001G late David over there all colored coordin with the shoes thank you start all right good evening and welcome sorry for the delay but we had some other business to take care of so like to call tonight's meeting to we have met official compliance with all notifications call please Nick Olson here Taylor here Sarah schert mcone here L gab here Gallagher here President Steve Olson here Nick Schumacher here this is our committee of the whole meeting for tonight Monday March 3rd 2025 this meeting is a meeting of the Board of Education held in public for the purpose of conducting the school district's business and is not to be cons considered a public community meeting there is a time for comments by members of the public during the meeting as indicated on the agenda members of
002the public wishing to address the board on any of the topics included on tonight's agenda may do so by signing up on the public comment signup sheet by the entrance prior to the start start of the meeting board requests refraining from making any comments involving personally identifiable information about students staff or Administration comments should be respectful focused on the items being considered by the board and will be restricted to 3 minutes in length action taken at today's meeting is to forward recommendations for final approval at the next regular school board meeting on Monday March 17 2025 first is comments by members of the public do we have anything in before I move to our agenda I would like to make notification that we are going to change the order of the uh agendas tonight we
003do have a presentation about an audit and we'd like to move as you look at your Committee of the whole reports the board committee reports number three shall be number one we would then move to Amy's report number two and then policies and rules will be number three so to lead off our board committee reports Budget Insurance committee that's me yeah yes okay I got two action items uh gifts grants and requests Administration recommends approval to accept gifts grants and requests received in February of 2025 motion to approve I motion and a second any discussion can we see it um little technical difficulty here second well thank you m Falls up yeah I don't know why it's I can read a off too it's not super long I just think we could just say that
004we have three or four in yeah Jesse herig I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that benevity donation for $500 all night grad party another donation from them for $ 64432 for boy hockey did we get it okay perfect I can stop there it is thank you have a motion in a second and no more discussion all those in favor signify by saying I I I post none motion carries our second action item is the annual donation to Scholarship Foundation Administration Rec approval of the annual donation in the amount of $1,000 District Superior Scholarship Foundation Incorporated Student Activities fund motion approved second motion and a second any discussion hearing none all those in favor signify by saying I I oppose motion carries I have no discussion item and informational items Here Comes our audit of the
0052324 financial statements all right good evening uh is my audio coming through okay yes thanks Perfect all right um I'll be brief looks like your little got your work cut out for you tonight on timing wise so I'll keep my comments brief but if you had any questions coming into it today absolutely take those as we go along here otherwise I'm going to walk you through a a quick two-page summary of the audit results for 2024 I'm Brock Gan principal in charge of your annual external audit um maybe first thank finance and administration for all the help that goes into preparing for an audit uh you're one of the larger districts in the state and there's just a lot there's a lot going on a lot of Grants a lot of transactions do a nice
006job um pulling all that together for us so with that um I'm going to try to share my screen and the two-page handout which hopefully is in your packets um see if this works here let me know if you see that on the screen there top of the first page of the two-page handout yes perfect okay so uh the way this is broken up similar to Prior years if you've seen this before um the top section section one talks about the reports we issue in conjunction with the uh with the audit and then the second half of the first page and the second page talk about the numbers so I'll get to that in a minute uh first cover the reports we issued so we issued an unmodified opinion it's the uh highest level you
007can receive it's what you strive for actually DPI requires that so thankfully there's nothing that uh caused problems with the amounts or disclosures in there that we'd have to have additional language that is different than a management letter at the end of the financial statement there's uh what's called a schedule of finding very common for school districts in Wisconsin to have something in there and two of the first uh the first two here that I list uh limited segregation of Duties and material audit adjustments those are extremely common almost all of my clients receive all these it's common for us as external Auditors to propose adjustments to your books if we do that it's kind of an automatic thing across the industry if um because because we can't be a part of your internal control
008structure we can help you adjust it at the end of the year and if we do that we just have to disclose that here in the management letter portion um segregation of duties for those less familiar maybe uh think of it this way um you don't necessarily have a team of CPAs on hand in your finance office to segregate all uh accounting functions the way we would like to see it happen uh that's receipts dispersements payroll journal entries there's a lot of different ways to impact the numbers and uh so you have very few people that have uh uh several responsibilities and what what's second what when that's the case it ends up being here in your management letter again very very common um even for the largest uh clients of mine like counties for
009example they still receive this as well you do what you can with the controls you have in place and and you as a board maybe it's more of an annual reminder that you do have a role in this with your approvals um the third one cash and investment reconciliations this one pops up occasionally throughout our client base uh it's a repeat of last year so a two-year period here where um we helped out with the bank reconciliation process to get the numbers tied out and uh um something you're working on and I actually don't anticipate this being ongoing into 2025 so you have you you have uh things in the works now to help uh mitigate that issue working down slightly there's a section on compliance because we do also in in addition to auditing
010the numbers we're looking at compliance with grants and contracts and we have nothing to report there there's no findings as a result of that testing all right now I'll move move you on to some of the numbers I give you a four-year Trend here so you can kind of see how things are are progressing and won't talk about all the numbers either but because there's kind of a lot going on what I'll Focus you on here is the second to last year what's called change in fund balance that is the results for the year did you come out with uh did revenues exceed expenses or the other way around and you do see a positive trend here that's good so you came out ahead of the game by a little over a million dollars um
011better than your expenses so revenues exceeded expenses might on the surface seem like a big number but bear with me here for for a second cu the trend is pretty consistent with way uh the size of the district and and the the changes so I'm going to measure um the financial health of the district by moving you up slightly hopefully I don't know if you can see my cursor or not but you're going to look at this unassigned fund balance number 17 million that is your unassigned reserves that's what you have to live on going into the next year 17 million I compare that to what you spent the $64 million figure here and get this ratio at the bottom you can see even though you did have a nice increase in your total uh
