Board Meeting 2-14-22

001okay i'd like to call this meeting of the west elsewhere milwaukee school board to order uh mr siege could you please leave us in the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the united states of america to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you very much susan would you please call the role mr sikkids present ms deal here mr burns president mr used truck here mrs justin i will mark her excuse for now uh mrs carr here mrs kaiser here mr keller here president lee here proper notice that this meeting has been posted in accordance with the open meeting laws of the state of wisconsin are there any modifications to the agenda this evening yeah we have no changes okay all right so

002then we'll move uh right into uh item number six which is our super dense report great um good evening everybody and welcome on and so the super giants report will come up screen there and so this is a quick update similar to what we've been doing for about two years now so we start with our agenda touch again on the guiding principles our external health metrics our internal health metrics the next step so this is pretty short on as in terms of where we are and where we're going our guiding principles continue to be the same always safety and well-being learning that works for all responsiveness and flexibility and then practicality of implementation in terms of our external metrics these metrics have swung as we know so from december 28 to january 11th this huge

003increase you know going from very high to critically i'm since january 11th to february 8th we've seen a similar decline from critically high back to very high and so the numbers in our community are definitely moving in the right direction although still on very high in terms of community positivity rate and burden rate however our internal metrics look really promising at february 11 so that's last friday at 0.23 um the whole week last week was at a quarter or less percent for our internal positivity rate and this is the lowest number since we've been tracking in terms of quarantine count and again that's both staff and students so only 48 staff and students in quarantine has a february 11th so those are encouraging numbers for us um and this is just the way the the

004graphic of those numbers look the percent positive and percent students and staff in quarantine and it matches exactly what i've just shared and so all of last week looks really stable for us at at this time and so that really leads us to next steps right now we have a significant supply of k 95 and n95 masks available to staff and students so for anybody that wants them they're available from our purchase and then we also received 10 000 additional n95 masks through the health department from the state stockpile and that happened in the last couple of weeks so we have plenty on hand for those that would need them and then later in this meeting we'll be considering whether or not it's time to make masks highly recommended but not required in our schools

005so that's really part of one of our next steps so that's the kind of return to school update in a quick version i'll move on to 6.2 which is the legislative update and again there's quite a bit going on do gop k-12 reform bills introduced and public hearing schedule the k-12 legislative proposals announced previously by senate chair senator alberta darling and representative rob witkem among others have been introduced including two new proposals that i'll touch on ab970 is eliminating income limits for parental choice programs and eliminating pupil participation limits for the statewide parental choice program private school tuition charge to a public people participating in a parental choice program and creating an education expense reimbursement program for the 2022-23 school year in the summer of 2023 all of which would not be good news for

006traditional public school districts ab-969 reporting to law enforcement certain crimes and other incidents that occur in and on public school buildings and grounds requiring certain schools to employ armed school resource officers and allocating federal american rescue plan act of 2021 funding to reimburse schools for cost of employing armed school resource officers the concern here is that this will make urban schools in urban school districts like ours look like they're places where crime happens all the time um given the way it's at least written the way i understand it right now and even though you know we work with challenging families and challenging communities it's not what our schools are um good schools where kids are safe and even though they're not always easy they're safe and kids are learning so it's one we're going to

007watch and are concerned about ab968 creating a charter school authoring authorizing board and allowing the board to authorize independent charter schools ab-967 high-performing charter schools authorized by school boards ab-966 reorganizing the milwaukee public school system into four to eight school districts and creating a milwaukee public schools redistricting and implementation commission ab-965 the components methods and formulas dpi uses to publish school and school district accountability reports and grant rulemaking authority uh so if that passes it and is approved it would be another change to report cards essentially we're just getting used to the most recent one um ab-964 increasing the school property tax credit due to virtual instruction during the 2021-22 school year ab-963 writes reserved to a parent or guardian of a child and we see that kind of language all over the country right

008now this parental rights language uh it raises the questions of which parents and which rights ab-962 the uw system institution participation and dpi initiated landscape analysis so um the governor vetoes the crt bill so tony evers vetoed assembly bill 411 the bill sold by proponents is addressing critical race theory the bill would have prohibited race or sex stereotypes and certain concepts from being taught in public and charter schools with violations resulting in a loss of 10 percent of state funding the bill also would have required all curricula used in school district or charter schools to be posted online and then finally legislatures budget committee approves adjusted sr-3 plan and paves the way for federal funds to be released to schools and that one we were expecting and at the federal level the level there's no

009updates at this point and then in the school board of recognitions for this evening um first one and it's related to the glass it might be difficult to see out there um that's sitting in front of me that we'll be very careful with um so our district the west allis west milwaukee school district was recently awarded the digital learning collaborative the dlac unsung superhero school or district award so ours was the district award um wawm was recognized at the fourth annual dlac um so the conference in atlanta georgia on wednesday february 9th during the closing session this award recognizes the work our district has done with providing high quality project-based digital learning experiences to each student in our district while also focusing on their emotional health and other initiatives over the past year this award

010was possible because of the hard work of deidre raymour and adam hengel in particular and special thanks to amanda stewart ii who created this video which you'll see in a minute which was instrumental in getting our applications submitted and accepted and awarded serves just over 7 000 students in 19 schools we are beautifully diverse and have been on a journey to achieve equity through deeper learning for the past six years our superintendent often says it's not about what's wrong it's about what's possible we have shifted our lens from seeing our learners as students with deficits to students who bring talents and assets to the table that deserve inspiration we have students who have started businesses like a coffee cart a snack shack and a working bee farm also building aquaponics labs and bakeries in our

011schools learning about sustainable farming and community outreach we have worked to embed the social justice standards into our work and have students and staff exploring their own identities so they can create a stronger sense of belonging in our classroom communities in the midst of the pandemic we've continued our project-based learning work throughout the shutdown and shifted all instruction to passion projects where students were able to capture what they were learning and doing from home they connected to local and worldwide experts to get advice on their projects and did online presentations of learning to share what they learned today as we have shifted back to in-person learning our staff continues to use the technology tools that we introduced during the emergency shutdown we have platforms that our teachers are using seamlessly as part of their instructional

012practice students have increased their skills in doing public demonstrations of their learning creating podcasts videos presenting at conferences and sharing about their work all over our area and our country we are so proud of all of the work that our students and our teachers are doing one of the things that we are the most proud of is the way our learners support one another as a school district we are constantly looking to grow and evolve to meet the needs of our learners each day we want them to be ready to live life on their own terms when they leave us with the skills to achieve their goals whether they choose college military service or jump right into the world of work we want them to be ready [Music] so i think this one i'd like

013to everybody ask everybody to give a round of applause to deidra to adam and to all of the teachers that are committed to this kind of work it is powerful it is difficult and it's been recognized [Applause] all right at doddke high school we'd like they would like to recognize kaylee bitters and angela wardlow amanda hayes phil fromm and greg gels for having their presentation proposal approved for the dl 2022 conference happening in march in san diego california the group will be presenting twice at the conference and the presentation is on their experience with partnering with the milwaukee bucks and what other schools can learn from conducting this all school community partnership project donny dotkey would also like to recognize kaylee bitters for her leadership in making sure that our first ever all-school exhibition event

