Board Meeting 2-28-22

001all right i'd like to call this meeting of the west southwest milwaukee school board to order uh mr keller would you please let me beat us in the pledge i pledge of the united allegiance of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all please call the role miss deal here mr sikich is excused mr keller here mrs carr here mr hughes jack here mr burns president mrs justin is excused mrs kaiser here president lee here proper notes that this meeting has been posted in accordance with the open beating laws of the state of wisconsin are there any modifications to the agenda this evening uh we have no changes this evening okay all right let's move right into the superintendent's report great um thank

002you and good evening and welcome everybody so we'll start with our update on returning to in-person learning and today we're going to spend a little more time on talking about some of the work that's been going on on the academic side um so a little bit more of that given some of the feedback we heard um a week ago just the concerns that you know um student achievement is lagging and we know that and so there's been some very intentional work so teacher will talk us through some of that and we still know we've got a long ways to go it's not gonna um two years of of what we've been through is not gonna get fixed in six months um but um we can get there from here so with that um so a

003little bit of our agenda again just the guiding principles the health metrics focus on student achievement a little bit about next steps again safety and well-being learning that works which is the majority of what we'll talk about in this update being responsive and flexible and is it practical to implement some of these things uh so the external health metrics continue to improve and so we've changed categories in terms of the color coding as of february 22nd um this is um the february 22nd data are not in the health metrics dashboard yet i actually received this about 15 minutes ago from the health department so i got it into our presentation for this evening but i'll go back tomorrow and put it in the actual health metrics dashboard but it's all encouraging it's going in the

004right direction on that's not up to date what happened um so all right so where we are last friday the 25th we had on on friday of last week we had two students in quarantine that was it two no staff wow um and our price that's the 14 day percent positive so 0.08 um so we're again kind of staying below the 1 so i think that's encouraging the impact of not wearing masks we won't know for a while this is just a few days of that so you can't draw any conclusions but um anecdotally what i've observed of lots of kids and lots of staff are still choosing to wear masks which i think is great and so now it's optional but kids are still choosing it and you know after two years of um

005having a mask on i will say a tuesday morning when i got off the elevator i turned around and started to go back down to my car because i forgot my mask and i went oh wait i have the option now because it's so ingrained in the way we've lived um so we're going to continue to watch this we watch it school by school because again the threshold that the board set was um three percent now we would go back to mass spurring and then again quarantining for close contact so um going forward i'll turn it over to deidre just to talk about kind of where we are in our progress um and again this is not the entire story there's still a lot of work to do but just so that on the board

006gets a little more background and some of the work that we have been focusing on that just hasn't come into the board floor until now good evening everyone um so next couple of slides again like marty shared a little bit of it is this is the time where we do our agr mid-year checkpoint um and then we included some other pieces from different data sources that we collect but i started with the school report cards because um those also got mentioned last week and we started uh the first year i put on this chart was 1617 and we had one school and significantly exceeds then it goes all the way down with two schools that are in that red category of fails to meet um 1718 we had made some nice progress we didn't have

007anybody in fails to meet 1819 again we were trucking along moving that was um 17 18 and 18 19 where the first two years we really saw some of the movement around the goals that we had seen within our strategic plan and you can see the kind of results of that in 1819 was that we had one school and significantly exceeds seven schools and exceeds six in meets and then two still in few meets then in 1920 we didn't get school report cards by the state and so these now 2021s are reflective of the forward exam and the a.c.t that the students took last spring as well as it includes information around attendance rates graduation rates third grade reading scores eighth grade math scores there's a compilation of things that go into those scores so

008in our schools we have four that stayed in the exceeds category eight stayed in the meets category two stayed in the meets few and then we ended up with three in the fails to meet um a couple of things to note about that there's some difference between the number of schools reported in that chart as we go through one of those reasons was 1617 was the last year we had a report card from dot key or from lincoln's excuse me so it dropped off and then 2021 was the first year docky actually received a color-coded report card so shared journeys and dakia in the past had always been eligible for the alternate report card is what it's called and you just get a satisfactory or unsatisfactory rating i'm sure journeys has always reported a satisfactory

009rating daki had always reported a satisfactory rating last year was the first year that they were or this this year is the first year they were eligible for an actual report card um so they were one of our schools that ended up in the red but partially that is they didn't have any growth to report because it was the first year they had received a report card so now that we have students going to ducky from ninth grade onwards we'll see a great difference in some of that scoring as we move forward really confident about that um and then the other thing to note is these are reports a chunk of the score is based on attendance um and so attendance to school we pay really close attention to we work with families when students

010are non-attenders to school we try to support our families as best we can but really set the requirement that kids need to be in school but the attendance from 1718 between 17 18 and 19 20 had some inaccuracies to it when we really dove into it we've been working with erin in our enrollment center and kevin clark and our technology department to be sure those are corrected because as you look in the chart at the bottom and i know that's super hard for you guys to read but i'll kind of look at the top one we went from 19.1 percent um reporting as chronic absenteeism so that's those date multiple days out of school that meet the statutory requirement the next year we reported 19.4 and then in the data that went to this current

011school year's report card we reported 24.9 um and our attendance just we were being pretty critical on ourselves the way we took attendance during virtual the way we took attendance during the school shutdowns um in a way that we are working on making sure we're just giving ourselves the grace that the wisconsin department of public instruction allows around some of those things we also found one data inaccuracy with the way graduation rates for students with disabilities were being reported so we're working with the state and getting that one clarified for our agr data um our overall goal is to reduce the number of students in the high risk category so you know we're using a new progress monitoring tool called fastbridge as opposed to maps it had its kind of measurement tools fastbridge has a

012tool that says college readiness low risk significant risk or high risk that's kind of how it those are the categories it uses so we set our goal in agr over the course of five years to reduce the number of students in high risk by 10 each year um so that data includes the data that we're going to look at tonight actually though does include students who weren't with us for a full academic year so we have a couple of schools where i'll share some data where more students are in that high risk category but many of the students that are in that high-risk category are new to us and they didn't take fall data they just took the winter data so far so we'll see that continuation of their growth over time and then just

013as a reminder our adr strategies are coaching and we keep some class sizes under 18 in grades kindergarten through third grade another thing to note about some of the data you're going to see is just that our testing window is fastbridge was new to us and we certainly didn't want to administer a test at the first week of the school year and we wanted to leave the window open long enough for teachers to be able to give the full assessment was from september 22nd to october 27th and then our winter test went from january 10th to february 21st so some students tested at the tail end of october and then again in early you know mid-january that's not a lot of time between those assessments we test again starting and on may 9th so we

014have a couple of other pieces of data that we'll share tonight as well next week i'll bring some each week i'll bring some just pieces of data from the different sources so next week we'll look at some aleks data so that we can look at how we're doing in math and the number of students we now have taking high school level math when they're in intermediate school which has grown quite a bit um so our agr data that the board actually needs to get twice a year this is the mid-year check overall we'll show you that in kindergarten we had 83 students who were identified in that high risk category in math in the fall we have 10 students who moved out of that high risk category since the fall testing in that short window

015in reading we had 129 students in that at-risk category or that high-risk category and we actually have more students who moved into the high-risk category but again some of those are students who are new to us so we just haven't had the time yet to work with them and then this chart which i'll include in my next board update also breaks it down school by school so i'll talk about what we're doing to follow up with the schools at the school level as well in first grade we had 101 students in the high risk category 23 students moved out of the high risk category in that window of time between fall and winter testing 180 students were in that high rest category remember these are just students in kindergarten through third grade that's the only

016agr data we collect 13 students moved out of that high risk category so that's that we're over that 10 percent and a couple of these grade levels that we were looking for uh the second grade data 11 students moved out of the high risk category in math 14 more students were in the high risk category in reading so we went back to some scholastic data to try to match up what's happening between the two things so that we can see where those um where are those inconsistencies happening for students and then in third grade we had three students move out of the high-risk category in math and one student overall so some schools had more students move out of that high-risk category a few schools had students move into that high-risk category um and so

