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 July 10th, 2025 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. 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. Thank you. May I have a motion to approve the agenda? So moved. Thank you. We have a motion by Jean and a second by Preetha. Is there any discussion?
002All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you. That carries on voice vote. Our first agenda item of the evening is the celebration of excellence, and we have a few things. Mark? Thanks Scott. I'm going to welcome Don Kurth, the athletic director from Brookfield Central to the podium. We have a number of student athletes that are being recognized from Brookfield Central and then we'll have a third recognition before we're all done. Don, welcome. Head girls track coach Matt Kumarschak who's going to be talking about his state champion. Coach Kumarschak. Good evening. On behalf of Brookfield Central, I just want to recognize and celebrate Kenny Rinkum. She was our 100-meter state champion. I'm Matt Kumershek. I'm the girls' head coach and sprints coach. I've had the privilege of watching Kenny grow
003over the past two seasons into not only the fastest athlete in school history, but also just a great example of what being a Brookfield athlete is all about. When Kenny joined us as a freshman, she said right away she wanted to break records, but more important than her words, she put in the work. Year-round dedication, constant training, always looking to get better. That hard work paid off this season where she got 11.77 in the 100-meter dash at the prelims at State this year, which was a school record, and then winning the State title the next day, winning by just a hundredth of a second, 11.88. She also hit the podium in the 200-meter dash, getting third place, and anchored our 4x4 relay to the podium, making fifth. What makes Kenny stand out even more is
004her personality. She is a fierce competitor when it's time to race, focused, determined, and always ready to rise to the moment. But beyond that, she brings humor, positivity, and leadership to our team at Brookfield Central. She lifts up her teammates and shows up every day with the kind of attitude we all want our athletes to have. Kenny's success reflects not just her hard work, but also the support of her family, her coaches, her teammates, and the BC school community. Her journey is a perfect example of what being a Brookfield athlete is all about. hard work humility leadership and pride in representing our school we couldn't be more proud of kenny we're excited to see what's ahead next for her she is training and competing and i think in in a couple weeks she'll be down
005in texas um competing for the junior olympics which is a national event in the hundred two hundred and four by four hundred two hundred and four by four Did have a slideshow and I had a quick video of what of her race of her final race I don't know if you guys have that or not Yeah, right there the track slideshow. Maybe it's not on there. It's okay. It's not up there I mean I can yeah if you want to do the tennis and then It was just the video is just of her final race. Kenny had just run the 100, the 200. She did the prelims the first day. She also, at the end of the meet, ran the 4x4, which is just a grueling race. And then we're kind of worried about can
006she come back the next day and now just win a state title in the 100. And she really came through. She had a great final day. And this race, if we get it up, she wins by just a hundredth of a second. It's just a really kind of exciting race where she literally just leans her way to victory. So if we can get it up, it would be really cool. But just want to celebrate Kenny and all the work that she's done. She's just an incredible athlete and person. So you can go through some of these slides. They're just some pictures of Kenny. Go to the next one. If you want to turn it up a little bit, you can come here. There's Kenny. Got to maintain form. Here we go. Fair start. Rinkum was
007good out of the gates. Boy, did she ever get out. But Lazarusque is stride for stride with her. This is going to be a close one. Lazarusque edges forward. Who got the lean? I'm picking Lazarusque. Remember, if they can't rank a server. Oh, they give it to Rinkum with a meat record. Mackerel. 1188 to 1189. Youth is served. Rinkum is your state champion. What a finish. I'm going to tell you, Jay, Rinkum put on a lean at the finish line and got that upper torso. And that's just the last slide of her whole state trip there. She was a 100-meter champion school record, and she also hit the podium in the 200 in the 4x4. So just a great athlete and showcased Brookfield Central very well. I'd like to welcome State Senator Rob Hutton to
008the podium. For some quick recognition as well senator Hutton Well, good evening. Thank you, school board. I appreciate the time to give special recognition for some outstanding athletic performances and just some very, very fine young people. I'm always a little bit split and divided because I stand up here as a former Spartan, but I do realize that we have remarkable athletes on both sides of the track, if you will, including Brookfield Central, and I couldn't be more excited to be a part of the celebration here this evening. Kenny, I will just say, back in my era, there was a different Kenny who was a superstar by the name of Kenny Harrison, who I spent a lot of time with in my days at Brookfield East, even though Kenny was at Brookfield Central. And if you
009ever thought you were any type of athlete, you just had to spend a little bit of time with Kenny Harrison, and you found out. that you weren't a very good athlete compared to his superstardom. And I'm sure that's very much the case with you as well. Kenny Harrison went on to do some wonderful things, not only at Brookfield Central, but beyond, including in the Olympics. And so we're excited to see you travel down to Texas to be a part of the Olympic opportunity as well. We know you have remarkable things ahead of you, and thank you for sharing your gifts and talents here at Brookfield Central in O'Brook Schools. So with that, I'll just present this plaque to you. Will not read it because my glasses will take way too long to put on and
010will be far too boring So I will just present this to you Can you come right up here? Mine's not as cool as that plaque, but I do have a Recognition on behalf of the Elmbrook school board recognizing you for representing Elmbrook so well state tournament I was there my son was running with Brookfield East, but the house an exciting race and we had to wait to see who won because they had to look at the photo finish and it was super exciting to be there. The crowd was excited about it. You could feel it in this room again tonight. So again, congratulations. And we're going to take a picture. So maybe we can invite Senator Hutton back up and we'll stand with that at our backs. We'll face this direction. And Coach, if you
011want to, board members, those are questions that you have for Kenny or comments. Okay, Cheryl. Kenny congratulations that is awesome I ran track years and years ago when I was in high school and it's just even now such a memory and I hope that you can take this with you and just thank you for representing our school district and best of luck at the at the Junior Olympics I'm kidding. My heart was in my throat even though I knew you were going to win. It was a really good video. Congratulations to your family for supporting your endeavors. What was going through your mind at the beginning of that race? I was really focused on making sure I was doing everything right. So like getting in the block start, staying focused, waiting for the gun, just
012trying to make sure I don't mess something up. Well you didn't Many congratulations for what you've done and what I'm sure will come in the future I would echo congratulations as well great work I too did track the high jump so I watched you jump afterward and I thought oh, high jumper Nice work. Thank you. I also again will echo congratulations to you to your family for all the hard work you've put in but Can you tell me a little bit about what your your training regimen now as you get ready to go to Texas? As I get ready to go for Texas, it's a lot of speed training and strength training. It's a lot of working on being explosive, so I'm able to put a lot of energy into the ground so I can
013move faster and just be very efficient as I'm trying to do so. Congratulations. Your hard work has paid off. I echo what everyone else says with congratulations. I think I read that you're a sophomore, and so to do this as a sophomore... That's just absolutely incredible. I'm very excited to see what comes in the future for you and what you're able to do because just amazing stuff. Let's give Kenny another round of applause. Thank you, Kenny. Our next celebration. We're going to ask Don to return to the podium. We have another Brookfield Central celebration. Mr. Kurth. The success continued with our boys' tennis team, so I'd like to introduce our head coach, John Vogt. John. All right, thank you very much for having us. We're very excited to be here, and we've got a little
014presentation to go through and introduce all of the guys. So on the next slide, we'll have all our team members. Not everybody could make it. We've got one coming back from Japan, somebody working, but for the most part, we've got everybody here. Our one singles player this year was Andre. Our two singles player was Noah. They both had extremely successful years. Holding one of our trophies is Austin. He played three singles this year. Our four singles player this year was Henry. You guys want to just give a wave when we go over? Our one doubles team was Michael and Jacob. Our two doubles team was Viraj and Diogo. And Diogo's checking in from Brazil, so he's on video. Three doubles team is Sam and Taishi. Sam's hands are full there with this year's trophy. And
015then one of the great parts about our team was just all of the talent we had. Our exhibition players and tennis is a little bit different than in a sport like basketball perhaps where, you know, if it's a tournament, they'll play matches, but they don't necessarily go in the scorebook. But the records for our exhibition guys, those are actually varsity records. So our exhibition players were extremely talented. One of them was David. Another one is Madov. Then we had Vinayak, and we had Siddharth. And then we had three managers this year. One of the managers, Avni, her goal was to be the GOAT manager of all time. I think she did succeed. She organized a lot of fun stuff for us, and then Amaya and Anj helped us out tremendously as well. It takes a
016tremendous amount of time and dedication. In the upper left corner there is drying off the courts when it rains. Players are the ones and the coaches have to dry off the courts. You can't just kind of sit around and wait. You've got to spread all the puddles out. In the lower corner there, sometimes it's a lot of just sitting and waiting. If it's a tournament that's a flighted tournament like the Nicolet one, which is where that picture was taken, the guys know they're not getting a match that particular day, but they're there to support everybody. So truly a team effort. Upper right-hand corner is Sam who was our match tough champion basically It's a program in the offseason where the guys just on their own play matches and they report what matches are playing what
017tournaments and Sam earned the most points in the offseason training and then a lower right-hand corner in the true coach Steinbach tradition We don't cancel when it rains we do other activities. That was the rainy day rules quiz So they have to take the tennis umpires quiz and those Noah Michael and Andre and Raj were our winners in that one Our section was pretty tough. We had the number one ranked team in our section, which was us, but then we had the number five, six, seven, eight, 10, 11, and 15 ranked teams. Usually a section will have two ranked teams, and we had eight. And so it was very challenging, but they really, the guys really focused on what they could control, which was on the court, and we came out on top. On the
018individual state side, we had Andre, who he was... Working with a shoulder issue so we had to serve underhand at the tournament and he wound up finishing sixth in state Which was the highest in 23 years without serving overhand Jacob and Michael finished third at the individual tournament Jacob last year had finished second. So that was incredible We also had our two doubles team Diogo Verage winning match at state tournament and then two singles Noah was also able to win a singles match at the Individual state tournament as well We finished undefeated, which was very exciting. It was the 15th title for the team, or I'm sorry, for the program. And one of the things we're very proud of is the guys worked really hard. They built the 26-0 record against 18 teams who are
019ranked. And we were very fortunate for all of the family support. It's essential to have the family supporting the guys in a long season through rain outs, through long Saturdays, getting home late, all of those things. So just tremendously happy to have that support. One person I forgot to introduce as well is assistant coach Tawari as well, who is a fixture at the courts. If you've ever been there, he's probably at the courts. Doesn't matter what time of day, he's always there. um things like that evidence really integral in the guy's development as well and the last picture diogo has taken this picture two years in a row it just sort of represents all of the effort satisfaction exhaustion that goes into a season there's lots of ups and downs to it but then at
020the end it ends in in happiness so that kind of encompasses i think the season that we had it was uh i guess put everything they had into it we'd like to welcome senator rob hutton back to the podium to provide some additional recognition senator hutton well thank you again school board appreciate the opportunity to come up with just a few words of congratulations to these fine young men who showed and performed very very well at the state level and thank you on behalf of our community for not only playing wonderful tennis but doing it in a way that showed the class and character that comes from brookfield and elmbrook schools and so my Applause to you and my congratulations to you. Someone mentioned the legendary coach Dave Steinbach who, believe it or not, was
021my coach in eighth grade for tennis. I love tennis, by the way. But fortunately, unfortunately, as Dave Steinbach would often do, he pulled me aside one day and said, Rob, he goes, the wonderful part of Elmbrook schools is there are a plethora of things to be involved in. He said, I would encourage you to try all of them before you think about staying in tennis. And I appreciated his candor and his honesty in directing me that way. But the legacy of tennis in Elmbrook schools and in particular Brookfield Central speaks for itself. And you guys had some big shoes to fill, and you did it, and you did it wonderfully. And so congratulations again. Very, very. Wonderful job well done and your continued success I know will be a part of what you accomplish in
022tennis as you go on to other activities and successes in your life so I will present this to your coaches who if I can tell you guys anything to not underestimate not only what your parents have done for you in getting you to every practice, supporting you in everything you've possibly done athletically, but the coaches that spend just an extraordinary amount of time and sacrifice away from their families and their other curricular. in order to support what you guys do because they believe in you and they understand the potential that's there. And so congratulate them in every way and thank them in every way you possibly can for this achievement as well. So congratulations again, guys. Okay, so once again, my certificate does not seem as cool as those giant trophies that are occurring there,
023but I do have a certificate recognizing the tennis team. And congratulating you for coming in first at State. representing Elmbrook so well and this is true this is something we've been talking about at Brookfield Central for a while and so thank you for keeping that tradition alive and for the hard work and effort that it takes to do that so we'll take a picture now let's get the coaches in the team and again we'll just line up with our backs there okay board members are there questions or comments they have for our tennis team and If you guys, by the way, are answering a question, if you wouldn't mind just kind of stepping in the microphone because it picks it up on the recording and for the people at home. So it's kind of annoying
024to step over. But who's got a question or comment? Preetha. I'll just start with congratulations. You guys, I'm sure, put in a lot of work to be able to win this. And we all appreciate seeing you all here today. But I have a question. How many of you are seniors, juniors, sophomores? Like what grades are you in? Or who's graduated? Anybody? Okay all right so a few of your graduates and then all right who's a rising senior all right so we have a good mix so we'll see some of you guys in the future years as well so congratulations again I would echo my congratulations as well I too had the opportunity to play tennis in high school my coach didn't say I should find something else to do but I certainly was not as
025successful as all of you so congrats I know how hard it is and how much work it is to get ready to do well so great work Cheryl? Congratulations. That's really awesome to keep the Brookfield Central legacy of tennis going. How many of you play year-round? Most of you. Yeah. Yeah. Well, congratulations and great job. And we realize how hard that you guys have worked. How many of you were part of winning both of those state championships? Congratulations, doubly. Once in a career is pretty amazing. Twice in a career, you'll be talking about that for the rest of your life. And who's going to be part of the third? Okay, there you go. All right. Congratulations, and I hope you're enjoying your summer. Anyone else? Let's give them another round of applause. Thank you, boys.
