, we got two motions in this one. So, anybody have any questions on on this one? No. No questions. Sounds great. Want to make a motion? Do we need a motion, Mike? Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's what Do you want You want a motion to approve this radio system? Yeah. Okay. I move to approve the new radio system for transportation. I'll second it. It's a motion to second. All in favor? I I opposed. That carries. And then the garage door expansion. Okay. Um, one of the things that we're learning is just with how the buses go into the

148uh bays. Um, we have three bays. Two of them are uh super wide bay eight. Um they have I don't know what they're called. There's a word for them. I don't know if they're mullions or what, but they're um basically making sure that the buses don't hit the side of the garage. Um we're hitting them. Our buses are wider. Um that bay is narrower than all the other ones. Um we have a bid of $1,700 from a local uh framer. And then um and he would do it. And then again, the both of these costs would go into fund uh I'm sorry, fiscal year 2026. The reason I'm asking now is so that we can get on their work docket cuz summer uh is a busy time and we want to get it done before

149August. The second part of extending that is that we have a new garage door would be wider. Uh that cost is $8,700. Um, we already have a new lift and we also have those security, I'm sorry, safety eyes. Um, remember we learned that we didn't have any safety eyes on any of the garages and we had it hit a bus and get damaged and it hit a staff member in the head. So, um, we have a lot of the components. I highly recommend that this is uh uh 10,000 obviously goes into fund 46, I'm sorry, into fiscal year 26 and you will have the money. Um I would highly recommend it and I have had conversations with the chip questions. Yeah, just so so this isn't a nice to have. We want a wider garage

150door where we've got one narrow garage bay and we've got wider buses. Yes. And if we don't do this u it's going to be problematic. Yeah. Well, yeah. And it has been probably if you go out there you'll see it's not a nurse. It's we have to do it. Yeah. Questions motion here. I move to approve the expansion of the bus garage door bay area for FY 2026 budget. A second. Motion and a second. All in favor? I opposed. It carries. We're 803 through the business item. letter. There's just people in the letter G. People in the audience didn't hear the instructional. Yes. This is not an official motion. You just want us to reread it. I mean, where I we already did the motion. Second, it'll be typed up in the minutes. I can

151just reread it if you want. We don't need to do another motion, right? No. Okay. I move to approve proposed hourly wage increase based on board decisions of a one job classification consisting of a $1 added to each cell. Step one through five. general ed aids who are currently above step five will receive a $125 raise for the fall of 2025 school year to adjust for the consolidation of a one-tiered instructional assistant job classification. Right. And again, it's going to be in the minutes so folks that want it can grab those. Right. Are all of our agenda? No. No. Very few. All right, we are going on to inform information in discussion teaching and learning update. Michael the Cosmos. The Michael Cosmos. Wow. All right. Um, I think Rick just got on a new one.

152I did skip a bunch of the slides in here just for time sake. Um, thank you. Mike already lost the bet, so take your time. One of the things that we often talk about as a district um this 10-year journey that we've really been on is getting to our Everest. And our Everest um we used to call it school A through A through D. We we now have land on it's visible learning. And it's not the John Hattie visible learning. Um it is where you can see the learning, you can hear the learning, you can feel the learning in the classroom. And what does that look like for both our students and our and our staff? and we've worked on refining that over the last decade. Um, and now we're at a point where we're

153starting to take some steps into that experience both for our teachers and for our administrators and excuse me and our uh staff. Uh, if we keep go to the next one, one of the things the board asked about um last year um not quite at this time, a little bit later in the year, you asked about have we moved the needle? Where are we in this journey? Um you can see in 2019 when we surveyed our staff um we talk about these these different u models or these different schools and we have the the school of ability where you know either you can learn or you can't learn right it's based on your ability or inherent ability and you're kind of your lot in life is cast from from the time you're born. Um or