017we're working with each individual school next and some of those what are we doing to make sure we're catching some of those students who are seemingly creating more gaps as we go or are those students new to us and do we have the right plan of support to help them move forward a couple more slides for you um our district-wide fast bridge data so um we've been reporting maps data to our board for years and years and years and i think you all know you always see a winter dip right so you're expecting to see you see fall scores that look somewhat like your spring scores and then in the winter you see this big dip in the scores and in the spring you typically see a rebound um so we were actually pretty excited

018that from fall to winter we are not we didn't lose as much traction as we had in other years with that similar winter dip um we don't love the fact that we don't have more students moving into that on track or low risk category but the fact that we sort of held our own is actually okay at this point in the school year um so for math 48 percent of our kids were on check on track or low risk um and then in the winter 47 percent of our students and this is kindergarten through 12th grade so we have some students who take the assessment in 11th and 12th grade who are using the progress monitoring data for iep goals and things like that um and then um the reading is 45 on track uh

01947 in the fall and then 45 in the spring um the scholastic usage i included that in my last board update so i'll just talk about that one briefly for a district that is new to a particular resource we got some feedback recently from our scholastic partners that the balance of what they're seeing in the coaching of what we're doing in the classrooms and the amount of time our kids are spending on the online program is similar to districts that just buy the online program so they were really impressed at the number of minutes our kids are spending in the online platform some of that is in school some of that is outside of school some of that is in a variety of different places so that's promising for us because this piece of data

020also really speaks to how hard our teachers have worked to implement scholastic we started the school year in the fall on the scholastic benchmarks so another piece of data that we use at 60 of the students reading below the benchmark and that's in kindergarten through fifth grade and now we're at 50 so the fact that we've gained 10 percent of the students now reading at the benchmark grade level for this time of the year right for halfway through the school year is really a good sign i mean our teachers have worked really hard to use the scholastic resource that our district chose to use give them to support them in the work and to make sure that we're able to address those needs and 4k through 5th grade ela and it's paying off so we're

021seeing some nice results from that one and then here's a couple of ways that our schools then turn around and use some of the data so lots of words on this one so i'll just summarize them for you so each school has a school improvement plan so horace mann had a few more students that actually moved into that high risk than we would like to see so they went back to their um doing a data diver on fastbridge and then they started aligning professional development sessions for staff to be sure that they were aligned to then meet the areas that kids aren't seeing some of that growth and some of the data that we'd like to see they've been doing a lot of work around independent practice and goal setting and then conferring to make

022sure that we actually understand like what that data should inform as far as what we're seeing in the classroom walker the team at walker meets every 30 days as a whole staff to review their progress around their school improvement plans and they have goals around reading and math that we talk about monthly as a whole leadership team that they talk about at the school site monthly that they talk about individually with teachers as part of their educator effectiveness evaluations all of those pieces um so they have a really pretty tight-knit process where the teachers give input into the goals and then they own the process of whether or not the whole school is meeting those goals at the school site um and then wilson has gone to a school-wide coaching model where all staff members

023are engaging in cycles of professional development so as opposed to one or two here or there um they are really engaging the entire staff in that process and kind of a shared ownership process um wilson in particular took a ton out of that training we recently did around math wholeness and they've really worked hard to start saying okay if that's what data is telling us what is the root cause of that and then how do we address it at the school site so that we're ensuring that all the students have exactly what they need and that is our update for tonight sorry i talked kind of fast but um that was a lot of information any questions for me on that section can you give this share to us yes we could take yeah thank

024you um and i've been getting in a regular habit of including also those data pieces in my board updates to you and pieces of kind of what's happening with some of the resources that we have so um if there's other things the board is looking for and additional information please just let me know and i'm happy to include those in my board updates as well okay so then that brings us to the next steps right so we're going to um continue to monitor internal positivity rates like i said at the beginning of this update continuing the efforts to improve student achievement that's you know why we exist it's the purpose of the enterprise and so getting that work back on track and i think it's important that the board knows this point well but um

025given that you know there's members of the public prior to covid we had moved from three failing schools and only one considered on to be high performing based on the state school report card to no failing schools in eight that were considered to be high performing um and so you know the work we were doing has not changed um the unfortunate part and i've shared this with teachers in some of the presentations is we have to do the work all over again honestly interrupted that for us in ways that i don't think we were quite prepared to have to adjust to but we're doing that now and then we're waiting um for some guidance on the health department although since i put this together and this evening when i looked at email um they actually

026said go ahead and you can um unlock the drinking fountains or bubblers as we like to refer to them so those red caps will be coming off they have to be um flushed and on you know to make sure they're safe and so we have a plumber on staff that'll do that so this will take a while to get through all of the with one plumber um but that process will begin now and so that's our return to in-person learning update um so in terms of 6.2 which is the legislative update i'm not going to read all of the um activity going on at the state level regarding legislation around schools but i think it's worth noting kind of what some of the big ones are so a lot of it is around charter schools

027or the um parental school choice program so removing income limits on removing limits to the numbers of charter schools the tobacco legislation we think makes a lot of sense and wasbee supports that on there so there are a number of bills that were approved by both the house and the senate and the assembly in both houses the assembly list is focusing on information around cardiac arrest in schools among students micro schools which is a thing getting traction all over the country um reading readiness which we've talked quite a bit about through the legislative updates over the months um gifted and talented programs um parental rights which is a legislative movement that you see taking place in almost every state right now on reorganizing milwaukee public schools we've heard quite a bit about again there's a

028number of them on charter schools on the choice income limits like i mentioned on pupil promotion there's a legislation around substitute teachers and the permitting process face covering opt-outs which maybe now with the latest cdc guidance on isn't necessary um crime reporting around schools again reading um testing reading readiness some legislation around kindergarten and then the parental choice program again so there's quite a bit to watch we think a number of these pieces if they're supported fully in the legislature may face a veto by the governor given kind of the direction they seem to be going but um a number of them probably will work their way through the process and um become law and then um evers did sign um an executive order for a special session and that is really calling a special

029session the legislature from march 8th to take up his 1.7 billion dollar plan to give wisconsin give all of us a tax rebate and then more money into education and there are no federal updates at this point then in 6.3 board of education recognitions first um finance and operations thank you to mark duff for all his work in our district well caitlin was out and tonight both mark and caitlin are here for some of the big pieces that we've been working on in the transition um at central high school they'd like to recognize carrie hanson a social studies teacher and nate rice counselor they have put tremendous hours in preparation for black history month specifically the dinner and celebration which was an evening to celebrate black excellence in our school community and history from communication

030great job to all the schools who showcased to the board on monday february 21st appreciate you taking the time to come and share with our board your projects and how they connect to your goals also thank you to anna pangel and dieter ramer who helped make sure that the students had pizza and activities while they wait for their turn to showcase um in athletics from central it's been an exciting winter athletic season with many accomplishments accomplishments for our bulldog student athletes we are fortunate to see our cheer team perform in their first competitive season our dance team was fortunate to be identified to go to the all-star tour at disney our boys and girls basketball team saw three student athletes trinisha brown grayson pritzel and najashi tolfrey reached 1 000 career points during the year

031um programs in schools that see one thousand point scorers typically it's once every few years if at all and to have three in the same season is truly special so kudos to the hard work of all of our bulldog student athletes coaches and programs we look forward to sharing more in the coming weeks as our winter season comes to an end and then at pershing we are so hashtag purging proud of our students who presented at our wa wm district school board meeting on monday february 21st shout out to the following students jacob smith richard um chafferdet jorge diaz ari benton court emma mccauley um jesse mccauley noel huber and the anthony thank you also to their families for their support and flexibility we also want to thank kelly holtz adrian spangenberg kristen pagankop brother

