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 March 14th, 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 with the exception of Sam Hughes Who is traveling with his family and Kathy Lim who is ill this evening? We would also like to welcome our recently appointed board member Jen Roscoff Who it was appointed to the seat that was vacated when Linda Boucher passed Would you please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance led by John Rossi? I pledge allegiance
002to the flag of the United States of America into the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. May I have a motion to approve the agenda? I think we have a motion by Jean and a second by Preetha. Is there any discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor of approving the agenda, please say aye. Aye. Thank you. That carries on voice vote. Our first agenda item of the evening is the celebration of excellence. Mark, I'll kick it over to you. Thank you Scott we're going to welcome three principals to talk about the seven national board certified teachers that we have many of whom are in the audience Congratulations to all of them that brings a total to 23 for the district The state average
003is about two and a half percent of the teaching population Elmbrook is at about four percent So with that I'd like to introduce Luke Sadowski to start us off and then we'll go to Christian and then to Andy. Thank you Good evening. My name is Luke Sadowski. I'm the principal at Dixon proud principal I am happy to introduce three wonderful staff members tonight as educators we hope to instill a lifelong love of learning and What a better model than those that just went through the national board certification I am so lucky to work with such dedicated individuals. Would you like me to call them up and stand next to me? I think they'd love that First is Molly Kaminsky. Molly is a second grade teacher at Dixon molly has been teaching at dixon for 15
004years and in education for 18. she originally had an early childhood license and now is certified k-8 she's been a literacy leader for all 15 years at dixon which is amazing to the changes that we've rolled in for literacy and she's been all a part of it helping dixon smoothly do that she's also the leader of the sunshine committee and keeps the positive culture alive at dixon thank you christopher swenson is next up Chris has been the music and choir teacher Chris has been a music and choir teacher at Dixon for 11 years He has a k-12 license in instrumental and general music He is in charge of our Dixon spring sing which is an outdoor school concert He's super proud just to get kids excited about music and arts And if you have not
005been to a Dixon spring sing mark your calendar for May 22nd. So thank you Chris And last is Betsy Vander Heiden Betsy has been an EL teacher for 23 years and seven which in Elmbrook She is one of two teachers in Wisconsin to achieve the national board certification in the area of English as a new language in the year of 2023 so one of two in the whole state Betsy was also awarded a two-year national WIDA fellowship in 2024 Next we'll welcome Christian Pleister principal from Burleigh elementary school We are fortunate enough to be able to celebrate two of our outstanding staff members this evening. Sorry about that. So in no particular order, we have Erin Thompson and Kayla Moffitt. So first of all, for just this, first of all, for Erin, she came to
006us after quite a... Successful teaching career already. She had five years in West Dallas, five years in Waukesha. Now she's been with us since 2016 teaching first grade. Things that really stand out for me is that through her certification, she achieved a National Board Certification Early Childhood Generalist category. She's really committed to personal growth and professional excellence. And throughout her journey, she demonstrated a commitment to enhancing student learning through self-assessment and targeted professional development. I really am impressed with her commitment to continuous improvement, really focused on analyzing student writing during the process and aligning assessments with individual learning needs, super proactive with her tech tools to help her reflect on her practice as well, and she wanted to extend a sincere thanks to both Lisa and Tom for their invaluable mentorship and support with the
007cohort that goes along with the national board work here in Elmbrook. So, Erin Thompson. Then Kayla Moffitt, you know we like to grow our own here Kayla was a student teacher at Brooke L when she first started in 2012 and then we hired her on midway through in the beginning of 2013 as a sped teacher at Burleigh and then she transitioned to a kindergarten teacher role a few years later Really again impressed with Kayla and the work she did as well to achieve her early childhood generalist category certification She's really committed to lifelong learning and growth She's also somebody who I look at as continually pushing herself to reflect on standards identify areas for improvement She is a whole enhance her own practice, but also really valuable insights that she's brought back to the classroom
008impacting both student learning and family engagement she also would like to give a huge shout out to the national board cohort here in elmbrook she felt it gave her a huge piece of support in the journey and really uh gave an opportunity to strengthen her focus so kayla moffitt next i'll welcome andy farley principal at brookfield east to the podium mr farley evening everybody would love to have laura price and isaiah tyree come join me from brookfield east Honored tonight to celebrate two exceptional teachers at Brookfield East National Boards is a really rigorous process as we know multi-year process high reflection high self-analysis but the so that student outcomes grow and I think Laura and Isaiah are tremendous models and advocates for that lifelong commitment to learning for our students, for our staff, and for
009our entire East community. So I'm really proud of both of them and really excited to celebrate them tonight. Laura is in her sixth year at Brookfield East, 19th overall, transitioned from Arizona to East, lucky enough for us. Teaches physics and earth science, and Laura also plays a huge role as our Canvas coordinator at East. So think about communication with students and with families. instant feedback with assessments, informative assessments. Laura is that point person for our entire faculty. So Laura does so much in the science department as well as our school. So congratulations Laura Price. And then Isaiah Tyree is in our third year here at East, seventh overall, social studies, world history, AP human geography. Human geography also like Laura. plays a role beyond our social studies departments and our continuous improvement team, has done
010a lot with data literacy for our entire staff, has done a lot with literacy for our entire staff. Just a magnet for our freshmen at East and has been a great addition to the Brookfield East community. So congratulations, Isaiah Tyreek. Thank you, Mr. Farley and to the seven teachers. Thank you for your commitment to growing in the profession This is the most rigorous process that a person can go through in our profession It takes multiple years and your commitment to it and the commitment that our mentors provide you is really really engaging So I appreciate all the hard work and with that I'm gonna have mr Wheeler go to the podium and I'm gonna ask all the National Board Certified teachers to come forward and you're gonna get a certificate from mr. Wheeler Are there
011any questions or comments from board members? Hi, I just want to say congratulations to all of you for your hard work your dedication It does not go unnoticed and we are so fortunate to have you all in this district. So congrats Mary big thanks to everything you do every day and I won't belabor it because you probably want to go home soon I would echo their remarks Appreciate all you do and that you've pursued this I just have a question, and maybe, Mark, you're the one. Just in terms of a district having, we have 23 nationally board-certified teachers. Is that unusual? I mean, the amount of time that it takes for teachers to go through this process? what's the value add you see that it brings to the classroom that's a high number for any
012district to have so we have a greater density than most school districts when it comes to national board certified it also creates this power of reflection the whole process which takes one two three years sometimes is really built off of reflecting on your success or your growth opportunities with kids so it's very rigorous And so I, again, just like to echo thank you because I think that's, I don't know if there's a secret sauce or a magic formula in education, but I know that teachers make a difference in students' lives. And so as you do that personal reflection, as you think about it, I... I can only imagine that this is improving the way that instruction is delivered and your content mastery and just the things that are going to make you an outstanding teacher
013and that are going to make a difference for our kids because at the end of the day, it's all about the kids. So thank you for your investment in our students. Thank you. That concludes our celebration of excellence and brings us to the high school student representative's report and discussion. Mark? Thank You Scott we'll start with an update from Brookfield Central then we'll move to Brookfield East and then we'll jump into the facilities and school safety conversation Brookfield Central what's going on at Brookfield Central these days in terms of our academic highlights juniors participated in the statewide ACT on March 11th and last Friday Brookfield Central welcomed 55 speakers to career day as students look towards May weekly AP exam review sessions are underway during Lancer block Moving to activities highlights, students competed at DECA
014State in February, and 36 students have qualified for the DECA International Career Development Conference hosted in Orlando this April. Brookfield Central FTC robotics teams competed at the state championship on March 7th and 8th and teams Hazmat and GearHeads will be advancing to the world championship held in Houston this April. At the state competition team Hazmat won the first place in Spire Award and team GearHeads won the overall competition setting a new state record. Our mock trial team competed at the state tournament in Madison on March 7th and 8th, placing third and bringing the club to a record total of 39 season victories. Moving to our arts highlights, BC hosted Choirpalooza on February 24th, with performances by middle, high school, and extracurricular choirs. And on February 26th, our chamber choir performed with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra.
015On March 8th, BC hosted solo and ensemble, culminating in a total of 87 events qualifying for the state competition. Finally, our athletics highlights. Winter sports season had a successful wrap-up with the Brookfield Barracudas placing third at the state meet and boys hockey becoming sectional champions. Our boys basketball team won regionals and became greater metro conference champions, as well as junior Henrik Kellogg qualifying for boys wrestling state. Additionally, the Lancerettes finished their season with the Badgerette Spirit Championship earlier this month. And finally, many spring sports have kicked off their season last week with more to follow next week and throughout the rest of the month. Great job. Thank you. How about at Brookfield East? So yes, to start off with the art highlights, our Brookfield East forensics team is sending five qualifiers to different nationals. Three
016of them will be going to the National Catholic Forensics League, and two of them will be going to the National Speech and Debate Association over the summer. Additionally, both of our a cappella teams, unaccompanied minors and Genesis, made it to semifinals and performed this past weekend at the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee. Additionally, like Central mentioned, we also had many kids from our orchestra, band, and choir perform at Solo and Ensemble, and we had many qualify for state, which will be held in next up and coming at UW-Milwaukee. Moving on to athletics, like Brookfield Central said, our combined hockey team placed second, and they made it to state, which is really awesome. Spring sports are also starting with girls soccer, track and field, baseball slash softball, and boys tennis. Our Brookfield East cheer team won the
017all-girls small state champion, which is really exciting. And additionally, Brookfield East wrestling, Colin Seffert and Ben Bosch made it to state, which is really awesome. Then for activities, we had our first annual foreign language trivia night. So our different foreign languages such as Latin, Spanish, and German all came together to host the trivia night and we raised money for a foreign language scholarship at Brookfield East. Our junior prom theme was released, Night in Vegas, as well as our prom court. The freshmen and sophomore classes held a March Madness in our field house, which pitted the freshmen against the sophomores in some friendly competition. Then lastly, Latin Club will be hosting their Classics Night at the Brookfield Library. For our academic highlights, the juniors took the ACT and will hopefully receive their scores soon. Then the
018confirmation of second semester AP classes, so people are submitting that they want to take their exams, and like Central mentioned, we start having excellence periods to start prepping for those and hopefully get some good scores. Then lastly, yesterday, sophomores took the Wisconsin Forward exam, and hopefully we'll give some good news to the state overall of our district. Thank you for those updates. Those are busy places. Thank you for all your involvement and all the things you guys do I know you guys are amazingly busy we have the topic of school facilities and safety and we have three questions that we had asked each of you to Seek some input from your colleagues in the student council or the student body What are your thoughts on emergency preparedness drills and procedures? Let's start with Brookfield East.
019Why'd you guys here? So we got a lot of good feedback about the timing of our drills We have a fire drill about once a month which students agree with that That's a good amount of time not taking away from too much class time but also kind of implementing good habits and then One thing that could be worked on would be diversifying the drills So although fire drills are very helpful for us something more like intruders or even tornado drills may help us Just feel more comfortable in our school environment how about at brookfield central yeah so i would echo a lot of what brookfield east said students in our student council and other student representatives found that the drills and emergency preparedness procedures are overwhelmingly positive in creating a safe school environment i would
020add that students thought that these are a great resource for highlighting the best procedures strategies whether it's exit or making the best logical decision in the moment when approaching these emergencies so overall very positive feedback Let's stay with Brookfield Central. What did you hear about the students role in making a safer school community? So our students said that students need to take these drills and procedures very seriously Because you never really know when something can come up They decided that we need to obviously follow instructions and communicate effectively with teachers and administrators during the drills so that we're prepared for the event of an actual situation. And then we go back to that old saying, if you see something, say something. And students noted that we need to take a proactive role in always making
021sure to be on the lookout and reporting any abnormalities in our school environment to kind of get a jump on anything that might occur. Anything to add from Brookfield East Similar ideas as central just being able to set good examples as students being quiet in the hallways when walking out making sure we're taking it very seriously and then also with see something say something with our Hope Squad we spread good examples of how to look out for issues within our school Awesome let's stay with Brookfield East school safety will always be a top priority it will be in every school district the district has invested millions of dollars in safety measures but we're always looking at ways we can get even better what measures do you think could be taken to improve school safety in
022our schools Yeah, so our student council members said that maybe increasing the amount of drills that aren't just fire drills and kind of increasing the conversation about like the why of our drills. So just like the dangers that could come with going to a public school and obviously with the more rise in like intruder alerts around the nation, just being able to know what signs to look out for and what to do in case of an emergency. Anything to add from Brookfield Central? I would echo most of that. We also discussed the importance of maybe exploring some options to go over procedures in the case of students being in large groups, whether it's during lunchtime, in the hallways during passing periods, situations like that where it's not necessarily an isolated student, but large groups of
023students that potentially would need to shelter in place or evacuate during emergencies, and also echoing their idea of more variety in drills. um just so that we make sure that we're adequately prepared for every scenario thanks john thank you guys i grew up in an era where school safety like this was not a priority it wasn't a top of mind thought and i really appreciate your thoughtfulness and your approach to this this is very mature and very much appreciated school safety will be a concern of ours forever it's just as the arrow we're in right now and we appreciate you getting that feedback from students and also appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule to be here any questions from board members mary More of a comment than a question. She knows it's
024coming. Isabel was perhaps too modest to mention that she is one of the five qualifiers for the national tournament in forensics from Brookfield East. Qualifying for the NSDA nationals is the pinnacle of high school forensics competition, the best of the best. I could give you a long list of celebrities, officials, famous people that have been. national qualifiers to the national tournament it's an honor just to get there it is a blast to be there congratulations Isabelle and enjoy your time at nationals questions from board members Jean I see that at Brookfield Central there's a comment about doing a gas leak walk at the beginning of the year and I'm interested in what that's about Yeah, so our this is our walk to in our case st. John Vianney for the whole school evacuation drill where
025we take all the students we have police in place to block the roads and then we go across reorganize in the gymnasium at SJV The thought behind this idea is that for incoming freshmen doing this at the end of the year is not exactly the best place because incoming freshmen then would not have the knowledge of this drill the typical procedures that go along with it at the beginning of the year or during the majority of the school year if something were to occur during the middle of the year I'm not following the gas leak part of this That's just a specific scenario in which this would be necessary so if there were a gas leak then we'd use this evacuation thank you for your contributions and your report i think this is one of
026my favorite parts of the board meeting is to hear what's going on our schools and to hear the great report from many of you and shout out to Lucia and her mock trial experience as well I think that there's some accolades there as well congratulations I had a question on the emergency preparedness I hear from both schools that you feel they're necessary and helpful is there any angst or worrisome or worry from students on these drills or do they feel that this is just giving them more comfort that they know what to do in these different situations I would say speaking for the general sentiment around Brookfield Central if there is any angst I certainly haven't noticed it I understand from all the students that I've talked to that while it may be an inconvenience
027at times if it occurs during a test or something it is overwhelmingly important that students have an idea of what we're supposed to do the most logical situations that we would have to like evaluate at the moment so I haven't heard any angst. I think students have an overwhelmingly positive attitude towards these drills. To add on, I do think that some people may, especially with what's happening in the world right now regarding these topics, that some people may not like the thought of these things possibly happening, but I think overall these drills are supposed to give us security and comfort that there is a backup plan if we need to fall onto it. So while it may be... discomforting to think of these things. I think overall these drills are extremely helpful in letting students
