001of america and to the republic for which it stands one would you please call the roll yes ms deal president mr sikich is excused mr keller here mrs carr here mr use druck here mr burns president i believe mrs justin's on her way she will not be attending so i'll mark her excused mrs kaiser here and 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 i have no changes this evening okay then we will move on to item six public comments so before we start with public comments i'm just going to read the expectations and rules for the public comments for everyone who is listening anyone who might be providing public comments today for
002those who might be wanting to provide public comments who are watching via zoom please put your name in the chat the following ground rules apply for all persons attending the meeting of the board these ground rules are not intended to deny any residents right to freely express their opinion on the substance of the matter before the board but are intended to maintain a respectful and safe meeting environment for all persons in attendance and ensure equal opportunity for all to view or participate in the meeting number one all attendees are required to abide by poor board policies currently in effect for example the face covering policy and expectations of board policy 167.3 public participation at board meetings in addition attendees are expected to observe reasonable decorum number two public comment is intended to provide residents with
003an opportunity to provide input to the board to take into consideration when the board is deciding on the matter those wishing to speak were to register upon arrival at the meeting each person will be limited to three minutes and must state their name and address for the record before beginning their comments public comments should be addressed to the full board not to individual board members and not to other persons in attendance board members will not engage in dialogue with participants number five comments that are abusive obscene profane or personally attack another individual or staff member will not be tolerated persons who make comments that are abusive obscene profane or personally attack someone will be ruled out of order and directed to return to their seat questions or comments regarding individual personnel issues will not be
004discussed in any open meetings and are to be redirected to our administration which are otherwise follow applicable district policies and procedures for review number six conduct during any portion of the meeting that is disruptive i.e booing hissing clapping or otherwise interrupts the business of the meeting is prohibited persons engaging in such conduct will be warned that if such conduct continues they may be ordered to leave the meeting and in the event of serious or repeated disruptive behavior it may result in being escorted from the meeting or police involvement and possible citation for disorderly conduct number seven once the public comment period is closed the public is not entitled to speak during the remainder of the board meeting persons who do not comply with this rule and call out comments questions or interrupt the business meeting
005of the board are out of order and will be directed to cease if the destructive conduct continues or is more serious the presiding officer may request that the disrupter be escorted out of the meeting or it may be resulting in police involvement and a possible citation for disorderly conduct as long as all those rules are understood we can begin with our first public comment mr joe mikelaichek my name is joe mikolajek 3355 south of russell court new berlin i have some comments to make on various topics tonight first why has the school board continued to waste taxpayers money by using the expensive teachers union wea trust for health insurance i previously asked this question and it was ignored and not answered would you provide me with any and all financial analysis comparing options to the
006wea trust was this done and when second enrollment is declining the tax levy and budget should also decline i have a feeling this will not happen next i want to address the obnoxious letter dated june 25th by mr lexman and co-signed by board president noah lay i will not be told by anyone in this administration or school board how i should comment on anything if i want to make a comment about anyone in the administration or school board i will make them that is my first amendment right just try to stop me from expressing my views and see what happens next furthermore if all you school board members agree with the obnoxious letter dated june 25th why don't you all go on the record and sign it there is a major problem with this yes
007sir mr lexman school board he is unelected educret that seems to run the school board this school board needs to grow a spine and listen to what the citizens are saying not an unelected educrat i was not born yesterday and know your letter is a veiled threat that citizens need to temper their comments to your will or they will not be allowed to make comments at meetings in fact you sent a specific threat letter to a citizen that commented at the june 14th meeting and as for your critical race theory it will bite you in the butt i have a copy of the constitution i want it to be made a part of the record and i suggest you read it carefully any questions not surprisingly none before we move on just like to remind
008everyone that the board will not discuss have any discourse with any of the public comments the point of the public comments is for the public to provide information for consideration and any sort of response will come by the next regular board meeting all right next on our list is mr john mauling my name is john mulling i live at 3850 south pole drive in new berlin i am part of the west dallas west milwaukee school district i first have a question i need to have answered by you but especially by marty because i need to know if anyone in the school district a teacher or anybody else has ordered the book written by abram kente he's mr crt of everybody i want to know if that book has been ordered by anyone in this school
009district i was also insulted by the letter i got from noah and marty um it says here these comments received this type of attention in part because of the manner in which they were delivered okay i was a little rough but the because of the content i got my information from m primus and hillsdale college which is one of the most elite colleges in michigan and the united states what i stated they're highly respected and everything i presented last time was factual and true so don't question hillsdale college i have questions about what was said in this letter also at the beginning it says quote to be clear we are not teaching crt in our schools at the end of the letter it says quote that being said we believe crt has a place in
010academic and political discourse i don't care if you're discussing it but you shouldn't be teaching it and i want to know who would be teaching it or discussing it anyway some places around the country mathematics teachers are doing it i don't think that should work that way in primus that i showed you before and gave you a copy of quotes critical race theorists are masters of language there are a series of euphemisms deployed by their supporters to to describe crt including equity social justice diversity and inclusion and culturally responsive teaching now i want to quote from your letter that you sent me you used the word continuing of the sessions quote and to further clarify our long-standing efforts to promote diversity equity and inclusion in our schools that's almost word for word the guy says
011that theorists of crt use almost to the word what a coincidence that is i want to review what i said last time equity and equality equity big word equity means everybody gets the same thing whether you earned it or not girl gets an a plus guy gets a d minus you know that's not fair give them a b see how that girl feels about it equality equality gives you the opportunity to get whatever you want and achieve what you want if you work hard word is spreading about crt kevin nicholson had a meeting at the old countryside inn last thursday over 400 people showed up they had to overflow and open up an extra room people are on to crt i want to also the intimidation from that letter and that young gentleman back there
012is an intimidation factor too i predicted that there would be a police officer in this meeting before i even got here that's part of the intimidation i've probably talked to 20 different people over the last four years and intimidation is the word that always comes out every time that's the word mr mullin your three mainstays okay i got one last thing i hope everybody remembers what they felt like on september 12th the morning of september 12 2001. that's why i'm wearing this that's almost 20 years ago remember what you felt like the morning after the towers went down i felt like a damn heart mad american i also said we were all unified remember how we were unified as a country that day we've never been more unified after world war ii i hope to
013god we can return to that i stood at the field in shanksville pennsylvania and stood there in silence where flight 93 went down upside down at 550 miles an hour mr mulling thank you okay i hope you remember 9 12. we do have one comment in zoom did you have zoom unmuted um leah zacharias i might have wait a second so we can hear you are you able to hear me yes yeah we can hear you now i can hear you okay all right um i'm leah zacharias from 1958 south 93rd street um two days ago the west dallas health department posted on facebook research has shown that smiling or seeing a smile is contagious and can stimulate happy thoughts even if you don't feel happy at the time facial expressions have a greater impact
014on our health and well-being than we think i ask that you change the mask policy to be recommended not required children may end up being among the greatest casualties of the cova 19 pandemic not because of the virus but due to the restrictions placed upon them over the last year which has interrupted mental social and emotional development in unprecedented ways it became clear very early on that children and teens are at very low risk many experts have made it clear that there are adverse physical psychological and behavioral effects of the cova 19 restrictions placed on children i ask that you look at the data there's an average of points there's an average of 0.6 hospitalizations per day in milwaukee county the seven day average for the whole state of wisconsin is 18 new cases a
015day those are just cases not necessarily symptomatic or severe just positive tests a local nurse stated that as of wednesday st luke's had zero hospitalized cobit patients and west dialys has won last meeting i mentioned the statistics in waukesha a district of 14 000 students who removed their mass mandate may 12th and many of the surrounding school districts have made masks optional i ask that you allow for parents to make the best decisions for their children and families please make masks recommended not required for all of the westdale's west milwaukee school district beginning september 1st thank you thank you ms zacharias um since we're in zoom i'll just do as well our person janine bagley [Music] uh i wonder if he lost the connection yeah we'll uh we'll circle back to janine if she uh
016she comes back on uh so let's go back to our live comments uh so jennifer steaky all right we'll come back to her hi i'm jennifer stegey i live at 94 51 west lapham street west ellis wisconsin obviously um so my thing is i oppose to the i don't want the the kids to wear masks i want it to be mask optional um i i'm asking that you guys look into like a risk assessment because i i feel that we have no idea of the long-term effects of kids wearing masks at school like is it going to affect their brain development their lungs other parts of their bodies are they going to be shorter because of this and i'm just really a concerned parent and this is not the america i grew up in i
017feel like more and more we are losing our freedoms this with the critical race theory the brainwashing i'm just done with all of it so and that's all i have to say all right thank you very much okay uh is janine bagley now available to speak from zoom street can you hear me yes yes we can hear you i mean we hear you okay great i just want to agree with everything that everybody's saying about the mask mandate i think it's ridiculous that the children can go to the grocery store they can go to the park we can go to the zoo we can do all this stuff without wearing a mask but when it comes to school they have to wear a mask uh you know i don't it's probably not stunting their growth