032hosenberg hosenbaum and nicole ellman for coming to support our students and then in 6.4 just some quick updates can i jump in and add one more to the district recognition go ahead yeah um so i had the opportunity to volunteer at the um solo ensemble on saturday at it was hosted at central high school and it was the first time i had been able to attend the event and volunteer and i just wanted to share with the full board we'll put some more information on in our district district recognitions as we had quite a few students qualify from our whole unified community to go on to the state competition which was really awesome and amazing to see and it was just a beautiful representation of our entire community coming together around our incredible music program

033um i kept texting amanda like why are we not filming this why aren't we putting more of this out there because it really was amazing and beautiful so if you see one of our music educators who were there for the entire day on saturday dedicating their time for our students and our whole community please make sure you thank them as we intend to do as well cool thank you and then um 6.4 so first response to some of the public comments at a recent meeting so on february 14th we heard from three members of the public two spoke about masquerading requirements and um one spoke about james and the giant peach at lane we appreciate that feedback and recognition of the work our teachers and students are doing in the performing arts and then on

034february 21st during a special meeting that included a section for public comments we heard from 18 members of the public all spoke in favor of changing our mass bearing requirements the comments also included concerns about mental health ability to see full facial expressions student achievements which we just addressed in part and we'll continue that in our returned in-person learning presentations and they mentioned that our internal health data continued to be low in terms of percent positive and percent in quarantine so at this meeting the board did make mask wearing highly recommended but not required um and we dropped quarantine requirements for close contacts so we still have quarantine requirements in place for those who test positive and those with covert 19 symptoms and then if the school reaches three percent positive the mass will again

035be required and like i said earlier i think the good news right now is many students and staff continue to wear masks even though they're optional and then on the other um big piece that we're working on so referendum communications is now ongoing and in full swing uh we recorded the videos uh i reviewed them today they look great so those are ready to roll out um that should be released this week the first hard copy mailer is also set to go out and that'll be community wide similar to the survey so that there's 60 000 addresses um but i but i think it's important that you know if the referendum passes there's parts of this that i think we need to focus on because i think it really will be an opportunity for our

036community so it not only provides our students and teachers with a modern high school building but it's also the opportunity to come together as a community and you know we hear a lot about you know the east versus west dynamics or the hill versus central dynamics and there have been different schools over the years here in the west allis west milwaukee school district but moving you know to one high school and being able to celebrate all of the high school students in one place for athletics and for solo and ensemble and for performing arts i think really is an interesting opportunity to bring us together you know one of the common concerns has been transportation and so i'm going to repeat this many times our commitment is that no student will ride a bus longer

037than they currently do right so that means we're going to spend more money on transportation but by making that commitment um so there's not going to be a new burden on students that um have do have to travel further they're just going to have expedited routes that get them to school uh and and we're also committed to adding after-school transportation for high school students so that would be a um kind of a an early after-school bus somewhere around four o'clock for clubs and activities and those students need to get home and then later for um athletes and the plan is that they would get dropped off at the elementary school nearest their house it would be a routing between the elementary schools and they could then walk from there that adds a cost of about

038five hundred thousand dollars per year um for the both the daily bussing and the after school busing but with operational savings of two and a half to three million dollars per year we can we can afford to add the additional buses and after school transportation so so i think it is worth highlighting that um it's just a really unique opportunity for our communities to come together and enjoy all that comes with the modern efficient high school building so as you're and i and and thank you to board members that are doing them you know the the tables and um passing out literature and answering questions i think that's you know another opportunity to highlight the idea of actually having a community that starts to feel as one community around its high school could be a

039pretty exciting time for us so with that um that concludes the superintendent's report all right thank you very much so we'll move on to item seven which is public comments uh before we get as a reminder each person will have three minutes to address the board uh please state your name and address before beginning your comments um the board cannot respond to any questions or comments that you make but if there is a response that is required you will have that either personally or publicly by the next regular board meeting if there's anyone who is watching online via zoom there is a link in the chat for signing up for public comments if you'd like to address them and i will call the public comments in the order that they have been signed up so

040we'll start with the first one uh marycool i apologize if i say anyone's name incorrectly good evening my name is mary cool my address is 17834 west roosevelt avenue new berlin most of the time i reside at nathan hill high school i'd like to start by thanking all of you for your time dedication and hard work for our community families staff and most importantly our children i'm here tonight to ask you for your support for early before the early retirement proposal this is currently my 33rd consecutive year teaching in our amazing district i was hired as a teacher in the west allis west milwaukee school district in 1989. i was hired when the 85 early retirement rule was in place this meant that if i taught for 30 or more consecutive years in our district

041i would be eligible for early retirement benefits at age 55 because of this and my love and dedication for our district i did not take one day longer than my six weeks after the birth of each of our three children i didn't want to break my consecutive years in the district making me ineligible for the 85 rule this is time i cannot get back i didn't take fmla when my father was ill because i didn't want to break my consecutive years in the district this is time i can never get back i taught for 22 years in our great district knowing that i had only eight more years until i met the consecutive years of service portion of the 85 rule during this time i also passed up many opportunities with other districts because of

042my passion and my allegiance to our district along with the promise of the 85 rule it was in 2011 that the administration at that time put together a phase-out plan that took away early retirement we were only one of a few just of a few schools in the state that took that promise away and with the other few that did most have reinstated it including mps and wauwatosa this plan only considered age and did not take years of service into account this left a very small group of us that had been included in the 85 rule out since then i have watched many of my colleagues in this district who are hired after me with less experience retire with full early retirement benefits including two of my long-term subs for my maternity leave even after

043my husband's organ transplant almost three years ago i decided not to take fmla but rather continue my allegiance to our district and my dedication to our students even without this promise supporting the early retirement proposal could save our district almost a million dollars over the past 33 years i've built 10 seconds positive relationships with family students in the community and this will continue i'm looking forward to being a positive influence and in continuing to proudly promote west allis west milwaukee school district which i love and i'm asking you to honor that promise and vote to support the early retirement proposal thank you so much thank you very much lisa calla good evening everyone i'm lisa cola my address is w226 south 9373 ripple because big bend and like mary i most of the time you

044can find me at your journeys so good evening i am here to ask your sincere consideration and support in the proposal for the early retirement design for teachers and at will employees who have diligently dedicated their time to our amazing school district you see i fall in the very small category of employees who began their careers in our school district in 1989 and were initially offered to retire using the rule of 85 when we signed our contracts however in 2011 after act 10 the school board at the time decided due to age we were no longer able to retire using that formula this early retirement proposal supports our strategic plan which states that through collaboration we will create and implement a new compensation system that is equitable competitive and financially sustainable if done correctly it

045can save our district anywhere from four hundred to nine hundred thousand dollars as a school district we worry about retention of staff having an allegiance to staff that has dedicated their careers to our district by supporting this proposal shows everyone that staff is of value and that you do believe in building respectful relationships and that you honor employees for their work and dedication with this long-term employee group having the ability to retire on a positive note it will in turn create a strong force of willing volunteers mentors and positive representatives as a veteran group we have watched educators leave our district after act 10. we stayed we have watched educators who had less years of experience and less years of service than us who we welcomed into our district as new teachers maybe even mentored

046retire with full benefit packages because they met the required age we cheered them on we congratulated them and we stayed through the years as an educator i have been offered many other employment opportunities while they were highly considered i always ended up declining the offer because of my passion and allegiance to wawm to me it simply would not make sense to leave a place that i love i am hopeful that you have the same allegiance to us in closing we will all retire at some point and it's just a matter of how that looks it is important to remember that positivity truly breeds positivity i believe that is why many surrounding districts have kept or reinstated early retirement for their employees i am hopeful you will consider my personal request to honor the early retirement

