Board Meeting 1-26-26

001All right. Good evening everyone. I'd like to call this meeting of the West Alice West Milwaukee School Board to order. Uh Mr. Keller, would you lead us in the pledge of allegiance, please? Miss Kaiser is virtual. Mr. Lee >> here. >> Miss Lee >> here. >> Miss Carr is excused. Mr. Pervos >> here. >> Mr. Beckard >> here. >> Mr. Keller >> here. >> Miss Deal >> here. President Burns >> present. Uh, proper notice of this meeting has been posted in accordance with the open meeting laws of the state of Wisconsin. Uh, are there any modifications to the agenda tonight? >> We do have one modification. It's an addition 11.3 has been added. It's the uh we're asking for approval for the trip to Orlando, Florida for the Palms team at Central High School. >>

002Okay. All right. We will add that to the agenda then. And then I believe that will take us right to uh you sure? >> Yeah. >> Okay. Um that'll take us to our Persian uh showcase here. Student showcase. You all ready to go? >> Oh yeah. >> You all over there too? >> They were very go ahead. Take it away. >> Awesome. Good evening everyone. My name is Alyssa Johnson and I'm the proud p proud principal of Persian Elementary and I'm Nicole Elman. I'm the instructional coordinator at Persian. >> So in just a moment, Miss Heather Rosenbomb and our students will take the lead. But first, we would like to provide some context around our theory of action and our schoolwide focus this year. So as you can see on the screen, so our theory

003of action is grounded in the belief that when we consistently implement high quality universal instruction and when staff are supported by a clearly defined learning framework, structured co-planning, and strong systems for data and progress monitoring, students will demonstrate typical or aggressive growth on assessments, allowing us to close learning gaps. So this school year, our staff has intentionally focused on our district's adult learning framework with particular emphasis on learning intentions, success criteria, and checks for understanding. We believe that when both teachers and students are clear about what is being learned, what success what success looks like, and how progress is monitored along the way, student learning outcomes improve. To ensure these practices are consistently implemented, Persian staff has been actively engaged in grade level collaborative team meetings, learning walks, peer observations, and professional development. This ongoing

004support reinforces intentional teaching, promotes alignment in our daily practices, and identifies opportunities for continued growth around our school. Over the past few years, our school has been very intentional about strengthening students foundational reading skills, especially in phonics. Research is clear that systematic explicit phonics instruction is essential for all students and critical for students who are struggling with reading. At Persing, we are using UFI foundations as part of our literacy system, both in tier 1 instruction for kindergarten through 2 grades and then intervention for grades u 1 through 5. Since implementing UFI schoolwide, we have seen students grow in both confidence and reading accuracy. From fall to the present, classrooms using EU UFI as tier one instruction have reduced the percentage of students on reading plans from 42% to 37%. Some of our staff members, including

005Miss Rosenbomb, were also early adopters of EULI last school year in our reading intervention groups. When we look at cohort data over time, we saw a decrease in the percentage of students on reading plans. Last year, 70% of first graders were on reading plans. This year that same cohort is now in second grade and 50% remain on plans. Similarly, 76% of last year's second graders were on plans and that has decreased to 51% as they moved into third grade. And then for last year's third graders, 75% were on plans, which has decreased to 58% as they are now in fourth grade. So rather than us just talking about UFly, uh we want you to see it in action. So, presenting tonight, we have Miss Heather Rosenbomb, along with our third grade students, Ellis, Aiden, and

006Darius. And so, they're going to be doing a U-fly lesson. Um, during the U-fly lesson, you're going to see that students are actively responding throughout the lesson as they are reading, spelling, blending sounds, and applying skills to word parts, words, and texts. We would also love for you to be active participants in the lesson. Um, so we've provided you with your own whiteboard, marker, and eraser for you to follow along with Miss Rosenbomb and our third graders. If this is your first time experiencing UFI, look to our third grade rock stars for support and help along the way. All right, take it away you guys. So, we are going to get started with lesson 45, which is our sh, so our shh sound. So our learning target for today is we are learning how to

007read and spell words with that sh sound so that we can recognize and write words that have the shh sound correctly. Our success criteria is I will know I am successful when I can correctly spell and read words with that sh sound. So we are going to get started with our phmic awareness. So, I'm going to say the sounds to you and then Ellis, you're going to blend it together. Okay? So, Fsh. Excellent. Aiden, you're up. Rh. >> Perfect. Good job. Shh. I >> ship. >> Perfect. Now, together, we're going to do the last one. Okay. So, shh. >> Excellent. Good job. Now, I'm going to say the word this time, and you're going to break it apart. Okay? So, I'm going to start with you this time, and we'll go this way. So, the

008word is shin. What's the word? >> Shin. Sh. I shin. >> Perfect. All righty, Aiden. The word is dash. >> Perfect. Good job. All righty, Ellis. The word is brush. Perfect. Good job. Okay, now we're going to move on to our visual drill. So, as you see the sound or as you see the letters, you're going to say the sound. Okay. So, what do we have? O Z I >> A. >> Okay, good job. Now we're going to move to our phone. So our auditory drill. Now when I say the sound, you're going to write down the letters that spell that sound. Okay? So the first one is C. Go ahead and on your whiteboard you can write the sounds that make the sound like as well sounds. >> It's a safe space. >> It's

009how we learn and grow. >> So who can tell me one of the sounds or what is one of the letters? Darius. >> CK. >> K. And what's the other one? C. Excellent. That all makes the C. Oh, >> good job, Amy. >> Erase your board. >> All righty. This time you're going to give me the uh sound. Go ahead and write the letter for uh give me capital and lowercase, please. >> Excellent. Good job. And what is that letter? >> U. Excellent. Okay. Our next one you're going to give me is Mr. Ros one more time. >> Okay. All righty. What is one of them? >> FF for our floss rule. And what's the other one? >> F. >> Excellent. All righty. You guys can erase. So if you have F or FF, you're

010correct. H2. You're right. Yep. >> Okay. And the last one you're do is the sound is e. Go ahead. >> E capital too. >> All righty. Good job. You may now erase. So now we'll be moving into our blending drill. Okay? So remember, I write the word and then you tell me what the word is and I will change a part of the word and you're going to read my new word. So my word. >> All righty. And then I'm going to add to it. What is my new word? >> Excellent. I'm going to take the beginning sound away. What is my new word? >> All righty. I'm going to change that beginning sound again. What is my new word? Kick. Kick. >> Excellent. I'm changing that beginning sound again. What is my new word?

011>> Excellent. Good job. Okay, changing that beginning sound again. What is my new word? >> Excellent. I'm changing that ending now. What is my new word? >> Will. >> Excellent. Good job. Changing the beginning. >> Excellent. Changing that ending. >> Pick. >> Excellent. Changing that vowel. H. >> Excellent. Good job. And we'll do one more. >> Excellent. Nice work. Good job. Okay. So, now we'll be moving into our new concept. >> So, we have consonant diagraphs. So, consonant diraphs is a diagramraph where it's two consonants that come together and spell one sound. How many sounds? >> One. >> Excellent. So we have our letter S which says S and we have our letter H which says but when we put them together they make that new word that sounds okay which make that one sound.

012Whereas a consonant blend is where it's two consonants that blend together. You still hear both of their sounds. So we hear the S and the T and when we put them together we still hear S. Yeah. Excellent. All righty. So, a consonant diagramraph is when two consonants come together to make that one sound. We've already learned about one of them, the ck. Okay? It's when our C and our K come together at the end of the word, they make that one sound. What sound does it make? >> Duck. >> Excellent. And our key word is duck. What's our key word? >> Duck. >> Excellent. Okay. So once again, we talked about how the S and the H have their own sounds S and H. But when these consonants come back together, they have that new

013sound like sh. What's the sound? Sh. Excellent. So we have our word sheep. Okay. So our sh can be found at the beginning of words such as and shop. That consonant diagramraph can also be found at the end of the word such as fish and wish. Okay. So to make that sound, you put your lips together and your teeth are rounded like this. Okay? So we make our shh. So you pull that tongue back into your mouth and you're sure that your voice is off because it's that quiet sound. That sh the shh sound is a continuous sound that can be stretched out. All righty. So I'm going to say shh. Now, I'd like to see you try. Sh. Perfect. Good job. So, I'm going to read first and then you will read next. So,

014if I sound this out, I hear >> sh. Now, it's your turn to read. >> Shock. >> Fish. >> Already removed for next. >> Flash. >> Crash. Yep. Let's sound this one out one more time together. Sh. >> Shell. Excellent. Good job. So, now I'm going to spell first and then you will map it out after. Okay. So, you're watching me first and then you will do it on your own next. So, my word is ship. So, I do my dots first when I map it out and I go, "Oh, me first. Yep. Shh." I then my sh goes in one box because how many sounds is it? One sound. I and then I go ahead and I write it down. Ship. Okay. So, it is now your turn to show me what you know.

015So, the first word that you're going to do is shin. What's my word? >> Shin. >> Go ahead and map it out first. I want you to check your vowel sound one more time. Yep. What's that? Perfect. There you go. All righty. What's my word? >> Excellent. What's my word? >> Shin. >> What's my word? >> Perfect. All righty. Erase. We're going to go to our next word. Okay. Our next word is shock. What's our word? >> Shock. >> All righty. Go ahead. Map it out. Remember what happened? It's a short sound followed by the C sound. There you go. Perfect. Good job. So, who can remind me why is it a CK at the end and not just a K or a C? >> Uh cuz this makes the short sound. So, this would

016be a CK. >> Excellent. Anytime that short sound, short vowel sound is followed by the C-, it turns into the CK. Awesome. Last one you're going to do for me. The word is brush. What's the word? >> Rush. >> Go ahead and map it out. Perfect. Excellent. What's my word? >> Brush. >> What's my word? >> Good job. Excellent. And what's my word? >> Brush. Perfect. Okay. So today we learned once again how to read and spell the words with that sh sound so that we were able to recognize and write words that have the shh sound correctly. I know that I'm successful and you should be able to tell me if you're successful or not when you were correctly spelling those sh words, reading them and spelling them with that shh sound. Awesome. >>

017Good job you guys. Very proud of you. >> Questions from the board. >> Anybody have any questions, comments? Want to go first? Snow. >> How many of you got it right? >> My marker didn't work. >> They were brand new. marker didn't work. All right, no questions. >> Uh, I had a I had one first off that I'd like to ask. The the speed that you went through that is that the speed that you guys normally go through because you guys crushed that and I could barely keep up. My brain was still trying to catch up with which letters we were trying to sound out. >> You guys go that fast. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Do you like Do you like going that fast? Gets it done quick and then you get to start

018reading things that have the sh sound in them. All right. All right. Other board members, don't be shy. Apparently, we are all stunned at your prowess. Yes. Deeply impressed. >> Yeah. >> Could you walk us through what's next? >> Yeah. So then we would move into some independent practice which is on the board. So then that's really where I'd assess if they're able to read those words, sound them out, and then put them on the lines. And then the next page too, um, I would have them then tap out the sounds to me and read the words and then go ahead and fold it over and then say each sound and then fill it in the each word and then fill in the boxes for that. Um, so that was just lesson day one. And

019then day two you add to it. Um where then you're adding more the word work where you give them a word for example like shin and then you say you're going to change one part of it to shift. So then they're in charge of erasing and rewriting the new word. And then with that then is they're learning like part words as well and then reading like longer passages too with those sh words within it. How do you how do you increase the rigor or that to meet the needs of the kid? How do you adjust that? >> So, there will also be like I can assign assignments on um Seesaw and things like that to help for kids who maybe need a little more support with it or are ready to read more like longer

020passages and then they can record their voice. So then I'm able to listen to how they're doing applying those phonic skills. >> Okay. throughout. And you're always able to if I see that someone's like progressing really quickly, I could always move them to a little bit of a higher lesson, >> it would just be making sure that I'm going over the site words. >> Okay. >> Because it incorporates cyers throughout. >> Gotcha. And I'm assuming the culminating activity is some sort of writing uh more in depth writing. >> Yes. So then they're writing sentences with the words as well. Okay. >> Just wanted to walk the board through that may not have been familiar with that. >> Thank you. Appreciate it. Any other questions? Well, scaffolded. Thank you all very much. Then we'll let you

021guys get out of here. Appreciate your work. Thank you for joining us. >> Thank you guys. >> You bet. Thank you. >> See you tomorrow. No, I like my marker. >> All right, we'll give them a moment to pick up and then we will go into our superintendence report. >> Do you have your marker? No, we we went that way. >> With you never really know. >> Oh, okay. >> Thank you guys. >> All right. So, Dr. Robinson, superintendent report time. >> I do. So, I want to um greet everyone out in the community, those who are watching online. We hope everybody is staying warm. It is uh quite uh cold out there. Um you know, how do you know it's cold when people who grew up in Wisconsin look at me and say it's

022cold? And so, I'm not I'm not shy to say it's it's it's uh it's been cold. Legislative updates. We have a couple uh that have been presented not only in the Senate but the assembly that affect education in the state of Wisconsin. Um I will not go through all of them but we will be on the lookout and watching these as they progress uh through the um legislative houses whack pep pep assembly. I want to thank to the thank you to the Bucks for hosting an energetic step assembly at WAC on Thursday to build excitement for the showcase game at Fizer Forum on Saturday night. Our students and staff love the experience and we're grateful for the Bucks continued support and engagement with uh our school community. I do want to uh use this time