012overall fund balance due to positive results this this ratio didn't change a whole lot stayed very consistent with last year um that's because your expenses increased quite a bit so you're your pacing you're keeping Pace with uh the increase in your expenses to maintain this level of financial he our general rule of thumb is you want to maintain a minimum it's not necessarily Target yeah you try not to go below it otherwise end up school districts tend to have cash flow problems if they do but something between 25 and 33% so certainly right in there kind on the lower end of that scale even um and I'd say the a more average and again we we work with over 100 districts across the state of Wisconsin that averag is closer to 29% but right in
013the ballp part there as well I'll move you to page two and here we're just looking at your year end fund balance numbers by uh by fund that all the details on the balance sheet first section section three um you're really looking for Trends here is it increasing decreasing and one thing you'll notice here is uh food service for example is down a little bit but still has pretty strong fund balance reserves of just under 1.3 million and you'll see a large increase here in your fund 21 uh you may or may not re recall but you had an uncommonly large donation received during 2024 so that will buy uh will naturally increase your balance of Reserves at year end moving down we'll get your Deb service fund uh during the year you paid 9.8
014million in principal and interest during 2024 and uh most of that was covered with budgeted revenues but you did have to use some reserves there about 96,000 to uh fill in the Gap uh to pay all the principle and interest so still plenty left there there's 1.2 million available to you for future budgets for principal and interest section five is your capital projects funds this is the round out the rest of your funds here you've got fund 49 is the first one listed um the only activity in there is some earning some interest it's it's sat idle otherwise so you earned about 37,000 and then uh fund 46 is your more active fund that second one listed there and you did uh spend down um you did spend about 1.3 million on Capital cost so
015you had some revenues in there a little bit of revenues and you did have uh a spend down it's a it's the intent to this one it's to work your Capital plan the last section I'll talk about here uh is a summary of your long-term obligations you'll note a net decrease in this top section of General obligation debt that's your tax supported debt uh as I mentioned before you did have 9.8 million of principal and interest of that 7.4 million was principal reduction and you only had one new net uh sorry one new debt issue during the year it was a note in the amount of 554 th000 so the net of those got you down uh from 75 million down to just under uh 68 million in outstanding General obligation debt we'll go through
016the rest of these here here's a summary of the other long-term obligations these are benefit plans these are leas lease items uh one item that's going to look a little unusual is this wrs row here so I want to just point that out quick these are negative numbers that's not a that's not a typo um this is a a measurement of your District's portion the small portion of the overall wrs pension plan that the state administers so we get a bunch of data we bring it into your report at the end of the year uh here in 21 and 22 the the plan was overfunded there was an asset out there that all the participants um brought on their book so you had this uh it's not something you could cash out but it was
017an asset of the your portion of the plan um plan asset that swung the the other way during 2023 and remains a liability here in 2024 so that's why it's a it's a positive number it's a little counterintuitive we're talking about liabilities in this section so it is uh a liability again you're not going to have to pay checks for this you pay your wrs benefit in your payroll as you go it's just something to keep a keep an eye on and the moral story is uh it's a very big plan and here in Wisconsin the the pension and the life insurance the one right above it those are well-funded plans so we don't have too much to worry about there they're going to tweak the rates they charge every year a little bit but
018we don't have a situation like other states where there's it's a poorly funded plan and they have issues to deal with so all in all good news there last thing I'll talk about or comment on is this percentage at the bottom and that's just a measurement of the statutory limit on tax supported debt I mentioned above your go debt that's tax supported debt the 68 million um there is a limit to how much you can hold and uh if you go above that you have to go to referendum well you're at 19 % of that limit so you have no worries there if you needed to uh borrow with Levy supported debt uh here in the near future so with that I will Pro conclude my comments and just open it up to see if
019you had any questions for me questions riveting Brock thank you you back thank you yep have good evening is there anything you want to add yeah so F version U one working with Brock Brock's from patient with us um you know being the position 100% turnover in the uh in the business office so um you know he's been an asset to somebody can reach out to and work through those situations um the big thing is you know when you look at it look at K million brought million less expenses but like Brock said that money is our our fund balance make sure we're going to be healthy continue to be healthy um we're at the lower end of where we kind of want to be but so healthy healthy spot um I anticipate I hope
020we contribute again to that this year um it's going to be the following years where it's going to be really really difficult to contribute to that fund balance um to the point that you might have to draw on it and that's one thing I I hope we don't have to do that but that's why it's there that's that's to get us through those rough spots and everything going on on the state um there could be some there could be some rough spots ahead of us and federal level and the federal level yes in you know three or four years from now so that's kind of by where we're at trying to get that front balance up um but again it's been a it's been a learning experience as far as like it is extremely complex
021the entries that need be make between sliding between funds and various steps so but again and I really appreciate Brock and his team yes I get a room for of the CPAs that come and help me so they've been uh they've been they've been great I think uh we got this audited out two months earlier than last year and I'm hoping to get it out two months earlier this year so we can that December deadline well done thank you thank you good night good night one last informational item fund 10 revenue and expenditure prary reports we not quite know what numbers David any c uh so we got a big check on the taxes last month we're a big check on state Equalization Aid at the end of this month and then we're not get
022money for a while so we're going to spike out on Revenue I'll move some money around so we can collect some interest off of that and then uh we be trickle down and the goal is not to use our um that we have out there or line of credit you guys will see that line of credit coming up again because I'm going to my goal is either a May to get a preliminary budget in front of you guys you can that the month after that we will set up another line of credit and then going forward we'll be the line of credit every proba July instead of this H done three of the last 18 minut anybody have any other comments questions conclud my report Mr President thank you Mr Olsen next our report from