014was successful the event occurred on january 20th and was very well run and well attended the next one will occur on the evening of thursday june 2nd and then at shared journeys lisa cola jenny salazinski and danny haber all became certified through through the early learning station inc in putting professionalism into practice all three also completed a book study reading pregnant girl by nicole lynn lewis highly recommended share journeys is collaborating collaborating with the milwaukee symphony in a project called the lullaby project students are creating their own personal lullabies for their babies and then moving on to 6.4 some update and information items and first response to public comments from our meeting on january 24th so first of all we heard from two members of the public at that meeting first both included comments about

015incentivizing vaccines among students with free socks and gloves so i did address that already in my report on the 24th but i wanted to reiterate that vaccines work and new information indicates also against omicron so and incentives are commonplace in terms of encouraging people to be vaccinated and just so everybody understands before we moved forward with our vaccine incentive plan we had it reviewed by our attorneys and they had no concerns as long as socks and gloves were also available for students and families to purchase and that they would also be used as incentives in other ways in the future the second member of the public who spoke mr broadwell also challenged our guidelines for supporting transgender students and also our mask requirements so first i want to remind everybody that members of the public

016have freedom of speech rights when they address the board but it does not mean that all speech is appropriate or should go on without challenge mr broadwell's comments about transgender guidelines and transgender students themselves border on transphobic language that may have been intended to degrade transgender students and their families the policies the district has adopted around transgender students were done thoughtfully and with the safety and well-being of all students in mind i said this before but we have the unique privilege and responsibility of serving all of the public's children mr broadwell also challenged our purchase of better masks indicating that the mask came from china where kovit is believed to have originated his comments might be interpreted as in degrading to our students and families of chinese descent suggesting that there is something inherently wrong

017with products coming to us from china and then finally mr bradwell suggested sweden as an example and noted that there were no deaths among children when they kept schools open and did not require mass i don't believe this is accurate statista tracks coven 19 deaths in sweden and they're published online and they're tracked by age group and the reports as of january 26 2022 there were 11 deaths in the 9 years and younger age group additionally preventing infections in students is not only about protecting them but the community as a whole so my responses here are not to limit anyone's speech but to ask anyone who addresses the board to think about the impact of that speech and will it harm someone intentionally or even unintentionally our words matter and being thoughtful about about that

018in a manner being thoughtful about the manner in which we use them matters as well and just a couple other updates unrelated to public comments so today today and tomorrow are professional learning days for educators so i want to thank the members of our professional development committee and all of the teachers and leaders who helped to plan these days and in particular are teachers that open their classrooms and are kind of showcasing their work those are i think nerve wracking experience for our teachers that commit to that but they're always really well received and so as we hopefully pivot from the time of covid these days are essential to moving our strategic plan forward and again improving student outcomes for all of our students and then finally referendum communication is rolled out now the referendum

019website is live and will be updated regularly it is available directly from our home page there's now on the right hand side of our home page where we always had enroll now code information we've changed the top one to referendum and it takes you to a a special website focused just on referendum communication so we also did the first information session about the referendum for some of the elementary staff this afternoon deidre and i did that and we're doing another one for secondary staff tomorrow afternoon so we use some of the time on the professional learning day so we don't need to interrupt each school staff meetings or collaboration time quite as much but we will make sure we get in front of every single staff person and even do an information session here for

020the staff in this building so that concludes my updates and the superintendent's report okay thank you very much so move on to item number seven which are public comments for this evening as a reminder anyone who wants to address the board must sign up on our online form uh and provide the information that is requested there each person will have three minutes to address the board you must start by stating your name and your address and as a reminder the board cannot reply uh or provide any sort of interaction during your public comments and if there is a response that is required it will be provided to you either directly or at the next regular board of education meeting all right so if they're i'm sorry for folks that are possibly community communicating via zoom

021will you be cutting them off with a three minute mark i'll be doing my best to work because we do have to do the audio back and forth but yes everyone gets three minutes i want to make sure people are aware that we are aware of that yeah so uh right now i only have one person that signed up for public comments and if there's anyone who is listening via zoom who would like to provide a public comment please uh use the link that's in the chat in order to do so but without further ado i'll start with the first person leah zachary arias should i still state the address yeah name and address yes please leah zacharias 1958 south 93rd street west allis when pandemic restrictions were first put in place it was with

022the intent that they would be removed as soon as possible at this time circumstances have changed case count case counts are declining everyone five years and older has access to the vaccine families have access to high quality masks which will make one-way masking protective to the mask wearer the responsibility needs to shift from a mandate to an individual responsibility of the family there is harm that should be discussed when it comes to masking our children masking has a cost especially for young learners the risk benefit calculation needs to be considered our children have been undergoing covid19 mitigation measures for two years now their emotional social and physical well-being have been sacrificed these children have paid the highest price families should have always had the responsibility to make decisions for their children's health and it's time

023to give that responsibility back to the families it's time to end the mandatory masks in west allis west milwaukee schools okay thank you very much the next person i have is rhonda jones i think she's on zoom you hear me okay okay um my name is rhonda jones and i live at 1457 south 86th street in west allis i'm speaking again tonight on behalf of my son and for so many other parents who are unable to attend tonight's meeting i'm asking the board to please reconsider making your masking rule against our children as optional as i explained in the beginning of the school year my son as well as so many others have been affected by this masking emotionally educationally and medically as i sat last time and explained how hard this has been on

024my son you sat emotionless and decided that his and many other children's needs didn't matter against what me as his mom knows is best for my child when the world around us is celebrating mask lists the super bowl in mass quantities banquets other sporting events concerts and district awards being handed out in atlanta all mass lists our children are told to put your masks up and they're reprimanded if they don't your abuse against our children has created lower test scores children who are behind in reading and speaking because they can't see their teachers faces to see or hear them properly depression and kids on medication and so much more it is time to end this as we see a dramatic drop in cases and even media stating that masking our children has basically been a

025waste there are plenty of well-educated doctors and nurses who have advised against the masking of our children but you've chosen chosen only to listen to the doctors that fit your agenda i was absolutely dismayed when one of your candidates spouted off that all he hears is masks masks masks and wants to talk about other issues and how to improve things academically where he totally missed that this is a large part of why kids are doing poorly in academics and why parents are frustrated we have not been listened to we've been largely ignored we've been told by other parents well my kid is doing just fine and not having any problems that's great for some of you but for many of us it has been hard it's hard watching my kids who used to get great

026grades now struggle it's hard watching my kid who used to be funny and happy sink into a deep depression it's hard to get my kid motivated when he sees that no one cares what he thinks it's time that you let me and so many other parents decide what is best for our children and to let them breathe and as for children who want to er as for parents who want to continue to mask their children that's also their choice but i want my choice back and it's long overdue okay thank you very much um next on the list is mr michael may he was also on zoom hello uh michael may uh 2375 south greenlinks uh first of all thank you for for following uh public health uh for these last couple of years i