047proposal i would willingly support the new educator who will be in my very unique role and continue to promote our school district through the 50 plus community partnerships and the many relationships i have built through the years proudly with 33 years of employment in the west allis west milwaukee school district growing up in west allis being a product of this district this would undoubtedly be appreciated and welcomed it would no doubt show the staff and community at large that you do truly value veteran employees and all employees for that matter ultimately it will show that you back the strategic plan which is built on the core values of trust integrity and respect thank you thank you very much steve broadwell don't see him here in person i presume he's on zoom see it's steve branny

048can you switch the audio over there how's that can you hear me now hello oh come on hello can you hear me we can hear you okay very good steve broadwell 12965 west ohio court new berlin i'd like to thank those of you that voted to remove the mass mandate it is incredible that two of you continue to beat your chest and put on full display your virtue signaling that you somehow care more for everyone than the rest of us even in the face of all the mom's personal stories of how this is ruining their kids noah science or rather your junk or political science as there is certainly no real science behind anything you do is not in your favor the cdc knee jerks its way through life as it bends its knee just

049as you do to the cdc to pharma and all the big money have you seen the recent admission that they have not released all data they have because they feel it might show the vaccine's ineffectiveness have you seen the cdc's relaxation of speaking competence competency standards for two-year-olds in what many feel as a result of policies similar to those you have put in place for our kids how on earth can you continue to follow such a compromised corrupt organization so behold into pharma as i mentioned previously all the other organizations you mentioned that have the same positions refer to the cdc's guidance for their own policies everyone is just fine with parents that want to continue to master own kids by continuing with this fearful useless and harmful approach to life i was amazed by

050the number of videos district moms were posting showing the pure joy kids exhibited when they told them no more masks your infection percentage threshold discussion was as amusing as it was ridiculous first marty said the one point five percent threshold [Music] yes it makes sense someone suggested three percent previously it was five percent which marty admitted was arbitrary itself really made yourselves look foolish with your discussion about this percentage no science behind any of it okay what i just read was my email to the entire board last week and now no i'm going to read part of your reply to me and i quote i am shocked and dismayed at your utter inability to understand what science is or isn't or even to have a high school level comprehension of how it works i have

051attempted through many communications to impart some of this understanding to you however it is evident that i have failed as i am not an educator it is clear that i lack the tools to get through to you so i will have to give up this effort and move on to more fruitful endeavors as such i will no longer be responding to your science inquiries and will direct you to the nearest institute of higher learning end quote thanks again noah for yet another lecture district parents have attempted through many communications to impart some understanding to you however it is evident that we have failed so let me tell you once again you work for us not the other way around that's it as carolina dietrich thank you i'm carolina dietrich i live at 2500 south 77th

052street in west allis i want to say thank you for voting to go optional with the masks i had a very moving moment with my son this week he's 17 a senior at central and i heard him using an electric razor for a first time in a long time and i asked him hey what gives what's up he said because i don't have to wear a mask anymore i can care a little more about my appearance and that rocked me so thank you because that was something that i just didn't pick up on and i'm glad that it was an unintended outcome but thank you because he's a handsome young man with those mutton chops my daughter is definitely overjoyed skipping into school the first day without having to wear a mask so she could

053smile at all her friends and teachers so thank you um i would like to address the proposal for the um early retirement for the teachers it makes sense to families and the other citizens in the community not just to the teachers us parents and other community members have shared with me it's important to recognize that commitment 30 years that's impressive these people are sticking around in a district longer than some marriages last it's important it's a big deal and i've heard throughout the couple years where i've been paying attention to the district is that some people are concerned that west allis west milwaukee schools is a stepping stone for teachers to go to another one if we could really close that gap and be like early retirements available to even the 25 year old that

054come right out of college and they're doing their first few years why give them 10 years to play the field get them in here get them early and keep them that would be an excellent way i know we want to right-size the faculty down to meet the needs of the smaller student body number and if student body increase is not a goal of ours that's okay but i i'd like to keep the teachers that we have so not only are the ones that we've had deserve to be able to retire early because of the renig that happened in i think even the newer teachers are still getting your foot in the door they need to have that commitment from us that if they stick around long enough we will take care of them why hold

055the last 10 years of their career ransom before they have a chance to retire they have to be in their 60s but they'd be 40 years in it's not fair it's not right and i think we should not have to cookie cutter our way through everything and every decision but every other district does why not make a decision for our own selves and our needs in our community we need to keep the teachers that we have with the right sizing and be able to honor the teachers that committed to us thank you very much rhonda jones uh yup hi my name is rhonda jones i live at 1457 south 86th street um first i'd like to thank those on this board who agreed to lift the mandates for our kids last week i believe that

056we can be headed in that right direction and hopefully we can move toward healing our kids that have been deeply affected by this um i want to touch on a couple of things tonight the first being the 30-minute speaking policy that applies to general public comments at each of your meetings i would encourage this board to rethink this policy and make it an unlimited time historically you don't have many that will come and make public comments and when many of us do it's likely because we feel very passionate about something that possibly needs to change giving the circumstances we're now facing public comments are more important than ever some of us have spent hours dedicated to thinking up solutions for making things better for our kids we've poured over the numbers looked at other districts

057and met together to find solace and commonality as parents who just want what is best for our kids in our district as your constituents who elected you you do have a duty to listen to us work with us and work for our children in order for this board to gain the trust and respect from the parents of this school district the biggest and most effective action that you can take as a board is to listen to those who know our students best the parents when we come to you and tell you our kids are struggling and we tell you where things can improve please listen to us as parents we oftentimes struggle to help our kids and when they are in the care of someone else eight hours a day we need to know that

058someone is on our team and listening to our concerns it hasn't felt that way and that is a big reason why many struggle with trusting the actions of this administration that can and should be your next step in partnering with parents only then will you garner the trust that i know that you're seeking from your community the next item i'd like to briefly mention is the issue of stating our address each time we come up to speak i as well as many others would like this requirement dropped we do already fill out our address on the sign up sheet in order to speak there are safety issues that many have concerns about such as protective orders that are in place to keep victims of abuse safe many are concerned as our addresses should not be

059publicized especially seeing that these meetings are posted on youtube and can be shared publicly i would ask that this requirement to share this personal information be eliminated from future meetings thank you mr john mulling my name is john mulling 3850 south pole i agree with that woman there perfectly that should not be on there for possible vindictive reasons um did i say my address okay last week the board voted six to two for the updated covet plan noah lee and brendan burns voted no i would like to request both of you to respond in writing through the minutes of this meeting or in an email to me the following two things because this is the most important thing you've made a decision on in the last two years you need to go on the record

060first i want both of you to why you voted no and second what would you what would have been your proposal to replace the one that was passed the public deserves an answer from both of you this is the most important decision in two weeks and you guys kind of punt it you deserve the public deserves to know where you stand on the issue i'd also like to thank you for making that decision you guys know where i feel you know where i felt a year ago with all the stats i brought to you um last week there was one person with an n95 in here well n95 is wonderful but unless you're properly fitted for an n95 you aren't getting as much protection as you get you're supposed to get properly fitted you can't

061just toss an n95 and say hey i'm 95 protected i just want to remind you to make you feel a little better about your decision the quote i made about november i want to remind you about a johns hopkins study at sloan kettering got together two doctors and as of november 9th they did a study there were 28 million 28 million children in the united states between 5 and 11 years old 94 of those people died of cobit those kids 94. the percentage of dying from covet in that age group was one in a million more kids died of of the flu than covet so i think it was an excellent decision um pretty much that's all i want to say tonight i just want to remind again no one brandon i would appreciate very

062much a written response the public deserves to know how you steal and how you stand on this position you need to let us know how you feel and where you're going because this subject might come up again thank you very much thank you devin ray she's online brandon i'm on zoom can you hear me um i also wanted to oh sorry devin ray 1027 south 110th street west allis i also wanted to just um back what carolina said in the two teachers that i agree that um teachers who stick with us for 30 years deserve early retirement and i agree with everything that they said about that what i wanted to touch on even more so was what deidre was talking about and i appreciate that you guys looked into what is stated on the