026And thanks for joining us from Brazil. Okay, one more celebration of excellence, Mark. One more celebration. Thank you, guys. We are joined by the current president of the Wisconsin Association of School Personnel Administrators, Sandy Stefchak. In addition to being president of the state human resources professional organization, Sandy serves as the director of human resources or director of human capital. for CESA 1, which is our local education service agency. She has joined us for an important announcement. Sandy, what do you have to tell us? Hi, good evening, everyone. Thank you so much for letting me join you tonight. I'm here tonight in celebration of Pam Casey. Pam Casey has been a longtime member of the Wisconsin Association of School Personnel Administrators, or WASPA, our organization, and also our board. She has served as the president, planned
027and hosted many statewide conferences. and represented our state at the national level. She is an innovator, starting and leading the statewide mentor project as just one example. Her WASPA colleagues describe her as not only being an expert in the field, but she's also an innovator and is incredibly collaborative, sharing of her time and expertise. It has been such a pleasure to work alongside Pam these many years through SPAM and WASPA, and we are excited to announce that Pam is the 2025 WASPA HR Director of the Year. Congratulations, Pam, and the entire HR team for your amazing work. You're making magic happen in this district, and this results that you see here tonight happened because we find good people, and you help us find good people, so thank you for doing that. Congratulations. Any board member
028comments or questions for Pam? Congratulations it is well deserved Indeed congratulations. I've had the privilege of working with Pam on the personnel committee for many years and very much appreciate her leadership her knowledge of all things HR her calm demeanor her organization and overall doing an awesome job and certainly from a hiring perspective and all things HR very very excellent so well deserved congratulations congratulations Pam I've interacted with a lot of HR people over my life and when I interact with you it's calm it's confident it's you know you know how to deal with people and you know the you know the law and it serves Elm Brook well and we're honored to have you so thank you Pam, let me also share my congratulations. There you are. And recognize that a big part of
029what makes you excellent is your patience with us as a board and the questions that we have. That does not go unnoticed. And I am delighted to continue to work with you in helping us be the school district that we've become because of the people that you bring here and keep here. and who know how hard you work on their behalf. Thank you. I'll just add, on a personal note, I had the chance to work with Pam for several years, and when Kathy was on the board, she got us starting to think about process and policy and just really tightening up the way we do things. We had some questions when it would come to HR issues with administrators and things, and Gina and I have always been able to reach out to Pam. She's
030made time for us. She's taken complex issues and helped the board understand them to Mary's point. Pam just thank you. Thank you. You've really helped us tighten up a lot of our processes especially in terms of the superintendent evaluation and contract and so really appreciate that over the last several years and then The rollout of our new compensation system just having these ideas on what can we do to retain? Talented people it there's a teacher shortage There's no question and we want to be the best we want Elmberg to attract the best the teachers make a difference such a difference in our classrooms and we have amazing teachers, but we want to We want to keep that edge. And so thank you for everything you're doing and the things you bring to the board that
031allow us to retain and grow our amazing staff. So thank you so much, Pam. Let's give her a round of applause. That concludes our celebration of excellence and I know a lot of you are probably dying to stay for the rest of this meeting but we understand if you've got to go don't feel bad just quietly make your way out the door and we'll move on to our next agenda item which is the citizens forum this is an opportunity for members of the public to talk about to talk to the board about issues that fall within the purview of the board but are not on tonight's agenda there's a list of rules and expectations on the back of every form And if you would like to request to speak during the citizens forum or any
032agenda item, please go over here to the table at your right and these papers are available. We do have one request to speak tonight. Angie Pingel, a resident of the district. Angie? Good evening. I see that Elmbrook has made the news multiple times since our last meeting. Once again, it's not for the excellence. that I hear so much about at these board meetings, but rather for something not so excellent. This month's PR relates to a lawsuit filed in 2020 against two high-ranking members of this board, which was lost following an appeal, ultimately leading to a judgment of $13,247.33 to pay the plaintiff's legal fees and immaterial fines against the two high-ranking board members. Fortunately, in this action, recovery was limited to the cost of prosecution, or in other words, the plaintiff's attorney's fees, and those
033de minimis forfeitures or fines that were paid to the state. The plaintiff did not seek to profit by bringing this suit. The coverage in our main local newspaper states that one of the high-ranking board members was disappointed in the outcome, but he is committed to transparency. Being committed to transparency means more than highlighting the excellent things that happen in our district It means being contrite when you make a mistake and admitting it publicly It seems to me that by admitting your error Which is what the plaintiff thought and not a financial payday. We may have perhaps Avoided this distraction and this expense altogether Additionally, this district has done much more losing in court than winning. So it seems that a shift in how you analyze legal claims is in order. I've said this before, new
034counsel should be considered as you appear not to be getting the best practical advice. Finally, in the spirit of transparency, I request that a public disclosure be made at our next meeting that outlines not only the costs paid to the plaintiff's counsel, but the costs to defend the action in total. I believe taxpayers paid to defend this, and we have a right to know how this board is spending our resources, particularly when our tax dollars aren't being used to educate our children. To be clear, this is what transparency means. So I really look forward to your commitment to transparency in action at our next meeting. Thank you. Thank you, Angie. And that concludes our Citizens Forum for the evening. Our next agenda item is the Consent Agenda. I'll start with the motion and then ask
035if there are items board members would like to pull. Can I get a motion? I move approval of the minutes as presented. The Consent Agenda. Thank you. We have a motion to approve the consent agenda. Second. And a second by Jean. Any items the board members would like to pull? Hearing none, all those in favor of the consent agenda, please say aye. Aye. Thank you. That carries on voice vote. Our first and only action item of the evening is recent gifts to the district. Jean? I would call your attention to the slide that's coming up on the screen that details those that... presented gifts to the district in the month of April 2025 in the amount of $44,043.39 in addition to the names listed on the slide tip that to the next we received a
036gift valued at approximately $21,000 from the WCTC automotive program to our automotive program that will help our students learn how to provide services to a vehicle of this nature newer and more complex as we all know the cars that we drive are newer and complex than they once were so thanks to all who have presented gifts to the district we appreciate your contributions towards excellence in the school district of Elmbrook these gifts will be noted on the district website in that area you may see who the donors are and will be posted there for for the future and with that I would move to approve the gifts to the district as presented Thank you and Sam seconded the motion Any discussion or comments? Yes. I just want to highlight that $9,500 from the Wisconsin Hills
037PTO that went into a new school mascot, choir cabinets, and the Green Club. A nearly $10,000 donation from the PTO is the tangible action from fun runs and other events that go on during the year that take an inordinate amount of woman power and man power to pull off. and I just want to make sure and the same goes for the Tonawanda PTO's $2,600 donation to our Nature Center which every student benefits from I just want it very clear that this board sees those volunteer hours and these tangible gifts to the district things we might not be able to afford without their time and thank them especially Thank you anyone else? Hearing no more comments or questions all those in favor of approving the recent gifts to the district as presented please say aye aye
038Any opposed? Thank you carries on voice vote that concludes our action items for the evening our first discussion item is a look at Some secondary curriculum changes Lisa Good evening everybody tonight I have for you some refined curricular documents that we have worked on over the past year with our educators in the area of art and digital curriculum contemporary health care practices which runs out of launch digital citizenship curriculum and personal finance we discussed this in depth at our teaching and learning committee and i did include in the context the links to our committee agendas if you want to dive deeper into what that discussion looked like it was voted unanimously to bring here for further discussion So I've kind of highlighted the four major big refinements that we've done so that our student experience
039is even better than what it is currently. The first one, we are continually building and transferring durable skills, which are also known as success skills or life skills with our students. And so in the curricular documents, you're going to see we aligned those durable skills to relevant career clusters and programs of study. so that our teachers can be very explicit with our students in terms of getting at why is this course important and how does that transfer to my real life so for example in our contemporary health cares class that that course is mostly aligned to health science and human services careers so you'll see in that in that curricular document um various careers that students will learn about such as physical therapy occupational therapy or medical lab technician you'll also see experiences that they
040might engage in like earning an industry recognized credential potential for college credit and any career-based learning opportunities so really trying to be explicit in our curricular documents of that alignment between the durable skills and career clusters the second big refinement you'll see is really connected to our continual focus on literacy and what that looks like in careers so you'll see specific academic vocabulary that is going to be explicitly taught for our students so that our students can increase with their comprehension communicate more precisely and clearly as it relates to the class but also careers and increases their critical thinking skills higher order skills such as analysis and synthesis so you'll see that listed in all of those and the third big refinement is really looking at how we assess students in these courses and ensuring
041that we have those authentic and career-based connections as well as we're differentiating so all students can show what they learn so for example in our personal finance course our students will start the course off with finding a career cluster that they're really interested in potentially pursuing after high school and through each unit there's different ways through the lens of that career cluster that they're showing their understanding of personal finance in the last unit they're analyzing insurance and what you know what's covered by various insurance types they also write a life budget plan if they were to engage in that career cluster. So looking at that authenticity and that transferability of how we assess students. And then the final big enhancement you'll see is that continual focus on intelligent technology behavior, but particularly as we're looking
042at an AI-infused world. As we know, AI is a tool, but it also is probably one of the biggest disruptors in our time, and it impacts all industries, not just education. So we've added specific units on ethical and safe use in our digital citizenship curriculum, and then when you look through our digital art curriculum, We want to ensure that, yes, our students understand ethical use, but they also understand through the lens of career how AI can impact creativity, innovation, collaboration, and what are the ethical and efficient ways to use AI tools. So a lot of really good thinking, forward thinking on behalf of our educators. in the board doc you'll have then all of those curricular documents listed if you want to dive deeper into what they look like so with that i'll open it
043up for any questions thank you lisa are there questions mary um thanks lisa this is this is largely really good positive things. I do have a couple of questions. First of all, a kudos. When I look at the digital citizenship curriculum and I see the notice that there will be more teaching sharing with the library media team who are the trained experts in that field, I think that's great and I think it's a step in the right direction. I'm delighted to see it. I am wondering why some of the digital imaging classes are in art. Brookfield East and in a different department at Brookfield Central Yeah that goes back many many years and it really has to do with the strengths of the educator who's teaching those courses and so we we have that expertise
044in one school in the art department and in the other school in ATE but it also speaks to just the natural interdisciplinary connections between those courses So with different staff it might be I don't know are they different? Curriculum they are the same curriculum different educators and different departments lives in two departments. Okay? Okay The other question I had was on when I look at the personal finance The little checklist of who it's recommended for why wouldn't it be recommended for every career cluster? Well it we have that discussion that in TLC as well. It is I mean obviously personal finances for everybody we're also looking at it like if that's a passion for a career direction so it's the personal use of finance but also if finance is something that you're super engaged in