027do appreciate it but the real reason i'm hopping on is to say thank you to the board members and or their families who are able to make it out to james and the giant peach a couple weeks ago lane patriot players did a great job and we just want to thank everyone for their support thank you all right thank you very much um that is all that i have signed up for public comments this evening um i will wait a minute as i usually do at the end here if there's anyone else who would like to sign up on the sheet again it's a link it's included in the chat if you're watching via zoom if you're here in person we have the ability to sign up out in the lobby in the elevator lobby

028okay i did not see anyone else sign up so i'm going to close public comments at this time thank you for everyone who provided their comments this evening and now we'll move on to item 8 which is the board report starting with 8.1 a review of the board calendar so today is february 14th happy valentine's day to everyone 6 p.m we have regular board of education meeting and then we have a workshop immediately following and immediately following that we have a closed session on february 21st at 6 p.m we have a workshop a communication and committee workshop and february 28th at 6 pm we have our next work at the board of education meeting and then immediately following a workshop people count 2223 enrollment projections and estimate revenue limit calculation and preliminary budget projections and

029then on monday march 14th at 6 pm we have a regular board of education meeting immediately following a special education services workshop so we'll move on to item 8.2 abort committee reports starting with communications in community relations and ms kaiser thank you at the january 24th communications and community relations meeting we prepared for the workshop that was held january 31st during that workshop bray architects the donovan group c.g schmidt and dr amanda stewart presented in regards to communicating with the community about the referendum question coming up on the april ballot also the district launched their faces of west allis west milwaukee social media campaign this past week highlighting some of the amazing staff who serve our students awesome thank you very much is there any questions or comments for miss kaiser or her committee or

030any topics that you would like them to consider at their next meeting all right if not we'll move on to item 8.2 the life readiness through college and career preparation miss kaiser all right bonus time at tonight's life readiness through college and career preparation committee we discuss this year's summer school options our middle and high school students will have pbl style activities to choose from that support a multi multi-curricular approach to learning secondary students will attend at their current school building elementary students will also have a pbl activity but there will be a reading and math booster option for families as well if they choose not to do other activities so there will be that highlighted as well our primary students will cluster at a couple of schools and sr funding will be you will

031be utilized for transportation so students have equitable opportunities to attend summer school we also revisited the proposal for block scheduling staffer at the secondary level staff are in favor of the schedule but families have valid hesitations currently there are several logistical concerns including a possible need for more classes due to an increase in instructional time available because we're not transitioning and stuff like that and how advisory time might be reworked for now we are leaning towards stacking 9th and 10th grades as a modified block schedule so reading and social studies would follow one another method science would follow one another so teachers can coordinate that way but more planning needs to be done before we even consider coming to the board on it and finally we considered a return to early release on some wednesdays

032we are considering secondary students having an early release on the elementary planning days right now more details need to be considered and then we will be bringing the idea forward to the board at a later date okay thank you for the block scheduling is that is that goal to be put into place for next school year is this just something that's being considered at this point at this point i believe it's being considered it'll be another year away okay um definitely for the black scheduling we could i think we're talking about ninth and tenth stacking which could be a po could definitely be is put in by next year because you are working with you know readings will studies science math things that naturally kind of go together in the curriculum um in the school

033day and uh so you'd have like the 50 minute 50 minute okay but the concept of these 90 minutes to 100 blocks there's a lot of details we start to work out and we want to a i know a parent spoke to me earlier about the ap classes and what that looks like for our kids so we want to make sure before we come forward with a plan that we've thought of every logistic very good anyone else jake kristen do you know back to summer school and elementary and the math and reading booster do you know will we be using our new scholastic resource in summer school yes will that be is there a component in there will we be using that as well yeah yeah okay and that's a great i mean i'm as

034a teacher i can i can speak for it's a great opportunity for teachers to focus on something specific because they know their kids they know their grade levels and what those little boosters kids definitely need in the summer and also looking at map scores and breaking down those little bits what could be needed but i'm speaking on my understanding as a teacher yep um yeah so the scholastic component does have elements of it for summer school the last couple of summers we've used a version of their program called lit camp we still have most of those materials but for the booster sessions it will likely be an extension of the scholastic resource we have right now and then we're working with them on helping us utilize the tool to design individual lessons in within the

035tool both to get ready for forward exam and do forward exam prep using our scholastic materials and then what would the design of that look like for summer and then for math as you know we've been working for a while and defining what our new resources are going to be so we've been piloting a couple of supplementary resources that will be used throughout the summer as well so for future agenda items i would love for you to give a board presentation or just a snippet of fastbridge and how that's been going and i would love an update on that yep we are in the middle of the raspberry window right now the second one with some promising results some increases that we've seen from fall in a lot of cases so as soon as the

036testing window is complete we'd be more than happy to share where we set right now with the board thank you i wrote it down anything else for miss kaiser or her committee all right if not we'll move on to 8.3 or remember reports of community events any community events where members like to discuss amy i just i want to remind everyone excuse me at the pta council's founder z carnival is this upcoming sunday it's from noon to four the theme this year is all around the world and um the profits that the pta council makes from that we actually put towards our senior scholarships and we also started a new scholarship fund this year where we're able to provide um money for seniors in need who to pay for things like their yearbooks or their

037cap and gowns like those expenses that maybe families um don't have the money for so if you're around it's at central it's from noon to four this sunday thank you anyone else jeff i'd just like to give a shout out to steve kosner and his staff at nathan hale they provided a wonderful meal for a friday night for the nathan hale athletic hall of fame induction ceremony and it was super job a lot of people feeding in quite a bit expedient manner so just wanted to do that excellent thank you anyone else shout out to uh james and the giant peach that was it was phenomenal and the thing that i really noticed that i really wanted to share was besides the fact that we saw a talent and which was lovely to see that

038talent we i i noticed such a sense of community among all of the actors and the families and it became just this time for those kids to shine and whether you know sometimes you're not athletic or sometimes you know that's your area and when i think about um you know creating memories for kids and creating experiences it was just such an honor to see that happening in our district awesome thank you anything else anyone like to share all right well uh we'll move on to item nine our consent agenda we have three items 9.1 the approval of the minutes from our regular board of education meeting on january 24th and our board workshop that was held on january 31st our 9.2 the employment summary and item 9.3 the supplementary contracts does anyone need anything separated

039out if not i look for a motion move to approve second it's been moved and seconded any last minute discussion not all those in favor aye opposed all right that passes oh okay uh heather is online heather uh any uh i i can't i'm trying to find her tell her she said she can't put her video on i just want her to be able to vote i don't see her um i guess heather type and chat your responses i guess i don't know what else i can't see you so we'll move on to our action items uh 10.1 uh cover mitigation practice mask wearing requirement mr lexman yes thank you everybody the reason this item is in front of the board this evening is that we committed to many months ago that um if and