023to again thank the entire uh West Alice and West Milwaukee community, specifically those within the Central community uh for coming out to and supporting uh our boys basketball team at Central as they um defeated Arrowhead quite convincingly on Saturday night at the Fiser Forum. It was um it was a great game. I had moments where I actually jumped out of my seat um when um Yousef dunked on looks like the whole team. Um it was um it was an exciting game. But when I tell you as a superintendent sitting there and and watching these kids and how they um really really carried themselves so well, professional um if somebody had come in and and they probably would thought this was the Bucks because of the way they carried themselves. They they were very professional in

024that. So, just want to thank um the coaches and and our our community for supporting them as well. Other updates, I did not list everything, but just some things I want to highlight. Our our student advisory uh group, the voice, we met um last week, the West Alice Rotary Club. I attended the meeting uh the week before. Last week was at the Wisconsin State Educators Convention. I want to thank everyone who did participate in that as well on last Thursday. um along with uh several other um several of the board members, we attended the West Dallas Taxpayers Association meeting and then of of course the the central basketball game that I mentioned, I did not mention in here slew of hell basketball games. I've gone to way more this year than in past years. I

025would admit that's been something I've been trying to rectify. Um but I've gone to at least two or three in the last two weeks. So shout out to those those guys as well. they really are playing hard and so um I I know that the the outcomes will turn around for them but I just love the way that they play. They play with great great tempo and they play as a team. So shout out to our Nathan Hale basketball team as well. All right and that uh actually concludes uh the the uh information for the night from the superintendent report. Short one tonight. All right. And that will take us to our public comments uh section of the night. So uh at this time if anyone would like to address the board, you may sign

026up in the back of the room or in the zoom uh link that is should be in the chat. Introduce yourself with your name and address. You have three minutes to provide comments. The board cannot discuss, debate, or act upon any item addressed during the public comments portion of the schoolboard meeting. Follow-up may be provided by the superintendent at the next regularly scheduled board meeting. Um, currently I do not have anyone signed up, so we'll hold for a moment to see if there's anyone that does. bite. >> All right. At this time, I will close public comments. Seems no one is signing up and we will move on to our board reports. Item number nine, starting with 9.1, the review of the board calendar. Um, so tonight, January 26th, we have a regularly scheduled board

027meeting and we will be talking about our 2425 referendum updates for workshop number four. Uh, and this was rescheduled from December 15th. We'll also have a college and career readiness workshop um that was rescheduled from the 12th and this will focus on the current state of post-secary opportunities for our students. Um then February 9th we will have another regularly scheduled board meeting and February 16th we will have a board workshop meeting which will have an audit presentation. Uh and then we'll have a workshop on the winter fall screener data and AGR presentation. And finally on February 23rd, we will have another regularly scheduled board meeting uh with the finance uh financial group uh workshop that will be the second Friday in January 2026 pupil count, the 26 27 enrollment projections, estimated revenue limit calculations, and

028preliminary budget projections. Um and that is our board calendar. We'll move on to 9.2. to our board committee reports starting with communications and engagement. Board member Dio. >> All right. So, our committee um actually met right before this meeting at 5:00. Um so, we reviewed our KPIs um key performance indicators from the strategic plan. Um we're trending in the right direction. Making um significant progress towards increasing Facebook views, Facebook uh interactions, Instagram engagement, and increasing open rates for our weekly and monthly newsletters. Um and then regarding the strategic plan, all of our schools will have posters displayed with the district's strategic plan printed on them. Um the communications team is also exploring the idea of creating a captivate video to share um information about the strategic plan with our community. Um and then uh for

029uh Carolyn's leave of absence, she'll be on maternity leave starting this Friday uh January 26. So um Rachel Cruz and Allison Regith will be covering for her and should be contacted regarding uh district communications and that's our committee report. >> All right. Thank you. Any questions for the communications and engagement committee comments or otherwise? All right, seeing none, we'll move on to our next report, which should be the financial stability and efficiency report. Uh, Mr. Lee, are you ready to give that? >> Yep. >> Okay. >> Give that. >> Uh, so the >> finance committee meeting uh met last week, Thursday, on January 15th at 5:00 p.m. Uh, we discussed the compensation model. This has been an area of monthly discussion for the facil uh financial stability committee. Last week, verification letters were sent out

030to all professional educators to verify their years of service, education level, and position of record. Professional educators are able to submit an inquiry if they have any corrections that are needed to their record. The compensation committee is meeting in February to finalize the handbook and we'll be coming back to the board in March for our second workshop to look for formal board approval on the new uh compensation model that will be moving forward. Consumer price index CPI the consumer price index which outlines overall staff compensation for 2627 bargaining purposes was finalized at 2.7%. This is the amount that we will be working off of from a budgetary perspective and we'll proceed with negotiations with our educational association in the coming months. Uh state and violence prevention grant during the week of January 11th. We submitted

031to the department administration application for the violence prevention grant. Our application was based around providing community steps for students who receive citations at our secondary school and promote education. If the grants accepted, this would provide budget support for existing positions as well as funding of vape detectors across all secondary schools. Uh we also have a few other areas that um the committee discussed um which will provide some future information uh at future board meeting. Uh one is our health insurance broker RFP. We'll be going to RFP for our health insurance broker um due to some changes at Brown and Brown. Uh we'll also be talking about high-cost uh claim submissions. Uh 2627 preliminary budget will be discussed at the board on February 23rd as m president Burns uh recently talked about as on our board

032calendar as well as preliminary plans and discussion around a phase three addition at the activity and recreation center for a pool. And that concludes my report. >> All right, questions on that one. There is a lot that you guys are going over right now. Okay. >> All right. Seeing no questions. Thank you, Mr. Lee. And then our last report is the recreation and community services. Miss Lee, are you ready to give that? >> I am. Thank you, President Burns. Um, the recreation community services committee met last week, Tuesday. Um, it was a quick and easy meeting. The fitness center is officially opened on January 2nd. Um, we roughly to date have about 170 memberships already. Um, you can still go ahead and go on in and take a tour. You can do self-guided or if

033you'd like to schedule, you are free to do that. Um, I mean, so far so good. It's all we've got. >> All right. >> Yeah. Go ahead. I just want to al just encourage the community to support the AFC. I've come up and worked out uh twice already in the past two weeks and um you know it's not not nearly enough people take advantage of it. So any anything that you can do at a at a at your gym that you're paying all of this money for every month, you can do the same thing here. So just take advantage of this the facilities we have. They are very very nice. Thank you. Any other questions, comments? Oh. All right. Thank you, Miss Lee. Um, and then we'll move on to 9.3, which is our board

034member reports of community events. Are there any events that the board members would like to report on at this time? >> Okay, Miss Deal, sorry. >> Wow. >> Terrible. All right. Um, so I just last week, um, I was able to attend the Wisconsin State Education Convention and I, um, just wanted to thank, um, we were able to have student representation again this year. Um, so we had, um, Hoover, um, Miss Supple's class who does the podcast. Um, so they were there and was really cool is they were able to actually interview, um, uh, Dr. Jill Underly, who's our state superintendent. So that was really cool to see. And then we also had our central um, robotics team there. um they were flying drones around. It was it was pretty cool. So, I just want

035to thank both of those um those uh teachers and um all the people that put um all the work into to getting that together so that we could share with you know with other communities um the good work that we're doing here in our district. Um the other thing I just want to shout out is um um just again thank uh the staff over at Daki. Um they have their exhibition night is actually going on right now. I was able to run over there at 4:00. Um, and again, it was just really cool to see all the um hard work that the kids put into to their projects and and they're very excited about about telling you about it and you can just see that they're they're very um they're very in tune with their

036learning. So, um just a shout out to to Daki for again for um you know putting together um ex the exhibition night. It's really great. So, that's all. >> All right. Thank you. Other board reports. Anyone else get out into the community this last couple weeks? No. Mr. Lee? >> I was also able to attend the Wisconsin Education Convention and um I was the WASBY delegate. So, I attended the Wasby uh delegate meeting. I just uh wanted to provide kind of a brief update on the results of the votes for that. So, um if you remember, there was a bylaw that was being proposed to change to create basically two different member types. Um and that was voted down. Uh the majority of membership did not think that was the right way to go. Um

037basically all or nothing approach and so that was where we were lying as well. A lot of people along the same lines of thoughts for that. Um uh the other uh things we discussed were voted uh in favor of what we approved of except for one unfortunate uh exception and that was the changes to the state report card. So that um that resolution included things such as uh removing the weighted um scores for students of low socio socioeconomic status as well as instead of having um the based on your district if you would have weighted scores more towards growth versus achievement. They wanted that was going to be equal just 25%. Um that was something that we were not in favor of. Um there were some amendments put forth. one amendment was approved which was

038basically removing there was a fiscal aspect to that as well and because it wasn't very well defined um that was removed from the resolution however the rest of it passed as is um 183 districts voted in favor of that some which I think have to have been voting against their own best interest because um I know many many districts have students that have free reduced lunch qualifications which would essentially lower their report card scores if this would be changed um luckily this is not legisl ation. This is just a resolution. Um I think that from our perspective as a board um it might be worthwhile to pass our own resolutions regarding the state report cards uh to try to show where our voice is in this because uh WAVY will will um advocate obviously as

039we just talked about no no differences. They'll advocate from that perspective and we want DPI to know we wouldn't want those changes to go in effect that would certainly negatively impact our our report cards as a district. Um but other than that uh it was interesting and didn't go that long. only a little bit past the 2-hour time frame that was put in place. I guess sometimes it goes a lot longer than that. So, it was interesting to see. I did go up and speak like six times. So, um I I felt it was important in some instances like when we're talking about free and reduced lunch and things like that. I'm like, why are we why are we talking against feeding kids? I don't understand why we're doing that right now. So, I think

040that was wellreceived overall. But, it was uh interesting. I enjoyed it and and uh something to do in the future for sure. Thank you. >> Excellent. Oh, sorry. I also had something else to say. Um, Crucible's opening up this week. So, I want to make sure people understand that. It starts on Thursday, Friday, and then Saturday, Sunday. So, if you uh we all know that our we have really great uh productions that are put on. So, if you can get out to the productions this week at Nathan Hail to see The Crucible, please do so. And then also, I want to um throw out that the wrestling hail wrestling is having their last uh home dual meet this Thursday. um six six o'clock for the JV, 7 o'clock for varsity. So, if you want to

041come out and support the Nathan Hill wrestlers on the last uh home duel meet, it's actually a big one against Sussex Hamilton. If uh we win that one, we will win conference. If we don't win that one, then we don't win conference. So, it's a it's a big one for us. So, great to have people in the stands to cheer them on. Thank you. >> All right. Thank you. Uh and then I see Miss Kaiser raised her hand. Would you like to comment? >> Yeah. Can you hear me? Okay. >> Yeah. >> I just wanted to say thank you to Mr. Lee for standing up and speaking on behalf of kids um for free and reduced lunches. I was also very active as a delegate encouraging people to vote in favor of children eating, which

042is something that would um support learning in the classroom. So, I I appreciate uh that work being continued. >> Thank you. All right. Uh any other board Mr. Becker, I want to thank everybody for showing up for the the West Dallas Taxpayer Association meeting last week in ECOS. Um, everybody in attendance had things to say, had thoughts. Uh, uh, some difficult conversations, but really important conversations. I think, uh, I think it's super important to engage with the public and vice versa. I hope people engage more with our material. Uh I do want to give a shout out to Mike from uh Aaron Norris's finance team for bringing a child with him and participating. Uh shows a real commitment. I think it's a good indicator of what's happening around town. Thank you. Any others? No. Okay.

