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 April 7th, 2023 and posted on the doors of the district office. Additionally, meeting notices and agendas were posted on the district website and distributed to the city of Brookfield and the village of Elm Grove for posting. Let the roll call show that all board members are present. Will you please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance led by Sahil Gupta. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. May I have a motion to approve the agenda? A motion and a second. Any discussion? All
002those in favor of approving the agenda, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. That carries on voice vote. And our first agenda item this evening is the celebration of excellence. Mark. As many of you know, this is the last school board meeting for Jen Roscoff and Jen Sun. And we have a couple of folks here to recognize them. I'd like to welcome Mayor Steve Panto to the podium and Representative Tom Mahalsky's office from Jacob Moline joining us, Representative Mahalsky. Please come forward, Jacob. whereas jennifer roscoff has served on the elmbrook school board from april of 2020 to april of 2023 and whereas jennifer roscoff has served on the following elmbrook board school board committees for the years indicated community and legislative engagement 2020 to 2021 finance and operations 2022 to 2023 personnel 2021 to
0032022 and teaching and learning 2020 to 2023 being chairman from 2021 to 2023 and whereas jennifer roscoff has served the following liaison role for the Elmbrook school board liaison Elmbrook parent Network and Leadership Council 2020 to 2023 and whereas Jennifer Roscoff will serve her last day as an Elmbrook school board member on April 11th 2023 now therefore I Stephen V Ponto mayor of the city of Brookfield do hereby thank Jennifer Roscoff behalf of the community for her many contributions as a member of the Elmbrook School Board commend the public spirit in this which she has so amply demonstrated and wish her the best in her future endeavors signed and sealed this 11th day of April in the year 2023 Jacob are you ready to also do the proclamation from Representative Michalski Absolutely I'm gonna make
004sure I got the right one. Did you wanna go for gin first or? Why don't we do both gins together and then we'll do gin. All right, sounds good. All right. My name is Jacob you know all that Representative Michalski sends his apologies for not being able to be here tonight I'm sure that Senator Hunden does as well So whereas Jennifer Roscoff is a resident of Brookfield Wisconsin and has served the community as a member of the Elmbrook School Board for over three years and Whereas her time in the Elmbrook School Board District Board Jennifer served as the chair of teaching and learning committee and the community and legislative engagement committee finance and operations committee and member of the teaching and learning committee and Whereas in her external roles We've got a typo there. I
005apologize Jennifer served as liaison to the Elmbrook parent network and leadership council and whereas jennifer's leadership and service to the community for over three years will be greatly missed now therefore be it resolved the members of the wisconsin senate on the motion of senator rob hudden and representative tom mahalsky do commend jennifer raskoff on the occasion of her retirement from the elmbrook school elmbrook district school board this is my second mural proclamation whereas Jin Sun has served on the Elmbrook School Board from April of 2017 to April of 2023 and whereas Jin Sun has served as clerk of the school board from 2021 to 2022 and whereas Jin Sun has served as treasurer of the school board from 2022 to 2023 and whereas Jin Sun has served on the following Elmbrook School Board committees for
006the years indicated Finance and Operations 2017 to 2018 2019 to 2023 and chair 2022 to 2023 personnel 2017 to 2018 2020 to 2021 teaching and learning 2018 to 2019 community and legislative engagement 2018 to 2020 and 2021 to 2023 chair 2021 to 2022 and whereas johnson served as a season number one convention delegate in 2020 and whereas jin sun has served in the following liaison roles for the elmbrook school board liaison to the city of brookfield 2017 to 20 liaison to the village of elm grove 2017 to 2018 and 2020 to 2022 liaison gifted talented parents advisory organization 2018 to 2019 and 2020 to 2022 and liaison southeastern wisconsin school alliance 2019 to 2020 and 2022 to 2023 and whereas jin sun will serve his last day as an elm brook school board member on
007april 11 2023 now therefore i stephen v ponto mayor of the city of brookfield do hereby thank jen sun on behalf of the community for as many contributions as a member of the elm brook school board commend the public spiritness which he has so amply demonstrated and wish him the best in his future endeavors signed and sealed this 11th day of april in the year 2023 Whereas Jin's son is a resident of Brookfield, Wisconsin and served the community as a member of the Elmbrook School District Board for over six years. And whereas in his time on the Elmbrook School District Board, Jin served as the clerk, treasurer, chair of the Finance and Operations Committee, chair of the Community and Legislative Engagement Committee, member of the Personnel Committee, and member of the Teaching and Learning Committee.
008And Whereas in his external roles, Jin served as a CESA number one convention delegate, as well as liaison to the city of Brookfield, Village of Elm Grove, Gifted Talented Parent Advisory Organization, and Southeastern Wisconsin School Alliance, and Whereas, Jin's leadership and service to the community for over six years will be greatly missed. Now, therefore, be it resolved, the members of the Wisconsin Senate, on the motion of Senator Rob Hutton and Representative Tom Michalski, do commend Jin Sun on the occasion of his retirement from the Elmbrook School District Board. Thank you, Steve and Jacob. We do have an additional celebration of excellence. Earlier last week, we had the chance to celebrate the Principal of the Year Award for one of our own principals. And I'd like to call Andy Farley up to the podium and have
009Mayor Ponto join him for a mayor proclamation. I was going to present this earlier, but my wife had some health issues which kept me from doing that. But it's fortuitous that you're here today. Whereas Andrew Farley has served as principal of Brookfield East High School for the past nine years, and whereas Andrew Farley has built a school culture at Brookfield East High School based on positivity, opportunity, collaboration, and commitment to the growth of students and teachers, and whereas early in Andrew Farley's tenure as principal, he brought teachers, staff, and administrators together to define the mission, vision, and core values of Brookfield East High School, and whereas under Andrew Farley's leadership of principals... cabinet of approximately 60 students was formed to regularly review the school's core values to develop ideas and action plans to ensure brookfield
010east high school is meeting the needs of all students and whereas under andrew farley's leadership brookfield east high school has driven to ensure all students are college career and life ready and whereas the association of wisconsin school administrators has recognized andrew farley's accomplishments as principal of brookville east high school and named him the 2023 wisconsin secondary principal of the year Now therefore I Stephen V Ponto mayor of the city of Brookfield do hereby commend Andrew Farley on his accomplishments at Brookfield East High School Congratulate him on being named the 2023 secondary school principal of the year Thank him for his service in the Elmbrook School District and to our community and wish him continued success Signed and sealed this sixth day of April in the year 2023 And let's have Jen Sun and Jen Roscoff
011come up along with Mayor Panto and Representative to take another picture, right? Did we get one, Christy? Bring your plaque with you or certificate that you can hold up. Just maybe right here in the center and you'll hide me. Thank you. Are there any board member? Now, we're going to be celebrating a little more detailed Jen Sun and Jen Roscoff at the end of the meeting. But are there any board member questions or comments for Andy Farley? I would just like to take this moment Andy to thank you for your leadership We know you're all in in your whole family into Elmbrook But I've just had the pleasure to witness you be a leader in our community alongside students we don't often get to do that and see that interaction with students and i think
012that has maybe been one of my most rewarding experiences as a school board member is just to see you interact with students know each one of them know where they what they needed at that moment and i think it's telling of those experiences in that relationship that you have in those individual moments that make you the leader that you are and that you're in make the contributions that you have to our district so thank you i want to say that i substituted at east high school and i got to experience your leadership firsthand and i was always impressed with the culture and climate that you established at that school it's one of respect I have had many principals I taught at many different schools and I would say that you're among one of the best
013leaders you're along with and I can say Joe Mangi because I respected him to the max so I want to thank you for your service and hope that you stick around for a long time I agree with everything that's been said and I would like to thank you for your amazing service and this recognition is very well deserved Bravo Our relationship goes back two decades and I just want to acknowledge the fact that it's been a pleasure to watch the progression and this being a culmination of all the hard work that you've put in to developing yourself as a professional and what you've given back to the community so thank you very much and we look forward to ongoing good things to come My students attend East and I'll share briefly two anecdotal stories admittedly,
014but my daughter having a rough day one day found herself in the hall texting on her phone. I think she hit it pretty quick, but Principal Farley comes walking down the hall and rather than admonishing her, scolding her, asking her to get back to class, he asked how she was doing. And she said, I'm kind of having a rough day. And that was characteristic of her, I think, freshman and sophomore years. It was tough. There were some tough things for her. And he said, why don't you come see me in my office sometime? My door's always open. And she took advantage of that. I don't know if she went down that day. And maybe it was during classes when she didn't want to be there or something. Andy was a mentor to her and then
015for my son when he went to college and he filled out his teacher recommendation he needed to get several recommendations but Andy was one of them and then he also I shared this the other day was in a business entrepreneur class and they made money selling these t-shirts For $9.95 you can get your own But I verified with him. He's in Argentina right now, and I verified. I said, did you make money on that? And he thought you might have lost money. He said, we made money. He goes, I think we were one of the few in the classroom. We made about a, the money went to charity, about $160, above and beyond what it cost them in the printing costs and the selling of the T-shirts. I don't know how many of these are
016being worn around the school. It's being worn around my house as I do yard work. But anyway, again, just thank you. Those stories that I shared are multiplied by dozens and hundreds over the years of students that have walked through East and have experienced it as a teacher and now as an administrator and Andy no one's more deserving of this than you so thank you. Jen? My two kids didn't go to East but Central. However, I do have a story and Even though not, well, there are quite many. And two story I want to share here with everyone else. About six years ago, I went to your office, because when I run for this position, today is my last day, but last meeting, for board meeting. And I saw what you do. I mean, it's
017amazing, because you work with the students. And you're really kind of model for the students. And when I look at your whiteboard, you kind of talk about a strategy, plan, this and that. Really, from top to hands-on, you are truly a model for those students and the staff too. And another story, when I got a tour, East, and one staff tour me, and of course they say, you know, the reason why I stayed in East for that long, because of course students, love students, another major reason, because Andy Farley. So that's... That means a lot and I really, you know, thanks so much for what you do and what you have been the model for the staff and the students. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Oh, wait. Oh, I have something. Take a picture. This
018is a commendation from the Board of Education again congratulating Andy for being named 2023 Wisconsin Principal of the Year. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. We will move on to our high school representative's report. Mark. Joining us are representatives from Brookfield East and Brookfield Central. We'll start with school updates from Brookfield East. Who's doing that? I am. Awesome. So for arts, we'll start off. So Brookfield East has their play Much Ado About Nothing, which is like a Shakespearean play coming up in the next couple weeks. They are sets made. It looks really awesome, so they're preparing for that. The forensics team plays third at the WFCA state competition. And then for activities, my personal favorite, junior prom is coming up April 22nd at the Wisconsin Club. It's going to be amazing. For athletics, senior Tom's Jerry.
