001Good evening. I'd like to call this meeting to order. The required public notice of this meeting was sent to Community Newspapers Incorporated and Metropolitan Press on February 20th, 2026 and posted on the doors of the district office. Additionally, meeting notices and agendas were posted on the district website and distributed to the City of Brookfield and the Village of Elm Grove for posting. Let the roll call show that all board members are present, with the exception of Cheryl Milnes, who is joining us by speakerphone. Will you please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. May I have a motion to approve the agenda?
002I think we have a motion by Jean and a second by Preetha. Is there any discussion? I would just mention that you may have noticed our agenda looks a little bit different than usual. We're going to prioritize the facility discussion followed by the petition to alter boundaries. So you'll just notice that kind of discussion. We have a discussion item, then our action items, and then back to discussion for the remainder just to honor people's time who came here to the meeting tonight. All those, any other discussion on the agenda? All those in favor of approving the agenda, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. That carries on voice vote. So our first agenda item tonight is the Citizens Forum. This is an opportunity for members of our community to address the board on items
003that fall within the purview of the board but are not on tonight's agenda. forms over here to your right Christy Westphal if you would like to speak on this or any agenda item we would ask you to fill that out there's a list of expectations on the back some of the expectations there will be a three minute time limit that the board will not engage in in commentary back and forth there's some other thing you'd be respectful those types of things on the back of the Forms and so we do have several requests to speak tonight. We'll start off with Angie Pingle a resident of the district Thank you at our last meeting. I raised a very important and time-sensitive issue that corresponds with our current election season I Requested that this board consider adopting
004a policy prohibiting political endorsements Our school board positions are supposed to be nonpartisan, which means that you're not representing a particular party In fact, again, most of you made your nonpartisan status a cornerstone of your campaigns. I believe that using your office and your official title in an endorsement of a candidate that is a member of a political party, such as a candidate for Wisconsin's next governor, is inconsistent with the representations you made as candidates to be nonpartisan. In my opinion... community elected you because of your positions directly related to our school district not because you said you would use your elected position to attempt to influence voting and other political races I would argue that such endorsements create the appearance of a conflict of interest between your nonpartisan obligations as school board members and
005an allegiance to a political party I appreciate the board members that have chosen to avoid this appearance of conflict by not issuing such endorsements. Thank you. Finally, I requested that the CLE committee discuss this potential conflict at their February 2nd meeting. Unfortunately, it was not discussed at that meeting. As directed on the agenda for that meeting, I immediately emailed the committee chair and the other members of the CLE committee requesting that they respond to my email. Since then, no meeting has been held. I did have one other member of the committee approach me to mention that it might be discussed at the March meeting. If we're committed to excellence, that means responding and following through. Thank you. Thank you, Angie. Our next request to speak tonight is Diane Sherwin, a resident of the district. Hi,
006good evening, board. I'm here to talk about library review sources and specifically a book that this district has available to elementary readers, The Mona Lisa Vanishes. While the history of the Mona Lisa being stolen and returned is interesting, there's excessively dark and graphic descriptions of violence, some sexual undertones, and language or imagery that does not seem age-appropriate for elementary readers. Some of the things the book describes are rotting bodies, skinning corpses, a flayed face, hangings, chopping up people. streets filled with limbs of men, a bastard, an attraction that leads to suicide, and more. This is elementary-level content. I suspect a root cause of this issue is that the sources Elmbrook relies on are only doing surface-level reviews. The most robust review that I found, which included the graphic content, was recommended for ages 12 and
007up. Elmbrook had this available to my 9-year-old. Interestingly, our own library catalog and Sora have varied ratings on this book. Sora has an Atos level in 6th grade, but an interest level 4th through 8th. The Brook Elk catalog has a reading level of 5th grade, interest level 5th through 8th. So if most of our library catalog levels point to 5th grade at the lowest, and generally middle school, why would we allow this to a 4th grader? I've heard the case that more graphic content helps engage readers and encourage reading, but the feedback I've received is the opposite. It seems like the graphic content makes younger students stop reading a book. So if we're hoping to build the love of learning, pushing graphic content too soon doesn't seem to be helping. A best practice would be
008to review library sources to make sure they are robust in doing the heavy lifting for the library team. library review sources are not providing robust reviews we could start using median age to avoid graphic content slipping in too early. That would also help account for varying student maturity levels within the same grade. Finally a reminder that in any professional environment if a duty is delegated to an intern AI or in this case book reviews the professional is still ultimately responsible for that work. With that, I'd like to see more ownership and accountability for books that are suggested to students, especially at elementary level. Thank you. Thank you, Diane. Our next request to speak is Tom Gale, a resident of the district. Good evening board members and Dr. Hanson. I had hoped to comment tonight on
009the issue of the middle school start times, but I urge the board to make this a discussion item at next month's meeting. Doing so would allow the electorate the opportunity to offer its thoughts on this important topic, and I believe it is time for our community to understand your collective decision and your individual opinions on this matter. But what I'm here to speak about tonight is the issue of cell phones. It has been nine years since I sat where you all sit, and I deeply respect and appreciate the service of every one of you. I commend each of you for the time and commitment you demonstrate. In the years since, my interest in and involvement with the district has remained strong, and I have served in a variety of capacities. Some of those capacities take
010me into one of our two high schools several times a week. My comments are based upon what I observed there, and while I cannot comment about both high schools, my assumption is that the environments are very similar. In today's divisive environment, there are few, if any, other issues upon which there is nearly universal agreement. From psychologists, social workers, and mental health experts on all sides of the political spectrum, the data continues to pour in, and its conclusions are clear. Overexposure to the array of social media and programs that are available to us on our devices is having an increasingly damaging and corrosive impact on our youth. Now I do not believe it is the responsibility of the school district to dictate or manage the frequency or manner of how students use their personal technology. But
011I do believe it is our responsibility to more aggressively limit what I believe to be a clear obstacle to not only academic learning, but all manner of other positive student experiences. This board has engaged in countless hours of discussions, plan reviews, and building tours as it assesses our facilities plan, and that is appropriate. But I urge you to consider a future work session to discuss and evaluate the impact this matter is having on our students and what, if anything, should be done about it. I cannot unsee what I have seen, and I have come to the firm conclusion that smartphones are a significant obstacle to the learning experience of our beloved students. You may think my views to be dire, and if so, I say fair enough. But I ask that you consider this and
012hold the discussion. Hear from our teachers and counselors in the schools. Lean into their expertise and the expertise that resides in this room. lastly I would suggest that pending your findings a possible starting point would be our elementary schools I believe this combined with the more rigorous emphasis on the fundamentals would be the single greatest positive impact you could have on our beloved students and would set a strong foundation for them a foundation that once set can never be taken away good good day and I thank you again for your service Thank You Tom Our next request to speak is Denial Ali, a resident of the district. I probably mispronounced that. My apologies in advance. You could pronounce it for us as you introduce yourself as you come up. Hello, board. I'm also here with
013Rohit Shetty, who I believe is the next speaker. We'll be speaking together. So my name is Daniel. I'm a resident of the Elmbrook School District. And me and Ruth will be speaking on behalf of the FIRST Robotics of Elmbrook. And we are from FTC Team 1321 Team Hazmat. We respectfully ask the board to consider recognizing FIRST Robotics programs in our district as an official sport. FIRST competitions, whether FTC or FRC, are structured just like traditional athletics. Matches are head-to-head, time-regulated, scored by referees, and organized into qualification rankings and playoff brackets that lead to championship titles. Our team advanced to the World Championship level and placed second. That level of performance required thousands of hours of preparation, often practicing almost every day through build sessions, strategy meetings, scouting, and match simulation. Globally, robotics is increasingly being
014recognized as a sport. Countries such as Belize and Indonesia have already formally declared robotics a sport, and FIRST Global continues to promote that recognition worldwide. Hi and good evening. My name is also Rochetti as Daniel talked about. So regarding robotics as a sport, some may argue robotics isn't physical enough or it shouldn't be considered a sport, but many recognize sports emphasize precision, coordination, and performance under pressure. As a driver myself, I train reaction time, I hand-eye coordination, and communication. Communication is a key part. and staying composed in high stress situations is one thing that we all take out of it and helps us in the future. These are same skills I've developed in multiple sports I've played and continue to play. FIRST Robotics has also demanded hands-on engineering, rapid repairs between matches, and endurance during
015long competitions and constant teamwork. Beyond competition, we serve our community through outreach, mentoring younger teams, running demonstrations, hosting events, and promoting STEM education. We don't just compete, we represent Elmbrook. Elmbrook is already one of the top robotics districts in the state. We have the opportunity not just to participate in this movement, but to lead it in the state. Recognizing FIRST Robotics of Elmbrook as a sport would affirm the dedication, discipline, and commitment that these students and us invest nearly every day. It's one of the quotes that is big here is, it's one of the only sports that everyone can go pro in. We would like to thank you for your time and consideration in this matter. Thank you. Thank you so much Daniel and Rojel and with that that brings to an end our consent
016agenda or citizens form sorry and brings us to our next item which is the consent agenda I got ahead of myself so I'll start with a motion and then ask if there are items that board members would like to pull can I start with the motion on the consent agenda Jean I'll move approval of the consent agenda as presented second I think we have a motion by Jean and second by Preetha are there any items that board members would like to pull B we'll pull item B. So all those in favor of consent agenda items a C D and E please say aye aye All those opposed Thank you that carries on voice vote and B is personnel matters We do have a request to speak Sam before board discussion. So we'll hear from Elizabeth
017Miller a resident of the district and then Sam, I'll let you speak on this agenda item. Elizabeth. Hi good evening my name is Liz Miller I'm a district resident and proud parent of two incredible Dixon students my neurotypical fourth grader and my autistic minimally speaking first grader with very high support needs I've emailed the board several times in the administration even more just to share our experience as a special ed family and I knew I would eventually want to come to share this in person but i really wish that it was much later and i'm sorry i'm going to get emotional here but uh i've tried several times to properly convey the impact that our special ed teacher julia julie rukowski or simply jay as my son calls her has made on our lives And
018I'll settle on this. I'd be lying if I said I didn't cry when she told me about her retirement. It was certainly exciting. I mean, I'm very excited for her. She certainly deserves it. but she's She's like a family member. She's seen us through some of our toughest times She's always showed my son kindness and patience His growth these past few years is due largely because of her and She's made me a better parent We owe so much to her and while I know that we'll be in great hands at Dixon next year because the special education team is truly Exceptional they're incredible. We're still going to be very sad when fall rolls around Julie's an incredible educator and we're gonna miss her dearly and Whatever you can do to somehow harness her institutional knowledge
019for the special education team. Please take take whatever you can from her because I we owe so much to her and so thank you very much Julie especially Thank you Liz Sam Thank you Liz for sharing that it's really cool when parents come in to honor teachers that have made an impact in their children's life and so relate to that with my daughter who has those similar needs and remembering how impactful some of the teachers she had at Tonawanda made a big difference to her and fortunately she left before some of them retired but when they retired it was noted so thank you Sam do you have any other comments on personnel matters yeah thank you it was pointed out to me that the the combined years add up to 292 years of service and
020that's a lot that Elmbrook has benefited from that I just want to say thank you to these incredible teachers and that have dedicated a lot of their life to Elmbrook and making it great I would echo Sam's comments we have nearly 300 years of experience retiring from this group you see the names there are 13 names some of these folks are absolute giants in our district and I wanted to thank them myself for all of their work so Jean Jill Jeff Gina Kate Callie Ann Jamie Patrick or Pat Phil Julia or Jay as she goes by Sandy Deb and Greg thank you for your incredible service to this community it's amazing Any other comments? If not, I take a motion on consent agenda item B. I'll move approval of consent agenda item B. Second. We
021have a motion by Gina, second by Sam. Any other discussion? All those in favor of approving consent agenda item B, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. That carries on voice vote and concludes our consent agenda for the evening. As I pointed out earlier, we're going to move to a discussion item now before we get to our other action item. Never mind. My bad. We do have some action items. So our first action item of the evening is the K-12 curriculum. And I'll be kicking this over to Emily Greiber. Emily. Good evening last month or I guess yeah in January Dr. Lisa Rettler McKenna Ellis and Dr. Amy Farley presented our updated curricular documents for our k-12 music alignment and for our introduction to special education program Course that was written and no questions