045that we've we've checked the career clusters that would lead you to a career in that area okay i guess i took it personal finance to mean more about educating our students in the use of personal finances it is that it is and okay and the career connection piece then i guess my question remains but that's fine um thanks sam Thank you, Lisa, for that presentation. So that was a lot that we covered in TLC committee. We talked about that. The thing that I wanted to point out, a couple things that we talked about was in personal finance was how to help identify fraud and not be a victim of that. So that was something that was important and some characteristics were added into the curriculum as well. And, yeah, and the AI thing, you know,
046originally we knew that was taught in the classroom. But as a committee, we decided to make sure that was added some a little bit more content that was added into the curriculum because so much art now in the digital world is being enhanced by AI. And, you know, just in conversations we've had with photographers and, you know, they use one button and it modifies the image to make it an output that they want. So that was important. So that was included and we added some enduring questions and some. even just some references to the resources. So thank you for that. I think this is a good improvement. We also had that discussion because, like you were saying, AI is a major change agent in that. So the committee had discussions with the team as well
047to ensure that these classes that are going to be highly impacted on a very quick basis. that we'll continue to re-look at them every year to see if there's some additional changes that we'll need to make or need to be added to the curriculum so we stay ahead of the curve and not fall seven years behind to the next renewal. So that was important as well. So thank you. Thank you. Jean? Thank you. I'm pleased to have reviewed the health care curriculum and as a health care professional would agree or support the type of offerings and information that our students are being given experience they're having a taste of what might lie ahead in a healthcare career and feel that we really addressed the high points there and we talked about one credential that um
048that will be updated it it will be gene i just i couldn't do it because this was already live so it will be before the action item okay great thank you for that um and then from a personal finance standpoint i looked at that and thought wow many, many moons ago when I was in high school and coming along and looking at the types of content that, sure, my parents covered some of it with me, but certainly not to the extent that we're preparing our students to face what lies ahead, whether it's looking at a loan or debt or a checking account or credit cards or whatever it is. So I'm pleased that it's a very robust offering and kudos to those who developed that. have elevated it so thank you thank you gene other
049questions or comments okay in the meantime if you this will be back next month as an action item in the meantime if you have questions please reach out to lisa and she'll be able to help you we'll see that back as an action item our second discussion item the evening is the school start time committee update chris we'll take this one good evening for the next five hours we'll be talking about school start time everything you needed to know Two hours of content you might not have needed. We'll see how that goes. Okay. So on March 18th, school start time committee recommendations were presented to the Board of Education. In addition to the recommendations, several assumptions or unknown variables were identified and needed additional research. And the purpose of tonight's 15-minute presentation will be to
050present new information and seek guidance from the board on the next step. For those that weren't on the Board of Education in March and as a refresher for all the board created a school start time committee in October 2024 charged to explore options and make an advisory recommendation to the board over 60 stakeholders actively participated on this committee the committee considered a wealth of research legislation Elmburg data and benchmark practices before evaluating options and narrowing to a recommendation Should be noted that at the time of the committee both Florida and California had legislation Mandating a middle school high school start time But Florida has since backed away from that mandate not because of any disagreement to the principle of Later start times but rather because the logistics involved were too disruptive to school districts It's
051a good reminder for us that any school start time change will only be successful if the logistics are well managed and planned for As a reminder, our current busing model utilizes three tiers and is the most common model used by larger school districts across the state because it's the most cost effective, transporting the most number of students at the least amount of cost. Since 1976, all Elmbrook resident students have been eligible for transportation, regardless of distance from the school, thanks to a hazardous zone designation. State statute also requires the district to transport students or provide parent contracts for students attending private or parochial schools. Currently, our private and parochial routes are spread throughout our three-tier system with a ridership rate much lower than our public schools. In order to achieve a middle school start time,
052desired middle school start time a majority of the committee endorsed a two-tier busing model combining ridership of our middle school and high school students and moving elementary start times to the first tier as you can see maybe in this chart if it's not too small or on your own screens this results in a significant change for our elementary and middle school students and families and a slight change for our high school students Since the presentation in March I've been working with a team to address four significant components of the school start time committee recommendation And we will discuss these right now first we verified the start times ridership capacity and route times that go right way All routes are within the target of 30 minutes for elementary and 40 minutes for middle and high school
053Which includes a 10 minute window to drive from the high school to the middle school for each route in the morning and afternoon We also partnered with the Waukesha County Sheriff's Department to assess the possibility of a walk zone, also described as a no-transport zone for our high schools. This assessment was limited to our high schools because we cannot figure out a safe way for students to walk to Pilgrim Park Middle School on Pilgrim Road, and the capacity of students that are south of the railroad tracks just... Don't help us reach a volume of students where it makes sense to try to navigate a walk zone essentially And so we focused on the high schools, Wisconsin Hills would obviously be a different story We did not look at elementary schools and the way that the
054Waukesha County Sheriff's Department does the study is they actually place a patrol officer at specific corners We work with them and identifying what the routes what the boundaries would be the guidelines they watch the corners that count traffic they Kind of assess whether a student of a certain age in this case high school could cross the street independently with reasonable safety and and for the most part They deemed that walk zones could be possible with the boundaries that are outlined this page so the we asked the sheriff's study to use a radius of two miles from each high school which is the maximum walk zone distance allowed by state statute and considered other parameters we asked them to consider other parameters such as not crossing Blue Mound or Capitol or any railroad tracks the picture
055is a general guide to the no transport zone with Brookfield central boundary boundaries guided by Brookfield Road Blue Mound and the railroad tracks and Brookfield East guided by 124th Street Capitol Pilgrim Parkway in the railroad ultimately the Board of Education can make the determination of no transport zones along with the Sheriff's Department so if the Sheriff's Department assesses it they say it's okay the board still has the option to decide whether they want to do it or not or maintain our current hazardous zone so And it could be all the way up to two miles. It could be one and a half miles. It could be one mile We analyzed it at two miles because that would give us the greatest decrease in ridership essentially these rules would be applied universally to public and private
056parochial students then so any private high school student would also fall under the same two mile radius with the same parameters and given walk zone or no transport zone These no transport zones would reduce high school ridership by about 20% of our student high school riders requiring six fewer buses and drivers and reduce the budget impact by approximately $350,000 the complicating part of not transporting high school students only in a two-tier format is that if a family lived within the no transport zone and Had both a middle school and a high school student The middle school student would be eligible to ride the bus, the high school student would not, and the bus would still go to the high school and middle school every day. So it truly is a ridership reduction strategy. It's not
057really an efficiency strategy or declaring a no-walk zone strategy. It's really just about reducing ridership and saving dollars. Any type of family or sibling exception... That we would make would cut into any cost savings associated with a no transport zone policy The need to increase the number of buses in order to support the two-tier model also necessitates the need for more drivers The committee gave great consideration to go right ways ability to fully staff its services which have been tenuous at best over the past three years We were surprised to discover the amount of turnover at our terminal in the past year based on this additional research, with 70 departures and hires over the course of the year. So they started with 85 employees or staff. Seventy people turned over during one year. Increasing the
058number of drivers by 20% would take careful planning and execution, hopefully be accompanied by stronger retention practices by Go Right Way that would provide stability for our students and families. A second concern regarding the impact of a two-tier model on our driving workforce is a reduction in take-home pay due to reduced hours. So a typical workday for our drivers now in the two-tier format, they might start at 6 a.m. and work till 9, so three hours in the morning and then three hours in the afternoon, six total hours each day. Two-tier model is condensed, where they might work from 7, 6, 6.30 in the morning until 9 in the morning, two and a half hours in the morning, maybe an hour or an hour and a half less each day. And our feedback from Go
059Right Way has suggested that that will be a significant concern for many of its drivers we do have the option of slotting many of our drivers into 4k routes in the middle of the day or running nature center routes or other routes where they can pick up time but that's not all of them that's for some of them essentially so staffing stability is is still a concern When processing options and ultimately a recommendation in March Great consideration was also given to the disruption to elementary students and families by shifting start times to the first year While an earlier start time for pre-adolescent children was supported by research which cited parent control over sleep schedules and different sleep patterns than adolescents Shifting start times disrupts many family schedules and places a greater emphasis on the need
060for after-school care and programming options response to those concerns our initial analysis of an early elementary dismissal which would be similar to what our current 4k through eighth grade Catholic schools have now is possible with an expansion of why care services added after-school programming and more partnerships with private and public entities like the Brookfield rec department and area daycare providers With more family members returning to the office for work We may need to explore several of these partnerships anyway Even in our current model to meet increasing demand for before and after school services By committing to a two-tier busing model our approach to servicing the transportation needs for private and parochial schools would also change While mandated to provide transportation or in some cases parent contracts to families The Board of Education does does have
061the authority to determine when buses will run for each of our private and parochial schools after conducting several models based on current ridership and route times an isolated Two-tier model that only serves private and parochial schools was determined to be the most efficient requiring eight buses and drivers each day depending on the school assignments some schools and the buses route assignments some schools would experience very little change to their current pickup and drop-off times while others would be up would experience up to 70 minutes of a change from their current drop-off and pickup times isolating the tiered model also means we can isolate the cost which total about 525 000 or an average cost per rider of 1200 per rider Because of our current model where we interject some of the private parochial routes into
062our three-tier model, the cost to transport now is about $200,000 for private and parochial services. So this is a significant change because we're isolating private and parochial on their own. And then finally... On the left side of this slide, I tried to summarize just some of the key decision-making considerations. Hopefully this would help, hoping this would help you land on your one to three drivers that guide your position on school start time changes. On the right side, I offer several possible next steps. And at this time, I'm open for any kinds of questions or comments you might have. Thank you. Before we open it to board member questions and comments, we do have two requests to speak on this. The first is Diane Sherwin, a resident of the district. Hi, good evening, board. I reviewed
