001all right i'd like to make uh break this meeting of the west southwest milwaukee school district school board to order um this deal would you please listen to the pledge of the allegiance states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you very much or can we have a roll call please mr sikkid she says excused miss deal here mr burns present mr eustrot here this is justin excused mrs carr here mrs kaiser here mr keller here president lee here proper notice of this meeting has been posted in accordance with the open meeting laws of the state of wisconsin do we have any modifications to the agenda today um given that we have some members of the public that are not
002following our mask requirements i'd like to suggest that we reorder the agenda to move to the consent agenda and action um and consider public comments at the end if there is an opportunity for it all right that sounds good to me so we will move on to our consent agenda all right so we'll start with oh they're moving us we have item 9.1 the approval of minutes item 9.2 our employment summary item 9.3 our supplementary contracts and i'm 9.4 our financial summary is there any items that need to be separated out if not we'd look for a motion move to approve second so movement second and last minute discussion if not all those in favor aye opposed all right that passes so move on to item our action items item 10.1 central high school palm
003dance team extended travel to orlando florida oops is this the wrong i apologize i'm in the wrong agenda apologize about that real quick so we actually did not have a financial summary in that last one do i need to re-do that probably makes sense to clarify it okay so um let's go back to that consent agenda i had the wrong one from last last meeting so we have item 9.1 the approval of minutes from our uh september 27th 2021 meeting we have our employment summary and we have our supplementary contracts does anyone have anything need to separate out for those three all right if not i'd look for a motion so moved second then moved in second in any last minute discussion if not all those in favor aye opposed all right that passes now
004i'll move on to item 10.1 which is lane intermediate school extended travel to washington dc june 12th through 15th 2022. and miss raymer is she on uh i am on the zoom tonight so hopefully you can hear me yep um good thank you um so yep this is actually a shift of the dates we had previously approved this trip and then they weren't able to go due to covet and all of those things so it's just been switched to new dates but we thought it was important to get it back in front of the board to make sure that we are still under approval as we had approved it and then they couldn't do it um costs for the trip have stayed pretty similar they're doing a lot of fundraising again to make sure it's
005accessible to as many students as possible there are covid mitigation procedures and cautions precautions in the guidance for the company that the school is um has contracted to do this trip with um and the trip is now proposed for june 12th through june 15 okay does anyone have any questions for deidre about this trip this is one that we had seen previously just shifting the dates everything else is pretty similar if not i would look for a motion move to approve second i moved in seconded any last minute discussion all right all those in favor aye no you're muted i can't hear you all right hopefully you can hear me now all right we had a motion in a second and it was just unanimously approved can i say opposed all those opposed all right
006it passes all right we'll move back on or move on to item 10.2 wa truss health insurance renewal for 2022 ms windler and at all he's team all right good evening everybody we are working through an annual item this is our renewal of our health insurance premium for the calendar year of 2022. our hayes team joins us so we have chris smestert and lorenzo di mateo from hayes they'll be walking through a short presentation tonight on how the negotiations and the renewal process went um each year we go through this renewal and ensure that what we are presenting and moving forward is what is in the best interest of our school district finance wise and our staff members so the renewal that we had for 2021 last year came with a rate cap for 2022
007and 2023. the rate cap for 2022 presented by wea was 8.5 percent and um as hayes team will talk through tonight the initial offer was 8.5 and we negotiate it down and there's there are a number of reasons why we are recommending tonight that we move forward with wea for another year and one of those reasons is the rate that hate that wea provides is lower than the trend in the marketplace so we'll show you the last few years and how the renewals that we've received have proved to be beneficial for us in terms of being lower than the market trend throughout those years so i'll turn it over to hayes to kind of walk through just four slides tonight on our renewal for wba thanks caitlin and could you go back to this first
008slide thank you so is caitlin reference the renewal of wea trust is for january 1 of 2022 uh on this slide we're just looking at the plan design for 2021 so really the current plan design that you have in place today district offers two medical plan options a 500 deductible and 1500 deductible plan with wea trust and in addition to that you can just see on the slide some of the additional in and out of network benefits being offered today caitlin do we have access to this yep this is posted on board book for board and for the public at this time so okay this presentation that you're working on here thank you yep and then uh the exec summary and then there are two attachments that are also attached to board book for public
009view so when wea trusts as well as really any fully insured medical carriers looking at what the renewal is going to be for a school district or any organization at that they look at really two 24-month period periods of claims and they break those up and do the most recent 12 in the prior 12 months and that's really uh one of the driving factors as to how they're getting to what their projected costs are or premium for the future year so when we look at your rolling 12 months the loss ratio from july 20 through june 21 of incurred claims paid through august of 2021 the loss ratio is 91.3 percent if we look back at the prior 12-month period before that so claims incurred july 19 through june 2020 paid through um 8 20.