018or anything like that but it's germy and gross i mean i have a going to be a for kindergartener there's no way he can he will keep his mask on and if he does he'd chews on his mask there's snot on his mask it doesn't matter if i wash the mask every single day like you're supposed to do they're exposed to that grossness for the eight hours that they're there and for my children longer because they're in the before school program and the after school program they're not at risk for contacting covet and if parents are concerned about that then the parents should be able to say okay i'm very concerned about my child's contract in colvit i'm going to send them with the mask i'm not concerned i do not want them to wear
019a mask my going to be second grader constantly got in trouble every single day because he would take his mask down to breathe it's it's ridiculous we really need to to do the research we don't need to follow whatever milwaukee public schools is doing we need to make our own opinion thank you thank you uh let's see we have one more in zoom tiffany i don't know i don't have your last name hello hello we can hear you oh awesome all right my name is tiffany arnold i live 2100 south 95th street i am um just on the road right now so thanks for letting me speak um i will not be sending to my children back to the school if they have to wear masks um i believe firmly in visual verbal emotional connection
020with the sight of people's like eyes and mouth reading how smiles affect children's emotional intellectual development cognitive development when children have trouble or are learning speech and connection with how to live in the community and how to socialize with other children and their peers i feel like the there's a disconnection between teacher and student when they're trying to teach when they're singing songs you can't necessarily always read cues at that young of an age when you're trying to connect with your teacher i also agree with the snot and boogers and dropping the masks on the floor um who knows what they're contracting then nobody has like died or had some severe gross thing from that so i think um just my own personal opinion i believe that covet is just a way for people to
021try to control there's nothing wrong with our kids contracting or passing i the teachers are teaching and whoever's teaching has far from everything that i've heard felt safe to teach or if they prefer to do virtual they have that option too i feel that there should be our human rights and freedom chosen individually if somebody's afraid to send their kids because of their beliefs then they can send the mask or take them to virtual school but i feel like there's a huge disconnect with emotional development for children i feel like some children and people are are born in homes where they don't have that same kind of love and attention that teachers give um i have lots of friends that are teachers and like the stories that i've heard in their classrooms of little kids
022crying because they like hate wearing the masks and then as soon as their teacher pulled the mask down to smile they had like a physical body like of relief just because they want to smile they want to like connect with one another human beings are wired for connection that is fact and all the other cdc fda i think a lot of that's very opinionated and very biased i feel like this should not in any way shape or form be a political thing i feel like this should be like a human humanitarian thing um i feel like we should all dig deep like would you really want to risk your child getting sick then don't take them to school do something else for everybody else this is a public school we should have our freedom and
023if we have to have the masks with whatever comes forth from this meeting i will not put my kids back into the school district i just think that you're taking away too much of our rights our kids need connection they need to smile at each other and you laugh they need to sing arnold when you take a breath in to sing when you're doing a warm-up when you're doing an exercise when you're doing the daily songs that you do in the class when you're doing a reading when you're responding to a teacher you take a breath in you're sucking in your mask and you can't breathe and the kids aren't saying that because all they care about is seeing their friends and connecting with people so they can't speak for themselves so we need to
024speak up for our children who don't know any better i hope that we okay i don't if they can't hear us but what's that they can hear now all right so miss arnold sorry your three minutes was well up um i guess you couldn't hear me saying so thank you very much for your comments uh so we'll move on to our last comment we have uh written down here mr may thank you members of the school board honorable members of the school board my name is michael may 837 south 113. i am come here tonight to speak about uh these uh i've been watching the last school board meeting and i was appalled this idea that crt is being taught in our schools i appreciate the email uh clarifying that it's not unfortunately crt has
025become the boogeyman of certain fringe groups and really um i think individuals have way too much time on their hands reading facebook and internet conspiracies and they're not doing enough of their own homework to one understand what it is and two understand what the equity beliefs actually say for the school district and i encourage people to look this up and actually read it here's what it is and i'm going to put it in plain terms each person is unique with their own goals and dreams we are responsible for helping students meet their potential and we must meet them where they are without prejudice we will strive to provide a curriculum instruction and assessment that is inclusive and not exclusive we will be service oriented and measure our success on the success of each student we
026will strive to make programming accessible for all our learning styles will be delivered to match the best learning method of the individual student we will use data to make best use of resources we will strive to be inclusive and open lines of communication with all families we will not give up on our students even if they fail to exert their expected effort or break the rules our staff and strong and strong co-working are integral to ensuring these goals are met and we will hire inclusive people that is the equity beliefs just summarized for you what does this have to do with critical race theory nothing nothing there's nothing in here pointing fingers race shaming or gender shaming etc it's about being inclusive and driving home the need to see each student as unique so that
027education can be adapted to their own success i'll give you a couple of examples my daughter is really good at math she's going into eighth grade with the opportunity to take high school geometry this summer why because the school district sees that she's doing well let's keep her going she also struggles in reading so her teachers know she may need an extra half a day to a day to complete her assignments that's working to the student's needs my son on the other hand excellent reader top in his class in terms of lexile not so strong on math it means he gets a little extra time with his teachers it means if someone has a speech impediment the school district is going to work with them to improve on an individual basis it means that if
028a person or a child has to be put into a an institution for for a mental illness that they have and they take a little more time to get their homework done they get the time and they get the extra tools they need to succeed that is what equity is all about has nothing to do with race uh so i just want to thank you again for your email clarifying that critical race theory is not taught in our district and again i thank you for these equity statements and i thank you for following them and last because i do have a couple extra seconds i appreciate you following the cdc guidance they are the scientists they know what they're doing and just i agree with the previous speaker who said it shouldn't be politicized so
029let's not make it political let's follow the scientists thanks thank you mr may uh with that i don't have anyone else signed up for public comments here live nor do i see anyone else in chat so we will close public comments at this time and we will move on to item seven superintendent report dr lexman sorry excuse me um thank you um good evening everybody uh the update on the returning school plan is not a presentation as we've been doing you know for months and months it's now um there won't be an update that's really the only announcement here there won't be a presentation until there's new information to share as we probably get closer to the start of the new school year just so we start kind of sharing out the plan of the
030way we're going to reintroduce school in the fall so with that i'll go to 7.2 which is the legislative update and here wisconsin joined finance committee so news from there legislatures joined the finance committee approved a budget that dedicated less than 10 percent of what governor tony ever proposed in his executive budget for education this was despite the fact that there is a 2.5 billion dollars of state revenues available for the 21 2021 to 2023 but in biennial budget republican lawmakers managed to secure 2.3 billion in federal covet funds for schools which have been dependent on them spending more on education without actually spending more on education so that sounds confusing it's because the explanation is related to the state's convoluted method for funding k-12 education the gop move would bump that would pump 408
031million dollars in direct aid to districts an amount that comes in addition to 128 million bump republicans had previously approved but because the committee also kept the lid shut on the amount districts can raise from the combination of state aid and property taxes through the revenue limit formula the extra 408 million dollars will effectively cut property taxes and not provide any additional revenue to school districts a district's total revenue limit less state aid equals the property tax levy so more state aid simply reduces the property tax levy but does not result in any new or additional revenue for school districts so we're going to continue to watch this as um it works through the entire budget process getting all the way to the governor's desk and then at the federal level juneteenth day became a
032federal holiday on thursday june 17th president biden signed legislation to make juneteenth a federal holiday dustin's enshrining june 19 as the national day to commemorate the end of slavery in the united states it was the first national holiday established since martin luther king's birthday in 1983. brian said signing the law was one of the greatest honors he will have as a president and i would um while we're on the topic of juneteenth encourage people that to participate and attend um beth kayla and i went to juneteenth i've been there a number of times over the years on and it was just such a phenomenal celebration i ran into so many people i haven't seen pre-covered so it was a bit of a reunion and the other aha is that we're going to have some booths
033down there next year all kinds of schools had booths set up and were recruiting both employees and students i thought what a missed opportunity and i want to have our black student union students with their black students matter shirts on because i think our presence would really save a lot about the work we're doing so i think watch for that next year we'll go on to 7.3 which is this district recognitions there's just a couple here in the once we hit the summer months so from the superintendent's office we wish to recognize the following individuals for their service to our organization during a time of transition so becky greece is now coordinator of student support so she's going to lead the 4k um through five ela adoption right so that's one coming up our reading