019John Burns I think competed in the state gymnastics meet over over spring break and he was our only gymnast so Yeah, it was just super awesome that he got to go. And then for academic highlights, five Brookfield East German students were awarded prizes from the National German Language and Society exam that they had the option, it was optional to take, so they were recognized for that. And then today, underclassmen, so ninth and tenth graders, took the pre-ACT Aspire testing this morning. So this is just like a really kind of like a low stress. way for them to take a standardized test and kind of see where they're at for when they're upper class and they have to deal with the real pressure of that. Also just a great way to see where the school is
020at with academics. And then, once again, Mr. Farley named Wisconsin's Secondary Principal of the Year. He's definitely... Definitely loved by the students. We definitely talked about the students, how Mr. Farley knows every student by name. There's kind of like a running joke that whenever it's your birthday, Mr. Farley will hunt you down and wish you happy birthday, even if you're the new kid. So we wouldn't have all these accomplishments and happenings going on with EAST without such awesome faculty and principal. Thank you, Ella. How about at Brookfield Central? All right, at Brookfield Central the underclassmen also took the pre-ACT secure today and all avid juniors got to take college tours. They visited UW-La Crosse, Winona State, St. Thomas University, University of Minnesota, and UW-Eau Claire. So that was an awesome opportunity for them to get
021a taste of different colleges nearby us. Four varsity basketball members received academic All-State, which qualifies you for that as being a senior with a GPA of 3.75 or higher. And lastly for academics two seniors are a 2023 herb coal foundation excellent scholarship recipients and one is a student initiative scholarship recipients and these students were evaluated on their leadership citizenship and community involvement So awesome that people from Brookfield Central received that And moving on to activities, 17 students qualified for HOSA International Leadership Conference and those are across 12 different events and they recently competed at the State Conference which is where the 17 students qualified and Junior Prom is coming up along with, they've been selling pre-prom raffle tickets and they've been getting pretty creative with their fundraising because it's things like Tux rentals and their
022nail appointments so that's going to be super fun. And for arts, the play that goes wrong has performances on the 21st and 22nd, and that's where Kate is rehearsing for that right now, so I'm very excited to see that. And lastly for athletics, brothers at our school, Aiden and Aaron Liu, are both national champions in their age division for short track speed skating. One is a sophomore and one is a senior. So Aaron, the senior, his age division actually, I believe, goes all the way up to 29, so crazy that he placed first in that. And Boys Lacrosse won their first game of the season against Hamilton. And lastly, Girls Soccer had their alumni game where the varsity soccer team got the opportunity to play against alumni. Great. The topic for this month was school
023facility projects. You guys were able to get some feedback from your fellow students around the $60 million investment in capital investments that we've done in the district over the last seven years without having to go to referendum. What did you guys find out? Who would like to start? Okay. So what we found for the updated facilities we use the most students said the track in the turf the BCHS pool the tennis courts and the library students said the projects that impact their school experience the most are the pool, the tennis courts, the turf, and the fab labs are really important one that's used across many different classes outside of the launch strand for example I've gone in there for my entrepreneurship class to make the cereal boxes we've designed or Latin convention shirts we've made
024and for projects students said we wish we could do Some students expressed that they wish the greenhouse could be prepared especially students who are in environmental club. They'd like to see that happen other students said in the orchestra room an auditorium which a big ask but and lastly furniture in the classrooms How about at Brookfield East? So similar answers to that at Central. Again, the biggest response we got was our library that was just renovated two years ago. Our tennis courts are also just beautiful. The way they were before, they were just rough. Now they're just amazing. The softball fields was another big one. And our launch classrooms, we have our innovation hallway with, you know, you have the one individual classroom, then you have that health care lab. I've never actually been in there.
025I've seen it, though. It looks pretty cool. And so then students talk about impacts. The library space has... provided opportunities for students to get together and work. It's kind of like a communal environment. It's close to other communal spaces such as the Spartan Union and the cafeteria and the courtyard. So just a really great place for students to get together and work on things. The tennis courts get used often, even if it's not during the season, if it's on the weekends. We see people from the community just coming to use them. And again, we have our technology center in the library that's made it much easier for students to get technology support. And it's just kind of like one central place where people can go and all the resources are held there for students who
026have technology concerns. And then as far as student wishes go, we've talked about this before. Our parking lot is always an issue at the end of the day. I know we've talked about earlier how from an engineering standpoint, our options are limited. but just to see kind of what students, that's always on students' minds. More interesting furniture in the classrooms. I noticed when I started in this district in sixth grade that there was a lot of interesting furniture in the middle school classrooms, and then when I got to high school, it went back to a lot of just rows of desks, which I thought was interesting, just how the middle school has had a lot more interesting furniture. the classrooms we have some more interesting choices in the library and our excellence center but again
027it's just something to consider um the music rooms some of the equipment I know like in our in the band I can talk about pan for a moment we've been fundraising to get instrument lockers we do our annual homecoming chili dinner and we've been fun we've been doing that for I don't know how many years, and so it's just a work in progress. And I've heard this from coaches. I've heard this from students. Apparently our weight room needs some love. I don't go in there very often at all, but I hear it could use some love. Thank you for those updates. Any board member questions? Anyone? Linda? I just have a comment regarding the speed skaters. I had the honor of going to the awards ceremony, and I was able to present them with their
028awards. I was thrilled to death because I think I'm there with future Olympians. They both, Aaron and Aiden, and there was a girl that placed third place, but I don't know her name. You didn't mention. I don't know which school she was from. But it's pretty exciting, and watch and stay tuned because I think we have two Olympians right here. That was national competition, so that means there were people from all over the United States competing. Anyone else? Okay. Thank you. And we know it's AP season coming up, a lot of studying and things going on, so we'll excuse you, although you are welcome to stay. Our next agenda item is the Citizens Forum. This is an opportunity for members of our community to address the board on matters that fall within the jurisdiction of
029the board but do not appear on tonight's agenda. There's a list of rules and expectations. There are lists on the back. And by the way, if you haven't received, if you'd like to speak and haven't... yet filled out a form simply go to Kristi over there on the side and she will give you the form to fill out please observe reasonable decorum thank you for providing input to the board know that we will not discuss or raise any actions on the issues raised until we've had the opportunity to properly notice them and research them for a future board agenda the time limit tonight will be three minutes as normal and the timer is our second month using the Jean's relieved second month using the video timer yeah so our first request to speak is Angie
030Pingle a resident of the district just wait to start the time till she's introduced herself go ahead hi I'm Angie Pingle my comments here tonight are my own I sat through the entire board meeting last night whoo that was a long one here in person During Citizens Forum, I spoke out about follow-through and doing the things that you say you will do. After the meeting, I spoke with a board member who said they would follow up with me regarding some concerns I raised two meetings ago. I followed up at the end of this March board meeting, and I'll be following up again tonight because I'm still waiting for that conversation to happen. I also spoke about a very divisive topic, inappropriate books. No one has followed up with me to discuss how a book that
031has been described as butchering the English language and has sexual content supports our educational goals and objectives. I also heard other speakers in support of some of these books that I label as inappropriate. I wasn't rude. I didn't issue a statement against their views. I may not agree, but I'm going to do so respectfully. I will continue to raise my objections here. not on social media. This is where this belongs. And when I leave here, I will be respectful of differing viewpoints. We need more people following this example. I was very disappointed to see that our own board leadership issued a statement that seemingly attacks other board members for asking questions and trying to ensure that they are representing the interests of their constituents. More time was clearly needed to fully understand the lengthy list
032of materials, and it just wasn't provided. Instead of attacking each other, why don't you all set an example for our community and work together to address questions and ensure each board member has the right information to make informed decisions? We need better leadership, less blustering, and a lot more respect. Thank you for listening Thank you Angie Our next request to speak tonight is Susan Hirsch Not a resident of the district And on deck is Keegan Hi, I'm Susan Hirsch and I'm not an Elmbrook resident, but I run UWM's school library certification program, which is part of their MLIS degree program. So I'm here as a private citizen to respond to comments made at the last board meeting. I brought with me today a story from a school librarian who is not me. I'm Jewish, and
033this school librarian was a fundamentalist Christian, and she wrote an article because she ended up in a very tough position. When she took her first school librarianship job, there were Harry Potter books on the school library shelves. These books went against everything that this school librarian knew to be true. She knew that God and magic could not coexist. These books were the embodiment of evil. What was she to do? fortunately this school librarian had her education for guidance she had spent years in her mlis degree programming degree program learning what her professional responsibilities were to her community and because of her education she knew how best to fulfill those responsibilities yes school librarians do know what is best to purchase for kids you can call their selections candy or junk food or dangerous but stating
034your opinion does not make it so school librarians are experts in their field they know how to meet the needs of the entire community all students all families all beliefs There is a pattern I am gleaning from watching your meetings. Some of your school board members are undermining your professional educators. Although you tout the number of educators in your district with advanced degrees, I have seen you undercut them at every turn, venting about a higher ed agenda and questioning the inclusion of curricular materials when input comes from a professor from... Canada people on this school board who do not send their own children to Elmbrook schools are dissolving trust in the district and sowing fear with unfounded opinions impressive conspiracy theories and shocking lies in the public school realm this is a five alarm fire
035elmbrook you say you want students who will be global city citizens who are college and career ready but you are making national headlines for removing lgbtq books from your high school that are in most middle schools i urge you to consider who in history has promoted otherness who in history is removing books from school library shelves who in history has shown this kind of xenophobia please join those in your community who are doing the diff job of speaking up to make Elmbrook a public school community for everyone Thank You Susan our next request to speak is Keegan Taylor a resident of the district and Martin is on deck Not long ago one of the new school board members posted on his campaign Facebook page that one of his priorities is to overhaul the district libraries
036I am here to discourage the board from making this their priority During a public comment last month, the new board member supported Victor Hugo's Les Miserables as quality literature for his young daughter. A sitting board member advocated for seventh graders to read Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird. Just to be clear, all of these books have been deemed inappropriate at one time. In fact, To Kill a Mockingbird was banned in multiple school districts last year. What makes your judgment right about these books and the other censors wrong? In these acceptable books, a woman propositions a man in a... and then accuses him of rape. Her father then beats her and takes the innocent man to court where the man is wrongfully convicted and then shot by the police when he tries to escape. In