154are you a school of opportunity where we're going to provide this education kids need to take advantage of these opportunities we're giving to them. It's up to them. Um, are we a personalized school where we believe all kids can learn? We're going to provide a safe environment for that learning or are we finally to that visible learning school where you have guaranteed learning for all where all means all from our highest to our lowest and we're challenging ourselves and our and our students. And you can see back in 2019 when we asked the question of which school do you currently work at? 85% of our staff said we're at the school of opportunity. We're teaching. It's up to the kids if they want to learn it and if they want to take advantage of those

155opportunities that we're giving to them or not. Um again, that's where the bulk was. As you can see from to five years later, 80% of our staff feel like we've moved the cog one level up. We're to that point where we believe all kids can learn. We can provide safe environments for them. We're trying to meet their needs of all kids through a personalized um plan. This is a really great slide and data. Yeah, it's huge. You can see how thin that slice was 5% back in 2019 and now it's already to 80%. Um, so good thing is we've never been a school of ability. We've never believed that, you know, we cannot have an impact on students lives. So that's been our academic model and journey for the last really decade to refine it

156and now for the last 5 years to really be digging in and what does that look like? Um, so Rick, if you go to the next slide, one of the things we talk about are some emerging practices. is we know act 20 is one of them, but one of the big ones that we've taken on as a district um and you as an as a uh school board have supported us in and I know our our new superintendent um Mr. Reef has experience with building thinking classrooms and we're thinking tasks. Um so that alignment works really well. You see the the torch being uh uh handed over, but again we talked about a three-year delivery plan. That's just the delivery and then the implementation and we started that journey this year and like all things

157it never goes as planned and that's why we have this vision for thinking classrooms in Prescott and what in an ideal world what would that look like? Um, one of the things we were able to do this year is, if you go to the next slide, Rick, there's these 14 different practices. These are just the practices that happen to align with Peter Lil and his research of 14 different practices that get kids to think longer and to think deeper. And that's what our focus is, is how do we get kids to think longer? How do we get them to think deeper? We um through our BTC leadership team, we had six areas that we were able to K12 go out and train our staff on. Visibly random groups, non-curricular tasks, curricular tasks, non-permanent vertical surfaces

158or whiteboards, um defronting your classroom, and then questioning keep thinking questions versus stop thinking questions and how do we respond to them? So, we've all had that training. You can see in your slide deck, again, I skipped most of the slides, how our staff sort of felt about those and how they went and where they rank themselves. Where are they on that journey and a one to four scale and most of them were somewhere in that 2 to three range, right? We've started our journey, most um staff are starting to feel comfortable with the vocabulary. They're implementing a little bit in their classrooms. Um there's a couple photos here of what does that look like? So, on this photo here, you can see some some math going on. You can see a a student with

159special needs in the top right corner and what does math look like for him. In the bottom here, this actually is a high school math class and you can see how they're working cooperatively um looks like they're doing some stacking with some cups. Um again, as a non-curricular task to get them to get ready for a curricular task and how do we interact and work with each other. Um Rick, if you go to the next slide, um again, some high school kids working together. You can see the uh on the left hand side we have some elementary age kids and some fourth fourth graders on the top and I think it's third graders on the bottom. Um and again working at those vertical white surfaces and that was sort of our big push is uh

160some of our teachers said we don't have the resources. So how do we get those resources? We went after grants. The parent committee has given us grants. Um um and then the school board and through our budgeting we we've been able to do that. um every you know one of the misconceptions is that how do you get kids to think deep is um they have to always be at a vertical white space surface and that's not true. It needs to pair with what's the activity that you're doing. Here's a deep thinking task that's going on. And Rick, if you go to back to this last one, I want you to notice the teacher in this picture. Rick, just go back to just leave it please. Right there. Yep. Do you notice the teacher? Where are