043Um I also went to the uh education convention and it was a lovely time seeing our kids there. Um the podcast group being back was uh fantastic because my son started in that first round with it and then one of the our neighbors is actually in there so he ran over and pulled me in to uh have me see all his podcast work that he's doing. So that was uh fantastic. Um and then I also was able to make it over to uh the central basketball game uh at the Fiser Forum and it was fantastic. um really seeing how these kids were interacting with one another uh and with the opposing team uh to the point where at the at the end of the game, one of the players that doesn't necessarily get the most

044time made a three-point at the buzzer and they ran out like he was a hero of the game. So, it was it was fantastic. So, I really enjoyed seeing all of that. Um I also wanted to uh as Mr. Becker did, but I also wanted to thank all of you that attended the uh taxpayer association meeting. Uh it was both appreciated and wellreceived by myself and Dr. Robinson and just showing that commitment that all of you have to having those conversations uh with the public even when they are difficult uh I think will pay dividends as we move forward with people understanding where we are and what's actually happening. So, I want to extend my thanks to all of you that attended. Um, all right. And with that, are there any others before we move

045on? I see none. So, then other updates and information. There's just uh one update from me. Uh, one of the things in the spirit of expanding our um, leadership uh, development and training with the board is I'm going to uh, start uh, inviting uh, all of the elected officials of the board, the treasurer and the clerk as well as the vice president and president to the agenda meetings uh, so that they can have a little bit more uh, interaction and uh, knowledge beforehand with that agenda planning and bringing that to fruition. ition to also help us develop as we move forward uh more leadership opportunities. So, uh that's just one announcement that I wanted to make sure everybody knew. And from there, uh we will move on to item number 10, which is our consent

046agenda, which tonight is 10.1 our approval of minutes, 10.2 our employment summary, 10.3 are supplemental contracts, and 10.4 for our financial report and uh financial report summary. Uh is does anyone need anything separated out? Okay. If not, I would entertain a motion at this time. Move to approve items 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, and 10.4. >> Second. >> All right. I have a motion and a second. Is there any further debate on the motion? Seeing none, all those in favor? >> I. >> Those opposed. All right. And that will pass. And we'll take us on to our first action item of the night, which will be 11.1, our open enrollment seats. Miss Bourbon, I'll start over. Good. >> Oh, okay. So, we're gonna we're going to do a followup um to the presentation, but we al also

047have some specific questions that were asked of the uh from the board to us and we've been doing the research and trying to get some answers on on that uh specifically related to our data or the data that we found uh from other districts. And so, I think it's going to be pretty interesting um sort of some of the explanations that come with that. But I just wanted to uh lay that out that we do have we tried to to think of all of the questions and to make sure that not only the board had those answers but the public as well. So I'm going to turn it over to Connie. >> Yeah. So, typically on the vote night, um, we just kind of go through the the seats we're asking for and just present

048the seats that we asked for in the previous workshop, but because there was a couple questions when we went through the open enrollment out, um, we kind of did some digging and kind of got the information and wanted to bring that back to present to you guys so that you had the information about that. Um, so I'm here to present the open enrollment projections and staffing for the 2627 school year. Um, and so, uh, this slide here is our open enrollment out at the top that we had questions about last week. Um, and question one that stood out the most to me after meeting with you last week or two weeks ago now, I guess. Um, does New Berlin School District participate in open enrollment? And in fact, they do. Um, they they participate in

049open enrollment and they vote every year just like we do in January. >> Oh, sorry. They do. Sorry about that. New Berlin does participate in open enrollment. Um they every year they vote whether or not they have open seats. Um this past year they had no seats. But what they do have that's different than us is what's called guaranteed enrollment. So if you are a student that goes there and then fill out a tuition waiver, you are guaranteed to come back on open enrollment. They also guarantee that your siblings can come back as well. So that's how it's different. So that's when um I think it was pointed out that there was a student enrolled and you can see the chart above um in kindergarten and K4. So that could be a sibling from an

050older family member who got a tuition waiver, applied for open enrollment and they can come back for open enrollment because they have a sibling who is an older child. Okay. Um and then they their board policy new board policy open enrollment has not changed. I did call their um open enrollment coordinator and speak to her because I had some further questions and she said that they are looking at possible changes for this year so to check back with her if I had more questions but she didn't want to give me any clarifying questions at that time because they are looking at changing guaranteed enrollment for siblings um because they um kept going down a path of like families who had longitudinal families and so they she said they were taking that to vote in January.

051So, we will see what comes out of it. But last year for the 2526 school year, they had zero open enrollment seats. They only did the guaranteed enrollment. >> Mr. Lee, >> so I just want to clarify. So, like yes, they participate in open enrollment, but they don't participate in new open enrollment seats. So 5 years ago maybe at this point they opened up 50 seats for open enrollment and since then they haven't opened up new seats. So the only seats that they have are those students they accepted and their siblings that may have come in after that. >> Yes. And if you currently live there >> and move out that that that student can come back as a open enrollment tuition waiver child. >> Okay. So I think just the difference is that when

052we talk about open we we're talking about new seats. >> New seats. >> We're talking about new seats. When we're approving this, these are new seats that we're opening up to come into district. >> And we know that and we've heard many times that New Berlin >> does not open up new seats. So, it's only students that went there at some point in time in the past >> or were one of the 50 students that got in in that one year when they opened up seats because before that they hadn't opened up seats historically. Sorry. >> And moving forward, they haven't opened up seats. It's just really those ones that they have been having. So, it's just an important distin distinction from our perspective as a board and I think for the community as well,

053whereas we're opening up, you know, we're talking about opening up 160 new seats in our in our district for open enrollment to come in. um versus only allowing siblings from current open enroll students to come in or guarantee >> guaranteed enrollment. >> Yeah. Which we don't do. >> Correct. Because if you do guaranteed enrollment, you have to take regular ed and special ed. You cannot like we look at our enrollment say we are taking this many regular ed enrollment and we have zero special ed due to space. You cannot do that under that rule. I reached out to DPI. Okay. >> Thank you. You're welcome. And then the other question that came up, question number two was, "What percent of West Alice, West Milwaukee students at each school are open enrollment?" Um, I also, if

054you flip over to page two, and I will click on here so that people behind me can see, we're open enrollment. Um, actually all of our schools fall below 8% except our deeper learning virtual academy, um, which with the flexibility of their learning fall above 8%, they are actually at 16%. So that was a question that came out of our conversation at our last meeting and so I wanted to get those numbers for you so that you had them in front of you, >> Mr. Lee. >> So I think this is really great to see. Um I think it's something that in the past was a problem for our district where we had open enrollment students that were kind of um in specific schools and other schools had little to no open enrollment. So I'm

055glad very happy to see as a board member that this is pretty evenly spread out um with if the expectation deeper learning being a virtual academy would have a higher percentage which is fine which is fine for that perspective. >> They have a flexible flexible um building so that they can take on a higher accountable >> account. That's great. I was I was really happy when I saw that. So thank you so much for that. >> No problem. So then that brings us to what we're asking for tonight. What I'm asking for is60 open enrollment seats. That's including tuition waiverss, which are the first 35 seats that we're asking for in each grade. So which is a total of 160 seats total for um for 4K through 12th grade. So, in conclusion, I'm asking for

056160 open enrollment regular ed seats, which has zero special education seats due to capacity. And I'm asking for 225 deeper learning virtual seats, which would would be only grades 6 through 12 with zero special ed seats due to capacity. >> One and two together. >> That's up to you. You guys can make the motion. Um, all right. Anything else? >> I was going to say to President Burns, those are separate actions, so it's something if you'd consider maybe combining them up to you. Just a thought even though how they're presented. >> Sure. Sure. Okay. Um, board members, is there are there any questions or anything else before we vote on this? Okay. So we can vote at this as one item but it would need to be motioned as one item then. >> So um

057>> to amend together >> no >> because you can make a a straight a mo Yeah. Only if a motion was made first for one and then you could amend in. >> Yep. Thank you though. Uh all right. So then if there are no other questions or comments uh I would look for a motion at this time. >> Move to approve 11.1 and 11.2. Second. >> All right. I have a motion and a second to approve 11.1 and 11.2. Um, is there any further debate on that motion? >> All right. All those in favor? >> I. >> Those opposed. >> All right. And that will pass. Thank you so much. >> All right. And then our next piece then that will come in is our agenda modification piece. that is 11.3 uh the February 2026

058extended travel to Orlando, Florida. And M Dr. Robinson, you were presenting this. >> Yeah. >> And in previous years, uh the Central and Hail teams have been um presented at the same time and for some reason it was not done this this year. The athletic director from Central is just returning from a leave. So we can understand why why it was not. But we are asking for the same approval for Central Palms team that was uh allowed for the Nathan Hail Palms team a couple of weeks ago. Uh the expenses are the same for for both groups. >> Move to approve 11.3. >> Second. >> All right, we have a motion and a second. Is there any discussion on this item? >> Seeing none, uh all those in favor? >> I. >> Those opposed. All

059right, that will pass. And then uh that will take us into our workshops starting with 12.1 or 2024 25 referendum updates. Workshop number four. Um and in case they don't talk into the mic quite, there's a lot of space. It's a very long room. You can all move forward to hear better. It's we don't bite as Ms. Deal said earlier. All right. Um, >> all right. >> You guys ready to go? >> We are queuing up right now. >> All right. We'll take it away. >> All right. So, we are back to give you an update on the referendum construction work that's going on. Uh real quickly, our agenda. We'll talk about some completed projects, some that we have in process right now. Then we'll jump into what what does 2026 look like. And then

060finally, we'll finish with how we're going to communicate all of those activities for you. So, starting off uh completed items. Last summer, we were able to knock out a number of roofs that were on our most pressing needs list that were part of the referendum work. So, Horseman, Persing, Central, and Nathan Hail all got some significant roofing work done. All went well. We maintained budget and um we'll be moving on and accomplishing some more roofing this summer. So, then our large project that dominated our time and energy for 2025 was the central fieldhouse. As you know, we were able to um get that completed. Uh we had a couple milestones we wanted to meet and that included um getting open for the basketball game right before Thanksgiving. And then we had a girls wrestling tournament

061and a boys wrestling tournament that we wanted to um get uh the facility open for in December. We officially opened it to the school uh the beginning of January. The school's been settling into the space for the last couple weeks and we are taking care of miscellaneous items, punch list items, um, and some minor things that need to be finished, completed, corrected. Um, which is very typical. Um, we've got some signage that's still going in. We have some large graphics that are going to go on the wall like the big bulldog and some cool things like that. A nice, um, uh, way to honor our Olympians. Um, so, a couple cool graphics are still coming. Um and then a lot of signage through the space and the corridors as well. Um things went well budget-wise.

062Uh we're having a couple meetings towards the end of this week and next week to sort of finalize all those dollars and um with our partners u design and construction team. So, but things are looking good that we're going to have um uh some surplus funds that we can use for phase phase two at Central. Um so that was central. Um we have a number of other projects that are also in the works. Uh dokey is one we are we had a steam leak there that we are we were able to terminate and um provide temp heat in the gym space. We needed to do that because the leak was going to continue to cause damage through the um through the heating season. So we were able to do that before school started. We had

063to go in and remediate the old ceiling which had some challenges with asbestous. So, we took care of that. We will be installing a new ceiling and then installing the duct work and associated things we need for the new heating and cooling system that's going to go in there. Aiming for installing uh potentially the new ceiling over spring break. So then as soon as school ends, we can jump on finishing the heating and cooling system there. Um, and then West Milwaukee, we are replacing the chiller, which uh kind of gave up at the end of the last cooling season, June, July. It kind of um decided it didn't want to work anymore. We had already planned on replacing it. So, we do in anticipate replacing that before we need to go into the cooling season

064again. Um, and we're also going to replace the boilers after we finish this heating season. So, both of those are going to fall somewhere around spring break. That's a good opportunity. We're aiming for spring break to replace the chiller. Nobody will be there. We can get in and do our work. That's the goal right now. Equipment's on track for arriving for that. And that's looking good. So, we can have a comfortable space for the last couple months there at West Milwaukee. We um took the opportunity this fall to jump on the exterior concrete work at Franklidd Wright that was really challenged. We got halfway done. We did our best and then the weather hit. We found a good stopping point where we accomplished what we could um made a break, made it safe. Um and

065now in the spring when the season allows, we will go back and finish the second half. This is all on the east side of the building. Um it got rid of some dangerous areas, some old broken concrete, some upheaved concrete from trees. Um it was a challenged area. So, we're giving them more of a clean slate to work with. They use that as a real gathering space and a playground space. So, I think it's going to be a much more utilized and and appropriate space for them. So, that's uh halfway through as well. And we're also doing part of the referendum work is upgrading our PA systems. So, we uh have our our vendor uh getting equipment in presently and we will be on replacing the first five of those systems in 2026. And it's

066really going to be kind of a rolling process where as we knock a couple out, we'll be ordering equipment for the next ones and we'll just kind of keep rolling through the schools upgrading and replacing the PA systems. So, um that's what we have in process right now. Uh for 2026, we are going to um tackle four new schools. Now, we have been in conjunction and alongside parallel to the actual construction work we've been up to, we've been planning these schools since early last fall. As you know, um, a lot of design, architecture, engineering work has gone into putting together the plans that we're going to use to build these next four schools this summer. A lot of activity out in the schools, measuring, you know, exploring, getting down into the scary places to see

067what the equipment is and that kind of thing. So, a lot going on with that. Um, the heavy lifting for that work is done. We last Friday we had our bid set complete that is in the hands of our our contractor partner CG Schmidt. They are um they have those plans what we call out on the street now meaning they're going through their bidding process with the plan sets. Um they're releasing those to interested parties who want to bid them. They're going to gather all that information. will regroup in a couple of weeks to review the findings and the bids that we have come in for these schools. Um, we'll be doing a couple site walks with contractors starting this Friday. We'll probably do another one the following Friday so contractors can be out in

068the schools and look at the things we're trying to accomplish. So, first of all, Nathan Hail, um, we have a number of activities we're going to tackle here. The pool needs work. Uh, tip, most of this work is going to be a little bit invisible. We need to replace the drain, the main drain that um you know that allows the water to leave. Um we have to do things underneath the pool that aren't super visible to anyone but very important to the mi maintenance of it and upkeep of it. Um we have an issue with the gutter system and its ability to drain in the large pool at hail. we need to correct that or it's going to become a an issue ongoing with the way the water moves in and out of the pool,

069etc. It's not very fun. It's not a cool project, but it's necessary. That's going to be part of what we do at the pool. Um, we'll also do as much as we can to refresh that space, take care of um corrosion and things like that, replacing equipment that needs to be replaced to give it a nice fresh um uh visual appeal as well. um the auxiliary gym. We need to replace the floor in there similar to what we did in Central with that athletic flooring. If you remember the wood floor and the athletic flooring around it, we're going to put that athletic type flooring in the auxiliary gym at Nathan Hail. That's for the multi-users that are in there. It's the most logical surface to go back in. Um we'll also do some refresh work