022have been presented around either of those curricular areas So I am here to answer any questions you have, or this item is here for your approval tonight. OK, so we'll start with a motion. And if there's any comments or questions for Emily, can I get a motion? I move approval of the K-12 curriculum as presented. Second. I guess a motion by Mary and a second by Preetha. Any discussion or questions? Hearing none, all those in favor of approving the curriculum, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you that carries on voice vote. Thank you. Thank you Emily Our next action on the evening is the proposed 2026-27 board meeting calendar. I Haven't heard any concerns about these dates. This has also been shared with candidates who are running for school board So I'd entertain a
023motion and then we can take any questions on this I'll move approval of the 26-27 board meeting schedule as presented Thank you. Motion by Jean and second by Sam. Is there any discussion or questions? Yes. I did send everybody a conflict that I have for the August 25th date. That is the only night of that week that I am unavailable. And I've had some communication with the administration about that date and we looked at some alternatives. So that's why we put the red underline on those dates? Correct. Yeah. So we'll finalize that with? It's most likely a work session. And we're hoping through planning, it's planned and not used. But if we end up having to adjust the date, we would contact all board members. Including any new board members. Thank you for that. Anything
024else? Quick question so we'll just leave that on for now or something and leave it as a placeholder and then if we have to alter the dates we'll be in touch with everybody to make sure we have dates at work but it probably would move to a different day that week as it is a work session. Okay or the week before or something. Okay. Probably not the week before but we'll figure it out. Okay anything else? All those in favor of the motion please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? I'm gonna abstain. Thank you. That carries on voice vote. Our final action item for now is recent gifts to the district. Jean? I'd like to draw your attention as Kristi pulls up the slides. We'll be looking at the gifts to the district for the months
025of November and December 2025. And at the bottom of the second slide it shows that the total for those two months is $127,890.85. On behalf of the entire board, our sincere thanks for your gifts. continued excellence in Elmbrook this document will be posted on the district website for all to see and with that I move that we approve the gifts to the district as presented you have a motion by Jean and a second by Sam any discussion all those in favor of approving recent gifts to the district please say aye any opposed thank you that carries on voice vote That concludes that series of action items and brings us to our first discussion item. I will let people know we do have a couple of requests to speak before board discussion and two requests to
026speak after board discussion, but we'll start with a presentation from Chris. Take a couple of citizen comments, board discussion and questions, and then a couple of more citizen comments. So Chris. Thank you. Good evening. I'm actually just going to turn it over to Rick he's prepared a half hour presentation for you all including song video dance happy to be joined by Rick in support of tonight's agenda items so just give me one second to do why can't I ever see this any glasses full screen all right here we go it's my pleasure to present an update on the Board of Education's work towards our district goal of creating a 20-year facility plan by June 2026. Each of you has invested over 20 hours of learning, options, development, facility tours, and finance considerations, and I'm grateful
027for your commitment, ongoing commitment, to this important work. I've also appreciated your dual focus of providing the best learning environments for our students and staff while balancing your responsibility to the taxpayers who elected you. This is not an easy task and yet the work is vital to our district's long-term success When many districts begin facility planning they're faced with a variety of difficult decisions Do they need to consolidate enrollments, abandon a facility, prioritize programs, or consider their property portfolio? Because of the work of our Board of Education over the years, and some of you have been part of all of these decisions, some of these decisions have already been made for you or can be viewed in our rearview mirror. Most recently, the Board's decisions in the past two years to renovate Fairview South and
028sell Hillside were the first two steps in our 20-year facility planning process that continues this evening. One of the driving factors to it... enrollment decisions and facility decisions is studying our current student capacity and anticipated enrollment trends. We have some of the largest elementary schools in the state who are also among the highest performing schools in the state. And from a facilities perspective, we're committed to the schools that we have. These are our schools. We're using them to great capacity, 70, 80, 90% capacity, and we need to take care of them. Through our conversations during our work sessions, I know that our board is equally committed to redistricting students when appropriate Sometimes at the expense of creating additions or investing additional dollars and then I think that's been a trend that as we've experienced in
029this district over all of the years that we've been a district as we grew to 15 elementary schools and contracted down to five that's been a common theme throughout our schools and really our district's history What hasn't changed in that time is our commitment to people's pathway to our high schools We feel like many of our families choose where they live because of the high school their children will be attending And we wanted we've always wanted to preserve that pathway for families that results in a bit of enrollment discrepancies between our two high schools you'll see that right now it's a 260 student gap with more on the Brookfield East than a Brookfield Central but there's still within the capacity of the facility and I don't think we've seen really any reason to change from
030our past approach of preserving those pathways in addition to our strong student achievement results we also have a really strong financial story to tell that starts with our mill rate history mill rate for those who are unaware is also sometimes referred to as tax rate the simple calculation for how to determine your tax amount is on the right but the mill rate is a reflection of several factors including our increased amount of state aid increasing enrollment controlled spending and then rising property values to name a few of the school funding formula so something that we're proud of and certainly pay attention to and again it's a great story to tell addition we have made significant investments in our facilities over time in 2008 our community supported a 62.1 million dollar high school renovation or referendum
031and renovation and in addition to that 62 million dollars we have budgeted over five million dollars a year to address facility maintenance and repair needs as well as support improvements to our pools and locker rooms, libraries, robotic spaces, fab lab, gym additions and many other facility improvements Those investments have totaled over a hundred million dollars from that same time of when our high school referendum was passed Significant commitment but we are proud of the fact that we have not entered into any kind of deferred maintenance and that's really not part of our 20-year facility plan process going forward either. Those decisions regarding our facility maintenance and repair needs are based on lifecycle management of the responsibilities we have with maintenance and repair such as our HVAC equipment our roofs our parking lots we have standards
032for all of those needs but we don't just replace them after at their certain period of time we assess them every year with often with external consultants and when they are showing signs of wear and ready for replacement, then we prioritize that in our capital maintenance plan. And that's how we've always operated, and we feel like that's the most fiscally responsible approach to maintaining our resources that the community has entrusted to us. Through this, as we began the facility planning process, we started with a needs assessment. And that needs assessment was based on really three different assessments, which included educational programming or adequacy, sometimes it's referred to as, facility maintenance, and safety and security. And out of that assessment, we identified four schools, Pilgrim Park Middle, Swanson Elementary, which are second and third oldest schools
033in the district, Wisconsin Hills Middle, and Tonawanda Elementary, which were both built in 1969. and I'll be speaking about their specific needs at those schools shortly while some of the needs at these schools were the same others were not and throughout our study phase we were able to learn about the assessment process that identified the needs we were able to see the needs firsthand throughout through our facility tours and then we also discussed the district standards by which we compared those needs to other facilities in the district For example, we often used our newest elementary schools, which were built in 2001, Brookfield Elementary and Dixon Elementary, as the standard to compare classroom size, small group instruction, and overall facility capacity. As mentioned earlier, our work together thus far has been thorough and comprehensive, and along
034the way we identified two key partners in Bray Architects and C.G. Schmidt Construction who have helped design options and cost solutions for us to consider. The options presented tonight are a result of their effort for which we are very grateful. I'm going to just briefly explain those four schools and some of their specific needs and also the chart on the right. To just give you some background or give the community some background on why these four schools and what needs we Discussed about them. So the first is Tonawanda if you are not familiar with Tonawanda Elementary, it's in Elm Grove and its current footprint is Outlined on the right image without the red just to give you some background on this facility chart the Proposed renovations are highlighted in light blue is a light renovation
035Classroom renovation or we do not move walls Dark green would be a heavy renovation where we are down to the studs and red is an addition so a few of the opportunities for improvement at Tonawanda include in 1969 it was built as an open concept school that means that originally there were no classroom walls and to date there have been walls added on the sides of each classroom but there is no wall to close off the classroom to others and so in each of the three pods that you see in the dark green there are seven pie-shaped classrooms there that are about 10 to 15 percent smaller than our normal classrooms in the district and they do not have those defining walls and doors at the classroom entrance and so you can stand in the
036center of the pod and see all seven classrooms at once Which is a great way to observe learning but when those classrooms are full It creates in which they are now because Tonawanda has increased enrollment by over a hundred and fifty students in the last ten years then noise bleeds from room to room there are security concerns without being able to lock down a particular classroom and And the enrollment pressures really have have placed some demands unique demands on this school that we don't see at our other schools so That's just a small snapshot of Tonawanda Swanson different different needs different solution here again light blues light renovation heavy green is is heavy renovation Swanson spaces in addition to just aging facility really revolve around academic support spaces and being able to give students who
037are in learning interventions or extensions the opportunity to focus on their additional work outside of the classroom with our talented learning support staff and but also have access to visible access to the classroom their classrooms likely across the hall or down the hallway and then there are some opportunities in Swanson to renovate our larger learning spaces such as the library that are used both by classrooms during the school day but also by several community groups after school and before school You can see at the top the differences in our cost of each of these solutions to Tonawanda was as a 33 million dollar proposed cost Swanson much less work and much lower price tag at nine million dollars Pilgrim Park again the second oldest school in the district several several significant needs at Pilgrim Park
038The gym is at the bottom of the diagram and the gym is original to the building. We consider it to be a one and a half section gym based on size. That's compared to a two section gym at Wisconsin Hills. We run three sections of Phi Ed every class period. Often... Sometimes all three sections are in the gym sometimes The third section is in our fitness room, which is upstairs, but is not accessible to Anyone in a wheelchair. There's no way to get up there So so part of it is accessibility part of it is adequate size that adequate size or the inadequate sizes is also realized through our community use hours if you compare our use of Wisconsin Hills gym to Pilgrim Park, Wisconsin Hills gym is used 1,500 hours a year And Pilgrim
039Park is only used a thousand hours a year and that's because we can only reserve We have to reserve fewer teams, presumably basketball or volleyball teams, because of the smaller space. So in addition to that, our music rooms are not ADA accessible either, fully ADA accessible. The band room, just to paint a picture, is built into tiers and so you would be stuck at the first tier if you were in a wheelchair in that classroom. Our choir room is built Down into the floor and so you'd be at the top level but no way to access the different levels of the choir room either and so This proposal moves the the music wing to the top. That's the red spaces at the top of the diagram Classrooms it solves some traffic congestion issues as well
040with light renovation and heavy renovation throughout the building including the electives wing and the electives wing is supports robotics woods art and technology some of those classrooms are also original to the building and Really don't support our current approach to to those disciplines Some people may be interested to know that the renovation proposal for Pilgrim Park also helps address traffic on Pilgrim Parkway, both before school and after school, which often tends to back up for a short amount of time, but it may not feel like a short amount of time if you're stuck on Pilgrim Parkway waiting for cars to get through the pickup or drop-off line. Finally, Wisconsin Hills, this is not a complete school renovation. This renovation is modeled after Pilgrim Park's renovation regarding our elective swing. So similar needs of updating our
041robotics, woods, arts, and technology classrooms, and then also focuses on their large learning spaces, the cafeteria. Cafeterias in our systems are... great opportunity for us to utilize our space more effectively because obviously they serve lunch for three hours of the day but then often they are underutilized for the rest of the time by creating learning spaces that can be sectioned off both after school and during the day we can host guest speakers we can have multiple classrooms in those spaces but then we can also support different teams and activities after school for our community benefit as well we recently conducted facility tours at each or gave the opportunity for the community to tour these four schools and one of the questions that we was given to us during those tours was why why why are
042we renovating why not replace why not build new and so you know I think we started with a needs based process we identified our needs up front we met with the architect and said how can we best meet these needs in the most cost effective way they presented several options to address those needs for each of our schools and I think I don't want to speak for you, but I think we were comfortable with the solutions that were presented as solid solutions that will last for at least 30 to 50 years if we continue to take care of our facilities as we have in the past, and at 40 to 50% less cost, it seems to be the fiscally responsible thing to do. You can jump in any time, Rick. So one of the, in