037these acceptable books, the hero of the story is definitely a thief and even steals from a priest. In the same story, a desperate mother puts her child in foster care where the child is abused by her caretakers. The mother ends up prostituting herself to try to provide for her child and she dies a tragic death. In these acceptable books, a child is abused by his drunken father. The boy runs away, helping steal property. In the process... Property, who happens to be a human being trying to achieve freedom. The boy accepts that he may go to hell for helping this man. These books you consider safe aren't safe in any sense of the word. No books are safe when they're taken apart piecemeal the way you're doing. And if they are safe, if there's absolutely nothing
038to offend anyone, they're probably not meaningful. Books like these challenge readers to reevaluate their worldviews. They do that today, and they did that when they were first written, just like many modern books continue to do. Not all children relate to 18th and 19th century characters. Some students benefit from having issues framed with modern storytelling, with characters they can relate to who dress, look, and talk like they do. Librarians find this balance between the classics you find acceptable and the books that are being written by authors of our day. They use professional review so that they don't assume that books are things that they're not. A Mulan story is gender bending, for example. The way that professional librarians were spoken about at the meeting last month makes me wonder how our district can hope to continue
039to attract the best in their fields if we denigrate their qualifications. How can we hope to encourage children to pursue higher education if that's their desire if we state that this essentially means nothing? How can you be on a school board and talk about education as though it's completely meaningless? And how can you wave around your own credentials, which you've all had to do in order to campaign? and say things that are simply not true about someone else's profession. Thank you. Thank you, Keegan. Our last request to speak is, did I get the name right, Martin? Yes, Carla. Hi. Oh, Carla, resident of the district. Thank you. Yeah. I have a daughter at sixth grade, Peel Green Park. And I'm here to talk about Peel Green Park. Interesting everybody's talking about books and defending everything
040so well, but I'm sure everybody knows, I hope everybody knows, problems that are having at Peel Green Park. Last week I received an email from the principal that a lot of behavior issues with kids, disrespecting professors, disrespect among each other, bullying, what caused the... teachers to take measurements that affect all the kids, not only the ones that are misbehaving, but all the kids are being punished by this out of control situation at this school. My daughter, I'm blessed. She's a very good kid that love to go to school. What is not the case anymore, she's struggling to go to school every day just because of the environment that is in that school. What is not her at all and to make things worse? Last Sunday receive an email from the principal again about a social
041media posting About an attack that one should was planning against the students at the school And that's it. We haven't received any communication. Just there will be police at the school. I wasn't sure if I should bring my daughter to school or not. All the parents are talking. We're talking among ourselves. I drop off my daughter at school the next morning. I saw Mark Hansen at the entrance greeting. But we didn't receive any communication. And everybody's talking about it. Everybody's trying to see what happened. I know there are privacy. because it's a minor, but people are trying to dig and understand what's happening. The kid has brother at other school, so people are calling other schools. So everybody's talking, like, you guys cannot drop a bomb like this and don't tell us what's going on.
042Everybody's freaking out and concerned. So I'm here asking for transparency. You guys are so worried about safety, like, all this pandemic is everything about safety, right? I'm sure more kids have been hurt by gunshots than by COVID. So we need something done. Like, we need some words from the district address the situation. Because we are not going to stop talking. And you don't telling us what's going on is not helping. Because it's just creating conspiracies. We are calling people and saying, what's going on? And a lot of things are being talked. What is true, what is not. So I'm here trying, please tell us what's going on and what will be done. Because the parents are scared. I'm scared to send my kid to school every day now. Okay, that's it. Thank you, Carla. Any
043more requests to speak? Thank you. That concludes the Citizens Forum. The consent agenda is our next agenda item. Are there any items which board members would like to pull? And if not, I would entertain a motion. Linda? Yes, I'd like to pull the minutes. I'd like to pull item. Which one is the minutes? Item A. I have a motion on the other items. I would move approval of consent agenda items B and C. Thank you. I have a motion and a second. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. That carries. And Linda, consent agenda item A, the minutes from last month. Yes. In Citizens Forum, it... Just says one of those things in there says Angie Pinkle addressed follow-through She explained what her follow-through was. I
044think it would be Since this is a draft. I would suggest that You explain what follow-through means? So people know what she was referring through referring to because follow through on what? So I would suggest that you might Add what she meant follow through with what? And then it said Carla Furman addressed books. Well, in the other comments, they said, I think we need some consistency there because they said someone addressed the removal of the library books, someone else addressed library books or book attacks. But then when you had Carla Furman's name, you just said she addressed books. so i think it would be nice to also list what her concerns were regarding those books then if you go down to the discussion items i think it's on page two no it's on page two
045of three at the bottom you have discussion items k-12 english language arts curriculum you actually listed who presented but you didn't list any of the discussion and i think and all due respect for people who do read these items and because there seems to be a lot of confusion I think it's more like when people play telephone when they're younger you whisper in somebody's ear a sentence and then the next one whispers and then the next one whispers and by the time it gets to the end it doesn't even sound remotely represent what was said so in the discussion items i think it's really important to say that one of my linda boucher had a major concern that she wasn't able to check out the materials overnight to review the k-12 english language arts that
046As a board member, I wasn't able to check it out. And I think maybe you should say something to the effect that I commented the middle school curriculum is not aligned with content typically taught in English language courses throughout America. And I did provide examples, and there was just a misrepresentation brought forth tonight in the agenda where somebody said that I suggested that we read these books. No. you go back to the tape you will say you will see that I said I googled what literature was being taught in middle schools in the English language curriculum throughout America and I named some of those books I didn't say I think that we should adapt this and whatever so right there is an example of how things got really really twisted so I think that in
047all due respect we need to since this is a draft include some of that in there and I think then because it's a discussion item anybody who goes that Really knows what occurs because my concern at that discussion was that it's not content rich based based on English language rich curriculum my thing was content and There I even received an email from somebody asking about a particular book that I read it Of course, I read it and I think it was more appropriate for a social studies curriculum didn't think it was totally inappropriate I thought it was better for a social studies curriculum and to be clear about the other example that I mentioned just for clarification sake doesn't have to be in the notes but maybe I'll save that later I'll save it for
048later when we talk about Whether we're gonna prove the curriculum or not tonight. I'll save that for later, but please make those Include those comments Somewhere because it was a discussion item. So people reading it actually know What occurred I know there were some points brought forth by Kathy Lim as to why? Part of her discussion. She said she wanted She asked for outcomes and you might want to include that Kathy Lim felt that she wanted outcomes included in order to approve it so since it's a discussion item please include some of the details and come back with that agenda because this is just a draft I appreciate that thank you So Linda point of clarification it's actually an action item tonight not a discussion item it's on the consent agenda because it's action so
049we want to get the language right before you take a vote on it because after tonight it will be said now where the what each person speaks on comes from are just these papers that they fill out So Christy, correct me if I'm wrong, she's just taking, for example, this one's respect. Oh, okay. So we take what the person has filled out on the form being their topic that they want to address. And legal counsel over the years has recommended that in terms of agendas, we're not trying to keep notes on everything said. Now, we could change it. If we want to start putting in our minutes the things that people say, and so certainly I heard you make one suggestion, which was that under the ELA discussion, we say that Linda Boucher shared a
050concern that the resource was not aligned with content typically taught in the ELA curriculum. So if you'd like to see that inserted, you would propose amending the minutes, and then we would take a vote on it because it is an action item. Whatever amendments you want to make to the minutes being an action item tonight You want to come up with the language here because it is an action item tonight talking about last month's minutes and so if Kathy if you felt like You agreed that you wanted one of your comments or points added into the minutes specifically generally we talked about We say what was talked about and so those topics are listed who spoke oftentimes is mentioned, but we Generally all board members speak on all topics. We don't usually list the board
051members We assume they pretty much all weighed in but we can add a comment Certainly if you wanted to make that motion, so I would like to make a motion to add what include Linda Boucher commented the middle school Proposed ELA curriculum is not aligned with content typically taught English language courses throughout America and she provided examples Did you get that? So then you then your motion when we talk about a motion second would be I move approval of the minutes with the What's the word I'm looking for not edit with the amendment as You know as amended with the proposed amendment. Thank you. I make a motion to approve the minutes amended by my comment which is Linda Boucher commented that the middle school curriculum etc etc Is there any discussion or a second
052on that motion? I'll second Okay, we have a motion and a second any further discussion? Thank you for that I appreciate the clarification on some of that comment If we are going into that detail, I think there are a number of other discussion points that were brought up And in fact, I would refute Linda's Concerned that the middle school proposed ELA curriculum is typically not taught at the middle school level In fact, the middle school curriculum that is proposed as long as as well as the resource follows our specific Standards for Wisconsin and we started with Wisconsin standards and then we edited and prioritized those specifically for Elmbrook and what is important for us and what we have seen successful for our students so if we're going to that level of detail we're gonna have
053a lot more discussion on minutes so I cannot vote for the approval of these minutes with that adjustment I cannot support the amendment simply on a principle standpoint based on what you shared earlier Scott about legal counsel encouraging minutes to be sparse given that we also have live streams available to further give folks directions to exactly what was said so leaving the minutes sparse coupled with a link to live streams that could be used for reference for exactly what was said as a video reference I think is more than sufficient I would clarify I don't know that's the purpose is to keep the minutes sparse but to keep it to events of the meeting and people who spoke and then let people go to the video as needed thank you for the correction but I
054do think having the archived live stream allows those that would like further clarity the option to be able to view exactly what was said at the meeting other comments okay we have a motion in a second vote on it oh Jen Sun Well, those never happen in years and happened tonight. I wonder if you open the meeting for future that you want to add a things viewpoint in there versus like you said earlier, say, you know, subject was discussed versus Jan's point, Linda's point, or Kat's point. I mean, if those are going to be standard, then move on. Then we need add those in there not say I want that in there. I want that in there. So I Think you just mentioned that you kind of touched the subject. I totally understand what Linda
055say you want people see What you have talked or your viewpoint Or if that isn't there, then what about somebody else viewpoint? So you kind of take one and miss this other one. I'm talking about a consistency. And also, I think this meeting minutes is kind of like a brief, which first time when I saw this, it's not a typical business meeting minutes. It is kind of brave level. The reason why like that I understand because five hours discussion and how much you want to put in there. You could put a lot in there. And when you put a viewpoint in there, I don't know how accurate it would be because everyone spend from their perspective, from their background, maybe mean this and that. So it's going to be a tough job for someone to...