010there's 89.7 percent so when we look at the most recent month compared to the prior the plan from a loss ratio perspectives running a little higher meaning that the insurance company is paying out a little bit more in claims than they did in the prior prior period compared to the the premiums that are being received and then the combined rolling 12 24 months those numbers combined is about 90.5 percent and worth pointing out here when we talk loss ratios we're talking in this case premiums paid versus just the medical claims so there are other expenses that come into play when an insurance company is calculating its renewal that is all relevant to the renewal calculation we're going to talk about a little bit yup thanks chris so for 2022 the initial renewal as caitlyn mentioned
011was that 8.5 increase which is the overall rate cap that was part of the agreement with wea there are as we talked about the main driving factor and that is the loss ratio with the district now when we look at loss ratios typically in the marketplace what we would expect to see for a group that's say 80 to 85 looking into the the mid to high single digit increase generally for that so a loss ratio combined of 90 percent with the most recent 12 months running a little bit higher than that around 91 or so percent now that is calling calling for that 8.5 or that rate cap now through an additional conversations and negotiation with wea trust really able to get that down to a 4.8 percent increase a big part of that there's
012a couple of things but a big part of that is just the relationship that they've had historically with the district overall um there is value in having a long-term relationship from a insurance perspective which is part of the reason we're able to get that down now you'll see the final increase is 5.8 percent as we've discussed previously by removing the post-65 retiree population part of that was increasing the rates for the active group by one percent but that did provide as we've talked about significant savings to the district overall by removing that population moving them to that anthem plan also noted here just on the slide the rate cap for 2023 which previously was negotiated is still 9.9 percent and then as i mentioned you know part of the one of the driving factors here
013is the historical relationship with the district another piece of this is that wea trust does put significant investment into condition management programs i'd say is unique compared to some other following street medical carriers such as the lavongo diabetes management program the interlink cancer care program and they do have what's called their novo health bundled pricing which does provide additional savings to membership at the district in addition to that just the overall service that your membership receives customer service continues to be positive which is not always the case with the insurance market on a fully insured basis and then in addition to that we with this overall 5.8 percent increase there's no change in plan design so the deductibles the plans offered the out-of-pocket maximums that would remain the same the network overall so the providers
014the doctors that the district members can utilize and see it would not change as well so that would all remain the same and then as caitlyn referenced as well just wanted to show you historically what the negotiated or final increases have been in the past couple years compared to the market trend increase overall so in 2020 the final increase was about 4.25 percent the estimated we call market trend it's when we take into account medical and prescription drug claims combined prescription drug trend is much higher than medical trend medical trends usually closer to six percent prescription drug trend can be 13 even 15 percent so we need to look at those combined that's when we say estimated market trend that's what those numbers are and these are what our actuarial team estimates on an annual
015basis both in 2020 and then 2021 you can see with that 1.3 percent the market trend there 7.5 and then for 2022 we're estimating medical prescription drug trying to be 7.5 again and then without removing the retirees we were at that 4.8 percent so overall consistently wa trust has provided favorable renewals compared to what we're seeing from a market trend average and that is all we have tonight so are there any questions from the board go ahead so these are general percent increases and that's just a percent of what we're currently paying obviously if we were paying lower than what other people were paying then our percent increase is actually less or if we were paying higher for costs were higher than a different plan than our percent increase made the percent increase might be
016less but the actual increase might be more than somebody else's a correct assumption yep so the the i think the clarification is that the percent that we're talking about as an increase is based on our current cost so if you're saying if our current costs were higher and the percent might be lower then we still might be looking at increasing costs um so the 5 5.8 is based on our current cost for our plan and as a reminder our district takes ninety percent of the employee of the premium and the employee takes ten percent of the premium or shares in the cost they pay that ten percent of the premium and those rates are in also linked on board book for public and board view tonight too so the both our costs as a district
017the 90 and the employee would go up by 5 and we would maintain the component of having the wellness eligible or wellness compliance so if an employee didn't participate in the wellness program meaning the biometric screening and the follow-up wellness coaching sessions and they would pay the 50 um more so essentially all of our employees who receive who are compliant with that wellness program receive a 50 discount per month on their premiums so the rates that we're looking at in the attached documents are representing of those some an employee who would be compliant in the wellness program okay and is there any language that locks the district in for more than just up this year that we're looking at right now uh or is this just a one year term that we could look at