043addition to the presentation tonight, just kind of this background information, we do want to have, we would like your feedback on... drafted proposal of a community survey and my apologies for not having the survey and board docs until noon today So we very little time to review it But really we want to talk about not necessarily the background information that's in the survey because there's a lot of background information There's a lot of context there for our community to to better understand this process and what our needs are but More specifically to talk about the two options that are presented and I'll spend a little bit of time on these options and just give you a little bit of time to think about this as I head towards wrapping up this presentation. So we talked
044about two funding options in the survey. And the first we've described as the comprehensive 20-year facility plan. So there's two components to this. and the first component on the left is our ongoing commitment to funding through our district budget our maintenance and repair needs and small improvements across the district our best estimate right now of those maintenance and repair needs over the next ten years is 57 million dollars which would leave about 14 million dollars for small improvements throughout the district again that would be funded by district savings similar to what we've done in the past with five with a five million plus commitment each year from our annual operating budget the second component of that comprehensive 20-year facility plan would be the renovations that I just described at each of the four schools so
045if you total Those dollar amounts for each of those four schools that would equal a hundred million dollars and that plan We do not have the annual operating budget to support and that's why we need to Collect feedback from the community on whether the community would be interested in supporting that plan and I'll talk about how we would proposed doing that or how much it would cost our taxpayers in just a few minutes the second plan that is presented is we've titled it as the debt replacement plan so same plan on the left to fund our maintenance and repair needs but this plan on the right only supports two of the of the four schools their complete renovations Pilgrim Park and Tonawanda it does not include Swanson and Wisconsin Hills which would then kind of
046move over to the left side of district funded operations and and and as I mentioned before we had about 14 million of For small facility improvements that could be directed towards Swanson in Wisconsin Hills But that would then leave no additional dollars for facility improvements at any of our other schools So we would have to consider how those needs are prioritized and figure out how to incorporate them into a 20-year facility plan. So again, even in a debt replacement 20-year facility plan, that $85 million total would need to be supported through a voter-approved referendum. At our last work session, we also had a board member request to consider another scenario. say a third scenario, we've had many scenarios, another scenario that supported the renovation at Tonawanda and then also expanded the gym at Pilgrim Park
047and made ADA improvements to Pilgrim Park. and kind of stopped there and did not do a complete building renovation. So that plan is shown by this block diagram on the right. We did still, you'll notice that we still had to move the music wing because we needed the space to the right of the gym to support locker rooms and the fitness center because, again, we needed to make that accessible. So you expand the gym on the bottom. You move the fitness center and locker rooms to the right, and then the music wing up on top. This plan is, the cost of this plan would be $27 million at Pilgrim Park, and then the $33 million at Tonawanda. You can see what it doesn't address, and really, we feel like this plan doesn't, you know, we
048started with a needs-based approach. We feel like the needs that are left, kind of on the table or not addressed through this plan would really put a lot of pressure on our district funded operating budget strategy and and and our ability to care for our maintenance and repair needs and so you know we don't we don't want to enter deferred maintenance I don't know that this plan helps us and it might put us in a position where deferred maintenance becomes more of an issue in our district than it ever has been I want to talk briefly about the reinvestment opportunity then to help pay for either of those plans that I presented. First of all, the high school referendum debt was issued in 2008. That referendum debt will be retired in 2028. Right now, that
049debt is 56 cents. of our total $6.26 mill rate. The debt portion is 56 cents. So you can see the three kind of action, inaction, action or non-action items described below. First thing is if we did not go to a referendum that would mean for the taxpayer a 56 cents mill rate reduction which for and Brookfield average home value of $600,000 would mean $336 returned back to the taxpayer each year. It's an annual realization. For the comprehensive plan, to fund the $100 million, it would require an increase of... an 11 cent mill rate increase which added to the 56 cents would total 67 cents that 11 cent increase results in a 66 dollar increase for a 600 000 home which is 402 dollars of their total tax payment Stay with me so far and then
050the third plan the debt replacement plan Would replace the debt that we have with no increase to the mill rate the 56 cent mill rate which would yield 85 million dollars so that One's tax payment on their six hundred thousand dollar home would be three hundred and thirty six dollars and that would continue for the next 20 years with no change So those are those are three investment strategies or or not I guess in the first case but really that's that's the consideration and and I think it's a it's a good position to be in when we are able to consider an 85 million dollar investment in our facilities at no additional taxes to our taxpayer Briefly talk about just the community survey in the process You have both the draft of the survey in
051board Docs now and also frequently asked questions if you're interested in kind of school perceptions approach School perceptions is the company that we've partnered with they have supported They've done over a thousand different community surveys in their company's lifetime. Many, many, many in Wisconsin districts in Wisconsin have been supported for their community engagement efforts. They have kind of a mixed print and online options, so any and all households in the district would receive the survey on paper. They could take it. either online or by paper and mail it back. one survey response per survey or one response per survey. There's a unique code to each survey. All of those will be collected in April and then School Perceptions will report out the results to the board on May 12th. You'll see also that there is,
052they do weight the results so that the results reflect the makeup of our community. typically communities have 60 to 70 percent of households do not have school-aged children and so they through the demographic information they collect they weight those results accordingly so that the results really are representative of the taxpayer base not just what your families want to do or your staff want to do or you know weighted with this particular demographic group Finally, we have kind of started our engagement opportunities, and really this is just the start of the process. As our facility plan becomes more fully formed, we anticipate having all different kinds of engagement opportunities. But to date, we did conduct the facility tours, had over 100 people attend. each of those nights at our four schools our senior leader team wrapped
053up today our our annual listening sessions with our staff one of the topics presented to our staff were facility updates and we received some great feedback from them we have met with both the village of elm grove and city of brookfield leadership to discuss our planning process, impact on our communities, and any needs that we've identified through our planning process where we would need to partner with them. And then the community survey really is our next kind of most significant engagement opportunity. in April all of our information so to date of the work sessions the presentations are can be found on our district website there's a link right off the main page 20-year facility plan but then also the URL at the bottom will get you to the same place This is our timeline and
054just to kind of wrap this up June 30th We hope to have a plan in place Facility plan and funding strategies as the goal and I think we're well on our way to doing that Rick anything to add Great thank you nice Rick many words Rick is amazing grateful to have him on our team So we, as I mentioned before, do have a couple of requests to speak before. Board, what do you say, Sam? What about Chris? Well, Chris actually is a man of many words. We have a couple of requests to speak before board discussion then we'll have questions and answers comments from the board and then we do have a couple requests to speak after and again for those here tonight you certainly can request fill another paper to speak Kristi Westphal to
055your right has those papers. So our first request to speak is Angie Pingel a resident of the district. Good evening. I want to thank everyone for their involvement and dedication to our 20-year facilities planning. I've attended most of the meetings and tours, and it has been very informative. But I do have a concern about how some of the information is being presented. This shouldn't be about a marketing campaign to our neighbors. This is about facts, costs, absolute needs, and nice-to-haves. One such example is in tonight's presentation, slide 6, regarding the mill rate history. We all know I've been to a lot of school board meetings. So I've learned a lot about school budgets Our school budget is fixed by a state imposed revenue limit It consists of two parts general state aid and local property
056taxes The district can't exceed this state revenue limit by a successful referendum or through the community fund Which is fund 80 that pays for our SROs and the use of our facilities by the community after hours Therefore, to me, suggesting controlled spending is responsible for the decline in our mill rate is confusing. I guess you could argue that not having routine referendums or assembling an even larger SRO team is an example of controlled spending. But what I really think is the issue is the rising district property values. That's up there like it's some great thing. Unfortunately, as property values rise, you get less state aid and more burden to fund our schools would come from property taxes, which would in turn increase the mill rate. But that's not what's happening. The key to understanding this
057statistic is something our assistant superintendent for business services said at the board's February 10th work session. He said that over the past 10 years, Our community has increased in value less than the state average. He said that two years ago, Elmbrook property values increased just 1.22% when the rest of the state was 10% something. Wow. Elmbrook properties are not holding their value compared to the rest of the state. I think before we move forward with a referendum, We really ought to understand why and what impact that could have on our future enrollment, which in turn directly impacts our property taxes. This may not be a case of if we build it, they will come. I support our schools, but we need facts, not shiny slides. Thank you. Thank you, Angie. Our second request to speak
058before board discussion is Leanne Weed, a resident of the district. Want to go after? Our other requests to speak are after board discussions so at this time board members if there are questions and comments for Chris about the presentation or Rick I'd like to clarify that we're focused on the survey this evening and these are the two options that we're thinking we'd like to take to the community via the survey rather than the rest of the presentation And if you happy to take any feedback about the survey if we can focus on those two Kind of the the two options now if you have other feedback about the background and how the background was presented We can certainly work together offline with that over the next three weeks before we finalize it in March Thank
059you. I appreciate that. We are looking to an outside vendor to perform this survey. I think the comments that you make in the background information in terms of a neutral third party and potentially more trust that we aren't making the survey pulling the results together and presenting them that some may not think that's a sound process though I'd like to say it would be but I think going to an outside vendor eliminates that perspective the option to have a single survey per household or the opportunity to obtain additional surveys by contacting the district office. I think that is a sound process that would allow one vote per person. The background information that's been included that addresses our journey, the needs, the plan around our improvements budgeting of 71 million I think those are all sound
060and and Essential to the process it it's a long document and I would hope that people take the time to to read it And work through it, but I think to take it any shorter we would lose understanding and it's going to be challenging I think when I look back to the 20 hours that we have spent to develop the understanding over these months it's a lot so that said I wonder about alternatives did I miss it as I read through the we'd like to do Would you support a building referendum of a hundred million dollars? Would you support a building referendum of eighty five million dollars if you didn't do that if we don't do this? Here's what we'll need to do and I did I miss it or is it something it would
061seem to me if I'm being Asked would you do this? My question would be well, what are my other choices if I didn't do this and So that would be one One area of feedback that I would have I do like the options for definitely yes, probably yes, undecided probably no, and definitely no. I think that helps us gauge kind of where people are falling rather than yes or no. And the demographic piece at the end or respondent information in terms of you know age ranges and whether you're an employee or you have kids in the schools or it would help understand those who have completed the survey and their opinions I wondered about the ordering of the hundred million dollar first and then the 85 million dollar second and I'm interested to understand why
062those are ordered that way Ultimately this is a survey about funding a facility plan and so the you know our the plan cost set aside would be to renovate these schools in the ways that we presented and so that's why we've started with the comprehensive plan and then offered the alternative the debt replacement plan I've heard comments in the community about the word referendum it echoes in some people's minds that have been in the community for a long time that the first answer might be no because of history and and I don't know I guess you can't really understand people's willingness to fund or willingness to support this plan without a funding arrangement so maybe there's no way to no way to avoid that oh you want a referendum I don't you know other people
063have had them and oh my goodness and no then engaging in the what and how and why and and I don't know if there's a way around that but that strikes me as something that could be an obstacle it's interesting because there's a on page Four maybe before the the two options that are presented and maybe it's the bottom of three There's there's a question that says do you support the pursuit of a building referendum? And using this tool that the state has given us You know and we didn't quite understand that question at first about the value of it, you know because it it's a It's not a concrete question nor concrete answer, but I think it gives you a sense for how people feel about referendums in general, that here's our facility needs.