056summarize everything. People talk within five hours. However, I do feel like there's enough support document behind this, which is video taping in here. That's why I think part of the reason this is kind of brief enough. So my point is I don't want to create more work for people to do. We don't want to hire another person to do the job. Meantime, I want to make sure we are doing the right job. So if... There's something like that I think we need to discuss because it's not fair to say I want to add something there but then yours is missing or you may have three of those. It kind of may be different from what I said and because you want people to see that too. So I think that's something, it's not a vote
057for this particular item or it's something kind of standard. What standard do you want to set up for future? Otherwise it's going to be banded. Okay, today is this issue, tomorrow is something else. And it's going to take a meeting forever. Kathy? Just a comment. I agree there is a video feed that people can go to. And I agree we have opportunity for minutes of balance. But I think from the perspective of Linda advocating for her comments to be added as a board member in the minute that she participated in the meeting, I think that should be respected, and which is the reason for my support for her motion. Thank you. Okay any further discussion Linda I don't always ask to put discussion items in but there seems to be a lot of misinterpretation because
058of buzzing and because of Notices that went out that were not my voice that were representing my voice and not necessarily my voice That's why I brought this forth in the first place so this would be an exception and I don't know I thought I did say the proposed curriculum but that's what I was referring to the proposed ELA curriculum so I took a text tonight because of misinterpretation also so that's why I feel that it should have been there or should be included Thank you. We do have one request to speak before we vote Angie Pingel a resident of the district I'm going to hit that Just want to clarify something that's been said a couple of times during this discussion. You've referenced that the meetings are available online I actually emailed you about
059that Scott after the last board meeting and pointed out at least five minutes or five meetings that were missing from 2021 I believe it was so not all of the meetings are available online and I know that there are other people who've asked me if I can find minute or meetings and they're not there either so if you're gonna say they're online they should be online or maybe you should look at your minutes to make sure that your intents can be can be found Thank you, Angie. Okay, we'll vote on this. All those in favor of approving the minutes as amended, please say aye. Any opposed? Okay, that fails on voice vote. Can I have another motion? I move to approve the minutes as presented. Second. We have a motion and a second to approve
060the minutes as presented. Further discussion? I would just like to... Reiterate that I don't oppose Linda's motion in terms of the addition I just think there was a number of different items that were discussed as well And so if we're going to go into detail, we would need to highlight all of those So it's either all or keep it simple and I share the same view Jen son, I'll echo what Jen just said I think if There's some changes. I'm not sure if there's policy related to mid minutes and if that need to be modified and Maybe more specific and what should be documented What what meeting then create a kind of standard people can follow otherwise I feel like it's not gonna be consistent You we can make someone happy, you know, sorry But
061I don't think that's good for in terms of like format of the meeting the future Since the amended motion was not supported. I just want to make sure that denying of the board members comment from the person advocating for her comments to be made an official document according to many laws that we by denying Linda's motion of her comments into the minutes is not a violation of some sort I don't know that but I just want to make sure that when we deny If I were to interject and say I want these things that were said into the minutes and that request was made and voting and denying that person's request as made in the amended motion is not breach of her right or any form of Meeting format So I just want to clarify
062that I mean I just wanted to do that Maybe someone could get back to me and we can vote and move on with that. Thank you. Yeah, I'll look into that Okay, we have a motion in a second all those in favor of approving the minutes is presented. Please say aye aye Any opposed? No that carries on voice vote And that concludes our consent agenda and brings us to our first action item of the evening which is the Brooke Gell and Swanson elementary school playground has school playgrounds Rick As presented last month just want to know if there's any questions before the vote Thank you I'd start with a motion and then we can discuss I'll recommend approval of the Brooke Gell and Swanson playground projects as presented Second I think you have a motion
063and a second Do you have a question or comment, Jim? No. I thought I would make motion. No problem. Any questions or comments? Kathy? No changes, right, since the last presentation? Same. Same identical. All right. Thank you. Okay. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. That carries on voice vote. Good job, Rick. Our next one won't be as short I imagine our next action item is the ELA curriculum and primary resources. Welcome Lisa and Emily. We presented at the March 21st meeting and we've returned tonight to answer any questions. Thank you. Before board member discussion we'd have a request to speak to Ann Sherwin a resident of the district. Hi good evening board. After last meeting's ELA discussion, I saw the statement that was put on the
064district website and signed by two board members. That statement came across to me as divisive and deflective. It didn't address all the concerns brought up by board members. Instead, it seemed to minimize and deflect from the true nature of concerns. This follow-up did not address why the only board member who is a former teacher could not bring textbooks home to review the content further. It did not address the fact that practice in regards to pilots from the last 10 years has not appeared to follow policy or law. The statement seemed to be telling the community what to think. A more unifying and constructive statement would be to acknowledge concerns and follow up with them on a transparent manner. I didn't see anything in tonight's agenda that seemed to address the serious concerns raised by board
065members. I did not see anything regarding metrics or performance to justify these specific textbooks. I certainly support a change in curriculum going back to established science of reading instruction. Given the 50 years of research behind this method, I'm sure this way of teaching reading can be done with many textbooks. I support approving new curriculum to align with science of reading to improve our ELA proficiencies but it seems it would be prudent to separate the curriculum instruction approval from the textbook purchase I suggest that the textbook purchase be paused until further review is done this may mean looking at other textbooks that also can meet our needs Finally, one of the bigger things that needs to be reviewed at some point is how Elmbrook ever got away from science of reading instruction if this was well
066established since the 1980s. Who made the decision to move away from this effective strategy? And if those individuals are still here, will they be held accountable? It seems like it very well played into the fact that ELA proficiencies have been declining for many years. Thank you. Thank you, Diane. Okay, we'd like to kick off our discussion this evening on the ELA post ELA curriculum and primary resource Just a couple of questions maybe and to just address that Lisa and Emily can you talk about the number of different resources that you reviewed in a couple of different areas number one before we even piloted and a little bit about that process and then two before the number of resources piloted so it's not just the one being recommended here but if you could share a little
067background on that In June when we had our about 80 educators in to work on our curriculum alignment one thing that we had was a vendor fair where our teachers were able using the board criteria to look at several samples and I would say we probably had total about 20 samples where K through 12 our teachers could begin to dig in and do an initial screening to see if any of those meet the board driven criteria that's in policy as well as gaps that we had identified when we presented to teaching and learning committee on our program evaluation From that, we narrowed down certain resources that we wanted to investigate further. At the middle school, there were four. And ultimately, as we vetted through those even deeper over the months during the summer, we determined
068two of those would be piloted. before we even got to that vendor fair our reading specialist team had also reviewed a variety of additional resources so there were more than I would say the 20 that started the process and then at the elementary level we piloted four materials okay other questions or comments just a comment about the approach to pilots this approach to pilots has been using the district and Mark I'd like you to correct me for at least a decade as long as I've been here and prior to me So I just find it interesting that we've got numerous board members that have been here much longer than I have that have approved this pilot approach that's been tried and true and now all of a sudden it's a problem it can be improved
069certainly as any good district we should always be looking to improvements as opportunity for improvement we should always take those up But I do think it's important to recognize that we have a pilot approach that's been in place for over a decade That has been approved including by some members on this board that have been here far longer than me. Thank you Thank You Moushehr Jean I was out of town at the last board meeting and so I'd like to make a few comments about the Curriculum and the resource as it is prevent presented as I look at the UBDs that have been prepared I am impressed by the specificity of the learning targets at each level and in each unit which as I would interpret learning targets these are outcomes that we're looking to
070for our kids to be able to know and do at each level the integration of the science-based principles including phonics vocabulary into the skills and targets think is is the right thing to do it's the right step to take next and the opportunity to attend tours at the elementary level at Burleigh and at the middle level at Wisconsin Hills back in I think it was February to see these resources in use in the classroom to hear from teachers and those who worked through the review and development of both the curriculum and selection recommendation of the resource and One of the strong points in the resource at least at the middle level as we discussed it was the wide selection of genre that appeals to a wide range of kids that it's not a single book
071that's going to be read but rather there's there's opportunities for kids who have interests in all different areas to be able to have a book that interests them that is going to help them meet their learning targets one thing that was raised to me during the tour was the fact that the online help for this resource wasn't the best but their help desk was terrific they have a good response time good turnaround and answers are readily available to staff as there are questions or issues that arise I found that to be reassuring that I'm not just hearing about how great this is because of this and this and this and this but in fact there are some issues that we struggle with and these are the This is the way we've adapted to that struggle
072and we've found a way that's going to work for us. When we have questions or concern, we're gonna be talking to their help desk rather than going through online help. So it's a small point, but I think it illustrates the fact that we've taken a balanced approach to this resource in terms of it's not all roses, but there are some thorns that we do have to deal with as we go. I talked with Emily today a couple of questions that I had in terms of reviewing the UBDs that the vocabulary words are all students going to be exposed to the same vocabulary words through all the classrooms at all the various levels and units and yes in fact it's a standard approach that all students will be exposed to the same vocabulary words or the
073same tools and approaches such that these build kind of a foundation for what they're going to find in the reading material and that will build to the next level so I think that's a plus there will be standardized approach across a big group of students but there will be individualized approaches for smaller groups of students that struggle I think that is definitely a plus I asked about the translation of standards into lesson plans as we look at here's what we're going to teach our students. What does that mean for lesson planning? And is there a standard approach or standard lesson plans issued? And the response was that the professional learning communities collaborate on lesson planning and probably a little more importantly pacing so that students can know and be able to do. all of the