070in there. We're going to replace some doors. We're going to paint. We're going to do some um light equipment swap out that needs it. Um and that's what we're going to do in oxygen. Uh we need to replace the teched air system. That is what it is. Um nothing fancy, but it needs to be replaced. We've already got that um a number of pretty good budget numbers in for that and it's looking really good that that's going to be an opportunity where we have some savings that might roll into some other items. So that's great. Um, the bathrooms, we are tackling all of the bathrooms that haven't been done yet in hail, meaning there was one set of bathrooms that were done about a year ago. We're not touching those obviously, but the rest of

071the bathrooms in the school that are public facing, not the individual bathrooms, we are going to do a refresh or remodel in all of those. Um, we're looking good on budget there. We feel good that we can accomplish that and give all of the bathrooms a much needed upgrade there. Um the AC system that is meant to accomplish providing cooling in the gym, the ox gym, the associated areas and um we anticipate also the weight room athletic area as well. And then our main gym, um, as you all know and remember, we were able to, um, do the flooring in there pre-referendum. So, that's complete. We have some of these funds that are available that are going to allow us to do some other things in that space, including removing the ceiling, opening it, painting

072it, cleaning it, uh, adjusting some of the equipment that's up there, um, and replacing some equipment that needs to be replaced in that space. and a number of other items are on the wish list and the agenda list and we'll see how all of our bidding shakes out and what will allow us to do as far as that goes to be determined, but we've got a pretty nice list of things that we hope to accomplish there. And then finally, roofing. We did most of the roofing um last summer. We do have one section above the ox gym to complete. I just got um our finalized bidding on that looking really good. um that in total our roofing dollars we're going to have a sizable chunk of savings there that we can use in other areas

073which is really nice. So that is Nathan Hail Irving. Um Irving is our first elementary school we're going to work on. It was our most challenged and one that we really wanted to get into um ASAP. Um so again, bathrooms uh pretty straightforward. We're going to accomplish remodeling all of the existing bathrooms. We're going to take one pot of bathrooms and and create um a personal care area which is needed for their population of students and also uh basically side byside ADA compliant usable individual bathroom. So there's just going to be a pod on the eastern side of the building that's going to be a little bit more geared towards the folks who need those special type spaces. Um, we also are working through the challenges of providing cooling at Irving. And this is a

074real challenge here. Our engineers and architects and contractor and myself have been in this space a lot trying to find the solution that's going to work to give us cooling in this space. The design of the building, the layout, the footprint, how the structural members go through it are all posing a lot of challenges. We think we have a solution. Um, we're working through it now. We're putting it out to bid to see how the numbers come in and if we can allow if we can do this within our budget. That's a challenge. Not insurmountable, but it is a challenge. Um, and some of the savings that we I think we can realize in some of the other items we're doing may just by a default have to go to that that cooling heating portion.

075Um, speaking of which, the roofing, we've got those numbers in. looking really good that we can perform the roofing work we need to do here, have some savings that perhaps can help us in other areas like the air conditioning. So, to be determined, but we're working through it. Um, next, Persing. Persing is a nice school. It's pretty straightforward what the work we're doing here. We're going to remodel all of the bathrooms, uh, including the K5. Um, the little little tiny bathrooms need some work and we're going to take care of those as well. Um, we have, um, pretty straightforward, um, HVAC upgrades to do. We're going to replace a rooftop unit that provides cooling and heat to the administrative area. We're going to replace the chiller, which provides cooling to the building. Pretty straightforward. Some

076other equipment and odds and ends in that budget number. We feel good that we're going to be able to accomplish all of that. Um, as we know here, the roofing budget allocated for this school wasn't needed as much as we probably thought it was at the beginning of the referendum. So, we're done with the roofing that needs to be done there. That savings is allowing us to meet a really urgent need there that's been expressed by everybody from Dr. Robinson to the users of the school is putting an elevator in that space. Um, they don't have one. They really need one. We found a good location for it. Um, we've worked through the design and engineering of it. We're working on the budgeting of it. We feel really good that we can use the monies

077we have available available at Persing in a really effective way, which is providing an elevator there. So, um, still working through all of those finishing touches on it, but it looks good. It looks like we're going to be able to achieve that with the budget we have available and um give them a really needed um uh elevator there. Um so finally, Franklidd, right? Um uh quite a few things happening here. The bathrooms will all get upgraded. Um we're going to maintain the existing footprint. Um we're going to reconfigure them a little bit. They've got some weird sophets in there that make them feel like a cave if you've been in those bathrooms before. We're going to remove those. We're going to add some lighting, make it a more pleasant experience to be in, as well

078as refreshing the spaces. Um, we already talked about the east side concrete. Um, the pool is in gen generally good shape. We do have some items beneath the pool that we need to change, upgrade, improve. We have quite a bit of corrosion happening down there just from the nature of the the the system. We need to upgrade some of the equipment that's been corroded, some of the um just the wiring and the piping that's down there. We need to install a better, bigger fan that moves air beneath the pool. Um so the pool itself is in pretty good shape. Um a a decent portion of our funds is going to go underneath the pool, but that's where it's needed. Um our elevator is very challenged there. We got finalized numbers from biders uh last Friday.

079We worked through it with our contractor yesterday. We intend to award those elevators um here at Horus Man and potentially at West Milwaukee ASAP. Um we've got a good budget. Um we're below budget and we can award these. We need to get the equipment in and um get the contractor working on their drawings and their submittals. It's a process and we need to get that rolling ASAP. So, elevators are ready to go. We had a good bidding process. We got good strong numbers and we feel good about the contractors we're going to release for that. Um the boilers and air handlers here at Franklidd Wright, no major challenges. It's a lot of equipment that has aged and needs to be replaced. Um, we already have cooling in the building. Um, so it's basically upgrading and

080improving equipment there. And then finally, one the last item that we're still working through and figuring out how we're going to uh tackle this challenge is the flooring. This is meant to be the second floor corridor flooring at Frank Boyd. Write. We did get um some budget numbers from our remediation partner because we do have some asbestous con issues going on with that. Um if we do remove it, that would eat into our budget pretty significantly. So, we're still figuring out how we're going to tackle that and what we're going to do with it, but we'll we'll come up with a solution. Um, one nice feature that we're going to tackle here at Franklidd Wright is we have a an area that for our um, folks that need um, special care and personal care, they

081have a room right now. It's not the greatest. Um, it's got some challenges. We're going to take that space, grow it, and we're going to give them an ADA compliant bathroom, a public-f facing ADA compliant bathroom, and then a personal care area with an adult-siz changing table, a shower, and some other features like that, which is a real need there um to really uh help that population of student that we want to help. Um so, we've already got a spot. it it works out beautifully that we can accomplish our our desire to get an ADA bathroom in the space that's unisex. Um now we can give them one of their own and we can also give them this personal care space that is definitely a need there. So that is Frank quite right and that

082is all of our work for 2026. >> All right. So just a reminder of um the communications plan that we laid out back um when before we got any of these projects started. So we will continue with our weekly feature Friday campaign, monthly referendum update in the newsletter as well as updated one pages on the website. Quarterly we have our larger projects which alternate between a video and a mailer. And then ongoing um we have our website, social media and events. I did hyperlink our website in there. Um it is a great way to stay informed. Um I would say that's second to social media. So anyone out there listening who's wondering like what's going on? How can I stay in the loop? Please check out our website. Please follow us on social media. We

083have plenty of information out there. I wanted to highlight a couple. Oh, I think these are all going to try to play. Um, I wanted to highlight a couple of uh highlights from the last time we met. Um, so we have Dr. Robinson in the top lefthand corner in case you didn't know. So, that was our hype video for the soft opening, which some may argue was the grand opening based on how many attended that uh versus the official grand opening, but that's okay. Um on the top right we do have the official grand opening of the fieldhouse. That's Mr. Somerfield right there with the scissors and the orange ribbon. And then we tried a fun miniseries um for our feature Friday which was meet the fill-in- thelank. So we had our project manager, our

084foreman and our superintendent and they were interviewed to tell us more about how they got into the field, why they enjoy it, um kind of like the skills you need for that field. We got some good views on that and and our goal is kind of to hopefully inspire some students to consider going into the trades. So that was a really fun miniseries. We partnered with CD Schmidt on that. Um so I apologize. I think I'm going have to click four times. Okay, there we go. Um and then upcoming communications, we will continue with uh feature Friday monthly newsletter and one pagers. We also have our large quarterly project which will be a standalone mailer to all community members, so all of our residences. Um, and that will come out in late spring. And then

085we will be doing orange ribbon cutting ceremonies at any school when they reach 100% completion for the projects designated to be completed through the referendum. So, we will not just be doing the orange ribbon at the fieldhouse. We will be doing it at every school when they reach that 100%. and we'll just kind of tailor those um to the school whether it's a pep assembly after school event. Um we'll have a lot of fun with that. How can they the with the uh updated one pages on our website? You can track percentages completion percentage with the updated one pages on our website. Um ironically today we did just get our uh drafts for February. So, we're reviewing those and those will be posted within the next couple of days here >> and those are updated

086month. >> Yes, those are updated every month. So, with that, I will pass it back over to President Burns. >> Thank you. All right. So, with all of that information, what questions do we have from the board? Miss Zil. >> Thanks. Um, can we go back to the slide about Nathan Hale? Goodness. Um I guess it's more of a comment than it is a question, but um with the leftover the money that we have of beyond budget, I'm just I'm very curious is our goal for the the the district is one we're looking towards more getting people into CTE and career and trades and also we have kids that are involved in other things besides athletics. And what I see on here is we've already replaced gym floors. We're looking at a ceiling. We're looking

087at a new director's office, a new trainer room, uh um a main gym, seating, new ceiling renovation, new scoreboards, new mats. My my concern here is when we presented the referendum, we also took people around in our our district. We walked them around our schools, and one of the things we talked about is our our classrooms, our science classrooms, how they're very outdated, how we have these buns and burners, and nobody has these anymore. Or our home, our home, uh you know, it needs to be redone. So, I'm I'm a little I guess I'm a little disappointed because I feel like there's not a balance here. I I'd like us to I'd like us to see if we have these extra dollars, we I feel like it's it's something that should be touching every child

088and you repairing a new athletic director's office, whether I don't know what the status of it of is, but that's not going to touch my child um or some children who aren't involved in athletics. I mean, I I guess I want this referendum money if we have extra to actually going towards something that is going to impact the most amount of students. So, I'm I'm just curious as to how we we came upon this or is there a way that we can we can maybe step back and see if there are other things that we can look at because I think that it's it's important that we're um not just addressing, you know, one one set of needs. Um I think we also need to um be more innovative. Um, career-wise, I'm thinking about if

089we start going into stuff like CNA and stuff, you know, why aren't, you know, we we're looking at renovating some rooms for that so that we can put, you know, uh, uh, like, you know, you CNA schools we have or such. I just I feel like we're not being very creative here. And I just I want the money to go towards actually impacting students. And I don't know how a trainer's room, a new athletic director, how does that change how does that impact the students? And also, how does it impact new scoreboards, new masks for a child? And I'm I'm I'm being devil's advocate, but how does that as a parent, explain to me as a parent who has kids who are not involved in athletics at all, >> how does that impact them and

090help them >> I think just just quick if I don't Sorry. I think the thinking was that these are just projects on the list this deal. And I think the thought was trying to get uh like hard costs on them to provide the same experience at Central and Hail. So if Central had it done in the fieldhouse, we're trying to see is it a need at Hail? If not, then it will be addressed. But that was initially the thought. None of these are committed to at this point. But the work that's getting done this summer is what you see in the budget planned and any of the rest of it is going to just be hard cost. That way when we come back to the board it' be this is what it looks like and

091it's really up to the board to decide how to spend the funds. >> Yeah. So when we say potential additional projects that's really what it is. So we're going to perform the work that we're tasked with performing and what savings we have we'll call like phase two sort of like we're calling central phase two with with uh any budget funds we have left. These are opportunities. We were looking at um providing equity between the two high schools. There are very challenged spaces um at Hail that Central just got brand new. So the challen the trainers room is very challenged at Hail. We want to provide the same space to to Hail that we did Central if we can with potential additional projects. So that's kind of where that thinking went. the equity between the two

092schools. Um the items that we're looking at savings like the main gym, well those funds were tasked for the main gym. So we're looking at well how can we keep those funds within that that umbrella. But I I totally understand what you're saying. I think this these are phase two projects. So, if the board wants us to sort of broaden our scope and our our reach and how we can tackle some other items, >> I guess my my concern is that we're constantly worrying about, well, this person has this. Well, I think we're forgetting like I I you know, Central just got a huge renovation. We're not going to be able to do that over at Hail completely. And I I guess to me, if even as a as a constituent, as someone who's putting

093my tax dollars into it, I I want to see it touch everybody. And right now this whether I I'm not concerned about central and and you know I'm sorry if the community feels that we it has to be you know tit for tat that if they get a new gym we get a new gym because it's not doesn't work that way and that might be have to be communicated because I just I feel like we're missing a real opportunity to advance areas that we want to move into. We should be dedicating some of this money to CTE, building up our trades and our our the things we keep talking about programming. I'm sorry. I'm just going We keep talking about how we want to bring in MATC and try these different things out. I think

094we just need I just think we Yes. ST phase two. I think we need to really put in some real thought as to how where we want that money to go. >> Thank you, Miss De. >> Other comments from the board? Mr. Lee? Yeah. So I think we have to be careful because with the funds that we put for referendum we did list specific items in which we were using it for and going outside of that item those items would is a slippery slope >> and I think that we do have to be aware of that you know we didn't list you know you know just auto shop exhaust is CTE right and the wood project the wood exhaust is CTE right so I think those are things that we put in specifically to try

095and address some of those CTE things that we knew we had to do specifically at hail Um, and but when we when we put when we went through all those things that we went through all the meetings, we specifically said what we were going to use these things for. And so these things are falling in line with the things that we were talking about doing in the referendum questions, >> right? And I'm asking about excessive dollars. I'm asking we're talking about money that is been beyond what we've already budgeted. >> But we didn't say if we get excess dollars then we're going to use it for this, this, or this. Right? So like these are still being we said we were going to use these dollars for these purposes and so that's why they're being

096put towards those purposes because those are the purposes that we said we were going to use them for. I I don't disagree that we need to upgrade our classrooms, but I think that's a much bigger project than just a nickel and diamond one here or there. And I think that's the the bigger thing that needs to be addressed. So whether you know having par between uh the high schools isn't going to happen completely. Um, but my understanding was that scoreboards were included in the, you know, the the gym ceiling was included in that renovation because we have to do the HVAC work which involves ripping all that up. So, for me seeing this as potential additional projects is a surprise to me because my understanding was that was what the original project was. When you

097redo the HVAC in the gym, you have to redo all that other stuff, too. So that was one of my questions is potential additional projects. Are those potential additional projects that are going to happen this year? Are those potential additional projects that might happen in years to come? Sure. Um I think the answer is yes and yes. There are going to be some items that fold into the current work and some items that would then be up for review on what could happen with the potential funds. Um, but there are items. So, we we say main gym, right? $460,000. That money was allocated for the flooring. The flooring was already taken care of. So, we anticipate that we're still going to use those funds in the main gym, just in different ways. how that looks.