018other possible avenues for health insurance if deemed worthy from our consultants as well as our own financial position for the the next year after this so this is for 2022 we're looking at right now right so for 2023 we're gonna have to do this again um so is there i see there's a renewal cap that they put in there of 9.9 percent but that isn't language that says that we have to go with them for the next year correct correct that's that's correct yeah nothing is locking you in from a contract perspective for 2023 that's just a financial just cap so you know what your max cost would be worst case scenario okay and there's no language that would say that if we did go to rfp or did and look at other things that
019they would change our rate cap would go away with wa we just know that this is what we would be looking at for wa you know if you're looking at others that wouldn't be affected by that correct yep sorry i had questions you guys have any other questions that maybe my question spurred okay well then i would look for a motion motion to approve second move and seconded any last minute discussion if not all those in favor aye opposed all right that passes we'll move on to item 10.3 which is approval policy number 167.3 public participation at board meetings and will be dr luxman and i um thank you so this is the third time that the board has had this particular proposed revision to this um bylaw or policy public participation of board meetings
020in front of it the first reading was to consider revisions and the board had some conversation regarding some of the language and change some of that language and that's appropriate in the process of a first reading and then because this is a bylaw it is the committee of the whole convenes to consider it is the first reading it gets held for 30 days so the last time the board saw this particular set of revisions was at our last regular meeting when the board again convened the committee of the whole to then forward it to make a recommendation to forward it to the school full board for the second reading and considering approval and so that's the step that we're in tonight typically policies are simply they go through one of the board's committees and then
021they come right to the board but because of the mechanisms of bylaws being the board's kind of policies that govern themselves it has that additional step and so we're at the last step of the board's consideration for the proposed revisions and this particular policy all right so it's like we discussed in the committee the whole at their last meeting there's no changes from the original approval that we had way back a month ago and so is there any questions or comments regarding the policy before we look at possibly passing it if not i would look for emotions move to approve second that's been moved and seconded any last minute discussion if not all those in favor aye opposed that passes all right so that finishes our business for today i was looking to still do
022our item 8.2 our board committee reports i want to give an opportunity for our committees to still um give a report so we have item 8.2.1 employee engagement and culture mr keller and ms marshall all right see if i can do this without my glasses up too much um the employee engagement and culture committee met on tuesday september 21st at 5 30 p.m the committee reviewed the harassment and sexual harassment definition wording of board policy and three apologies two two six six and three three six two the definition in the two policies is different and the committee seeks clarity regarding the spirit and intent of the differences the committee recommended that the definitions be reviewed by legal counsel once we receive legal recommendation and clarity the committee will determine the appropriateness of any recommended changes
023the committee also previewed available child care partnership options through national child care centers that have several locations we will explore the possibility of conducting a needs assessment to determine the feasibility of a partnership the hr team will continue to monitor monitor the anticipated release of the osha guidelines as they related to the path out of the pandemic mandated vaccine requirement the guidelines are expected to be released in 30 to 60 days the hr team continues to respond to staff's individual specific questions and situations regarding the calculation of compensation under the new compensation model released in august each individual inquiry receives proper research documentation and recalculation our goal is to ensure that each individual is receiving the proper compensation the committee will meet again on october 19th 2021 at 5 30 pm via zoom excellent does
024anyone have any questions for brian about anything he talked about or any suggestions for his committee that you might want to have considered for a future committee meeting seeing none thank you very much uh we'll move on to item 8.2.2 communication community relations miss kaiser yeah i think one second i'm just going to board so we met at the september 27 communications and community relations meeting we discussed the upcoming school showcases we've had a lot of excitement about the events amongst our schools our first one will be october 18th with shared journeys in docky they've already have a leg up on projects and we also want to see them in all stages so shared journeys in ducky we're excited to be our first we are encouraging not just classroom presentations but co-curricular theater musical ensembles