034specialists and have three schools for school supports alicia roche coordinator of culturally relevant practices she will lead our el department some english language learners work on some community driven collective impact work and have three schools for school supports deidre raymore starting july 1 she will be lead for communications and community relations through july 12th when our new director is expected to begin and ddr will also be working with the related committee of our school board i'm jeff thompson the principal at mitchell elementary school will also be our safety coordinator so that was previously janet delicate janet is still supporting in that role jeff will also be the facilitator of parent complaints so that's the formal complaint and complaint resolution process and that i'm jeff went through all of the training recently for all the new
035title ix coordinator responsibilities so he'll continue in that role as well and then i'm going to be the lead for human resources and working with the employee engagement and culture committee of our school board until we have a new director that's been identified and then onboarded and we'll do a transition between myself and the new director with the employee employee engagement and culture committee and then just uh 7.4 just a couple updates so public comments from june 14 2021 were responded to in writing and that was through a letter that went to all families employees and to the individuals that made public comments at our last meeting in addition more detailed information was shared by an email earlier today with one member of the public that inquired about wea trust health insurance so all of
036that has been responded to at this point so summer school we started with high school today and we're almost set everywhere else a few hiccups here and there getting access into skyward but teachers are in place the curricular resources are arriving by the day and planning has been happening all over the district so we've expanded summer school to address some of the challenges and you know what people talk about these days is learning loss but the dynamics of what we've experienced in the last year and a half um what what is exciting for us at the high school level there's a new strength and fitness course it's offered both at hale and at central there's over 150 students signed up for it which is a lot of kids for us and a brand new course
037and there's also about 70 students who are choosing to take personal finance so that's a new graduation requirement and so 70 of them taking it this summer and what that what why that's exciting is not only the numbers look good but what that does by students taking these courses in the summer it opens up opportunities and are scheduled to take other electives during the school year and elective teachers love to see that kind of thing it allows them to start growing their program so all it's good news in a number of directions um in our leadership hiring a little update so for the new principal at central high school with jeff taylor retiring um and we continue the process for both central and human resources last week we completed the first round of interviews for
038the central position and we moved um what we feel are three really highly qualified candidates to the second interview and that'll take place at the school and so we've attracted some interest from other school districts which we're really excited about the second round panel includes teachers parents and students from central um and that steve sperry who's been working with us and you know on and off supporting human resources doing other things he will actually facilitate the process so we have somebody kind of independent from the school and from us now facilitating the process for the final round of interviews and then we completed the first round of interviews for the director of human resources this morning in fact um and we've scheduled the second round of interviews for thursday of this week so we're moving
039that process along as well and here too we're excited about the opportunity to add some new depth and real experience hopefully in that area for the organization and then finally our facility master planning process wrapped up the first phase which includes a set of broad recommendations and it's coming from the facility advisory community team so fact is what we've been referring to the next phase will be a series of workshops with all of you with the board um and we've scheduled at least three at this point and what it will be is an abbreviated version of the learning experience that the whole fact team had so you have a chance to ask all the questions about the various reports and the analysis and those kind of pieces and then um we'll introduce the recommendations and
040talk about um you know how those formed coming out of fact and then it really is turning it over to all of you um in the coming months to consider any action on a more detailed version of that plan and that will include launching a community-wide survey and as i explained in fact what the board will have is information that fact didn't have and that's the results of a survey so what is the community really interested in in this big set of ideas and will there be support through a referendum to actually implement some of these ideas and that may shape the recommendations differently than what came out of fact and that should be expected and some of the um you know some of the email i received from fact members like well how come
041we couldn't have the survey information because we would have shaped our recommendations differently and the answer to that is yes that's probably true but we need to have something to survey about and so that's the fact process got us that far now we know some questions to ask to help all of you and to take the next steps with this and then again as we head into the month of july um and where things tend to slow down a little bit in schools and school districts i just want to remind everybody enjoy summer months it's wisconsin and so take advantage of summer get outdoors and be safe and have fun this summer and so that concludes the superintendent's report all right thank you very much dr lexman i'll move on to item board reports starting
042with item 8.1 review of the board calendar so uh today's meeting on monday june 28th is a regular board of education meeting and we will have action tonight on a proposed 2122 budget and preliminary tax levy then on monday july 12th our next meeting at 6 p.m will be a regular board meeting then on monday july 19th at 6 p.m we have a board workshop meeting the first one on the facility planning then on monday july 26th at 6 pm we have a regular board of education meeting and monday august 2nd at 6 p.m we have another boardwalk workshop the second one for the facility planning and on monday august 9th at 6 pm we have another regular board of education meeting all right uh i'd like to move on to our board reports first
043one college and career readiness mr youstruck excuse me uh okay so at our committee meeting on june 14th we had two topics that we discussed topic one was some questions on the neola 2000 series we reviewed questions about policies 2131 2210 twenty two twenty one twenty two forty twenty two sixty and twenty four fourteen uh there are several that cannot be changed as they are directly from the state statutes we have a few questions that we are taking to our attorneys and we will report back we will propose aligning all the policies to our mission vision and beliefs while still following all statutes and requirements from the department of instruction topic two is computer science courses we looked at a proposal to make two sections of our introduction to computer science courses to increase the
044access for all students to take them deidra will work with donna krasovic our computer science lead on the next steps for realigning the courses next steps dedra is going to follow up with the attorneys on the questions that we have about policies and we will share the update on our co-curricular plan plan for our workshops for the 2122 school year and our most recent panoramic data great thanks thanks mr you struck any questions for mr combo his report well thank you we'll move on to our financial stability and efficiency report which will be miscarried because brendan and i are new to the committee caitlyn used our last meeting to build our background knowledge by recapping the business office's projects and priorities she started with accomplishments she shared many examples i'll highlight a few reducing audit
045findings from 12 in the 18 to 4 in the 2019-20 creating a master document that tracks all the retirement benefits outsourcing the health insurance payments creating a tracking system for student activity accounts some of these accomplishments took years of effort but have finally been finished and we will reap the benefits for years to come caitlyn then shared uh ongoing projects with us and again there were a dozen heavy-duty projects that constantly needed need tending some of them were implementing of the new compensation model planning for esser funding creating the 2122 budget including staffing and insurance renewals helping with the operational portion of the new virtual school participating in the facili facility planning fact team meetings helping with the new operations side of bussing for summer these are just a few and again those are ongoing
046projects that our committee that she brings before us the committee will be updated on all of these projects as they progress along with just a few new ones coming down the pike now the new ones include black scheduling for the high school on the 22-23 school year that the the financial side of that implementing of the new dpi finance report beginning july 1st so that's of course something when dpi requests something you implement so she'll be working on those and reporting to to us about those at our next meeting we will be addressing questions on a few of the neola policies that our committee is in charge of and investigating and we will be diving into that thank you thank you very much does anyone have any questions all right if not uh i will
047move on to asking if there are any court members that have a report for a committee event kristen yeah i just want to say thank you to sam sajecki from the rec department and particularly a couple of the folks who work for him brendan and abby um i'm coaching through the direct department baseball with a bunch of little ones and it's been taking quite a village but the school the rec department's been amazingly responsive reaching out to coaches and parents quite a bit about um expectations and what they want to see out of it and i just want to say thank you for the smooth ride that it's been so far and i'm looking forward to the rest of our season awesome thank you amy it's not a community event but i just wanted to
048say thank you to our fact committee um i was able to start the fact committee as a parent rep and then obviously come on the school board but it was a very intense process a lot of information i think that we'll see that when we do our own workshop so i just wanted to i didn't have an opportunity at our last meeting to say that but say thank you to all of our fact team um parents and staff who dedicated all that time and energy to moving us forward all right yes thank you very much echo that thank for then that's a lot of time and effort put into a very very important process and a lot of details and things like that that they had to digest and consider so i do echo that
049thanks for the time and effort those community members put into that committee any other reports or comments that board members like to include all right then we'll move on to our consent agenda we have item 9.1 the approval of minutes item 9.2 our employment summary item 9.3 supplementary contracts in item 9.4 the financial summary is anyone need anything separated out if not i would look for a motion move to approve second all right there's a move in a second any further discussion all those in favor opposed all right that passes okay so if i could ask just for a little pause here so um thank you so in the employment summary you approved um two new leaders and we'd like to take an opportunity to introduce them both one i will introduce and give her