063the presentation attached, and honestly, I'm disappointed but not surprised to see PR spin. First, I heard Chris just say that the start time committee had 60 members. So it was actually approved with 91, and the final thank you listed 57. That means that the committee lost 37% of members. While the people that put in time should be thanked for their work I did hear from parents that said they didn't feel like they were being listened to Which is why they stopped attending and you also saw that frustration in the public comments a few months ago More surprisingly if you look at page 12 Increased aftercare is listed and it's posed as if elementary students in aftercare for a longer time is the benefit While aftercare is absolutely appreciated and needed for many families a balanced
064and honest presentation would list the increased financial burden to working families and less quality time with children for these families It would mention less sleep for these children Many of whom who are struggling to learn to read These things were raised by the community a few months ago, and I'm disappointed, but once again, not surprised that a senior leader isn't putting this in writing. I also think increased aftercare is not factoring the longer-term impact. While adding free 4K gave us an enrollment bump, if parents are paying for increased aftercare from 5K through 5th, this will discourage long-term enrollment. Finally, I see a lot of talk about activities and extracurriculars, which students enjoy. But it's important to remember that the primary focus of the district should always be education first. Thank you. Thank you, Diane. And
065our next request to speak is Angie Pingel, a resident of the district. Good evening. I'm really glad to say my son is 18 and still in the district at Fairview South and that I don't have to deal with this start time personally. Because what I didn't see at all in that presentation, not one single mention, is the impact on families of kids with special needs. Let me tell you how nightmarish this would have been for me. Not only could I not get my son up that early in the morning, I would not have been able to work. My son was... kicked out of multiple day cares including the Y care at Brookfield Elementary because they did not have the resources to care and provide for a special needs child. So what I was able to
066do was I was able to hire teaching assistants to work in my house from the middle school and the high school in order to provide me with that after school care and allow me to provide an income to my family. This would not be an option for special needs families under this model because the high school and the middle school will get out after the elementary schools. And while middle school is challenging, it was only three years, not six years. So you're asking families and telling a lot of special needs kids they have no options. There will be no options. There are no daycares that cater to special needs children. So you're sending a lot of families more than... 11% of our kids have IEPs in our district. I don't know how many of them
067are as severe as mine, but having one family lose the ability to work because there are no daycare options is an unacceptable option in my opinion. So I would urge you to go back to the drawing board and take another look at it, not only from the impact to typical kids, but please don't forget about our special needs kids because they're not factored in that presentation at all. Thank you. Thank you Angie and now open it up to board member questions or comments Sam Thank You Chris I can tell you guys have put a lot of work and energy into that and I appreciate that could you tell me the approximate percentage of Students that live within two miles of the school. I'm sorry that cuz what high school it was 20% 20% So would
068that probably be a little bit higher for elementary? Well, we didn't assess it for elementary I mean it typically You wouldn't have the same distance for an elementary student. You wouldn't go two miles For elementary school students, you know, there are assumptions I think you can make about high school students that they can walk out of a Circle or a court without sidewalks they can get to a pathway that then gets them eventually to a Controlled intersection with lights and they can cross it on their own So those are those are all things that the sheriff's department considers when they look at walk zones. So I think when we When we assessed walk zones just internally and considered elementary it would be very short radius half a mile maybe You could go to two miles
069the state statute allows for that, but I think just reasonably and I don't believe there's a critical mass of students where it would be a benefit to us to make that change at elementary Did you did you look at the middle school students? Well, so again, like, we could do it at Hills, and there's a radius, you know, that you could apply to Hills, but the problem is Wisconsin Hills is in the far corner of the city, and everybody else lives one way from Wisconsin Hills. So it's not like you're surrounded on all ends with students that would then hit the radius. We could do it at Hills it would be harder to do at Pilgrim and to apply something unevenly between our two middle schools We don't do that very often in our district
070or ever Could be done though. Sam any other questions? Not right now. I'm sorry. Okay Cheryl Have we looked into the budget impact and where we would find the funds because if I'm adding the private school and the walk zones that's almost a million dollars The private school is included in the budget number so this addition is the total addition So we have not which is why one of the recommendations is to consider this during the budget cycle which would be in February to May so that we could be assured the dollars were there and we weren't making a decision now that was going to put us That would be one way to think about it and another way to think about it would be that if you set the target now and we knew
071we had to find or reallocate $600,000 from other sources we could start working on that now and get there in the budget so could be done we did not talk about where these dollars would come from though from other parts of the budget One more question with going with the earlier elementary start times did we think that some families might pull their students out and go to a parochial or private school that has a start time that might fit their family better and what impact would that be financially for our school district I think it's a concern however you know, the majority of our private and parochial students in town attend our three K-8 Catholic schools, and they all start at 740 or 745 for all of their grades. So, I mean, they're starting now
072where the recommendation was proposed. So I don't know that we would lose on that. They also may not have the same start times based on this different busing model. Mary thanks Chris for this information and and thank you for pointing out in the answer to Cheryl's question that you know that there are people who have elementary school students starting at this earlier time now there are also a lot of parochial and private schools that offer a 3k and a multiple day 4k and more extended before and after care and I think We're losing some students to that convenience already So we can't really measure hypotheticals at this point in terms of who we might gain or lose Nor was that part of the scope of this committee's discussion In fact private and parochial transportation was
073absolutely not part of our part of our charge What was part of our charge is where this report starts, and I'm always afraid that we go past it on the first page, and that is that the research on adolescent mental health and physical health. has there's a great deal that we can do to improve it as a school district one of the few things we can control is the time they start school which would hopefully promote the amount of sleep that they get none of that is a guarantee but it is absolutely incontrovertible need right now. What I didn't see in this, Chris, and you referenced, but maybe it's something we can include in. future publication to the community and to the board is we were asked pretty explicitly for the research on what elementary
074school students need for sleep and we didn't have that that wasn't again part of the charge for this committee but we did hear the community ask for that and i thought we had asked to see some of that um and i've looked at it and you're i'm not questioning your synopsis but I think having that data on the table as we grapple with this decision would be helpful. I have lots of thoughts on this. I think I appreciate that we have more information now, and I appreciate that the information we've got. In many ways is how do we make our status quo contracts and relationships? Work with a completely new system so for me there are still a lot of avenues to review and questions to ask in terms of How we bust these kids
075I understand am I correct that we don't really have a written report from the sheriff's study it's a rudimentary analysis there is a is that an answer to my question do we have something there there is a report okay um i guess i'd be curious to see as much as we have on that although i'm not at all convinced that i want anybody in the middle of winter walking to school um regardless of whether they go to high school or not in community that doesn't have a lot of sidewalks so there are there are many and those are just you know i'm not trying to throw a bomb in the room but those are questions that we as a board have to look at as we make a decision to consider a change that will
076be for an overarching good. Will a change be disruptive? Any change will be disruptive. And we're looking at... facilities right now which include middle school facilities we're looking at a proposal for some curricular programming changes for middle school which would have an impact and now we're looking at start times not just changing for middle school but for district-wide for the betterment of the physical and mental health of our children at all levels to be better than it is now. So there are still so many questions to ask and answer as a board as we determine how we go forward with this, more than just the dollars, and that's not insignificant, but it is one part of determining what it costs and then determining what the cost is of doing things. That are important and right
077I would like us to consider and maybe not ready to put this in a motion yet But when you're looking for next steps, I feel like the next step ought to be a work session among the board to Dig a little deeper into some of this Conversation because I don't think What we have now has allowed us to ask all the questions we need to ask her to kind of Turn over every stone as we look at ways to make this Work for the community to make it affordable for the community And to do what is right for the families of this community, especially for the children and the learners in this community Thank You Mary the comments Wes Yeah, I appreciate all the work that's been done on this in this process the school
078start time committee all the work that they put into it It's a lot. I think at this time I agree with Mary that word we have Definitely some work to go through I guess would be my perspective. I feel like there's a lot of You know, we have a we have a recommendation which is great. But the like like Mary said the number of Things to consider whether it's you know Looking back at at the finals, you know the final vote. It was close It wasn't a landslide victory either way. And so that kind of raises questions as to whether you know, how do we How do we land in a place that at the end of the day there's going to be disruption, there's going to be challenges, some people will be unhappy. There's
079no two ways about that as much as we'd like to please everyone. But is there a way that we keep looking under stones, keep thinking about how we tweak it? Maybe there are tweaks to be made that can make it more palatable for more people. I mean, the cost, you know. That's a that's a big piece and and how how we manage that I would be curious You know, I know we limited it to capital and Blue Mound and anything past that would be a significant significant ask of any student to go across the busy road like that and so Don't want to do that. But as I think there are more more things to look at and I wonder if these are the times we have to get to, if there's a way to
080get towards 8 o'clock and in that range for all of them. And maybe that's not possible. I know we had parameters when it came to 345, I think, was the cutoff time. And nothing could go past that. And maybe that is a hard stop. But I struggle a little bit with us moving high school only 20 minutes. When you know, I think the there's a lot of research out there that says high school really needs to move past 830 So we still didn't get to that point. We still didn't get to that recommendation And so just wondering if we can you know kick things around in or accession take our take our time because it's going to be so disruptive and make sure that we have a well thought out plan as to how we're
081going to proceed with this especially with other big decisions on the docket facility planning is going to be a big thing so I wouldn't want to rush this and make a poor decision we've seen what's happened in other communities other states where they've wanted to do what's best with the research and I absolutely want to 7-18 is too early for middle school But going to a later start time than having to make another tweak isn't going to be helpful or beneficial either That's going to be even more disruptive so I'm in favor of work sessions talking about this more and You know taking the time we need to to make a good decision for the community the u.s. Sam About two years ago, I remember sitting on the CLE, and this was the first time
082this topic ever came up on my tenure on as a board member. And I truly at the time thought this was a really good idea to look into. and it made a lot of sense and you know we fast forward to today that we have seen an incredible amount of work that you guys have put into this the community has put into that as well in addition i've heard nothing since on the board about how elmbrook has continued to be pretty much the best school in the entire state of wisconsin you know we we excel academically you know we've got the incredible staff of teachers students are learning high ACT scores. So I hear from one end, it's all working. What we're doing is working for the community. And I want to say we have