025etc uh we are also going to be streamlining to a centralized location online scholarship opportunities for all students so if there's an easy one-stop spot for everyone to go and have access without having to chase everything down and that's it that's great i think it's a great thing to get everything located in one spot so students don't have to hunt to try to figure out what's more excellent on one spot yeah definitely any questions for miss kaiser or any suggestions for many topics in the future no all right we'll thank you again mr kaiser uh and then item 8.3 any board member reports of community events kristin so um something i wanted to acknowledge today is indigenous people's day i work at with native americans children and it's very important to me that my children
026and also there's a large native population in the west allis milwaukee area who don't necessarily go to our school where i teach but they do attend our public schools and so i just wanted to very quickly acknowledge that the west allis west milwaukee school district um we are now caretakers of this land for those who were removed or erased from their traditional homelands here including the mesquacci sauk and fox dakota ayate iowa miami kickapoo and musketin and the nations whose names we'll never know for those who've recently lived here as a nation the botawottamy who reside here and who are known as the potawatomi today and whose creation stories took place in our neighboring lands and where we are who have called this territory home for as far back as camry remembered fantastic thank you
027for letting me have that of course very important though good to recognize indigenous people's day today any other any comments or community items that the board member like bird would like to bring forward i just would like to note that tomorrow is dotkey's very first ptsa meeting so they had not have a ptsa previously and they're getting one started up so if there's anyone who is a parent or student or a staff member from daki who would like to participate they're meeting tomorrow leave it at 6 00 p.m uh at docky so i just wanted to bring that up because that's a new thing and exciting for for docky to get moving all right board calendar and then superintendent's report you skipped 8.1 oh i did yeah because okay so um i'll go over uh
028the board calendar item 8.1 uh so today is october 11th at 6 00 pm we had a regular board of education meeting next monday october 18th at 6 pm we have a communication committee workshop that this guy's already talked about we can have some of our show shoot start our school showcases and after that we have a financial stability and efficiency workshop for the 21 22 budget update on october 25th at 6 p.m we have a board of education meeting which also includes our final budget and tax levy and on november 8th at 6 p.m we have a regular board of education meeting yeah we can do the superintendent's report okay so we will move on to item seven the superintendent's report right uh thank you 7.1 is our update on our return to in-person
029learning and caitlin needs to get plugged in with the presentation but as we do with each of our updates you know we start with a little bit of an agenda what i'll cover during the short presentation here uh and so first i always touch on our guiding principles that we've tried to follow throughout on the last year and a half and continue to even going forward where we are with our health metrics and i'm going to talk a little bit about something new we've been working on is really what are the thresholds that would move us to virtual learning right so we've had that question kind of keep coming up and even though we haven't gotten close to any um thresholds that you know maybe are very very various area districts have considered um i
030think it's important that we start considering what would move us to virtual learning in a school or grade level if you could jump to the first slide there you go you can stay right there um so the guiding principles that we touch on all the time are right safety and well-being um and therefore setting thresholds of what might move us back to virtual learning learning that works for everybody being responsive and flexible and then the practicality of implementation and so we've made decisions along the way based on the fact that there's some things that are just too difficult to implement and being practical about what we're trying to do to navigate this time has been important for us so you can go ahead to the where we are are in our external metrics so i
031did get the latest burden data from our local health department and we're we're stable again things are trending down a little bit in three of the four metrics that we monitor again we monitor the burden status of burden rate of both milwaukee county and west allis west milwaukee and then the same in terms of percent positive and so percent positive for west allis west milwaukee went up over the last couple of weeks everything else is trended down but we haven't shifted any categories so the it's pretty stable in terms of where we are in milwaukee county and even more locally you can go ahead to where we are with internal metrics and here's this is now a little change this table has changed over time a bit uh we have been tracking just the first
032three columns which is the week or the date where we are in our district positive case right so that is the percent positive that's staff and students combined um so the total percentage of everybody and then whether or not that indicator is green yellow or red and so we have set right now our thresholds that yellow would be three percent and higher and then five would turn red and that's where we're going to start to talk about it is the time to go back to virtual learning um the other indicator is going to be that we're going to start talking about now is quarantine and we're doing raw counts and percentages and this is recent and never really asked us to pay attention to this and so we started tracking this we hadn't been tracking
033it every day counting like how many kids are in quarantine total and which schools are they attached to so that's now part of the kind of data collection um that we do every day and so you see a couple of data points here um and that has gone up and so we're at you know on october 4th just over two percent um of students of staff combined again so the percent of students the staff that are in quarantine and you know there's way more students so obviously it's more students as a part of the total um that has gone up uh you know as of last week to 215 so 2.59 and so that really leads us to the discussion about so what are the thresholds when we look at those metrics that might move