050an opportunity to share a little bit of her background and caitlyn will introduce the other leader that's moving into a new position so we need to get on zoom to find amanda stewart amanda stewart was just approved as the new director of communication and community relations and i um amanda and beth and i met earlier today my part was brief with her and she knew she was going to be welcomed and have an opportunity to just say a few words and then she and beth spent quite a bit of time together um so she starts to go and keep her into best world and understand all the systems and practices that have put in place we're already beginning the transition even before she was officially approved but the timing of it worked so she can
051find amanda there she is see her all right amanda can you hear us yes hello everyone thank you so much for the introduction i'm very excited to be coming home to the midwest and to be welcomed into the west allis west milwaukee school district i have felt very welcomed and energized throughout the entire interview process so thank you for that a little bit about my background i have been working at california state university fresno for the last five years in communications and media relations my expertise is in digital storytelling and engagement and particularly how digital tools contribute to belonging and sense of belonging so i'm very passionate about equity and social justice and was drawn to west allis west milwaukee school district's equity beliefs i can definitely see how passionate you all are about supporting
052the needs of all learners and i look forward to being a part of that experience so thanks again for the warm welcome and i look forward to getting to know everyone and my official start date will be july 12th perfect hey thanks amanda welcome welcome looking forward to working with you all right then we'll turn it over to caitlin hi everyone um clark i've been with the district for 22 years i've worked with technology and education for almost 35 years so i think we got a great department i really look forward to leading the department into the future we've got great team members and providing technology and support to all the staff and students and to meet all the needs we're awfully lucky to have you and then before we leave employment summary time um
053just one note this is beth kaler's last official school board meeting and i just want to again thank beth for the amazing work she's done for us to carry us through all of this work over these last six years so again beth thank you we're gonna miss you but we know where you live so [Applause] all right thank you very much congratulations to all our new hires and yes beth you will be you will be missed so but we do have your phone number so thank you for all that you've done for our district all right so let's see if i can get back to my agenda uh we're going to move on to our action items for this evening starting out with item 10.1 the 2122 district property liability and workers compensation insurance uh
054with switler windler are you missing a connection did kevin leave okay so this first item here is our district property liability and workers compensation insurance so we're joined tonight by one of our representatives from our insurance broker marsha mclennan agency so i'd like to welcome mary pat ananson she's on zoom and she's here for any questions that the board might have following this update so uh in the action item that is attached so anybody who's listening tonight and the report can view that on board books we have a proposal for the renewal of our property liability and workers compensation insurance there are a number of carriers that we use for those insurances and those are listed in the document that is attached to board boardwalk tonight the main um there's two main updates that i'll
055talk through tonight so one of them is the increase that we'll see from 2021 into 2122 and that is mostly attributed to our workers compensation insurance increasing so the way that workers compensation insurance works is the mod rating is basically like the loss ratio for workers compensation so it's based on the state it's a state rating that compares similar employee groups against a weighted state average and it's based on the three previous years so our current moderating is based on 17 18 18 19 and 1920 and so our moderating increased from 1.28 to 1.45 the goal is to not have an increase to if the goal is to stay the same or decrease and so because our amount rating increased our workers compensation premiums increased as well so the increase of about five percent from
05621 2021 to 21 22 is almost entirely attributed to our increase in workers compensation insurance and a meeting with mary pat and her team from mma we they have a plan and a process where they work with school districts to identify what workers compensation area we need to focus on and so we'll be doing that in partnership with res our workers competition carrier throughout the coming year to identify our area of need and then create a plan to address those needs in order to bring our workers compensation moderating down for future renewals which should hopefully provide us with less increased renewals or potentially stay the same or decrease renewals going forward so that's the first piece is on workers comp and then the second piece i wanted to review tonight with our board and the
057public is the other large change within um our renewal so we have two we had in 2021 we had two cyber insurances one was through beasley and the other one was through cic so those are the two insurance agents two insurance carriers that we had the cyber through and we got that additional beasley coverage last year as an additional layer of cyber coverage this is not normal for school districts they have two but it was due to our circumstances while we immediately implemented and changed our processes within our business office and then also had staff trainings so those pieces have were accomplished in the most recent year and we'll continue to will continue to do those staff trainings and implement our additional security levels one of those such factors that will be implementing um it'll
058take a year of crack progress and process in many conversations with various stakeholders within our organization is called multi-factor authentication so ultimately what that is is when you log in to oh to your account use your username and password and that's basically one factor authentication so we'll be moving to a second a multi-factor where you get either a text or a phone call or an email to get a code that you then put in to log into your account so that it'll be a two-step process instead of the one-step process for logging in and so kevin is aware that that is one of the priorities of the staff department moving forward for this year and so that our goal will be for um to work through the school year for that to be implemented in
059about a year from now and so uh that is a piece that beasley has is requiring along with all cyber companies um i should say most cyber companies at this point um because we hear the cyber market is crazy right now so we are working to continue to implement additional security factors and so ultimately those are the two largest changes within our renewals for our district property liability and workers compensation insurance so with that we can welcome any questions any questions jane i'm just curious and why does it take a whole year for something like that to happen i mean it's a long time i mean i yeah that's a really good question so there are a lot of components to implementing something like that and a huge huge piece of it is the training
060and the awareness because we could if we just implemented implemented it say next week people are gonna be like locked out of their accounts so without the proper communications that i put forward over multiple facets and multiple ways and multiple months without that training and that awareness it could cause more problems than it would within our organization okay other questions caitlin as far as for the cyber security we have required treatment training that every employee who deals with i presume anything regarding our finances must complete um where did we get those required trainings from like how do we determine because there's lots of stuff out there which ones would be required for our district yep so we worked with a process with a company called know before so our technology department did a number of
061um research into a number of different opportunities that we could utilize for in terms of cyber training for next year or for the current year and moving forward and so no before was the one that was best aligned to our needs and also financially reasonable for us and was similar to the safe schools modules that our teachers and staff already do so they're familiar with that similar format okay are there any insurance breaks for having training like that in place for employees we're talking about cyber security insurance there are not that's a good question um but in the attachment the attachment that's attached to board book on the third page we did receive a premium credit for an amount of four thousand thirteen dollars and that is for trainings that our department went through um
062named mainly steve eichmann manager facilities in terms of risk management management training so we actually received a credit of four thousand dollars in our total coverage for those risk manager trainings right now the companies that we work with don't have a credit for staff trainings in terms of that that know before training or the cyber training okay i just thought if we reduce our risk by having those trainings versus places that may not happen they they do asset and it's pretty much i mean it's not necessarily a i don't say an additional benefit it's more standard they're they assume that we should have some sort of staff training like that all right any other questions regarding the insurance if not i would look for a motion motor proof second then move for the second any
063further discussion all right all those in favor aye aye opposed right that passes all right and just want to say thanks to mary pat who's out there on zoom somewhere so all right so we'll move on to item 10.2 the 2122 plymouth budget and tax lovely miss whitler all right so this is the item that we've been talking about for months and months now we had a workshop on june 14th that's really throwing me off that i just see my picture here we had a workshop on june 14th to review more in-depth the preliminary budget and the assumptions for revenues and expenses that go along with it and where we stand so i'll just review at a higher level tonight as that workshop is available for viewing online so as always we complete a preliminary
064budget and we approve a preliminary budget before our fiscal year starts on july 1st although it's weird in wisconsin because our state is still working through our biennial budget so we are basing our budget on a number of assumptions both in terms of revenue and in terms of expense this year in our preliminary budget we are budgeting currently a deficit of a little over a million dollars so currently one million seventy four thousand one hundred two dollars as our projected deficit which we look to balance before we prove our final budget at the end of october the number of revenue assumptions and expense assumptions i'll go through now are also included in the attachment on board book so the assumptions that are included in terms of revenues are conservative in nature because this is what
065we're hearing from the joint finance committee and from the state as they're working through the budget we have a zero dollar increase in our per people allocation inside the revenue limit and no special education reimbursement rate increase in terms of expenses these are again this is part of our preliminary budget we do look to include these also in our final budget um to some extent so we have a 1.23 cpi increase for all returning staff we look to fully fund our implementation of the new teacher professional educator compensation model which includes a 200 annual increase for all returning professional educators as well as retroactive micro credential compensation we have 8.5 health insurance increase built in because that is our rate cap for next year that certainly could come in lower based on our loss ratios
066and our negotiations with our health insurance company we have a 1.5 dental insurance increase we have budgeted as an expense item and open enrollment expense out increase of a million dollars on the expense for that item and then a 25 reduction in school building budgets as well as 325 000 annual contribution to fund 46 for turf field so it's just important to outline some of the larger expense assumptions that we make obviously there are many more that go into the budget but these are some of those highlights in terms of the compensation model this is again a preliminary budget and the board has identified a priority of funding fully funding those teacher compensation model factors but we do have a unbalanced budget right now so what we'll do in through the summer and fall and