028feel comfort and knowing that they can do something to protect themselves and the people around them. Fantastic. Thank you so much for those comments. I've got a question and anyone could answer this. So the board talked over the summer and then approved in September after school student resource officers, SROs. Right now I think we're using security and I know that last couple weekends ago we had a big day at Brookfield East there was a lot of things going on I think we had security in place the SROs aren't there yet was there any conversation among students about like after-school safety and what it might mean to you know looking forward to a police officer kind of being on staff for those events or do they feel good about the security that we've got? So I
029know all the people that I've talked to involved in after-school activities, which is a lot because I'm involved in different intramural activities, different bands. So I'm there after school a lot. I personally feel comforted by having extra security there just in case they walk around locking all the doors, checking the hallways, and I know all the other students that I've talked to have indicated that it is just a comfort to have. to know that there are people there watching and I think it's just a nice way to have our community feel safe while adding another element into what we already have. Thank you. Anything else? Just same things he was saying I've spent a lot of time after school even if it's just hanging out in the library getting my homework done and I see
030the police officers and the SROs very often in our school and Although I haven't really seen them in action a lot just their presence is calming knowing that if something were to come up we would have Them to rely on Thank you anything else from board members Well, we're a week away from spring break or less than a week, so you probably have some final exams or homework or projects or something to do, so we'll let you go to it and enjoy your spring break and the last term that's coming up. Thank you. Our next agenda item is the Citizens Forum. This is an opportunity for members of our community to speak to the board on items that fall within the purview of the board but are not on tonight's agenda. If you desire to
031speak, Chrissy Westfall over here to my left. Your right is the one with the forms you would fill out. if you want to speak about something that is on the agenda there's a form for that as well it's the green forms that we've got up here there are a variety of rules and expectations on the back of the sheet I won't go over all of them but basically you'll have three minutes we ask that you be respectful address the board as a whole and understand that we won't engage in conversation about any topic until we've had an opportunity to look into it in more detail Our only request to speak during Citizens Forum tonight is Angie Pingel, a resident of the district. Angie? Good evening. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan recognized March as Developmental Disabilities
032Awareness Month to increase public awareness of the needs and potential of Americans with developmental disabilities. and to provide the encouragement and opportunities they need to lead productive lives and to achieve their full potential. As I read about President Reagan's work, I've reflected on my experience in Elmbrook with my severely developmentally disabled son. I thought back specifically to my participation on the last equity non-negotiables. which was later rebranded as the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Workgroup during the 2020 to 2021 school year. I still get really sad and angry when I think about the statement made by Dr. Elise Futura during one of our sessions about severely disabled children needing to be in the regular education classroom to teach those children how to be empathetic and accepting. Knowing me, I did address that statement at the time,
033stating that my son's purpose in the Elmbrook District is to learn and develop as much as he can, not to make other people's children better. That is a parent's job, and that is what equity means to me. My son has just as much right to learn as any other student in this district, even if it's at a much different pace. The statement from a highly educated person leading a work group was shocking and it told me just how much work needed to be done because I was the only person who commented on it in that entire work group. So during this important month, Developmental Disabilities Awareness Month, I ask you to reflect on our students with developmental disabilities. consider whether this is still how our children with severe developmental disabilities are viewed in our district
034thank you thank you Angie and that concludes our citizens forum we have a lengthy consent agenda just some regular business items we are going to pull items F and K because we have a request to speak about those but I'd start with a motion and I'll ask if there's other items the board members would like to pull I move approval of consent agenda items A B C D E G H I J L and M I'd second Thank you are there any other items the board members would like to pull hearing none all those in favor of approving all the consent agenda items with the exception of F and K please say aye aye any opposed thank you that carries on voice vote Consent agenda item F is the administrator contracts renewal and we do
035have a request to speak Angie Pingel a resident of the district Good evening as many of you know I've spoken on this topic before and I'm here again First I want to reference the K through 8 English language arts update to the TLC dated March 2025 available in the district's resources According to the information presented, our district map ELA percentage of students proficient declined from 65% in the 2022 to 2023 school year to 63% in 2023 to 2024. Our middle schoolers, grades 6 through 8, declined from scores ranking between 60 and 64% to 51% to 59%. What that means is just 51% of our eighth graders are proficient at grade level last year. This is the chart. This is appalling for the number one school district. I understand that the superintendent is a tough job,
036but I continue to question whether we should be rewarding this performance with salary increases in eight, or I'm sorry, nine to 10 years of post-retirement health care. which includes dental and prescriptions. And this is significantly funded by taxpayers. After a careful read of the contract, it actually allows our superintendent to remain on the district's self-funded health care plan in perpetuity as long as he pays the Elmbrook calculated premiums after years 9 and 10. Taxpayers could be paying for a very long time because we're a self-funded plan. Our budget is uncertain, and signs are pointing to a decline in our economy. And there's the potential elephant in the room with regard to the future of Act 10. I haven't seen any discussion of stress tests on our budget should either or both of those events occur.
037This is not a personal attack. This is trying to point out the fiscal management we've heard so much about. Is this good financial stewardship? That's all I have. Thank you. Thank you Angie Any board member questions or comments on the administrator contracts? Okay, and that entertain a motion and move approval of consent agenda item F I think you have a motion in a second any further discussion Hearing none all those in favor of approving the administrator contracts is presented. Please say aye aye Any opposed? Thank you that carries on voice vote Our last consent agenda item is item 5k the second reading of the 6000 policy series Angie Pingel the resident of the district has requested to speak Angie good evening. I wanted to talk specifically about policy 6006 that is the policy about section
038504 of the rehabilitation act of 1973 and I'm sorry that Kathy isn't here to hear this. But this policy talks about an IEP team. And if a layperson would read it, like a parent, it sounds as if the IEP team is comprised entirely of Elmbrook personnel. But we know that that isn't correct because I've been saying it up here for how many years now. We know that the child's parents are members and they're equal members of the IEP team. Their inclusion is so important that I'm shocked. It's not stated anywhere in this policy Even DPI acknowledges their importance in information update bullets in 21.21 I'm sorry 21.01 In addition, this policy states that if a student is found to not have a disability covered by the IDEA or does have a disability covered by the
039IDEA but does not require special education services, the IEP team must then determine if a student is disabled under Section 504 and whether a 504 plan is necessary for the student. If the answer to that is yes, then the IEP team concludes and becomes a Section 504 team, and I'm reading that right from your policy. The paragraph that follows the added language on page 2 states that the 504 team develops the 504 plan and placement and seeks permission for its implementation from a student's parents or guardians. Again, this reads as if parents are not part of the 504 team, but we know that they are in the case of an IEP team that becomes a 504 team. Although parent participation on a 504 team is not mandated by Section 504, many area school districts include
040them because of a parent or guardian's detailed knowledge of their child. I wonder if Elmbrook is looking at parents the same way other districts do. Thank you. So I'd like to send that back to committee. Thank you, Angie. Any discussion about this 6,000 policy series? It was on teaching and learning? Teaching and learning. Mary, when you talked about it? This didn't come up in committee, that particular issue did not come up in committee. The changes that were made were listed as posted here and approved. Isn't here. I personally would be fine with having the committee take a look at that one policy and approving the rest of the 6,000 policy series. In the absence of Kathy, give her a chance to look at, so we'd be looking at sending back policy 6,006 and practice statement
0416,006 and then approving the rest and have the committee look at it. Fine, unless somebody here in our audience or Mark, I don't know if you know, in terms of parental involvement in these processes, that we could speak to that. If not, then I would agree. Parental involvement is involved in both the IEP process and the 504 process That's a given or always? Yeah always That is required by Practice procedure policy all of it Mark do you know if that's in the state statute that we're referencing here? I'd have to get back to you on that What I'm hearing is if it's our if it is our practice then either I don't see a practice statement associated with that one So if that's there is Okay, so linked if we can have that reflected what
042our is practices my understanding and talking to many families is parents are Strongly and intimately involved in these plans and following up and part of the process and part of the plan So I would like to see that reflected And I agree with sending it back to committee to make sure that is reflected or giving Kathy a chance to communicate why it's not included. Yeah. I would point you to the, if I may, sorry. Mary. There is a practice statement listed in this list. And it says, in the event of a disagreement between the parent, guardian, or adult student and the school district in regard to the identification, evaluation, procedural guidelines, et cetera. he she may request a hearing conducted by an impartial hearing officer that would be the 504 hearing correct so obviously the
043parent would be involved if they were raising the issue of hearing so i think that's understood if it needs to be more overt i don't have a problem with i don't think anybody has a problem with that because it is our practice yeah emily did you have a comment point out there is a practice statement page two of the practice statement and the items that were added that are the dark gray highlight do indicate parent engagement in the process So the 504 team has to have knowledge of the student. The parents are notified of a referral in writing. Parents and guardians are notified of due process rights. They're engaged in determining if there's additional tests necessary and obtain consent in writing for any additional assessments for eligibility. And then there are other components throughout the
044process as well, but there are some key steps there where families are engaged. emily do you think these bullet points are reflective of the process overall or yeah my my sense is that they're in the meeting and having this discussion and giving some input and it's not just sort of being notified and um getting consent that they're an active participant i would yes jen the they're certainly engaged throughout the process um the practice statement continued from what it was before and the items in gray are the new components that have been added so really the process as it's been in place is like we would be maintaining that we're just more intentional with including those specific instances where families and I in a 504 team are engaged in that process Emily what about calling out
045parents specifically in Is the regular policy just about 504 or just our IEP teams in general? Do we call out the parents and the IEP? This is specific to the 504, yes. This specific policy, 6006. Appreciate that clarification. So I'm fine either way, sending it back and having the committee look at that one thing and approving the rest. Would someone like to make a motion? Jean? Our specific direction to the committee would be to make this clear that... Notifying the parents that they are expected or invited to participate is that what we're looking for I would assume, Mary. To be clear, the practice statement added an entire paragraph about parental involvement. So that is already there. That's what we would be approving tonight. What you want to go back to committee is just the policy
046to make a reference to say what exactly about parental involvement, since our practice is to involve the parents. What do you want in policy? Well, I would ask the committee just to look and see if we need to add language about parental involvement in the policy. Policy and practice statement? Well, we do have the paragraph in the practice statement, but they could look at both. I haven't looked at it in detail. This is my first in-depth look at it for this meeting. So, Jen? I feel what I'm hearing from Andy is that this paragraph wasn't sufficient. And I'm getting agreement there. So I think that's what she's asking, just take it back to committee so it's not just policy, but it's a practice statement as well. And I haven't spent time in it, and obviously
047I'm back in this, so I would defer to Mary if you think that we can take another look at this. I don't think there would be any objection to committee taking a look at it again to reflect our practice because we do include parental involvement. It would not be a change in the way we do business. So can I get a motion to have us vote? So I would move that consent agenda item K, specific policy and practice statement 6006, be returned to the TLC committee to clarify parental involvement as part of the 504 process. Second. Thank you. We have a motion and a second to return the 6006 policy to committee. Any further discussion? All those in favor of that motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Now can I get a motion to approve
048the rest of the policies? I would move that consent agenda item K, with the exception of policy and practice statement 6006, be approved as presented. Second. Any further discussion? All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you. That carries on voice vote. And that concludes our consent agenda. this evening and moves us to our first action item of the evening which is the benefits consultant contract Pam pretty exciting stuff important good evening Last month we had representatives from R&R Insurance present to answer any questions that you had about the potential of them becoming our new benefits consultant, effective April 1st. I've not received any questions in this period of time. However, we have finalized the details of the draft of the contract, which is included, just a couple highlights. The
049contract is for two and one quarter years with no service fee accessed in the first three months. and the annual rate is discounted compared to our current consultant. R&R is demonstrating transparency and is not taking overrides from the carriers, so the fees that we're paying them are the only fees they're going to receive as a result of a pinning our business. Year two of the contract will have a portion of their fees at risk for the achievement of mutually agreed upon performance metrics, and they are excited to get started and would appreciate your support. Thank you Pam. Let's go ahead and start with the motion and then we'll discuss the motion as needed. Jean? I move approval of the benefits consultant contract as presented. Second. I think we have a motion by Dean and a
050second by Preetha. Any discussion, questions? Jean? I'll say that I participated in this process and reviewed the various proposals that were received based on the RFP that you had sent out, which was very well done and a very organized process and a team of folks that evaluated those responses to the proposal request as well as interviewed various vendors that brought us to the point of recommending R&R. So the process was superb and sound and detailed, so I'm happy to support what's being proposed this evening. Pam, I'd just like to add a thank you. I personally think that health care costs as a self-funded plan, it's a potential danger to money that we could be spending in the classroom. So I think anything we can do to understand our health care costs better and areas for
051savings are important. So thank you, and I hope they're not afraid to do big things. Anything else before we vote? All those in favor of the motion to approve R&R insurance as our benefit consultant, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. That carries on voice vote. Thank you. Thank you, Pam. Our second agenda item or action item of the evening is the audit services agreement for 2025 through 27. Ben. Good evening. Audit season is around the corner here, and we just completed our RFQ for our auditors. We went out to four different firms for a bid, CLA, RPB, Baker Tilly, and Schumacher Sama. So from the response, we only got two bids back, CLA and RPB. um it is the trend that a lot of auditing firms are getting out of school districts because
052it becomes a lot of work and a little return on investment there's just not enough money in it for them so looking at the different audit firm data cla is local as is rpb the numbers hours quoted was 325 to 293 there's a lot more school districts working with cla than rpb currently and we were provided with references which we did follow up with Getting down to the brass tacks of it, CLA comes in significantly under what RPB would, especially when you consider they're quoting more hours as well. They're including the GASB 87 lease calculator and the fixed assets, which they track for us. So furthermore, CLA has competitive fees. They've been our auditor since 2016. They're fully paperless and plugged into our financial software, so they are in our skyward looking at our financials.
053It's not us auditing, doing these reports, and giving it to them. They have their own access as they need. So our recommendation is to go forward with Clifton, Larson, and Allen. Thank you. This is an action item so we can start with a motion and then Any comments or questions as needed? Prita I'll move to approve the 2025 to 27 audit services with CLA as presented second Thank you. We have a motion in a second. Are there any questions for Ben or comments? I've been on the board for the many years that the current firm has been performing audit services for us and as I've had experience with auditing in my career and have been impressed with their approach, their discipline, when they come and report at F&O, I've also been a member of that
054committee, to hear the reports that they're bringing and as questions arise, they're responsive and I am very supportive of continuing with Clifton, Lars, and Allen. I just wanted to say thank you to Preetha and Jean for taking the time to walk me through this process and remind me of the process I think just given the environment that we're in and other school districts that have had some financial difficulties and surprises in their district this is an extremely important process I appreciate that we take this out for RFP look at different firms to do this I appreciate the synergies and the efficiencies in keeping with the same firm but I'll always keeping an open mind that maybe we need to look at someone new to review this but appreciate that we are staying with the same
055firm and that it's the appropriate choice given the choices that we had so thank you for taking that time and I am supportive of this decision I would echo that this is really important. We heard in the boardroom a few months ago a request that we have our finances audited. We do every year. And so for the community to know that, hey, we hire this out and this is an independent firm and we want to make sure our finances are as we state and as the board has told. And so I appreciate the work of our auditors to have another set of eyes on it and the experts that come in and do the work. So really important. It's money well spent. And I'm grateful to all support this motion. Anything else before we vote?