034us back to virtual learning and what we've been talking about and uh with with the health department comparing to whatever some of our neighboring districts are doing we're talking about five percent as the threshold and it's both both five percent positive and five percent um of a school and quarantine and the reason i think it's important that we consider both if you think about a long fellow or a madison um it's very easy to have five percent of students out um during regular cold and flu season there's typically more than five percent of student body is out and so if it's only percent positive um it's very likely that we would close madison and longfellow being very small schools pretty often and so maybe that's not the wisest place to go so combining that with
035total percent in quarantine and with that reaching um the five percent those two combined is what we're going to start to pay attention to in a school and again our goal is to learn masks the goal is to have students in school and to keep them in school and so far we've been successful right we haven't had to close any grade levels any classrooms any schools outright so far um i'm saying so far because we will if if it honors you know safety and well-being but when you close the school it also creates a sudden burden on families that now they have especially young kids right so i'm using you know long fellow madison as our examples here but any of our elementary schools where there's young people now that have to stay home for
036seven days or ten days and suddenly the family is scrambling again um and we're trying to avoid that if at all possible and so staying with our mitigation practices and using these two factors to determine if we would go back to virtual learning kind of where we are at this point there is um not a great deal of science behind this that i can find of what is the right number and so i've kind of selected a middle ground between you know some schools are doing three percent um at percent positive and some are doing absolutely nothing in terms of monitoring data at all so it's like okay let's find something that maybe is in the middle to see if that is reasonable for us and so that's what we suggested if you go to
037the next slide you'll see a little bit more of kind of so the data reporting that we're doing now so this is actually up right on our web page when you click on return to in-person learning you'll see this right away um and so it's a new graphic um and um tess has done a nice job and amanda nice job very quickly today pulling this and putting it up um we've only again you see the blue bars which are percent positive and then you see the red where it kicks in where we started to capture that data for the percent quarantine right that's why there's not red all the way through so we've gotten as far as um three percent but we have yet to get close to one percent um positive as a district
038right these are district totals we've had one school if i'm getting this right i think we hit 2.44 and one of the schools once for percent positive so we've gotten kind of halfway to that five percentage mark so far but this is um that is now kind of linked into the spreadsheet so it'll automatically update every single day so parents that are watching this and are curious about where are we in the metrics this is another tool that they can use um to track and follow so you go to the last slide so in terms of next steps um we're continuing for our intermediate high schools trying to incentivize vaccinations and really encouraging that so the custom socks are out and available and so students that present secretary with a vaccination card or parents come
039in and they have the medical documentation um the student gets a free pair of socks that are customized to their school and i have them all laid out on my desk for each one of our intermediate high schools they're pretty cool um it's a problem for me though because now i have to pick what pair i put on in the morning and then i have to make sure i go to that school but we hopefully it encourages more students participating we'll do the same when younger students are eligible for vaccinations also with elementary schools that's in the works as well we're going to continue to monitor our health metrics and attract the internal positivity rate um and then just like i talked about or is there a point at which we either have to go
040back to virtual learning or are we far enough down the road and and younger kids getting vaccinated that we're able to start to back off from mask requirements which you know i think we'd all love to get back to more of a sense of normal but until we're confident that we can keep kids safe and in school we're not going to be recommending that until after we see kind of the impact of vaccinations on younger kids and then um again just like it was mentioned in the um the employee engagement and culture committee report we're just waiting for the osha guidance on requiring vaccines for employees right and there too it comes like the if we close schools in the double-edged sword of what happens the impact on parents if we have um employees that
041simply refuse we already know we have challenges staffing right everybody does these days um and does that make it worse and that's going to be something we're going to have to talk about once we get the osha guidance and so that's the update for return to in-person learning so any questions there before i go on do we have any data from schools that do not have mass requirements and their positivity and their burden rates and stuff like that have we reached out to any districts that don't have any i have not it's a good question i can do that we'll see that um part of the the challenge it's not collected or reported anywhere right we're not required to report kind of our internal numbers anywhere and then it also creates the is there consistency