023our superintendent uh I have just one informational item Mr Fe here to give us High School update thank you and that's it I try to be brief he there we go um some celebrations I was like to start off you know with good uh we're start continuing to see Improvement in the rate of which students are passing their classes um a little over 95% of the classes that were taken at Superior High School uh in semester one um we passed by by our students uh so we're continuing to see Improvement in that area uh which obviously as we push and and work toward um graduation that's that's a good good thing to see uh I think you and I've heard from our staff and heard from our students you know the the connections that our
024staff are making the overall improvements in uh the atmosphere spere and climate I'll talk about a few things there um we continue to see a decrease in our significant behaviors you know physical things illegal uh illegal things um we're we're seeing a pretty significant uh reduction in in those which obviously is good as we're looking affects the climate in the safety of the building and one other thing I wanted to to point out which was pretty cool uh ACP the academic and career uh planning element the thing you know within DPI that that spans across the district level starts in elementary school right up um until they graduate um' done a lot of work with our uh education uh our employment plan um you know we've we've met met quite a bit uh we're doing
025a lot of things at at the high school level clyn null has done a great job of uh if you you see it seems like we have a career fair once a month we have students going and checking out colleges and checking out trades and she's organizing so many different opportunities uh for our students to see to see what's out there and to be exposed um DPI reached out to us and identified our plan as an Exemplar uh something that they want to use highlight on the website and and show off to others as a model for for what this could could look like and obviously as we're looking you know to graduation and uh for for our students to be prepared for what's next uh giving those Explorations and opportunities uh I think are
026huge and uh I'm excited about you the work that we've got going on there um you I mentioned I mentioned the the climate and some of the things are new staff member stops by on Mondays uh she is a um a therapy dog and training from the police department so mie stops by she's a she's a hit with with our with our students student she visits me weekly too so she visits she get see I actually had a student uh St didn't tell me was May two Mondays ago I came to school today because Millie's going to be here right like well whatever whatever it takes you get to hang out with Millie um the middle during a recent staff development we played a scooter botch ball with our staff so we having fun sliding
027across across the gym floor uh and uh the other two pictures there on the right were from our recent Unity day uh we broke out the old uh Elementary fiet parachute was one of the activities and uh which is a big big hit with high school kids uh and then you see one of our Mr denar and one of our students uh student challenged them to a a cook off with uh multiple categories so it was part of our Unity day as well like Chef yeah kind of I volunteered to get taste testing think I was the real winner my staff members were under the parachut We There were there were some at times yeah actually uh gunar Johnson our newer fiad teachers it was raining wet with sweat but he did that he had
028three or four r ations of of the parachute so had some good good times there um School challenges um we're still seeing our mental health challenges really put a strain on on our resources we talk to our teachers and talk to our counselors or Deans or principles uh a lot of what we're doing day in and day out is you know obviously first and foremost is supporting our students in their needs uh it does it does stretch us we do we do a lot of that um you know and you know it it feels sometimes like you know some of the other things we need to do you you know take a take a back seat but you know that's reality of where we are in the support uh that that our students in our
029community need um our numbers have getting better uh we're still seeing truy uh as as a significant challenge we we've got a decent number of less you know percentage less truant students this year than we had last year uh we're still seeing numbers numbers too high in the upper teens uh of percentage of our students who are you know would meet that definition of Habitual truancy working and support you know it's no secret that that these three things are all all connected uh to one another um the the overall instances of vaping uh are G have gone down what we've seen is is a pretty significant increase in the amount of amount of Vapes that are THC Vapes so we're seeing less less volume of Vapes coming through uh we're seeing but three years ago
030it was less than 5% of the Vapes or THC uh we're now we're now seeing 30 something percent of the Vapes um containing THC which obviously a lot of a lot of connections and the challenges we're facing and and and trying to you know clean it up and keep it out of the building uh but also you know support those you know who are who are struggling uh with it so again continues to be um something that we're putting a lot of efforts in um shifting gears to our to our goal uh our our main goal our area of greatest need as I talked to last time we were here that we identified was around a math achievement in the ACT um and when I talk about our action steps here momentarily we've looked well
031we're focused on math and some of the strategies we really as a staff tried to approach this as um building wide and and U rigor wise in terms of act looking at the type the type of questions the level of questions that students face on the ACT um and bumping up the engagement the productive struggle uh the higher level tasks so a lot of our uh our Focus within our professional development has been there uh as we've worked worked through the the year in our professional development some of the things we've done um one of the things that our staff responds really positively uh to and continue has in the past continues to is when our professional development is homemade when it's our teachers demonstrating you know things that they're doing and and having an
032opportunity to to talk with one another collaborate uh build some things tweak some things within their lessons uh you know that was really a big focus in our last staff development this isn't this isn't a wholesale change this isn't what we're doing is wrong this is how can we how can we up the r how can we make these more engaging for our students so as we worked through that our last staff development we had a little mini circuit where you teachers had an opportunity to to check in and go to different classrooms and see what it looks like in different spaces and different subjects uh and also an opportunity to you know to talk to one another and you I had 15year veteran teacher tell me that they' never been in one of our
033art rooms before so to see you know to see them experience a many art lesson but also be able to take back uh some of you know what that art teacher was doing uh to engage her students um a lot of our work at BTC stands for building thinking classrooms uh it is higher level engagement it's um higher rigor it's productive struggle working through um more more elevated type of tasks which also are what you experience on the ACT you know those level two and three depth of knowledge um questions can I interject it I I think one of the things i' I've shared with Ain and others it's it's not normal for teachers to feel that level of comfort to be able to go and observe each other and that is a testimony I