056All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. That carries on voice vote. Thank you, Ben. Next up is our school start time committee recommendation. We're going to have a report from Chris. And then before board discussion, we do have two requests to speak. And then we'll open it up to board member questions and comments at that time. With that, Chris, I'll turn the time to you. Thank you. Your much-awaited report. Welcome back, Jen. Good to see you. Thanks for being here. So good evening. Over nine months ago, Board of Education and District Administration began to discuss concerns regarding our middle school start time during work sessions designed to address our district goal of a review of middle school programming. late October the board approved the formation of a
057school start time board committee with the purpose outlined on the screen in front of you which expanded beyond middle schools because of the connected nature of start times to busing for all schools as well as sleep research and academic performance of all students at the same meeting the board also approved the recommendation to allow all who expressed interest to serve on the committee the opportunity to participate which over the course of five months yielded about 60 actively engaged students staff parents administrators and a school board member I was the facilitator of this committee and I'm delighted to be here this evening to present the committee's recommendations to the board with one of our committee members Jacob Eisen our committee met five times over the course of five months for two hours at a time at
058Burleigh Elementary I'm very proud of the effort committee members put forth to understand all of the different factors that contribute to our school start times. These include busing models, district data, sleep research, and staff, student, and family opinions expressed in a recent stakeholder survey. If nothing else, this board committee's approach has yielded 60 more community members who can speak to DPI instructional hour requirements, the benefits and concerns regarding a three-tier or two-tier busing system, and the district's history with hazardous zones and its obligation to transport all resident students. That said, we did reach a final recommendation that Jacob will present shortly. As we look ahead to what comes after this evening's presentation, it's important to understand our recommended next steps. We are not requesting board action or even board support tonight for the recommendation that's
059presented. Super important that's clear. Rather, we're asking you to accept the report as the completion of the committee's work, recognize the time and effort invested by committee members, and direct the development of an implementation plan that the board can then discuss and consider over several future board meetings. The reason for this approach, which is a little different than some of our recent board committees like the Facility Planning Task Force or School Reopening Task Force, is that there are several elements the committee was not asked to consider as part of its scope of work regarding school start times, which we felt were better left to district administration and the Board of Education. examples of those decisions include determining the impact of the committee's recommendation on private and parochial busing commitments and strategies to fund any additional
060costs resulting from the two-tier recommendation with that in mind I would ask you to consider tonight's presentation as the next starting point in the conversation about school start times One that is fully formed and could be accepted down the road But for now provides great benefit to the Board of Education because of the information collected Analysis conducted and the straw poll results of our committee's work and with that I will turn to Jacob to share more information about the committee's process and recommendations Good evening, everyone So we studied a lot of different things in regards to coming to the final determination as our recommended school start time plan Really starting with the research Asked right from right right from the first meeting to review these articles which really kind of started us off on really
061identifying that children 12 12 years and older require 8 to 10 hours of sleep and using that as a metric that we really focused on, but also focusing on the changes in sleep patterns of pre-adolescents and adolescents, and how that kind of worked as it relates to our current school busing system, our current school start times. We also then looked at other different states and any sort of legislation that they had put or enacted. Interestingly enough, we actually found that California and Florida had already taken action to do these kind of revisions, which we found very interesting. We also did note a plethora of district data, including middle school and high school attendance data, bus route cancellations, drop off and pick up patterns at schools, parking availability at high schools, high school co-curricular participation, and
062Y program participation. So we leveraged all of that data in regards to how these things could be impacted by any of the decisions that we would make, given the fact that there is currently normality that's been established by virtue of our current school start times. We also did take the opportunity to learn about other districts including the Northern Illinois suburban schools which had very similar demographics to our own as well as the Madison Metropolitan School District. So from starting January of this year to March most recently we worked through a process to assess the different types of peer configurations and school start times. which is presented there. As you know, we currently have a three-tier bus model with middle school starting at 718, high school starting at 755, and elementary school starting at 850. Currently,
063our current bus model is very cost-effective given that based on limited transportation resources. And after considering many start time models, the committee used several voting techniques to identify the scenario with great support. I do appreciate Chris being able to allow us to do a lot of voting on the fly and really kind of narrow down our selection. In the end we did decide to choose a two-tier bus model with elementary school starting as the first tier and then the second tier being a middle school and high school combined as the second tier. The combined routes would drop students off first at high school, the routes would drop schools first at high school and then 10 minutes later at middle school for that second tier. and as you can see we actually provided estimated start and
064end times for the school as well as the differences from the current start and end times that we when compared to our current model and but please note that these are just estimates and they will require further review as you flesh out the implementation plan process The two-tier recommendation within our own committee received 62% of committee membership support. Again, we did a series of different voting, and ultimately this was what 62% of the committee members chose, with the key factors being that it aligned very much with the research. I can tell you personally this was a value that I chose to be very important. that coalesced with the ages 12 plus having better targets toward getting that eight to nine hours of sleep for the adolescents. On average, elementary, middle, and high school students reported
06578 hours of sleep per night of school, and that's per the survey that was conducted. 72% of Ellenbrook stakeholder survey responders, 5,000 being 5,199 total, supported at 8 a.m. or later start time for middle and high school students. with 11% being neutral and then elementary students some commentary that came from this is that they tend to wake earlier can be more easily adjust to a bedtime and are more learn ready to learn in the morning than the afternoon time which I thought was a really excellent discussion point that happened several times throughout our committee meetings particularly from our elementary school teachers who work with that population every day And then lastly, it would ultimately reduce before school childcare needs of elementary school families because of the earlier start time. It's important to mention, as I
066stated, that there was a stakeholder survey where almost 5,200 individuals participated, which as I understand made up 30 to 40% of the participation rate, which was very high. So we do believe that is representative of the population and does offer strong support across all groups for change and the belief that our middle school and high schoolers are not getting enough sleep. Of course, this recommendation does not come, is not perfect. So some of the things that we want to acknowledge that will need to be looked at during the evaluation process, including that the Waukesha County Study a possible walk or no transportation zones to reduce ridership and the budgetary impact which could be anywhere from $420,000 to $910,000. The fact that the early elementary school dismissal could impact families, particularly child care and the increased
067need for after school child care programs to build capacity for them. The impact of parochial and private school bus routes and start times, which was not in the scope of our discussion. The logistics of finding busing and ride times for middle and high school students, which was also looked at on the survey. And more precise school end times to better estimate impact on high school and middle school co-curriculars, which also was something that a lot of individuals were very impassioned about and spoke highly of. And then finally just the fact that it's change. I mean that is something that this has existed for quite a while and there's a lot of apparatus that's been established that supports this type of, that supports the current school start time. So we understand that with change comes the
068need to make those other changes to support that so that it feels like a win-win for everyone. And then lastly, on regards to board policy considerations and recommendations, which we talked about, of the critical success factors that you guys indicated that you wanted those recommendations, so we have three for you to consider. As I mentioned in the previous slide, in order to limit the budget impact on the two-tier model, we recommend a study done by the county sheriff's department to access the feasibility of walk or no transportation zones. such zones can be established the policy needs to be changed and its language around hazardous zones need to be rectified and it's been wonderful to find out about what a hazardous zone is because I did not know that before this committee and then additionally because
069the two-tier model does combine middle and high school students on the bus the practical statement language regarding walking distances to bus stops and the maximum number of students on the bus needs to be changed for the grades 6 through 12 Because the committee members had invested so much time and effort into the research on this topic We felt like we could leverage some of that expertise and gain some guidelines that can help form an implementation plan, which is one of the recommendations for board action tonight is the creation of an implementation plan. So you'll see some of the guidelines here, just kind of what are your non-negotiables or what would you recommend your non-negotiables to be? I think when we talked about school start time, a lot of people, when they thought about middle school,
070don't like the fact that our middle schoolers are getting on the bus starting at 6 30 in the morning okay if that's the case then when what's our target is is kind of the guideline then so our target based on committee conversation is 7 a.m which For the majority of days of the school year there is light at least for now with daylight savings time and such at about 7 a.m. For which is also one of the concerns of middle, you know middle school families and families in general So these are just sample guidelines. I think as an implementation plan is formed We will continue to refer back to these guidelines from the committee, but they're not hard and fast. They, again, are just trying to leverage that expertise that's been developed over time. I
071should also mention a couple of things. One, we have several members of the committee who are in the audience today, so when you do recognize them, you can kind of recognize all at the same time. And two, it's interesting to note that... florida did pass a law in 2022 that was to be implemented in 2026. the conversation now in florida based on feedback from a lot of districts is that they're looking to repeal that law and the reason is is because District started planning for it and they hadn't thought through all the details well enough to come up with a good plan that was cost effective and had adequate resources attached to it like transportation. And so they pushed back and now they're backing up on that and they may repeal that law. Not because
072it wasn't a good idea and not because people didn't support it but because they didn't have a solid implementation plan. So I think that just supports this approach. of let's get the big picture, let's get a target, let's develop a plan, and then let's have a really informed conversation at the board level and the community level about that plan, and then we can see what happens. And I think this plan in a two-tier model, because it is so different than what we currently do, there are a lot of details that will be new to everybody and need to be fleshed out but will give us the most flexibility for whatever the board decides in the future about school start times because we'll have figured out all the details on the front end I guess for
073that conversation so with that that concludes our presentation we're happy to take questions and comments Thank you Chris before we do we do have a few requests to speak and directing board members attention to the agenda item there are three proposed motions again these are just ideas recommendations possible motions accepting the school starts the school start time committee board report or committee report does not mean we're implementing it it's just a formality to say thank you for the work we accept this report it's great there is also another motion there that directly thanks the school start time Committee members and so both of those are potential motions and then as Chris said he addressed the implement implementation plan and That would just be the district doing some more work to come up with details to
074bring something back to our community To the board that we can discuss more. It's not implementing a school start time change it's these factors that were a part of the presentation that we just talked about so just as you consider those motions that can potentially be made we do have a few requests to speak before board member discussion so I apologize if I pronounce these names wrong but our first request to speak is Molly Valkis a resident of the district thank you My name is Molly Baclis. I'm the parent of a second grader and 4k student in the district at Burleigh Elementary. I've reviewed the documentation posted by the school start committee and am uncomfortable with the voting process that was used to suggest scenario three is the only solution to this problem. While I
075agree that the middle school start time should be adjusted, changing the elementary start time by 70 minutes is drastic, not favorable to elementary families, and is earlier than most every single benchmark school. Sleep recommendations for elementary students are still longer than those in middle school. 9 to 13 hours for ages 4 to 11, going down to 8 to 10 hours for ages 13 plus. So although it may be easier to shift, younger ages still require more hours of rest. Challenging the idea that all kids get up early, my kids sleep 11 hours from 8.30 p.m. to 7.30 a.m. With a 7.40 a.m. school start, they would need to get to bed by 7.30 p.m. Moving bedtime earlier for us directly means less family time. For working parents, this means they lose that hour with their
076young children and may also need additional child care hours. At best, if the promise of additional after-school child care is available, the smallest of kids could be spending 10 hours per day away from their families. At worst, if we cannot fulfill the after-school need, working parents could be scrambling for child care. With an earlier release, elementary students likely cannot stay home alone, make food for themselves, and be independent about completing homework the way middle schoolers may be able to. So now dinner, homework, and bedtime, all handheld by parents, gets pinched into an already tight timeline. With respect to the hard work of the committee, I believe that scenario four should still be reconsidered as a solution. Within the committee voting, this option was voted on as the preferred option when voting among scenarios two, three,
077and four. Thank you for your consideration and your time. Thank you, Molly. Our second request to speak is Ray Herrera, resident of the district. Ray? Good evening. My wife and I have two small kids both attending Burleigh Elementary, one in 4K, one in 5K. And to that end, we have a vested interest in any new school start time. That proposal, since our school, our family will be affected with it for the next 14 years. We do support the review of the school start times for middle school, high school. We agree start times for middle school are very early, and based on that sleep research, should be moved back. High school seems to be, in fact, the second latest compared to surrounding schools, but could certainly benefit as well. The answer, however, is not to do
078this at the expense of our elementary kids, like mine. It is a drastic change, 70 minutes, not 15, not 30, not even 45. That's like three round trips to grandma's house. That's how we coordinate and time our kids. 70 minutes is long for a younger child, especially if the child is at aftercare waiting for their parent to pick them up. At the end of the day, it's an eternity. Now the kids need to go to bed 70 minutes earlier. We will barely get home and eat dinner together, and it will be that time lost to start the bedtime routine. So it's not only time lost with our child that day, it's actually more money, too, coming out of our pockets for the additional 70 minutes of aftercare. We know there are other significant effects of
079other families. Another couple we know at school would now need private aid costs for aftercare for their special needs child. This proposed scenario affects the entire Elmbrook school population of 7,800 students their families plus all teachers Support staff before and after school caregivers bus drivers etc etc too many moving parts Vote no to this scenario instead review scenario number four or go back to the drawing board For those business types out there, even for me, it's common sense. Or if you like cars like me, think of it like basic change management lens. Instead of making a change from a zero to 100, how about we go zero to 50 first? How do we make some gains in the right direction? How do we get closer without changing schedules for the entire district and every student
080in the family? Then we start with scenario four to start somewhere. It gets us a later start time for both middle school and high school without affecting all elementary school students and families. It also allows us the opportunity to learn how we did. It'll inform us how did our change go, what risk factors did we miss, what will we consider. Then later, review if moving elementary makes sense. We can all agree little kids vary differently, have very different needs than middle school and high school. Not just they will be okay because the kids get up early. So did we say in the survey we supported our 8 a.m. Or later MS or HS high school start? Yes, we would need this knowing this Thank You Ray Our next request to speak to us is to
081answer when arrested into the district Mark earlier talked tonight about school safety and the significant sum of money that we've invested so given that Have we applied this view on safety to the proposed changes? We're suggesting putting elementary students, so down to four-year-olds, waiting out for the bus in the seven o'clock hour. I really find this surprising because in recent months we had both a death and a close call in neighboring districts with busing and elementary students. So I really think we need to be careful not to put sleep research over the safety of our youngest learners. Another time that the district talked a lot about research was during COVID, and my youngest learners were very negatively impacted by this. I'll never forget how a Harvard study on masking was referenced to support recommendations. When
082I looked at that study, there was no real-world data, and it was only simulations. So we need to be really careful on the quality of research that's being provided, because we may be repeating the same mistakes. additionally we know that the youngest students need adult supervision and this schedule change will burden some families and add additional costs to find after-school care have we considered that this is making Elmbrook less accessible to lower income families with this change Finally this is another example where the survey sent to the family was not neutral It showed the district administration's wishes with info provided above the questions This is like the hillside survey and so this is why someone after the hillside session said well the district administration will just now recommend whatever they want I Really hope you
083guys start recognizing this issue because you guys are legally on the hook Finally like previous speakers I absolutely support moving back middle school start times but I do have an elementary student that is needs a lot of sleep and getting her up at 7 a.m. is just gonna be a nightmare I this needs to be a reward thank you Thank You Diane Our next request to speak is Laura George a resident of the district Hi everyone my name is Laura George I am a parent of a current 5k student at Burleigh I also have another child who will be attending the district very soon what I have to say here today is definitely going to directly echo a lot of the sentiment that has been shared from the prior speakers but is a lot shorter
084So as a parent of a 5K student, I am absolutely concerned about the proposed 740 start time for elementary students. It creates a huge childcare gap, especially for working parents. So even if we take away from the AM need, at this point in time, that's honestly minimal for a working parent. It's a much larger gap in the afternoon. 230 dismissal is way too early for students in our district when we think about you know elementary students you know some as young as four years old being in the current y care option it's completely unstructured i can't imagine having an entire school of you know kids that are you know very very young um being in the gym for two and a half hours plus without you know the structure that they need at this point
085in their life as also stated earlier the proposal also cuts crucial family time by significantly moving up that bedtime agreed my kids it is virtually impossible to get them up even at 7 a.m today to get them on the bus at 8 20. um so just envisioning waking up you know a four-year-old or five-year-old um you know at six o'clock in the morning i just it's really hard to wrap my head around as mentioned by the committee madison appears to be one of the only districts in the state of wisconsin that offers an elementary start time as early as 7 40 in the morning most of the other districts are closer to 8 a.m um i definitely appreciated the opportunity to have my voice heard in the survey but i agree with the other speakers