067into october is balance our budget and the board would look to maintain those items within our budget and at that point that's when we would be able to move forward with implementing those within teachers actual salaries i also wanted to just touch on the total tax levy and then mill rate so our total tax levy from our current year i say current we have two more days left in our conference later so from our 2021 tax levy moving to our projected 2122 we're looking at a decrease of about 1.5 million dollars in our tax value and we'll also see projected right now a decrease in our mil rate of over 50 cents so right now it's projected to be a 54 decrease and those two factors there are a number of items that go into
068calculating those two things so it's not attributed to just one item but it it is important to note that over the last decade our projected no rate for 2122 is 1.50 less than the average that we saw over the last decade in terms of mill rate so a mill rate just um because i feel like you can't hear this enough times um all these factors are pretty complex so again what is a mill rate the mill rate is based on a number of factors and so we take the total revenue limit calculation which is the formula defined by the statement so we do not dictate our revenue limit calculation the state is at the state statute and we plug in our factors but that formula is dictated for us and so that gives us the
069total amount of revenue that we can receive for funds 10 and 38 so our general operating fund and debt payments and that's by way of property taxes and state dates so the revenue limit is the total amount of revenue that we'll get for property taxes and state aid and then the state tells us how much we get in state aid so it's a simple math problem of revenue limit minus the state aids equals the school-based portion of the tax levy we add back in the fund 80 portion that's our total tax levy so once we find that total tax levy we're divided by the equalized value in all of our municipalities and that equates to our mill rate so just even within that there's a number of factors that are reducing both our tax levy
070and mill rate and both are expected to go down from 2021 our current fiscal year to the next year's proposed preliminary budget so those are the main points i plan to touch on tonight and i am welcome to take any answer questions all right thank you very much caitlin anyone have any questions regarding the primary budget but for us here tonight no questions at all um okay well if there's no questions i look for a motion second to move and seconded any last minute discussion if not all those in favor aye aye aye closed passes thank you very much yep all right so the next item 10.3 committed fund balance for retirement uh retirement benefits okay so this is the last one that i am up here for tonight so we talked through during a
071may 17th board workshop um um we talked through a budget amendment for the current fiscal year 2021 as opposed to the preliminary budget that we just looked at for next year this is for 2021 that we're referring to now and through the number of budget amendments that we talked through the board also discussed four million dollars being set aside for the specific purpose of future retirement benefit costs and the board would be able to decide when those dollars are actually utilized so just because we're setting them aside now doesn't mean it's part of next year's budget it would be part of our annual budget process where our board would decide this is the year that we would like to utilize those those set-aside dollars so we are governed by gasby we refer to governmental accounting
072standards board and so there's a number of statements that we function underneath and one of those is statement 54 which specifically refers to fund balance reporting and then the different classifications of fund balance so you know a thrilling topic most of our fund balance is under a category called unassigned and what we're going to do tonight with board action is committing fund balance under a category called committed fund balance so um in gabby 54 it states that the committed fund balance classification includes amounts that can only be used for the specific purpose determined by a formal action of the government's highest level of decision making authority which of course is our board so with an action tonight we would dedicate four million dollars to commit to fund balance for future retirement benefit costs and then
073the board could always take action at a future for me to uncommit those funds um but right now then what we would with the committed funds we would only be able to utilize them for that specific purpose of future retirement benefit cost and so this these are dollars coming from our 2021 budget based on the factors that we talked through on the may 17th workshop okay does anyone have any questions regarding this we went through a workshop it's pretty straightforward so the hope of this uh is obviously kind of the starting point for looking at long-term post-employment benefit costs for our district so all right well if there are no questions i would again look for a motion move to approve thank you caitlyn all right so we will then move on to item 10.4
074southeastern wisconsin school alliance membership dr laxman thank you so this is an annual item comes forward about this time every year so we're one of the members of the southeastern wisconsin school alliance and what it's what swsa does um it is an effort to coordinate amongst almost all of the school districts in southeastern wisconsin um lobbying efforts in madison right so it's a way for us to have a collective voice to try to influence legislation that benefits our school districts and in particular our students right is what we're really motivated by um swsa if you want to learn more has a great website we've worked with terry phillips for years as the executive director and you'll see every now and then she'll push something out then like oh the whole world needs to see this
075and i've forwarded it directly to you it also gives you a little feel for some of the work they've been doing um within our membership dues with the big costs really go to pay terry and the higher lobbyists so rainey is our lobbyist that works for part time for swsa but it's always interesting when they're especially like this time of year to chime into those meetings um to listen to rainey's perspective on you know how things are moving through the legislature or not because she really has great relationships um on both sides of the aisle forum and what swsa is doing so it's been a good partnership i've over the years served on the executive committee um for swsa and um you kind of cycle through they have one there's different regions so they want
076representation from different regions and it's usually a superintendent and a board member and it's after two or three years then people kind of go off so i've done my cycle of support and service to the organization but we're well represented with it and so we encourage the board to continue the membership and to continue to continue to be a partner in that kind of resource and influence to help support public education with our kids thank you any questions regarding this no if not i look for a motion move to approve second second any last minute discussion all those in favor aye opposed that passes move on to item 10.5 independent hearing officer resolution for expulsions dr lexman yes so this is another annual item on the board in order to facilitate um expulsions through an
077independent hearing officer has to approve or take action to improve on the implementation of an independent hearing officer we work with an attorney from below vetter we did a few years ago when we shifted to an iho we did get an appeal of an expulsion that went to dpi and we had been using dan velit who's also the attorney that does primary advising for the board it's really the primary attorney for the board and dpi said yes in fact there is a conflict of interest given that and so we changed to a different attorney and that's been supported by dpi and then we've actually redid that expulsion and the expulsion held on the second time so just so you're aware of a little bit of the history there we do like the process because it
078does give an independent um lens on it that is also an attorney so it follows really good due process procedures and you know our um our eyes aren't daughter the t's aren't all crossed we get that feedback in that process so it actually holds us accountable in that process to make sure that if if we do have to move towards expulsion with a student we're treating students in the policy in the process under the statutes fairly and i think having the iho um really supports us doing that um process as hard as it is at times but doing it well all right any questions regarding this item if not i will look for a motion move 10.6 policy revisions two number five three five rule staff production enforcement procedure second reading dr luxman yes uh
079so this one has been talked about before with the board we brought this forward through committee um to a first reading and it's a small change within the matrix and the matrix actually now will be um attached to a rule um under a new policy the new policy is actually 3131 on staff reduction so that's neola and so the the change to what used to be 535 happened kind of along the same path as when we adopted all the new neola policies so i'm clear about the numbering here and um and so we understand exactly what we're doing so we're not actually changing the policy itself we're changing the rule and it's a small change but it but i think it's a smart change because what it does it takes out a part of the
080process that was really kind of subjective if we get to a tie in a building where um a teacher or more than one has to be reduced because then this is all by enrollment it's all fiscal this is not performance right this is fiscal reduction um one of the one of the tiebreakers was contributions to the school community and that gets to be a little subjective right and so as we work through that this last round it became really clear that this is not exactly as clean or as fair as maybe it could be and simply taking that out and going to tie breakers as years of service or date of hire and so it's a little bit old school right um last in first out but it is i think the cleanest and fairest
081way to do that when you're in a moment where now we're tied because they're equally uh high performers they're equally in their years of service they're so where you go to um and so i think this does make sense and again it will be in the rule not the policy language itself all right any questions regarding this change ah we look for a motion move to approve second movement seconded any last minute discussion not all those in favor aye opposed that passes all right item 10.7 cover 19 mitigation practices changed to mass bearing requirement dr lexman yes thank you um and so this item really is coming forward because it's it seems like we're in a space again where we're trying to balance as we have been for months and months that's right various kind
082of competing needs and interests and information around what are the best practices during a pandemic on and we're in a phase of the pandemic is changing too right so lots of people are immunized now although um you know children under 12 can't get immunized yet so there's that right so there's some kind of competing interests right there many of our neighbors have relaxed or dropped entirely mask requirements in schools not all of them right so mps is the biggest school district in the region and has not changed but many have so there's differing kind of approaches to this cdc guidance officially has not changed on in terms of masking requirements in schools but then there's also the you know what we've talked about all along one of our guiding principles of our returning to school