034think to the culture of that high school that they um are eager to demonstrate their lessons and people are eager to go into each other's classrooms that's a culture you have to create and so I think that's really uh it's been it's been a good positive um move and I think teachers enjoy learning from other teachers as opposed to others so I think that's nice job the other bullet ah had on there Ai and the ACT we tried to you know we hear the the negatives of AI and you know how students can use it to to cheat and things like that uh We've also tried to harness it and use it uh use it to support student um some of the things that some of the AI tools will do you can enter prompts
035you know so I mention that depth of knowledge those higher level tasks you can take some of the things that you're currently teaching and ask uh ask the different AI tools to give you a passage and to generate around this topic and to generate higher level thinking questions for for students to uh to address so we we've been spending some time and you know and obviously looking into our general classroom instruction and then how that that connects to the act so that was our big you know our our main focus in the past we've had two goals a an academic and a cultural goal well we don't formally have that cultural goal this year that is something that our shared leadership team feels strongly about and has put some effort into uh so so a
036couple of the things call them a cultural group for the rest lack of a better term we kind of split up when we're in our uh Shar leadership meetings uh our our building culture group has done has you has created some of the activities we've done to have some fun is also uh spearheading the campaign to reach out to community and graduates and we want to we want to we want to show representation and show show our students the people who came before them Superior in some of the amazing things that they've done uh so we're we're starting you know got it up on our TVs we're we're looking to uh create signage and things like that to really um highlight focus on some of our problems again representation not just not just to our
037Lums who our federal judges but you know who are are doing all kinds of cool things uh around the community and around the world uh they're also their next thing they want to take on is again bridging that Gap and continuing to build a relationship with staff and uh and students um they're looking to create um some profiles you know we're going to do in our next staff development uh kind of do a profile get some profile information for all of our staff um from from teachers to support staff to Kitchen staff uh and everybody and really uh great signage in all of our offices our rooms our spaces ass says who we are uh you know have a picture highlighting where we came from what our backgrounds are and and really working to continue
038to build and strengthen those connections because you know uh how how important they are well that's what we've been up to you know has been that long since I've been here to speak and kind of a snake draft that kind of got the the end of the first round and towards the beginning of of the second round but you have any questions I know I ask this often but do you see any Trends with truy or are they kind of all over the place right now um You Trends are I guess I can speak we're we're lower than we have been but I mean it's everybody's story is different I mean yeah you can put things into some Trends is this a um is this a transportation thing is this a um supporting a family
039member who's got a health issue you you you definitely can see some Trends but you also see dozens of unique personal stories you know and trying to trying to connect with them and connect with the families and and see how we can help you know eliminate any barriers in regards to uh vaping I know there's only be so much we can do um do we need Vape detectors in the bathrooms do we need CIS what what we need we have Vape detectors they go all day along we have we have B detectors we're going to talk about search and seizure uh it's you know they're this big you know and they can stash them in a lot of places and hit them quick and even with the baap detectors um if you The Vape detector
040is on the back back corner and if you go to the front stall takes about 40 seconds before that works its way back there so you've we tried the education piece too Jan it's the education piece is our biggest you know is is our biggest tool and our biggest front and continue to work with our students and I think we here and I talked about some Community things and just in a community meeting the other day how we can continue to you know Community educate about about them and arm our students with the right knowledge I know one of the concerns that I've seen from parents is you know their kids are hesitant to use the bathroom because of the Vape detectors and and the stuff that happens in the bathrooms do you find that
041because I've heard that you know if it student is in there and they go off and they're automatically searched even if it's not them do you find that kids are pretty I guess open and and trying to be helpful or do they most most of them are they just they kind give you this it's a bummer I mean it is abely I'm kind of divided on that yeah Vape detector at times I've turned them off times turn them back on you know like it it's a tool but it's yeah but it's but when you got like three kids lined up in a stall next to each other you know what I'm saying and I'm there on Wednesdays so I see it every Wednesday morning right so right and then they're behind a closed door and
042you need to ensure private just there's a lot of challenges I me to to try to combat it to say we're going to we're gonna it up we're going to discipline it out of the building is it's not the you know is not the the effort that's going to be successful obviously we when we see it we address you know we deal with it but it's it's on the front end in the education that's gonna that's going to ultimately be what's us the most success my other question or topic is is about AI stuff you know I went to a presentation like conference regarding Ai and the need for policies you know for staff and students um I'm just curious if are staff catching the use of AI right now seeing it in get some
043of it problem we get some of it uh we have a turn it in.com which a lot of our teachers use um when you're turning in you know a piece of writing that does have ai detection so it will it's pretty darn and 87% of this was AI generated uh there are tools there are tools like that again um it's another thing that the front-end education of and you know I think we're looking as teachers how we how we structure our assignments to to maybe make them AI proof you know as well like you know if you're if you're asking a kind of a a common a common thing what are the causes of the Civil War AI can create you a great essay about you know something something like that but you know maybe
044you focus in and you're using a specific text and things like that uh AI doesn't have the ability to pull you know all those things so yeah I think it's you know policy I know Aon in the future ready side of things they've been doing a lot of work on both ends uh student student side of things and uh us as the employee side of things of how we how we utilize it you know and but we have talked about policy development it's changing so quickly that uh I think our plan is next fall to bring something or something in the next six months or so we've talked about that like policies that we currently have academic integrity and safe and ethical use of Technology really really apply of all this so luckily we do
