001Greeting board members and members of the community. I'm Dr. Sarah Chaya Clarity, the director of secondary teaching, learning, and equity. Here to report on the dissolution of Dne County Schools Consortium. This is a situation report prepared under the superintendent's consent agenda to the board of education for April 14th, 2025. to provide a little background on what the DNE County Schools Consortium is. Our school district has partnered with this organization to support youth apprenticeship since the mid1 1990s. In the spring of 2019, about six years ago, we entered into an intergovernmental agreement with a number of other districts for our what was called the school to career program at the time. That agreement with these other districts in the area was became known as the Dayne County School Consortium. The purpose of the consortium was to
002pool our resources to provide work-based learning opportunities for students. At that time, districts had fewer numbers of youth apprentices. And so by pooling the resources, it gave an opportunity for us to collaborate um work with one another and have everything centralized through an organization who supported our endeavors. So we are currently one of 16 consortium member districts in the greater Dane County area and Manona Grove, the Manona Grove area school district has been the most recent fiscal agent for the Dane County Schools Consortium. So they hold that fiscal agency and then help coordinate and distribute monies to all of the other member districts in this day county schools consortium. So the situation is that over the past several years we as a school district have experienced significant growth in our youth apprentichip participation. uh we
003have doubled the number of youth apprentices that were enrolled as of two years ago and we are now looking to double again uh our youth apprentices across sre west and PPA for next year in order to be able to support the significant growth in all areas of work-based learning we have three dedicated personnel three full-time employees one is located at central office and that is our district CTE e coordinator who supports youth apprentices on their job sites. We also have two college career and life readiness coordinators, one at Sun Prairie East and one at S Prairie West who also supports Prairie Phoenix Academy and those site coordinators help coordinate everything with students at the high school. So the Dane County Schools Consortium has historically facilitated partnerships with the Workforce Development Board of South Central Wisconsin
004for our youth apprentices. So supporting the business side of making sure that our students get connected with their businesses. Recent challenges have been developing across the past year uh or really a little longer than that in this partnership from our perspective and that includes increasingly restrictive coursework approvals by the Dane County Schools Consortium membership team. um pretty cumbersome processes for getting students to apply, getting their um applications and their um all a number of indicators that they have to meet in terms of coursework and really having this centralized control shift happen at the Dane County Schools Consortium, which has really limited our ability to tailor our programming to our students needs. At the same time, there has been ongoing uncertainty around the viability of the Dayne County Schools Consortium. As I mentioned on the previous
005slide, Monona Grove has been the fiscal agent for this consortium. However, in the spring of 2024 and again in the winter of 2024, Monona Grove provided formal notice to the Dane County Schools Consortium Executive Director, their board, and all district members that they would no longer continue to be the fiscal agent as of July 1st. There does need to be a fiscal agent who is going to be the one who manages the money from all of these member districts. And since that time, none of the other 16 districts have volunteered to assume that fiscal agency role. So, this goes to show that the lack of other districts who are volunteering to take on that role um further underscores the challenges that we're seeing with this consortium model given all of the challenges that have been
006happening outside of the fiscal agency really around the programming and the control that's been happening by the Dayne County Schools Consortium in relationship to our students. We as a school district have already provided notice that we are going to withdraw from the Dane County Schools Consortium at the end of this fiscal year. So as of June 30th, 2025, we will no longer be a part of the Dane County Schools Consortium. However, that intergovernmental agreement that we joined in 2019 states that the consortium itself may be dissolved by an affirmative vote of school boards of twothirds of the participating districts. A dissolution vote may only be taken after provision by the board of directors with at least 30 days prior written notice to all participating school districts. So there are there is a a larger interest
007among the Dane County Schools Consortium members to seek to vote to dissolve the Dane County Schools Consortium as a whole. Therefore, on behalf of the superintendent, we are seeking your authority to be able to vote affirmatively to dissolve the consortium should a vote be held by the consortium prior to our withdrawal. So if if some if a vote were to come forward between April 14th and June 30th, we are seeking the board's approval to vote affirmatively to dissolve. And again, a twothirds vote by all of these 16 district members would be required for final dissolution. There are several other larger districts in the region who are taking or have already taken similar steps to have the board authorize an affirmative vote. and the Workforce Development Board of South Central Wisconsin is actively working uh with
008all of the school districts that have been serviced by the Dane County Schools Consortium to establish a network um and facilitate collaboration among districts. It's important to know that the grants related to youth apprenticeship and worstbased learning will continue uneffective and we will ensure continuity of services by continuing to leverage our staff to serve our students in partnership with our businesses uh in the years to come. I want to express gratitude to our CTE coordinator as well as our college career and life readiness coordinators who have been working and amplifying our programming bettering service to our students across the past several years. and gratitude to our students who are pursuing these academic challenges, putting themselves out there, taking on work-based learning opportunities that will not only amplify their high school experience, but set them up
009to have a successful college career and and life experience. So, I look forward to answering any questions that you might have at the upcoming board meeting on April 14th. Thank you. [Music]