083plan is practicality of implementation and how much energy do we want to spend in enforcing a mass requirement that especially for older students and adults if they're vaccinated is really unnecessary so so we're bringing it forward for the board's consideration and to talk to each other about where do we want to go next with the mass requirement for us there's no perfect solution in this um no matter which direction we go as almost every decision that's been made during the pandemic is we're going to be criticized both directions right so it's just accepting that that's the space we live in as decision makers um what um so the recommendation that we're bringing forward is to try to find something in the middle and it's not perfect uh because it creates its own complexity but the
084logic of it at least to me is that um where we have younger children that do not have vaccines available so if they're in a building somewhere engaged with us whether it's summer school or rec day camps everybody in that building because younger kids there that can't get vaccinated or there everybody wears a mask right and we've been identified between certain hours right um so then after those hours if there's activities going on then masks are not required they're there sorry they're highly recommended for unvaccinated people that's we were through some of this language with claire hartley one of our attorneys and she supported that and keep using highly recommended for unvaccinated people um in buildings where we don't have summer school where maybe we're just running some professional development or there's regular kind of
085meetings that happen during the summer masks would no longer be required and if this gets supported masks that these meetings would no longer be required um the the the the options here that's which is the middle ground option right but you can debate and change this um if you wanted to breed differently i mean an option is do nothing right now wait to see what the cdc guidance is going to be for the fall we can live with that that's fine then we're going to communicate like crazy around the expectation and work to enforce it as best we can um there's the middle ground and then there's the option to drop masks entirely like many of our neighbors are doing um that's probably the easiest to implement as you might imagine if you're a principal
086in a building so you might prefer that from a practicality standpoint my concern about it and i know i put it in the exact sum um my concern about it is that if things get worse you know disease progression especially unknowns around now the big variant is the delta variant um if that really gets going and fall as we come back indoors is it going to be much more difficult to kind of get masks back on people um and and i don't know the answer to that it may or may not be if things are really you know look really bad again in disease progression i think people will all be like okay we got to put our masks on but if we're somewhere in between and the guidance is no we need to have
087masks again you know is that going to be a heavier lift because we dropped the requirement highly recommended for unvaccinated people made that the requirement so so again i'm i feel like i'm all over the place because i am with this and so we've what we've presented is kind of the middle ground um shelly strasser's here if you have questions about the implications of whatever decision you make for recreation because i think they have greater complexity to try to implement what we've put on paper than even the summer school because shelby gave a great example in the email today that there are students at hale that are in athletic high school students in athletic kind of activities during what is the time of masked requirement and those same students are then after those hours in
088athletic activities at hail so during these hours they have to wear a mask but then the same kid later doesn't right that's the reality of it i don't know how else to clean that up by finding a middle ground but i just wanted to be honest about how this might shake out if it's implemented as kind of put on paper right now but with that i'm going to turn it over to all of you and just help us figure out where you want us to go next all right no questions i assume kristen thanks for saving us to the end by the way um i would personally like to table face masks requirement for buses at this time for september 1st i think it'd be kind of nice to sit on this as a community
089with the newer a little more um relaxation on the mask when it comes to those who are backstage vaccinated i think we should table september discussions until we're a little closer and see where we're at with the hope that there is a vaccine being developed and moved forward quickly i just think these are two separate discussions and so to also have the bus um september 1st discussion it's a little too soon kind of piggybacking on that i think there's a possibility because we've said we haven't had cdc guidance in a while i would imagine as we get closer to the school year that's something that hopefully will change that will provide a little bit more guidance i think i think in terms of the summer school situation i think that makes sense i think people
090made decisions based off of what was going to be in place um and now you've got some of that cohabitating that wasn't necessarily completely expected and i think kind of making those expectations clear makes sense um but yeah potentially uh making a decision on september 1st for when the school year starts whether that be end of july early august kind of revisiting that as we have more information other questions i was just going to jump on that and agree with both brian and kristen um one of the concerns that i had and maybe you can address this you might not have an answer is um just in terms of like the fall and something that you know we can kind of think about is um so we're requiring it for elementary school but remember we
091have 11 year olds that go to middle school i did look at the now you know lane and west milwaukee have smaller populations um last year we only had 161 114 sixth graders at those two schools but when you're looking at frank lloyd wright you're looking at 276 that's how many sixth graders we had last year so even if we say quarter you know 75 percent or 25 of those kids can get vaccinated if the parents choose that um this is something to think about so um i'm not saying one way or another whether we should have it optional or you know mandatory but i think that there's some questions in terms of that we need to look at because i think people in the community and parents are going to say well why are
092you requiring in my elementary school but you know my 11 year old's going to flw or lane or whatever and they don't have to wear one the other thing i would like us to consider is if we're making it optional for our high school and our excuse me our middle school teachers and staff to wear no masks if they're vaccinated i think that's something we might want to consider for elementary school teachers if that's something that you feel comfortable with so again um so those are just some of the things that i came up with uh or just thought about um and then i just wanted to to verify that in the fall the intention is still to use hand sanitizer use the plexiglass still do social distancing and we're going to do the same
093things that we're doing now so at this time the answer is yes unless guidance changes okay right so if there are um adjusted practices i think a little bit of what i'm hearing is right let's do a wait and see for the fall and i think i think that makes sense i introduced it they're thinking that maybe it provides a little bit of assurance for families that are watching like okay at least we're gonna have masks in the fall so i can you know feel comfortable sending my four-year-old um but including that right now is doesn't really it doesn't really change anything right so unless you're going to take action to change the current requirements we're still going to have masks we're still going to have all the other mitigation practices it's really i think
094starting july 1 up until the end of august right i think what i'm hearing is do you want to make some adjustments there um and then we'll revisit and what comes in the you know in the fall and i think it'd be social distancing where possible because again if we're having everyone back the social distance thing as we know pretty much is going to go away for most of our classrooms just because of the number of students there bill i would like to go do away with masks i would like to know what kind of data is out there for waukesha franklin and old creek that have done away with mass and how the spread has you know have we seen any spreading kids under 10 years old in these scenarios we have everything going
095open everywhere you go there's no mass i'm watching 35 000 people up at the bucks game or the brewers game box games open everything is open it's been 15 16 months where we keep saying let's wait for the data we don't know if they spread we don't know we don't know and i don't see any data we had 16 what was it to count we had 16 cases in the state of wisconsin okay i don't see a need for the mass anymore i don't see him a need for him in summer school especially and here's the other thing i've been in school board for five years there's not been one topic where i've gotten contacted as much as this topic right here and i've had two people tell me they want masks two and i've
096probably a hundred plus people teachers everybody nobody wants some ass two people and they're from the same family or they have the same last name so i've talked to probably 30 teachers they don't want miss they don't want to talk to the kids and tell them to put up your mass they don't want to go through hey why at the brewer game nobody has to wear a mask but i come to school and i gotta wear a mask what kind of mental block is that gonna put on kids where everybody else different school districts don't have to wear masks but us in west allis we gotta wear our masks i don't get it i don't see it and i'd like to be done with it okay for our questions jane i i have a lot
097to say um and again when we talk about middle ground so marty talked about middle ground and you know doing away with the masks would be not middle ground would it because then some people would not be having their needs met and i wrote this because i'm emotional about it because i'm very invested and i see both sides to this argument and so what i would like to propose as a board um i will read it's just 30 seconds one of the we have all been part of the deeper learning competencies all of us doing this we have collaborated and communicated and problem solved and we have done so much self-directed learning as a as a country as a world we have been imploring these but what we haven't done is um agreed on the
098content mastery all right so the content mastery is when we read things from the cdc when we watch our read articles and we watch television and what's happening is is that the issue this becomes the issue so both sides make compel compelling cases for masks or no masks both sides can use science to back up their stance both sides truly believe that they are doing what is best in their hearts for their children and i believe all of you when before i got on the board you truly believe following the cdc is the way to go you believe that that's the best thing for our students and i respect that but when you have two opposing sides i feel that we as a board should leave it up to the parents it's we should not
099be voting yes we we are going to keep masks in place no we are not i think that we should give this responsibility and this decision to the parents because a year ago when we backed and used the cdc it was because it was new and we didn't know and we said let's just let these experts handle this and i think we made a very good decision doing that but now we are in a completely different space and parents know a lot and if we want to live our equity non-negotiables then we need to listen to all families whether it be the two that want their children so desperately to wear masks or the ones that don't and so we need to give a gradual release of responsibility to our parents and we need to