045have lots of great policies already in place and what you know what we're working is just to continue to to do that education piece but then also offer some more guidelines that are more specific to like AI examples thank you thank you thank you thank you very much um I have okay here um I got a couple other things that will'll bring forward at our regular uh meeting uh not next Monday we have spring break next week so we'll we'll meet on March 17th and then we have one action item we have an annual field trip uh from Northland for a senior Retreat motion to approve second um oh just Motion in a second yeahor I'm sorry no that's not you there's a motion in a second to approve the overnight field trip for the
046Northland SE Retreat is there any further discussion this might be a dumb question maybe not um students and staff going on in overnight is there like it list how men is chaperon is it all males on the overnight is there females is there a representation of female staff member in case something goes on Spencer think the staff is going stupid question not really all right is there any further discussion hearing none all those in favor signify by saying I oos motion carries that concludes that report thank you very much we are going to now shift gears earlier to the policies and rules committee Mr Gall all right Administration proposes the approval of changes to the following policies based on Neola recommendations in order to be in compliance with federal law updates the first and only
047action item is the first reading of policy 5771 search and seizure this was tabled in the October uh meeting and since then I've talked to both principls at the middle and the high school they're here tonight we haven't made any changes from the original proposal there may be questions specific to this but they can I I after you take a mo after you get motion as if I'd like them to kind of talk through how this looks uh can you get a motion motion to approve a motion second and second discussion can you guys talk a little bit about what this looks like in reality in your world yeah so we just review kind of how we operate on a pretty regular basis because we want to make sure that one fall policies that we
048have in place but also you know what what's best for our kids and our students and and how we how we're going to do things so but we're even considering a search of a student maybe it's uh suspected of you know something dangerous or whatnot we need some probable cause and evidence to do that it's not like you know we suspect something vaguely and so we we talk about as an admin team we're looking at searching somebody how we feel about them in that we need to have some pretty good reasonable cost what would a search look like though like if you were if you suspected somebody had something what would that look like and how are how are police how are your SRO involved in that yeah so if if if we suspect somebody
049of having let's say a babe um we'll we'll pull the SRO in we ask you ask permission to do a quick search and Sr will use a Bond and it'll alert that there's anything metal in on your person sometimes the kids just s to their pockets and show us if the SRO is not available we don't do anything invasive at all um that's really the thing and then the other part of the search component is of their belongings and such so the lockers are ours but the stuff inside their locker belongs to their personal property so again well generate a question ask permission to search through their belongings but if there's a suspected you know weap or something serious about that need to ask information the problem cause and then the serious seriousness of the
050of the situation we believe in serious what happens if they say no there's reasonable suspicion the courts have said we still have the authority to search um what you see you know sometimes in high school because they can drive themselves and this is something that we've wrestled with as to how to proceed with there's some I think maybe it's just around the breath breathalizer aspect of this but what if they refuse to search we know students who know they're caught so they just just run out the door um so um you know yeah they're now leaving they're skipping but they're but you haven't had the opportunity to to search them and uh you know again this is this is more on um you know a vape side of things obviously it's a a suspe a
051suspicion of a dangerous weapon the police officer SRO would still follow up in that situation most cases an SRO is working in conjunction with the schools not necessarily on their own yeah so two court Mumble jumbo but the courts have said for for schools we have we need a reasonable susp suspicion which is a lower threshold than what a police officer needs to get with probable cause but then the police our SRO officer can assist us I mean we have that Reasonable Suspicion to conduct a school search the SRO can take part of that in that even though they may not have had the law enforcement Bill of Rights you know side things with problem work in conjunction with those it's it's always good to have them nearby when you're doing those do those things
052and the other side of the search piece is we always have two people in the a part of that and we don't do a t uh to be honest but uh once the Smo pulls out the wand that that goes through the school pretty quickly and things started to change we not to do as much I think the concern in October was around braining and how comfortable I mean obviously you guys are probably pretty comfortable that you've done it enough but the other administrators um especially you know you got a couple new ones you know what kind of training goes into that um are they brought in on those to train specifically on how to do that training just happens that are Monday morning meeting we talked about it again today discussing here tonight The
053Bu policy right um US US policy with a with a newer newer person I I have as well us observe the you know observe how we do this and then let's be brief as to the policy and the why we do things but you know our formal trainers but we also don't do formal like searches you know don't yeah before the W was like which is like going back to the vaping Example The Vaping detector goes off there's one student in a stall we asked the student to come out we search their backpack we ask them to empty their pockets they may have it placed somewhere else but that's where we don't know yeah aside from like we is there anybody that's like actually patting down other than an SRO maybe somebody the SRO wouldn't
054touch someone for a suspected baby would be suspected weapon situation and that would be an SRO probably an SRO show up is it safe to say that once if you were if I was a student that was respected that want to ask a student to empty their pockets search their bag most of those students become very nervous little bit reluctant but lo and behold you've had the suspicion you've been spot on not doing this uh about success a whole lot my Reasonable Suspicion is very ious so you're probably at the problem yeah I think it's all I want to get into the reads the why we would do it is because somebody has seen something or there's a report that's it's not because oh it's Johnny again because we've gotten some good int but there's
055a reason for me for me not weapon type of situation of VAP that like for me another student saying someone has a vape is a reasonable suspicion for me it probably would be the threshold but I I don't ask for a description if that's the case search someone Bas on student saying someone had to thank you guys any other questions anybody one more thing it does get more you know puts more steps into it but inter both attended our legal seminar put on by our our administrators Association and they bring in lawyers to talk to us and the the process of of the asking for written consent is what they is what they highly recommend now it's it's a procedure and it's adds steps to what we need to do but that what what niola