040when metrics health metrics related covet improved we would bring the mask requirement back for the board's consideration and we want to make sure that what we're doing at this point given that metrics are improving is continues to be consistent with the board's expectations um i do want to point out that you know in in the on return to school update right so we shared some of the internal metrics and those definitely are promising for us uh we did set in our health metrics dashboard uh uh metrics tied to community health metrics that would would say now we're going to trigger a change in mask wearing but those metrics similar to the metrics we set you know when we came back after the break and omacron was breaking out and looked like we were going to

041start closing schools all the time because we because we hit this five percent threshold and i recognized that that simply didn't make sense and those were arbitrary numbers at the time and everybody was making the best decisions with the best information possible when you know working through all of this and so using the external metrics was simply our best on i'm just be honest simply our best guest at the time and that makes sense for us in terms of changing mask requirements in schools um and so at this point we're really focusing like we are with our keeping kids in school only if we can't staff them i think it's time to look at mask requirements and if our internal data says that we're doing well to make them optional and i think well if

042the board supports that um that you know we'll communicate carefully that you know we're going to highly recommend them and we have kn95s n95s available plenty for whoever wants them but it would be our recommendation it's highly recommended but not required so they become optional in our schools i also if the board supports us would really like to see that we simply drop the requirements in our athletics and other events on it again i'm just going to be really brutally honest it is absolutely unenforceable in those spaces at this time where i think maybe the last or second to last district doing or trying to do that um and that's the reality of where we are um and so i don't want to kind of deceive anybody from what we're trying to do or capable

043of doing uh but that's why you know it's back in front of the board for your consideration or reconsideration and if the board doesn't support this we'll continue with our best efforts and continue to require masks in schools but again i just want to make sure that you know we're following what you know the board believes we should be doing at this time so it's really you know a conversation for all of you to have together um and we're happy to you know answer any questions that we can all right so questions jane i um i would like to talk to you about and i'm i'm fully aware that we are voting on masking today and not quarantining i'm fully aware of that um but i feel like those two mitigations go hand in hand

044and i i'd like to know if we drop the masks how do you think that will affect our quarantining procedures so deidre is way closer to just part of the work than i am um but if maths are dropped it is possible that there will be more recommendations for quarantine yep and that's included in the executive summary as well because the current quarantining guidance and that's been a big part of our mitigation strategies have been to isolate right once we know of an identification or a close contact and we are not proposing as you saw jane any changes to that this time right so if a family were to choose to should the board approve this or prove masks being recommended and not required and should a family choose to not have their child in

045a mask potentially they would then be a close consider to close contact because we aren't going back to separating people to six feet apart in classrooms there aren't enough space for that so right now the rule is within three feet for more than 15 minutes with your mask on right is still the consider the close contact and so this would be sorry excuse me with your mask without a mask on would be definitely close contact the masks on provide less students who are currently ending up in quarantine as close contact so a few more students were at school without their math son more would be considered close contacts in those moments and potentially could end up in quarantine and families just need to know that that's the reality of that situation should the board approve

046this tonight so close contact even if there's no symptoms or no family members in the house so again um i i struggle with that because i am almost more concerned about quarantining than i am about masks i really am i i want kids to be in school and i do not think that we should be quarantining the kids if they have no symptoms or no family members at home that have have been tested positive and they have not tested positive so again i'm concerned about going forward with the mask and then leaving that other mitigation in in place and i would want something from the administration at least saying you know we're also then going to i'd like a timeline i guess about you know are we going to um you know look at this

047for two weeks or three weeks and again we do that all the time you know we look at it weekly but then when will we go back and talk about quarantining and changing that mitigation will it be based on the data that we receive when we remove masks how give me a give me something i'm quarantining yeah i think and we'll jump in for a second and remember you can let us know what your thoughts are but right now you saw the numbers for positive cases and the number of students we have in quarantine which are very low for us at the present moment what you would see would be that would give us an indication that should again the board approve going recommended and not required you'd see a significant more number of students

048showing up positive from those quarantines if we still continue to see patterns where that wasn't the case then that would be something that you that the board might want to consider coming forward to then stop change the process around quarantining or change the system that we've currently been following which is to follow the cdc guidance and the guidance that we get from our state health department so that's really what you'd be looking for is the number of students who turn up positive would be on a significant increase for two you know then the board might want to consider looking again at a mass policy or a mass mandate um and then also that number staying low would indicate that perhaps there's an opportunity to move on the quarantines as well okay yeah no i agree

049entirely really is i think again if this is supported based on our internal data that we'd watch i think we'd see more students go into quarantine but if that then levels and comes down i think there's another conversation that we can have there are a number of school districts in our area that have dropped masks quite a long time ago and have just because it's so hard to keep up with the contact races and quarantining they do their best to inform parents and then the answer is you decide if you want to keep your kid home right um i don't know that i'm comfortable going there right now we've taken a careful kind of step-by-step approach so tonight is kind of it's this one step and let's see what we learn and maybe there's another

050step that's not too far behind because our goal is equal to that jane you know we want the kids in school as often as possible and i know that and i know that and so i just my last comment is is that i encourage you to get more comfortable by using our internal data i think what other comments or questions i know we've talked in the past about and again i know it's not apples to apples but how we compare to other districts and their policy have we been able to get any of that data do we know what that looks like no um right it really is apples to apples we report on different things differently than others a number of districts that have you know stopped the mitigation practices entirely this information has

051disappeared from their websites and so they're just not a good answer other than there's still a handful that have a mask requirement most do not and that's kind of seems to be the state of where we are there was an article today on about it was kind of the conversation across the state of wisconsin school districts starting to have this same kind of debate around masks so we're certainly not alone in the timing of this either but that's the best i can do to answer that one thank you yeah i guess um so for most of the data for math says it's not necessarily that it is protecting the wearer but it is protecting the community around the where we still have four cares that cannot be vaccinated and then we also have students with

052other conditions where they can't be vaccinated either in our older and so if we're removing the masks we're putting those kids in harm's way simply because we're removing their protection for them to be able to be in school safely so how do we protect these kids if we take the masks away as a requirement um great question so i've seen i think this is franklin i'm not positive when they drop their mask requirements the board did leave in place requirements for 4k classrooms so for 4k students that continue to be required to wear masks it's not easy to keep masks on four cares but they've gotten familiar with it for sure so that's an option to make that kind of emotion in terms of students that are medically fragile certainly hope that their parents would

053still expect them to wear masks um at school we have i think we'd have a similar expectation or hope for um employees and may have underlying health conditions uh and i think we would want to work with the parents and the teachers in those classrooms that for those students in particular that have underlying health conditions that we would monitor their mask wearing if the parent expects the mask for those students i think we want to monitor and work to help the parents enforce that mask expectation um but but this kind of leads me to some of the questions and feedback we received from our teachers association and if i get any of this wrong you can talk to me later but i'm going to do my best so they also asked the question about 4k