083done our due diligence and the work that the community and you guys have put into this has been really good to answer that question. And now it's time to close the chapter and say there's no need to proceed. We've got $600,000 minimum as an additional cost, which is probably on, may or may not be on the conservative side because we don't know how many of the bus drivers are going to say, I can't handle the hour cut. I can't handle that pay. cut, I need a job that's going to supply and provide for my family or my part-time. It's clear that the community doesn't want us to spend, in my opinion, from what I've seen and what I've talked with, $600 to $1 million more on just changing the start time by a few minutes
084each day to accommodate some kids that might work better in the mornings than some kids. you know, who don't. Maybe that'll help them. Maybe it won't help the others. And so I think we did a due diligence. I think it's time to close the chapter and move on. I am not in favor of any more work sessions. I think that you guys have worked hard. You've given us great information. I think we can all make a decision to say we're not going to come up with the $600 to $1 million to do it. We've got, you know, budget problems. We're talking major, you know, facility upgrade. We've got a lot of teacher staff that we can do. So appreciate the hard work. I'm in favor of ending this right now and moving on to more
085important things. I think we have a lot of other bigger problems in this community we can resolve in this school district. So thank you. Senator Jean. Jean. First of all, thank you for the follow-up work, working with the Sheriff's Department and the bus company and bringing more information forward to us. It's a complex topic and I appreciate your work. I wanted to ask about the... the walk zones and the 20% reduction in high school students I'm assuming that considers the reduced ridership that currently exists within that group do we match it down to that level to say these kids don't ride now and yeah we started with existing riders this past year and then modeled Whoever lived in the attendance areas and I would just Mary's you said, you know lack of access to sidewalks
086I think that was the case in 1976 when the hazardous zone was declared across the community it's a different story today because For most of the the routes that we looked at to get to central or east do they have access to a pathway? sidewalk or pathway In a relatively short distance from their home, you know, they're there You know block of residences usually outlets to something and then you end up on a path and then you're on your way So the and where there isn't path that's what the sheriff identified as a concern like they would need a crosswalk or something across at a couple intersections small intersections because they don't exist and they didn't have a natural way I would also say that I wouldn't make the assumption that we're gonna have 20%
087students walking to school every day they're gonna find a way it's it sounds callous that but again Bussing all students is not the norm in Wisconsin school districts. There are many districts that You know leverage some or all of that two mile distance to not provide transportation and that's just the way it's always been and that's what they've known and So in this community, obviously we're changing you would be changing 50 years of practice and expectation and that's significant But it is not the norm Elsewhere, so just keep that in mind, too Thank you I'm pleased to know that we're thinking if we're going to do walk zones that we're looking at high school students in those walk zones I think that that gives me comfort that we're looking at a student who is further
088along in their maturity and development and like you said able to find their way Certainly younger kids can do that as well But I'm I'm comforted that we're looking at the potential for high school students that you have already looked at Those who are currently riding to then determine how many we'd see in terms of a reduction so that I'm glad for that I wanted to know whether there's any option to flip the elementary start time after the middle and high school start time such that we could look to I've heard feedback around younger students need for sleep as well and we heard about impacts to families and such is there the possibility for that You may not remember this but on March 18th when we presented we talked about the recommendation as a starting
089point Starting point that had a lot more information and a lot more data than we had before it had a lot of input from 60 60 plus members of the committee and and Then we could go from there, but we identified these four things that could be applied to any model you know we could implement the board could choose to implement a walk zone right you know not for this year but for next year for our high school students as a way to reduce costs and save money and so that we could use the money for different different priorities so that's this is I think useful information for us to take going forward should we ever want that tool in our toolbox but absolutely we can come back to the other models one of which
090was to put middle school high school tier first elementary second My recollection of the committee's conversation about it because that was really the conversation I think that happened at the you know kind of the last conversation that happened at the end of the day was was first of all It's less aligned to research because it'll put middle school high school at 740 to 750. So really no No disruption to high school or five minutes disruption to high school and you're gaining 20 minutes at middle school. So is it worth it? 20 minutes for 600,000 now because we know the cost of it and the research would say Best to start after 8 o'clock or later, you know, and it didn't meet that and so that's why elementary the committee said we're just gonna go for
091it We haven't changed This has been studied three times at least in this district formally over the past 25 years We get one shot at making a recommendation and then 60% of the committee members said yes, we're gonna kind of go big and make the recommendation that elementary would go first and middle school high school second so that's kind of how we got here but absolutely all of those options we could come back to a three-tier model too if we didn't like the cost there's another option to go you could just flip middle school and high school or middle school and elementary right now and it would be cost neutral and um you know still would maybe get you to the same times that are similar times to what are proposed here so anyway all
092of that is on the table Thank you. I appreciate that. I would agree that I would like to talk about this some more because we have, while we've studied it, we had a large group worked a long time. I don't feel like we're there yet to be able to say it's not worth it. I'd like to delve into the possibilities and maybe it's not a 740 start time can we push it back further than that can we make other adjustments that would make this worthwhile 600,000 is a lot of money in the context or the big picture of our 130 40 million dollar budget I don't want to say it's a drop in the bucket but it is a it is a smaller number that Seems like it's doable or for me it would be
093worth Spending those funds if we can address the needs of our students mental and physical health by changing how we start our school day, which as One of you said so well that's the one thing that we or one of the things that we can do that can help improve our students mental and physical health we could move move it around and then we'd look to our families to support us on the non-school times in terms of assuring that their kids get enough rest and enough sleep and etc so I would be in favor of having some more board conversation around this to see what else what else we might be able to do We've heard a lot about this and thank you Chris for this updated presentation. It's a lot to consider. I also
094am in agreement that I think that we need more time to consider the recommendation, some of the information we've learned today, and to see whether or not there is a pathway forward. where we may be able to act in the best interest of our students. So I also am in agreement that I think we need more time with this and whether, and perhaps that is a work session for the board to be able to discuss this option or determine at that time that it's not something we'd like to pursue. So I think I need, I as well as others need more time with this. I would just say there's no secret in my time on the board. Sam said it well when I first came on the board I've been a strong proponent of two-tier
095bus system. It's been an idea that I've liked However, there's this I have some questions I agree with many of the things you guys have said my fellow board members have said I Would need to understand the finances better. It would have to be For me more budget neutral. We've just done so much work on our budget and we Anna Sam Stated we have some needs I understand it may cost something, but over a half million dollars is a lot. It's probably too much for me. And I do still see us in the process. I appreciate where Sam's coming from. And again, I'm a proponent. I could be convinced to let it go, though, if we can't get the finances there. This doesn't work for families. I mean, the whole point is to do something
096for families and kids. And if this doesn't work, and so I think a work session, then I think that we need something along the lines of a community presentation and listening session, and then maybe another work session. And then I don't want to drag this out. I think this can happen over several months, you know, the next half a year, or it could be a part of the work we do this year, this upcoming year. to where we could make a decision of is it at all feasible, is it helpful to families and kids, or do we let it go? Again, it's been looked at before. People previous to us have decided it wasn't worth the cost in whatever, whatever cost the earlier boards were considering. And we may get there as well. I'm not
097quite there yet. But I don't love these proposals and I wouldn't vote for them, but I have questions It sounds like other board members have questions. So maybe I'm kind of hearing consensus on the work sessions Maybe next up Mary do you have something to add that's different? I do. I just want to make a few Responses to things that have been set around the table based on my experience on the committee Many people are unhappy now with the status quo. So the fact that disruption and change may make some people unhappy absolutely negates the fact that for 40-plus years, families have been unhappy with the status quo, that we don't know how many middle school students we may not have because we have such an early start time. And I have at least anecdotal
098information from people who have said... They'll come when they get to high school, but not at middle school The two-tier system was overwhelmingly supported As were some other tenets of the at the start time committee. I think Chris can corroborate that part for me because we were asked point-blank Two-tier or three-tier and two-tier was overwhelmingly supported The flip between elementary starting first or middle high school was pretty close. That was a pretty close vote And it did fall to the the point of if we're here to do justice to the research that we have overwhelmingly endorsed then we would be foolish not to get closer to we're not going to start at nine o'clock if we were doing this perfectly for the research we'd start at nine o'clock we're not going to start at nine
099o'clock but at one point the committee was asked what would be the ideal start time not to start before school and my recollection in my notes i looked them up today said eight o'clock at least in the groups I sat in, and what would be the latest you'd want to end, and it was like not after 4 o'clock. So... Yeah, could we push this whole thing back 20 minutes and does 8 o'clock make this more palatable to people? Perhaps. Can we do it? I don't know. These are the things we have to really dig into a little bit more. And I did just, Chris, want to say I live in the Pomona Hidden Hills area, which is definitely walkable to Brookfield East, and there isn't a sidewalk in either subdivision. So you'd have to get
100to a main road. But a lot of kids do walk. They walk now. They probably haven't opted out of the bus. but they walk. And those are some of the things we haven't, I don't think, dug completely into. What are some other opt-out options, maybe opt-out options short of walk zones, making everybody walk, that we could explore to bring down the ridership to a more realistic cost that we could swallow? I guess that, yeah, this all just comes down to the fact that... I think there's more to discuss. This is not, this would be the, if we can get this to the point where we have a proposal to vote on, although it's been discussed twice, I think in the last 25 or so years, no proposal has ever gotten as far as the board.
101It's died before it got here. And there was a lot of feeling of, oh, they're never going to do anything anyway. Never going to fix this problem. But there's a strong body of research and a strong sentiment that this is the right time for Elmbrook to lead. making an improvement here because it's the right thing to do so I don't agree with you Sam that this is dead and buried at this point not by any stretch of the imagination and if you had sat in the committee meetings that I sat in with this group you would understand why so I do propose that we move to a work session that we kind of put some of our questions on the table we may not have all the answers yet but I think it's time for
102us to dig a little deeper and figure out if there is a way to get this to the finish line that is good for kids. That's number one. That might cost more than the status quo, but if it's the right thing to do for our students, it's what we should be doing that we can afford as a community. You know, $600,000 is a big bite, but I sat around this table and we approved $300,000 for two SROs we never hired last year. So there's money for things. If this is a thing that should be done, we should find a way to afford it because it will make an impact on every adolescent's... physical and mental health. So I'm all in favor of a work session, and I think we have lots more to talk about.