100go back and revisit this and say no you know what we're not going to make this decision the parents are and we'll have it optional and that's the way that we meet middle ground make this an optional thing let the parents decide for their children all right other questions or comments and based off that then i'd like to hear from teachers because we also serve for them and where do they feel on this subject at this point okay any other questions or comments on this yeah i mean i don't know what that means no no one knows what that means i think that we're in a we're in a space where we have to one look at what's best for our families what's best for our communities but i think too um the issues as
101well if we're talking about equity if we leave it up to the parents and we have a lot of people that are upset about masks and they're like we're not wearing masks we're sending them in that leaves the equity away for the people that want the masks in place that leaves people behind that don't feel safe and it's like well they can go to virtual school then why don't the people that don't want to wear masks go to virtual school if they don't want to follow the guidance of the cdc and the professionals that are in the field then shouldn't they be the ones that are making the choice to stay home rather than putting that onus on the people that want to participate in the community want to participate in things that are going
102on within the community and i understand that there are differences between different areas that we have you go to an outdoor game at the brewers and they don't have it mass it's outdoors that's along with the cdc guidelines you go to the indoors pfizer has a mask mandate it is in on their website so if they weren't following it that's on them not necessarily on us going like well why can't we do it and i think if we're if we're talking about those two that desperately want their kids to wear masks i want my kids to wear a mask i have a four-year-old he wore a mask he didn't have a problem it gets gross he puts on a different one i think it's also about how we support it at home and that this
103is just what we do it's not something that's a terrible piece in place it's not something that's going to be awful it's not going to hurt you it is simply what we do and the expectation in this space is that expectation the expectation over here is that expectation and we as students have that when we go to different teachers so arguing that well we're different yeah we are we've also kept our transmission down we've been able to maintain our school at a high uh caliber education and i don't think that backing off of that now when we have a delta variant that's coming in is going to do us any good i mean we're going to have to fight it harder to get people back in the masks if they are taking them off now
104okay kristen so to sum up let's table that one issue about september first buses um i'm in favor of accepting what was been proposed for today minus that bus piece for september 1st and go from there okay and elementary school students september 1st yes sorry the september 1st piece can you read it to me again read what would be i'd be so essentially we'd be taking off the last for the second to last paragraph i believe she says mass will be acquired for all students staff families and visitors elementary schools and for all students on buses starting september 1st and be in effect until cdc guidance on mass squaring in schools changes or other local health guidance indicates changes are appropriate um i'm asking that that part be removed because it's very separate from summer
105where just a different atmosphere and different expectations and levels of crowdedness and allowing for athletics parks and recreation and within the facilities departments and such to be able to take masks off for vaccinated adults and highly recommend otherwise while i do agree with tabling that part i just do want to know that by removing that we we effectively still have in place what we ended the school year with so we will want to be sure that we revisit this prior to the school year starting so if i could suggest so there's not emotion on the table yet no but but i think what would maybe by removing that that's that's fine i mean again we just need to get some direction from you effective july 1 2021 through you know if it goes august 31st
106or whatever the whatever you want i think that then cleans up like okay that's for now but the previous is still there all right so it's really through august 23rd is the next board meeting before school is reopened right it could be that that's that one that works as well to get the communication out about any potential changes and so forth so you would probably want to do it till august 9th well i would just well either that or the following week which is still before school would begin correct i think i think the simplest way is to make it calendar to the end of august and then that we just will like we did with the return to school plan we put a date in place that we would revisit this whether we took
107action on it or not would depend upon the discussion on that on that evening so um in your opinion dr lex as far as having enough time to communicate what the masking expectation will be for the next school year what's the latest that you think we should consider that again i think we should probably be at the first regular meeting in august and even though this expectation if you prove this would go beyond that the august 9th is really what happened september first right sure exactly that would be something that i think would be reasonable and that people have an understanding of that expectation amy did you have something yeah i just is there a way that we can get some feedback from parents and teachers because i'd really like i mean i'm not saying
108one way or another but you know especially our staff i think it's important that um i did actually have a staff member reach out to me about being optional for masks at elementary school so i'd really i do want to hear what the community has to say about this because again we're only nine members obviously we have different opinions um i know that science isn't necessarily about opinions but i'd still like to kind of gauge where our community is and our staff is with it so yeah we can we can certainly do that families start to pay more attention to what's happening in schools what you hit when you hit august so it may be we get a survey lined up and it runs you know august 1st august 9th or something so we can
109bring it into that august 9th meeting to get some feedback from all employees it'd be interesting and then maybe parse it out by teacher and other groups and then for families as well um you could do it by age that might be interesting as well so yes i think i think makes a lot of sense that we would ask yeah i mean that's similar to what we did when we were evaluating the returning to school plan in the first place in terms of what comfort levels were with certain scenarios and so forth so i think that would i would agree that would be some good information to have and i think you mentioned about doing off of grade levels when people are i have a kid in each level so you know my so my
110middle school or my high school are vaccinated but obviously the the you know eight-year-old isn't so i'd i'd like to you know that would be nice to just kind of if it if we can kind of look at you know where people are feeling you know parents and guardians are feeling in terms of where their kids are in that base on age so okay i think that the comparisons between our elementary age students who cannot be vaccinated with adults is not a good one because someone choosing to vaccinate versus someone not being able to be vaccinated are two very different things and i think the reason why these were selected as carefully as they were is to take the largest groups of the people who can't be vaccinated and try to protect them as much
111as we can there's a lot of things that i can say about transmission among students and tradition among kids and the fact that there is has been an increase since vaccination started in our younger kids showing up in hospitalizations that the percentage of them getting sick has increased which is expected because you're seeing people who would otherwise be getting sick being vaccinated and they can't be it but the other thing that we have to concern ourselves with when this happens is that if a child who maybe doesn't get very ill can then pass it on to someone else who can whether they're vaccinated or not the delta variant has been shown to be able to break through the current vaccine it's called delta plus is the new variant that has been emerging and so that's
112of a concern so much so that who just today announced that they said people who are fully vaccinated should continue masking so it's in these situations that we have to consider when we're making these decisions regarding masking and it doesn't no one is harmed by a mask nobody is harmed by a mask there is zero evidence to show that masking hurts anyone and there's lots of evidence that shows that masking prevents the spread of copen19 many many peer-reviewed papers and i'd be happy to provide them to anyone who wants to see them about masking and so i think in this situation when you're talking about the safety of people who cannot protect themselves because they do not have the option of having a vaccine and making someone wear a piece of cloth over their face
113with with breaks and so forth and so on that we had in our school district it's an easy decision for me personally to make because it doesn't hurt anyone to do this but someone else not doing it or if you say someone's gonna be optional and okay fine you wear a mask if you want to the mask that i wear protects you it doesn't protect me and so that's why it's important that everyone who's there is masking or the vast majority of them otherwise the protection of it is lost and so if you don't have that in the schools that's where the concern comes in for me and the science all agrees with it so for me personally i would be in favor of removing the fall discussion and make it closer to fall my
114hope my sincere hope is that we have clear cdc guidance at that point which tells us what we need to do as a school district what they think that we should be doing as a school district and although we know more the average population knows more about this the cdc the wisconsin state department of health and our local health departments are still far more better at public health they're public health experts they went to school for this they work in this none of us here knows more than that and so an opinion of whether you want your child to wear something not that's one thing but whether or not that's the right thing to do for public health is a very different thing and those are the two things that have to be separated between
115making decisions for your child and making decisions for the greater good of the public and that's what public health is and unfortunately that gets lost a lot of times these discussions it's not so much about personal liberty it's much more about making sure that each one of us here and all our loved ones can be here a year from now there's over 600 000 americans that can't say that right now i just want everyone to consider that so with that being said i would attend a motion unless there's other discussion which i would be happy to hear so when i listen to you noah i agree with you and i say wow yes he makes a lot of sense but then there are other people that will say that they have that have data that
116shows that masks can so again so the data that we're using is the cdc is that correct well it's it's the cdc guidance but there's plenty of individual studies that have been done the american academy of pediatrics is another group which is a group of uh pediatricians obviously that you know provide guidance about masking and children and so forth and so on so my reservation is that parents their children are their most precious commodities and i cannot imagine any community member putting their child at risk i believe that that they have enough evidence in their minds from the last year to say i do not think that my child needs to wear a mask or that it will um it will affect the majority of kids in a very negative way or in make a
117lot of kids ill i believe that they have a right to have that and say that and so the middle ground is allowing them to make the choice i don't i so i still i'm not when i listen to you i understand what you're saying i do i understand but i can listen to a group of parents that will be able to give me other information that really makes sense and i i don't know i mean are we really the ones that should be making that decision right so i also to a degree agree with you but i don't think it's safe to assume when when we have the stakes that we have we can't assume that everybody's doing the research not everybody's doing the research um and this goes on both sides because again