063dpi reports um but what i wanted to talk about was what we can do more so every school went through the same two tough times as us they managed to maintain their academic standing with little to no decrease yet we have dropped approximately 32 percent in comparison to our own selves where we were prior i feel that this shows a direct reflection on the decisions made by our administration not being in the best interest of our children or their educational needs every district around us stayed around or at the same level that they were at prior to yet we dropped significantly and i don't mean this in a way to compare us to others i know what everybody says about apples to apples but i'm just trying to show that blaming kovid isn't accurate we

064all dealt with covid and their education was put first and not politics which i think needs to change in our district we are finally at a point where we are moving forward but momentum takes time to show effectiveness i understand that the learning plan that was put in place was making upward trends in our school in our children's academics and that's fantastic but something happened to cause the drastic decrease you can blame kovid you can blame virtual learning i think it had more to do with the administration but either way it needs to be met with a more aggressive plan than just going back to what we were doing we first need to get back to that higher standard of education that we were at before before we can relax into what we were doing

065to maintain it just throwing ideas out there and i posted this online um that what if we did something where a teen asset group was involved and they could bridge this gap instead of private tutors that some people can't afford it would offer the high school students who do well in school the opportunity to help those in lower grade levels where they struggle and in return it would be something beneficial to those higher grade levels who are doing well and help them on resumes or college applications there are other programs in place within our district that are put in place for other types of careers maybe this could be something for those who want to become educators or teachers and maybe it's not feasible and who knows but i think it's important that we focus

066on catching these kids up and they shouldn't have been left behind in this gap that was created thank you very much that's the last person that i have signed up for public comments this evening as i usually do i'll just wait an extra 30 seconds or so if there's anyone who just joined the meeting remotely who would like to sign up all right well not seeing anyone else sign up i will close public comments at this time and uh we'll move on to item eight our board reports uh starting first with item 8.1 review of the board calendar so today is monday february 28th we have a regular board of education meeting nearly followed by a workshop on people count 2022-23 enrollment projections estimate of revenue limit calculation and preliminary budget projections on thursday march

0673rd at 6 00 pm we have our first community information session on our upcoming referendum this will be a virtual session and there is a link available on our website as well as that will be going out to our constituencies on monday march 7th at 6 pm we have our second community information session about the upcoming referendum and this one will be in person at west allis central high school cafeteria on monday march 14th at 6 pm we have our next regular board of education meeting immediately followed by a workshop on special education services then on wednesday march 16th at 6 pm we have our third community information session on the referendum that will be held at nathan hill high school auditorium then on monday march 21st at 6 pm we have a closed session

068meeting with superintendent dr luxman and monday march 28th at 6 p.m we have our regular board of education meeting and then thursday on march 31st at 6 00 pm we have our fourth uh community information session on the upcoming referendum this last one will be virtual as well so moving on to board reports um 8.2.1 employee engagement and culture mr keller thank you we met on 2 15 um and covered about three different topics the first of which was stay interviews that's something that we've been trying to get some more information on in terms of uh possibly having those implemented within the district along a similar line we will be we are gathering some exit interview information and we should have a summary of some of that info at our next meeting we also talked

069about substitute recruitment and retention uh there was a wage increase that went into effect in january and as of february 14th we had added 10 new substitutes staff is actually working on an orientation and handbook for the 22 23 academic yearbook and also working with the communications team to recognize some of our substitutes we also did an update regarding the new compensation model again that the goal of that was to bring to average compensation um for professional staff uh the spirit and intent was uh to align internally so salaries are equitable within smaller groups and to move us toward average teacher salary in our region some of the highlights we found out was that the end result was that 52 percent of our professionals did receive a wage increase um returning professional staff did also

070receive their cpi increase we had 83 members of the professional staff that participated in the microcredential program and we also found that new teachers were a bit more likely to receive a wage adjustment based on these new parameters than some of the more experienced veteran teachers all right and that's it we'll be uh meeting again in march all right thank you very much does anyone have any questions for mr keller or the committee or anything to be considered at the next meeting thank you all right thank you very much move on to item 8.2.2 financial stability and efficiency ms carr this will be short and sweet um the committee met on thursday february 7th 17th the first agenda item was an update on the early retirement proposal and because this is action item for tonight

071i will let mark duff explain the findings and the recommendations because we're going to be dealing with that soon the next item on the agenda was the esser funding update and this information was shared at the last monday's workshop and the last item on the agenda was the budget update and this information will be presented tonight at the board workshop so i didn't necessarily i certainly didn't want to repeat or steal your thunder so all right well thank you very much for that does anyone have any questions for jane of the committee or anything that they would like to have considered at their next meeting seeing none thank you very much for both of you for the board reports uh we'll move on to 8.3 board member reports of community events does anyone have any

072events they attended like to talk about this deal um all right so on sunday february 20th i just want to say a big thank you to the west allis west milwaukee pta council they have their founders day carnival um we actually had the theme was um all around the world so we did have students and faculty from both central and hale that came and provided activities for the kids and had a pinata and it was really cool so i just want to say thank you to all them all the parents all the students everybody that showed up for um the founders day carnival and then uh kind of adding on to what deidra said earlier um i was actually my son was able to participate in the solo and ensemble the music festival this past

073saturday so i just want to um say thanks to all the volunteers a lot of volunteers a lot of our music program our music staff are there so i just want to thank everybody that came out and made that a success awesome thank you very much anyone else have any other events they'd like to talk about miss kaiser um i also attended the pta carnival but in the capacity of uh sharing about a referendum but i can also speak to the fact that it was so wonderful to see folks out and about the kids had a really great time i also was very lucky to attend the wmsa string festival on saturday i was there in the capacity of also speaking about the referendum we've had exceptionally wonderful responses to talking to the public about

074what we're actually planning to do here and it was really nice to talk to folks i'll be attending tomorrow night the west allis common council meeting but i also want to say it was great as a former musician reliving my glory days 20 years ago um it was wonderful to see the students out there and hearing them perform was just an absolute joy and we have some amazing talent in this district that even just sitting in the hallway i couldn't i was telling poor noah about my glory days in the pep band so it was wonderful and i'm thrilled that the arts are back and they're able to do this again all right awesome thank you so much i was happy to hear those stories um anything else that they would like any other board

075members like to to bring up all right i'll just echo all the comments that miss steele miss kaiser have made i was also able to attend the pta carnival uh as well as solo ensemble my son performed as well so thank you to all the volunteers all the people who put their time and energies into planning these events and making sure they go off without a hitch thank you so much for that and taking time out of your already busy days to be able to help our students and you know help our families to be able to hopefully achieve this whatever they want to do so thank you so much for all that and it was a great time as well by me um all right so that we'll move on to our consent agenda

076so we have um four things on the agenda this evening item 9.1 the approval of minutes from our regular board meeting on february 14th as well as our board work session and special meeting on february 21st we have the employment summary at item 9.2 item 9.3 our supplementary contracts and 9.4 our financial summary does anyone need anything separated out if not i'd look for a motion move second moving in seconded any last minute discussion all right all those in favor aye opposed all right that passes let's move on to our action item this evening just one 10.1 early retirement proposal for teachers and national employees mr duff and mrs windler welcome back well i had the privilege of working with kaitlyn for several days like a couple of days a week like 12 months so

077it was fun to work with her to get her back and ready so um she did work with me on this early retirement proposal which was kind of a fun little project for us and uh so we have discussed that at the work session and i did provide some documents to you um or the workshop work sessions we uh i did provide a summary to you and in this document it highlights some of the cost review by the actuary um and it includes some of the documents that we would be using as kind of the guidelines for providing the benefits and in addition mr sikich asked for a breakdown of how some of the staff and work and how it broke out so i made a table uh and that's the back of the packet