103Thank you. This is not an action item this evening, but just discussion and an update, so it sounds like we'll be meeting again to discuss this in a work session type setting. Thank you, Chris. You're sitting at the table, staying here for the strategy map. While I'm here. While you're here, keep going. so obviously intention to have that discussion first so we could assess our district capacity second through a strategy conversation so similar format to last time i'll have brief presentation and then questions comments so purpose of this agenda items to prepare the board for august action on our 2526 strategy map This nine minute or less presentation will summarize our work to date and allow for clarifying questions and the opportunity to provide or clarify direction for the final strategy map in August. We
104found success in recent years with the strategy development process that begins with learning and background for our senior leader team and the Board of Education. allows for goals and key performance indicator considerations by each committee, and then puts it all together during full board discussion and action. We've also found that a one-year plan focuses the district's efforts on the most important work and declares the priorities to our students, staff, and community and families. Our longstanding mission and encompassing vision drive the work we do. Preparing all students to be engaged and prepared for life, college, and career requires us to constantly reinforce our core values as we meet the individual needs of our students. Since the development of our three strategy areas and objectives years ago, I feel we've had very rich conversations about capacity and
105prioritized work that always begins with teaching and learning goals. but recognizes our commitment to attracting and retaining an outstanding workforce and the responsible use of community resources. All of our work lives within those three strategy areas. the teaching and learning committee had a robust conversation about district goals and measures related to teaching and learning and in my conversation with Emily the goal that was identified by the committee we felt actually fit better as our great place to learn strategic objective so that is the only change to our objectives this year if you look at past to present is that we used your language from the committee as the objective and it would just feel like it matches better with the great place to work and great school district objectives which are the second and third
106ones if you review last year's strategy map you'll see the teaching and learning goals represented on the screen while the results are always lagging until our Wisconsin Forward data is released in November we're excited about our student achievement results from our spring 2025 assessments and hope to improve on our top four ranking in ELA and top six ranking in math in 2024 The Teaching and Learning Committee identified four measurable goals representing many grades and several assessments. The targets were created to provide focus within reach of our capable students and staff. We did make one change to the second goal from what was discussed at committee, adjusting the Wisconsin Forward grades three through eight goal up from 79% to 80% based on our preliminary review of embargoed Wisconsin Forward data that we can't talk about. An
107enormous amount of work went into the operationalizing of our new staff compensation model where we saw over 95% of staff meet the professional learning and impact points criteria during the year, supporting their advancement on the salary schedule. Additionally, we've seen positive results from our healthcare strategies despite the pressure of rising costs related to all aspects of healthcare. Because health care expenses have a significant impact on our operating expenses and overall budget, the recommendation is to continue with more strategies and a specific dollar amount target for that cost center. The district has focused time and energy on our facilities over the past three years, focusing first on our facility portfolio and then on expanding our proven 10-year capital planning strategy to address some gaps in classroom design, large learning spaces, food service, and office environments. Our
108administration has suggested the creation of a goal focused on a dynamic 20-year facility plan that will communicate large needs of our facilities that may not be met. with our annual operational resources Additionally, we're seeking guidance from the board on what to do with our middle school program goal Which was temporarily put on hold as we considered the school start time work knowing that a change in start time may Necessitate a change in the middle school schedule our key performance indicators capture the district's most important measures the majority of these measures were identified in 2023 with stretch targets set for 2026 the teaching and learning committee reviewed its targets in june is proposing a few changes moving from rank indicators to proficiency indicators feeling this better reflects the outcomes of our students compared to our relative
109rather than our relative position to our peers There are many celebrations among our KPIs across all three strategy areas. Our literacy results continue to improve, employee retention is strong, and our family net promoter score is amazing. There are always areas where we can improve, starting with consistent performance in our ACT results, regardless of the student cohort testing that year, controlling our aforementioned health care costs, and hitting our enrollment growth targets so that our financial picture remains solid. With that summary overview I'd welcome any questions or feedback based on the prompts on this last slide Is there feedback for Chris again this has been through the committee's and so you've seen these two on two different committees different parts of this kind of coming together tonight questions or comments I think based on our previous conversation
110the middle school program review Maybe needs to slide over till we settle the start time conversation and understand how that what that's gonna look like and So I would propose that we kind of swap those out Because I think that the program review that was done and the recommendations that came out of that is something we should continue to Pursue but at a future time. I don't think it's appropriate that we abandoned that at this time The goals in terms of reading and math, yes. Healthcare cost management, absolutely. Long-term planning, yes. And I think the start time is a big enough deal that we need to include. I agree with almost everything Jean said. With regard to the middle school program review, I'm wondering if there is a way to incorporate the start time. and
111the conversations we're having about facilities into a district goal of advancing the middle school, the educational experience for our middle school, for our adolescents, middle school and high school that would involve both the start time discussion that we're having and any appropriate program reviews. I like the program review presentation we had. I don't want to lose mojo on that. I don't want it to get stale. But I do think in the context of whatever decision gets made about time changes, it could be incorporated so that we don't make a change and then another change the next year, that if we're going to make a change to the middle school experience, we look at it in a more holistic way. And I think that would be a good goal for this year. Thank you, Mary. Sam.
112Thanks, Chris. Again, the goals are the strategy map is always exciting, and I just love the refining it and always looking how to continually improve and get better. It serves this district well and the administration and the team here. If you want me to answer those questions, my opinion is abandon the middle school review. I think, you know, as Mary stated earlier, we... I want to make sure the mental health of the children is at its best, and there's enough evidence that block scheduling for middle school kids is not beneficial. So my opinion would be to abandon that, and then the district goals, I think continue to prioritize those with the health care costs and long-term planning for facilities is where we should focus. Thank you, Sam. I just want to reiterate, Sam, you said
113the strategy map is exciting, right? Yes. Thank you. Look at the smile. It's exciting. Finally there's like two people in the district now. Get excited. I put Excel sheets in my dreams at night so. Preeta West or Cheryl would you like to weigh in here with some feedback or comments? Looking at this discussion prompts I too agree that right now I think the middle school program review needs to be Put in hold as put on hold as we discuss I think B we need to prioritize the school start time discussion I think that's for me would lead to then a further discussion about the program review I agree with the proposed goals of course of prioritizing reading and math health care costs and long-term planning for the facilities So and I would again reiterate that
114I would add prioritizing a reaching some conclusions about our school start time discussion Cheryl I would agree with the district goals prioritize the reading math controlling health care costs and the long-term planning for the facilities I will go along with looking at the middle school start time I do believe that we really need to dig into the financials and make sure that we're not going to be cutting back on academics if we have to cut costs and we're not cutting back on our facilities in the whole budgeting process Think the district goals. I mean those make sense to me. I think continue all those as far as what's due with middle school program review I know I'd be I mean, I'd be curious if we could Fold it in with the start time discussion. But
115between the two of them it seems like the start time is a much bigger decision to make and I guess the one question I would have is on a timeline as to Potentially being able to implement it for 26 27 Do for decision-making processes from us do we have to make a decision sooner on one of those two like if we the the school start time does that need to be made by let's say November versus the middle school program review that that could wait until You know February March like how did those play into this? That's a good question. I More time the better for sure I think realistically with start time if it's It would need to be October It needs to be early. I mean we're notifying our private parochial school partners
116of changes Go right way has to acquire busing. They'd have to ramp up HR practices There's a lot of and after school. I mean depending on the you know the time Designated time start times, you know after school care needed to be expanded all of that would need to it would take a while So I would hope that the next work session could get us towards, if not a decision, it could get us towards a timeline that made sense then. So are we looking at a conversation this year that would be set for 2027? Or are we pretty sure we're good to go with whatever is... you know, is preferred by most and we try to get it done early. Yeah, because I guess from my perspective, that influences what we think we, like if
117we can fold both of them in together. If we don't think, you know, if it's October, I don't know if that's even possible from a start time perspective to get that for next year. So I don't know if it hurts or if we if we don't have the bandwidth That's one thing but to fold both of those in together if we still would consider the middle school program review that We're probably looking at you know that could that decision could be made in the spring if we had to perhaps if it's a schedule change we can continue those conversations together for the following school year if that's you know if we can't get the middle school start time and then it doesn't it doesn't seem like it's going to be as intensive and take up
118as much bandwidth if we have a little bit more time The middle school program review had some changes to delivery minutes I'm not sure We didn't look at delivery minutes changing. That was outside of the bounds of the start time committee, although we were informed that we exceed minutes at the elementary level. We don't exceed at the high school level, and I think middle school was pretty close, too. Is that right? They both have two extra days for snow days, essentially. But, I mean, in terms of wiggle room, not a lot at the middle and high school levels. So I'm wondering if that program proposal. Has been kind of meshed against start time recommendations because there could be I don't know if there would be anything that to think about but When we're looking at
119delivery minutes and we thought about things that could affect delivery but if we were finally if the state said you can start before Labor Day and we had a few extra days that could affect Delivery minutes that could affect start times. I mean there are so many little factors along the way that could have an impact I just don't know how those two that program as it was presented to us and the start times were considering might Impact one another just thought For our work session if we have one I know I would connect program review to facility study before I connected it to start time I feel like start time If it's a two-tier system, we're gonna have to run with about what we have for the length of a day But when you
120talk about facility remodeling You know and you're thinking about what programs are we offering that that's when all of the middle school study Information will come into play and be helpful As we as we think about any kind of remodel whatever that looks like and to put some timing to that context Our course selection process for kids typically happens in January February so that means your course selection changes that Chris just referenced would have to be done and approved by the time we got to December so from a timing perspective the whole system gears up for that December to February course selection process that's where our whole budget is built off of So I'll share some comments I guess I'm largely thinking different than all six of you So I'll try to clarify, just give
121a little background to our new board members and share my thinking. And it's fine. I take comfort in the governance of seven. And it's fine if I'm just different on this. I'll say it like this. By sharing just a conversation that Mark and I have, we meet often, the superintendent and the school board president, to strategize, talk about these meetings, what's going to be on the agenda. As I thought about this year ahead in terms of board capacity, I see a large amount of capacity around the table. And I was pretty excited about that, to really roll up our sleeves and get some work done. So I asked Mark, I said, how fast can your team go? Remember this conversation, Mark? Because in my mind, this is more like a Venn diagram. So a Venn
122diagram is the circles. So facilities largely falling under Venn and the finance and operations area. The middle school program review is largely teaching and learning and Emily Greiber. And then the school start time, it's different work. I think it largely falls under Chris. And there are some overlaps. Certainly there's a financial component. But I asked Mark, I said, can your team go as fast as we can? And you said? No. Did he say no? This is where all the directors are perking up. They're just like, wait, what did you say? He usually says no. We have put some and hired some amazing and very capable senior leaders, administrators. I have a lot of confidence. And now this puts a lot of burden on us. So thinking along those lines, we thought, what if there's a
123board meeting each month, second Tuesday? What if there's a work session kind of scheduled each month, fourth Tuesday? That kind of gives us our nine to ten work sessions we're going to need to do this work. And Mark says his team can do it, and I think they can because I think the work is spread out across different people largely. So I'm a little different. I don't think these things are mutually exclusive. I think there's a small chance on any one of these three, and the three things I'm considering here now are middle school, school start time, middle school programming, and facilities. I don't see any of these being votes that we're taking action on most likely for the next school year. Just because these are big things. I mean, yeah, if we could settle
124on a school start time thing and bring it discussion action, I mean, it's gotta be in place late fall, early winter. I don't see it quite happening. Middle school programming, and this is for the new board members, largely came down to those minutes. The two high school principals, very capable, great presentation. I'm not saying anything negative by this, but when Kelly and Matt brought us the presentation, they reduced minutes in science and social studies and were increasing minutes in ELA and math. And the board struggled with that. We weren't ready to pull the trigger. And they said, we can go back. we don't necessarily love this either we can go back and do more work on this so again but they're not going to be working on facilities by and large they're going to work
125on middle school programming they're not going to be working on start time although they might have sat on that committee and had and certainly have input into that but the bulk of their work as as middle school principals is really thinking about hey what's the best schedule and if i had to pause something i'd pause school start time if we don't have the capacity i think We need to be looking at our middle school programming. We're here for academics That can be implemented regardless of when the day starts I think we need to be looking at what can we do to improve our reading and math scores? Because that's what a board member is looking at I know it's not about test scores, but that's how we're measuring academic performance. I see some needs at
126our middle school level I'd like to address them If as a board we feel we don't have the capacity for all three things I'd say then that's priority in my mind Scott Wheeler would prioritize the facilities and the middle school programming and Push off for a year or two the start time conversation, which these are all complex They're all complex, but in my mind, I thought we could do all three in my mind. None of it's probably taking effect for the next school year by next school year. I mean Yeah, 26, 27 that we're probably looking at the year after that. But let's start the big work. Let's get it going. So, again, that's not what I heard in consensus around the table, but that would be my input. I'd leave it. I'd leave the
127middle school review in. I think it needs to be prioritized. But, anyway, other thoughts? Well, your Venn diagram should overlap between start time and performance because that's the whole point of the start time change. It does. Yeah, there's some. So I'm halfway there with you, but I'd like to keep that in the mix. Oh, I'd like to keep all three. Okay. I mean, that's my position. I think we can do all three. It's going to be a lot of work. I mean, I'm looking around this table and my fellow board members. I think it's going to be a lot of work. But I think Mark and his team can do it. can keep up with us. I don't know if they all rise to district goals, but I don't know that I'd drop any of
128those right now, personally. Again, just my thoughts. I'd be happy to try to synthesize that into a one-sentence goal for action in August. Yeah, no problem. Well, if you're watching the clock, Chris, we still have a half hour on this agenda. Thoughts before we move on, Gene? I'd be reluctant to let the school start time effort pause there is so much work that's been put in and so much information that's been brought forward and to set it aside and potentially we're coming on to if it's a year or two out we have a whole new board and it's going to be refresh refresh and maybe another group getting together to do it The administration can handle, and there's really four of them, healthcare costs rests in there as well, if they have the bandwidth to
129do it and we can agree, we may need to do more and longer work sessions to get all this done. If we're willing to do it, I'm reticent to postpone or... pause on the school start time and There may be some sequential nature to program review and start time I don't know the interdependencies on that mark you have a feel for that at this point I think you have interdependency on the facility start time and program conversation I think there's interdependency for all three of those maybe that argues for keeping moving on those Any other feedback for Chris? I was just going to say, I mean, if the decision is between, like, putting one to the side and that piece will start time or something like that, I mean, we should just keep them all.