161they located? What are they doing? Yep. just watching. Exactly. They're just watching, right? And what are they watching for? That's the next thing, the important things we're What are you watching for? The kids that are might be wrong but are still having deep conversations and arguing their points and talking it through. Those are the kids we ignore. Yeah. Cuz eventually they'll realize they're air. The kids that we that we look at are the kids that the group's done. They're standing around, arms crossed. They're not having the conversation. let's go and talk to those kids and see where where they're at and are they really ready to go on or not. So again matching the task to the way that we're delivering that for the students. Um if you keep going Rick the next slide then

162after that summary is sort of like what are what are PSD teachers saying about BTC? What are they saying after a year of trying to implement learn about it? Um again we're not in the end. Some of us are just starting this journey. some are a little bit further, but they're talking about student collaboration and communication that they they haven't seen before. Um, risk takingaking, we talk about that all the time. And then that ownership that comes with it. Um, they're talking about the tools that they have, the structures that are now in place that allow them so when they're doing their lesson planning, they plan totally different. We have a number of hours of curriculum writing over the summer that teachers are requesting so they can revamp and look at the way they're having

163kids think in the classroom and can some of these structures and tools work for them. um transferring that information and adapting across settings. And finally, and probably the most important at the very bottom there, a joyful and engaging learning environment. That that's what our our teachers are seeing that what has changed in your classroom. They're starting to describe and students are starting to describe the learning experience as joyful and engaging at the same time. Um just last slide is sort of wrap-up is that um again through the school board making this a priority this being a K12 and all the principles um bringing that on that every site wanted to be part of this. We didn't want to peacemeal it out. We wanted to move forward. Um we have our BTC BTC leadership team and

164then some expansion. Right? So we have some that you can see are returning. We have some um new ones there. Um, and in two weeks here they'll be going to the national conference in Seattle and we have uh five staff members that'll be going there to get some more training from Peter, from his close team that he works with. Um, so it's a great opportunity for us to be able to have this leadership team again with more training that then can even develop and design better professional development and bring it back and make it Prescott. So thank you to the school board for doing that. Again, like I talked about, Mr. Mr. Reef has experience in this. He's done this in his previous district. Um, so it's going to be nice to just just feather

165and keep this vision going because that's always some of the fear when you get a new superintendent is what's going to be their vision and are you going to just drop things off that maybe are in the works and and this is definitely one of those areas that we'll continue to march forward on. Awesome. Any anybody got any questions or comments for Michael here? No. No. That's good. Pretty awesome. Who doesn't do this in their job every day? You know, collaborate with your co-workers and and work through problems. So, yeah. Fantastic. All right. Thanks, Michael. Move on to the job study. Yeah. So, tonight we really captured, I think, the essence of how helpful it was to have an external objective view. um to have data to make sure that we were making decisions that

166were data driven, that we had evidence for it. Um obviously there's some uh ongoing steps that we promised. So we just wanted to kind of remind you um of that is that it is a journey. Uh we first wanted to make sure that we established consistent and competitive wages. um we were able to give a 4% raise in general over this year and then now uh differentiated anywhere where from 3 to 4 1/2%. Um we've established that structure this year. Uh the goal is to have it continue and beyond. Um we have an annual increase and then uh for teachers and then a closing the gap increase. Uh the goal is to continue to monitor the impact just like we do as educators. We want to make sure that we're effective in the classroom. We're

167going to monitor against those identified benchmarks. We have a smart goal of when that can be achieved and we'll know when we have achieved it. Um HR will be taking on a big uh process with regards to addressing any anomalies. We have made uh decisions by the board to address some of those already with regards to the PDP and um updating the um extracurricular. Um, and I think that uh we're on our way. We also have updated and asked staff to continue to give us paperwork and update with years of experience. Um, the goal is to have kind of a refreshed or revised um, handbook. We know that the handbook um, there's some lowhanging fruit to kind of update that, but then a longer probably three phases as we continue to be able to kind