078that broke down like the at-will employees versus the professional educators and how many in each different year and which plan they'd be eligible for so overall um one of the other changes that we did make at the meeting we were discussing whether we would propose a a lower percentage for um retirees to pay for their health coverage after reviewing how the implementation of the plan and discussing it with the superintendent and others that we thought that um we thought that we would maintain it at um there is a the way it works is that after a certain period of time the the contribution amount is frozen and then the retiree pays a higher level as the cost increases so we felt that that that amount would be for some of these retirees they'll be retired

079for a period of time and that provision will kick in and they would be paying more anyway so we felt that was reasonable to keep it simple keep the current system in place uh that other retirees have so we continue to recommend it at that 90 percent so otherwise do you have any questions from the materials that were provided otherwise we haven't had a recommendation is to approve questions no questions all right well if there's no questions i look for a motion move to approve second last chance questions comments i will have to recuse myself from this vote i believe yes [Music] all right no further comments no further questions all those in favor aye opposed that passes and one refusal okay thank you very much congratulations uh all right we'll move on then right

080to our workshop um 11.1 financial stability and efficiency people count there's a number of things here i'm not going to read them all but it's the workshop [Music] all right so i will get started aaron's passing out a handout so i just wanted to say hi and thanks for keeping things moving and um i'm excited to be back so i just wanted to extend a thank you first of all for um aaron and mark's work on this presentation which obviously there's a bunch of work behind the scenes that goes into this for weeks and months at a time and especially particularly from mark holding the report too for the last few months he's been a rock star and i'm so grateful that he was able to step in and serve as interim so the workshop

081we'll go through tonight has a number of factors that we always refer to as puzzle pieces to our budget each year they all work together in maintaining our projections for next year in terms of our budget and our schools and also it's important to look at them as puzzle pieces because we work with them together to maintain our financial stability so just our agenda for tonight we'll go through membership and enrollment trends and then what those two terms mean in terms of definitions and then what they mean in terms of our physical impact we'll go through our revenue revenue and my calculation which you can never go through too many times because it's very complicated so we try to boil it down to terms that um help us all remember what the main pieces of

082the calculation are and then we'll talk through our staffing projections and our budget projections so we'll begin with our definitions the two main definitions that we kind of throw out throughout this presentation and they're different and they're important it's important to know the difference so those two terms out are our membership and our enrollment so membership you're seeing represented by the blue bars in this membership is represented by the orange line in this model and the orange line is our three-year resident membership so membership is our resident students those are students who live in our west allis west milwaukee and there are portions of greenfield in new berlin within our communities and that's the portion that's affecting our revenue limit calculation so the three-year membership average is what is the factor that's used in our

083calculation and that's again resident students so membership is resident students and then enrollment is represented by the blue bars in this graph and our enrollment is what drives our staffing enrollment is our students in seats so enrollment drive staffing and all those pieces work together as we plan for our budget moving forward okay so this is something uh um that i shared with the fsc committee meeting and uh so this is kind of tries to help you see the math of how it ends up calculating um the revenue for the district and what we're facing so the fiscal impacts of membership enrollment there's three different categories that it can impact one is the revenue the district receives so that is calculated through the revenue limit so membership impacts impacts the revenue hopefully i didn't run

084out of my battery you keep talking i'll grab my adapters right okay so so the membership impacts the state revenue limit but it also impacts our state equalization aid so while the revenue limit allows how much we can spend as a district the equalization aid is how much aid we get from the state so the higher our enrollment is the more aid we get which is used for tax relief for the district so um so that is a fairly important aspect of how membership enrollment impacts our revenue another major contributor to this one another aspect is enrollment is used and i think aaron plays a big role in this is enrollment impacts how much uh it helps us project staffing at the schools uh so it's a major aspect of staffing obviously the amount of

085students you need impacts how many teaching staff you need so um that's a very important aspect for how we use enrollment for that then finally there's another part of it enrollment is part of our open enrollment system is also impacting um his impacts enrollment it helps us determine how many open enrollment seats we have and some of those areas so one of the things that i did on that table you can see uh the trend um over that period of time 2018-19 to what we're projecting for 2223 will be a loss of 663 students and then um for the future projections and aaron went over this uh a couple like a month or two ago and it was a january uh we we are projecting even more students to be lost in future years so

086this all impacts all these categories of revenue staffing and ultimate enrollment one of the areas to mention on the loss is that's membership so those are the number of students even students who left our district that are counted in membership so those aren't the membership loss isn't just students leaving our district those students are counted in membership so it's a it's an overall larger picture of just less students living in the communities and that's a national a state out that's a trend that the whole country is seeing so that's exactly right all districts are facing the issue of declining enrollment so one of the things i i did at the fsc committee meeting was just to do the simple math so for every student uh we are on our membership uh the district gets about

087ten thousand five hundred dollars per student so so if you in addition we get per pupil funding this is of 742 dollars per student so um the district's been facing declining numbers of students so if you do the math and multiply it out it shows you about how much we would have to reduce uh to meet the revenue limit so you know in other times you know if you have increasing enrollment it's the opposite you gain the enrollment but so for the short term for the next year we have a fairly small impact from the revenue limit we expect to lose about 35 students which isn't too bad but the way the state revenue limit works it's a three year average so we're still paying since i don't know paying is the right term but

088we're still impacted by that three-year average from the year previously if you go back you can see there was a significant decline in the colbit year of about 585 students so we still have our because of the three year average we're still reducing our costs uh for that drop in 585 student drop in that year but then if you look at the longer term trends um the long term trend at the bottom if we well for the whole range of fiscal year 18 to fiscal year 25 it will be about a 13 55 student drop that's about a 15 million dollars in reductions the district will have to make in that lengthy period of time um and so so there that is why we have to continuously be diligent in being more efficient the state

089financial school financing system requires us to be efficient based on what our enrollment and membership is so hopefully this map helps you show the challenges that we have and so this this table here just kind of represents and i know we had gone through this about a month ago it represents kind of how we come up with um the level of efficiency that mark was referring to um and as you can see if i just click back here to this table you can see the bottom column that says fiscal year 22 to 25 that's kind of what we were facing here over the next three years but if you look to the fiscal year 18 to 25 we're already in the middle of that right so the fact that that says 15.23 million dollars of

090of uh reduction and the fact that we're sitting here today looking at over the next three years only four of that shows that this process here works right it's keeping us efficient it uses our enrollment to dictate how much staff we need and having these processes in place through you know calculation of open enrollment by trying to retain students and waivers it does work and so this is the table that we went through a month ago for open enrollment these are the seats that will open up here um at the end of april open enrollment is up and live and it concludes at the last monday april so open enrollment also is a both a cost and a revenue to the district so this is just quantifying that dollar amount so for every student um

091that we either receive in or goes out the tuition amount is 8 161 and special education tuition is a little bit higher based on costs so our total tuition revenue that we receive for students coming into the district for the 731 students is about over six million dollars we have a higher amount of students leaving the district so that's about almost 11 million dollar cost so the net open enrollment impact is a cost of 4.67 million dollars but uh it it's worth noting is that we we are able to levy ten thousand five hundred dollars so we we have a higher amount of revenue limit money for those students than we have for our cost or for the revenue so i'm just going to add a piece um just to kind of bring it back

092to the calculation of the revenue limit so we talked about the revenue limit as a three year average so each for each student these are open enrollment out students but they're still residents they live here and they go elsewhere so we get to count them in our revenue limit which is why mark's referring to our revenue limit um but remember that our revenue limit when we talk about membership it's a three-year average that means we get to count one-third of that kid each year so they're all it's in different time periods it's not like we're just getting 10 500 and then paying out the 81.61 so just all adds another layer of complication to our revenue limit and our um funding formulas and and so of the total of the 12 you know 33 that

093we see open and roll out that number does fluctuate year to year but it's generally been in that range for a few years now the majority of those students contrary to some assumptions about 800 of those students attend milwaukee and primarily in grades k-8 and so when we do a lot of these calculations here i talk a lot about how we see many students come back in grade 6 through 9 10 11th grade because that's typically what happens when a lot of the families who open and roll out choose to come back so i think um and we've kind of talked internally about this is an opportunity i think as we move forward especially with facility consolidation and getting more information back in terms of services we can offer to try to attract more families