130I think my hesitancy is always whether administration has the bandwidth, because it's a lot. So provided that's the case, then, like, let's undertake the work and get it done. I think when we meet again. We have a work session August 6, but that one is fairly planned and structured targeting facilities but Maybe at the next board meeting we need to put forward a timeline of what that could look like with all of that work moving forward with decision points Along the way so that you know what's expected because there are some decisions. I think that have to happen in the next calendar year especially regarding facilities, I would say that May be more time sensitive than others But at least then you would kind of know what the expectation was for work and a decision
131not just the work behind it But also the decision part. Okay, it sounds like you've got your feedback Appreciate this will be back as an action item at our August meeting Next agenda item is the annual budget hearing notice And actually coordinate this with pre-the pre-the do you want to read the notice from the clerk the legal notice? One question though it is dated for our next board meeting Correct yeah so tonight we're just discussing it and then it would be approved at the next board meeting but this is what it would say is approved So the notice of budget hearing an annual district meeting notice is hereby given to the qualified electors of the school district of Elmbrook that on Monday September 22nd 2025 at 6 p.m. in the evening the budget hearing and
132annual meeting will be held in the cafeteria of Brookfield Central High School located at 16 16900 West Gephardt Road in the city of Brookfield, Waukesha County, Wisconsin detailed copies of the budget are available for inspection in the district office at 3555 north Calhoun Road Brookfield Wisconsin 53005 the budget will be presented at the annual or at the budget hearing followed by all matters to properly come before the annual meeting to be considered by the electors the superintendent and the board president will present reports to the community Motions will be requested to authorize the reimbursement of actual and necessary board members expenses, to set the salary for the Board of Education members, to establish the amount of the annual tax levy, to lease suitable buildings, to lease district sites, buildings, and or equipment not needed for
133school purposes, and to establish the date of the 2026 annual meeting. This notice is dated Will be moved to action in Brookfield, Wisconsin on the 12th day of August 2025 and will be published on September 10th and 17th of 2025 So I thank you. Yep. I say statute. There's a variety of things that can be a part of the annual meeting agenda They're not all applicable to Elmbrook. And so you'll see attached board members There are as gonna get the number here 13 well including adjournment 13 items That we'll be discussing at the annual meeting. You know, are there any comments or questions about the agenda for the annual meeting? It's pretty standard procedure for our district and how we've done in the past if you have any questions in the meantime It'll be back
134for action next month. So let me know and brings us to the first reading of the 1000 policy series Let's see preetha. Thank you So we have some policies that are brought forward for discussion. This is the first reading of what was previously and what is to be a review of policy 1221 and some of the 900 series policies. So just to go over what what we have here for policy 12 previously known as policy 1221 which was the citizens advisory committee for the board of education we've recommended it with with some revisions and renaming and renumbering the policy to 9402 to reflect its close alignment with the standing board committee's policy of 9401 so that brings me to 9401 previously titled board committees the recommendation is to change that name to standing committees and
135we recommend renaming it to standing board committees with revisions to remove language associated with special board committees recommended changes to clarify the process to fill open committee seats and propose consolidating committee job description policies into practice statements which are also attached to this policy all ad hoc board committees would be determined using policy 1221 which is proposed to change and be renumbered as 9402 to join the 9000 series we also at cle recommended converting some of these policies into practice statements and these are attached to policy 9401 you will see attachments regarding the standing what will be the standing board committee's descriptions that includes the personal committee finance and operations committee legislative engagement committee and teaching and learning committee and in converting these to practice statements I believe our goal was to remove accessory language
136or excess language and to give a general overview of each committee's purpose and goals that's it does anyone have questions are there any questions I was on the CLE when we talked about making these practice statements rather than policy I am fully in support of that but I had not seen the proposed practice statement for F&O until this packet that must have been done at the June meeting and my question would be why the strikeouts for the items that were struck out of the language as it was moved into a practice statement you know specifically things like approval of the budget calendar review of legislative proposals by the state that have a financial impact on the district i think the things that are struck out kind of to an item should probably stay within the
137wheelhouse of the F&O committee. And so I would support, and I can't speak to the other committees that I'm not on because I didn't review those or that I'm not sharing, but like woofer reports, we should still be getting those. I would support this, but I would add back in those items that were struck out on this draft, unless there's a reason I'm missing. I can speak to some of that and I'll ask Cheryl and Wes to jump in as well as they were on this committee in this committee meeting with me for example when you look at the WUFA report this part that struck out the statement there monthly reviews of revenues and expenditures and then it goes including check registers WUFA reports and bid summaries we thought that that was limiting rather than
138allowing an expansive understanding of revenues and expenditures. So it wasn't with the intention that we would not be reviewing those. It was just more that all of those things and perhaps other things do fall under revenues and expenditures. It was more to broaden rather than to eliminate. And I would say that we made similar recommendations for all of these. Please. less or cheryl if you if you feel like you can yeah and i think part of it was at the cle committee uh meeting was we moved these forward with the thought that um other you know marion fno and tlc like there would be thoughts and inputs uh from various other members as to what you know committees they chair they might have more perspective and so want to bring it forward and have this
139type of discussion as to like if there are things that we think that should still be included let's have let's have that but knowing that we are CLE and not F&O thought it made sense to make sure that that input comes through too That's helpful. When I look at, you know, and so respectfully, I would want to add these things back in for F&O because things like bid summaries, we did talk about at F&O. Sam wanted to see bid summaries as they come in on projects, especially over a certain amount that we might not be scrutinizing in the same way. The woofer reports should be there. Things that... impact you know changes that impact program you know reviews of fiscal impact of program proposals I think we should be looking at that so I'd like
140to see these back in and then I could support this change to a practice statement I wonder if these should go to the respective committees and be agendized at the committee and then come back here once the committee's had a chance to really look at it and get around a little bit my favorite words i agree with mary on this one i'm writing this down right now I think it's in the back of the committees for the individual ones. But I love the F&O to have as much detail because I think for new committee members to look and say, oh, what is the WUFAR report? Just another reminder if they're going to look at that or if they're running for election or whatever to see that. So I think keeping as much detail in there
141is important. Okay, so I think we're gonna send this isn't going to the community legislative committee but it will hit each of the one of the other standing committees before our August meeting for some feedback and Maybe edited so take a look closely because it will be a part of our action items next month We'll just make those edit changes as part of it TLC doesn't have a meeting prior to August so They'd have to be after that for us to look at the TLC one Okay, then we can push it back to September Yeah, and so yeah, can we push this back to a discussion item at our next board meeting and give each committee time? I would also like to make the point that F&O meets on Monday. So if this could be
142included in the packet and agenda this week for Monday's meeting, we'll review it at our next meeting, which is Monday. Great. Any other questions or comments for Preeta about any of these? I mean, that's just one policy, or sorry, the practice statement. I have some thoughts on the 9402. I'd just like to pull it up. Yes, the 01221. If you could pull it up, Janelle, and maybe make it bigger. i don't think someone's in office i think it's a term of service and it's a perhaps it's a minor point but if y'all are willing to entertain that this group is is providing a service rather than being in office i would appreciate that and then at the very bottom there's a typo that i will get to you for open meetings law with an s
143so other than that i'm good sam so when this came up when we were when i was in cle a while ago um it came to the board it one of those long meetings days but my personal opinion is that what I would require to approve this one is that the verbiage to say that every board member has the ability to sign at least one person to the committee I just think that it's in order to have a good representation of those ad hoc committees that you know a selected person from the community that they each individual board member has the right to have on that that would be important to me So that changed to the new 9402. Policy is the one you're talking about. It's not currently in either. It's not in the
1441221, but yeah, I would want that added if we're going to change that as well. Yeah, if I may clarify gene that statement where you say term of service that does not apply that only applies to ad hoc committee members who are actually School board members So what it's saying is that unless they are expressly appointed to a date bound term of office that expires prior to the committee being dissolved Appointees which could be a school or sitting school board member But everyone on an ad hoc committee board committee will serve until the committee is dissolved If you are a sitting school board member and your term expires Or you're out of your date bound term of office While that committee that ad hoc committee is still in service You would not be like listen,
145you would not continue on Right but but otherwise Date-bound term of office is only school board members. It's not other members of an ad hoc committee. We are looking at the second paragraph there. Yeah, that only applies. I mean, Mark, am I correct on that? That only applies if we have school board members could be on a committee. And that is what, so that statement only applies to a sitting school board member whose term may end before the committee is dissolved. Okay, thanks for clarifying. Yeah, I didn't catch that. What if it is a, if we have an ad hoc committee that we, I'm just saying if we have someone who we on a committee have asked that we have two aldermen on this committee as well. If their term expires, they would no longer
146be sitting on the committee. And so that would be a reason to keep that in there. Right, who could potentially not, I mean, doesn't have to have a board member or any elected official, but if there were, they would be bound by the terms of their elected office. Any other questions for Preeta? Comments? Okay, so we're going to see some of these policies back as part of our next action sequence in August, and some of them will be September or October, depending on when committees get a chance to look at it and pending the next discussion, next go-around. Okay. Our next agenda item 2000 policy series Jean This month's personnel committee meeting we entertained the recommended rescission of policy practice statement 2350 based on recommendations from our legal counsel that we have many different policies
147concerning investigations which have different time requirements and different responses and perhaps different appeal rights and particulars that are within that scope and having a broad policy such as this which promises other things that you do have appeal rights and that the timing is perhaps 10 days versus 30 days their recommendation was that we would rescind this overarching investigations policy and practice statement in favor of retaining those various policies and practice statements that concern specific items I meant to have a list of those specific items and I don't have it right in front of me here but I know Pam sent it to us very recently there's a policy complaints concerning district personnel Equal employment opportunity harassment whistleblower alcohol and drug-free workplace grievances search and seizure weapons and it goes on from there, so 16 different
148well 15 different policies that address certain specific aspects and It's believed by below better that we would be better served With each of those individual and without a controlling policy that is in conflict Questions or thoughts? There are questions for Jean. Are you posing the question to the board for input? Well, I mean, just similar to the other policies, recommendation is that this would be rescinded, and are there any concerns or questions about that before we bring it back for action next time? Okay. This will be back next month. And then let's go. Yeah, Wes. I was going to say one of the purposes, I think, from our meeting was to bring it here so everyone had a chance to wait. And if no one has opinions, that's fine. But, you know, when we knew
149we had that many different investigation policies. there was a pretty robust discussion on this as to whether we could potentially miss anything if this is a covering everything policy and there are any areas that if we get rid of this will just potentially be missed and so just wanted to add color to you know it wasn't necessarily that we just were full speed ahead at least that's what my recollection was it was to Bring this up and and like I said if other people don't have thoughts. I mean to me the number of policies is on investigations It's a lot it seems and I don't know if there's there may be no way to Condense them but I do like part of me wonders if there's any way to If there would be any way