042across the way we're tracking and other people are tracking but it's probably worth asking especially in places where um right there don't have mask requirements the same that we do so yeah let me find out and i can include that going forward actually phil i can answer that so cdc actually came out with a report recently that showed that schools that do not have any sort of a mass requirement compared to schools that do have a higher incident of cold percent positivity rate in their schools as well as a higher incident of cope and positivity rate in their community and also oak creek franklin school district which is a school district that does not have any sort of masking or quarantine policies recently got a letter from their health department imploring them to put something
043in place because their positivity rate in their school and their quarantine orders in their school is multiples higher than everyone else in milwaukee county which everyone else except for them has some sort of a masking policy in place so there is data both nationally and locally which is pointing to the fact that masking does have a positive impact on reducing the amount of covert that's transmitting not only in schools but also in our communities as a whole and i'd be happy to share those things with you sure i'd love to take a look okay um just one other question um so have we talked with the health department about our percentages that we're kind of holding at and what are their what was their opinion about that i guess so they didn't object but they
044also didn't endorse right so again i don't know that there's science around five percent or three percent um but but i think what they encourage us to do is continue with our mitigation practices sure okay come on okay um so i'll go into 7.2 which is the legislative update thanks kate there's quite a bit here i'm not going to read all of this word for word just because it's a lengthy update today but there's been quite a bit of activity related to the k-12 education world um in our legislative legislature recently so senate bill 373 that bill requires dpi to create a school district financial information portal and we think this is probably a really good idea school finances are pretty difficult to understand and when you get into the information that is currently publicly
045available becomes pretty opaque pretty fast unless you really spend a lot of time with it and understand it well so so this one is supported and because it will require no new data collection it's just requiring dpi to create a new way to tell the story of school finances so that it's a little more understandable generally senate bill 463 this would require each school board to post learning materials and educational activities used in public instruction this one is opposed by the organizations we're a part of so when when you in the report when people see we oppose it's not the board it's really the saa and swsa so the organizations that represent school boards in various parts of the state the reason that this one gets opposed is because school boards have local control that's
046a hallmark of the way public education is organized in in all of the states so there's local control but there's also the concern about trying to manage what this would require which would mean we would have to capture absolutely everything a teacher puts in front of students and make it publicly available and so that means we would add staff if we would have to abide by this if this becomes law we would have to staff up and have people that just run around and collect and scan and catalog to make it happen and so part of what saa is opposing to is just the staffing capacity especially for small districts so you know districts that are you know a third of our size and most districts in the state are much smaller than that even
047um it would i think so i think there's reason for saa to oppose it assembly bill 220 this bill specifies that the youth apprenticeship program must be included in the list of educational options that a school provides to parents and guardians which we think is a good idea the more information about options and opportunities young people have while they're in high school that might lead to a cool opportunity after high school is a good thing we already include all of this information but requiring it so that young people have um access to this information about youth apprenticeship i think is valuable um senate bill 398 this would add september 11th to the list of special observance days for schools as a day to remember the attacks that occurred in and so there's a whole list
048of special observance days in state statutes that school districts have to make sure they account for columbus day is one of them and we've expanded even though we still recognize columbus day we've expanded that to be also indigenous people's day which is happening nationally as well but this the september 11th would add one more special observance day and there's no reason not to support that um senate bill 449 this is grants to school to provide critical incident mapping data to law enforcement so this one we think makes sense if it helps us operate schools in a safer manner it helps keep kids safe in schools by by sharing more information with the police that one is supported assembly bill 411 under a bill of school board is prohibited from allowing a teacher to teach pupils
049race or sex stereotyping and is prohibited from requiring an employee to attract attending a training that promotes race or sex stereotyping so um this one is opposed on in part because there's an aid penalty that provides for um independent public citizens to sue um schools teachers school boards so it's a mechanism that i think creates way more problem than it solves uh and so maybe there's other ways for us to have conversations about what really is driving kind of the momentum behind this kind of legislation it's not just here in other parts of the state and we would expect that you know the governor current governor would veto it if it gets that far assembly bill 435 requires the state superintendent of public instruction to incorporate cursive writing into model academic standards for english language