074expectations we have of them by the end of the school year and certainly as they approach standardized testing that students are prepared that they are meeting their learning goals across the year and that as we test them they have been exposed to the content that they need I was concerned about the pacing in terms of how much content are we expected our teachers expected to pull into a I don't know is it a 36 week schedule if you round up nine weeks terms times four and there's six week units five six week lessons five units each so that's a 30 week Plan allowing some flexibility for whatever may come up if attendance becomes an issue or if students get behind or if something comes up so that teachers have a little bit of flexibility Allows
075a buffer so that challenges they face along the way can be addressed I was a bit concerned about the assessments as they currently exist as there are expectations and then open spaces for proficient and beginning and not yet started and we talked about that on the phone today and I am understanding that the plan will be to build that out further so that there's a inter-rater reliability one teacher is looking at a student in a similar lens as another teacher is looking at the student or across the students that a single teacher is evaluating that there's some consistency and that there's an understanding of where that student is and what does that proficient mean in that particular category so I'm satisfied that that will be further built out to assist with the assessment of our
076students. We talked about partnerships with home. I think about what you learn in the classroom similar to music lessons for example we teach kids how to play music at school and then we expect them to go home and practice and we have the support of parents or guardians or whomever it is at home helping students practice play that musical instrument or in my case I used to hound my students to practice because that wasn't always a favorite thing but that partnership with the home beyond the walls of the school We have experts in the building, we have experts in the classroom, our TLSs and our teachers and our teaching assistants that provide that foundation, but we need that partnership at home. And Emily readily said that's a gap we have right now that we expect
077these workbooks are going to fill because kids will be taking these home and there will be an opportunity for that work to be done at home and perhaps. can't guarantee what availability there is for that support but at least we'll have that as an avenue for students and parents or guardians to follow I think that from the standpoint of the work that's been done how it was done what we have been presented with in terms of the UBDs the curriculum and the resources to support that good work and I would like to thank those that were involved in the process I think we've structured something that follows the standards as they're written provides a pathway for all teachers to follow a similar approach such that students can meet their learning outcomes and I will support
078this proposal this evening thank you I wanted to say that I think we're rushing into this fast I know it's been a long process for you and the people involved but I do know that I did attend some of the teaching and learning committee meetings I'm not on the committee but several times the committee was asked what are the outcomes and that would seem to be a main concern what are the outcomes As an educator, I know outcomes and objectives are stated even in AVID, they state the objective every day. Objective is the same as the outcome. By the end of today's class, this is what we would like to, this is what we're gonna reach for, this is what we need. phonetics is not an outcome vocabulary is not an outcome these are basic
079reading strategies that I would hope would be in every single classroom everywhere in every culture because if you don't have vocabulary you can't understand the content or what the story is about that's nothing new So I don't see that phonetics are outcomes. They're not outcomes. Outcomes is what do you want to reach? Outcomes are not reaching X percentage. Outcomes are by the end of third grade, every single student will be able to whatever it is. And that committee has been asked, they've dismissed, they've come back to. the next meeting and then they've been asked the same thing what are the outcomes for grade one what are the outcomes for grade two i still don't know what they are they have never been presented um because because i i think that there are better uh literature
080rich programs out there by other companies i think we should take a look at that and see what might be a little bit more appropriate i certainly did like the workbook approach i think that was good hopefully the teachers will correct the workbooks my experience is that if you ask some parents right now even though i don't have kids in the district but i did have uh family member lived with me that was in the district and they had it was really great because they had math workbooks but they weren't corrected always so and you can ask some of the parents now if the workbooks are getting corrected i'm not saying teachers don't correct them i'm saying it's great that they have follow-up i like the phonetics i like the way that they were laid
081out i thought that was very good and engaging because instead of just being on computers that they were actually writing so and once you read you write you say it you see it you remember it so that's a good concept but i'm disappointed that i was unable to review the literature review the books to take them home to see which books and the content that went with the workbooks um i know it was mentioned that i didn't attend uh one sliver presentation which you can only see a presentation you see a presentation I don't think that's enough you know to convince somebody you know it's like taking a car for a ride when you buy it think you would check out to make the model the reviews and everything else before you would just take
082it for 10-minute ride and say it's great I'll buy it so I think the pilot program I'm glad that it's a good concept to pilot I think it's important to pilot but I think that it lacked documentation what classes were taught which grades were taught how long were they was it twice a week was it once a week was it you know for Three months straight I don't have I don't have that information. I did some at one of the teaching and language Committee meetings they talked about the high school curriculum the teachers answered all the questions They presented the books that went with it They talked as a team they're looking for more books I support everything that the high school curriculum was presented they have it all together and they also told us
083the outcomes so I was very impressed with that I could support the high school portion of this but also it was mentioned at the last meeting that every single book was reviewed I'd like to see I haven't seen any documentation who reviewed them and by what standard and what were the comments and documentation that went if every book was reviewed I would like to see the reviews on those books before I could go forth and support this curriculum so at this time I'm out Jason Emily or Emily do you want to address I heard two major concerns Linda was asking about the objectives and outcomes by grade and then the book reviews and then anything else If you could be clear so Linda if you could just make sure that we're clear on You're okay
084with the very specifics of the high school outcomes So do can you tell me what those are? Because to me all of the outcomes are in the UEDs and I didn't see differences between what the high school documented. The high school teachers spoke individually. Absolutely. I didn't take notes at that meeting. I'm not on the teaching and learning committee. You probably could tell me because you listened to them at the TLC meeting. So would you tell the audience how they responded? Because like I said, I wasn't the secretary at that meeting. No, I appreciate the address from their mouths. So so enlighten us please I appreciate that and what I heard from them was specifically what was in the UB DS for the high school and what we're seeing in these specific learning targets, so
085I feel what I heard Kathy's concerns with are the specific metrics on what we're going to improve the learning targets what I heard from the high school teachers when they presented and I did appreciate many of them attending I talked to many of them specifically before and after the different teaching and learning committee meetings with the concerns that I had and their learning targets are very clearly documented in the UBDs clearly as the UBD's document for middle school and elementary school and I'm not seeing a difference and so I'm just asking you to clarify the difference between what the learning targets that are specified in the UBD here and what the middle school and elementary school so maybe it's just you didn't hear it at teaching and learning and are not reading it here so
086I just want to be clear what that difference is and what you need that you heard from high school and not middle and elementary school The targets that were presented were such as every time when I attended when it was asked and presented was We have a target of such-and-such a percent proficiency and we have a target of such-and-such a percent proficiency so when they were asked the specific question on the outcomes, that's what they referred to so that's What the answer to the question was when it was asked at those meetings and that's why I thought that's not outcomes those targets you know are not outcomes when you say the outcome when they were asked that question they said the outcome is to reach such and such a percent proficiency or we take and
087we see where the kids are at and then we move on from there those are the end that's the way it was answered at those meetings so um i still would not approve it because I'm not familiar with the content of everything whereas the difference is the high school teachers did tell the specific books they did tell how they specifically were breaking them down into units and how they had modified the way that they approached teaching their lessons ninth grade and tenth grade and eleven so there was more of a transition they also explained how they don't always use the same book every year for every group they kind of assess the needs of that group and pick an appropriate literature based book for them to read so they can emphasize whatever is needed it's
088like if that group needed more work on character development in stories or whatever they they keyed in on that so that's the real difference i don't um by not being able to know the specific books or review or look the books look at the books and check them out at home i only have two things i can go by That's the reviews that were read by everybody and I haven't seen them or read them the reviews and I haven't been able to check out the materials So I guess that's the difference the high school teachers presented the materials that they're using in the books that they want So thank you So in the presentation that we presented last week we linked in all of the all class reads from from k-12 so that includes what
089would be found in the recommended resource for elementary what would be found for the recommended resource for middle school and then the books that are listed for high school in terms of the middle school books as was said last time we do have a balance in the genres including the classics we continue to teach the outsiders in eighth grade it's definitely a favorite and continues to be S.E. Hinton we have lots of various touch points with the classics in middle school, including Walt Whitman, Charles Dickens, Ray Bradbury, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Frost, Mark Twain, Longfellow, just to mention a few. But all of those selections, which are found in our recommended resource, are listed here. So Emily's pulling up my view. the HMH was there, and then as well as our high school books. Some
090of the other books that were listed from last time, Linda, when you had shared some concern about key literature, Lord of the Flies and To Kill a Mockingbird, those are listed in our high school curriculum. Outsiders and Call of the Wild are listed in our middle school curriculum. I guess the difference is a recommended resource I don't know if that's what's being taught or if the teacher decides based on well I guess I'll take a recommended resource or maybe I won't I can have a list of recommended resources that may or may not ever be used I need to know what is being taught What I the brief viewing that I had I'll use the example the name of the story was heartbeat and I will repeat it was about A male who had a
091very thin Body type or what I don't know No, cuz there's ectomorph endomorph and mesomorph body type. So you happen to have a skinny body type put it that way we happen to have a lot of sports people have stature. Swimmers, speed skaters, basketball players, and people who are not even in sports have that body type. And this guy is self-conscious about his body type. He's so self-conscious that he pads himself. His girlfriend has remarks, and he feels very uncomfortable about it. And I don't think that that was appropriate content for discussion in middle school when kids are going through puberty and their body's changing and they're all self-conscious, and even beautiful girls think they don't feel good about themselves. Like I said, I only have a limited view of what I saw because I