054students uh about how do we keep those students safe so i really appreciate that coming from our teachers um and so i've kind of answered that one uh another question was you know are teachers going to be expected to keep track of like now who wears the mask and who does it i think that's an unreal expect expectation um except for maybe those students that you know parents said here's the and we know already the students that have underlying health conditions so i think that is a reasonable expectation because we do special things for those students all the time another um the other question was whether there be an option for staff to telecommute if they should personally have an underlying health condition and i'll just add to the one about students with medical conditions

055we have that now we have some students who just can't wear a mask for one reason or another and we make a plan in the classroom to try to keep those students six feet apart so that we can still have some kind of mitigation practices for the students who can't wear the mask but yet have the underlying health conditions we've created some very innovative school plans around some of our students who can't come back to school right now because it wouldn't be medically advisable and how do we provide some homebound instruction and provide them opportunities to still connect with their peers so we're working one-on-one with many of those families right now the other thing about the 4k classrooms is frankly when it there is an issue or a positive test in the 4k classroom

056there's a great majority of that class that goes home as a close contact anyway because as much as our teachers are working very hard to keep four-year-olds in masks and keep them three feet apart if you've ever been in a four-year-old classroom you have four-year-olds at ever any point in your life you know exactly how challenging that is so that was the other third question was around whether we'd work with staff who we have known medical conditions around being able to telecommute yeah and so the answer to that is what we do under normal circumstances we work on a case-by-case basis and often it requires that we ask for medical documentation so we get some information from a doctor and then we make a plan if that and i think these will be few but

057if um there are those kind of concerns that a doctor says yeah without any masks um this is i have a concern about this we'll work with that teacher that employee received telecommunity is a solution um you know we're we're in a much better place in terms of absences and sub coverage than we were even a month ago which was awful um and so we may have a little more flexibility so we want to work with staff on a case-by-case basis and then the last piece of feedback was and said she you reached out to the executive committee of the teachers association and heard back from seven six of whom said we support going to mass being highly recommended but not required and so that's just a little bit of you know some outreach and

058feedback directly from our teachers other questions comments another one um the other piece is looking at our internal metrics because we mitigate and because we're doing the things that we're doing would that be why our internal metrics are so much lower than our city metrics as a community because then it would mean that keeping these mitigation pieces in place is actually effective at keeping this down which then keeps kids in school keeps parents at work keeps the community rolling so i think the answer is yes it is possible that our mitigation practices or masks are part of that but it's not the only solution right so it's the cleaning sanitizing it's the um the air purifiers purifiers we have in classrooms and those will continue to be used um you know but the the only

059way to actually answer the question because this is speculative right on my part is to make the masks optional and monitor the data right so if we were to move move forward with making the masks highly recommended um kind of along that last line of thinking are we able to continue to look at the data and if we see a tremendous spike the other way then revisit in terms of what makes sense for mitigation strategies yeah absolutely um that it is the mask requirement that the board took action direct action on right the rest of this was only things we we built and essentially kind of had consensus around but the board never voted on right so i think we would if that concern happens and it looks like we've changed one thing and things

060go in the wrong direction i think it'd be my obligation to bring that back because that is the place where the board has taken direct action in terms of mitigation and again hopefully there won't be another surge like we saw in january but knock on all the wood you can find but if something were like that were to happen again or if there was a new strain or something like that then obviously we'd be coming back to the board to consider whatever we thought was the best decision in the health and safety in the respect of the health and safety of the students and the staff we serve other questions and comments so from my perspective i think this is a little premature i think that with the community spread that we're still seeing right

061now that we're at mile 26 of a marathon and we're deciding to take off our shoes i don't think that makes sense from my perspective because of that i think that if we waited even two more weeks it would be even better for a community spread which will reduce risk quite a bit for everyone involved when you're looking at the fact that when we came back from christmas break that we had a huge influx and spike in our schools and that was because everyone was doing whatever they wanted doing with whomever they wanted and when they come back from spring break we're going to have another similar situation happening having the reduction in community spread now is a good sign definitely and i'm very hopeful that it would it will continue to decrease this was

062predicted that around february that we would see the omicron wave start coming back down and i was personally looking at the beginning of march to start looking at a possibility for you know reducing some of our mitigation practices in place so for me i think that although the signs are looking good we're not quite there yet to be able to say it's safe to just make it highly recommended instead of required there's you know a lot of data that supports that um you know number one being the letter that we got from the local health departments which basically said what i just summarized this is not the time to do it we're not quite there yet the cdc hasn't changed their recommendations either although they have discussed that new guidance for schools is coming that

063there is going to be new guidance coming soon but they also said that you know don't throw your masks away we should still be masking at this point to prevent the spread i know there's a lot that is put around kind of the fact that kids don't get super sick which isn't 100 true some kids do get super sick um you know i think like 20 of hospitalizations right now our students are children obviously a lot has to do with the fact that a lot of children aren't vaccinated i was hoping that we were going to have some good solid vaccination data for our schools it didn't happen first for both students and staff i know that the information that we have been able to gather isn't accurate so unfortunately it's not we can't really

064draw any conclusions from it but we do know from county data you know the percent of student age kids that can be vaccinated that are vaccinated is around 30 so you could probably assume similar percentages for our schools as well and again for age groups for our teachers about the same again it would be good to know from one school to the next if we have more staff versus less staff that are fully vaccinated and boosted if they can be because that builds confidence you know part of the argument is well now everyone can get vaccines who wants to get vaccinated so we shouldn't have to mask anymore but really the vaccination only helps if you actually got it so if there's a lot of people who didn't get vaccinated who get sick maybe they

065don't get super sick but someone else does and someone else gets so super sick that they die that happened to a lot of people and it's still happening to a lot of people um so for all those reasons i personally will be not supporting this measure i think that we're a little premature on it i would like to see a different date february 16th is very quick and you know i was personally looking at re convening on this in our first meeting in march to look at it again see if the numbers continue to come down and then i think it might be more pertinent at that time to be able to to make those decisions that's where i stand on it anyways amy um and i'm just gonna jump in and just let you

066know that um i also think that this is uh premature in the sense that um i think of anything it's our quarantine policy um because honestly what i see here is similar to what jane brought up if we change the mask mandate and we say it's optional we're opening up for a lot more kids to possibly be quarantined and i know the feedback that i've received from parents is that's what they were mostly upset about if our goal is to keep our kids in person to continue to allow kids to get the in-person instruction i just don't know how we do it by taking masks away and then essentially any kid that's unmasked that they're in close con i just yes our numbers going up so for that reason i am going to say that

067i will not be voting for this and i'm saying that we should they should be masking and quarantining should go hand in hand and so we should talk about changing our quarantining as well because both of them i don't agree with both of them either one of them so i'm on the i'm on the other end okay other questions or comments if not i guess i'd look for a motion i'll move to approve the mitigation practices for the mass for mass boarding requirements as printed here going into effect on february 16th second all right let's move in seconded any last minute discussion i will say heather we need to make sure we can at least hear you we can't take a text vote so i hope you can get your microphone working or your video