050arts again wasbee so wisconsin association school boards opposes it again on local control grounds so if if a school board thinks cursive writing instruction is important then a school board should implement that but rather instead of it being a statewide mandate um assembly bill 561 the bill requires the school board annually to report to the dpi the number of pupils who attend a credit recovery course that one we think does make sense that we start to get a pulse of how many kids are in credit recovery courses and i'd love to know so how do we compare to neighboring school districts and what are they doing differently that maybe we could learn from or are we doing something that they might learn from assembly bill 563 the bill requires a half credit of civic civics
051education for high school graduation on and to develop rules to develop a model civics curriculum here too this one is supported we think the more young people know about the mechanisms of government and the process of participating in government the better i was a social studies teacher i taught civics for any number of years it was a standard high school ninth grade course um in milwaukee um and and of course i always enjoyed it and and it was always fascinating to me the number of misconceptions that ninth graders had at that point about how government works um so this one that one makes sense assembly bill 564 the bill requires reports concerning state agency expenditure of federal corona buyers relief funds and requires allocating 100 million dollars in those funds um force for school public
052schools charter and private schools for mental health programs and um this one we would support and waspi does as well we know on the challenges young people are facing right now as a result of the many disruptions that have they've experienced in their lives in the last year and a half and so was being we would support that on and then the gop proposal would allow the governor to appoint the state superintendent so there's a proposal that would change a number of what are currently elected positions they're constitutionally um determined that they're elected positions to change it to appointed positions um and so i think that one i would bet wosby and other organizations will oppose and then lastly um jill underley a new state superintendent delivered the state of education address on october 23rd
053and the legislative fiscal bureau releases the estimated school aides on september 27th and the final come out on october 15th and then again this one i've said before saa supports tobacco 21 bill at the assembly hearing so this is really targeting vape and vape products that are accessible to younger students and then um under the gop on the the or under the redistricting plans right that come with each um census the gop retains smaller partisan edge under evers commission maps but the just given the kind of how we lay out in our state the gop would still have some partisan edge in the new maps but be a little bit smaller and then the reading assessment bill that we've heard quite a bit about that's going to receive a hearing um senate or did receive
054a hearing sorry held held a public hearing on this this past wednesday october 6th and so i'm sure we'll hear more about that as that one starts to move forward and again um we've we feel that we're in pretty good shape given some of what we've adopted recently and what we're hearing they're going to move towards we're already doing some of that work but the concerns are just how prescriptive it is and again the idea of local control so that was quite a bit of legislative updates this week 7.3 which is the board of education recognitions so first of all to our school board october 3rd to the 8th was wisconsin school board week and we celebrated that with a little special dinner this evening so we want to take this opportunity to thank all
055of you and passport members for their commitment to our students communities in our district and it's a lot more work than maybe you thought when you started down this path um but but it's important work for communities to have school boards that are really engaged so i appreciate that as the superintendent that have been blessed with boards that really are committed to the work and stay engaged in the work and then to our district from serena walker she's the confidential assistant in the office of communications and outreach for the us department of education and she and the deputy deputy secretary of education as you aware visited our school district and we hosted them at daki and they spent the extra time to take a tour which we were all thrilled with and so she wrote
056this as a thank you i want to personally thank you for assisting us in the planning the district administrators roundtable we appreciate you sharing your community with us the insight provided was truly invaluable and helps us do our work on your behalf we are presenting the takeaways of this conversation to senior officials at the department of education in the white house please know that the department of education is here to support you and your efforts we look forward to staying in touch please also be sure to share our gratitude with those that participated in the conversation we greatly appreciate them taking time out of their days to meet with us and we did have a number of um area superintendents and other staff from neighboring districts that joined us at dotkey that day through the