092was unable to view the material the way I wanted to, and I don't think that that is an appropriate content for an English language literature class. There certainly may be a place for that type of content, but I don't think it is in that curriculum. Anything else? Okay, Jean and then Kathy. I'd like to move to approve the recommended English language arts curriculum and primary resources as presented. I second the motion. I have a motion and a second. There's still some people that haven't had a chance to share their comments, so we'll go Kathy, Jensen, and I've got a few comments. Jensen was first. Okay, Jensen. You were first. It's age before beauty. It's your last meeting. I'm honored. Thank you. Since last meeting, I kind of like a struggling. I was debating what I
093should do because I heard different opinion from different people. And I just feel like maybe I'm really least qualified person say, hey, this way versus other way. because I was not professionally trained as a reading specialist. I'm not a person who is close to the students and kids all the time, every day. I'm not working this as my career or things like that. So how am I offer valuable opinion from that perspective? I feel like I'm not qualified. However, I think I can leverage from my business experience. I hire people. and a higher qualified people. And I trust them. I set a goal for them. Say, hey, here's what I want. And I have to trust them to do their job. And also, I thought, you know, when I see doctor, I can't dictate doctor
094say do this way versus other way because, honestly, I don't know. I just want to know, you know what, I want to be healthy. I want to this and that, and doctor are going to prescribe things to me. And I think... Then I look at my my own experience with my kids who went to inbrook schools I think that's the reason I kind of run for school board because I feel like they got a definitely quality education from the schools so when English is my second language, so not excuse is just kind of My background and I'm not qualified to select the books for the students say hey, you know read this and that I never done that before and how do I know if they're doing okay or doing good or doing terrific and
095from multiple reference of course from feedback from teachers and of course from test score and say 99% in the LA or Perfect score in middle school a CT. I'm not trying to brag about it. But I just just kind of tell you that I as a parent's language, English as a second language. And they did well. Where is it from? You know, from school, from teachers, from professionals. So with that, I thought, you know, I mean, the team has been working on this since last year for almost a year. And I went to the, you know, the hour tour and that tour just kind of witnessed an experience. and talk to six, seven people, you know, and ask those questions as someone just like, you know, pretend, say I hired them, say, hey, here's what
096we want. We want them to be proficient at that level. And do they have enough support document, work, work, you know, those. So those people who are with the kids every day and who do for a living on this. And so... I thought about a lot of all those things. I think we, I mean, for someone like me, I would say we have to trust them because that's what they do. Of course, it's accountable. Five years from now, say four years from now, they may... Not as the KPI we want, but then in the process, in the whole process, we will figure out what happened. And curriculum is one thing, which I ask when I was there. I say, is those kind of subjects all covered, those? And I ask, working book, is those something
097we used to have? parents volunteered to do a Xerox for everything. Now we have a book for them. So all those from non-professional experience parents, we say, hey, those are in place. I feel like those are a good choice, but how long it take to make this happen? You could have waited for another year or two. As someone myself, entrepreneur, I can't wait for a year or another year, because opportunity is a cost too. I would say from what I saw, from what I experienced, from what I talked to people, from those people whose credentials, I feel like this is definitely, you know, the work has been done and do well. So I'll support what has been proposed and from what I've talked to people. Okay. Kathy and then myself, and we do have two
098requests to speak. I'll just make a few comments and just reiterate. It is good that we are all engaged and the book is one thing, one part of curriculum. I'm a process person. My entire career has always been process, change, management, and procedure. And it matters. And as much as many who disagree. And I think it is good to disagree because you wouldn't want our voice to be like me or anybody else. And it seems like the differing of the view and the opinion seems to be what's troubling through some who disagree. I've been saying it, I'm about the process and I've said it as I said on TLC as a new board member since the fall when the presentation of the assessment of how we need to improve our ELA because it is pretty
099low. We were all in support of that. And to reiterate as to the minutes which is not reflected because of the way we keep minutes. and also it's not recorded but the comments that i have made and if you have not attended all those tlc meetings and whether what i say or don't say people believe i cannot make people believe what i say or don't say that is your judgment and your decision since the assessment of the ela has been presented we I have reiterated as the board that is ultimately responsible for the things that happen in the district. And regardless of how people like to sit behind social media and pontificate and assert their views, and that's totally fine, and that is what's great about this country. Because that would not be allowed in
100actually most of countries with censorship and one way of thinking and group thinking and they're censored one way or the other. So as though people could sit behind social media and pontificate and really take advantage of the passion and the engagement that this community has, to take advantage of that. and it is very tragic to see some people fall into that ploy. People that are not from within the district that come in to cause problems. And it is divisive when you have the citizens and especially the employees of the district and their family members that publicly engage in harassment, mockery, and spreading of things that are put up on social media publicly. That is quite sad. It's not something even to get mad about because it's quite sad. It's quite tragic. Having said that, I
101cannot make people believe what I say. I cannot make people believe my intention. But I have always prided and I've always been commended in leadership as person of integrity and that comes with a lot of disagreements by my bosses, by people who report to me. But at the end of the day, I am held to my decision. And what's different about sitting as an elected board member is not that as a leader in an organization, perhaps handle $200 million budget and whatnot. There's consequences and I do take my vote seriously. I swore an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States. and to the state constitution of Wisconsin. So to reiterate my concerns, I have said multiple times I believe teachers teach. I believe that the administration and the way things were done, as
102Mushir, you have said, that this has been done last 10 years, and I believe it. But that doesn't mean I have to agree with the procedure. Because at the end of the day, I don't speak for anybody on this board, neither do you speak for me. And I have to hang my vote on something that I can defend and that I can speak to in the future. The practice of last ten years of how the board has, and I get where the gray area can be, and as you go into page 12 of the documentation, just even textbook approval process. Just the whole thing of how it absolutely you should Lisa and Emily, you should be as an expert going through 10 million different books and distill that down to us to review. The fact
103that it goes. through parents first, then it comes to TLC at the end for the board. And that is a point of my concern. It may not be a concern for anybody else, but that's not how I make decisions. And that is something that I have to decide for myself and where I hang my vote on. How others vote, that is your vote. I don't judge it. Neither should I be judged or mocked or ridiculed for that, but that comes with the job. and it has been confirmed in tlc that yes i said has a board always gotten involved at the end when everything is done yes okay so that's what it is and we will work on future curriculums and we could work on future things as we move um set the agenda for
104the future as we did in the last meeting but that when i was asked about learning outcome What are the metrics as the curriculum 6140 says as the curricular proposal. These components are to be presented at teaching and learning committee and the board of education, rationale presented, curricular document. All these were done after the fact. Now this is not fault to anyone who did the work. Again, this is how just board function last ten years and it is what it is. But for me to make the decision on the past practice of how I'm reading the policy and the statute. And what I have sworn my oath to and its ramifications that I have to hang my vote in past practices into the next six years of our children's education. I have a very hard
105time hanging my vote on that and investing in $1.4 million next six years. And I agree that we should not just be pulling books because somebody complained. So last book that got pulled, I'm assuming original document of that book was reviewed and that we went through our process of policy to make sure it warranted a removal or addition. I agree. So I'm a policy procedure person and I know we could disagree to agree and agree to disagree, but those are my concerns, my personal view of where my vote lays and I have to be able to live with my decision and that is my decision alone as each of the board members have your decisions. Thank you. Thank You Kathy I have a couple of comments and a couple of questions and then we have
106some requests to speak First of all, I appreciate the concerns that Linda Raised our last board meeting especially about the seventh grade workbooks there's been there and several comments about the statement that Jean Lambert and I released and Just so you know, I did connect with Linda apologize to her for not including her in the writing of that statement so it might have had a different tone as was pointed out and we did have a nice conversation about that thank you Linda for your viewpoints it did cause me to think about some of the resources and review them more carefully So one of my concerns when I was on TLC on the TLC committee still as a board member Certainly is the reading and so I noticed in the workbooks and this is a question
107for at least an Emily That as you get to the end of a unit There's a list of short reads. There's a list of poetry. There's a list of long reads and there's like three selections in each Explain to me how the end of the unit and I understand that we've got our UBDs And so that's why I don't know if we'll be using kind of that system at the end. That's in the work works How will that reading be done in a typical unit? Maybe not every unit, but are we kind of following the workbook at that point? Are we injecting some of our other books and Texts I can speak to the middle school flow of the unit Throughout the unit they're reading a lot of short reads that span multiple genres and
108then those are right in the workbook Yep. Yep, and then towards the end of the unit they have a longer read that they that they do as an all-class read and that also will be paired with book clubs where they're selecting a book It could be selected various ways. It could be based on the interests of the students. It could be based on it has a similar genre or a similar character portrayal and so forth, but they will continue to read full novels in small books, in small groups, as well as as a full class. And so that's a practice that we celebrate over the last five years is increasing the reading stamina of students, whether it's reading the same book as a whole class or reading in small book clubs. And that will continue
109as the unit progresses. So that's slightly different than kind of the layout of the workbook resources I sought. Because it just had those Every unit ends with a long read and it usually gives And the students are getting two of those, they're getting one long read as a class and one long read And then they're getting a book club book And I was told on my tour of the schools because I asked the question that we're not just throwing out the books and good literature we've had before that some of that literature would be connected to some of these units so it's more books than just previously approved books previous curriculum you know resources that we would keep those and hey we've got a classroom set of call the wild call the wild isn't mentioned
110in the workbooks but here we can use it we can insert that I'm using the example maybe maybe this and it might be inserted as a small group small group read or it might be inserted as a full class read gotcha thank you It is just really a priority for me as a parent, as a board member, that our students read more books. I loved when I was in Brookfield Central earlier this year to see that we've added some reading time for high school kids. They carry a book now, right? It's got to be a physical book, and they have how many minutes a day, Mark, to read? Brookfield Central is piloting a silent sustained reading approach for about 20 minutes a day. They're attached to some choice reading that they pick. It's their book.