150to condense and put some of this stuff in practice statements, and I know that would be a larger undertaking but it I worry with how many policies we have, whether we could run into situations where we have a situation that covers multiple policies and which policy is being used might not be the most restrictive. And so I just, it just, when I saw the number of policies, it seemed like a lot. And I understand why we did it. And if it's the guidance of the attorneys, I get that. But I think... There's definitely some overlap With some of the policies it seems at times if there's overlap then why are we? Picking to choose this one to rescind versus just look taking a look at it as a whole figure out where where we should
151improve that so I think we We we had this as a catch-all I think what I would say is overlap like for instance harassment and discrimination Those are two different categories, but there's going to be some overlap in some of those and so a situation that might involve harassment and slash discrimination we have multiple policies that are going to cover that and so You know, we would just take this one away and this isn't going to impact the rest so all the other policies are still going to be Yeah there I think the attorneys seem to think that we were covered And you know didn't go through every permutation as to what might not be covered but it was just as one to make sure that we had awareness as to kind of You know
152that piece of why we brought it here and if other people had thoughts is it worthwhile to say if this if this type of Investigation falls outside of the the other mentioned and the other policies then this one would apply is that could this be the bottom of the catch-all or is that did that make sense that was a discussion we had i think as part of that whether we would add something in where it would be you know if nothing else applies um this was just the recommendation of the attorneys that we brought to the board and so if that was that was something we kicked around and discussed but you know We were just bringing this forward, and that was something that I think, you know, Mary, you may have other thoughts, but
153I thought that that's one thing that we did discuss a fair amount as to whether we would just add that in as, like, this still remains. If nothing else applies, then let's use this. Then we have a default. Yeah, I agree with what Wes's synopsis of the meeting was. The 4,000 and the 5,000 series of policies have specific... requirements for things like a child neglect or a chemical abuse or harassment or a bullying situation alcohol in the workplace that kind of stuff and in those policies there are specifics about how that particular incident is investigated and pursued so this I think there was some sense from Pam that the legal counsel thought this This particular policy in the 2000s could confuse the prosecution or the process of going through one of the other policies. And
154so to create kind of a two-tiered mess, if you will, from a legal standpoint might not be in our best interests. And getting rid of this was the choice. I think Wes put his compliance hat on. I very much appreciate him saying, but what if there's something we don't have covered in these other policies? And I think if there's a value to have this as a last resort catch-all, what if there's something we haven't designated in another policy that we need to investigate, we have this. But it's not written like that, so we'd almost, if we wanted to keep this, it should be written as, like, if there's no other governing investigative process. this would be our investigative process and it's not that way right now it could be a duplication and not necessarily an
155equal process to other things we have in other policies so we did send pam back to the legal counsel and they they reviewed it and so based on their review and pam's recommendation i can live with getting rid of this but it's a decision for all of us to make I don't know if nothing else applies that necessarily the guidance that's offered in this very detailed and lengthy policy would be the right approach and so it's hard to it's hard to outline an approach to something that we can't foresee and say that would be the right approach that should be taken perhaps it could be very general to say that we will be timely and will communicate and will be fair and I don't know necessarily the value of that. Is there another policy that
156states that the police department shall be contacted if the law is broken? Is this like now that's being taken out of our policies that we don't have to contact the law? Oh, no, it's not taken out of any other policy. And if there's a drug incident, we have written into that policy where and how police should be included. So it's just a matter of... This was I guess again the advice of the legal counsel. There are certain ways you want to handle specific incidents that may be illegal or maybe You know crossing lines where we need to investigate a theft or something like that And those are laid out in those specific policies. They don't all align with this policy So we're not consistent, but that's not a bad thing was the way I guess
157I was led to believe because we would handle different things in different ways Definitely the law enforcement involvement is delineated in some of these other policies as appropriate I think the gist of it is you have investigative policies that could compete with each other Yeah, I get that part and if you end up in a space where you have a complainant who wants to make things difficult they could use the competing policies against you. And to streamline them was the attorney's recommendation, and the streamlining would be to abandon the general policy and let the specific standalone policies that we have to have based upon state and federal agencies stand alone, as opposed to having a catch-all that could be used to compete against your standalones. Yeah. I haven't looked through all the policies that this
158is in regards to, but, I mean, what first stood out to me is if a law is broken, You know and it could be something like that's not a part of our other policies. It may not be harassment It may not be it could be gambling. I don't know but whatever it is, but if the law is broken I would say that we would have full obligation requirement to contact law enforcement if that's not in it You know part of our other policies are not listed somewhere else and I would say I'd have a problem with your sending that you know, or this can be modified to say, you know, if the other policies don't apply and a law is broken, we still are required to contact the police. Yeah, I think one of the
159things we talked about was just leaving the first sentence and let that be the policy, which says the district's committed to conducting investigations of alleged employee or student violations of state and federal law, board policies, district and school handbook, and other matters that require investigations in a prompt and consistent manner. I'd recommend that the committee take back the feedback and come back with a recommendation from its next meeting. Okay. And perhaps you can ask, similar to what we just did on the other one, is if policies fall under other committee areas, they could be reviewed by other committees. Meaning, you know, is the law enforcement issue addressed in the teaching and learning policies as needed? Okay. I think we have that in our chart. But, yeah, we'll take it back. Thank you. Thanks, Mark. All
160right. The 3000 policy series, Mary. We took a look at, these are pretty small changes. The 3310 is just an update to the administrator's title, reconfirmation on the performance payment and bid bonds. Asset management has one significant revision, which is to the dollar amount of an asset. capitalized and this is to comply with changes to state and federal language to make it a $10,000 rather than a $5,000 single asset class. So it seemed like a reasonable request. It was something that helps us comply with other language. It hasn't been changed. That amount wasn't changed for a long time. There are two legal references that have been removed. I'm not sure why, other than that Woofer now has asset management language in their documentation, and I'm guessing that may be part of this. I would ask
161that we look into the reason the Gatsby Statement No. 104 was struck out, because that... statement I looked up was just when it was newly revised as of June 15th 2025 so I would like to make sure that I think it's being added it's being added not struck yeah it's being added yeah the struck could be the ones with the lines through so it's being one of course being added I think that's good yep okay good catch though yeah from the account side That's over my head, so I didn't get it. Yeah. Okay. So the capitalization threshold is really the change there that is significant, and it is to bring us into alignment with what's in everything else. So I would think these are, unless you have any questions, we'll bring these back. Any questions
162from Mary or comments about any of these policies? Hearing none, our last set of policies is the 4,000 policy series back to Jean. The staff code of ethics 4116 is policy 4118 employment references and verification there is a clarification of expectations that's noted in that first paragraph that when reference requests are come through that we are expected to provide good faith information the personnel records the changes have to do with files for a confidential health file what may be contained in that confidential health file and that the employee has the right with request and consistent with the rules and regulations to review and get a copy of the contents of the personnel file Thank you Jean are there any questions for Jean on these policies tweak on the employment references and verification I think we
163added like amended to contractor in the second paragraph and then I think in bullet point two right above legal reference I think it's supposed to be contractor as well so just for clarification and it's not corrected to say that no it just says contract needs the OR The right above legal reference the school employee contract or agent has been charged? Bullet point two When you come across typos like that just reach out to me and we can take care of it real fast. Yeah, sorry about that That's all right. All right. If you have any other questions about the 4,000 policy series connect with team for our next meeting I'll be back as an action item Next agenda is the board presence report I don't have a lot to report other than we had a
164work session on our strategy map which you saw at the meeting tonight and we hope that all of our families and students are having a safe and enjoyable summer and staff They'll be back shortly in about a month. So enjoy your last month Are there any items the board members would like to discuss by exception only Hearing none. It brings us to the superintendent report mark Much of what I have to report tonight has been celebrated in one form or fashion already this evening So I'll plow through this pretty fast. First of all, congratulations to the auto program for the aforementioned Donation from WCTC. We thank WCTC for their generosity. This is a pretty amazing step forward for our automotive program We had a number of students involved in a variety of different competitions in
165Orlando, Florida recently Here's a picture of them as they competed in the National Science Bee competition Jean Lambert had the opportunity to attend the Aiden Liu sponsored speed skating event Thank You Jean for going and handing out awards We had eight students from Elmbrook participate in the competition and central came out on top for the most points for the school side Competition Jean anything to add from that event Who's had a hand in pulling this together it was palpable. They're so thrilled with the way this has taken off and the responsiveness from other districts and their leadership is Incredible, I mean for high school students and recently graduated high school student to pull this all together and make it happen is amazing They're so thankful for this Board of Education support. Aiden mentions it every
166time I get a communication from him. He's so grateful for being able to say he's connected to you guys and having Jean there really spoke to him about how important it is for this board to bless that. You also heard from Kenny earlier today around her state championship. So just remember she is a sophomore. So not to set the bar higher, but we're going to expect a couple more. You also met the tennis team from Brookfield Central, which captured its second straight championship. And then next month you're going to meet the Brookfield Central girls soccer team, who won a state championship in Division II, led by Coach Dan Mackle, who was named Division II Coach of the Year for the state of Wisconsin. So congratulations to Coach Mackle and all of the kids involved with
167the girls soccer program. Both Brookfield East and Brookfield Central had phenomenal soccer seasons for girls and boys. Congratulations to Henry Sojka for his participation in the Wisconsin School Music Association's competition. He was one of four students to receive an exemplary composition award across the entire state. And finally, I would be remiss without talking a little bit about the Administrator of the Year awards that you just heard about, the most recent one. But if you start to look at the last 10 years in this district... You start to accumulate some of these awards. You have hired really, really good people, and you've let them sail. So thank you for making that happen. You think of some of these. I had a chance to spend time with Liz Nelson as she was presenting at the National Principals
168Association. She's the Associate Principal of the Year for the nation, and she got to co-present with the Associate Principal of the Year for the high school level, and they were simply outstanding. Andy Farley and I both had a chance to attend that event. And finally, on the back wall, our arts for this month is pictures from the Engage in Excellence Awards. If you have a chance to take a peek, you'll just see, as you can see up here, a lot of smiling faces. I want to thank Chris Thompson and the entire communications team for making this a very unique event. And you can certainly click on that link, and it will take you to the webpage, which highlights all of it. And we actually have Chris Thompson's solo. on the web page right now so
169if you've not seen that solo or don't remember that solo you know the opportunity to view it with that that concludes my report i take any questions or comments that you may have any questions for mark hearing none can i get a motion to adjourn i'll make a motion to adjourn thank you emotion by sam and a second by mary all those in favor oh it was cheryl all those in favor of returning please say aye aye thank you