064this is an option that the state has provided to communities, do you feel like this is a viable option or not before you get into the dollar amounts? And then maybe they agree that this is the right approach, but the dollar amounts don't match up with what they want, you know, the outcomes that they want to see. And so then maybe you can draw from that more generic question then and get a better feel like maybe there is support for something out there, we just haven't presented the right solution. at least that's how school perceptions explained it to us other questions or comments um thank you for this chris i appreciate a lot of work went into this and generally i think this survey looks pretty strong i have a couple of questions in the
065financial background Near the top of the survey it indicates Elmbrook is among the 4% of Wisconsin school districts that have not requested a referendum since 2008 knowing that the vast majority of Districts that have gone to referendum have gone for operational purposes and not facility purposes I think I'm not sure which point is being made here because I keep thinking about how I'm hearing a lot about fiscal responsibility and fiscal conservatism, and I don't think you can look at what we've done and not call it fiscal conservatism and fiscal responsibility over the last many years, but that 4% of Wisconsin school districts that have not requested a referendum reflects not just... the maintenance we've done and the improvements we've been able to do on our buildings by taking money tax money and dedicating it to
066facility use but also that we have fiscally managed our operating budget for for learning purposes for staff and health care and all the things that have continued to go up so i don't know if that is too much too much detail but i'd be interested to hear school perceptions reaction to that second i keep seeing the six hundred thousand dollar home in brookfield and i'm not sure where the six hundred thousand came from i think it might be a median cost or something like that but it's it's really not in the detail here that that that mill rate is based on your assessed value not what you could sell your home for today So I don't know how many people who could probably get close to six hundred thousand dollars for their home now Actually
067have an assessed value of six hundred thousand dollars. So if you could sell it tomorrow for six hundred, but your assessment is at four hundred and ninety thousand you're not paying sixty six dollars a year for the comprehensive plan you paying significantly less per year and That's significant Jean as I listen to you talk about the if it fails the first time what do we do i think one of the things that i don't know if it has a place in a survey or not but if if we were to have to make a second ask as opposed to do nothing and not fulfill our mission to create a 20-year facility plan, the longer it takes us to get something passed, the higher the cost goes. We've learned that even in our 10-year facility long-term
068plan, something that's been in there for two or three years ends up having to have a contingency increase because it's more expensive than when we... First needed it So that's just a reality that I think needs to be communicated somewhere along the way and finally I'm looking at the difference between the comprehensive plan and the what we call it debt replacement plan and Well, I see the differences I was trying to find I see Wisconsin Hills office reno has come off of it I think we talked about that being about a million dollars what I do see coming off of Pilgrim Park even in the debt replacement plan is that improvement of flow we lose that third hallway Looks like we don't know. Okay, and that's it's the same facility design in both Okay, we
069just lose the renovated It's the same plan. Elective spaces where. Same plan for Pilgrim. It just doesn't. Okay. It doesn't look like it to me, but maybe I'm just missing something or maybe the. Maybe the diagram's not right. Maybe the diagram needs to be looked at. Yeah. And again, I think fiscal responsibility is evident and that's how we've maintained this. The other final thought I had is we've been looking at this and looking at improvements to four of our nine schools. and two other buildings our special ed school and and our other owned facility that 71 million dollars that we can spend to continue ongoing maintenance and small improvement projects is not just for the things we see here and not just for the things that we might have to do out of that fund
070if we go with the debt replacement plan but it has to serve all all of the buildings and the 71 million That we expect to spend is what we know now without the contingency increases and without any unforeseen needs So at a time when enrollment may flatten or slightly decline I would say that what I've been told it was be time and time again is that student enrollment is the coin of the realm that's what drives our operating budget and to put further tension on that at a time when enrollment may not be increasing which we've enjoyed may make it even harder to continue the ongoing maintenance and small improvement projects that we've been able to afford over the last decade Thank You Mary I'd like to speak next Gaye West All right my turn
071so a few few questions comments I know Looking at the top we we oftentimes like to benchmark against other districts. And so I wondered if there was an opportunity When we talk about a hundred million dollars how that benchmarks against other districts in southeast Wisconsin or across the state and whether other districts spend when the 5% of their budget on ongoing operating maintenance or not as a maybe that it falls outside of this but just for comparison's sake so people understand what we do versus what other ones do the second question I had related to Tonawanda when I looked at the plan on there I couldn't tell was that the four section three and a half section which right now it's three and a half okay okay I wasn't sure where we landed on that
072because I know there was a lot of discussion whether it would be four or three and a half so yeah I mean I think there's still room with within the plans to get to a four section facility okay okay that's hopefully I just couldn't tell based on on what that was and then the last piece I guess for me because I feel like Jean and Mary have covered a lot already I was curious from a, I know we're scheduled to send it out, I think April 9th to the 30th, I think is when it's scheduled to go out. And maybe it's too late for that to be adjusted or changed. And that is what it is. But I know as I've talked to people, I've... Went around the community and tried to get a feel
073for where people were at when it came to information and if they knew Facility planning was even a thing And it wasn't promising what I had heard I out of the the people I talked to the doors I knocked on Out of the people that I talked with only one knew that it was an ongoing thing and that was one that had kids in the district and they said oh I think I saw it at the end of an email that there's this 20-year facility plan thing going on and I know we've had what 111 people come through our tours but I also I'm a little worried with an April 9th that gives us a little over a month that this survey is it has a lot of information but I don't know if it
074has I don't know if it tells the whole story in a way that the community can really feel confident in understanding the bigger picture. Because, I mean, we can talk about ADA accessibility and just put that on here. But I don't know if that's the same thing as understanding what that means from if it takes 15 minutes for someone in a wheelchair to get from the sixth floor in Pilgrim all the way to the elective wing and they have to leave class early. And so I struggle with that tight time frame and wondering if there is any opportunity for it to be sent out starting at the end of April so there gives a little bit more time for engagement before that goes out so people can feel more informed and hopefully. Maybe they still
075make the same decision as what whatever they're gonna make on the survey But they have a better idea as to what's coming and can have some more context Okay. Do you have a sense of how we would? engage people? Well, for me personally, I'm knocking on doors to talk with people. So this gives me an extra month to do that and just talk with people and try and help people understand, come to people. Or if it's listening sessions, if it's something at each of the schools we have, you go to all the schools so people can come close by. I don't necessarily know exactly what that looks like, but an opportunity to... Better engage people before that survey goes out because I do worry that you're just gonna see numbers And maybe that's okay but
076I feel like going through this process and learning all this information And I don't I can't speak for the rest of the board But I feel like everyone's come in with very open minds asked a lot of questions and people have moved off of maybe where their biases start from and I think it's really hard to do that if you're just given a sheet of information so Sam? Yeah, Cheryl, go ahead. I would also agree with what he just said about the timing. I think that having the survey go out, I think it's April 9th, that's going to be going right up against the election. Let's have Christy text her. We can come back. Yeah, so we'll come back. We'll go to Sam. Cheryl, if you can hear us, we can't hear you. So we're
077going to move to Sam really fast and then come back to you. She's still talking on there. Is that something on the speakerphone? Where's our tech guy? I don't think it's our end. We'll text her and tell her she's just talking to the wind. The three-minute time limit was up. No, I'm just kidding. There you go here here we go Hey, hey Cheryl, can you hear me? Oh Gotcha, that's what happened. That's what happened. Okay. So yeah just back up to that point We were talking about the timeline that those are indeed voters. I think it's important that they are communicated with prior to the survey. I also have some questions about, we were given some different options with Pilgrim Park and it appears that we're just using one option, that it was the more
078expensive option. And I question whether or not it would be good to have a couple of those different options shown also for the survey. Thank you. Anything else, Cheryl? No, that would be it. Okay. Thank you. Sam? We're just taking notes right now. Chris? I'd be interested in feedback from the board on which option to go with I feel like we need to pick and and I think when we discussed at the last work session I felt like there was more support for the Integrated option that connected the music wing with the rest of the building and created a third hallway So that's that's why we presented that option. It was more about meeting the facility needs and it was necessarily about the cost I guess but I'm happy to Be told otherwise Yeah, my
079opinion about that is is pitch the I guess the highest and see what the feedback says and then Decide if you need to adjust from there. That's how I would approach it So thank you. I did want to say great presentation Well done great details. I did feel that there was a lot of transparency in presenting the numbers I really appreciate that how you showed the the mill rate I think that that's really helpful and it's it's confidence building on that. I would like to one recommendation is You know in order to provide the most information in the community to I think even taking your presentation That you recorded tonight here and to put that on the website as well And then maybe a link to the full segment that we have for tonight for
080people to quickly find that and view that. I think that would be worthwhile. And then mentioning that link going forward into any other communication for them to hear what is being said would be important. And then I would love to see on there, too, because what bothers me the most about referendums is the incredible amount of interest that the community has to pay for that. And the way I see it, it's the lack of previous planning, and now we have to take a big loan out and pay interest on that for 20 years, which I just think is not always ideal. And I think looking at that number is important. So it's a $100 million referendum, but the community is paying $165 million? $166 total. Okay, so that's a number that I think that is
081just... It helps people grasp that I know it's probably not ideal and and winning people over but for me like I want to know like That's the truth on lending statement you would get when you buy a house right here You're gonna get the amount of total interest you're gonna pay over the entire time I think that that would be a fair thing to also translate to the community Can you real quickly just tell me a little bit more about slide 18. So I was the one that requested about not doing the full Pilgrim Park renovation and I guess what I was maybe it was it not slide 16 which one I'm with you it's on the screen okay thank you slide 18 I didn't have my glasses on 8 and 6 look the same
082For just my thought was the gym is in pretty bad shape in the sense that it's hard to have everyone in the school get together. They're sitting on the ground. That makes sense. It's, you know, not upper level where it's no ADA compliance. So why would we have to do the entire, there's no other scenario where we could just do a smaller addition to just accommodate the locker room or add on just part of the gym on that side versus having to do the entire, you know, elective, the music wing. Because that's what I requested. Yeah, the renovation of the gym, obviously it grabs the space that the locker rooms are using now. and declares it as part of the new gym. So that's kind of the gym expansion there. It's not listed as an
083addition on the width side, but it is taking that space and turning it into gym space rather than locker room space. So then you have to move the locker rooms. Obviously the upstairs fitness center has to be moved because it's not accessible. And so they had to go somewhere, and we also had to address the ADA issues in the music wing. exists right now and so you know based on the previous options that we looked at for Pilgrim we can't put the locker room fitness on the other side because now you're cutting into the parking lot and drop off and we're already condensed in that on the left side of the gym and so that's why making it a contiguous space on the on the right side made the most sense Even though it obviously
084added cost because you're then building an addition with the music But your other plan has the cafeteria in the front side cutting in the parking lot space So it also a renovation then of the parking lot which was not part of the scope of this work either Okay, so we tried we tried to limit tried to respect the scope that was given to us and worked within that rather than You know moving into scope creep essentially. So Guess what you're saying. There's really not another scenario where you could put the locker room somewhere or add on just a small portion down that area without having to Do you can't go south of the gym to the bottom, right? Right and part of the reason for moving that is we're using the whole roof structure so
085the roof structure of the gym goes over the balcony or the area and the locker rooms that's how we're getting the bigger gym so you're removing the balcony and you're staying within the roof structure because it spans the whole place so that's why we have to move it to the music area so it's adjacent to the gym I imagine we can come up with something a little bit of a cheaper option but Where you're telling me is that's the only option right now? That's the option that we discussed with both CG Schmidt and Bray that I Guess made the most sense with the objectives that were given Okay, and then you're talking about the six million maintenance tell me a little bit more about why that would be so some of the Pilgrim was identified
086early on in our maintenance assessment as the school with the most maintenance needs over the next three to five years and so in the proposed $52 million renovation there are about $10 million worth of maintenance expenses which includes lighting, ceiling and then The chiller upgrade changing the chiller out getting rid of the ice making system and then the controls so So because we're only affecting a portion of this renovation then we took out of the ten million four million dollars of Improvements maintenance improvements are embedded in the renovations that are presented here but six million dollars roof replacement and other parts of the building um are not included so and then and that would need to be then part of our 71 million dollar maintenance and repair budget so instead of 27 million we could
087also add the six million on that and get to the 33 if you wanted to as well right so that would be another option as well it would real quick then about the survey i just want to make sure i understand fully how that is so I didn't see a question and maybe I didn't read it as thoroughly as I would have liked but since it came late today the there's no question about asking if they are an employee of the district there is there's okay I missed it the demographic questions are at the end or the second to last page and then if they have children in our schools children in a private parochial school there's several age thank you and then why And the survey company information that was sent out, they say
088that they'll also survey people who can't vote. What's the thought process behind that? That would be staff. I mean, some staff are also included in here just to give you a feel for how staff support or don't support. And they'll segment it, staff who are residents versus staff who are not. But those are the only ones that would be considered in this survey. What's the thought process behind that? I mean, I get the understanding that they work there, but this is ultimately going to the voting taxpayers only or the constituency. Yeah, I think it's to give you. You know, this is a survey to develop a plan, and so I think it's important to have the staff perspective of how do they feel about the facilities in which they work every day, and then also