098Well, those are the potential items we've listed as how we could use that money. We're going to get the new ceiling, right? Um, it's really just an opening up of the ceiling. >> We are not going to run new duck work because we don't need to. We're going to adapt the existing system, which is adaptable to provide cooling for that space, which is going to realize some more savings. Um, so that's great. we don't have to run tons of duck work and and do a lot of crazy work that's going to cost a bunch of money. Um, so that's going to give us more opportunity for savings and using that elsewhere. But yeah, I mean I think the idea is that there are main gym items that are going to be accomplished in this this

099process because that money was allocated for them, right? >> Is that a fair assessment? Yeah, if I if I could I I I think to Miss Dill's point, when when you look at this in isolation, it it does not look like we are spending money across the board. It does look isolated. I get that part, right? But I think the the the point of trying to be transparent with this is something that we said to the community as we collected data, as we had these conversations about what to spend it on, these are the things that kept coming up. Um, I think also once you hear the next board workshop um with uh CTE and our college and career readiness, you you you'll hear where the other needs are coming. So to Miss Dill's point,

100there there will be some other things that we're going to be needing for some potential programming, but this is where we are. I think if we have any changes, then we'll come back to the board to note what those changes or suggestions would be. Um, I think it's a little misleading when you say additional uh projects because if you look at that there is a need for a new athletic training room. There is. It's it's pretty bad. However, the the space that we've identified is the athletic director's office. So, that's where it's not. Don't look at it like, oh, he's getting a brand new office. No, that's actually what a training room is going to be. So, it's this is a little misleading when when it's up there like that. But, I think Miss De

101has an excellent point as a parent. Um, I I totally understand. What about the kids in their educational experience in academics is just as important as athletics. I agree 100% with that. >> I wasn't done. >> No. Sorry. >> You have more questions? >> Yeah, I do. >> Okay. Go ahead. Um, can you go to the central fieldhouse slide on the costs? What are owners what are owner costs? Sure. So, we had we held certain contracts that our contractor wasn't able to for a variety of reasons. Um, the athletic flooring installation, >> we paid that contractor directly. the um remediation of the mercury in the floor and all of that. That's cost between those two right there. That's a million dollars. Um and then associated other things, remediation, um miscellaneous equipment, that type of thing.

102So, um yeah, it that's a very typical cost. there's going to be owner provided equipment or another item that is typically an owner provided thing is the AV system. So we contracted for the AV system. Those three contracts right there make up 95% of that cost. >> Okay. And and Bill, aren't there other things just thinking a thought here that if we purchase direct we get tax breaks too that could be owner costs? Maybe not specifically here but in the future. That that certainly is a consideration. Yeah. >> I just wondering what they were specifically. >> Yeah. So those items there there's things like typical owner provided items are it AV um any equipment furniture things like that. Those are typically owner owner contracted and owner provided costs. Okay. >> Thank you. Other questions from

103the board? No. Okay. Um, I do not have any questions for him. I look forward to seeing more of what's going on. I I look forward to seeing what other projects were able to accomplish. Um, so in that case, if there's no other questions, you guys are released, I guess, uh, into the wild. Have fun. And that'll bring us to 12.2, our college and career readiness updates workshop. >> Thank you. >> You bet. Thank you. >> Here's the scope of Nathan here. >> We're doing what we're doing. Just it's we're not going against. Miss Deal, your microphone's on. I don't This is a full if you wanted. >> All right, welcome you guys. Are you all set and ready to go? We are indeed ready to go. >> Excellent. Well, then please take it away.

104>> All right. Thank you, President Burns. Good evening, everyone. Um, my name is Alyssa Barrage, as you know, but I am also joined by a team of folks. So, I'm going to have them introduce themselves as they'll all be um part of this presentation we have this evening. >> Uh, my name is Robert Joyce, uh, the manager of college and career readiness for the district. >> My name is Cody. I'm the coordinator of second years. My name is Alicia Benedetti and I am the coordinator of secondary mathematics. All right, so we're going to jump right in. Our focus today um is around accelerating access and achievement for our students. So, thank you um Miss Deal for the the nice setup for the conversation. We're going to talk about post-secary readiness. Um and so for our

105time this evening, we have our presentation broken up into three different sections. The first will focus on the current state. So what are we where are we currently with our postsecondary opportunities for our students? The next will go into the immediate horizon. So what are we working on right now and planning for into next year and then we'll go to the next horizon. So 2027 and beyond. What are we really looking forward to? um and expanding opportunities for our students as well as aligning and being strategic with the opportunities we are providing for all students here in West Dallas West Milwaukee. So with that, we have three goals. So this is what we really want you all to take away from our our time this evening. First um as well as any families that are

106listening. So first to provide clarity on current post-secary opportunities for students and families in our district. The second is to to share our strategic next steps on accelerating access and achievement which is part of our strategic plan. And the third is to provide an overview of two courses that we will later seek approval for um from the board. And those are English 101 and pre-calculus courses. They are both um under the umbrella of concurrent enrollment. So we'll be talking through that um as part of our time this evening. So moving into the current state as we know this is our portrait of a graduate and I kind of want to zone in on the first um part of the portrait of the graduate which is core strength and unlimited potential. And so our mission really

107here in our district is yes to ensure students have the foundational skills they need in literacy, math, um as well as civics and government and all of those courses, personal finance to ensure they're ready, um for life beyond their time with us. But also we want to make sure that they have a lot of other experiences related to careers and and technical education and opportunities. So really that unlimited potential is what I want to connect to here in our portrait of a graduate. We really want to offer a lot of opportunities and pathways for students to explore while they're with us. The second is the road ahead. So right now we're in absolutely a building phase. Um part of that building has been the members you see on this team. They've contributed a great deal

108to our district's work around instruction as well as expanding our post-secary opportunities. So, each of them you'll get to hear from tonight. But truly huge assets to really building the future that we as a board and as a team drive towards. What we're looking forward to though in next year is accelerating access and achievement. So more opportunities for students and then aligning those opportunities so there are clearer pathways which we will talk about tonight. Um for students to receive college credit while they're with us as well as experience um experiential experiential based learning. And finally some grounding for our workshop this evening is just connecting back to our third school board goal around college and career readiness. Um, so we will share some preliminary data around where we currently sit as it relates to this

109goal this year, but definitely looking to expand in our advanced coursework specifically around dual credit enrollment and concurrent enrollment as well as the CTE pathways. Um, and so Robert will be speaking a lot on that. So in our district, I want you to just have this visual in mind. We're going to go deeper into all the post-secondary opportunities because again the purpose of today is that you all have clarity on these different opportunities that we're talking about that our students and families have access to. I think this visual just shows there's kind of two different big buckets of opportunities. One are coursebased opportunities. That's what you see on the left. That's where we have concurrent enrollment, early college credit program, start college now, transcripted courses, dual enrollment academy, and AP coursework. A lot of different

110words. We're going to go a little bit deeper in a second, but those are all coursebased opportunities where students can potentially receive college credit while they're with us here in West Dallas West Milwaukee. So really important um to name those different types of course-based opportunities and for all of us to have a shared understanding of or at least you know a a grounded understanding of what those terms mean. On the right side you're going to see experience-based opportunities. So, as we know, that's when students can get out in the world and explore different careers and things that they are really motivated and interested in. And that includes internships, work-based learning, and youth apprenticeship. And the industry recognized credentials are something they do with our staff in West Milwaukee, but is a direct connection to what

111our industry folks are saying that students need to be prepared to work in these different industries in our world. So, we'll speak now. Let's go a little bit deeper. I want everyone to look at the one pager that was shared and it looks like what you see on the board. And so I'm just going to kind of walk through so we have a grounded understanding of what these different types of opportunities are and then I will share kind of the two that we're going to focus in on this evening. So again, the first half are those course-based opportunities. And so at the top you'll see the name. Many of you are familiar because you approve our early college credit program students to attend universities um and receive coursework through them. You also do that for

112our start college now. Um, and so that should a lot of this should look familiar, but you'll see the first um, row beneath a title is just a short overview of what that type of course work is. Um so if we look at concurrent enrollment for example um this is done in district and that's when students receive college and high school credit for um courses that are taken with 4-year universities. So that's taught by our staff and that's coursework that we can then offer here in district. Um, and two of the courses that we are looking, as I mentioned at the beginning, to come back and ask for approval on are English 101 and pre-calculus. And so those two are not yet in our course catalog. That is something in an area we are looking

113to expand in. The major benefits of concurrent enrollment is that it guarantees college credits for students um as long as they successfully complete the course. Okay. Um it also fulfills the general education requirements for English and math. So as they move on to both technical colleges as well as four-year universities, it will cover those general education requirements which is a huge benefit for students. and they transfer across the UW system with the exception of WMadison. Something we always just have to keep in mind is WMadison has its own regulations and expectations around coursework, but the rest of the UW system, it does does accept those those courses. Then if we move to transcripted courses, we're going to talk through some that we already have. They're listed here. Um, but those are courses that are also

114taught in district and students receive college credits and high school credits for these courses that are related to a different CTE pathway. Okay, so the transcripted courses should hopefully raise a flag in your mind. Oh, this is a CTE related course. Um, it's also again taught by our our district staff. Um, and and students are able to get college credit for it upon successful completion. and it also transfers to W technical colleges. Then the you all are very familiar with the early college credit program and start college. Now those courses are taken on campus and that's for students um and they would also receive college and high school credits. The students request specific coursework at the university or college. This is for coursework that we aren't able to provide but is often extension of their

115learning here. that could be higher level math to a type of coursework that isn't part of our current course catalog. So really above and beyond what we're able to provide. Another if you keep moving to the right is dual enrollmentmies. This is done um on college campus. We have 12 students currently who are attending MATC through a dual enroll enrollment academy and that means they take their coursework fully on campus um for their senior year. So that we do have some students that are very set. they know that they want to go into this pathway um and that allows them to take credits um and really maximize their time um with us but also get the college credits in the specific pathway. And finally of our course-based options we have our advanced placement or AP

116coursework. Um, and again that's done and provided in district. So students receive high school credits and then possible college credits as well depending on how they test on the AP assessment. Um, so I again just wanted to walk through those because there's a lot of different language and this is this is something that we're going to make available to families as well. We've tried to really synthesize and summarize what are the opportunities we have and make it I think more digestible to families because a lot of these terms I've noticed are used interchangeably by folks but they really mean something different and they point to different coursework and different pathways availables for students. And I also just want to clarify when I say pathways, I don't mean a student can only engage in one of

117these types of course-based opportunities. Pathways are just opportunities. And we're trying to get strategic with the pathways that we're offering um specifically in CTE so that students aren't taking random courses, but courses that are leading to um areas that they're most passionate about. So, that being said, you could have students taking concurrent enrollment, um, English 101, getting English credit, also taking, uh, engaging in early college credit program for something else related or transcripted courses through CTE. So, we really want students to be able to expand um, and be able to access all of these courses. And then lastly, again I just want to highlight the experience-based opportunities on the bottom half. So you have work-based learning and youth apprenticeship which we are going to touch on and talk about further in the presentation. Industry recognized

118credentials as well and then internship. So um just again this is for all of us to have kind of a grounding of what are the things that we currently do offer and where are we looking to expand. So the area we're going to talk more deeply about in terms of course expansion is concurrent enrollment. So we will be talking about that later. Now I'm going to hand it off to Robert who's going to speak through some of our current state with career and technical education uh clusters and pathways. >> Yes. Thank you so much. Just for a little bit of background because I'm I'm just getting to know you guys. You guys are getting to know me. Um, I'm a teched teacher by trade, so I get pretty excited about career in technical ed. And