086i wish that there was more transparency about the amount of time that they were proposing the start time being moved up by yes i agree we can move up the elementary start time but by 70 minutes i would have never agreed with that i suggest that the board go back and look at the two start time options that everyone here has been talking about, option three and option four, and take another look at them. As an Elmbrook alumni. I do remember how hard those three years of middle school was waking up you know at 5 45 in the morning you know as a teenage girl that was really really hard to make sure my hair was done perfect and you know getting getting to middle school so I definitely agree we need to address the
087start times across the board I just think that there are other options on the table here that we can be looking at and it doesn't need to be jeopardizing our our young students here and impacting the financial well-being of all the families in the district. Thank you. Thank you, Laura. Our last request to speak is Elaine Dole. Dole? Elaine Dole. Okay. You're close. Thank you for the opportunity to speak my name is Elaine Dole I have a 4k student who attends Brookfield Elementary and another one who will be there shortly like many other parents here today I am here with concerns over scenario 3 being advanced by the Elmbrook school start committee I do want to recognize I know there was a ton of hard work that went into that and it's a very very
088complex issue and it's hard to fit you know one size fit all solution and I understand the need for a change the start times for the middle school and high school students but I do have concerns that is that being done at the expense of the elementary school school students one of my main concerns is that earlier start time like some of the other parents here it is very hard to get my kids up before 7 a.m you know i can't get them to sleep at 7 p.m that's not going to work they need that you know 10 to 13 hours of sleep there's a big gap between you know, what a 4K student needs in a fifth grader. So having that sleep for that 4K student and like that kindergarten, those early years is
089so, so important. Along with the sleep, having time to have a healthy breakfast before that. And I also echo the... bus safety concerns standing out there at seven we're one of the first stops so 7 a.m in the dark we don't have street lights on our streets we don't have sidewalks so definitely concerns there and then the 2 p.m dismissal right now my family doesn't need to use any of the y base we would under this new proposal so that would be an additional cost that families would have to incur especially you know in a tougher macroeconomic climate that's a tough pill to swallow in addition As we see remote work and flexibility in the workplace as a whole starting to decline to pre-pandemic levels, there's a lot less flexibility with jobs to be able
090to leave quickly. A lot of us have commutes that we have to factor in. So that's definitely a concern with that. dismissal and like others said my 4k year old would be at school for nine to ten hours already sometimes she comes home just like overwhelmed and overstimulated from her day so having that 10 hours i mean like adult working nine to ten hours that's a lot um so to expect our youngest learners to be able to do that i think it's it's asking a lot of them and then what is that quality of time going to be when they're over tired overstimulated it just takes away a lot of that quality time from students if they have to students and families if you're expected to be there earlier and also needing to use the
091Y base so again just really want to have the board consider the other scenarios primarily scenario four that would have such a significant impact on the elementary students again understand the complexity of this issue but I would like to see a solution that doesn't come at such an expense of the elementary school students thank you for the time thank you thank you Elaine with that board member questions or comments it's pretty nuanced subject Jean I have comments and a couple questions first off I'm very appreciative of your work particularly the many many hours spent in learning and discussion around the many complexities of this issue I was a skeptic when the plan was released to include all interested parties. But and I'm pleased with the robust response of our community particularly the student involvement. I
092think their voice Certainly parents have a different view but the student voice I think it's important to to present the whole picture and so I appreciate the the participation of our students Resounding thanks to you Chris Thompson for your guidance of this group. I heard a lot of unsolicited feedback in the community accolades to your expertise and leadership of this group. I wasn't thinking that a group of 60 or 70 or 80 was gonna be workable, but it sounds like it was well done. I've had a number of email communication from parents, primarily at the elementary level, with concerns about this recommended scenario number three, correct? That's what we're looking at. In terms of questions, I wondered if you can first of all we don't have any students not receiving bus services right the walk
093zone plan there's there's nobody in a in a walk zone today right everybody's eligible okay so we'd be starting out kind of a ground zero there in terms of determining who and how in the impact right we targeted certain distances for just for modeling purposes just to see you know what a one mile walk zone for middle and high school students could do as far as a reduction in ridership then which would save costs and allow us to pursue a two-tier consider a two-tier option versus a three-tier like we have now so between a mile and a mile and a half is about a 20% reduction in ridership and certainly We call them walk slash no transportation zone because you're not expecting necessarily that somebody who lives a mile and a half away is going
094to actually walk to school state law allows you to to Dictate up to two miles of no transport zone and many districts do that Wauwatosa has no transportation provided Whitefish Bay is the same and so when you look at their school districts and their start times Whitefish Bay is 8 8 10 and 8 20 or something like that and in an ideal world That would be great if we could just bunch them together at just the right times but that's all because of transportation and and not having to bus their students and so We would work with the county the county's the one who has to sign off on on what's eligible for transportation What's eligible to be considered as part of that zone or not? I would imagine that there would be certain rules
095that just you don't cross You're not gonna cross a railroad tracks to get to school, you know I mean it doesn't necessarily mean that everybody has a sidewalk though We did a we did a preliminary study with the county last year year and a half ago just at Brookfield central and and if you know essentially if you can walk out of your subdivision and get to a pathway and get to Crosswalks that are marked and labeled then that may be eligible within whatever distance you set and so So there are some general guidelines that have been established I think by districts all across the state We would apply those with the county's help and then they would help determine it So it wouldn't necessarily just be the district saying everybody from here on out has
096to find their own transportation Do you have an idea of how long once we request tomorrow that we have a study like this done what amount of time that would take? It's gonna take a while mostly because of county resources when we talked about it before they did Brookfield Central and it probably took six weeks just to get them lined up to conduct a couple day visit observation yeah and I'm not sure we'd follow the same model We might look at certain streets and certain zones and try to identify what those ground rules are and then and then figure out how far that gets us But I'm not sure of the approach. I just know it's going to take a while to get that done Could I just add to that answer if I may?
097This is that area of implementation that we're talking about now. This is not Wasn't it was part of what we talked about and I was the board member that was able to attend the meetings and I rove from table to table over the weeks and Got to talk to many different groups These were some of those decisions that would be left to the district to recommend or to the board about crossing major streets and The walk zones, maybe crossing guards, other things we talked about would have an impact on the cost of implementation, not necessarily the core of whether or not these times work for kids. So we've got, now you start to see the moving parts and welcome to. 10 to 12 hours of our life and however many of the rest of you
098were up thinking about this at night and things like I was. So it's important to get those answers, I think, to do our due diligence as part of the implementation strategies for sure. finding out what's there will only inform what we think is the right thing to do and that's going to be a reflection of what this community needs and whether the sheriff's department says there has to be a sidewalk and whether we say there should be a sidewalk that's two different decisions so I just want to keep that in mind along with all of this and I think thank you Jacob and thank you Chris for setting the stage well we aren't at the finish line here we're at just the first lap of a marathon so um it's it's good to start thinking
099about all of these things but your your input is really helpful here and and that report would be helpful as well well and i'd like to be uh clear about the whether The movement from a three tier to a two tier bus system is predicated on walk zones and from a budgetary standpoint the only way it could work is if we can save that four to nine hundred thousand or whatever the numbers were that that's a that's a must or We could do a two-tier bus system without walk zones. So it's not a savings though in cost It's an add-in cost because when we because because a large percentage of our middle schoolers ride the bus now. Again, let me back up. Our highest demand for buses, drivers, comes at elementary. And so we use
100the reason why elementary tier stands on its own and during the rest of the day, morning and afternoon. is used to meet middle school high school and our private parochial obligations elementary stands on its own because we need all 50 plus buses to service our elementary schools and students if we take those same 50 and apply them to a middle school high school combined tier we still have more riders at middle school and high school than we do at elementary even when it's combined and so then we need more buses So we need in my estimate up to 10 more buses or 12 more buses to if if we didn't have any walk zone which would be the $900,000 plus expense or if we did have a walk zone that would reduce the need to
101maybe five or six more buses to service those requests so so that's the that's the additional spend but the only way we figure that out is by doing a hazardous zone study determining if we want to do a walk zone and then and then that will tell us how many drivers we need and then we're making the assumption that we can get those drivers in an economy that hasn't changed much when we've been struggling to hire and keep our drivers. So I mean a lot of variables there and the committee did a really good job I think at considering all of those factors as when they were considering options especially deciding between a three-tier model. because that would pretty much be status quo as far as drivers, buses, and operations, or a two-tier model and
102collapsing for more efficient, more effective start times. Can you speak to number seven on the screen here as to what what does that mean? Yeah so so we did survey staff as well about and the survey wasn't designed to survey on specific scenarios because there are so many factors in each of these scenarios and so what we really wanted to know was you know do you access daycare now or childcare now before and after school would you access childcare before and after school if times were these times and these were all times that we were considering. And so we just had people react to really specific questions that gave the committee different inputs than to guide their scenario decisions. So when we surveyed staff, I think the majority of staff supported moving times and the
103benefits to students. elementary said yes we would benefit from an earlier start time we didn't say what that would mean but we said they would benefit from an earlier start time so that students didn't tire out in the middle of the afternoon like they are now so that was one thing high school middle school staff said that at least high school staff did said that they would benefit students would benefit from a later start time be more alert be ready to go in class we also asked staff how would this impact you and your family and your commitment to, not really your commitment to Elmbrook, but your ability to kind of deliver on your work schedule is what really the question was. Knowing that we set the work schedule and staff would certainly need to
104respond, but we wanted to see what staff would say. course I think there are middle school teachers I think prefer the early schedule they prefer getting done earlier elementary teachers would like to work a little bit earlier high school teachers seem fine with the 20-minute start either way didn't really matter much to them at least in the survey so the but we already have a process to accommodate Change requests from teachers that we use every year in February. They can put in a request for a different teaching assignment Some of our elementary teachers have moved to middle school for a schedule change that was better for their family and a change maybe in schools or for whatever reason they would be they chose and then sometimes we've been able to accommodate that so really what
105number seven says is we would leverage Processes like that and it wouldn't necessarily just have to be teaching staff. It could be any staff member who's working at a school that maybe starts early now and prefers to stay that way, we would use that process to allow for some voice in the process if changes were made and they were significant enough, I think, to warrant a change. Thank you. And my last question is, as you look at the differences between scenario three and scenario four, the motivating factors for... scenario three were the earlier start time for elementary to accommodate the afternoon what did you call that downtime or reduction in their ability to attend to what's going on is would that be capturing the essence of it that we've we've flipped from one to the
106other for that reason so reasons why reasons why scenario three was was different or why it was I think one of the reasons scenario three was popular with those who chose it was that it came closer to the goal that is set by the research that even starting at 815 or 825 the research would tell you we should be starting after nine we all kind of went well that would be great it's not going to happen right i don't think we are in a place yet where we're ready to do that for any number of reasons even though it might be biologically the right thing to do so moving toward a more perfect system allowed us to get closer to that adolescent best sweet spot with scenario three scenario four I'd say the proponents of
107that felt that it was the least disruptive to the status quo and it did make progress toward moving the middle school back but they're still before eight o'clock and there was some feeling that we weren't getting where we were supposed to get So, I mean, everybody has a different reason. When you have 60 people in the room, you have 60 different reasons why they chose, and it wasn't 90% in favor of one particular scenario, which is why you've been presented with the whole enchilada here as a starting point for the discussion. But great question. I appreciate that. Oh, go ahead. I would just, and I think Mary encapsulated it perfectly, and I think one of the excellent exercises that occurred when we finally were voting is just to choose our core values as to kind
108of why we are going with scenario three and four. And I think, you know, really it came down to that. That kind of research consideration, you know, is maybe a value versus something else and as I said there I think everybody had a different Focus, you know, we I had teachers sitting at my table. I had parents sitting at my table I had parents with children in both elementary school and middle school and you know with that so in the end I think it kind of got split along that line of just where where what school is gonna start For me the compelling Remarks that I've heard by email and in the room this evening about moving our elementary start time up so far Is that long day? if you're a 4k-er and you're there
109for 10 hours I don't remember who said that but that really struck me as well as the comment that Diane made about and others and emails to me made about little kids standing in the dark or in the early morning and not as visible because they're they're small the the attention in the afternoons that weighs on me and certainly the the need for rap care and the time between the end of the day and the start of extracurriculars at the elementary level is a Concern that I would have and I wonder if there's a way to look at for at scenario four and move those times such that we can we could manage it with the middle school perhaps starting at 8 and the high school perhaps a little later and then elementary at Close
110to the time that's recommended Because I would certainly be prepared then to say I would love to have an implementation plan that looks at that scenario I'm hesitant frankly given the concerns I've heard to to shift elementary that early at this point in time yeah Gina all I would say is that all of the work on the implementation plan will support either scenario three or scenario four so we don't we don't need to decide tonight because we'll still need to work with the county to develop to see if there's hazardous zones we'll still need to figure out the logistics of you know before and after school programming or the logistics of students riding together on the bus so so I think by having the most I don't want to say most extreme but the most
111aggressive model as the recommended model allows us to put all of those details in place and then if we choose a less aggressive model we'll be able to do that and we'll have all of the information we'll have the research we have all the district data already we'll have all of the information that's going to go into an implementation plan and it can then just be flexed based on What you're feeling the board's willingness to to? either gradually Attack change or or go bigger well and for me an implementation plan means that we're gonna we're gonna do this and here's when we're gonna do it and so I forgive my misunderstanding of that and now it's clear to me that It's I'm not sure I'd call it an implementation plan more around Continued research as
112to the various elements of it that would inform final plan to implement something and if that's where we're headed I I think you I be happy to have you rename it yeah to say that in a just a slightly different way from my brain we're really talking if we're looking at implementing a two-tiered system It's different than implementing a three-tiered system and the costs are going to be pretty close They might not be identical, but we'll have the core of what we need to do it I will say week by week the three-tiered models fell away as options because they just always left somebody in a worse situation even than the two-tiered model with an earlier start for elementary so there was again thank you jacob for for saying what i was thinking too chris
113made a point even in our last meeting of saying write down your guiding values before you vote and we had to keep coming back to why are we doing this in the first place the normality of now is a really good way of looking at what we're doing. 30 years ago, I was the parent who was flabbergasted by the early start time at the middle school, so it's been that long. The district says they've gone through this three times. We've been through this more than three times. And to my knowledge and my experience, we've never gotten this close to a better plan. I'm energized by the fact that you're here and you're speaking collaboratively. One thing we came to agreement on early on is nobody loves the status quo, middle school starting too early. And
114from there, it's how can we be more perfect for that purpose. Comments or questions? Preetha? Well first I'd like to say I very much appreciate the work of this committee I know that this was a huge undertaking so to everyone on the committee thank you for your hours of work with this to everyone who's written in over the last few days and emails I want to say thank you for those and to all the speakers here tonight I hear your words and I again just want to say that I really appreciate the depth of this discussion the comprehensive view of the research that we have heard of heard and again to the questions i've been asked so far some of my questions have been addressed but i do have as i look at this um
115what i what i can kind of appreciate from from the presentation here is that very early on it looks like scenario three and scenario four came out Ahead it looks like initially even scenario four had more support at one point at one time and then again I can see how the process brought in discussion and how it came down to Selecting between scenario three and scenario four I guess what and we did hear a little bit about that, but I was wondering if there's any way I could Understand more about why one decision was made given that they're both two tier systems or two tier busing systems how Some and again, I do see the highlights of what you know, what went into that discussion but Is there anything more that you guys can say
116about what where that decision what would impact of that decision? So and this all happened last week Tuesday, so early on would be early on Tuesday and in about an hour, so it was probably the most exciting hour that you've ever seen on a 60 person committee I would say I think we voted five or six times in three or four different ways so hands dot exercise electronic voting was all present the when in scenario four Just so people are clear because it's not included in the recommendation but it is included in all the other documents related to March 11th that are also on our website tonight so you can go to our website under community and school start time committee and you'll see the history of all of the documents that were presented to
117this committee Scenario 4 was not talked about until last Tuesday and the reason why I developed it as an option for people to consider is based on the on this on the Survey results from our families. I mean we knew I think all participants knew we had identified pros and cons of every scenario that we had talked about leading up to March 11th they knew that Child care was going to be an issue with a 230 dismissal They also knew that a 4 p.m. dismissal at middle school was going to run into so many co-curriculars that everybody was going to be really excited about that too. And so that's why we went away from a three-tier busing model, I would say, or a later middle school end time that... butted up against a 4 p.m.