118i'm kind of in the middle here um i i see i i see a lot of the potential issues on both sides but i've heard people on both sides that clearly have not done any type of research and they're just following along with what other people have said they haven't done the work on their own so those are the people that worry me because they're just going with whoever's squawking the loudest they're not doing their own research they're not making their own decisions they're following whatever crowd it is that they're following and that's where i get worried again on both sides um i i think again i think by tabling the piece for september what this does is it allows us to get similar information both from staff families etc and then it kind of
119keeps in place some of the safeguards that were in place when people made the decisions about what they were doing this summer which i think makes sense because ultimately those decisions were made based on the information that they had um so and hopefully during that time especially as you know if we're getting surveys out to parents and so forth hopefully those parents will take that time to educate themselves as well surveys surveys will if we're following the cdc and we're saying that we believe in the science and we should follow them and and and noah's point surveys are a moot point even if even if 90 of our population of our community say we don't want masks if we're going by noah it doesn't matter then he's right noah but what you're saying is that's
120true you know they might be thinking with their hearts they might be thinking um for reasons that are are not about public health so i think i think the important thing to take into account is that we did surveys for return to school you know the the the majority of people were looking to return to school we chose not to do that because that was against the public health recommendations okay if the cdc comes out with recommendations and this is me speaking personally here if the cdc comes out the recommendations says due to whatever reasons we highly recommend that school districts require masking in their schools for all students regardless of vaccination status then me personally i would be in favor of following those and the reason for that being is since the beginning of
121this we've always followed the science and i don't there's nothing that i've seen that tells me that we should suddenly not do that anymore there's there's no new information out there that says that suddenly people know more than the public health experts so if i'm not saying that the rest of the board will agree with me i'm saying that's where i would be because that's what i've been doing this entire time yes bill so we we have districts surrounding us that have gotten rid of the mass policy correct do we know how many districts have gotten rid of it and to what extent and have we reached out and asked any of those districts for any type of data you know how many kids have they had to uh how many kids have tests positive
122any type of information any type of data i mean i hear we have data i mean but but i don't see it well here we have it waukesha do we know has there been a higher rate of transmission in kids under the age of 11 since they removed the mask so and oak creek franklin is there any data no but i mean obviously the data now would be a little bit skewed since we don't we're not in school so the data if they if they removed them in the beginning of may i don't know when long shot exactly it wasn't until like there's about two weeks left and now they have summer school and i'm assuming right so we could probably get some data and some information from some surrounding districts that took steps to
123remove the masks and see what kind of issues have cropped up i mean we all we say we have data but i don't see the data i want to see the data so bill i can i can email you some articles the data that i'm referring to is uh global stuff so so not looking not looking at whoa global yeah so so large scale studying that's a huge variant and a huge factor in this type of data yes we want a little more localized type of data we use our local data to make i mean the thing i look at is our local transmission rates and our and you know the the our burden rate that we're looking at the the the thing that's now being updated every two weeks our local data is what
124we use to try and look at what is the risk here right in our own backyard but when you're looking at broad scale decisions when you're looking at you want to look at millions of people not just 10 000 because then you're looking at every swath of race ethnicity disability age all of those things are being taken into account when you're looking at those decisions and so when i talk about data peer-reviewed data for the most part good peer-reviewed data is going to have a large sample size which means a lot of people were looked at to determine if there was an effect or not positive or negative so that's the data that i'm referring to so i would really like to see some more local data so i don't know things from the surrounding
125you know school schools in the state of wisconsin maybe how many don't have mass when did they get rid of the mass have they had any issues with the mass or the transmission rate um i know mostly a lot of broad i mean i'd like to probably you know if we want to broaden it to cities in the united states that have the same ethnic makeup as this and populations of the city west allis let's do that you know but like i want to see data on what specifically would you like to i just said the transmission rate in the local area of kids under the age of 11 since the mass requirement has been removed in the school districts in any school district in the state of wisconsin okay so any school district in
126the state of wisconsin that doesn't have a mask requirement right so the data is going to be pretty limited i'll tell you just because no school district in the state of wisconsin a public school district i should say there were private schools that didn't have mass requirements early on but they have a much smaller population in general but public school districts very few of them had any length of time where they weren't having a mass mandate in the school towards the end of the school year there were some around us that did remove it waukesha was one of them you're correct um okay franklin i believe just recently removed it for summer school but other than that i'm not aware of any but you know that sort of stuff can be found and see if
127what other ones have them we know mps hasn't changed it this dr boxman just said that so that information may be able to put together it may be useful for us for a discussion for for fall for the next school year but right now what we have here in front of us is a recommendation for the rest of this summer and we've had a suggestion but no official motion to amend the current recommendation to remove the second to last paragraph starting with max will be required for all students to have families and visitors in elementary schools and for all students on bus routes starting on september first twenty twenty all right i moved to amend 10.7 to remove the fall map that second last paragraph require discussing fall mask wearing and move to approve 10.7
128with that struck from the proposal with requirements through august 31st hi second all right so we have a motion a second on amended 10.7 which would change the masking requirement to only the schools and hours as indicated would take effect from july 1st 2021 effective until august 31st we should probably add in there that we will review [Music] the date that we're going to review for so no no later than august 9th um if you want you can put that in into the motion so either the maker or you'd have to offer a friendly amendment i offer a friendly amendment to discuss this on august 9th 2021 to review fall mastering requirements for west house west milwaukee school district second all right we have a motion second for amended item 10.7 as indicated any further
129discussion a question about the buses yes um we have effective immediately and we have all this going on and it says buses will be required on on buses and then down below it says school buses for the purpose of athletic activities or participating in recreational community services program they are not required then is that what that's saying yes so so summer school bus routes would require it but the athletic other ones would not well does the recreation community include the uh the camps that the students are attending at hail because that's through the rec department if you look here it says buildings hosting operational day camps hail so 7 30 to 5 30 will be required to wear masks right but if they go on a bus during that time it's part of the wreck
130department they're not then required to have a mascot i don't know that they've been doing that charlie can you come here by the mic thank you at this point i'm not aware of any scheduled field trips so if the requirement would be to for all the kids even at the camp to wear a mask while on the bus then they would do so but right now we don't have any field trips scheduled so there's no phone buses but they can't understand so there's so many and we do not provide transportation it's all fair transportation so this isn't about getting them there this that would be only field trips yeah which they have done in the past we have done them in previous years yep but that would be a clear distinction from the other groups
131that are listed hence that would fall under i would assume the policy of them being in their summer school class or their day right yeah their daycare because the bold up on top of the very first table includes on buses that's it's hard to find the language that makes it it's really clear but right and the only reason i ask is because we're dealing with two different groups with the schools on buses versus with the rec department on buses so that would be through the rec department which is not required correct but i think for the fact that it says for day camps that if it's part of day camp then it would be required because the cbc guidance on this is that even vaccinated people are supposed to wear masks on called transportation so
132that and that's why the original amount for the original statement for fall said all students regardless of age would be wearing masks on buses just because that's what the cpc current guidance is so i mean are you saying that we need more language to specifically state that or is it clear enough from this that we would that if they're in day camp regardless of the activity if it's on a bus or inside they're going to be wearing a mask if they're outside obviously this doesn't change your outside masking requirements it's not required for outdoors you okay with that i feel like it needs to be explicit otherwise we'll have arguments michelle is the one who runs it i'm sure you'll have arguments arguments from i i don't know whoever so should only come in account
133if we head out if we go yeah so i mean if that's if there's no plans on ever taking the kids anywhere during this summer or cycle then yeah and if we if it would that would be addressed at that time the plan that it would be you know according to a policy that while we're on bus we're masked but this is so we did have a motion we did have a second and the other questions or comments i got a question uh if i vote no would i be voting for the current mass policy to be to continue yes you would and if i vote yes and i'm voting for the amended asking policy correct so would i recuse myself or would i have seen if i don't want to hold either so you
134can abstain you wouldn't have a reason unless you have a conflict of interest i don't know right okay any other questions or comments i will be obsessing i will also okay all those in favor aye opposed and two extensions okay so five to zero all right well is that our quorum i'm sorry yes well it just has been present it doesn't matter okay all right thank you so uh that ends our meeting for this evening so it entertained a motion to adjourn move to adjourn second movement second in the further discussion all right all those in favor aye opposed we are adjourned all right shut down oh