068one or the other we can't take a text vote any other last minute discussion all right all those in favor wait wait wait i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry we're gonna do a roll call vote roll call though mrs kaiser no mr burns no mrs justin yes i'll come back to mrs justin mrs carr yes mr sikkids yes mr eustrak yes mr keller no miss deal no president lee no this is just um i can see her but she's muted i mean i can't see her or hear her well even without her vote it fails motion fails five to three uh so follow-up question for the board given the conversation about quarantine would you like us to bring back that as a possible change of practice at our next regular meeting yes so our next

069regular meeting middle february february 28th the end of the month yeah okay and this can we can come back to this at the next meeting if our cdc comes back or other things change this is not today only we can't talk about this again two weeks right it will be out there that this is not a on the 28th that means our next minute yeah our next regular meeting where we take action so and again that was kind of the day i was the the time frame i was targeting myself for looking at it based on what things are happening in the community so hopefully things continue to get better and uh yeah no just like i said in the introduction you know wherever the board goes with this we'll continue to do our best

070to follow the board's on direction um but then for the 28th we'll bring back you know where we are with internal data and potential masking and maybe it's a broader conversation about all of the mitigation practices and would it be possible to get better vaccination data by that time if we can in two weeks um staff are working on it yeah it's just some of that's been reliant on secretarial help from the schools um we are now just one full-time contact tracer working with us based on some staffing issues um and so um yeah as best we can yes would it be possible to send a survey out um to families and staff asking if they'd be willing to voluntarily provide this information so i wouldn't have to go piecemeal by at least at least

071from a staff perspective i mean there's a voluntary thing that they can decide if they want to share or not uh but that might be at least by building because because for me i mean the students are less likely to get as ill but the staff have a higher chance and so if we had a good idea of what staff were fully vested and vaccinated and or boosted i think would be helpful for me anyways we did a similar survey early on with staff so i think repeating that probably makes sense sure it probably just needs to add the question about boosters okay if we're going to talk about the quarantine situation can we also talk about as an extension of that i think a lot of the concerns are that when kids are quarantined

072they're basically just missing a week or whatever of school work and it's i think a lot of parents are feeling it's impossible to catch up to that i've actually experienced that myself a couple times so can we talk about that plan and how we can work around that a little bit because that's becoming a common frustration especially for people who have been affected multiple times throughout the school year already sure yep okay anything else before you move on okay 10.2 approval of the 2021 audit report mr duff i believe you look surprised i'm not sure if there's much more to discuss we've had we had a work session on it a few weeks ago and so this is just for the formal acceptance of the audit uh report no no additional changes or anything from

073what we what we saw at the workshop no there were no no changes to what the auditors did so it's all all the same from the last meeting of the 20th and 24th okay any questions if not look for a motion move to proof second movement seconded any discussion all those in favor aye opposed all right that passes um we'll move on then to our workshop so 11.1 she took plan review with miss melissa do oh do we need to move anywhere are we good here no i think we're i think we're okay we're okay sorry i feel somewhat familiar with this spot but it's good to see you again and it's been i think it's been a long time since i saw you in the flesh so it has been sometimes is it okay

074this way okay i see everyone okay mr president and dr lexman thank you for the opportunity to be with you this evening and to provide a mid-year update on the work on the strategic plan as many of you have participated in this process throughout multiple years our intention this evening is to both provide a sense of where you are now but um to do so with interaction with what you have been hearing in multiple ways as well as what you have been working on in your board committees because ideally all of this work is aligned and so the strategic plan isn't something separate it's a component of the work that's ongoing as you remember and hopefully feel pretty connected to your latest strategic plan which goes from 2020 to 2025 under the sort of tagline

075of learning that works focuses on the mission and vision as you see them here they should be familiar your core values as well as your four building blocks which are also represented in your board committees and one of the things i thought we could do as part of this workshop opportunity was really think and talk about i already heard some in the last hour or so but examples of aligned action or discussions um work that you as as the board have undertaken or administrative work that you have learned about um through your prior workshops and or communication from the superintendent and team but where are we doing some things aligned to the current building blocks and or the vision and the mission just thought we could have that discussion first maybe rephrase the question i

076would be happy to sir oh ms deal is ready um and actually sorry i lost it go ahead repeat i'm sorry i'm so sorry so what i had envisioned was sort of filling your together filling your thoughts as well as um in this more public setting where are we doing work right now that aligns to these things does that help ma'am yeah so what i was going to say is i just in terms of since we brought dr stewart onto the board i just foreign at the board the administration yeah um i think in terms of our communication goals and stuff um i i feel like we're that she's actually using a lot of multiplying method or multi this one where it says multiple methods of transparent consistent and culturally competent communication um i know

077that she's made a really concerted effort to make sure that we're present on instagram and twitter and facebook and just our website and i feel like she's just sharing a lot more of like giving people really a holistic view of what's going on in our different schools and the different avenues you know the different things that are going on so i think that's yeah excellent excellent thank you and that to me that falls in the communication and and community relations but i also think there is something in the mission and vision about the kinds of things you're communicating about are these their student activities for them you know at its core which i think is is really critical thanks yeah ms carr i think that one of the things that um that the board has

078been working on is the referendum and i feel that that goes in all four categories i really do i you know it's about making modern spaces for our for our learners and i mean you can go through each and every one and you can see that um that really works towards this the strategic plan yeah you might think it just sits in financial stability but to your point um it is also you know effective learning and teaching spaces are important for employee culture and certainly for families and others in the community to recognize the opportunities here sometimes that's very much the visible and visual facilities that you have to provide to students and the community i know uh for the financial disability efficiency ones that we have made progress on our audit findings which we

079just approved the audit from last year and that goal was met actually for what we had said before so i mean i really have kudos to caitlyn and her team uh to get that done because uh it was um a lot worse shape than what we have right now so it's a great great thing to do because when i first joined the board that was one of the biggest issues was finances and um so it's great to see that we're in such a much better place now and meeting these goals that we're putting forth as far as stability and efficiency and the other one being our budgeting so making sure that we're within uh two percent or less of excess funds at the end of the year so we're expanding the funds we're getting on

080this year's students and staff and not having huge surpluses at the end of the year so that's i think really great and important and that feeds into the equity portion too i believe because then we're spending those funds uh equitable so that we're making equitably uh to ensure that we're using the money that we're getting from taxpayers to be able to educate and pay our staff and educate our students now in doing it in an equitable way i actually think you've exceeded your goal that was set for 2025 as of 2022. so we can talk or dr luxman can talk a little bit about what we do when you have exceeded um and to your point that's more than just the financial stability that means a lot in in lots of other ways as well

081so your equity beliefs are also a core component of the strategic plan um and listed as they are here i think um you have brought it up mr lay and ms deal also brought up the way in which communication and or resource alignment are also trying to be more equitably shared and distributed across different populations in the district and community i wonder if there's anything here in the beliefs that you have noted in recent work as either a board member or in work with your board committee that particularly aligns to one of the the equity beliefs yeah yeah i can speak to number ten i think that we've been doing that for for a lot of years um every staff member is part of an intentionally designed educational team that co-plans together and we have