119so sometimes I can wander with my speech. I'll try and keep it as concise as possible, but also answer as many questions at the end, too. Um, so I I wanted to just give a overview of just some terminology. So you have clusters and pathways. And so clusters, what they are, if you look at that symbol on the right, that's from DPI. It allows us to be able to take the broad grouping of of different careers that exist out there and try and help us to narrow our focus. Since we only have so many resources, time, effort to be able to designate towards different careers. We can't teach to all careers, but we try to find some places where we can teach some soft skills and and have some areas where we can hit multiple

120um career paths in in in a single area. So um when you look at the pathways that that narrows the focus even more. Now we're talking about sequencing our courses so that way they lead to a particular type of career certification um internship opportunity um those sorts of things. So that's clusters think more broad pathways think more narrow. And so this next slide if you look at the bold those are our clusters that we currently offer here in the West Alice West Milwaukee School District. And then the bulleted points are the pathways that follow underneath each of those clusters. And then on the next slide, just like we shared previously, these are our current transcripted courses. This is something that we want to be able to build out because for each of our pathways in

121order to be a quality pathway, and I'll talk about that more later, we want to make sure that students have the ability to be able to get industry recognized credentials, they have access to college credit, that they get internship opportunities, some work-based learning opportunities where we can bring people in, get them onto the job site, so we can provide as much career guidance in an area of interest that they have as possible. And so part of this is academic and career planning. Um it naturally makes sense that career and technical ed. That's where a lot of it sits. Um the reality is a counselor being probably one to 300, it's really tough to be able to spend a whole lot of time on academic and career planning. So it really does take a lot of

122effort from um teachers at each grade level. um us being able to be intentional about what type of courses we offer but then also access to platforms such as Zello. So um we do have academic and career planning is an ongoing process um that is supported through our coursework um internships and youth apprentichip opportunities. We try to figure out what our students interest, help them to be even utilize Zello to complete entrance inventories and then help them to explore some different career pathways either utilizing uh Zello but also getting them into some of these courses that we offer and giving them hands-on learning opportunities to be able to build those out. So this is our current data. So our latest snapshot, so the number of students that are in advanced placement, dual enrollment, industry recognized

123credential, workbased learning, and youth apprenticeship. These are areas that we are strategically working towards growing each year. And I think we're putting the things in place right now that will help us to be able to do so. Um, youth apprenticeship, I think we had we had one last year, we're up to 10. Uh, we'll be up to 11 after tomorrow. And so that is something we hope to double each year. that is a great capstone opportunity for our students to be able to get some hands-on experience and it's getting more and more broad with the department of workforce development allowing us to be able to have some really unique opportunities in each area. So, um look forward to expanding that further. And then these are our concentrators. So, concentrators are students who take two or

124more courses in a designated pathway. And so it's neat for us to be able to see, okay, what students what they're interested in, but then also see where they're doubling up on those courses. Um, these numbers are are very accurate. Um, as far as a minimum enrollment, it could be higher than that in an area because you cannot when we report this out, we cannot report more than one concentrated area. So some students might be uh taking double courses in family and consumer science. they also might be doing that in a business course too, but we have to end up selecting one or the other when we report to um the state. And so when we look at this data um it's it's actually higher than that in those areas. So which is really neat

125that that students are taking advantage of multiple courses in designated pathways and then we're trying to rev up communication efforts. Um and and part of what we're going to be able to share today is an effort in doing so. Uh as we're trying to narrow in what our strategic plan looks like for the next one, two to three to five years for current technical ed, we want to be able to build out a website that that demonstrates that. Um as I shared before, I think for me as a parent, I have five children myself. Every each one of them is uniquely different and I love being able to hear about the things they're interested in. And then for me as an educator, I also try to figure out, okay, how do I take what you're

126interested in and be able to see what offerings are here and and see how we can grow some passion in those things and some direction. Um, we will try to utilize the website to do that. So, and see what our programming looks like to help answer those questions. So, that is a work in progress. We're we're gathering some different things, but hoping that here in the next couple months, we can start to build that out as we get more clarity as to what to the next one to two to three to five years look like. Um, we've also started the youth apprenticeship spotlights. You may have seen those on on Facebook. We've been posting those out. So, for our current students that are in a youth apprentichip, just trying to get that message out to

127people. Um, we've done some video spotlights. We're going to be doing an automotive one here again pretty soon. So the comm's department has been amazing in helping us out with that. And then um our academic career planning lessons. So we utilize Zello to be able to do some interest inventories for students. But then there's also activities if students do choose to take advantage of it. It's really good exploration into careers and you're going to be able to get an idea of what kind of things you might be interested in. we have sent that home to families so that way students and families can talk and discuss through those things. And then um here one of my my ambitious goals are as we build out this youth apprenticeship and as we build our community relationship with

128different industry leaders, we'd like to be able to build a clearing house essentially where I can have interested employers, interested students be able to um give me some basic information in each of these sites and then I can help play matchmaker in helping to expand our youth apprenticeship opportunities because oftentimes people want to be able to help out. they just don't know how yet. And so we want to be able to build some clarity around that too. So those are some goals we have. >> All right. So next we're going to talk through the um immediate horizon. So in the next year we really have four big areas that we are looking to take action on. Um and again aligning with the concurrent enrollment work and expanding that. Um and then moving towards our CTE

129um and having right now we're in the process pro process of a comprehensive local needs assessment and that's going to really springboard a lot of the work that's to come around CTE. Robert's going to speak more about that as he's been uh deep uh in the work of that. So I'm going to hand it next to Emma who is going to talk through our first course concurrent enrollment course that we are going to seek approval for at a later date. Hi everyone. Uh so English 101 introduction to college writing. This is the first course that um we are hoping to seek approval for. Um, this is a concurrent enrollment college credit course taught by a WAWWM high school teacher, but they will be earning college credit through UWM upon a successful completion of a 70%.

130This is one of those courses that transfers across the entire UW system with the exception of Madison. And so, this course fills a few um needs that our district has. First, it fills a foundational skill gap. Often students will go into college their freshman year um lacking the ability to have a strong rhetorical awareness um of the writing of texts that they are reading critically analyzing. And this course focuses really deeply on that skill. It also uh focuses on the writing process, not just about completing a five paragraph essay, but really about what does the revision process look like when we're analyzing a text. This opportunity also creates equitable college level access for students who might not see themselves or attempt an AP course. Um we'll get into some of the requirements that students need

131to be in this course, but it is accessible for a few reasons. Um and one is it is a we'll start it as a one-year course. So, it's taking that one semester college course and expanding it, which allows more students to see themselves successful in that college environment. It also strengthens our college readiness, especially when we're talking about digital tools, AI, and how students are going to inevitably have to navigate that when they enter college or their next post-secary um decision. And it enhances our own competitiveness. a lot of districts surrounding us are already offering something similar and so this will help us um expand those opportunities and and be on a similar page as other districts and it provides a lowcost pathway. So the district cost per student would be $345 and if a

132student were to go into college to take English 101 it would cost them around $1,600. So this is a huge savings for them as well. So um for our um immediate horizon for the 2627 school year um our vision would be to have one section offered at central one section offered at hail strategically scheduled so that in the beginning and the end of the day so that Doddkey students could also co-enroll in this as well. Uh it would be approximately 25 students per site 50 students total and it would be taught by a current uh English teacher. No new hires are um required. Uh we have a few teachers who are able to like they have enough graduate credits that they would be able to teach this course in the fall. Um teacher training and

133support looks like two days of training in the summer. Um compensates those teachers for that training. They focus on how to make sure that the the the rigor of college is still within the high school high school classroom. And so um the support that those teachers get is they will have a mentor teacher from UWM assigned to them that will be able to support them throughout the school year. So that uh professor will come in, they will observe the teacher, they will support them with giving them feedback, making sure that all everything that you're the students are producing is at that high caliber. And so our primary enrollment group for year 1 would be students who are currently in American literature and they will be seniors next year. Uh students with a 2.75 GPA or

134higher or students recommended by a teacher. Those are the two UWM requirements. And then lastly, it would be students who plan to attend UWM um or another UWM system so that we know they will absolutely be able to transfer those credits to the university of their choice um once they graduate from us. And this last slide here around English 101 is just kind of a the vision after next year. Um, and so those teachers that would be approved, that are going to hopefully be approved, um, they could kind of expand the way that they teach this course. So they could have one section of English 101 that lasts over the whole year. That could be for students who maybe need that additional support in the reading of that college level text, still accessible, but they

135get a little bit more time. They could also then teach another section where one set of students would earn English 101 credit in the fall of their senior year and then they would be able to earn English 102 credit in the spring and they would be totally done if they're not an English major with their English gened credits by the time they graduate from us. So in the 2728 school year, it would be a minimum of a 100 students at each high school earning college credit. C could you speak real quickly about how does this affect the the the current layout and I I know that you got you've had some conversations with teachers and like what are their concerns and how have you addressed those concerns? >> Sure. Um and is that in terms

136of like course like teaching the courses >> the courses but I know it I think there's also a feeling that it could take away from AP >> students who are taking AP. >> Yeah. Yeah. And I think some teachers have expressed that. So, >> absolutely. And I've talked to some teachers at both high schools. This is not replacing AP. This is in addition to AP. This is for students and if students are taking AP, they could also te take this class as well. This would be for students who um maybe don't see themselves. So, we're thinking about expanding the student opportunity, right? So, um it would be for those students who maybe never really saw themselves taking AP, think it's too difficult. Um, and so it would not take away from the AP classes. It

137would just be in addition. And we would have to look through scheduling to just make sure that everything fits. But it is not replacing AP. I forgot I had one more slide, which is this is just an example communication that could go home to parents and guardians around English 101. Now we're on to pre-calc. So what is this course? It's sim very similar to what Emma was talking about with the English 101, but pre-calculus will be a 105 class. Um that is also taught by WAWWM high school math teacher. This will provide three W Green Bay College credits at no cost to our families and it will transfer across the entire UW system. This will bridge the gap between algebra 2 and college level mathematics. It should strengthen our readiness for uh our STEM classes,

138our business and health science pathways. And a big piece of this is that it it will provide a critical access point for our students to to earn a college math credit early, which is not something that is very common across the board. Um, when a student uh graduates from high school, most likely than not, they usually take a pre-calculus course or they take a calculus course, which does not guarantee them entrance into a UW calculus course. They will still have to take a math requirement in a te and a test for that. And it more often than not, our students don't pass into calculus and they still have to take a pre-calc. this course will automatically give them entrance into that calculus one course. So, not only save them a cost in high school, but

139it will save them double the cost when they go into college. So, really a it's a savings in both ways. Um, the district cost would be 460, but with this great program with our W Green Bay system is that they will cover the complete cost for our free and reduced lunch students. So, one section at Central and also one section at Hail. So, similar to our English one, um, no new hires are needed. Uh, the one difference is that currently we don't have any teachers that qualify for it because the math is a little bit more strict. Those 18 credits have to be in uh, grad level mathematics courses. But the W Greenbay system will allow our our teachers to go back to school and they will cover that tuition for them to go back

140to school to earn those 18 credits. And so they will be able to concurrently teach that course here at West Dallas while they're attending a university themselves. The primary enrollment group that we would love to see is our students currently enrolled in algebra 2 with trigonometry. or incoming seniors and those that the the only requirement from the university is a B+ or higher in that course. >> Here you go. >> All right. >> Before you go on, I just want to make sure I'm recapping some things because I think so we're hearing this. So go back real quick and I apologize. Feel like I'm part of the board right now. No, I'm not. >> Go for it. >> Uh >> with Not not interested in that. >> So So for the math course um is

141this a semester one semester like how comparing to the English? Just want to make sure. >> Yes. It it would be just uh it would be a semester course for W system but a whole year for the high school. >> So we're splitting the one the the whole course into halves. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Just trying to make sure we were clear. Yeah. But but we are also saying that each kid that that if if kids were participating and take take advantage of both of these offerings that they could leave our district with six credits. Is that what I'm hearing? >> Uh >> seven credits because four for >> math >> seven credits for English and for math. Correct. >> And that's really the first year of math. Correct. >> That's I'm just trying to

142make sure. Yeah, >> just saying it out there just to put it in perspective >> to emphasize secondary institutions require an uh English and a math correct requirement. English is a 102 and a math is at a minimum a 105. This would cover not only that math, but it would cover the English as well if they took both that they would not have to take any general ed courses. They would go right into their major. >> Correct. That's what I wanted to bring out of this. Thank you. Okay. I also >> Oh, go ahead. >> I just want to reinforce one point that they brought up, which is the important part about concurrent enrollment is that it's done and taught by our teachers who know our students who know how to work with high school

143students really well. Um, and it's taught on campus, so you remove any transportation barriers and it's it will be at no cost to students. Now, that's something that years from now, we may have to have more conversations around how are we going to fund this if we, you know, want to go and continue to expand in these areas. But for now, this is like feasible and sustainable for us as a system to offer to students. And so again, just want to highlight some of those big points of why concurrent enrollment is so impactful and truly accessible to all of our students. President Burns, did you want to >> Sure. Thank you. I actually uh since we went through these two courses here, I wanted to pause so that the board can ask a few questions

144before we go into more. >> Uh Mr. Lee, >> I have a lot of voice. It'll pick up the odd mic. Um, how can students So, you're I know we're not approving these classes, but so students are picking courses now, >> correct? >> Or already have picked courses. >> They already have. >> So, how would they be able if we approve these classes these courses in 3 weeks time? Um, how would they be able to go back and say, "Oh, well, I want this instead of that." And we know how hard it is to move uh schedules around at this point. >> Yep. Well, the good thing is while students have selected courses, schedules have not been made. So, we've had preliminary conversations with leaders and teacher teams around we really don't want to wait

145on offering this to students, but we also want to make sure we get it right and ensure that our teachers have the support they need to be successful in year 1, which is why we talked a lot about year 1 implementation and having specific cohorts at both high schools as well as inviting in our DOT students to be part of those cohorts. So what it would look like is because there are some uh university requirements um we talked with our principles around like which courses which students do you think would this course make sense to be in year 1. Um and then we pulled a list of students that are current juniors that would be available these opportunities would be available based on the GPA or teacher recommendation. So to answer your your question Mr.