089certainly the community's interest in the facilities as well. And so I'm just thinking of this from a practical perspective. If I was an employee of an organization and I said... please give me the nicer updates and all of that and it would not affect my pay and I'd have to pay for any of that. What would be the incentive for them to not, or how would that be weighed properly? I don't understand that. Yeah, I think what we've heard from our senior leader listening sessions, two today, that, you know, staff, several of our staff have worked in. multiple buildings throughout their careers and and some are in multiple buildings every day and and they know there's differences, you know, I think they know when when they're in a classroom that is appropriately sized and can
090close off to the rest of the to the hallway noise and You know focus their students attention in different ways versus an environment You know more like Tonawanda and so so I think I think they they have a realistic approach to their assessment of our facilities We were with Brookfield Central staff today and and had a I think a very reasonable conversation about you know Needs in their buildings which weren't many and were based on lived experience, you know, and they weren't extravagant I don't think our staff I think understands our communities values and and the value of taxpayer dollars and and and knows that You know, we take good care of the resources we have And they would also rather see an investment you know, as much investment as possible in teaching and learning
091rather than just our facilities. So, you know, they know it's important to invest that $5 million a year every year, but they also know that that $5 million could be spent elsewhere in support of teaching and learning, but they recognize that's just the balance that we have to live with based on our community's expectations. And I know their opinion is extremely important and valued. I just, if we're looking at bringing this as a referendum to the voters, I don't know if those responses would not properly reflect what the voting population would want, and I think that would be something I'd want to reconsider that one. And then just do you know how the weighted average is taken? I mean, so my guess, and this is just a pure hypothetical guess, but parents and people that
092are part of the school will heavily vote or fill out the survey, and you'll get less and less. when people are outside of that how what's the weight of it going to look like is it going to i mean their experience is you know again the thousand surveys that statistically i think we only need 500 700 responses or something like that they're they'll ex they've ex communicated to us that they expect many many more than that one of our neighboring districts just went through this survey and maybe set a record for a response rate with know 25 30 percent or more and so the so you again take that segmented population of non student households and as long as you have a representative statistically representative number then they take that and extrapolate it for 60
093percent of your population or 70 percent of your population do you know what their success rate has been in predicting that Predicting referendums? Yeah, based on these surveys. Well, they say that if your questions are the right questions and you were to carry those questions through to the referendum, then they have a high degree of confidence in the survey results. If you decide that these are the two questions today, but really we're going to ask this question over here and we never surveyed on it, they won't guarantee, obviously, their response. So I don't know that there's a percentage of success. I think our leadership team has experienced different rates of success in other surveys for other communities. But they've done this enough, I think, where they can reasonably predict. And they helped develop these questions
094as well, I assume? They did. They did. Okay. And then I also didn't see anywhere where it said this was an anonymous survey. So is this 100% anonymous? I did a search. I couldn't find it in the whole document there. Yeah, I mean, there's no identifying information there other than your household code. And that's not, I don't, your address isn't stored with the survey. So it's just a code. I mean, codes can be tracked. So I'm looking at it from a point of view of someone who's a skeptic by nature. We'll ask. I think that'll be important for, to get true results back, especially from. yeah so in the FAQs it's there but we can make it okay make sure it's real clear that's 100% anonymous yeah thank you that's all I had let's go
095ahead and hear from all board members and we'll circle back around as you've got Preetha do you have anything you want to add I appreciate all the discussion tonight and thank you Chris for putting together this good this presentation I'll let everyone else speak I've got a couple of questions, and then we'll go to Jean. And then we do still have two people who are requesting to speak after board discussion. So think about the survey. I mean, for me, there's such a big issue in our community because the ramifications are 20 years, right? And it's every single household, whether they vote. They own property here. This will affect them whether they're aware of the survey whether they're aware of what we're doing I mean this this could affect their lives and so it does carry
096a lot of weight for me and I'm very interested in hearing what people think and so Chris I just wanted to understand better the thought process behind the two proposals like I know we don't want to overwhelm people with seven Or I mean we could say well there's four options for Pilgrim Park and we've got three for tunnel I understand that but to limit it to two almost seems like oversimplifying it a little bit where like you said if we don't survey the right questions and the board we get the survey back we decide we want to ask different questions. We might have a disconnect and so is there some value in maybe looking at more than two just what's the thought process behind? To what did the survey company share or your thoughts on
097that? the delayed contributions to board Doc's were kind of a result of our ongoing dialogue with school perceptions about Kind of what's what's the story like you that you know, they kept you know, we haven't I would say you know we've done a lot of work in the 20 hours of work sessions but we haven't taken the time to summarize that work until you know really our conversations with school perceptions like you know how do we encapsulate the process the position the opportunity and the plans in a way that's coherent to people and representative of where we've been and like where we'd like to go So the some districts have Certainly segmented parts of their facility needs into you know kind of program buckets or you know, do you want a new gymnasium at one
098school versus a You know cafeteria classroom upgrade at this school versus something else at another school versus something else in another school there's a lot of background information that would be required to make that kind of assessment you know I mean kind of to Wes's point that you know if you don't even know that we're even talking about facility planning how do you even know you know and I don't want to oversimplify our story but really the at the crux of our story is the you know our facilities are either designed using a model that no longer works or are aging. And we're trying to set them up not just for the next five years, but really for the next 20 years or 50 years. And so when you think about that timeline, Doing doing
099none of these things isn't really an option over the next 20 years and just hoping that we can get by and hoping that our 71 million dollar budget can support all of the ongoing needs and so I Don't know. I mean, I'm certainly open to to Crafting other options. I just don't know what those other options are yet. I guess would be my that's fair And so I wonder if this next question asks us in two parts is related. How do we seek feedback on things we haven't thought about before? We've thought about a lot, maybe everything, maybe all the major points, but maybe not. There's a lot of smart people in the community. And again, as people start to engage in this conversation and then is there an opportunity? So there's that question. Then
100is there an opportunity to gauge community feedback on? the design almost with a question like would you like to see other options for so we have one here in the survey but would you like to you know go to the website look at other options for Pilgrim Park again not all are gonna engage in that some are just gonna go through the survey and they're gonna be like I'll look at this one I'll give you some feedback but maybe there might be a chance to direct people someplace else for additional information or and or how do we solicit Things we haven't thought about is there an opportunity in the survey for that kind of feedback and they've done this quite a bit so if you could maybe I'd be interested in that and then to
101West's point about educating people and people being able to see what we're talking about because again, ADA compliant means something to me as I've walked our buildings over the years and we've talked about the kid on crutches, it's not always a student in a wheelchair. What about the kid who just tears the ACL skiing or a football injury and they've got to exit the building at one point in Pilgrim Park to access a different part of the building because we can't get through, we've got obstacles. I wondered if almost like a virtual, I live in the space of property management, so thinking of houses for sale, not every home, most homeowners don't do this, but if you're in an area where you need to generate some buzz about your property or sell it maybe a
102little bit more, a video tour or a virtual tour, we've got Mikey. He's awesome. We've got a great team. that does amazing videos. And so is there a short video clip where you could see? the room at Pilgrim Park that has the uneven floor and the foundation. It wouldn't have to be long, but again, could direct people to the website for some of that more information. Like, well, what do we mean ADA compliant? And there could be three or four short video clips, examples where you could see pointed out. I don't know how we could do it with privacy concerns, but could you see some of the congestion? You know, maybe just showing knees and lower. We're just looking at shoes of students going through the hallway to see. The congestion we've got at certain
103times of the day if we're talking about flow Because flow you're like well, yeah, I'd be nice if we get through here But if if we're really backing things up or you know the side of cars down pilgrim when we're talking about The need for some change of the parent drop-off part of the district gets that people who have experienced it get it 80% of the people taking the survey aren't going to be in that group or 80% of people voting on these proposals and so that video Those short videos might be helpful. I don't know how many it would take, but I can't imagine we'd need more than a couple dozen. Eric, he's like, this is job security, Eric. I don't know, but just maybe a thought in terms of educating and being able
104to send people. to the website and then once they're there if they can see that as a place of value for the ongoing conversation maybe people stay connected to this you know through the summer through the fall as we continue to talk about facilities and really refine options if they know they can go there and find quality information that might be a good clearinghouse the survey will be over in a month and so how do people stay engaged if we've directed them the website just some thoughts Jean and then any other board members like to speak again we'll go Sam and Mary I just have a couple more points I tend to agree with Sam in terms of staff taking the survey and I wondered I wonder about the you can stratify the results to
105to pull those out if you're talking about would you support a referendum of this amount or that amount it would seem that It would seem that staff having that opinion isn't necessarily helpful to us as we gauge our community's response because they're not going to be voting the staff that don't live here so I tend to agree that we should have some way to manage that It could be that in many of their surveys where school perceptions has helped facilitate where staff where they're asking people to prioritize options that may be of more value from a staff perspective then then maybe if it's just focused on a referendum question then maybe that staff perspective isn't valuable so we can clarify with with their team and see if that's helpful and I also agree with Scott
106in terms of the video tours I remember when we talked with when we toured Pilgrim Park and Liz Nelson I ended up in her tour group she's assistant principal over there she said there are 600 kids in this hallway at the end of the day and we have regular accidents with students because they're moving fast and it's so congested so if there's ways to there's ways to convey and I don't know what the statistics look like but that might be an important add to the you know all the facts that we talk to our community about so thank you Sam I appreciate your affirmation Jean and my question I actually disagree with or at least I want to just throw this out there. First question, for the communities that have a 30% response rate, is
107our plan to do something similar to what they were doing as well? So you said a record-breaking response rate, something like that, or is that expensive? It's the same cost. I think it's just the community's interest in the topic. Okay. I didn't know what the process was of whether it's multiple mailings. When we put out surveys, people respond, just in general, because... They're committed to providing feedback, and we're asking for it. I think that the two questions you basically have right, I think that that's all you would want. I think adding more is confusing. I think that keeping it just at the minimum. My opinion is it's laid out very, very well, and it gives you the argument. And it gives you the two options. And then really, because that's all that they're going to
108be voting on at the end of the day. I think you add more, it's just going to muddy the waters. And I think, lastly, I think I would strongly caution, in my opinion, of not putting out these videos you're discussing. I think the perception will be right away is, well, that's just the worst one minute of the day, and anyone can live with that congestion for a minute. I think you'll sow more doubt in the community. I think you'd be better off providing just statistics. Like, you know, for an average hallway of that, we have 454 kids per minute walking through this area. I think that would be far better than to try to say show a video because immediately I'm going to think. That's that's that's propaganda. It's rigged. It's not it's not accurate
109They're just trying to paint a dire scenario and I and I I think you're just you'll you'll create more doubt then you will benefit from that Mary Thank you. First of all a question that Cheryl's comments put in my head about snowbirds. There's a question on the survey that says, is your primary residence in the school district of Elmbrook? And that will, to me, identify perhaps staff who don't live in the district, but also people whose primary residence, because they're a snowbird, is maybe Florida, which means they are a homeowner but not a voter. And I don't know if how school perceptions identifies. or if they find it's necessary to differentiate those because I think there is a difference if you're a taxpayer but this isn't your primary residence versus you don't own a property
110in the district. So that. As far as the video tours and the... comments I appreciate Scott some of your questions about can we offer them more options however what I hear through that is you want people to see more of what you saw and know more of what you know through videos or through options you've considered and I think we all have gone through that process but that was our process that was our selected process and we have gone through it now so I have no problem with limiting options on the survey because I do think the more you put in there the muddier your response is going to be that's just kind of my professional opinion on doing that as well as what I've seen here I do however like and didn't point this
111out before the opportunities to comment in text form on this survey there's some really good in between the facility sorts of questions and after your decision opportunities to ask more questions and comment and I think for me that is sufficient rather than putting in more options for people to say no and no and no I'll never support one or gee I would do this if you added this or subtracted that so I think this does allow for that flexibility and that is a real positive to the survey as it's written finally I just want to agree with some of the sentiments Wes gave about Questioning ways that we can get out in the community more I can't go out of my house without being asked questions about this subject There's a there's a hunger for
112more information and I have already asked for The preparation of some fact sheets and some FAQ sheets that a lot of the information you presented tonight has in it But it's not easily in a handout form i would be happy as a board member to go out and do more of that and in a more organized way as as a collective process that we develop or individually if there isn't time or interest in doing it in a collective way but um that said i don't i don't think the election is what april 1st 7th? I was close. At any rate, it's before April 9th. So for me, I don't get concerned about conflation of the election because the election will have happened before our survey goes out to Cheryl's concern about it being too close.