082worked really hard at that for for several years and i was part of that work and um you know it in the years ago teachers did not want anyone in their classrooms and they did not want other teachers in their classrooms and it was a kind of shut your door and do your thing and we've come such a long way and that is so good for kids how we have wrapped around them and we've used all of our our our sped teachers and our reading specialists and our coaches and we've they're all they all plan together for the greater good and so i think we have met that mark that's excellent certainly yeah i think the use of data number seven is something which has really informed a lot of the decision making at least

083when i'm looking working on the board especially when it comes to educational softwares and new educational curriculum and things like that when we see a deficit or we're hearing from staff like this just isn't working we try to pivot or provide something more either as a supplement or a replacement to hopefully be able to to meet the need that we have as with many districts i'm sure a lot of our our curriculum is dated and so we've been able to uh with the better finances we've been able to uh maintain actually be able to start replacing those things on a regular schedule uh so that we're um hopefully teaching more up-to-date material still work on progress i know but i know we've made a lot large strides for that in the last several years data

084pushes a lot and we've instituted new testing mechanisms and new surveying mechanisms for students and families to try and figure out what's working for them what's not working for them and we've tied some more strategic goals around increasing those scores as well that's excellent so um in addition to those uh what i what i thought i would just mention before we kind of get into uh the measures that you're working towards um from the administrative team and that you'll hear more about um i just wonder i mean i was thinking that there are lots of ways you can be informed of progress towards the strategic plan though we don't perhaps always make a very explicit connection um however i think it's good practice when you get your whether you get them weekly or bi-weekly updates

085from the superintendent and directors ideally those are pieces of information that align to the building blocks and the vision and mission to try to help you in your daily interactions with the public have the most up-to-date information that that the administration has clearly your committee meetings and hearing the reports uh the couple of reports that came out tonight by the way excellent job reporting out i'm that was very it was great to hear um but i think those are places where as a teacher it's really nice i'm a teacher too okay um so i think you know in within those meetings there should be you know most of the topics should relate directly back to those building blocks and the measures i'll share in a moment tonight is sort of a pause and certainly this

086year is a lot different than we might have imagined it would be i think as of last summer so this continuous checking on where we are is important and then at the end of the year usually over the summer and it can kind of depend when your data comes back from student achievement or other external measures but it'd be reasonable and you should expect an annual update on progress towards those strategic plan goals certainly through the course of the pandemic many districts perhaps yours included have not been able to make those updates as regularly because we've been absorbed in operational updates and decisions as you all just went through a few moments ago but i do think the west allis west milwaukee is ready to get back on that and and to have that reporting

087occur this summer so um just so you know and again to help affiliate what you hear through other methods to the strategic plan um in your 2025 goals for each of the building blocks we have identified specific measures of success so it's one thing to say we want kids to have success in life through college and career readiness that's great but how will we know if we've done more of that in any given year than a prior year and so while you see the deeper learning competencies embedded there know that the goal of the district over the five years of this plan is to get to a place where every student has an annual public demonstration of learning and every student has at least one post-secondary opportunity before graduation and then in the survey tools

088that you use from panorama there's a desire to move to what you see is pretty much at least 80 percent of students are reflecting favorably on those really important characteristics from social awareness to self-regulation and they're pretty ambitious targets over time and what you'll probably start to see as we report this year is those original numbers were i'm thinking pre-pandemic or very early in it and so we'll have to see whether we're going like this or we're going a little bit like this which which certainly could be expected you'll also see the bottom three bullets there are focused on reducing exclusionary discipline increasing the four-year graduation rate and increasing attendance and certainly uh that last one also likely impacted by the very information you were just talking about related to either covet itself or quarantines

089and isolations and still when you get to 2025 this is what you're you're aiming for in relation to that you may receive updates if the panorama survey is given more than once a year you might see some results that relate to that and as we heard um from the reporting out tonight there were definitely some key activities and strategies i think going on in that success in life through college and career readiness but anyone else on the committee want to mention things that they are hearing or working on that relate to these outcomes [Laughter] wow i didn't see it from over there it's quite beautiful um you know to have the work recognized at that level nationally you know when you talk about equity through deeper learning they got that message yeah well actually i

090think it's pretty powerful yeah not oh and you may have already yeah they scare you um yeah and if i could add to that i think the in previous years when we did do our public demonstrations of learning there was more opportunity for board members to be a part of more of those things and that's just been more of a challenge but those activities are still going on and the fact that we did public demonstrations of learning when we were in the emergency room shutdown when we were in virtual instruction last year is part of what why we were awarded this honor that we were awarded and why we're getting chosen like you heard about docky getting chosen to present at deeper learning that is another international conference and it was extremely competitive to get

091on the speaker presentation and adam and i will be presenting at that one as well as well as the team from daki so it's that kind of work that's getting recognized we talk a lot around ways that we get recognized more nationally for our work sometimes than we do locally and that is where our board can be hugely helpful when you guys have those opportunities to share to attend but also just kind of some of the learning that you're seeing coming out of some of those moments and that i think we are doing a ton of that now flw had an exhibition recently with one of their communities daki had a whole school exhibition hoover had a mini exhibition this last week franklin's had a couple um so the more board members have opportunities to

092participate in those and then give feedback publicly at our board meetings and feedback out in the community around not just the cool thing that they maybe saw that a student produced but around the learning that that's evidence of i think that's where it's that's what we present about when we go nationally and speak at conferences as we say here's cool and interesting things but here's the learning behind that and the reflection um and that's an opportunity i think for board members to be really active in this particular building block sorry dan you had something yeah and is there a way that you could encourage principals to to let us know about those and not necessarily the end product like you said the process or a snippet of it or this is what we're you know

093this is the beginning stages of something or and just let us know so that um if we were available because i think that the more that we know about that um you know the better that we can support the strategic plan yep yeah and that's certainly something i can work on with our principal team yeah excellent i'll certainly pause at each of these as needed for questions but i wanted to share now moving on to employee engagement and culture the measures that were identified and the targets set for 2025 shouldn't surprise you in this area you're focused on both participation and perception in your employee engagement survey which you do have a progress monitoring version and then a year-end version every year in intending to decrease voluntary staff turnover that being significant to the continuity

094of learning implementing the compensation system which i believe you are in year one of so probably you've been hearing both about the plan itself and then as you learn in a new plan any refinements or updates and then really trying to increase the diversity of the workforce so that's in the equity beliefs and then it also exists here and and that certainly does not happen by chance but over time will will be the result of significant specific efforts there and so from that committee there may be other items that you have discussed or heard about recently or dr lexman that you would share in recent months about activities or strategies that have come forward related to the employee culture anything come to mind i just have a comment can we next time we do this

095have some questions ahead of time for feedback i'm sure you'll look and think about it before it's presented to you it's a great idea yeah a little overwhelming difficult being able to speak though and yeah on the fly for this yeah um one of the things i was thinking of uh in this space um dr luxman when you were talking about the interactions you had with some staff to bring forward at least some anecdotal data about a shift in mass policy so those are kind of even in small moments trying to seek and solicit input seem to be significant as well and thanks ms kaiser i'll make sure we have an advance opportunity to consider as well as to develop questions you may have because that's the other part that i think we'll certainly have