056is proposing is really much really pretty much exactly in line with what the lawyers they brought in to speak to our administrators Association uh recommended as well we talk with other districts were very much on the safe side of this this problem it seems like guess by policy superintendent billing principal assist principal direct resource officer or the only one searching or any staff no not any staff that's I have been able to designate Deans I know it doesn't say that in the writing of this policy but believe old policy said or principle do me else got any questions comments thank you guys for your clarification thank you I no further questions all those in favor Same by saying you can go you posted all right thank you guys thank you I have no discussion items
057and no information items all right we shall move on Personnel negotiations committee Brook all right I have a couple of action items today Administration recommends approval of the March 2025 new hires and separations report motion approved second second is there any discussion is the plan Molly on the resignations with the counselor and Spanish feacher and we'd be posting four next year we have to go back to the Reemployment list last year and weall some a couple positions that we'll be starting to post here on the next week it's only been here a few years righta yeah other discussion hearing none all those in favor please signify by saying I I all opposed motion carries Administration recommends releasing Jennifer L's early childhood education teacher with the district from her 2425 school year contract or her request
058effective February 2525 with the liquidated damages provision enforced motion approved second Motion in a second is there any discussion okay hearing none all those in favor please signify by saying I I all post motion carries Administration recommends releasing Mark Johnson Special Education team from shs from his 2425 school year contract for his request effective March 7th 2025 with the liquidated damages provision enforced motion approved second second is there any discussion none all those in favor please signify by saying I I all oppos motion carries I have no discussion items and no informational items that ends my report Mr President thank you Brooke next is teaching and learning committee Mr mocker soon as I find it I know okay no action no discussion items information items Jennifer willby director earthy childhood family education Indian education updates
059and Black History Month update welcome Jennifer um hello sorry about my voice you got a little froggy voice for a second um I'll try and be brief though um I see an has already pulled up the bad River screening thank you um this Thursday March 6th at the superior High School in the pack we will be showing the documentary about bad River tribe in odena which is near Ashland many of our students are from the bad River tribe um but it's open to the public um and everyone's welcome to come starts at 6:00 p.m. doors open at 5:30 we'll have light Refreshments after there's good a discussion to follow as well um and we're very excited because um there will be an introduction given by a pad River Elder Robert W uh and he was
060part of making the documentary U we're excited about that there is free child care um on site as well the documentary is um not rated however it's recommended for 14 and up um we shared that information with families um so offering uh free child care we've been working uh to get that secured as well um and then Martin Luther King Jr and Black History Month update um Monday January 20th was Martin Luther King Jr day um I shared these resources that Ann's pulling up um scrolling through with teachers uh and staff a few weeks prior to that um so that they'd have access to that similar resources similar for what I shared in um November um sorry my train um in addition so I did get some information from high school teachers and what's been
061happening there as well high school students um read Martin Luther King's biography and analyzed his eye of a Dream speech and discussed his letter from Birmingham Jail um obviously this happened at all different grades and all different classes so not every student did this um so I'm just going to give you an update of what did happen um in February for Black History Month high school students learned about the Civil Rights Movement of the 50s and 60s um they watched film they compared and contrasted Martin Luther King Jr Malcolm X's approaches discussed EMT Hill as a leading event participated in photo analysis and compared the Civil Rights era to modern day and they did much more um the BSU is a student the black student union is a student L club that meets every week
062uh they talk through issues both in school and in the community they discuss po potential events um that they'd like to facilitate and build relationships Lucas hmle is the adviser and he shared that the group has not yet wanted to fully commit to any events so far this year so they've just been spreading awareness about the club to their peers so that's what I have any questions yeah I was wondering I went to the event at the deck they didn't do the March CU it was too cold this year which is like the first time ever but yeah I saw like the denfield high school BSU their president spoke and it was like really inspiring to see high schoolers up there so I just was wondering if our BSU was still active or doing anything
063too so yep they're active they're meeting they're just I think it all kind of depends on the uh motivation of the group at the time kind of what they want to engage in like they've done some stuff at juneth too and so I think yeah we have an adviser and they do but I think it kind of we kind of lean on the group to kind want to get engaged yeah sure great thank you than that was all Steve thank you you're so efficient thank you all right next our operations committee Sarah no action items no discussion items two informational items the Bryant Elementary project for tucko repairs and Replacements is currently out for bid the bids are due back on March 10th bid tabulations will be emailed to the board members that day for
064review and to ask questions as necessary for Action at the March 17th regular board meeting and then we have technology and cyber security update Aaron chilling director of Information Technology and Casey Smith Technology support specialist welcome welcome you got mail I know like early Tech long AG go Tech um hi everybody I'm Aaron chilling this is Casey Smith um we are just representing the the technology department um and we also will speak a little bit to the Future Ready team that Aon mentioned earlier today and our data privacy team as well um so we have our technology Vision that all students would be self-directed Learners who can access evaluate and apply the most effective tools and resources to fish as individuals and Global Citizens and I remember Brook we talked about this word ferish this
065actually has been um a really longstanding technology Vision it's really been enduring you know even as new things emerge Ai and things like that come up we really as a future ready team really like have leaned into this and said we really don't need to change much but we did add this this idea of flourishing so it came up in a conversation when we were working um but with everybody that strategic planning time so you'll recognize these as our District's um commitments that are part of our strategic plan and our technology department really wanted to try to think about how we fit into this and how we could support this bigger District Mission Vision and all these commitments so with Kate's help um we actually made our own mission statement our own vision statement and
066then we chose four out of those same priorities from from the Strategic plan for the whole District to focus on with our department so we chose safety continuous Improvement communication and Equitable decision- making so the rest of this presentation just kind of focuses on each of those four commitments and how our teams really kind of highlight those um so one thing on our list um is safety we all agree that that's super important and um we have a data privacy team um and that data privacy team um consists of IT staff curriculum and instruction um staff so Crystal's on the team we've had an instructional coach on the team we really want to look to make sure that anything we're using with our students um and our staff as well really protects their privacy protects