113It's already being talked about in the election. It's already being talked about in the community that that ship has sailed, as they say. So anything we could do collectively to... put some info sessions together to informally answer questions. I think that would be awesome and may meet that need to explain the in-between the projects that you talked about, Scott. Videos are okay though, Eric. Two dozen sounds good to me. Thank you and Chris before you say I do appreciate Mary your I had missed the two comment sections again I was working today and so came straight from work here just skimming through the survey I had missed those spots for the comments that might take care largely of a couple of the concerns I had so thanks for pointing that out. I just want to
114say we do have an opportunity with LINC we always put out a community newsletter called LINK with board candidate information so that will be going out in arriving in households in late March we have a front page opportunity where we could provide provide another high-level overview we did that also in December but do it again and then direct people towards a place towards our website with resources so if we can build out those resources just again another opportunity to put it in front of people Cheryl, did you have anything else you'd like to add or ask? Okay. Thanks, Cheryl. Anybody else? Okay. Our two requests to speak after board discussion, just two, yeah, one's for a different agenda item, would be Ann, I hope I can read this, Corinian, a resident of the district. Okay,
115and thank you come to the podium you can say it in them in the microphone your name She is a resident of the district and yes like to address this. Thanks. Yes and Calmer Canadian. I'm a ton of Wanda parent and neighborhood resident And I will start by saying that I did feel a little blindsided by the plan that was released last week As I've been looking for months for more informations on this more information on this plan Right now Tonawanda is very full but before moving forward with any plan we should investigate population fluctuations over the past 10 to 15 years and projections for the next decade and then some. I think Elm Grove is at the end of a baby boom and school census will decrease somewhat in the coming years as shown
116in the slide tonight. Projections put Tonawanda about 50 students fewer by 2030. Regarding the plan that was recently released, Tonawanda has been a progressive open concept school for over 50 years. I am a product of the no wall situation. It was fantastic. I wouldn't change it for anything. Closing off the classrooms and creating a new building would be a huge mistake and loss for our community to say nothing of what it would do for the neighborhood aesthetic. The slideshow neglects to illustrate that it takes out... the basketball courts and all the green space that's left you want to talk about fiscal responsibility the pto just spent almost a hundred thousand dollars grading the soccer field putting in two basketball courts and a new playground equipment the proposed plan looks to give the current pod footprint
117over to rap care and four and five k are we in elementary school or are we a daycare There are other areas of the current building that can be bumped out and modified to provide the additional space that is being sought. Lastly, the proposed plan creates a lot of disruption, destroys the outdoor area, ruins the open concept, and still does not address the infrastructure issues of the pods, the failing construction. or provide space for guest speakers or an all-school family event. The pendulum can stop in the middle. I believe we can be creative and thoughtful in refining the plan for Tonawanda. I urge you to please be clear with community communications and how we can work together to refine the Tonawanda plan because this plan as presented does not work. Thank you. Thank you, Anne.
118Glen Allgaier a resident of the district would like to speak I have not written out my remarks as well as the other people have for that I apologize one I would like to commend the board for looking at these issues I think long-range planning has been a hallmark of the district and I commend you for doing that some people would challenge taking advantage of the end of a referendum to do it I think that's okay I think as long as we prioritizing things properly I have appreciated the good questions of the board I think I commend you for that you're doing a good job I have not seen the survey so I can't comment on the questions but I'll try to make a couple of comments about the survey number one and it's been alluded
119to here I think there is generally ignorance in the community about Really what we're talking about the presentations Chris has provided I think have been excellent But as you know from what I sent you an email last week I think there are a lot there are some pretty significant questions that to me have not been addressed and So I I'm glad to hear the link is coming out. I would put on the front page We're gonna put on a referendum for a hundred million dollars and we're gonna send you a survey in two weeks So go check the website if you want more information and there is a great place to put all kinds of information I'm not advocating videos, but that's a good place to send people so they can be prepared for the
120survey because I think I haven't seen the survey but I think they ask those kind of questions with Limited information is is hard I like the waiting that I heard. I didn't understand how that would be done, but I understand now from Chris's comments, so thank you for that. One of the things that I don't understand is where are the wants versus the needs. What I'm hearing is it's all or nothing, and I saw some nothings, or I saw some wants in the tours I saw. That might be okay to incorporate because it's cheaper to do them, but I didn't get that clarity and the information that's been presented Question you might ask yourself is suppose the survey the survey comes out with negative results You have less than 50% supportive then what is your
121next step and finally I will make my pitch again that With declining enrollment in the district. I suggest and this is one of the alternatives. I haven't got a good handle on suppose with declining enrollment we targeted Tana as being a three-section school do we need to put that whole extra building on to the school if indeed we did some small redistricting Thank you Glen and that concludes our discussion on the 20-year facility plan brings us to another action item Resolution authorizing the issuance of an order regarding the petition to alter boundaries and Chris I think you're gonna take this very briefly state of Wisconsin Wisconsin statutes provide for Technically different procedures for school district reorganization depending on the nature of the territory being detached or attached Really anybody can request consideration for attachment to
122one district from another but it requires both districts approval or to go through a process of an appeal with a hearing with the DPI so tonight we have a request from petitioners Jordan and Chelsea Nedesheim and then the board will be asked to respond to that per statute it needs to be addressed in the month of February So as we welcome Jordan and Chelsea to the microphone the process typically goes the petitioners present their rationale on why they want to attach or detach and Then the board has a discussion around that conversation and then you make a decision around your resolution So with that Jordan and Chelsea welcome Thank you I'm Jordan. This is Chelsea. We're kindly requesting to detach our future home. We were building At 550 West Ravenswood Hills Circle from Waukesha County
123School District and attached to Elmbrook School District As you can see in the maps attached in this document our property is located just outside the district boundaries Both Chelsea and I work in the medical industry. Chelsea is employed by the Medical College of Wisconsin and I work in medical device and partner with pain physicians across the state. Primarily we're heading east and north from our property having our children in Elmberg schools would relieve some burden and transporting our children to and from school And we have attached maps to kind of show that in reference in addition to convenience We have many close friends and family who live in work in the Elmberg school district We have worked very hard over the last several years to build a community of people For our children who we
124feel loved and safe with and we would love for them to be able to attend the same school as their friends We've explored the option of open enrollment and discuss this at length with the Elmbrook school district However, we are aware this is not an option for the 26-27 school year and it is unlikely to be an option in the future for our children We hope We hope that the Waukesha County School District would be understanding of our request to detach to enroll our children in the Ellenbrook School District adding convenience to our daily routines and keeping our children ingrained in the community we have already built for them is extremely important for us we're happy to answer any kind of further questions Thank you any other questions or comments I'm sorry if I missed
125it in your request your students are what ages We have a four-year-old and two-year-old They currently are enrolled in Waukesha or not yet? Not yet. Okay thank you. I have a question for Jordan and Chelsea thank you for coming and I imagine it's a lot of work to get to this point I guess my only question then would it be has the Waukesha already approved this? We met with them last night and they declined. They declined? Right. Okay so does that mean this is dead in the water at this point because it would require both or? Statutorily this board needs to take action as a receiver of that request Both boards need to take action so Waukesha took action last night and Elmbrook would take action tonight If it is a split decision and it
126was it between the two you're saying okay how does that impact voting and you know being this is just one house in the entire street right and there's how many houses around the street do you know How does that impact those scenarios? I have no idea. Best practice would be to have a contiguous alignment of your boundaries, not to have islands. This would create an island. The impact for us potentially is additional cost because we'd have to send a bus into a place where we don't pick any other students right now. So I was just going to ask a clarifying question. So this petition is only for one house, not the houses on the street? The petition is for one house. Thanks for coming in I appreciate the efforts you're going to here Have you
127spoken with your neighbors in the subdivision about joining into a request? We are just in the process of constructing the home now so we're not officially living. I've spoken with a few neighbors who are older and said they really didn't have an opinion on school district boundaries. But I spoke with Kathleen Fry who was like the specialist who recommended that we start this appeal process this year. And she kind of steered us in the direction of only partitioning for our home because it's less revenue that the Waukesha district would be losing. so she suggested trying this first and it's that this does not go or we're not successful to redo it next year with our block and she's a specialist she's your attorney or she's a specialist in what she is a specialist I spoke
128she works for the state of Wisconsin in the school department of public instruction okay so she was your process kind of contact I understand I understand Mark, testing the memory banks and the history, hasn't this area made requests in the past? I don't know if this subdivision even existed, but it seems to me that whole Weston Hills area. has been on the block before when it was built to check our records I'm not sure I think it's not my time no I go back for a bit of a minute Weston Hills did go through this process before so there's some precedent we should probably know there have been successful detachment hearings that have attached to our district in the past including one as recently as last year two years ago oh that was the northwest
129corner yeah Mark could you just speak to if we've had one-offs in the past in your recollection or if they've always been neighborhoods subdivisions in my time we've never had a one-off that has gone through the process successfully we have had groups of homes go through the process successfully If this petition for a single home is successful say tonight or is successful in the process what would that mean for other homes along that street if say in the future they do also have school-aged children what would that probably have to go through the same process for each individual home or would it then become as a group and this It's up to the petitioners So the ones that were successful Was there denied by one district and approved by other than it went to state,
130do you know? Okay. Yes, I believe that was the case. And what generally, based on your experience, has DPI approved this? It's really a blend of different approvals and denials. It ranges from the type of value you're talking about and what kind of impact it would have on property tax base, because this all is about shifting property tax base and property tax payer responsibility. So it comes down to the size typically. It also comes down to the number of kids that are involved oftentimes and the impact on the sending district versus the impact on the receiving district. Are we going to incur additional costs? Are they going to lose staffing because of it? Things like that get considered as well. DPI considers all of that? It's a pretty in-depth hearing chaired by three board members,
131one from a rural school district, one from a suburban school district. So they call it small, medium, and large. I've been on the board for a very long time and have participated in a number of these requests and I could tell you that the request that was approved a couple of years ago I went to Madison with our assistant superintendent for business services and participated in that appeal hearing and the request was for a one street that was adjacent and not a lot of kids along that street but it was I think maybe eight households or whatever that one was approved but the others that I've been part of for a bigger group for a little bit smaller group they have a long list of criteria that they work from and they're looking at are
132your educational opportunities balanced between the districts and what about the creation of an island like this certainly would create an island that would Would drive some hardship in terms of cost on this district And it is a pretty lengthy process very deliberative lots of documents and testimony by you all and by the representatives for the school districts and then a decision is ultimately made so just for some reference that's the process that we'd be looking at here if we were to go forward with approval I would appreciate if we could put up the map and kind of show what we're talking about here if you have a the district boundary map I do have another question as I look at this here it does say that the same territory cannot be the subject of a
133petition two years in a row unless both school boards have adopted resolutions waiving the timeline so as you guys had mentioned if it's not adapted this year you had thought to maybe do it again next year it sounds like that might not be allowed We weren't aware of that in my discussion with Kathy she had mentioned that that would be an option if we petitioned with our block next year I think they would view that as separate territory if it is an expanded request they would view that as a separate territory So there are four homes there on Davidson on the south side of Davidson that I don't know if there are children that live there or not that take a school bus but to your point about you know you're gonna have to ship
134a bus in when when I was in grade school I used to walk four blocks down the street to have to get out of my school bus so if my kids had to walk down to the end of the street for a school bus or as an alternative we can drop our children off at school so I don't want that to be a deterrence for this We did also include maps of like the distances from our home to the Waukesha district schools versus the Brookfield district schools I Know there's I'm bringing that up. I think it's important to understand that the the grade school for Waukesha is Closer in distance over the middle school and high school for our district is closer to our home It's a significant commute into basically downtown Waukesha, into the
135new middle school that is going to be falling under our address as Hornady Middle School is going to be closing, which we've learned last night. And then Waukesha South is on the far west side of the city, which is where we live now. Can we go back to that map again? This doesn't show me much. And again, it's above the red line here. That little triangle, yep, right where her finger is. That triangle, okay. Okay. I just want to return to the wording from this DPI document here. The sentence after the one that I previously read says if the petition includes any of the same territory as one submitted last year, consider returning it as invalid unless both boards have acted to waive the timeline. So it sounds like if there is the possibility that
136you wouldn't be able to repeat your petition in a year. unless both boards have already gone ahead and waived the timeline, it seems like that might be a step we should consider. Am I incorrect in thinking that? And again, I'm just taking this from the wording that I'm reading right here. I think it would be something that everybody should know before you potentially don't have the opportunity if, say, it didn't go the way that you were hoping to in Madison. I think you're very perceptive that would be my recommendation as well as the not as shy as would ask for a waiver of the timelines and that would be included in part of your resolution regardless of which way it goes it seems like it would be worthwhile to protect yourself with the option to
137have that in the future to be able to do that so so Mark do you want to give us I mean I'm interested from an administration perspective in terms of cost legality I mean you mentioned we've mentioned busing a little bit what would be maybe a recommendation to the board on this petition I think the general recommendation is always accept a petition to attach in general but following best practices when it comes to school district boundaries you don't want to create islands because it creates the potential of additional costs down the road so given all of that I would recommend holding true to best practice and boundary maintenance as opposed to just accepting the detachment requests I think my recommendation would be is to go back to the community explain to them why Elmbrook is
138a much better school district than Waukesha oh it's just being recorded never mind um i i think getting them to to sign on with you would probably be your best route i couldn't support this today mainly for the complexities and certainly see your willingness to drive and and but if you sell your house the next people might be like well i get the right to take them on the bus so that would be something we'd have to be consistent with so i think if you were to bring back the community you know that street or those two streets which again i i don't think it's ideal because of how it's going to jut out there it's going to be probably a long road or a challenging road but you guys have the determination it seems
139like and i would certainly wish you the best on that but i probably couldn't support this today at this time as i look at this map and i look at pretty much a a box that could be built for my 94 south to that westernmost red line. The part below the line, that box that juts out, I believe that entire Weston Hills subdivision came to us and succeeded to be annexed into the Elmbrook School District. And I'm pretty sure there was some pretty bad blood with the Waukesha School District at that time because those are very nice houses that were built and now not theirs. I'm not just looking at your block. I'm looking at that entire neighborhood and wondering how many students that represents and knowing the turmoil that the Waukesha schools are in
140right now with declining enrollment and I'm not sure that they're ever going to be in agreement with losing any of their students but because you're an outlier, a single here, if that entire group were coming and we had more data and maybe more understanding of Waukesha's reason to decline, I'd love to have more students. I'm not against that at all. But at this time, with this just involving one house, I just can't support it right now. Anyone else? Wes? I was just going to say I agree with Sam and Mary at this point. I think the one-off, the historical precedent and how we've approached things in the district of not doing it for one house and the logistics, as Sam said, if we added, you know, if someone else bought the house, what that means.