096time this evening if you have questions about strategic plan execution but sometimes those don't pop into your mind right in the moment but but can come with some advance preparation i know we also um with the calendar we always reach out to staff uh for the annual calendar to see if we come up with a couple different options administration comes with a couple different options and then that's what the they had to prefer someone and we did that again this year and then mr burns brought up about mlk day and keeping that as an actual off day and that was brought back to them again to see what their preference would be to see if we'd want to maybe make that change for this next year and they said no leave it where it is

097for right now and okay for future calendars to consider it so um there's a small example of being able to engage staff on those types of decisions which obviously has a big effect on their their family life and so forth so yeah i think the other thing where some of the comments you all made in that last voting action around concern for individual employees or employee groups i think that's just another way in which you're attending to you know the needs of the culture within the system uh and and tending to it even in challenging times so in communication and community relations part of what i really appreciated hearing ms deal when you spoke earlier was about social media and different methods of communication because the the targets here are in a lot of spaces

098but that's included particularly with technology offering us the methods that it does while we do continue to want to see more parents provide feedback on the annual survey and also have a more positive perception of the district that's kind of a lagging measure and comes once a year and you know you want to have more interaction certainly throughout the year as likely happens at many schools but increasing social media engagement and the use of the term engagement is about people engaging with your content not just you putting it out there so i think that's one of those ways that you get a sense of people are interacting with what we're doing and sharing not just if they're passive recipients you don't know who it got to or how broadly trying to increase or sustain the

099open rates of information that is sent which certainly in a busy time when folks may seem overwhelmed by emails good to see and then kind of the final if you ask me most most significant measure here is can all of those things along with increased academic performance and a great place for people to work and financial stability decrease the number of resident students who opt out of west allis west milwaukee and certainly that's not something you track probably more than just once a year and it'll be interesting i imagine there's been some unusual movement throughout the pandemic perhaps both in and out i'm not aware of it here but certainly trying to make this the choice and to the point some of you made earlier about a referendum to bring your facilities into a condition

100that would make this a place to choose you know there's a real connection there as well am i missing anything in the space of communication and community relations that has come up recently i understand like the videos that yeah such a great job putting together and having a regular sort of like posting you know so like it's it's coming up on my feed more often um when i'm seeing something being posted by district you're grabbing like the reward and posting that up on the thing like that used to lag quite a bit maybe hear about it board meeting but it wouldn't be posted on social media ever um and so i think that just those things it gets the district in a positive light in front of people more often and so that they're aware

101of it and so then when something comes up like the referendum well i haven't heard anything about you know now they're asking for money so i think like that all can feed into having a better narrative for what our district is yeah and it makes it very easy for all of us to help right i mean even i often retweet things from west allis swiss milwaukee because they're so cool and i would like other districts to see what you are doing but i think for each of you when you have those things that you're informed of in a format that you can also share with others allows you to be an ambassador without having to know the explicit detail of every every single activity and so um then in financial stability and efficiency board president

102referenced the first goal which i think given your very uh very positive odd i don't know if it's positive or just not not negative audit i don't know how you characterize that but um this year sees you really exceeding and and moving beyond the goal as you mentioned making sure you have a reasonable fund balance but also one that can secure you in the case of emergencies so the balance between those two and then obviously um the work on a facility's master plan and my understanding is what has led to um your willingness to bring forward a referendum with the public and so you can see how when we first started this that was just at its initial phase developing the plan and i'm sure you were the recipient of many reports from ms windler

103on that particular process some of you may even served on committees there so seeing those things make a move and i believe in fact the credit rating also made an improvement between when this started and now so just exciting i think that you're not going to tick off every one of these and frankly even in five years there may be some that you don't attain but if you don't set the bar high as an organization you never know what you could have accomplished so seeing some of those things already coming to fruition hopefully is is very helpful even in the conditions we've we've been living in so i'll certainly um take further questions or wonderings um but i would encourage you as you head through the spring to be listening for where items that come

104before you reflect here and reflect back to your strategic plan and then anticipate a good annual report out at some point once we have the majority of the data to share and dr lexman i didn't let you kick off so perhaps i should have let you speak i'm so sorry i talked too much no that's all folks i think it's important um for our board for our team that every now and then kind of oh yeah that we have a strategic plan and we're trying to do some big things that we agree to um and there are some ways to measure some of the big things we agreed to because it's so easy to get stuck in the day-to-day or into the last nasty email that you received and let that kind of live as

105like oh that's the work and to remember that there's bigger work that we're trying to accomplish um and you know it gets defined by this plan so revisiting this every now and then even if maybe we didn't quite prep you enough for the conversation so we'll work on that but um but it's helpful that oh yeah this is there and it's guiding the work and and to get back to you know more granular reporting in the spring summer it's probably going to be more likely so how do we actually do moving the needle towards these things some of which have been accomplished already which is i think um pretty spectacular for us but others i and i employ engagement parent satisfaction not as surprised they're probably going in the wrong direction so where are we

106in and how do we get back on track so that'll be the conversation in the summer about the scorecard um so that the board really has a more in-depth kind of understanding of not only the goals but also the strategies that we think are going to really help us move the needle because in 2025 we want to be able to celebrate you know how far we've come and like melissa said we may not hit every single one of these but that's also the year where you're setting another five-year set of goals so i think that's both kind of an entry anna exit for us this evening indeed any questions or comments the strategic plan or i guess i have one and that would just be for the ones that we have achieved um so what

107does that mean we're we're at 2022 right now right so there's three years left at this and we've achieved some of these goals um do we do a mini revamp and adjust or pivot to another goal to replace the one that we have or one recommendation i might have and i do think this will be good conversation come summer but given the difficulty and challenge of some of the other goals you have in this case and in the particular conditions we find ourselves in my recommendation might be to take those goals you've achieved and your target is to sustain that while reinvesting kind of the organizational energy that you thought it was going to take to do that but you've achieved it and reinvest it when i think when i you know to to your

108point dr laxman when we think about the impact of these years on children on families and on employees perhaps sustaining our financial stability is adequate while we also be as intentional as we can there but i do think it's an open question certainly in other times we might say well why don't you take that goal to the next level i just think you do want to be reasonable about what the organization and the system can can undertake as we begin to exit from the greatest gravest parts of the crisis um i think there's still a long road back in in many cases but good great question i just don't want kayla to get bored running out of things to do busy right now all right well thank you for your leadership uh this doesn't work

109uh without a highly productive and effective board so um i'm grateful for your service to the community and to the system thanks thank you thank you very much thank you for coming always a pleasure uh okay so at this point um we have to adjourn this session and we're going to reopen as a committee the whole so i need i need to ask for a motion to adjourn at this point yeah booped and seconded all those in favor aye opposed all right we will turn off everything and then we have