111It's their book. They carry it around, but hey, they're going to be reading. And I love that. When we see reading, generally the number of books we're reading declining as our students are getting older in our system. So anything we can do to read more books, I wrote that in all capital letters here in my notes because I just really feel we've got to be reading more books. And so I would ask teaching and learning. next year whoever's on this as we review this usually we do kind of a curriculum review and jen's not and you won't be here but but we generally do a review kind of how did the first year go i'd really like to hear you know what are our teachers using for books what books resources do we used to
112use how many books are students reading and just i know we won't know for every single student but i'd like to make sure that the number of books we're reading is more not less and then Another point, same as I made on the social studies curriculum a year ago, I just, I look at the assessments at the end, and it was brought up by Jean, and I think she asked you the question, so it's been partially answered for me. I want to make sure, and maybe you can fill this in a little bit for me, that over, as my own children who advanced in the Elmbrook School District, it seems like there's more group presentations, less writing of essays. And the social studies curriculum, to me, reversed some of that. We saw that there would
113be maybe less group work, more individual essays, more writing was included in the social studies curriculum that we approved. And I'd like to hear and just make sure that that's the case with this proposed new curriculum and resource. What's the writing going to look like? And kind of, again, our students need to be able to write a research paper. They need to have experience writing an essay. And so I want to make sure those things aren't getting lost, that, in fact, we're doing more of that. Yeah that's definitely the volume of writing has been prioritized in our middle school and high school curriculum we through the curriculum renewal are really ensuring that kids are engaged in process writing such as Writing that research paper as well as on demand and the on-demand piece is at
114the middle school school where we want to increase the frequency So I know Jean spoke earlier at some of the work of the PLC's we're building out to make sure that Every week we have a sample of writing for kids Whether that's part of the process writing they're doing or some of the on-demand prompts that we're giving but definitely that was an area we identified that we want to Ensure our students are writing more and more and targeted writing and I would say for both reading and for writing the amount of direct instruction is is substantially increased so a lot more opportunities for rich instruction from teacher and then Specific to writing we're looking at a real heavy emphasis on the quality of writing down to the sentence structure and really building that foundational skill
115set with students before they're moved into really focusing on volume of writing so a much heavier emphasis on Those skills early on so they're not practicing those bad habits I did see in the workbooks more of those science based reading skills emphasized there in the practices They'll be doing in in my classroom observations. I did see more teachers working with individual students in groups And I've seen previously so that is good Scott can I add on to that just while you're on topic the other piece that I think Has really come through is the focus on grammar. So you're talking about writing. So some of the technical writing skills is much heavier emphasis and more consistent and I know that's what we heard at our initial discussion in areas to improve we've heard that from
116families and students and really making sure that we're giving them all the tools and practice there so not only in this resource but I know in some other supplemental areas we're really looking to make sure students have practice with that and it's been an emphasis so that just goes to your your comment about the writing piece so it's not only volume of writing but it's also that specificity and i appreciate the emphasis in our specifically in our curriculum and the resources to support that and the technical piece as well so i and you know that i echo your concerns on the writing piece so thanks for highlighting that as well So I listened to Linda last time raised some concerns specifically about seventh grade and I did Review the seventh grade workbooks contracted the administration.
117Thank you, Tonya making those available. I didn't find that to be a problem and Looked at some of the things that were specifically read Last time and with the content, context of the story, the greater context reading it all the way through, they are excerpts in there. The questions that are asked following the reading excerpts, the activities that are in the workbook, I feel comfortable supporting this as a primary resource. I also take comfort in the fact that this resource is approved for use in states that are fairly conservative like Florida that have laws against CRT in their content. So I have not read every page of the resource. It's possible in the time given. But I have looked in detail at some of the workbooks. And I've looked at our Elmbrook curriculum in terms
118of the UBDs. And I do feel comfortable approving it. again I want the follow-up in a year trust and we want to see again I believe this will improve proficiency rates and this will have an effect on our students and so I do look forward to that we have several requests to speak we'll start with Angie Pingel a resident of the district Thank you I know at the last meeting I raised a number of questions about the curriculum and the process that we use to adopt curriculum and I sat here with my list and kind of marked off what might have been answered and what might not have been answered to see where I feel tonight and I guess I don't feel any better tonight than I did after the last meeting what I keep
119hearing is that it's okay that we didn't follow practice statement what number is this 6156 for more than 10 years and nobody has caught that that's okay and that makes it right I raised at the last meeting that school boards elected officials are responsible for approving curriculum they're responsible for ensuring that the curriculum that's being taught in our school is approved we're doing pilot programs that have not been approved by our school board And no one here seems to think that that's a problem. I don't know, maybe it's the lawyer in me, but I do think that that's a problem, that we have laws for a reason and we have policies for a reason, and it's not okay if you're not following them. It's not okay. And I don't care if you've been doing it
120for 10 years or one year. It's not okay. You need to address that, and I have not heard anyone. Maybe Kathy referenced it a little bit in her comments, but no one's willing to talk about the fact that this happened for 10 years. I also talked a lot about in citizens forum about respect and I do appreciate your comments Scott but I would have really hoped that you would have pulled that statement down because it did add to the divisiveness within our community and I really do want to see all parties be able to have a reasonable conversation about what comes next for our students what's going on is not okay it's not okay So I guess then I came back to a statement that was made at the last meeting that said we implemented
121a new teaching methodology But we applied it with our existing resources our primary and secondary resources, but then at the beginning of this the presentation That seemed to be contradicted and we talked about how we use different primary resources So now I'm confused again with what was said at the last meeting and what was said at this meeting So which one is it? Are we bringing in materials primary and secondary materials that have not been reviewed and approved by our board? I think that's a question that the community has a right to know. You are our elected officials. You need to address that. You can't just sweep it under the rug and say, well, we've done it for 10 years. That's not okay. Thank you. Thank you, Angie. Sam Hughes is up next, a resident
122of the district. Thank you. I actually just had a couple quick questions. The previous or existing reading program was described to me as marketed to us and it was a failure or didn't achieve the goals we wanted. So I'm curious as to why jumping into a six-year contract, it seems like, from what I read, versus doing more of a let's do a two-year contract, maybe reconsider that, give the vendor the metrics that we have an expectation to. even if it's an additional cost, I think for such an important program of reading, one of the fundamental things that we need to have for our children, I think we need to approach this with caution. Knowing that we've already been burned once in the past, I think it'd be prudent to say, well, let's see how it
123runs for one or two years and consider that and then extend it or pay the remaining of the contract then. The other thing, this is somewhat related but very different, is this week I had to do a job posting for my business and... I went on to this website called OpenAI, typed in create job description for this position and it out popped everything I needed and I took it to some other people in my office and said here's the job description I wrote. They were like wow this is really good. I said it took me 30 seconds. Open AI or chat GPT now can produce essays in a matter of seconds, 1,200, 2,000 words. And Scott, you mentioned how important writing is. How will this program take that into consideration? How will we safeguard against
124children being... I hate to even say this on camera, but using that as a resource now. Maybe they don't know about it, but how do we prevent that from happening and just make sure that that's part of it? Because I'd hate to see us get two, three years down the road and suddenly realize all these essays are now written by ChatGPT and none of our kids have the ability to do creative thinking and analysis and all that as well. I feel like those are really important things to consider with OpenAI and those resources on the internet. So again, I would encourage to do a shorter-term contract. just rethink through that here in a year or two again. So thanks. Let's go ahead and actually refer to or answer a couple of these questions. So starting
125with the six-year contract, Lisa, Emily, why a six-year versus? One or two. Typically it's substantially more cost effective when we do a longer period of it. And our vetting process on the front end of this really helps us get down to what are those gaps that we know of that we're trying to fill. I mean, yeah, I would echo what Lisa said I know our vendor had shared with us a difference because there was a question early on about if we did a one-year versus a six-year and the per student cost goes from 540 down to 240 so it's a that's an annual $300 per student increase if we were to make a shift like that and then with a bulk order you get teacher resources we didn't have to pay for teacher resources and
126we would be charged for those with a shorter term package. Additionally, the time invested in writing those UBDs, learning the materials, we have a three year professional learning plan in place to really become highly skilled with these resources and I think when you look at two years and then making transitions when it's especially at our elementary level where it's reading it's writing it's phonics it's half of the school day to have teachers expected to potentially be learning new resources every two years i think is not manageable How do we ensure AI is not writing essays? That's a huge question. I think our staff are definitely, it's been a topic of discussion about what are the positives of AI and what are the negatives of AI. You know, there's certain things that they do, even with
127using Google Docs, that they can check revision history to see what, you know, the child is doing or not doing. I think it's a teachable moment of what plagiarism looks like in the new era and so I don't necessarily have an answer to that but I can tell you that it's already in discussions with our teachers about some of the capability of CHAT-GPT in particular. Lisa this would probably fall under our academic dishonesty policy and we do employ a number of tools at our high school level and likely at our middle school level and especially in some of the writing pieces already to try to understand areas where students may be lacking integrity in that area Right, and even part of the HMH in the literature is with writable, and writable has that ability to
128do some plagiarism checks. But at the same time, ChatBT is on a whole different level. So we have to do more learning about that. Because I can't answer with certainty that our current tools can really get at what ChatGPT now does. Okay, and I just would reiterate that this skill set is extremely important and for us to know that AI has produced a good document whether that's a job description or otherwise they need to have the fundamentals to know that it is a good document and so to be able to do that you have to practice it and so I would encourage and make sure that we continue to focus on that in our academic dishonesty policy and other tools that we have but it should not prevent us from pursuing improving our students writing
129skills and literacy skills. And I do want to add some of our assessment strategies that are listed throughout our documents conferring having that one-on-one time with a teacher or small group time with a teacher teachers know they know your skill level and so it's not just using external tools to see if there's plagiarism teachers really have a good grasp of the proficiency level through the instructional practices that we that we have in our classrooms just a couple of comments i i do think that chat gpt is going to open up some ethical issues which are probably well outside the scope of our board and likely a discussion that families are going to have to have as well i appreciate jen's pivot to our academic honesty policy i've had the privilege in this community of interviewing