146It will be done in teacher teams at the high schools looking at what students are eligible. Are there any students outside of that that we would have teacher recommendation that's only an option for English. So again it's working through the requirements of the university and then from there reaching out to those students and families and saying hey this is something you're you're available an option available. you were originally scheduled for um world literature as a senior, but we have this new opportunity with English 101 that we think you would be great for. Are you comfortable with making that shift? So, it will be more work this spring >> and then moving into next year, it'll be rolled in with course selection, which is the ideal so that >> right, it's available again to all of

147our students. So it will be a little bit more work on our end this year in collaboration with school leaders. >> Okay. Um my second question was >> you can have the best courses in the world but you need some very specific teachers to teach these >> and once you get those specific teachers how do we keep them? >> Yeah. >> So they don't go somewhere else to teach it. >> I hear you. Um a few things. One is what's in our control. One, we already have incredible staff on our in our English department team. >> Um, two of which who have already taught this course um, previously. So, that's really exciting and encouraging. We have people that have experience teaching it. Um, in terms of I think part of the concurrent enrollment uh benefit

148is retention in that especially on the math side, we could support teachers through introducing this this pathway in partnership with W Green Bay in getting 18 credits towards a master's that they then um will need to teach the course. Yes. But it's also professional advancement for them. To speak to your latter point, how do we keep them? I mean, I think um what's again within our control is like wrapping around a lot of support. So, when we've talked with teacher teams preliminarily about this um it's making sure that they're not out there having three different preps or four different preps. So, ensuring that if they're teaching this course, they might teach one other course. So, it's something that's doable and manageable for their schedule. Um, it's also having the mentorship. I can't speak more highly

149highly enough about Emma and Alicia and what they've added to our secondary um in terms of they both have expertise. Emma has taught English 101 before um Alicia has also just phenomenal mathematician um and able to translate that to staff. So I think part of it is the support and the strategic implementation to not overwhelm the system um to make sure we don't want to also set up students for failure. We want them to be successful in these courses so that they can see themselves as oh I I can do college level work. Maybe there is some different opportunities available for me that I didn't think were there before. >> So I'm glad you were thinking about it. Um, I'm more looking at the math side of things because that 18 credits is not a

150small thing to get for for free for a staff member, right? >> And once they have those 18 credits, they will be very very marketable >> to any district. >> So, that is the thing that I'm concerned about, right? We don't I hate I would hate to set this up and we got a teacher and then over the summer we lose that teacher because it's very difficult to then replace that staff member, right? You can't just plug and chug some any other math teacher, right? you have to find someone who's got those qualifications >> in order to hold the class. >> So, I just think we need to think about that more holistically. I don't know if there is some sort of agreement as far as like we do this and then you're here for

1513 years or something like that to ensure that we're putting all this effort in and and and I would really hope that they would stay here obviously on their own. >> Me too. Me too. >> But with that being said, we have to look out for our students, right? That's why we're doing this. And so I would really, you know, encourage me looking at something like that to try and encourage like, hey, we want to at least be able to get three years or some amount of time out of your being here because you were able to go through this wonderful opportunity and hopefully after that you stay. But if after that you need to leave that at least then has an established program in place and we're able to I just don't want to

152leave our students in lurch. heard stories of AP classes not being ablely taught or having a you know a a substitute teacher in there for the first x amount of weeks because we lost a staff member at the last moment and u with something like this especially I think that there would be a lot of interest in it um in our district but um it's just harder to fill in those gaps if someone does leave suddenly >> of course and we have had tuition reimbursement agreements so that's something Dr. Robinson and I can explore previously we've paid for that tuition right so this is just a slightly different >> tuition reimbursement and also some type of agreement that you know you stay for a period of time we've also use that as well so those

153are things that Aaron you know Aaron we've already talked about those so yeah >> thank you all right Miss Lee >> kind of coming off a lot of what Mr. Lee had said um do we has there been any Do you know if we have any current teachers in that bubble into this? So interested um do we have any current teachers that have shown interest in taking those courses to be able to teach us? >> Yeah, currently we have two. >> Awesome. >> So, but we just found this um this kind of endeavor with W Green Bay very recently. So, we still have some time to even build that even more than just the two. >> Okay. Oh, wonderful. >> And they're also again in our conversations uh with the universities asking like how feasible

154is this? Would it be too much to turn around for next year? And they are very confident that as long as we hold up our end and get them the information they need that we can we can be prepared to begin next year. >> I just like yep, we want to do it and then we don't have a teacher. >> Exactly. >> We had that before, you know, and that's so that's kind of my worry now, especially wanting to get into this so fast. junior I would love for this opportunity and get excited then we know some areas so >> no it's great >> I'll speak a little bit more to precalculus >> to and and what you were asking too Mr. really is like pre-calculus is a course that's already offered in the course

155catalog. So, this would be a seamless transition into from what we already currently offer into this syllabus wouldn't even be that different. >> It would just be that we would be able to offer it as a college credit. >> Yes, it replaces that course. >> All right. Uh, Miss Kaiser, you had a question. Uh, just want to remind board members, turn your microphone on. I couldn't hear anything Miss Lee said, unfortunately. Just a reminder. >> Yeah, you can repeat it. Go ahead. >> Okay, I can repeat it for you, Kristen. Um, I was just asking if we currently had any math teachers that would that had expressed any interest in being able to take these further courses to teach that. >> And we do very much Yeah, you bet. And we do. >> All right.

156Other questions from the board about these classes? >> Questions? >> All I was going to say was that I was excited that it started with just the the English was the the initial proposal that we had seen in committee. So to see the the pre-calc added, I know that that was a goal of yours. So I'm I'm very excited to see that as a secondary option. Yeah. >> Also, Xbox science, but >> yeah, I know you wanted all the core ones, but I >> and I I think that the uh yeah, the the opportunity for the teacher to expand the their back their education, I think, is a really great addition to it. >> That's all I wanted to say. >> That's fine. I appreciate it. Any other questions, comments from the board? Um I

157had one, two, three. Um the pre-calc it says the entire UW system. So this covers Madison as well. >> I believe it would because it is part of that 18 credit requirement. So because they are more strict on the on the ability to get that grad level, the teacher has that grad level, then the um UW system will all will cover it all. So, is the English one about the grad level teachers? And if we had grad level teachers as well, would they then get the WMadison credits? >> It's a great question. Um, >> uh, no, because UWM, they just they they've never been able to transfer English 101 to Madison. So it's not about the teacher, it's about um the course being offered through UWM. So if a you know any other student went

158started at WM took English 101 102, they would have to take English 101 again and Madison. >> So is there a way to get the UWMadison credits? like instead of hosting through UWM, we host through W Green Bay or W Oshkosh or would that then shift whether or not Madison would cover that >> credit? >> We can explore that. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> Um and then the the question I had, I'm going to go back because Dr. Robinson brought it up, you guys talked on it, uh but the AP choice versus doing these um why would I bother with AP if I'm going to get credits guaranteed because I don't get credits guaranteed with AP and so I mean I can see the teachers components with this because >> two AP is really hard

159and I don't know whether or not this would be as hard or more less I don't I mean >> I think um I'll name one thing and then see Emma if there's anything you want to add as part of a conversation uh with the teachers. I think it's AP serves a certain role in the university system and that very prestigious universities do like to see that AP is a coursework is on a student's transcript. So now when universities take students transcripts from high school, because every um district has local control over waiting grades and what that looks like, they take it, they scan it, and they apply their own point system to different courses. So um I think that AP has relevancy for some students who maybe are seeking um specific universities. Um, and then

160again, English 101 is just highly transferable and I think more accessible uh for more of our students. So, to me, it is a benefit to have both because you're you're kind of we're just expanding the literal number of students who can leave us with college credit. It's just filling a different um reaching a different population within our >> I think it comes down to the flavor. Like what what flavor do you want as a parent? Do you want your kid to have this AP course uh experience or do you want your your kid to leave with college credits? It's like what do you want out of your kid? And I don't think there's a right or wrong answer, but you know, for for for me as a superintendent, my my my efforts uh from the

161beginning have been to increase opportunities. >> And this is an opportunity for that kid. And I'm going to say Johnny, that's my dad, okay? Little Johnny who wants to go to college but who may be intimidated by the idea of going to college. So guess what happens to little Johnny? He never goes to college because he has not experienced that success. This is an opportunity to give those kids that the initial success and to show them that I can actually do this. I can do this. So let's keep going. And that's what we're trying to do. So, it's all about do you like spicy or do you want original when you when you compare the two offerings? >> Well, I don't think that it's even that limited because like from the perspective that I'm seeing

162is because what we currently run into is students that want to take lots of AP classes, they can't. And so, they have to pick and choose. And so, why would I bother with AP math if I can do this and AP English if I can do that and then I can take my AP >> other things? Um, and then I'm I have the AP, but I'm not, you know, with this and now I have my credit. So, I just kind of something that that I'm thinking about. But also, uh, with these being college level courses, are they going to also be weighted the same as like AP? Are they going to be on the higher scale? >> They would be weighted. >> Okay. And then the last question, sorry. uh the schedule for the teachers

163that are doing this because usually if you're running college credits, you're teaching like three hours a week for a class. Uh I mean, you might be running multiple ones or whatever, but it's >> three different opportunities. Are we how is that schedule going to look for the teachers? Because especially for the math with them being concurrent, having to do grad school and high level math stuff, I don't want to burn them out either. And so is there >> the things that we've kind of explored so far is again around the prep. So we have some that are teaching multiple levels. So um trying to limit that as much as possible, but with doing less cohorts in year one implementation, they'll likely have two preps, right? Um and so I think that's like a consideration. Um,

164additionally, something that we didn't emphasize a ton, but uh, teachers do receive a stipen from the university for teaching the course, um, as also just a little added benefits, $500 a semester. So, there's like some sort of compensation from the university as well. But those are things we will absolutely take into consideration cuz we want this to be successful as much as as you all um and really want our students and our staff to leave after year one being like we can expand this right we want to reach more students after that first year. >> Okay great any other questions otherwise we can move forward please. >> Awesome. So now we're going to shift again this is the immediate horizon. I know this is a long presentation, but um so now we're going to shift

165into the comprehensive local needs assessment and how that's kind of a springboard for our next CTE work. >> Oh, I'm sorry, Sherry. >> Yeah. So, the comprehensive local needs assessment that is part of us participating in the Carl Perkins grant. And so that's a federal grant that helps to supplement um a lot of the funding that we have for our career and technical ed areas. And so as part of that um every 3 years you're supposed to be able to do a comprehensive local needs assessment which allows you to be able to say all right what does industry look like? What do the skill set look like? Are we preparing students for those? Do we maybe need to relook at what course offerings we have? do we need to look at what type of resources

166we have related to those? And so what we've done recently is we brought in um local industry representation. Um we also brought in representation from MATC and brought in our staff to be able to start tackling some of these questions within these areas. So we had um nine different meeting times to do this. And so I'm still putting together all that information that I have gathered. Um, next we will also take some student information. We will use some student survey. We did have some student representation at that meeting, but not not a broad enough group, but we'd like to be able to get some student information as well. Um, in between now and the end of February when I get a chance to meet with our teachers again, we will dive through these things. We'll

167also do some more extensive look into local data questions um related to that and start to develop what is going to be our strategic plan over the next three years for sure. Hopefully expanding it even further and then how are we going to utilize the Carl Perkins grant funding to help support that but will also allow me to be able to bring some of that information back to the board and back to um leadership within the school district to say, "Hey, maybe these are the plans that we want to do." And then we can start to um organize how are we going to spend the resources that we have to work on things like kitchen updates and if we're going to do a kitchen update, what's going to inform the type of kitchen update we're

168going to do? And so I'll speak more to that, but um so some subsequent action steps related to this. We want to be able to increase our transcript and credit. I you'll hear me talk about that. expand our industry recognized credential, expand our youth apprenticeship, increase access to certification programs, and um really look at what courses are we offering. Are they nice to have? Are they the best to have? Um the nice thing is if you looked at that originally original image of our clusters and pathways, they're pretty diverse and I think they're a pretty good representation. So you're not looking to get rid of programs. It's just how do you reorganize some of the core structure within the programs to maximize where we're trying to get students to and also build up our ability

169to build in credits for students to because the transcripted credit if our teachers are teaching those courses we don't have to pay anything for those and and so students are able to get those college credits. So um just trying to expand on those too. So we'll talk through that. So this here was just basically the agenda that we went through. Um just the starting point when we met with our industry partners. Um we looked at some labor market needs. Some of it was just qualitative just asking them what skill sets exist, what what that that are needed. Um what types of jobs do you see over the next 5 to 10 years coming up? We looked at some specific data from the Department of Workforce Development to help inform some of these things. We started