141And I think Mary, you're right. Like there is a logical piece there that could make a lot of sense despite how much of a fight undoubtedly that would cause, I'm sure. But I think, yeah, just the... I think from historical precedent to the one-off, I think it's just I wouldn't be in support of it right now either. Cheryl, did you have anything you wanted to add? A one-off, and it would be an island. I don't think it would be wise of us to go forward. So we do need a motion if it's a denial or an approval, and it's a roll call vote. So if someone would like to make a motion, I'll ask if there's any more discussion or questions at that point, and then we can take the vote. Before a motion are
142those are only two options we must approve or denied tonight, okay Then I would move that we deny the request Authorizing the issuance of an order regarding a petition to alter boundaries motions or a second second Gene seconded that okay. This is roll call vote. So Christy will come to the microphone right there Oh, sorry we questions and comments. Yes. Sorry. Thank you. So Your motion is to deny. Correct. Okay, so if we're voting yes, it is to deny. Yes. A yes is a no. Yes, okay, with how we're doing that today. And I would just encourage you guys that the stamina, I think if you could bring that neighborhood in, I think you'd get the support here, in my opinion. I do have a question, because it seems kind of contradictory, right, where if
143we go and try and get the whole neighborhood. then Waukesha is probably surely going to say no to Mary's point because we're going to be losing a lot of students, a lot of tax revenue. So our thought coming in as a solo, as an island, was that it minimizes the hit to Waukesha and makes it less for them. It's less of a burden coming over to Alhambra. That was our thought. They denied it either way though, right? Yeah, they denied it for you as a one. Correct. We always knew that they would. but the president is pretty sad but if we were to approve one we've set precedent to approve many and they're never going to do that you know that then we'd have these at every single board meeting eventually we'll take over the
144whole waukesha my concern you're on you're on the record for that my concern is again the point that i brought up again i I understand your concerns and I again also as my fellow board members I commend you on the on your pursuit of this I would encourage you though and for this reason I will also vote yes to vote no to deny only because to preserve you the opportunity in my mind to do this again either individually as a group my concern would be if we were to if this were to then go to the state and you were at that level somehow denied what does that mean for you in the next year and again without clarification of that I'm concerned that it means that it blocks you out for a certain amount
145of time so yeah we kind of were under the understanding that if this both we got denied that we would recircle back next year. I think that would be the case. We're denied, then that doesn't take away your opportunity in any way to do this again, either individually or as part of a collective group next year. I believe so, as long as we don't go to the appeal process with the state. And I'll just add, I haven't been a part of too many of these, some like Jean said, it is a pretty big process and a fairly low success rate. I haven't seen many successful but this does have a chance to be successful if there's more people involved Would you recommend just like based on the map like going for that entire territory on
146the other side of 94 or just going for like our block Why don't you and I set up a time to talk So anyway I just had not directly addressed That was my concern is the state and going to that board and it is pretty tricky. Even two years ago, I didn't think. I liked the idea. I was really supportive of the street, but I just, based on my experience, I didn't think they were going to get it, and it was great that they did. Yeah. We've met at length with the Kirchhoff family, so we understand everything that they went through and kind of how they approached the process, so they kind of guided us and helped us. You know, he said the same thing, that it was a long and kind of grueling process.
147So rather than an ending, it's probably more of a beginning tonight of your journey. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, roll call vote. So, Christy, you'll come to the microphone. Do you want to say it again? You're voting yes if you're denying it? Yes. We're voting yes on a motion to deny. On a denial. Okay. Pritha Curdiara. Yes. Wes Silla. Yes. Mary Wacker. Yes. Cheryl Milnes. Sam Hughes. Yes. Gene Lambert. Yes. And Scott Wheeler. Yes. Seven yeses. Okay. So, the petition is denied. Maybe we'll see you back here again. Thank you. Okay, that brings us to our beginning of our, some other discussion items tonight. It's 3000 Policy Series. Let's see here. Is this going to Eugene? Mary. Nope. We went through these last time three are reconfirmations and 3430 is a revision just to update to our
148current practices and 3534 has to do with a recent change to the district's 403b vendor Before we have board discussion we do have a request to speak Leanne Weed a resident of the district would like to speak about tax sheltered annuities Leigh Ann hello good evening again Leigh Ann Weed district resident I'm here tonight to talk about the proposed revision to policy 3534 regarding tax sheltered annuities and I ask you to reconsider approving the proposed revision to leave the policy as is and instead to reconfirm it As I was reading the agenda items for tonight's meeting being a newly retired teacher within Elmbrook 403b this agenda item caught my eye the present policy allows approved 403b vendors that's plural multiple options for employees but the revision designates a sole provider chosen by the district to
149serve as the one and only approved vendor for employees I did send an email to all board members and Mr. Prather yesterday morning with questions about this agenda item. I understand that leaves little time to respond before this meeting, so I'm here to ask those same questions prior to board discussion in the hopes that those questions will be addressed and answered during your discussion. In each of the three school districts in which I taught, staff had choices for investing their own money for retirement. This policy revision removes all choice. I want to be very clear and stress the point that 100% of these invested dollars are earned by and belong to the employees. The employees are choosing to defer their earned money in order to save for their retirement. When I was employed, I appreciated
150having a choice in where to invest my own money. I researched the option, an easy process, and chose an option that had strong performance with low fees. My fear with this policy change is that employees will not have a choice of an investment company that has both strong performance and low fees. My questions are, what is the rationale for this policy change? What will be the metrics by which the sole investment company will be chosen? What choices of investment companies and how many choices are our benchmark school districts offering to their employees? What will the employee fees be for the chosen sole investment company? For example annual fees a rollover fees a rollover into the new company rollover out of it rollover upon separation fee increases upon separation of employment And finally, since the invested
151dollars belong to the employees, what input do the employees have in the selection of the sole investment company? As an aside, at one school in which I worked, if 12 or more employees requested a particular investment firm, the school added that firm to their 403B choices for employees. I know as a board that you have very complex, public, and impactful decisions to consider and make. have also seen thoughtful discussion of the perhaps tedious and mundane policy considerations that you must make as you know how impactful those decisions can also be thank you for considering and addressing my questions and again I ask you to not revise the present policy thank you Leigh Ann No, the change wasn't, I mean, the reasons for the change weren't presented to FNO, just that there was going to be
152a change. I know there were district listening sessions that senior administration ran at all the schools. I'm not privy to what was said there or what the particulars are. Maybe Mark would have more information. So the rationale is a lot of different layers to it. Probably could spend an hour to two hours talking about the rationale. No, we've got time. We're running about 20 to 25% participation rate in our 403 strategy. It is one of the retirement tools that is in our toolkit for employees to use to get prepared for potential of early retirement. We have had in the past as many as six vendors that have been approved and employees have had the choice of those six vendors, but it's been very much a sales commission like approach. What we're hoping to do by
153going to one vendor is move toward an education approach where we would be helping our employees understand what the investment could be and why it's important for you to consider it as opposed to having somebody sell and get a commission for selling a 403B investment. We continue to work through a number of different benchmarks, both in-state and out-of-state, taking a look at districts that have been successful transitioning from a defined retirement benefit. such as health insurance upon retirement to a more defined contribution approach. And we're currently monitoring a couple different new models that are out there. You'll hear more about those in the years to come. So this is really prepping for a strategy to help our employees be best prepared for retirement. And this just involves new? investment in the 403b the existing policies
154don't have to mandatorily change the employee has the right to do what they want to we're encouraging all employees to check with the current provider to find out if there are fees associated with transitioning they could transition some of it but some people have fees that anything that's been invested in the last four years comes with a higher fee so they really are encouraged to contact the current provider but all future 403b contributions will be through one provider okay and what would be the incentive to move their funds or to if we have a 20% usage of the 403 B because this is not their primary retirement plan as teachers right what do you see this as an incentive to get more than 20% involved the incentive is we get access to an education program
155that we won't have an environment where we have a competitive sales commission approach So you would the hope would be there will be lower fees here lower fees and more engagement I apologize if I'm remembering incorrectly, but when Ben was presenting this it was to minimize the fees so That you're saying hope versus will it might be a bit different than what I remember So he said it would Not hope so I don't maybe the fees will be lower depending upon the length of the investment. So if you put money in and then take it out immediately, the fees are going to be higher. No, not the fees for that. He mentioned that the fee, like I think he said the general recommendation is if they're in it now, they get to stay in it.