057invitation and then finally 7.4 just some quick updates and information items so response to public comments from september 27 2021 so mr broadwell commented on a number of items expressing concerns about crt implementation implementation transgender guidelines our potential referendum um our continued relationship with ria trust as well as social emotional learning so we can say it again and again we continue to be committed to our equity work but it's organized through our equity beliefs and the social justice standards not through critical race theory we have our guiding language and documents that we've had in place for a number of years um we have responded on a number of occasions related to our continued use of we had trust for employee health care and the board just continued that relationship one more time um and they've
058come in consistently as we saw in the last three years with increases that are well below kind of what is regional or what is in the market generally um so so that relationship makes sense to us but again we'll explore cost savings opportunities as we go forward we put in place and consistently follow guidelines and procedures to support transgender students while also at the same time we've expanded privacy rights for any students who may request them so that our guidelines aren't just for transgender students it's also for any student that needs a little bit more privacy when they come to school um so that work continues and then the potential referendum well that's something the board will consider in the future right so no decisions have been made just yet we're waiting for the results
059of the community-wide survey then the board will decide whether or not um there is going to be a referendum put forward in front of our communities in terms of our facility master planning all right so that work does continue we have one more community information session we've added one so it's this thursday october 14th that's at frank lloyd wright it's at six o'clock it'll be in the cafeteria remind people face masks are required but rearranging a separate room just like we did in the last couple ones for people that don't want to wear a mask or can't wear a mask they can participate in a separate room so we keep everybody safe the way we organize it is we share a 30-minute presentation and then provide opportunities for members of the public to explore specific
060aspects of the facility master plan so there's then a table with um where you can find out more about facility conditions and needs so what what's the state of our old buildings and that's steve eichman does that our facilities manager there's then a table for if you're curious about design and construction so if we're actually successful we go into real design and we're starting to actually get you know shovels in the ground so bray architects and cg schmidt construction management are there to answer those questions if members of the public are curious about budget finance and tax impact that's caitlyn windler our director of finance and operations and then a big part of the plan is to modernize our aging buildings to support project-based and hands-on learning and then deidre raimer is available to answer
061those questions and then lastly i want to mention on some work that we're doing when it's not unlike other school districts that are experiencing just i think more behavioral concerns among students than i think we're used to in a september um and it's i think a reality of the dynamics of what young people and families have experienced for the last um year and a half last 18 months and how disruptive it has been and part of it is we recognize that you know we have um for high schools for example there's essentially kind of two ninth grade classes coming in at the same time right so the tenth graders really didn't have a lot of typical school experience they had a lot of education that took place during those 18 months but in terms of
062the relationships that helped them navigate high school of you know relationships with each other relationships with adults and there's a gap now and it's showing up in the behaviors that we're experiencing um in some of the schools and some of it gets responded to long term by rebuilding relationships and trust and really getting kids to understand again if it's the old the old saying if you see something you say something right that's how we keep school safe so you turn to an adult but until that time we're sending some pretty clear messages about what's um the expectations are and holding young people to the code of conduct and it may turn into higher suspension rates and expulsion rates than we're used to um and i just i want the board and the public to be
063aware of that we're committed to keeping schools safe and the vast majority of our kids are doing exactly what we expect every day but um if we have to um send a really clear message about expectations then we're gonna we're prepared to do that and so if there are more expulsion hearings coming forward um i i don't like saying all of that but it's the reality of where we are um and schools have to be safe places and we can't run schools where that's not the case and so i just want to be really clear and honest and open with the board and the public about that but again the long-term work is really rebuilding the relationships and the trust and that comes through the social emotional learning we do it comes to the restorative
064practices work that we do but 30 days in it's not enough to have established all of that after a year and a half away so that is ongoing work but it is where we are and we're committed to getting back to where we used to be um so with that'll conclude the superintendent's report all right thank you very much dr lexman okay so uh now we would move on to public comments uh if everyone in the audience is wearing a mask we can proceed with all the comments uh ma'am if you are still refusing to wear a mask and you're not willing to go participate in public comments out in the area that we have established for you um is that what you're saying i am not moving no okay so you're refusing to wear
065a mask yes all right okay well then i guess i look for a motion to adjourn [Music] that is not going to fly i have a motion i'm looking for a second [Applause] [Music] all right