170to look at then the size and scope and sequence of our current CTE program. But then we really dove into like what is a quality program of study? And a quality program of study is going to be one that has um a sequence of courses that's going to lead to transcripted credit. So students are going to be able to get college credit, but they're also going to lead to certification, but is also going to be able to lead to work-based learning. And eventually we'd like to have each area have a career and technical student organization. So you have multiple ways to engage with that subject area while you're in high school. So you're really going to become an expert at it. You're going to find out, hey, I really love this or I really don't

171and hopefully build some skills around that. So So that gets to the the vision for the future. And so, um, I I'll read this first sentence that all students will graduate with credentials that extend beyond the minimum requirements of a high school diploma. Um, I feel like we have the ability to do that for for students. I think we can help them get into some living wage opportunities to build on before um they graduate high school. And so, advantageously, I'd like to be able to say I would like every single student to be able to have that. And so it's going to take a while to build that, but I think we can. And so if you look at my my colored bold words there, I'll explain how that fits into that purpose. And so

172um I'm I'm still I'm stealing some of this from the technical college system. Working with them probably about 10 years ago or so, they started to revamp how they organize their courses. And um it you know when you would go to a technical school you would get either a technical diploma or you get a degree from that school. And so you would take the the number of courses that were required for either. Once you finish that you would have the the the base knowledge that you need to be able to get a job related to that study. The issue that they found was that students after a semester, a year, maybe even three semesters, life happened and they had they they had to drop out of school or take a a break for a little

173while and then come back. And they started to look at this and say, "My goodness, if we would have just resequenced our courses in a way, we could probably have built some credentiing along the way." So there was on and off ramps. And so then they started to build in badges and certificates, technical diplomas, and then degrees. So each building on each other. And so when you see the transcript at dual credit, what I'm trying to do and what we're trying to entice MATC to join with us, and there's a lot of excitement at least around it, back it up into the high school. So how can we get students to get that transcripted dual credit while they're in high school and get to that badge certificate earlier and then be able to continue to

174build on that beyond. So even if a student doesn't go to a technical college, you know, if I'm going to go into finance and I'm able to get some basic credentiing in finance, right, or using Quickbooks or something related to that, when I go on to a 4-year university, number one, I'm going to find out, yes, I do like that. And number two, I have a base that other people don't have. So now I have a leg up on others. So really it comes back to wanting to cap, you know, capture the time that we have with the students and make the best for them while we do have them. And so that's what that gets to which really gets to and again I'm sorry to to go on and on but I do get

175excited told you that um when we talk about the the math and the English so many of these programs if they can get that that backs that up even further. So for us, you know, our policy is is that we will pay up to 18 credit hours for a student through Start College now or early college credit program. You know, if we can back up to where a student can get 10 credits or so while they're with us, that doesn't count to that and then build on that plus 18. you know, you're talking about a student that has upwards of 30 credit hours done before they leave here within an expense that we can sustain as a school district. So, just trying to figure out what can we do that builds opportunity but also sustainability.

176And so, what we're currently working on too, so these these are these pathways that we want to be able to get out to students. So, we talked about like how would we um advertise these things to to families? Like when we talk about how can we build out a website, what you have is a number of different handouts there of just some rough ideas to begin with, but how can we make these interactive links on a website so that way you can learn more about it? How can we build in, hey, here's what employment trends are going to look like. this is how this can extend to this major or this major and this is if you go to this school these are the opportunities you have but these are basically a basic handout of

177what we hope to accomplish but using that that same template that I had on that vision of how does it build to dual credit how do we show where that is how do we show where along this way you're going to get an industry recognized credential that you can make some entry-level pay on you know can we get you to be a nursing assistant Can we get you to be a dietary um aid? Can we get you to to be a transporter, you know, with the with the hospital? I mean, part of it, we did bring Aurora in as part of our groups when we had those discussions and we're talking about how do we build opportunities for our students, but then how do we get them into these places for youth apprenticeships so that

178way they're getting some hands-on experiences. And so this is just a mockup of what that could possibly look like. But the goal and intent for me is to bring as much from that technical college level down and the industry recognized credential from our industry partners down so that way we can get students into some higher level opportunities earlier. And then finally, this is um this is kind of an add-on from our original um presentation, but I do want to just talk about potential future partnerships that we've had. Um I'm going to give Dr. Robinson a lot of props here. Um he I I I've had a it's it's been fun working together with him. He he he likes to build connections and wants to build opportunities for kids. and all of a sudden I I

179get called into these meetings with these people that he just he just starts to set up. And so I just want to say thank you to him because I don't want to make it sound like it's all me here. These are some opportunities that he has created. Um we have been talking to Habitat for Humanity. We've been talking to Aurora Healthcare Wei Energies as well and we energies and Habitat for Humanity is more so how do we broaden exposure and access to careers in the trades? You know, we have a building tra we don't have a building trades class. We have an advanced woods class where we have some credentiing in that and they can get some good understanding of how uh you know woods works in construction at a basic level but how can

180we get them exposed to a broader sense of that by actually getting work in working in a building? How can you expand that to a building trades course where for part of the day they actually go and work on a structure so that way they're getting more than just what they're limited to in the classroom. How do we work with wei energies to be able to get students into some of these places so that way they have access to apprenticeships that come at a premium but us being able to get some of the students in earlier um to to be able to get a leg up. So those are come from some of the conversations Aurora Healthcare again I think the more we bring them to the table the ideas just start to to take

181shape and so we're going to try and figure out how do we get students into a clinical observation class? How do we develop something like that? So a student says, "I want to go into medicine. I don't know what to do." How do we give them like maybe an opportunity to go see four different people that they can shadow for a time period, but then we have a course designated towards it? So they come back, they report back on it, they do some research related to it. So they really have a strong academic and career plan for what they want to do. So they're when they do hit that that university level, they're they're really focused in what they want to be able to achieve. Then lastly is the JOTC. So this is an opportunity

182that's just recently come up. So this is something that just looking into right now, but I wanted to bring it up as well. Um the Army JOTC, I'm familiar with this because when I was principal in Toma, we we just started this the last two years. It is a program um that that we applied for years ago and it took a little while, but they opened it up. This is something that they're still trying to expand. Um, and some people meet it with mixed reactions, right? Um, and so I just wanted to talk to it, but oftentimes people forget that from a military standpoint for students, for access, for opportunities. It's not just going and and being on the front lines, right? I mean, every single Army base is a small city. You have plumbers,

183you have electricians, you have diesel mechanics, you have vehicle mechanics. So, so there's so many different credentials that students can earn if they do decide to go into the military that they can also come out with, but also with no debt and and and some money in the process, too. And so, it is something I think worth exploring. I do want to make sure that I'm just going to read a couple parts to it so that way there's full transparency with this too and discussions. Um, but it is designed to be a student leadership program. It's not supposed to be a recruiting tool. students are not obligated to join the military if they decide to take these courses, but it does really build a lot of the soft skills that when I was talking to

184our industry partners the other day that that they're looking for regardless of what career students are going into that they get to develop here. So, if you don't mind, I'm just going to read a few of these. Um, so while participation in JOTC does not require a military service commitment, junior ROC cadetses may qualify for advanced placement in the senior ROC program or the active or reserve components of the armed forces. Cadetses may be authorized and authorized the enlistment grade of private first class if they have completed three or more years of JOTC with a recommendation from the senior senior army instructor which means that they can go in if they they're part of this for three years that they can enter in at a higher rank than if they were just to come in

185right out of high school. The program goals, improving physical fitness, remaining drug-free, thinking critically and creatively, uh, communicating effectively, working as a team member, graduating from high school, pursuing meaningful careers, especially in the areas of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. And finally, through student- centered classroom activities and outside related experiences, the participants acquire the knowledge, skills, and self-discipline, patriotism, sense of responsibility, and respect for authority that will better prepare them for the future. The program enables cadets to serve their country better as leaders and citizens while they join the workforce, join the military, or pursue higher education. And finally, what I found from this, when I taught in Miami, I got to see it. When I taught in back in my hometown in the Orlando area, I got to see it. And then starting it

186in Toma, sometimes kids need to find a niche. And the really neat thing about the JOTC is that there is kind of a family organism to it. So some of those kids who are along the fringe who don't really find a purpose for themselves in high school, it has built some structure for many of those students to be able to do that and a sense of pride in the process. And so with that being said, I just say that because when I do the student survey, I'm going to add that as part of it because for part of the things that students would like to see, families would like to see that maybe that we're not offering as well as what their interests are, it's going to be embedded within that survey. So just looking

187for that and then if there is a lot of interest, bringing that back for for further discussion. If there's zero interest, then it is what it is. I just wanted to add um you know the military was not for me. JRTC was not was not for me when I was a kid in school. However, I had a lot of classmates who were able to go to uh the military because it was their choice but that was their way out and there was their that was their way to get a college degree because their parents could not afford it. If if military is a choice, GI Bill, these kids will have a free ride for school. We are not um you know trying to um say that this is the way they have to go, but

188we have kids annually who participate in the challenge program with Wisconsin that go off for, you know, self-discipline and motivation and direction and they come back saying how much they've learned about themselves. And it's that same idea. We're just trying to help our kids any way we can. >> Great. >> So, just to close us out this evening, again, our goals today, um, which I hope that we achieved is providing clarity on again our current state of affairs, so current post-secondary opportunities for students. um how we're looking to accelerate that in the next year and then that vision that uh Robert just shared around expanding around CTE and then providing the overview of English 101 and our pre-calculus courses and the last thing I'll say is our goal is yes to expand and increase opportunities

189but we also are looking to be very strategic with those opportunities so um we want to take and listen to our students and families in their areas of interest and then align coursework and pathways so that students aren't just taking courses but they are leaving us with truly maximizing the benefits of being a student in West Alice West Milwaukee. So there is strategy behind um what we're bringing forward today as well as like what we're looking to do especially based off of student feedback and the comprehensive local needs assessment. So, with that, I'll hand it over to President Burns. >> All right. Um, any last questions for our presentation? Mr. Le, you have one. >> I said, uh, two. One was on the credit the coursework we were talking about. It it just came to

190me. So, some two-year degrees or two-year schools also have like similar requirements for English and math. So, would any of these math and and English? >> Yeah, they would count. >> They could count for a two-year as well as a four-year. Okay. So, I think that's important to say, right? Like we're not talking just UW schools, but it might be important to list all of the schools that it could transfer to, including two-year schools, because they some people have a strategy of going to your school first and then getting your kind of prerexs done and then having those transfer over to a W school, not Madison, of course, but other W schools where you could get your four-year degree that you wanted to get. And so I think that um but but might be some

191people just are just going to go for the two-year like that's what that's all they need. That's what they what they want. And so this could help them too. It's not just people going for a four-year degree. So I think that's very important to state. Um and and maybe expanding the the schools that they would ex within Wisconsin anyways that that it could transfer to would be important thing when you're communicating that out. >> Love it. Thank you. Um the other question I had about CTE specifically, are we doing any work with the unions? >> Yes. Yes, we are. Oops. Um we we have invited them to come to the table. We did have some conflicts of timing for when they met. So we are engaging in that work though. Yes, we are including the

192unions. So, I know that in my time running for school board and things like that, >> I've met with members of unions of one trade or the other, and they always bring up like, you know, why don't you work with unions? You know, we always have opportunities for apprenticeships for Yes. Um, uh, you know, providing on-site or on job training and things like that. And I always said, well, I'm not sure. I presume that we're doing something like that. So, as we're looking at that, I just want really want to try to make sure that we're working with them because they have resources. they have, you know, a lot of connections with businesses and things like that that I think would be uh advantageous to our our students who are interested in that. So, um

193I'm glad to hear that we're pursuing it and I think that we should definitely be including those unions whenever possible when we're working with these sorts of things. With that being said, if you do come across somebody that speaks of that and and has an interest, then please point them somehow in my direction or get the information to somebody else that can get that to me. So that way I can be sure to reach out because again what you find is often times people do want to be a part of it. >> They just don't know how and so that's what we need to try and build a little bit more clarity around. So thank you. >> Absolutely. Right. Thank you. >> Any other questions? All right. I had one last one and it's more

194of a comment, but um with all these expanded opportunities, um I would I was wondering if we're going to look at improving our summer school offerings so that students that want to take advantage of possibly multiple pathways don't have to fight their schedule in order to do that. Um >> question. Yes. >> Okay. Um, that's been something that I've been fussing about and creating an opportunity in summer school that's more for advancement versus remediation. So, Alyssa was nodding because she we've had some some talks about that. So, we we we are working on that. >> Uh, yeah, I agree 100%. >> And I think just also to speak to that, um, again, really excited to work with the individuals here. Um on that uh we also want to just offer things that sometimes families have

195to pay for. So ECT preparation course work things like that that um aren't always accessible to everyone and with you know the amazing people we have in our system that's something that we can increase and offer too. So >> awesome. Fabulous. Thank you. That's what I wanted. All right. Um that I think if there's nothing else, thank you so much for your time, um and the presentation. Um and then I guess with that, uh that brings us to the end of our uh agenda. Um so I got to find my space here. Sorry. If there's no further business and there is no objection, the meeting will be adjourned. There being no further business or objection, the meeting is adjourned. >> Thank you everyone. Thank you.