118dismissal so so we presented this other model which the model was start middle school at about 7 55 high school 10 minutes later 8 0 5 and elementary then stays at about the same time it is now maybe because of busing it has to end five minutes later we're not really sure so I mean it's for elementary there's very little disruption Middle school you're pushing back start time by about 30 minutes and high schools 5 to 10 minutes later than it is now so so if you're looking for moderate approach to change that gets us closer to research but maybe not all the way there depending on your perspective it was an option and so people quickly were able to wrap their heads around it I think you know and again kudos to the committee
119for for responding to that new model But so that voting process that's described in there which I tried to capture in the minute So everybody kind of follow a play-by-play was we asked them to pick their top two of three and And so some people were split on a three tier still and selected that as one option some people selected the recommended option That's in front of you tonight most everybody in the room selected the other option, scenario four, as either their primary or secondary. I didn't make them pick which one was first and which one was second. And so that was like the next best alternative for most people in the room. So it received the most, the broader support. received broad support from the room and so that that's that was early on
120and then we eliminated after that then we eliminated the three-tier option came down to the two tiers and then they had to pick which one would you prefer as your most preferred go back to your guideline you know what's what's guiding your decision and your values and then make that decision and that's where scenario three the one presented tonight came out on top so so I think there's there was general understanding in the room that scenario four represented less change, closer, but maybe not quite there. I mean if I was just to give a real simple summary, I think what Mary and Jacob have both said too. And so that's why some people said, you know what, we started with the research, we started with trying to get kids more time, high schoolers asked for
121more time in the survey, so pushing them back 20 minutes, parents and students said that unanimously, was gonna be okay. So then then they then they split out between the two scenarios So I mean and really it was important to get to a recommendation It's just as important to get to this next step You know in the process was to get the report back to the board to figure out what our next steps are so we can just keep this Conversation moving so that we can do something different than what hasn't been done over the last 30 years Thank you for that. I mean I do appreciate that again as I'm learning scenario three came our scenario four came about based on survey recommendation So that's I think an important piece for me to understand
122And I I currently have a middle schooler and a high schooler So I have current lived experience with this with our current model. So I will say I very much appreciate the work that has gone into Finding something better. But I guess my question then is, given that scenario four was introduced one week ago and very quickly was voted upon on that day, it sounds like, have we given enough time to that? I mean, do we need to sit with that? Because it sounds like the work to get us to this point took many months. And scenario four was introduced. And as we've seen, there appears to be a significant amount of support for it. And again, that's sort of why I asked that question about the determination between scenario three and four and how
123that came about. But I do also appreciate that the current implementation plan, what you are asking us to do, supports both of those models. So we're not really making a decision about that. tonight if we are to start with an implementation plan it would support both scenario and three and four as further thought is put into consideration Several times during our thank you for the question several times during our meetings I referred back to the school reopening task force which was done at the start of COVID and I said the most valuable part of that task force wasn't necessarily the recommendation it was the conversation that the task force had that allowed the board to have a really smart intelligent conversation about the pros and cons And even though the task force recommended one model
124and it was pretty close, like 16-14, 17-13, something like that, the board decided to do the other model. And I felt like that was fine. And I felt like the committee still had served its purpose and had added tremendous value in their work in leading up to that decision. And I feel the same way here. I feel like... More time certainly from the committee may have yielded a stronger percentage one way or the other but I don't know which way would have gone first of all and I really think getting to the next step now of I'm still looking for a better plan the plan and guidelines and you don't call it implementation plan I'm developing a plan and based on the guidelines It is is is what we need to do next like we've
125got momentum Five months of study and research allowed 60 members to wrap their head around this problem in an awesome way. And then let's move it forward now with the next steps. I get the sense there are people in the audience who are on the committee who have things to share. They could fill out a form, right? I would encourage them to do so. I agree with what Chris said. I tend, as a human being, to err on the side of talking more. I like reflective time to make big decisions. And we could probably have this be a standing committee and talk about it every month for the rest of our lives because there's a great deal of interest and we have a variety of arms on this octopus. For me... The decision is how
126can we do the right thing in the most cost effective way. I don't think the status quo is the right thing. And so that's where we began here. I'm so grateful to live in a community that's this interested in doing what's best for our students. There was unanimity that status quo is not an option. There was unanimity that the research points to the fact that students who are in their adolescent years are sleep deprived. And I'd like to just share, I do encourage... you to read all the peer-reviewed research, listen to the experts, read the books, consider the many sides of this issue with an open mind and heart and a dedication to finding the best possible outcome. I think everybody's doing that. I just did write down a few bullet points of the things
127that are my... are the core values that drove me on this. There's no question that students are sleep deprived. The CDC reports that six of 10 middle schoolers nationally and seven of 10 high school students in America do not get enough sleep on school nights. Our survey also tells us that that is not only true in our community, but parents think their middle schoolers and high schoolers are getting more sleep than our middle schoolers and high schoolers report that they are getting so that's that's something we need to think about we heard a lot about from staff and students about strategies they use to get through the day without sufficient sleep and that's a lot of caffeine energy drinks and things that are not optimally healthy when we talk about sleep it sounds small but
128sleep deprivation does some pretty nasty things. Sleep deprivation can impair the development of the frontal lobe of the brain, critical to controlling impulsive behavior. Numerous studies have shown that teens who do not get enough sleep are more likely to engage in risky behaviors. Insufficient sleep in teens makes them prone to accidents. Drowsy driving can cause reaction times to be similar to the effects of driving drunk. Combine that. with a lack of driving experience and distractions like texting and the problem can become a matter of life and death lack of sufficient sleep is shown to impair cognition and academic performance and if you think our kids are doing great imagine how great they might be doing homework takes longer to complete reaction times are slower judgment and alertness can be impaired And research has shown that
129sleep-deprived adolescents are more prone to developing anxiety and depression, issues we're grappling with in our community and we hear about. So the contributing factors to lack of sleep include these things, according to experts. Early school start times, homework. work and after-school activities the natural biological shift in circadian rhythms that occurs at puberty making it harder to go to bed early and harder to wake up early and Of all of those things. There's only one that we as a board can address and that's the school start times experts that I've listened to have said that's the no-brainer in this it's one thing we can control so that's what guided me that was the vision that guided me we can do better for our students we have high community interest in doing the right thing and again
130I'm so appreciative of Being able to be a part of this group of 70-plus members of the community who read the research, spent the hours over the past six months discussing, giving Chris so many ideas to operationalize this. They gave him a million different factors to chase and to think about all sides of this issue. I thank everybody who has emailed, everybody who has spoken tonight. I've been the 5K parent, too. I know it's hard to, my kids didn't wake up early. I get it. And we had a lot of elementary school parents on this task force, I will tell you, and some who have done multiple levels. And there's an acknowledgment that you're an elementary school parent dealing with those issues until you're a middle school parent dealing with those issues. And your life
131as a parent, your timing, your family schedule is a fluid thing. And when you're my age looking back on it. You'll recognize how rapidly that changes you get into one rhythm and all of a sudden Somebody gets a different job or somebody's in a different level or like me you're blessed with children four years apart So you have an elementary a middle and a high school student all at the same time So we can't fix that for you or they couldn't fix it for me But what we can do is find what's the right thing for the majority of our students and is least disruptive to all of our students and we can afford that's a big one and that's going to be a board decision how how can we do this and what can
132we afford thank you mary we want to keep moving along so jen And then I've got some comments. We do have two more requests to speak. I will be quick. I'm jumping right in here, but I did want to continue to express my appreciation for this work group. I know it's a ton of hours. I know you're researching, you're reading all the studies, you're reading the data, preparing for the meetings. It's very appreciated. And as Chris said, it is invaluable information to move the board from doing all this on our own to you have... done such a significant amount of work to be able to lay out the groundwork for the different decision factors and it's it is invaluable and it is helps us start here to say here's the other information we need considering
133the cost considering the logistics considering all these other pieces it's just extremely valuable so thank you for for that time um i echo many of the questions that were laid out here and i appreciate Mary your time talking me through some of the different sessions in the end of the scenarios and it was very helpful to hear that scenario for was just developed most recently and that you were reacting to the New information that was coming. So I appreciate that Was there also I know there's a number of studies that were out there and we've heard a lot about adolescent sleep was their consideration or thought about Pre-adolescent sleep and those needs and that timing That that would be one question that I want to understand especially for considering this much earlier start time. Yeah,
134I think I'm gonna guess here but up to five years old six years old. It's ten to twelve hours of sleep and then it's from there until puberty it's 9 to 11 hours of sleep and then it's 8 to 10 hours of sleep as the recommended for adolescents So the difference though from the research is that parents have more control over their pre-adolescent bedtime wake times than their adolescence as they become more involved in sports as they get access to screens as they you know for a lot of different reasons and so so in several of the districts that were profiled in the research the elementary seemed to be the the flex time flex level that you could put before or after in Madison You'll see both you'll see schools starting before and after and
135all of that is just to balance busing needs Same thing in Northern, Illinois. You'll see schools that start first here or third tier Again, it's to give high school in at least in Northern, Illinois The better start time and then they just wrap elementary around it and so could go either way, of course But but those are the reasons why their research suggested elementary was flexible I also appreciated the survey information thank you for sharing that with me Chris I think what we heard in a number of the different emails and thank you for sharing some of the ones that people may not have noticed to share with me in my brief tenure one of the questions I had is it feels like there's still more community input that we might need once this is
136flushed out a little bit more I would like to hear more more from the community because I think Your questions in the survey was really to help inform some of these scenarios and it wasn't necessarily as you said evaluating the different scenarios and Once it becomes and feels a little bit more real you can start to think about okay. What does this mean for my family? What is this impact and I know as a working parent that Pushing a bedtime to 7 p.m. Would have meant Chaos chaos right like that. I would have worked schedules would have had to change to be able to even just get the basics done I Would also like to hear a little bit more at the elementary level About co-curriculars right and how that would be impacted under these
137different scenarios Co-curriculars and extracurriculars. So I know there are sports starts young And it doesn't finish by 5 p.m. And 6 p.m. So those are some of the other pieces that I would like to I think would be beneficial to the board as you're continue to evaluate these scenarios to understand More community input once these are flushed out a little bit I know you have a number of different pieces that you want to bring together And I would echo Jean's comment about you know, if there's some start times to massage here On scenario four that might be something to investigate you Jen First of all and be brief. Thank you to the committee We're gonna officially thank you with a motion in just a second but thank you that time spent the reading the Giving
138up evenings with your families really appreciate that Because this information is gonna help the board and give us a lot of information to make a decision and move on to next steps I Personally supported a later start time in the middle school for how long mark? Ten years since I've been on the board I've been talking to him about it for a long time I have five kids that we've lived through this in my family. My youngest is now in middle school and It's it's an issue and I quickly realized that it would take a two-tier bus system And it would take money and I think that's why mark has always said let me on It's not necessarily Mark. I'm one vote of seven, and the board just hasn't been there. But as Mary said,
139this feels exciting to me because it feels like we're closer to making a decision or at least taking a step in the right direction. And a two-tier bus system, I think, could be step one. That could be that zero to 50, just the next step in a process that maybe takes more years than I'm patient with, but I'm fine with a few steps in the right direction. On your, I don't know if you call these critical success factors or Chris, I think number five, I would add that maybe with our extracurricular activities, we include a conversation with our conference partners. If we're going to move our high school start times later. that our baseball teams and our soccer teams and cross country and at least with those conference partners that we would start the conversation
140and say, hey, our school's letting out later. Wouldn't it be great if we could just start some of these sporting events later? I mean, football games are 7 o'clock on a Friday night. That's great. Or a Thursday, right? And that's great for adolescents, great for that high school athlete. And so what do we need to do to, again, maybe our conference can lead. I think Elmbrook leads the way on a lot of these issues, and I think our conference could too. So that might be. Language I might add to number five That I'd be interested in seeing to my fellow board members in the interest of better communication and more transparency with the community, I would strike the word implementation from any motion. And maybe I heard Jen use a word I like, decision factors,
141or we say next steps, just in the interest of clearly communicating that we're not implementing something, that a decision has not been made, but we're researching next steps. I think also, one, I don't see up there, and Chris, I don't need to call it out specifically, but again, I would expect that we would have more work sessions and then more community survey feedback, maybe a listening session where the board gets together and we listen to the community. Once we are getting down to an option one or an option two and we have more specifics, a start time, which school system we're thinking about starting first or second in a two-tier system, that then we would... take that to our community for more specific feedback. But I think that is implied here. I don't think that
142necessarily needs to be written on these, but maybe add our conference partners to number five. So we do have two requests to speak. And then I'll entertain some motions. We can make one or two or even up to three, but two of them for sure can be combined. But let's first hear from Maria Casanes, a resident of the district. Maria. Hello, I was not prepared to speak but I feel like it's necessary I four children three in the district currently and I found it very interesting the last night when we were Meeting I was on the committee that somebody asked to show of hands of how many were elementary parents how many were middle how many were high school and Overwhelmingly more elementary school parents were represented that night So to have the vote of
143option three win, not by a little, but by plenty of margin, showed me as a committee member that the elementary parents were in support of that option. If that wasn't the case, it would have been eliminated. So that's where I felt comfortable with option three being presented. That's the first thing. The second thing is I am a middle school and high school substitute in the district, and I see firsthand the exhaustion of our middle schoolers. And one day after I was on the committee, I paid attention every hour of the class periods of how many students came into class with... energy drink or a soda and I stopped them because now it's in my brain as to wow every hour multiple kids are coming in with energy drinks and so I asked them why are
144you drinking that because I'm tired and I'm like That's not healthy for all of these kids to come into class with energy drinks to stay awake for school. And these are middle school kids. That is not healthy. That's the second thing. Third thing was the middle schoolers are not being watched outside at 6.30 in the morning. When I drive through my neighborhood... Almost every bus stop there's a parent with their elementary kids. So if they're going to be out there at 7 or 8 30, you know, they're going to be out there with their kids at 7 So they're not I mean no one's going to leave their elementary kid alone outside waiting for the bus at 7 a.m if they're waiting with I mean, I see handfuls of parents in our neighborhood out at
1458 30. So I feel like That's something to consider And last was I originally voted for option four. I did. It was our last. We were down to the two, and I voted for four. And then when it came down to eliminating one, to go through this whole change for middle schoolers to go from 718 to 750, to me, was not enough. to support option four. If we're going to make a change, we're gonna make it right. And we're not going to just give them a half hour of change. We need to make it better than that. So that's why I changed and ultimately supported option three. So thank you. Thank you, Maria. Our last request to speak is Shannon Drake, a resident of the district. Shannon. Hi there I'm Shannon Drake I've currently got
146six kiddos attending Elmbrook schools two at each level elementary middle and high school I was also a member of the advisory committee and I'm not speaking tonight to advocate for one scenario or the other but I am here because I feel it's important to give emphasis to the research as we keep hearing mention okay and I do feel that there's been some implication tonight that that research is maybe far removed and way too hypothetical to be relevant for the welfare of our students and so I just wanted to take a moment to re-emphasize some of the things that Mary already outlined I'm very glad that she brought up a lot of the specific details that we saw repeated in all of the areas of research that we looked at because this is not really, it's
147not far removed research that maybe was only done in a vacuum as some of the others that were referenced tonight. It goes into almost every aspect of student well-being and safety, including their mental well-being. As Mary mentioned, it affects levels of anxiety and depression and even suicide rates. It's been known to have adverse effects on driving, so increased... incidents of car accidents happening by teenage drivers. All of these factors were so significant in my mind that they outweighed any inconvenience that we might feel by shifting some of the other grades around. So I encourage you, if you have not already really dived into the research, don't discount it as something that is just theoretical. Please be assured that it came from the most reputable sources. in the relevant areas of expertise. And I feel it
148absolutely speaks to the safety and well-being of our students. I think that probably that is also the key to your question that's been raised multiple times of why Scenario 3 might have won out over Scenario 4, because the research was found to be that significant. Thank you. Thank you, Shannon. OK, board members, let's entertain some motions here. Jean? I move that we thank the school start time committee for their work accept the report as presented and direct the administration to further refine the assumptions in my one of my lines of work along the way project management you get all your assumptions refined and then you put your plan in place and you go so I would say further refine the assumptions including the key concerns that will inform a final implementation plan and that motion
149is coming up You can see the motion on the screen can I get a second Mary made a second any discussion of the motion Only a question for Chris is that do you need additional guidance to move forward No we didn't in the suggested motions we did have a timeline I guess I want to make a commitment that we'll come back in June and have a discussion about it we may not have all of the assumptions resolved Then so I appreciate maybe the flexibility of an open one but I also want to set an expectation for the community to know that this conversation will restart In June and then we'll see where we're at and then we'll go from there if that's fair And and if that's the case, I like Scott your idea about
150a work session maybe in June to look at that rather than Assume we're ready to take a next action step. I think it's gonna this isn't gonna happen for the fall we started with that assumption and I think a work session will allow us to have some of those table discussions maybe there are members of the advisory group or others who might want to be available to us at a work session but I think that would be if as long as you've got what you have something for us we leave it open we can add more to that I don't think it needs to be in the motion as long as we know that we're just gonna be the process in which case I would absolutely support this any other discussion or questions so it's
151not in the motion but implied it the administration's told us they're coming back in June here to a board meeting or work session awesome okay all those in favor of the motion behind me on the screen please say aye aye any opposed thank you that carries on voice vote And thank you, committee members who are here and all of our community members for speaking tonight. You can go home and enjoy time with your families and we'll keep going. Or you could stay if you want. You could stay. I wouldn't. You don't have to. I wouldn't. Okay, our last action item of the evening is recent gifts to the district. Christy's pulling up the screen on the screen the gifts to the district for December 2024 and January 2025 in December the district received $55,780.06 in
152gifts from those donors that are listed and then in January we received $30,878.75 from the donors who are listed on the screen We'd like to sincerely thank all donors for their support of excellence in the school district of Elmbrook. These slides are retained on the district website, and so those that visit can see readily who is contributing and supporting our excellence. And with that, I would move that we approve the gifts as presented. I'll second. I think we have a motion and a second by Preeta. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Thank you. That carries on voice vote. And that concludes our action items for the evening and brings us to our first discussion item. Lisa Rettler is coming up, actually, for the first two discussion items. She'll be here.