067our teachers privacy um and protects the safety of our Network so we work hard together to make sure that those digital resources really adhere to our standards and adhere to the law um so if a teacher for examp ex Le wants to use a new resource with their students um they send us a request and we meet and we vet the request we look at their data privacy um policy and we compare it to like I said the the legal things that we're committed to and also just our standards to make sure we're putting the safest and best tools in front of our students um even if something passes just just saying like oh there data privacy a policy looks really good green light you can use this we really want to make sure we're
068not oversharing um because that's an important thing for us to know and and teach um our our staff and our students about as well we just because somebody asks you for something does it mean you have to share it that's the way we can protect our own privacy as well so that kind of leads into this idea of data minimization which Casey will speak about so data minimization and the power school update kind of go hand in hand um one of the um goals that we have is on the data privacy team is to make sure that we're minimizing the amount of data that we're sharing with these thirdparty companies and with Educational Tools and the less data you share with them you know the less chance um if you do have a cyber security
069inance that you know that data is out there um so when we're telling or having teachers uh use the tools that we bet you know sometimes we say just use the first name and the last initial um so you have less of those identifiers out there on those tools um so with power school we heard about the cyber security incident um that we had in the end of December um our district does not house any Social Security numbers within Power School um because of data minimization that information is not necessary for DPI for um our federal reports we never even collect that um so the information we have in power school in those specific tables that were targeted was all just our directory data basically um that people already have access to well that we
070it's first name last name address part of our policy allows us to share directory data but we still do that you know kind of gated we don't want to just have all that information out there so we're you know careful about sharing that um but through our policy we say we can share that um even though that data we didn't have any data um that was in the cyber security in incident um that would require us to notify our students and staff we are having power school um Power School offered for free to have um experience provide free identity and credit monitoring services to all the current Informer students and Educators that information um was part of that site security incident so they'll be receiving some emails in the next couple weeks um saying how
071they can sign up for that um and just so they are in the loop we want to keep our families safe um and I think power school is doing a great job they're going above and beyond for like a district like us that did not have any of those you know key data elements taken so I feel good uh it was a little scary there for a little while but yeah I mean so yes circling back to like the fact that you know we don't want to overshare we're super careful about vetting the tools and resources that we use that whole process has really been an education for for our team and for our staff so moving on you know to the next Point um we continue to need to educate ourselves about all these
072kinds of attempts from you know fishing emails to spoofing emails and all there's a whole dictionary they happen all the time they happen all the time so the best defense for us is is not just those technical things that we have in place but we call we call ourselves human firewalls like you have to know that people will try to socially engineer their way into getting this information and and again it's it's that education piece we have to really really be watching out for it and people are asking really great questions when they're suspicious of something um and that's part of our education as well another um thing that we're do y'all punk the staff we do that at the state they send them like oh you passed you know but like they'll get you
073do you do that do some there are there are programs where you can do some training and then part of that training no these are just like you click on this bust not that teachers need that but it's actually like a good awareness thing like oh crap yeah I should have read the full email address or something okay like don't provide your s security number well no there's like little more or just click L don't touch anything I've worked for companies that done the same thing like if you you do it three times you get some special training exactly exactly okay sorry we've um initiated multiactor authentication for staff so that if something is um wrong with your your password that you have to have another step to to actually get into any of your
074accounts so um that's been going well um and we continue to educate our students just like we have um in protecting their own privacy making sure that they understand the importance of passwords and keeping their personally identifiable information um safe and secure and private as well um aside from just general Online safety things too about how to keep yourself safe when you are using the internet we have encryption if puple data is in the email they're email encrypted yeah questions so okay continuous Improvement um database decisions are super important to us so we focus our efforts um on creating systems and procedures that really can you know benefit um all of us based on the the common things that come up um we support uh professional development so we um ourselves on our team we
075are leading sessions for um our colleagues we are supporting um people um making sure they can get hooked up when our presenters come in so we have all sorts of different levels of support with professional development um and the Future Ready team as we talked about a little bit earlier has four main focal points um we are definitely talking about AI um Literacy for staff and students we continue to work on digital citizenship and make sure those lessons are woven into um everything that that we do um K12 um as far as like all the different like curriculum are I guess um we just want to make sure that we are continuously modeling um um those digital citizenship skills regardless of um of what course we teach and regardless of what grade we teach we
076also um focus on accessibilities we want to make sure that our students can learn everything they uh want to learn and share everything they know about what they've learned and in whatever way that they need to um and finally we um focus some of our attention on um embedding Those computer science standards again into different grade levels into different curricular areas um and specifically we're on year two um of our newer um computer science course at the high school and we're continuing to see um increases in involment in that as well as the kids grow up through our programs um communication um is another um commitment that we are also committed to as a as a district techn ology team um we use our help Des ticketing system to communicate of course we get information