168of refine that. Um there is the opportunity for um HR to do we discussed to have a survey specifically around benefits and to identify what are the benefits that gap between what we currently provide which is about 45% of their total compensation and to be able to say do you value it as much as we think you might and then if they don't there's steps of making sure they're informed they're educated and then to come back if they're informed and educated and still don't value it, let's repurpose and put those dollars elsewhere. Um the goal for that is to have that kind of done as teachers come back in August and our staff is ready so that you can have those discussions um in alignment for uh the following year. And then to be proactive,

169we had started to identify where are the biggest challenges for staffing. Um right now we have two positions open for uh transportation. We have a position open for a lead cook in food service and we also have uh a position open for our custodians. We just posted on our website some of our um teaching positions. It's one of the first steps that we did make is that the all the job descriptions and some of the nice uh factoids about Prescott are updated on the it's a little bit more let's just say aesthetically pleasing uh for somebody trying to come out there. And then we also identified hard to fill positions and any special education licensed staff has been difficult secondary math and science teched and then we uh in red I think we never finished

170well we started the conversation it's not finished and so whether or not some consideration of specific lensure would be included but overall I think the state of the district is well with regards to um starting the journey you have identified the middle border in River Falls is your metric and that was helpful for us as well as we finalized um the bus drivers and our instructional assistance tonight. So that's where we're at. Yeah. Any questions, comments here, Tanya? No, not at all. I mean I I think it's great to have it. We can it's right this is your last board meeting with us. So this there's been a few just kind of road maps for us and um this is one of those. Thank you. Yeah, no comments. No comments. Rick, you've left you've left

171us in a in a really solid spot and I I think that that just is a testament to who you are and you just never quit until you feel like you've done what you came out set to do. So again, thank you. Um item C is the quorum possibility for Thursday 20 the 26th just there may be more than two of you and so we have published that all right is that it that is it no further discussion on I'm pretty sure have a quorum there but uh I'm going to move us on item 12 recognition measures anybody care to approach point of be recognized at this time. All right. Don't have to. Thank you. And unfortunately, the board will consider a motion to convene. Did Rick want Rick wanted? Yes. Uh I'm sorry. Uh

172go ahead. Yes, we had a few last words here. So, um, obviously, um, I was fully surprised by, uh, the opening remarks, Tanya, that you had, um, beyond, uh, on behalf of the school board. And, um, very appreciative. And this is, as I shared at the end of the school year, it's the last bell of one's career. I forgot to bring the bell so I could ring it one more time. But uh in our famous uh uh historian within uh Prescott, you know, Dallas Edgars always tells or coaches us to continue to do good things for our students and our community. And I think that um your selection of Jim Reef um the time that we've shared and the um work ethic that he has and his listening and learning so far has been um

173it's a privilege to watch and I'm very happy for the staff. And I guess I would just say it's been an honor and a privilege to share uh your children, the programs and to grow Prescott to where it is. I look forward uh to continue to see it uh improve and because our goal has always been to be the best at getting better and I could not have done it alone. I appreciate the board and the staff and um I'll end with Edward R. Marorrow. Um good night and good luck. Yeah. Well done. Thank you, Rick. Thanks. All right. Uh, we did go through the recognition. So, now we can, uh, I guess board is going to consider a motion to convene a close session under exemptions 1985 1C. So, Rick's not done yet. Uh,

174for Yeah. I consider employment promotion compensation evaluation data, right? Yep. And there are uh employees one through six. Yeah. So we have Yeah, we have employee it's okay if I say employees one through six. Yep. Okay. Uh so we need to consider a motion here. Anybody want to make a motion and then we'll roll call. When we go into close session, we'll roll call. Uh, I move to convene in close session um in room A 117 Prescott High School at 8:30 say under the exe the statute too um Yep. Under uh exemptions 19.851C in room A17 at 8:30 p.m. I'll second. All right, we have a motion second. All in favor? I I oppos. All right, we will re close session. Thank you everyone for sticking around.