153But first, we're going to tackle the German 1 and 2 primary resource. Yeah. See what I did there? Yeah. I don't know if that's good. I don't even know if that's good. Okay, so tonight's discussion item is about the recommended resource for German 1 and 2. Just a little bit of history. When we brought our world language curriculum through in 2023, our German committee had prioritized a primary resource in German 3 and 4. And at the time, they were fine just having teacher-created materials, meaning that they didn't have a primary resource for German 1 and 2. At our one-year implementation review that we do after every new curriculum is implemented. The team had discussed a lot of reasons why they wanted to potentially seek a primary resource and so we did a for German one
154and two so we did a resource needs assessment and that led us to having some things that we were interested in pursuing and Took it to our teaching and learning committee to get a pilot approved Through that process, our team has truly engaged and done a lovely job of justifying why they feel they needed a resource for level one and two. a lot of their discussions were about having a consistent approach from teacher to teacher for planning we have two german teachers that span four different schools and they also talked about like just the nature if you ever have a new german teacher move in or out of one of those buildings it's nice to have something to support the curriculum that we developed they also talked about in the field of world language as
155we know we want to find those culturally rich and authentic materials and they do a lot of digging on their own to find that but there are some primary resources that really present some efficiencies when it comes to their planning and so some of the criteria that they wanted to look for for a primary resource included that culturally rich authentic use of the the German language having some digital resources that provide support for students when they're learning grammar when they're they can listen to dialogues they can dig into some different cultural information. And then they also wanted to ensure that it aligns not only with our Elmbrook developed curriculum, but with universal teaching practices in German that's worldwide, which I thought was. really interesting and helped us land on what we wanted to pilot. So
156our teachers went through the pilot process. We brought it back to the Teaching and Learning Committee and discussed the results which are linked on there on the resource adoption recommendation form. You can see every detail of adherence to board policy as well as ensuring that this is the right fit for our German students in the district. So we are recommending this as a primary resource. The budget aligns with what we have paid for previous tools, previous primary resources in world language. it would be a seven-year teacher and student recommendation it includes print copies that are classroom sets as well as access for as I said digital for teacher and student so tonight it's a discussion item but I'll open it up for any questions you might have kind of going through the history of why
157we didn't have resource on the primary side for one and two and now that we do and seems perfectly reasonable to me thank you yeah thank you yeah and i would just say at the committee level we had excellent presentation from our rock star german teachers in this district they are pre-perennial award winners and put a lot of thought into this and it made this a very easy decision So it looks like there's digital text as well as hard copy Correct And for seven years? For seven years yes And is it what's the practice in Foreign language classes today are they mostly using digital or did they also use the hard copy as well? They use both It's really balanced as you can imagine learning a language you have to be able to have those
158interpersonal skills Communicating back and forth and so our teachers in all of our languages are very Very meticulous about not having students on computers the whole time so it is a very balanced approach of that you know interacting with one another doing things that are more hands-on tactile and then you know some of the the digital pieces which provide oftentimes excessive increased accessibility for all students as well as immediate feedback and and certain things such as grammar And our current teachers teach both one and two and then three and four so this feeds directly into Correct And is this textbook for both one and two or are they two separate For both one and two So I was trying to figure out I just was looking at what we approved for German three and four
159it does this Is it the same company? Does it align? Is it usually scaled? That's a great question. It's a different company, but both of what we have adopted for 3 and 4 and for 1 and 2 align to what we created as our own curriculum. So they felt good that it could be an easy transition from 2 to 3. The resource changes, but we know the way we designed our curriculum that it is a natural progression in developing proficiency Any other questions? Okay, this will be back at our April meeting as an action item and then Lisa our next discussion item is the primary resource for contemporary health care practices Yes so this one is a little unique in that this is a course that we offer that runs in our launch medicine and
160healthcare strand only and students are eligible to earn two college credits with WCTE with this course that type of college credit is called transcripted credit And so in order for us to deliver this course on campus with our credentialed educators, we have what's called a transcripted credit agreement between us and the university. And that agreement really articulates what we want kids to know and be able to do out of this course so that it's common from... what if you have a student at WCTT taking it and taking it here in Elmbrook it also articulates textbooks or related materials and appropriate assessments that are expected to be implemented so it provides a level of commonness between a student who takes it at the the campus and the student who takes it here so recently those well
161those agreements are updated every year and recently that agreement indicated that there was a required textbook for this course And so we took it through our process and our filters to ensure, as we always do, that this is the right fit for Elmbrook. And as you see on the board doc here, the required textbook that's recommended from WCTC and essentially required really provides some nice enhancements to our course, such as the course competencies are demonstrating professional behavior. as a member of a healthcare team, protecting patient privacy and confidentiality, demonstrate effective interpersonal communication in healthcare settings, integrating principles of customer service in healthcare settings, and demonstrating effective written communication skills in healthcare settings. So we felt that the book was... a solid fit it is required in order for us to offer this course for transcript
162to credit but we also found that it was a good fit so that's kind of the history of how this came about we do have budget numbers there we would be looking at about 110 copies of the book It is not a digital book. It is only a paper book. And so the price per book is about $56.21, which when we looked at the WCTC bookstore, that's a little bit cheaper than what they sell it for there, but that's the cheapest price that we could get it for. And Mary did bring up at the discussion at TLC, which I think is important, is that... A lot of times in that situation, you're paying for the research that is behind the publication of that book. So that's kind of the background of why we have this
163recommended resource for this course, and I'll open it up for questions. Thank you, Lisa. Other questions, comments for Lisa? Jen? Given that it's a contemporary health care, how do they, you have an estimate for how long this resource would be relevant? Yeah, so it's well colleges like to change more and They recommend that we buy the second edition, but they said we could use the first edition So that leads me to believe that if they in two years move to the third edition We'll still if there aren't significant changes. We'll still be able to use the second edition and so we're always very mindful of that because as a you know, a public school where we don't have the ability to change our resource every two to three years. So we anticipate using this for,
164you know, five, six years. Yeah, I would just say this is one of those costs of partnering with higher education is sometimes we're going to have to go with their resource and we don't have the autonomy to choose our own. But this looked like a really solid resource. with some legs to last a while hopefully great this will be back next month as an action item as well thank you thank you Lisa as Ben makes his way to the table for a couple of the discussion items here we'll start with the 2025-26 property and casualty insurance renewal Yes, thank you. I used to work at a university for a long time So I know about those additions and the updates and it's a new preface. It's a new addition Yeah, we're gonna get into the
165property and casually insurance renewal So the district reviews coverage and proposed rates for property and casualty insurance each year with her broker R&R insurance last year the 2425 budget for all lines was eight hundred thirty thousand two hundred and twenty dollars R&R insurance right now is forecasting a four percent increase for the 2526 So I don't know if you have the presentation in front of you. We have multiple lines of coverage. We have property and crime, and that is with the current carrier, Liberty. We have general liability, educators, legal, auto, and that is covered by Community Insurance Corporation. We have workers' comp, and that's covered by SFM Mutual. And we have cyber liability, which is also covered by Community Insurance Corporation, or CIC. So what impacts our renewal? Well, first of all, our experience. The
166market itself. So for a good example, a few years back, there was a ton of tornadoes in the Midwest. That ended up impacting insurance rates across the board due to their reinsurance costs. They just passed it along. And then finally, how will we mitigate risk? So as far as property goes, it's costed by the square footage. And like I said before, Liberty appraised our property just recently this last year. Right now, their indications are reasonable for 2025. And the rates, as far as they're concerned, Ellenbrook's losses have been very good to the marketplace. So our rates, we're getting good rates right now, according to R&R. As far as liability insurance goes, CIC is a non-for-profit group. They do not have umbrella coverage, which is a positive. Our workers' compensation, it's set by the state, and
167then your three-year loss, which is called your mod, is calculated into it as well as what your payroll looks like. And right now we know CPI is 2.95. Currently, Elmberg has a very positive mod rate right now, which means we're sub-1, which means we're not looking risky or costly to them. So we will see actually a decrease in that coverage. as far as the cost is concerned. And then finally, cyber liability. This is CIC again, and they're coming in very, very positive with their indication. So the overall renewal is very favorable, being at 4%. Just for context, last year it was 12%. So we're looking at roughly about $36,000 in new costs with this renewal. Workers' compensation, as I said before, it's estimated to decrease by $28,000, which is very favorable. And then we really
168like CIC for cyber because our first million dollars is at no charge. Now, we do take out another million just to be safe, and they're only indicating that will cost us $1,000 more. So they've been very favorable for the district. As far as renewal strategy goes, for property, we're not planning on going to market at this time. We are monitoring, though, how Liberty is coming in. Last year, they did fluctuate. They were very high, and then all of a sudden drew back because I think they're losing some other coverage in the marketplace. So we will keep an eye on that. As far as liability in the automobile, again, this is a really excellent indication, only a 5% increase. Workers' comp is down 7%. then cyber liability is gonna come up between two and five percent
169estimated so I'll take any questions that you might have on the renewal we will bring this back and we should have our R&R insurance broker here for at that time for action Questions for Ben I'd just like to say that F&O did a thorough review of this and Paul was there and presented and answered our questions as to, we talked about why wouldn't you market this and he had a very good response in terms of few carriers do this type of coverage that we were talking about and takes a lot of time to market it and on an annual basis creates an issue that they believe, well, we maybe aren't going to be continuing with them and so they strategically do the... the marketing or taking it out to market I guess you'd call it
170so I would say that FNO sent this here with a favorable report and a recommendation I would recommend that we that we support this Mary Ben or Jean when is the last time we did put this out for bid Are you considering like bidding out R&R's brokerage? Well, not R&R. I mean, I know we've just moved different lines. Yeah, so all the lines they put out last year. Everything went out last year. Yeah, and the reason why he didn't recommend it was because he said he knows the marketplace and he knows our renewal is under market. Okay. So it would be redundant. Have we had a cyber claim? We have. We did a couple years ago. Do we know, were we with them? Do we know what that cost? Yes, we were. We did have
171it covered. Since then, we've taken greater steps to mitigate some of those possibility threats. Yeah, but the threats change as fast as our mitigation changes. I mean, just what did the insurance pay out on that? what was mitigated. Sure. Well, I don't know right now what we paid out. I can talk to them and then we'll have it for the next meeting on action. Because a million sounds like a lot until you've got to deal with a cyber threat and it's not that much when you do. So I'd want to make sure that... Well, I know that we did get credit coverage for all those that might have been compromised. So that's part of it. But I know one thing from talking with Dan and IT is we do have a group called Red Canary
172now that is basically protecting all of our wireless ins and outs, everything, and it identifies threats in real time. And he has awesome graphics on where they realize it and then they shut it down and what the time was. So that's one of the steps. It's an expensive software, but it's top-notch. So that doesn't have anything to do with our insurance? No, that's just the mitigation practice stuff we've done. And does having that impact our rate because we're paying extra to have extra protection internally? No. It's actually, if we go with them with CIC for auto, they give us a million cyber free. Yeah, that's why I'm wondering if a million of cyber is really as much as we think it is because that can be a tremendous. I would think that Dan would have
173weighed in on this. Let me go to him and find out what it costs. I just want to make sure we're not under, I mean, we've had to do some of that in our workplace, and I've heard the guy that gives our presentations on that, and it's one of those, like, once you have one, some companies won't reinsure you because the cost is tremendous. I'll bring that back to you. I just don't have that in front of me. And granted, we're not dealing with. PII for hospitals or medical here, but we are dealing with student records and that's Yeah, yeah So I'll just jump in here with a couple of questions because I cyber Was one of mine if I understand your presentation, right? We get the first million free, but we're buying another million
174correct So it's two million dollars of coverage. My understanding was after that cyber attack, which again was about a year and a half ago That they were gonna drop us that it did end up being quite expensive for them to cover they brought in people and Shut systems down and there were a series of it. It was three or four attacks over a few days And I don't want to go into too much details, you know, what meeting with that day is in that in that sense is that our insurance Carrier is gonna drop us and we weren't gonna be able to get cyber to Mary's point And so I just wondered but now they're including it It could have been a different carrier back then. I can look and see. That would be helpful.