156They don't have to transfer the money. Correct. That can stay where they're at. But the fees to participate with one sole provider. Yeah, with the new investments. Less overhead. Less overhead and easier to choose from. That's accurate. That's how it was presented that I remember it that way. so it seemed like the way he was presenting it it was a no decision so I appreciate Leigh Ann you taking the time to email I did read it I didn't respond so I apologize but it you know I I didn't know there would be a controversy on that so I think this would be something I would love to take back to the committee and discuss this a little bit more there We've listened to 218 teachers and not heard this as a controversial issue on our
157listening sessions at all financial benefit I mean is the district saving money with this process do you know as well or is there it's just purely to help simplify the process and minimize the choices basically simplify the process I think it's also to get positioned for a potential matching program that you might want to consider as a board someday any other comments questions on this Leigh Ann would like to address us again go ahead Leigh Ann welcome back to the podium So thank you for answering some of the questions. I think there are still some that could be answered further. So I know it was mentioned there's a 20% to 25% participation rate. I wonder if... if you know why that is the case I think the assumption that it's because there's too many choices
158and it's confusing and it's competitive might be a faulty assumption so if we're making this decision based on that assumption I would ask you to go back and re-look at that and find out why there is a low participation rate in fact I wonder if it is low what is the participation rate for the other benchmark schools are there any districts that have a sole provider if so Did the participation rate increase I would very much like to see that like to know about that in terms of the education approach I don't see why you can't have an education approach with multiple vendors you can The education is about starting an investment like encouraging. I was a teacher math teacher for 37 years as often as I could I implemented financial literacy in my math
159classes, showed my students, demonstrated the power of compounding interest, showed the impact of fees on those investments over time. I had 18-year-olds who started their retirement fund. I had people who went home and talked to their parents about it. I don't think education is very difficult, but you have to take a little bit of time in which to do it, and on an annual basis. but you can still provide choices for people. I do wonder how the employee fees are going to be guaranteed to be lower. I have invested my 403B in WEA Trust because it has incredibly low fees. I have not rolled that over yet because the fees are incredibly low. So there are options with low fees. In terms of a matching program, that would be great, but I would ask you
160to... not make this change until you have that matching program in place I don't think you have to do this years in advance so again I thank you for offering to maybe bring it back to committee I think this and I don't know if it's controversial I would like to know for sure that it's not controversial it struck me so thank you for considering this I appreciate it I thought Ben, Mary, maybe correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought he said that the reason the 403B was not utilized is because the other retirement fund. WRS, right? So it was. So this is additional money some teachers put away and others don't. And we don't match. Yeah. Currently. So I think if we did, we would see higher enrollment. Having worked at a private university
161where they match generously there was no other retirement option So if we leave it on that's fine I guess I'd love to get those questions answered then before the next meeting that I just get clarification on that and Any other questions? I'll just email directly Are there any other comments or questions on any of the other policies and this isn't being voted on tonight? So next month the board members have questions certainly i just want a clarification do you want this to go back to the committee for more information than we have before action or do you have what you need is there a time sensitive that this has to move because we're making a decision by a certain date we would hope to implement changes by may So we've been through a very active
162RFP process where everybody who is currently providing us 403Bs has been given the opportunity to respond to that RFP, and we have selected a vendor from that RFP process that some of our staff already use. So if we could run through these questions at F&O on March 23rd is what it's looking like it's going to be and then come to the April 14th board meeting for action, that fits in your schedule? Sure, but I'd like to know what those questions specifically are that we need to address. They're in the emails we got today. Right, that we haven't addressed now. We want to know fees. We want to know in change. It sounded to me, and I would clarify this with the committee. Our maintenance fee is lower, but early withdrawal fee is higher. I don't
163know. That's what it sounded like here. It would be helpful to lay it all out. Sure. For me to get a clear perspective on it. I just want to understand the pros and cons better I guess I didn't know that going into there I think it would be worthwhile to just try to figure that out a little bit more okay because I think we heard the pros I don't remember hearing any cons okay mark if there was a presentation slide or two that was given to the staff that we could take a look at that might fill in some of the blanks yeah one other thing I might add I'm comfortable with that going back I'm just looking at the struck language I don't know that your policy would necessarily have to be changed before
164we go to the one vendor. I think it says that you're going to give a list of vendors, but if we decide in May that, hey, we're going to one vendor and these are the reasons, this policy language could certainly be updated in June, is my feeling, because it says we're going to provide a list of vendors, and, well, we've gone to one, and we'll update our policy. It doesn't seem... Is there a reason why it would need to be changed? That language is stricken and it says the district shall designate a sole provider to serve. Correct. So I'm saying, but if we leave the current policy and don't feel like this has to, I'm wondering if the policy really is time sensitive. I mean, if you feel like it's got to be changed before
165you, I think we could still make the change if there's rationale for it. F&O has talked about it and then bring this in May or June. Why don't we take another look at it at committee? It can come in April. Yep. Just trying to take some of the pressure off in terms of time. Other questions on the 3,000 policy series? Okay hearing none we'll move on to the 4,000 policy series first reading Jean A personnel committee needs to entertain for this school year so kudos to Pam and her staff we might be the first committee to complete all their policies no oh second Well, you're right. At any rate, the policy 4420 is communicable diseases and or life-threatening condition and has been. revised as is indicated in board docs with the addition of recommendations and
166guidance from the Waukesha County Department of Health and Human Services and management of communicable diseases is as stated there and just a correction to student services so any questions for Jean If not right now if you have some later, please let me know this will be back for in our consent agenda next month Sam first reading the 5,000 policy series. Thank you. We'll begin the 84 different policies We have to go through not the one that personnel Nothing major was in any of these policies most of it was just fixing grammar and adding, you know clarifying some language and some minor revision, so Yeah, besides what's listed there, if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer. I have a question. I was trying to remember if there's been some conversation about, like, immigration
167falls under the law enforcement policy here? Correct. And so that would apply under this policy with the approach? Sam the only thing that was also changed was the one question came up was the breathalyzer policy and There was one point where the the previous policy stated that after a few minutes to take the test again So we consulted with legal and that was removed out of there. So any other questions? None those we back direct any questions to Sam or Emily with the teaching and learning department and Those we back on our consent agenda now. We're to the 6000 policy series Sam The next set of 84 policies here that we actually spread them out over the next month. We'll have a few more. Most of these are reconfirmed, minor revisions. The big one I
168thought was kind of big was just the policy 6183 to start college now where instead of just WCTC only, it included technical college. So we made that a little bit more generic since we're participating with other technical colleges as well. And then anti-discrimination statements were added. an admin code and nothing else really major. Any questions for Sam on the 6,000 policy? Sam, home run. That was pretty easy. We'll be back more next month. We'll be back with more. Again, that will be back as part of our next meeting on the consent agenda. Mary, the first reading of the 7,000 policy series. 7,000 policy there is a revision on both of these that I think became a we were all noticed as a district-wide adjustment to codify our policies in the same way by using the
169word superintendent instead of the phrase district administrator because it was all over the place with different policies. So 72-11 is revised to add the option for superintendent and designee. And the other policy is to do the same thing with a couple of insignificant updates, changing the the board's attorney to the district's attorney in policy 72 11. and we took out the word carefully because that's the way we should review everything any questions for mary if you have any let me know okay there's more time they'll be back next month all right and that brings us to the board president's report Every year the board sets priorities to guide our work and focus our efforts as we finish the current board cycle We're starting to see many of the major Board goals coming to the boardroom
170as we normally do at this time of year for the discussion and action Sequence and so again, I just want to publicly express gratitude to my board members for the preparation efforts to do the heavy lifting of school programming, facility planning, school start time, academic performance, healthcare costs, et cetera, et cetera. It was pretty robust when we agreed to our strategy map last spring and it's taken a lot of time, but I am grateful to work with each of you and it truly is a privilege as we work through all these things. I wanted to report on one of the events I attended this last month. It was the Unified Sports Basketball game at Brookfield Central. I'm sure Mark will touch on this in his report. But I've been to these games before. I was
171just thrilled and reminded. how exciting it is as one of the participants drilled a couple of three-pointers and the crowd is just cheering and going crazy. And I found myself cheering on some of these athletes as they tried again and again to score. Then they finally did and unified with the crowd and the athletes as they experienced this special game. So just a couple of shout-outs here. So grateful to Hannah Christensen, who's a student from Brookfield East. who founded Unified Sports back in 2022, inspired by her brother. She wanted to create this program for the inclusion of all students with and without disabilities, and it's just awesome to watch them come together and play this game, and they do. And also grateful, thank you to the EEF for raising funds to help expand this program
172in Elmbrook and beyond, and just feel truly privileged and honored to be... a part of a great school district that has so many great programs like this and that is my report our next agenda item is informational items that are discussed by exception only are there any items that board members would like to discuss okay mary this really isn't f and o but on behalf of wes and gene and i we got to attend the eagle court of honor at dixon on sunday and it was amazing three brookfield east Eagle Scouts received their awards and their accolades, and city and state officials were there to commend them as well. And it reminded me of how much goes on because of the diligence of volunteers, like all these scout leaders who've just made tremendous impacts on
173these three young men. And it was a wonderful experience. And Gene spoke beautifully on behalf of the district. Thank you, Gene. Any other? things you'd like to discuss hearing none that brings us to the superintendent's report mark thanks scott just a few quick updates first of all i wanted to say congratulations and thank you to everybody since niche has been ranking schools in 2016 we've been in first place eight of the ten years the two years that we were not in first place we were hair short in second place so congratulations to the board and to the entire community for doing amazing work when it comes to this Can you talk about whether we pay to have this rating done? We do not pay. We don't belong and we don't? No. Okay, thanks for clarifying.
174Yep. Also wanted to offer a little insight into Teacher Professional Development Day. I get asked this question a lot, like what do teachers do on that day? we have a number of things going on for instance the picture you see there is a picture of josh varner he's an expert in trauma-informed education and he spoke to our middle school teachers at both campuses and helped them understand strategies that they could have in their toolkit to help kids that maybe aren't as regulated as we would want them to be in addition to that some of the other training that went on in the district was involving lesson design literacy training and also artificial intelligence training at our high schools congratulations to our national merit finalists we have a gaggle of them as usual 21 of them
175this year 13 at Brookfield Central 8 at Brookfield East they have officially advanced to the finalists standing and that means they're in the top 1% of 1% of kids you've been there or have heard about the hydroponic farm system that we have across the street and we had a chance to engage some of our middle school students and had an opportunity to highlight the program from our food service program perspective. They got to see the hydroponic operation. They're now growing basil, and the basil is amazing. So thank you to Caitlin and her entire team. The English Language Learner Program offered its family engagement night at Burleigh Elementary School. It was a full house, and this is just a brief picture of... One of the different events going on, it's a packed gym, lots of different
176celebrations going on from a variety of countries. We have about 40 different countries represented in our student body right now and 20-some different languages. You've heard me talk about the robotics program. This is crazy, you guys. There are 10 teams in the top 10 ranked in the state of Wisconsin. Four of them are from Elmbrook. We have the two spots in Worlds for FTC. Elmbrook has the two spots. So what you heard from our student speakers earlier, this is the real deal. So congratulations to everybody. All of these teams that are referenced here have had wild success and been invited to some of the most elite events in the country for FIRST Robotics. Dixon started to a trend that is becoming district-wide, a trend to involve the Ability Center in helping all of our students
177understand adaptive sports. They have a program called ASAP where they bring wheelchairs in and our students participate in wheelchair basketball. One of the students who isn't wheelchair bound and mobility challenged turned to their teacher and said, they all look like me, as they watched their classmates participate in basketball. It was a really good way to build empathy. It's a modified half-hour session for kindergartners, and our first through fifth graders experienced it in the regular FIAD classes. So kudos to Dixon for starting a trend. You may recognize Krista. Krista is our orchestra teacher in the middle level. She has been named an Emerging Music Educator of the Year by the Civic Music MKE organization. This is a pretty exclusive award and congratulations to Krista for earning it. She's an amazing teacher. Also staying in the world
178of arts at the middle level, congratulations to Wisconsin Hills and Pilgrim Park for their wildly successful middle school musicals. Speaking of music again. we had the opportunity i know christy had a chance to attend i think pam emily jean prietha went so a number of folks had a chance to attend this very exclusive presentation put on by the milwaukee symphony orchestra performed alongside of nicolet high school and milwaukee high school of arts the brookfield east Choir was selected out of 46 submissions in a statewide blind audition It was I had a chance to attend this concert a couple years back when Brookfield Central is there It's an amazing event. So if you get the chance to attend one of these in the future, I'd highly recommend it Continuing in the world of arts, we have
179our Scholastic Art and Writing Award recipients being named across the district. So we have kids at both of our high schools that are going to receive a wide variety of awards. We have 20-plus award winners in the visual arts and also in the writing. So some of these award winners will have their art displayed in Madison and Washington, D.C. as part of the effort to build art awareness. We had an author visit at Tonawanda. Alex Willen had a chance. He's an author and an illustrator, so he does children's books, and he also does the drawings for children's books. Our kids were absolutely amazing, super engaged. He had each of them do their own drawing. You're looking at three-time champion. Mr. Caroon, who is pictured right here, is a three-time repeat champion of the district-wide spelling
180bee. He'll go on as an eighth grader to represent Elmbrook along with... five other folks two other classmates from wisconsin hills one from dixon and one from burleigh they'll be representing our district at the cisa one competition so it goes to a regional b we wish all of them luck but we have high expectations for mr karun As Scott mentioned, Unified Sports has happened two different nights at our district. The most recent one being at Brookfield Central. You see some pictures. Congratulations to everybody involved. The picture on the left-hand side is an all-group picture. You can see that it's a packed house, really well attended, and our student body really gets into cheering on their classmates. Huge thank you to the let's skate foundation for the donation to the Elmbrook Education Foundation Which is on
181a campaign to read raise $75,000 to sustain and expand our unified sports opportunities That's $75,000 contribution will allow us to sustain unified sports in this district for a decade congratulations to Pam Casey being named the HR director of the year at the state education convention I know a number of you had a chance to attend that really appreciate you supporting her for that event she had a chance to be recognized on January 21st Also a quick reminder to our community that Pilgrim Road will remain closed from Fieldstone Drive to Esser Court. So if you're thinking of Pilgrim Road, think of the Worth Park area, the entrance to Worth Park. That is currently blocked off. If you've done what I've done and forgotten that, you've known that it's a dead end and you can't get through,
182there is literally no way to get through right now. We anticipate that this project will complete sometime in May or early June. Side note, we've had to reroute 30 buses because of that. So we had to rebuild our entire transportation system. Also a reminder that we have a board election on April 7th. Area 1, Area 3, and an at-large seat are available. The pictures of the candidates are there as well. And finally, to the folks who helped us shatter records for the Engaged in Excellence nominations, remember that we combined our Engaged in Excellence and Thank You Thursday initiatives into one process. We have 2,300 nominations. That's our most recent one highest one ever was 2100 so we blew through that record So thank you to everybody who participated in that the engaged in excellence event
183will highlight award winners in multiple categories in the near future Finally the arts in the back of the room is from the Tonawanda students If you've not had a chance to look at it You can see the great art talent that we have in our school district that concludes my report any questions for me Just to add to that the Scholastic and Art, the students Gold Key and Silver Key are currently on display or at least they were two weeks ago at the Art Museum. In Milwaukee. In Milwaukee. So if you want to see that there, that's kind of fun to see. There's a lot of BC and BE there. Our kids do pretty well. And Chris did a great job with your slide presentation. Any other questions? Can I get a motion to adjourn?
184I'll make a motion to adjourn. Sam? And a second? Preetha Preetha seconded that all those in favor of adjourning please say aye aye Thank you. We are adjourned