077when things aren't working but we can also um respond back to the requestor and give them information of things to try or things we've tried so that's a nice back and forth um tool for us to be able to communicate um we make sure our stakeholders have the information they need if there are issues or upcoming events that might affect them we want to make sure that we're communicating those in a timely manner um and we also have um teach Tech leaders at each building to provide some on-site support so they really do a good job communicating when things are coming up um at the different building levels and they can just help like with really timely things as well so they're really important part of our communication piece all right Equitable decision making um
078is another pillar that or another commitment that we're focused on um in an effort to help um with um saving us some money continuously review and research our use of equipment um an example is that um we um realize that we can um we could maintain um some laptops at the elementary level for example beyond their typical foure life cycle so historically we would you know buy a new laptop relase it for four years and then buy another new laptop after four years and we just have this fouryear life cycle and if our equipment is in good repair and we can safely and logistically use that equipment beyond that typical life cycle we've been able to do that to save quite a bit of money um and we again continue to research less expensive Solutions
079um without sacrificing security of course and we want to make sure that uh our students are able to use all the tools as well um see jump in on this um talk about elementary level trying to get stuff to be used longer than it's expectancy are you also taking any inputs from staff that have to use those devices to make sure all the programs and everything are working properly that you know they're actually usable Beyond I mean the the computers are or the applications computers programs sometimes programs don't work because computer's out of date or vice versa so are you taking input from staff on that too and and not just pushing them all longer is there input I mean our future team is actually a has representatives from the the teacher groups um and
080from building from each building and um yeah and I was I met with a a staff member today who was expressing some concerns and we wanted to make sure that we had you know if something wasn't working properly we had plans in place you know spare computers that could be swapped out if something was broken and whatnot but um yeah we've done we've done quite a bit of work to make sure that those things are like I said earlier like logistically able to continue on so um yeah can I ask a followup to that I've sort of mentioned this to Casey before but how how do we assess the applications that we have purchased and whether they are being utilized and if they're not being utilized maybe no longer purchasing them anymore like how do
081you assess that on like an annual basis so for most things we can we can find usage data like do you do that on a regular basis and assess that each year especially for ones we purchase we purchase tools we do that okay yeah and actually that leads us you know that second bullet there so thank you for mentioning that we want to make sure that ask one more question too I know at one of our listening sessions it was brought up and I know I think that's why Ed was saying it so I think some of the concerns that were brought up is that not all if we're keeping some computers longer um some are different than the newer ones and so then teachers aren't able to just give directions to the students because
082they don't match perfectly and so then there's that um struggle I would say um with doing it with an entire class so then they brought up maybe and again I'm not asking for a solution right now I'm just I guess presenting what was told to us in the listening session um instead of maybe every student having a tablet or a computer maybe is it better financially to go back to the carts where they are updated they are fully functioning the batteries are good everything is going well because again there's some discrepancies with the a reliability issue poti and do we need to go back to not oneon-one and more having carts so that we know what we can expect yeah is that we I did follow met with some of the people that I met
083with someone this who was in on that conversation as well and um I think there was a little bit of confusion about like the mismatching computers the way intended it to be set up was that all the kindergarten and first graders would have the same computers across the district and then second through you know levels would have the same computers so there might be some some confusion in like the systems of like I said kind of that swapping out of spares and things like that um and and all the computers should get regular updates what we've really struggle with is the the um procedures you know at the end of the day when the computers get shut down they need to be shut all the way down and so I know I mean speaking as
084teacher myself I would be like it's it's time for gym and we'd slap computer shut and maybe stick them on the maybe not so some of those procedures I think lead to some of that hardship so we yeah so we definitely hear those concerns and we continue to try to try to figure that out Withers to see like what what are procedures that we can help support you with and what are actual like technology fixes that we need to address as well um so going back to this just a couple more things to think about um again like Amy said we want to make sure to maximize the resources that we pay for so there's always going to be that like shiny new thing out there A lot of times companies will say you know
085we can use it for free well typically you can use it for free because eventually they want you to pay for it um you can use it for free because maybe they're taking your data and so you know free isn't always a good thing but we do we do invest in some really robust tools you know seesaw and Google and in Adobe and things like that and we really want to spend the next you know year or so like Beyond really highlighting all the things that that those tools can do because we want to make sure we're we're maximizing what we're paying for as well um and along with that too again with those robust tools finding that tools um are that we're using really do offer a lot of great accessibility features within them
086too so we want to highlight those things as well to make sure that our students and their teachers understand how to how to really maximize those things again so that kids can share what they know and they can learn about anything they like all right oh that's it great those are our four things so thank you for the questions is there anything else anybody wanted to thank you than been pushing expense it's out there so I really appreciate eron um I say say you need save money she says how much and I said a lot once you find something they say find more so it's been really good pushing back in our team it's really hard like I know a lot of people a lot of parents that the seran technology wasn't a big deal
087to them and they're like oh why do you have a one-onone and then I tell them go to McDonald's to try to overun me do unless you do a tablet try and work McDonald's the future is in technology we everybody needs to be computers well we don't set our students up B the fail so I just appreciate the fact that be uh extending computers out you know she says maybe we can get one maybe we can get two years out and then making sure those computers are consistent aon's had a lot on her plate and she's stepped up on thank you thank you that concludes my report well thank you very much a reminder our next regular board meeting is March 17th St Patrick's Day so if you're Iris step into the Paula uh we
088will begin that evening also at 4:30 p.m. and a close session want to sincerely thank you for being here a long day and long the longer evening for some of you and we really appreciate your attendance motion to adjourn motion to adjourn motion second to adjourn if there are any further discussion there none all those in favor signify by saying I