175I know you weren't here, but yeah, it doesn't influence my vote per se. Yeah, that would be helpful. And then I went through the presentation, and I guess I just have to write down, is there a place where you've summarized just what, I mean, the budget is $830,000, but... Is that 4% higher than it was last year, the total? Correct. That was last year's budget. That was last year's. This is the renewal indication. It's not final yet, but the renewal would be a 4% increase, which is about $36,000. And that's with some of the pieces going down in cost and some of the pieces going up in cost. Okay. Yeah, I was trying to make sense of it. Sorry if I didn't understand that. Okay. Okay, that answers my question. And I'll have that question
176for you. And is it correct, I'm not sure if I misheard, but none of our coverages went down, but some of our rates went down? Yes, correct. Any other questions for Ben? And Ben, I'm fine if you get the information Dr. Hanson in terms of the cyber security. It could just go out in the confidential communication or just an email before the next meeting. That's easy. You don't necessarily see it in the meeting per se to vote. Okay, then Ben's staying at the table for our next discussion item, which is capital projects. Ben? I'm going to have Rick come up here. He can drive here. Okay, so... This is our capital budget not to be confused with our large maintenance budget large maintenance budget was roofing hardscape that got a That gets approved during our
177budget process. This is our capital budget that would be fun 46 Where this year we're proposing to add a generator to Brookfield Elementary. Right now we have three buildings without generators. It's Swanson, Brookfield Elementary, and Fairview South. Fairview South is getting a generator added during the project this summer. We're proposing to do Brookfield out this summer and Swanson will be in next summer because we're doing some roofing work there. So had to work around that. So Brookfield Elementary. for the generator just like we've done at other buildings we're going to connect all our emergency exit lighting to the generator add one emergency light in each classroom and bathrooms and then we connect one boiler and one pump to the generator that way if we fail power during the winter months we can still keep hot
178water circulating we don't freeze up the building it's not this It won't heat it up to 70 degrees, but it'll keep it warm enough that we won't freeze anything And we've done that at other buildings and it works very successful On the slides I've included pictures. This is Dixon and it's gonna look very similar. It's gonna go up on the roof We have to do some reengineering of the decking and everything but this generator is a little bit bigger because of our Network infrastructure is at Dixon at Brookfield L. It'll be a little bit smaller KW generator but more than enough to take care of our needs there and everything so just wanted to show a picture what it would look like and then there's transfer switches they're in inside the building there The budget
179for the project is $382,798. This is a big project because it's very extensive labor to run wires through the building to pick up each one of the circuits. The buildings were not built with emergency circuits, so we have to run the circuits, just like we did at Dixon. um so that's the first project the second project that we're proposing is ada accessible playground equipment at tonawanda if the board remembers we've been working our way through the schools they have some there but we want to update it and we also want to put some ada compliant pass in like we've done at our other schools to make the playground equipment more inclusive for everybody again there's just a few pictures here for it and everything and the budget for this project is ninety thousand so those
180are the two projects we have this year and i will take questions questions for rick i have a couple um these aren't too in the weeds but what do we do with the old i mean the playground equipment I've been there. I haven't swung on the swings or used the monkey bars myself, but it doesn't seem super old. What do we do with equipment like that that may not be end of life? Well, most of that equipment that we're going to be removing, like the swings, are probably 20-plus years old. They look in good condition because we replaced... decks and everything but they do not meet the new code as far as like spaces and stuff we're grandfathered but that's why we're picking this one set of area to take the oldest equipment out at
181school so does it go to like habitat for humanity or i mean does anyone use these can't really donate it because of the liability and everything with it. So most of the time we take it out and we will take it for scrap. Or if there are decks for some of the older equipment that we have, we will save the decks or some of the pieces that we can. But like the swings, if you look at them compared to the newer equipment, they're not even close. And then as far as totally in support of... Backup power equipment. I don't know what it is about the power grid in Brookfield and on grow, but it goes down a lot surprisingly a lot and so I'm in support of that and I know you know, we energies
182upgrading some power lines and things. What do we do? right now because because after this upgrade we'll still have two schools without a Backup power, auxiliary power, right? Well, actually, Fairview will get it this summer also, so it'll just be Swanson. So what do you currently do when the power is out at a school to keep the pipes from freezing? So we have battery backup lighting that, by code, stays on for 90 minutes. If we end up having to go longer to hold for buses, we have portable generators like little ones you have. We can put temporary lighting. in the hallways and we've had to do that before we had a generator at tonawanda and other buildings so we we have the assets to do it um it's just not as quick it takes us
183a while to get there this is instantaneous you have to come in the winter time on the weekends or whatever like heat buildings if building power is out so last year when we lost power for those four days we actually i had my electrician wire into some of the circuits to get the boilers running so we wouldn't freeze up buildings and piping so We have ways to mitigate. It just takes a lot longer. And over time. Yep. And this last weekend, we lost power for this building in Fairview South for six hours on Sunday morning, too. So we had generators, so kept everything warm. Well, thank you for that. Rick never gets to sleep on the weekends. Yeah, it's crazy. Thank you for your service. Yeah, you missed the part where we talk about what
184happens when you're sleep-deprived, so be careful of that. The playground equipment I'm feeling super old because when I came back to the community in 1988 the Tonawanda playground was my first project and This is two playgrounds since then Is the ADA inclusive equipment gonna be a single structure or is it multiple things? It depending on the size. I right now I have a designer what they'll do is they'll design three different scenarios then I put it out for the students in the school to pick on it with the PTO and include them but usually it's two or a couple of pieces that one where you can get into it with it and other students can be around so if you go to other schools it's worked out great Great and there will be accessible swings
185added when the swings are all replaced Swings at Tonawanda big darn deal so swings at every school are popular and and a ninety thousand dollar budget doesn't seem overwhelming at all to me and it sounds like you're gonna have to do some pathway construction to get the kids to use a port in place surface because we find that that's the best surface for for it so it works great as a parent who's had to do the fundraising heavy lift on two different schools, playgrounds, one in another district and one at Tonawanda. I'm glad we're supporting this. It's an important part of the Kids' Day. Just to follow up on Mary's point, are there funds coming from the school or from the... PTOs, any other supplementary funds? For ADA equipment, we do not ask the PTOs.
186When we go through the other equipment, then we ask the PTOs. Like I've had other equipment replaced at other buildings, PTO, Brookfield L, they funded a percentage of it for us and everything. But with ADA, I believe it's the district's responsibility to make sure we include everybody in our equipment. Okay and this is just a portion of the playground is that correct? Correct it's one section to get the ADA equipment in Okay but you said some of it isn't up to code it's not up to ADA code No it's just there's gaps for with the newer equipment for like heads getting stuck and things like that and it's grandfathered in code but when you put the new things in it's much safer for children so the equipment that will remain there is that up to
187code that's newer equipment so we picked the older playground we picked the oldest to get it out of there thank you yeah just if anybody remembers the slide of death at worth park um these these rules do change and thank goodness they do for the better but the the shelf life on a playground is shorter than you think because of that well thank you rick and ben that'll be back next month as an action item Now we come to policies. So we've got the 3000 policy series. Let's see where my paper's gone. Pritha. The following policies were discussed at our March 13th F&O meeting and were sent to the full board for discussion. So we have four policies here and minor changes were made to all of them. I'm sorry, three of them. The first
188one, our relationship with vendors. We were just reconfirming that. No changes were recommended. For policy 3325, which is titled receiving goods, just some of the language was changed. We struck a... Sorry, pulled up the wrong one. Striking just, again, what's not current practice at this time. So, again, as you can see there, just aligned with written communication to the business office. We don't do that anymore. with written communication. So then policy 3-3-2-6, which is payment for goods and services. Again, you can see here some of the minor changes that were made at the addition of ACH payments just to kind of... bring us up to what we do currently. And then also the removal of the line about regarding emergency disbursements that may be authorized by the superintendent. That's not anything that's in practice so
189we decided to just have that removed from there. And then our last one is the 3327 which is the policy on the conflict of interest and again just added some language from statute so mimicking statute where we just replaced the wording significant interest with private pecuniary interest director and directed encompasses appropriately what we needed to do here so again these are the four policies that were discussed and brought to the full board for consideration if anyone has any questions any questions for preetha Okay, thank you. That'll be back in our consent agenda next month. Jean, you want to take the 4,000 policy series? Yes, I'm bringing three policies that we handled at our last personnel committee meeting. And policy 4306 is recommended for rescission as it's a practice that we no longer use. 4430 is
190recommended for reconfirmation. 4610 is recommended for rescission as well there were this was put in place when we made adjustments to our post retirement benefits and we had tier 1 tier 2 and 3 employees and all of our tier 1 staff that this was relevant to have everyone's met the requirements so the policy is no longer necessary Questions for Jean on the 4000 policy series Okay, that'll be back next month. We do have a request to speak before we discuss the 6,000 policy series. And Kathy's not here, so it looks like Emily's prepared to jump in. But Angie Pingel, a resident of the district, is going to address us on the 6,000 policy series. And then we'll turn the time to Emily. First. Thank you for listening to my comments at the last meeting and
191taking this policy back and looking it over and making a lot of revisions It's certainly much much better. I did have a few more comments though that I wanted to mention six thousand and seven use of service animals First I was really disappointed in the first page in the section entitled Or it's actually right above service animal handler responsibilities It's probably the easiest way to find it and it's the very last sentence that was added to this paragraph where The district is referring parents to the Wisconsin special education mediation system And as a parent who's been through the Wisconsin special education mediation process, and as an attorney who's represented other families in that process, let me tell you that if you get to that point, it's a pretty big failure. It's an incredibly stressful burden
192on families to go through that process. They're not familiar with it. A lot of times they're looking for legal help. They're looking for advocates to help them because they don't know what a mediation process looks like in most cases. So I'd really ask you to take a look at that and see if that's something you want to actually say in a policy because to me, as someone who's been through it as a parent and has been through it as an advocate and attorney, You just you did that's the last resort you can certainly spell out what the last resorts are But you really want to encourage people to work together and find a way to get through it And to me that just shouldn't be in this policy then moving right along The second question
193I had was on item number nine where it says any person dissatisfied with the decision Concerning a service animal can't appeal that decision to the superintendent And my question was, does that sentence mean to the person with a service animal or to a person who might be impacted by a service animal being around them? It's very, very unclear to me. And if you're dissatisfied with the decision, I just think that that should be more clear. And then finally, you talk about employee use of service animals. You talk about parents and trainers in the next section being accompanied by service animals. But you never talk about training for employees or students. And I will tell you, as an owner of a service dog, it was so important to me that my dog was actually trained in
194a school. My dog spent every day with a child in a school learning how to behave in a school. And there is no provision in here about students who might be certified service dog trainers. and teachers can be certified service dog trainers and they have the same rights and you have the obligation to accommodate them under the law in the state of Wisconsin as a person with a disability and those two elements are missing from this procedure so I would ask that maybe that be taken a look at and see if you can correct that before it comes back to the next meeting as an action item Any questions for Angie? Can I just ask that last piece to it? So this is a student is working with a dog to train the dog. Yep.
195So for example, my service dog for my son went to school with a student trainer. so that that dog learned how to behave and act in a school setting, didn't react to bells, didn't react to other students. So they need to get that training and get that exposure so that they learn how to behave in that setting. So the dog was with a, not your son, but a trainer. A trainer who was a student, a high school student, and a middle school student, actually. So not an elementary student, a little older kids, but they were in those environments to learn how to behave. And that's so important because if you can't get a dog trained, they can't provide the service that the kids need. So it's very, very important. I'm grateful to the Beloit School
196District for allowing my dog to go into that environment where it was trained in Beloit. So, Angie, what's missing from our policy that because I see that it may. So it may be accompanying service animal trainers. That's under parent, visitor, vendor. It's not under student. If you look at the section title, it's parent, visitor, or vendor. So I can bring a dog in and train it because I'm an adult, I'm a parent. But students do this as well. Oh, I see. And so do teachers. It says and others use of service animals and it doesn't define who a service animal trainer is. If a student is a service animal trainer, I think it's inclusive here. I don't think we need that. I would disagree because you've got student use throughout the entire session. So I
197would just ask that it be made more clear. because it's an important element and maybe it won't come up in the Elmbrook School District maybe nobody will train service dogs here but you are required by law under the state of Wisconsin to make those accommodations Yes Precinct Yeah what I was going to say this I mean to Mary's point even though it's not specifically laid out here this policy does allow that it does not in any way prohibit a student trainer from training an animal a service animal in our facilities But if you look through the process for a student bringing a dog into the school it doesn't fit It just it doesn't fit. It's not clear. I would really love to see that changed It's clearly your policy, but I would love to see
198it changed The state statute that requires So Wisconsin statute it is not a federal statute as referenced in this policy. It's a Wisconsin statute Yeah, there is no federal law for trainers for service animals. It's only my question So is the Wisconsin statute that that defines that listed in our references here? Yes, I believe that it is because I know as a matter of policy we don't we try not to Restate every single piece of the statute, but just more of how it applies here. So I appreciate that. We're not excluding it And by referencing it here, I think that would, if this situation were to come up and there were concern, that would help define it. So I'm not sure that we have to spell out every different instance, but appreciate that that specific
199statute is referenced here. In addition again the employee could also be a trainer of a service dog and the provision that you have specific to employees only references engaging in The accommodation process under the ADA it does not reference state law and being a service dog trainer So just my thoughts. I would love it if you'd change it, but Social education mediation. Oh, thank you Eric mediation system You took exception to that and I'm interested to know We should just delete it and then people are kind of off on their own or well you you reference it you can certainly list it as a Resource that if if all else fails, this is an option but that was brought up in every IEP meeting I ever went to that I didn't agree with or that
200this was an option. But to put it forth like that, that there's no other way to work this out amongst this group of people, and that you need to take that step, a lot of people are gonna just throw up their hands and say, forget it. Because they're intimidated, they're frightened, they don't know what that means, they've never done it before, they're worried about the cost of a lawyer, if they have to get a lawyer. It's just very overwhelming, especially when you already have an expensive child with special needs. So it's just the way I feel about it, but maybe you want to leave it in there That's certainly your choice But to me that that's the path of least the last absolute last resort It seems we're on our way to that last resort
201as you walk down through the student use of that that the Student may be accompanied by a service animal and please let us know although it's optional and that we shall comply with the rules and regulations and anyone who's willing we will convene the team and develop accommodations. So it seems like we're walking down the path of yes, we're gonna allow it because we must and it'd be nice if you'd let us know and then we're gonna work together to iron this out and if we can't, here's an option. Then to leave someone hanging. I guess I would rather see that you would go to your assistant superintendent first, you would go to your superintendent first and you would try to work it out. here before you go there. Like I said, that's the last
202resort because it's just not a great experience for families. And the district's much more comfortable with it. The district does it much more often. The district has attorneys on staff and a budget to pay for it. Families don't. They don't. They immediately go like this when they hear that. So just my thoughts. So thank you for listening. Okay. Emily. Okay so this policy was both policies were brought last month to the meeting and then we pulled them because of some comments that were shared so we sent the second policy the therapy dogs in school there was there weren't any points to bring to review so that is back the way it was presented last month but the student use of service animals we provided that policy to our legal counsel along with the feedback that
203was offered in comments at the last meeting and so all of the updates that are reflected here are in response to the feedback from our legal counsel questions or comments as a member of that committee i'm satisfied with what emily brought back from legal counsel and i think given all the things we just heard our language covers the inevitabilities that were raised Yeah, if we wanted to incorporate, I was thinking about how to incorporate student trainers on that line. So service animal trainers, maybe accompanied by a service animal. It could be service animal trainers, comma, including student trainers, comma. We're not saying adults. We're just leaving it open. And when we start defining it, then we start to have to categorize more things. List everybody. So we'll be back as part of our consent agenda
204next month. Direct any questions to Emily? Now we're to the 8,000 policy series, which is me. 8,300 is not attached. Oh, gotcha. Okay. I'll go over that in a little more detail then. So the first policy here is the 8120 with the practice statement. And this is basically reconfirmation. We change the dates. You might wonder why we have to have the dates in there, but it just gives an idea of the rolling term, and so it is helpful. And so that's just an update that we make every time we look at this, that we're forecasting out those terms. So that's really the only change there. The bigger one was 8,300, which is not attached in terms of the changes, but it's not a huge change. We're talking about the annual meeting and went to F&O
205just to double check the date of the annual meeting and revised the wording to reflect that the annual meeting will take place after the budget hearing rather than having two separate times. So that was really the change. It's there in that policy. So it just says following that meeting. So again, kind of a small. Change but that was the bigger change of the two policies any questions on those 8,000 policy series I would just comment that We discussed this policy at F&O a couple of meetings with the thought process that could we anyway be able to Accommodate bringing the final budget to the community and then to the board for approval rather than the preliminary budget that we approve in June gets brought to the September meeting because we don't have all the information we
206need from the state until the 15th of October and when we looked at the requirement that the November 1st is a date and forgive me I don't remember specifically the requirement but that We need to have our work completed by that date. We don't get our information until the 15th. And to turn it all around and have a final budget and a community meeting and a board meeting in that tiny window, we've opted to not weigh in on a change to the dates as they're currently structured. So this will be the preliminary budget at the end. Yeah, all that good work being done, I would just say after my day at the Capitol, there's some skepticism about the state's timeline to get their budget in on time this year because it's a political hot potato.