094to maybe opt back into our schools earlier rather than later so um and just kind of building off that so how we determine staffing needs for next year we take the projected enrollments and we use the section size and sections required to determine staff and that's broken down by each school and we roll that forward every year and this is the kind of the grid that we use and as similar to the discussion we had a month ago we fill our our um sections to the 92 percent and that is broken down um in our elementaries by grade because you know our grades in 4k the student-to-staff ratio is obviously different than what we would like in grades five so um as a as a whole we look to fill our elementaries to 22 students

095per teacher as an average and then our secondaries to 27 as a class and so if in any grade we don't fill that so if our average in kindergarten was 17 and we had 10 sections we could take one student per section and then our open enrollment will be 10 for 4k and that kind of math is what we use to um to determine the open rolex and so some of the strategies that we we look to use in terms of um you know balancing a budget is is first of all which is the number one thing we're talking about is kind of responding to declining enrollment and looking at what schools and trying to um run efficient staffing miles as we can and the second thing that we're working on now is is developing

096a vacancy review process to that way when someone does you know retire or resigns or seeks other employment is to take a really close look at what position is that and is that something that um we can feel internally um as opposed to submitting reduction of force that's kind of the ideal and not letting staff go but trying to fill these positions internally if there needs to be a reduction mark already talked about early retirement that's a strategy we're looking at using to try to be more efficient with staffing and finances we have the agr reduction strategy which we've gone through and you have the paper here we'll talk about a second and really the goal overall is to address these issues through attrition not through reduction and we want to keep our staff and

097if people are going to retire and we can fill that internally that is the best possible way to do that some of the the goals are embodied in the board's policy production and force too so those are some of the strategies that we take into consideration and there is some future planning involved with this because we are planning uh some there are work groups and there's planning going on with school consolidation as well so some of these uh vacancy review processes that we just we won't automatically fill a vacancy we will have a process in place to review the need so that we can meet some of our goals and targets so this table i handed it out i feel like it's easier to see and read in front of you as opposed to on

098the screen so this this kind of this is the overview of the um you know the the staff in terms of enrollment for next year so on the far left column you have the schools and then as you move from left to right each column kind of helps tell you the story right so you know each school and then you have the the next column is their current staff this year and then they were staffed on the projected enrollment for this year right the following column is what the enrollment actually came in at tfs is third friday enrollment so we staff schools based on the projection but then part of the projection for the following year is to review the what the enrollment came in at by school okay and so as you can see

099i just use franklin it's the top row it's just the easiest to um kind of proceed through the equation so franklin has 12 staff their projected enrollment was 248 their actual enrollment came in at 231 and their projected enrollment is at 223. so you know you go oh the third friday enrollment was 231 the project it's 223. it's only eight students how come the required sections is 10 well it's because their enrollment or their staff was based on the 248 right so it's really a decline of 25 students so based off the model of filling the average to 22 at 223 the required sections would be 10 which would give you 22.3 students first at franklin elementary which would show you an initial staff decline for next year at that school of two right and

100in the green this shows you kind of the agr philosophical approach that we've applied from last year moving forward to try to use some of the dollars we get for agr to apply that to uh retained staff and lower class sizes so as you can see in the green as you move across it says required sections plus agr staff that would be 12 which would maintain the current staff at franklin and which would give you two sections of agr and so at the bottom where you see um the initial change in staff minus two minus five minus seven at the bottom it shows us a subtraction of minus thirty-seven and as you look to the right it shows you change in staff with agr8 and then plus 29. so essentially we would be looking at

101having 29 sections of agr next year we need to reduce 37 we have 29 sections of agr so 37 less 29s each so the reduction for next year in terms of staffing is eight staff yep one oh do you want to hold questions at the end can i ask questions so when it comes to the egr staff um what is the criteria for determining that we're going to keep x amount for agr in x school because they're uh because like you know horseman is seven for instance and other other elementary schools have less right and so what is the criteria to determine that we're going to put more hr sections in one section versus another each agr's funding is on a per school basis so that's ultimately the reason um is the amount of dollars

102that are allocated to that school based on the agr formula which is state state driven it's not our own internal formula so we are told how much money we get for each school okay and then this number is the dollar amount that fits in there um and then aaron talk through a little bit in the next slide as well this idea of float he'll go into what this means but we have an agr carryover so this means from previous years we haven't spent the full allocation each year we have a chunk of these dollars that we refer to as agr carryover which we can utilize and are utilized in these formulas so this some of these numbers aren't sustainable forever and ever indefinitely but can be sustained for a few years utilizing these carryover dollars

103and again they're based on each school's calculation the calculation of agr um each school gets that individual amount based on that formula okay thank you so then to go to the next next page which i handed out as well so um you know as caitlyn kind of mentioned not all we we have carryover and agr um funding by school um that i guess proceeds back a few years so we're looking at trying to accomplish two things one retain staff as best we can and to use up the funds so what's the best way to do that we reviewed that and said if we can reduce class sizes in elementaries in grades k through three that'd be great for okay through two that'd be great so let's look at trying to do that and so what

104we started looking at was um because not all of the funds are going to be sustainable to do this forever to keep this many sections right so we developed this idea of of a float right so how many sections are each school able to float and should someone resign or someone retire we would look at not feeling that position because it's a flow it's not sustainable to maintain um so what we have here this table this is elementary only and it shows you similar to the last table it shows you their current staff the required number of sections that they need to fill or to maintain a building average of 22 and then it shows you the number of agr sections they have this year how many we're looking at allocating next year and then

105the net change in staff the sustainable number and then the sections floated so franklin's the first example as always here so they have 12 staff we were we would need 10 based on their enrollment this this year we have one agr section next year we're suggesting that we have two due to the agr funding which results in a net change of staff of zero right that was what we looked at the last last table the sustainable number for franklin year to year is two and the sections float is one so what that means is should someone at franklin retire or resign we would not fill that but we would still have two agr staff meaning we have 11 teachers at franklin nine of them would not be agr and two would be and what that

106does is it allows us to have two of the 11 be grant funded and nine of them come out of fun time hence reducing the amount of money that we would need to fund out of the general fund by saying that correctly yeah so that's kind of the strategy that i think in in conjunction with the eight staff that we would do the declining enrollment at the middle school right the number for sections floated is 14 that certainly doesn't mean that we'll have 14 staff at the right schools all retire or find other employment but it's certainly a model to to be able to keep staff that we have and if someone does leave part of the vacancy review process to evaluate that to to kind of stay in line with what we're trying to

107do budget projections so now so overall budget projections for 2223 we used a model system from baird um to do a multi-year forecast and you have to in order to do a forecast you put put in assumptions so we usually start out a fairly conservative consump or assumptions which would be um you know basically just rolling over the prior year base and then making certain adjustments so we do know right away the state has provided us with no increase at all in per pupil funding so for next year so that's a zero dollar increase because of the two-year budget the way it's set up we did include the declining enrollment as per the projections that um aaron and we've shared with you um but one of the things we did did not include in the

108base this assumption is we did not make the staffing adjustments um we did include this the current cpi for compensation increases 4.7 noting that the board still needs to take action on that so but that's what the state provided uh as the cpi the health benefit increase um we put in at eight percent it could be higher or lower but uh the health benefit increase is at that level uh we and as i mentioned we did assume minor adjustments uh to departmental and other types of service costs um so and then we did as mentioned um in the essa presentation we at this point we were trying to minimize it does not anticipate the use of esther funding to directly reduce the shortfall so we put this together and then so now we have the

109amount so i always say [Music] that we always review these with caution this is a guideline is our initial goals of what we should meet but it is it's within what you've been dealing with in the past so we're anticipating um declining enrollment is generating a reduction in our revenue limit of about 2.6 million dollars that's the main main contributor to a revenue reduction next year in addition expenditures are expected to increase a little less than a million dollars so overall that comes up to about a 3.2 million dollar shortfall that we'll have to address so so that that is the challenge we have before us um any questions in this area then and we do have uh planning in process and a pathway to achieving um a balanced budget for the next year so

110as uh aaron was mentioning there's there's we've identified processes for um having uh efficiencies with our staffing um that'll and we'll make fte adjustments based on need in that review process that'll also be impacted by the retirements and also the early retirement plan that we have but a lot of this is driven by declining enrollment so we will have a savings in the staffing area um one of the things we are planning on doing is this year we received uh per pupil aid from uh federal aid from governor governor evers was able to put together about a million dollars in aid instead of using that this year we were planning to use it next year so um so that was one of the things that would help reduce that that shortfall in addition we discussed

111last week caitlin and i were working on a debt reduction plan so that that will also help us out and we could use some esser funds and other funds to develop a plan for consideration that will help addre help with the budget shortfall in addition we just have to continue to scrutinize all the budget line items develop efficiencies and strategies and kaitlyn don't you have anything to add to that um no but this is the point where we start looking so we're high level and we start getting into the nitty-gritty going through each of our department budgets and our school budgets and our staff and salary benefit budgets and eventually work towards the balanced budget so each year at this point in time for the last number of years we've been right about the same

112point so about a three million ish deficit um so nothing that we haven't seen before and we intend fully to come to a balanced budget before we approve in october um and then one thing that mark's work done which we'll review in a second here is so we're talking 2022 23 but it's important to look into the future and we talk about using these federal funds those are one-time funds just like our restaurants are one-time funds these funds from governor ebers that he allocated from federal funds to down to school districts in the state of wisconsin our one-time funds and we can utilize those and this graph that mark will talk through shows what that does when we utilize those and this depiction of our five-year forecast i think is really impactful just looking at

113it in a visual sense of what what it means if we don't address these deficits each year and we have been doing that we've come to a balanced budget each year and have ended in a really great place the last number of years so mark can talk through this graph so this is a five-year forecast um and so one of the things the different colors are is we already identified the 2223 shortfall that we have we're well on our way towards planning to address but in the following years there are impacts so you can see in 2324 i have the red and the orange so that governor evers funding is one time money so that is one time it goes away so then that actually creates a shortfall in 2324 for us to resolve so

114our our the red line indicates what the shortfall would be but i also included the green area which is the state typically provides a per pupil funding adjustment they didn't do it during those last two years but they usually give us a couple hundred dollars per student so this assumes that the state will give us a per pupil funding increase if they do not our budget deficit here will balloon by that one and a half million dollars so that's that's uh that's i think assuming a 200 per pupil adjustment the state really should give us about in a per pupil adjustment and that would significantly help us in our deficits over the next several years but um but that's what that's reflecting so the green is if the state gives us what they typically do

115with the per pupil increase it'll help us but if they don't the deficit will grow uh even greater and then the one on in 2425 we do have some esser funding that is paying for base some of our base costs uh like uh lease payments for our technology plan so once that esser funding expires in that year that will be some additional challenges the district will have to find funding for so that does add to that deficit but it's um but it's far enough out that it can be planned for and worked at so that's why we're trying to be careful about recommending uh use of ester funding in a way that adds to our deficit rather than maybe what we're trying to devise is one that helps um with our structural deficit so to

116summarize this two main points hopefully i'll forget them before i get to them um one this each of these bars assumes we've balanced the budget the previous year so in the 2324 bar that assumes we've balanced our budget and we've reduced our expenses or gotten 3.2 million dollars more in revenue so each of these if we didn't then the next bar would be that much bigger so the other thing is that the district's in planning for some school consolidations and those efficiencies and savings are in those some of those out years which will further help us uh be more efficient and address uh some of those anticipated shortfalls in those years so we are doing some some strong financial fiscal management over a multi-year period looking out into the future so this is i believe

117you know from somebody who's only been here a few months but these are this is good good work you're doing to manage your finances and be looking in the long term and so that's i think that's something you should be proud of and my second point was that this this is us planning for the future and maintaining our financial stability us talking about a deficit does not mean that we're like mark said doing something wrong this is us addressing our and balancing our budget each year so again due to talk through our revenue limit and our resident membership our students who live within our school boundaries so this is us balancing our budget and maintaining our financial stability moving forward any questions comments f1 i know agr is a grant uh it's five years um

118is this i know we don't know for certain when does this round end and do we know if it will be always yeah i believe it just i believe 20 our current year 21 22 is the first year of the five-year period so we've got four additional years and we don't anticipate that it would change or end okay there's nothing that would point to that we just have to reapply just like we just did this period those dollars are associated based on the number of students at each one of those sites that qualify for free reduced lunch so it is the state's plan to help close gaps and then we get title one money which is the federal plan to help close some of those gaps of students that come from backups so it would

119be highly unlikely that the state wouldn't have a program like that for the long term it probably just continues to take different forms and have different requirements for us the name might change but yeah any other questions all right well thank you so much for all this work and mr duff went on specifically thank you for filling in for caitlyn when she was away it was really nice working with you while you were here and you definitely brought a lot of you know knowledge to the district i think that was great on helping out while she was away so i hope you're not going to go too far because it's great having you around everything but i wanted to formally thank you for the work you've done here for us thank you so much i

120appreciated the opportunity was actually kind of fun i appreciate the opportunity i won't be going too far but i don't live that far away thank you so much so at this point because we have to um we're going to ask for an adjournment of this part and then we have to reconvene as a committee at the pulse we'll do an adjournment and then i have a five minute recess and then come back as committee the whole so could i get a motion for a tournament so move second who've been seconded all those in favor aye aye opposed all right we are adjourned five minutes re-convenience for me to hold with a second and then we'll do a roll call motion to what reconvene is the committee of the whole motion to reconvene is the committee

121of the whole second all right roll call please is this a yes or a here this is just who's present yeah okay so this is car here mr burns president if you want mr use jack here mrs kaiser here mr keller here mrs justin's excused ms zeal here mr sikich is excused and president lee here all right um yep all right dr great uh thank you so what you have in front of you uh as a committee of the whole there's the first reading of board policy updates so these are the july 2021 updates that we're still trying to get cut up to um we did work through these in workshop um and gathered some feedback from board members in particular we changed all of the non-discrimination policy language um following um the statement you

122know gender including transgender um and that was um advised by our consultant from niola's appropriate even though gender is considered to be from the federal language all-inclusive um it is a little bit even more inclusive to state including transgender so we've made those changes that was really the extent of changes um just a point of order i suppose that the board would not be approving the technical corrections because in current bylaws um i have the authority to make technical corrections but the board has to be informed right so this is the way to inform the board so you can see them if there are any questions but but it's really just approving the on the other updates and the none the big ones in this update or the non-discrimination language um if there are any

123other things this is the moment to um raise them with this round of updates in the first reading so we can adjust for the second reading it comes back again before the regular board not the committee of the vote to approve as the second reading um in a month right so it gets held in committee so you're serving as that committee where it's held for 30 days that's really more part of the public process the public ask questions but it's also the opportunity if the board wants to make any other additional recommendations we can consult adjust and bring those back in 30 days i should also add that um assuming the board approves the first and the second reading a month from now you're very quickly see the next round of updates we'll do this

124again right away so we get caught up to the cycle because we do have well suzette has updates to deal with sorry um for january of 2022 so that's where we are and trying to keep up with our viola policy process so no changes except for the transgender adding in any questions or comments you guys have about this any additional things you saw when you're going through that you wanted to have address between our first and second readings of these no no no all good all right well i look for a motion moving second any last minute discussion follow us in favor aye opposed all right and that's our last thing so now i would look for a real motion for a tournament adjourned sagan moved and seconded all those in favor we aye a

125journey thank