207And there's going to be some waiting to see what happens in the April 1st election. Preetha and I sat through a four-legislator panel. two Republicans and two Democrats, and the abyss was large between the four of them. So don't hold your breath on the budget. Do what we can. Any questions, other comments on the 8,000 policy series? Again, basic edits there. The 9,000 policy series is our next discussion. I have some bigger things here. 9300 and it has a practice statement. We're striking everything in the practice statement not because we don't want to do that It's basically a checklist that Christy has developed over the years It's robust and she's going to continue to maintain that as kind of a best practice but we put into the policy 9300 the things that need to be
208covered at a board member orientation and then operationally the administrative assistant will just maintain that checklist and have the links and get the appropriate documents and still work through that same checklist that is in the practice statement, but felt like that we didn't need the practice statement like that and it changes from time to time. We add in little things here or there and then you have to go in and change the practice statement. So the policy lists the main areas that we're going to be... orienting a new board member on. In our CLE meeting discussion, we moved one sentence from the second paragraph to the first to kind of make it more clear that the district recognizes the importance of onboarding. So that was the suggestion that Mary had made and appreciated that in
209committee. Policy 9422, the liaison to the municipal government. The revision here is to require a confirmation by a majority of the board before voting. So again, that's... Dealing with tids and you know things like that and it's kind of a self-explanatory that the Majority would have to be in favor of that to direct our member how to vote Policy 9680 board member requests Just the revision here is to add the assistant superintendent for HR title because Pam's position has changed since the last policy Update policy 9681, the presentation of diplomas. Just kind of a, again, slight change in language here to update the process. The board members can present diplomas and just kind of have some dates in there and who they need to contact just so the procedure's in there a little more clearly,
210especially if someone isn't currently on the board and they kind of know how to do it and it's just clear for everyone. And then we are taking away the practice statement because we don't really need a practice statement because it's kind of described in policy now. So we're rescinding the practice statement. Any questions on the 9000 policy series? Okay, good work. That concludes our discussion items for the evening and brings us to the board presence report. I'll be brief. Bring up the right screen here. In the last month, I've... had the opportunity to join up with EEF and Grimaldi's as we've been thanking our teachers and staff. EF sponsors that event, Grimaldi's makes the pizzas and we deliver them. So I just get to swoop in with really delicious pizzas and say thank you to
211staff and they are so appreciative and it's just been great to be a part of that and to be interacting with our staff again. I say it frequently from this chair how lucky we are to have wonderful staff. They do make amazing things happen in our schools. Just great to be a part of the Grimaldi pizza delivery process and it's just so fun. So thank you to EEF for organizing and sponsoring that. Also had the chance with Mark and Emily, Brett Gertzmacher, to meet with one of our state legislators. And it just caused me to reflect on how Mark and his team are tirelessly working a lot of different angles to advocate for Elmbrook priorities and Elmbrook students. So Emily, you were there at part of that meeting. Just thank you for making that happen
212because we do make decisions as a board, but there's a lot of things from the state that come as unfunded mandates or come as rule changes or potential legislation. And so it's really great to have our local representatives working with us on what our... Elmbrook priorities are and so really grateful for that meeting and in that same vein wanted to say thank you to Marion Pritha who went to the state capitol to meet with legislators and advocate for Elmbrook so thank you for your time and effort to drive out there I don't know how many people you met with three or four Three yeah for half an hour or something each visit and so it was a significant amount of time And I said, I don't know if you guys want to add anything there
213for your visit Yes, it was great. And and the way was be set up the morning was equally useful Because they had a panel as I said of four to assembly men and two senators and had directed questions about the budget and they prepped the audience saying you don't like some of what you hear you don't like some what you hear so please just listen but it was a really good insight into what's really driving the decision making there and it helps us to go in and and remind everybody that whatever and whenever you decide we have to make it work so please don't make our kids wait because we can't hold first grade for your decision so it was worthwhile and and cordial and good to meet some colleagues from other school boards and
214it reminded me very much that it is important to use our voices in Madison because the things that are going on in Madison have a big impact on what we do here Anyway, so again, thank you, Mary and Preetha and Mark and team and all of our staff, and that is my report. We now have the informational items discussed by exception only. Are there any items that board members would like to discuss? I would like to report out on the Elmbrook Education Foundation as you all know I'm liaison to that group and we met yesterday and I mostly wanted to kind of go through the dates that are coming up because the calendar from now till the end of the school year gets pretty busy and just to remind everyone that the the STEAM event
215is coming up on the 9th of April at Brookfield Central from 4 30 to 7 It's a very popular event. It has become a pretty incredible fundraiser for the foundation. Board members are welcome. I've been there a couple years and it's phenomenal. The types of displays, the interaction of kids with, for example, our robotics teams and others, quite a few. the 9th of April at 430 till 7 at Brookfield Central. Quite a few students there helping younger kids with all the different interactive, 32 interactive stations they said will be there this year. So that's the April event. Then in May, the Most Influential Educator on the 18th for, I believe it's East. And then on the 1st of June. Then on the 2nd of June, Scholarship Night, they have... unwound scholarship night from the rest
216of the honors nights at the senior honors nights we've typically had senior honors plus scholarships and it's gotten kind of long so they've pulled scholarships out to be presented then on the 2nd of June there are 67 scholarships being awarded this year which is phenomenal the growth in our scholarships over the years is quite quite impressive The team right now is in the midst of reviewing the 213 applications for scholarships that have been submitted this year. And then I think that about covers it. Beth Dobrzinski, who's the exec director, went through kind of a comparison of where we were five years ago in terms of sponsorship of our various events to where we are today, and the growth has been phenomenal and impressive and an amazing team of people that comes together and works on
217behalf of. Making things better for our kids here in Elmbrook. Oh, and I did forget the golf outing on the 10th of June So if you're a golfer or not Yes, you don't have to be you can come and help or come and enjoy So if you can support our foundation and their activities and that's my report Would it be okay with you if I presented the Parrot Network? Sure. And I can fill in anything. Okay. So I just wanted to talk about upcoming events. Parrot Network has an event planned for Monday, April 14th, from 7 to 8.30 p.m. here in this room. It's the Be Smart Safe Gun Storage. And again, it's a program designed for everyone, whether or not you own a gun, and good information about firearm safety. This program is specifically
218for... well it's for parents of students of any age but to attend without children and again that's here in this room on monday april 14th and the information and link to register are on the Elmbrook Parent Network page also there is an upcoming meeting on Wednesday April 16th and those meetings are from 12 to 1 p.m. and again here in this room you can be in person or via Google meet and the Google meet registration the link is available on the parent network website so just wanted to let everyone know great covered everything perfect Mary the gifted and talented parent association has a big event that they've been talking about all year coming up on April 16th they do both a morning and an evening session our treasurer in the talent development department Liz Mulaney
219will be presenting the guide smart but scattered it's been a kind of a book talk slash strategy skill smart but scattered is is guidebook working with four to thirteen year olds and working with strategies to both enhance their talents and to keep them focused build their strengths and and build on their weaknesses as well I think it should be a worthwhile presentation she's very high on that book and she's a real advocate so it's a pleasure to listen to her talk I'd also like to give a quick thank you and notable recognition to the partnership that our library staff has developed with Boswell books. We had another event at Swanson this past week where What's his name? W. Bruce Cameron, who wrote The Dog's Purpose and all of those books, came out thanks to Boswell
220Books and spoke to the third, fourth, and fifth graders at Swanson. This is one of many of these events that Boswell has partnered with us in the last year or two, and it really ignites the kids. It's a wonderful opportunity, and our library staff goes out of the way to build those bridges, and I appreciate that. Anything else? Okay, well Mark Hanson had to step out to deal with a personal family issue with his father He just texted and says I'm wrapping up here need me to stop back, but I think Emily's got Emily You should be right here So this is the assistant superintendent report And bear with me I got it slides moments ago so I will do my very best here but as this board knows John Roscoff was appointed to the
221vacant at-large seat by you and that seat is through April 27th and we thank you for committing your time back with us John All right and then unified sports is something that has really been taking off in Elmbrook and this is a combination of students with and without intellectual disabilities who come together to play to play on the same teams and Mikey's minute really did a beautiful job of shining a light on the opportunities that this presents to our students and it's had such great success at our high schools that now unified sports have also expanded to our middle schools and you can see there some different team representations lots of lots of kids showing up for these really great opportunities And then at Brookfield East, our cheerleaders won the Wisconsin Association of Cheer and
222Palm Coaches All-Girl Traditional Small Team State Championship. So a celebration for the East cheerleaders there. And then there was some parent education opportunity presented by Dr. Gabrielle Valise of Marquette University. and it was things tick tock snapchat and ai oh my so lots of different tech and social media pieces to help families navigate what that looks like with their children At Brookfield Central, eSports has been ranked number one heading into finals. So if you're not familiar with eSports, it's E for electronic sports, but it's essentially video gaming where kids come together and play on teams competitively in video game competitions. So they are doing quite well. And then our Brookfield Central Chamber Choir performed in a concert at the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. And you can see the orchestra in the middle, and then the kids
223are represented around the outside, and it was just a really beautiful opportunity for them to come together and provide this musical entertainment for a... auditorium just packed full of people and then there's just a few additional photos there but it was just a beautiful presentation and some just incredibly talented students and adults and coming together it was really impressive the fourth annual Elmbrook three-minute film festival spotlighting student imagination has occurred I don't have a lot of details on that one And then the 2025 district spelling bee winners that will advance to the regional spelling bee. So lots of students. We had six students participate at the CESA 1 spelling bee. And Keshav Karun, who is a seventh grader at Wisconsin Hills, took first place. So he will advance on to the Badger State spelling bee.
224And then Kardic Ramachandrula, Kardic, was named the Regeneron Science Scholar. So a very high accolade for his work with STEM. So he was named one of the top 300 scholars in this talent search. And it's a competition that's very prestigious. recognizes high school seniors for their work in the STEM field, and he's just set out to do some pretty amazing things. That's a huge celebration. And then we had a number of students participate in and take spotlight in this year's annual Wisconsin Educational Media and Technology Association book trailer contest, where they created videos for some of the books that they were very engaged with. And then many of our students also engaged in the History, Geography, and Science B opportunities that are hosted by the International Academic Competitions. And that took place on February 22nd
225at Brookfield Central. And many of our students qualified to move on to National. So lots of successes there. And then our English Learner students. were able to come together and the district hosted an EL family engagement night so it brings the many many cultures that are represented throughout Elmbrook together for a night of celebration and sharing their cultural heritage with one another and really feeling part of our Elmbrook community And then the launch and Milwaukee tool preliminary judging took place last week where the teams over at launch provided their presentations. and these were scored. We had judges from all over the community and some even out of state folks that came in and were helping to score our launch students in the top 10, then proceeded to a final presentation which took place this morning
226at the Milwaukee Tool location in Menominee Falls. And just a really great opportunity to see our kids in the business. world giving you know public speaking which can be really intimidating and just really doing such a fabulous job with that so kudos to all of them dixon hosted their science fair and as always had a really great turnout lots of student engagement lots of families that turned out to see what all the students had worked on with their science fair projects. And then as far as robotics, the FIRST Tech Challenge State Championship, we had two of our teams, the team Hazmat and Gearheads, are advancing from the state championship to the world championship event at Houston, and that will take place April 16th through 19th. So that is pretty incredible for those groups. then Pilgrim
227Parks forensics team I see Mary thrilled about that one over there so first place in the extra-large school division so kudos to that team as well and then dan scott our technology director was inducted into the national cosen volunteer hall of fame that is the consortium for school networking they do lots of things around technology artificial intelligence in that vein and his volunteer work earned him the status of fame as one of their 2025 volunteers so thank you to him and then in our engaged in excellence awards we had over 2 200 nominations and those educators who were nominated learned about those nominations this week and the finalists will be presented after spring break so always lots of excitement around that And then more with Dixon. They also had their Dixon Gallery and Empty Bowls
228Night, which is... you know a tradition there and they raise money for the milwaukee rescue mission every year always a great turnout lots of celebration and just such a great sense of community with that and then if you've noticed the student art in the back of our room that is from our burleigh students from mrs madsen's class who created those pieces that are on display currently and then an update on our 25 to date public records requests is the last any questions for emily i'm not sure that's good 25 good job thanks emily i was gonna go for 30 because ben's was going for 27 and i thought you had seniority you should beat him but i ended up with three other bowls all right can i get a motion to adjourn second all those
229in favor of returning please say aye aye aye thank you we are adjourned