130kids for college medical school pa school and during those interviews you ask how rampant is cheating in your experience academically and to see the degree of increase in that response is disturbing to me. I would just share, as a parent and as a community member, I think the discussion around chat GPT is important for parents to undertake as well, and my personal advice would be is that each household in our community needs to have a discussion about, we consider chat GPT usage for schoolwork to be cheating. It's not your work. I think we need to start having that discussion as parents as well just to say what do we consider to be academic dishonesty? Because you can do shortcuts to get places, but ultimately are you really learning? And ultimately that's going to be a
131requirement for us as parents to say are you achieving the maximum experience from your education here at Elmbrook? And is it your work or is it the work of some bot somewhere? And I think the in-class writing, you know, where, hey, you're given a prompt and now write and that's evaluated, should help in terms of. can our students write there in class and if we start to see discrepancies the homework coming back is pretty good the in-class writing doesn't replicate it we would know but we're gonna have to revisit this certainly from the academic dishonesty portion Linda I was just wondering before we would jump into this as I would say why can't we implement or use the strategies that were utilized in mid-year with the first graders across the board for all grades as
132a standard practice because they were not So many were low and not proficient you had a team of people they utilized they did what had to be done they worked as a team and it was reported back to the board that a Great percentage of the first graders jumped from not being proficient to be proficient So why can't we just see if that works and use the same curriculum? And and books that we have now if those were successful strategies and we already had proof that they work, why can't we use that as a standard practice and take a better look at possible different curriculum in the meantime and go through the process of what is dictated by your policy as far as if you want to use the same thing in pilot and document
133it and let people look at the materials, that would be fine. But I think if you did something that was great, then why would you have the teachers start with a new curriculum next year when you just found out that something you did works great? My decision tonight, I want to repeat, is based through the lens of a person who was a career, I had a career teacher. Career of teaching reading every grade level K through 12 and I was also a co-teacher in the middle school and high school levels So that's the lens I come from I don't know what other lens is Is from any other board member but mine is from the teaching lens and from a person who has been teaching reading for a lifetime Thank you Let's circle back to
134the first comment person to address this Angie talking about the policy you want to take a crack at that I do Kristi I don't know if you're able to pull up policy 6140 so Angie I appreciate your comments I have heard Kathy talk about this in committee and at the board in the boardroom and And I think we agreed to disagree. We have a different interpretation of that policy I think we agree that this policy can be improved in terms of the wording and terminology When I look at this policy and I look at the different steps I do not see them as sequentially as they're laid out here. So step one is to understand prioritize and unwrap standards I know that that there was a big team that did that and they came to
135us and said we understand the priorities here's the here are the we understand the new standards that were 2020 here are the ones that we feel in Elmbrook are the ones we need to prioritize many driven from the success that we had with the first grade pilot and a number of different areas where we've really implemented the science-based reading from there they looked at that and said based on the current resource we have do we need a new resource or not they said the one we have is not achieving this will not help us get to achieve those standards so they said we need a new resource concurrently so we're looking at different resources at the same time we're looking at what do we need to develop our curricular resources and assessment these are together
136so yes I understand they're sequentially it says the needs assessment informs the decision to maintain current resource or to replace alternatives we decided that we need to replace for k-5 and as well as middle school not at the high school level We've adjusted some of the high school primary resources But for elementary and middle school we said we need a new resource Using the prioritized standards not the resource the prior to our standards and unwrapped learning targets the team works to develop The curricular documents the UBDs so these to me are concurrent and so therefore I do not feel that policy is not being followed I feel policy is being followed these happen in tandem and we can't have this I'm not going to have a resource dictate what our Elmburg standards are and our
137curricular resources our curricular documents are and so these two happen together so to address the concern and the comment I think these two happen together they don't always happen together sometimes we have a really strong resource that is gives us everything that we need and we can look at that I Talked to the middle school a Middle school teacher this last week and I said wait now I looked at the the resource Here and they have six units and we only have four really digging into that they said well no this is because we're looking at these specific units we want to accomplish these different goals they have collapsed a couple of the different units they're achieving everything they're using a lot of that resource but they're really making it standardized to Elmbrook to make
138sure that we're achieving what we need to achieve and so I don't think that we want to be sequential that we want to take everything that a resource has I think we need to have these two in tandem and I agree that we may need to we should and need to look at this policy and practice statement together to make sure that we're doing what we want and intentionally want to do with curriculum in Elmbrook but do not feel that looking at the taking at this in this approach is in violation of policy I would add that we did have looked at this policy I was gonna go back and check We might have added that when I was on TLC we might have added that last line number three primary resources require Board of
139Education approval I referenced policy 6152 when I just spoke a minute ago And so we will this summer ask TLC to look at inserting piloting language That's going to happen On our discussion document Okay our next request to speak is Nancy Santasteban Just a brief comment as I'm listening I might be kind of inexperienced on the role of school board members but as a parent I am more comfortable having our professional teachers Choose select and decide on a curriculum and I believe that the school board Members do a wonderful job keeping everything in line and I went to a TLC meeting and I was very impressed with all of the steps that the teachers took To outline I mean all of the stuff is over my head And I think they did a wonderful job.
140I do not expect school board members to read all the sources that are listed. You can find that information online about what all the books are about. You do not need to read them all, just as you would not have to conduct all science experiments. ELA curriculum is probably more accessible for us to all read and try to understand versus math in high school or science in high school. But I don't think that. gives you the right to overstep your boundaries and I believe the teachers have done a wonderful job and I believe the TLC committee has worked together to make sure things have been done in order and on task and all the checks have been made and I just want to say that I believe I Agreed with a lot of what Jin
141Sun said The educators I feel comfortable with them making the decisions For the details not the school board members. Thank you. Thank you Nancy Our last request to speak is Stacy Coffey resident of the district I want to express my support for the teachers and staff who spent almost a year working on updating the ELA curriculum the ELA product Chosen was reviewed and selected as the best product by the experts the teachers who will be teaching from the books and workbooks and the librarians who vet the books a Literary rich curriculum and literature based approach to reading primarily uses written text to improve literacy exposure The goal is to teach how to read and analyze text and instill a love of reading and get kids to enjoy reading feel that the books and the short
142stories brought up at the last meeting address concerns that are age-appropriate for middle schoolers like mr. Wheeler I read the breadwinner and the two short stories mirror image and heartbeat the short stories discuss the conflicts and changes that adolescents are going through and that middle school students can empathize and or identify with heartbeat is a book about a boy who wants to change his appearance to impress a girl he likes he eats more works out and finally wears layers of clothes to look more muscular He's sweaty and miserable and realizes he should be happy with who he is and accept himself. A great message for middle schoolers and one that they can most likely relate to and have a discussion about. Mirror Image is a sci-fi book about a girl who has a brain transplant.
143She's trying to figure out how she feels with this new body as people are treating her differently, including her twin sister. Again, a great discussion for middle schoolers who are concerned about how they look and what others think. Teens in this age group might have concerns about body size, shape, or weight. And these books make discussions in these areas accessible. These experts in reading and teaching who have reviewed and are presenting this ELA curriculum should be supported for their knowledge. When I have a plumbing problem, I take the advice of a master plumber. When my car needs to be repaired, I find the best mechanic and listen to the advice. When I need surgery, I find the best surgeon and listen to the recommendations. I would ask the board members to do the same with
144regards to this ELA curriculum. The teachers who have reviewed this and the librarians who have vetted these books are the experts and should be listened to. Thank you Stacy and that concludes all the requests to speak on that topic are there any other comments if not I would entertain a motion And again teachers we work at the end of the day it's quite surprising that it comes to the board for a vote for the matter of law So overstepping our bounds, I don't know, I mean, if I don't have to vote on it, I'll be happy not to vote on it. But we're required by the law. That means when certain steps are required, there's accountability to that. I am all about experts, professionals. Again, whether people believe me or not, I can't help that.
145But again, as an expert in my own field, at the end of the day, it's a matter of consent. so when it comes to especially two minors now again if everything came through because all the documents are there paperwork's done process followed to Jen your point yes it could sort of go either way again to me that the books that you have vetted multiple sources came down to two that those were brought in with change in standards or current standards because I heard different varying things prior to even coming to the TLC was is a crux of my personal process impediment so again at the end of the day there's a concern when there is authority and responsibility comes accountability So I've said this in TLC as well, if we want to have a final
146say on things and bypass all these procedures, the committees have to go through, vote on action sequence, the matter of law. Then whoever wants to make the final decision I did make a recommendation and TLC that we write to that policy that those individuals not the board who Oversees everything be personally held accountable for that. So there's a matter of consent when it comes to minors There's a matter of consent when I give my expert Opinion and plead people because it's best for them. I cannot do anything if they do not consent So it is a matter of not just about experts with those comes accountability so it is brought to the board because it has to so I just want to be clear where the accountability lays as we work with the experts and
147professionals in educating our children with parental consent thank you I move to call the question Okay, we have a motion to call the question a second. This requires a two-thirds vote, which in our board would be five out of seven. If the question is called, then we'll vote on the motion. All those in favor of calling the question, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Would you explain what calling a question means? It just means that we're going to be done discussing, and then we're going to vote on the motion. Okay voice vote I mean roll call vote If you request it Yes please all right thank you thanks for clarifying So the motion to call the question carries so we will now have a roll call vote on the ELA curriculum motion as presented Five
148yeses and a no and a yes for high school. That carries on roll call vote. Thank you. Our next action item of the evening is the Board of Education meeting schedule. We've seen this before, current board members, and shared this meeting schedule to get input from board members who recently elected and haven't had any concerns. Right, Christy? Any additional concerns? July 10th might be a conflict. And I have to buy an earlier ticket to come back on July 10th. I'll be coming from Utah, but I'll be landing at 4 p.m., assuming there's not a flight delay. Well, it cost me a little extra. So, Linda, no, but I mean, we're voting on our calendar tonight. If it were a day later, does it change it for you? You might be unavailable the whole week. I
149don't know. Just approve it. Because to make sure that everyone... It's balancing for conflicts. I have missed July meetings before this year again I'll be able to make it back by taking an earlier flight slightly more expensive, but it's not bad You want to take the microphone Sorry at the January meeting the following Tuesday in July was proposed and the feedback was that that was late in July And so we came up with July 10th as the other option any other discussion Kathy so July 10th, I Probably won't be in town and then I we I thought we discussed this will be was it presented to newly elected board members as well Okay other than that, I think I'm okay, but July 10th one is I probably won't be available is it Bad week for
150you the entire. Oh, I mean, it's like coming into town that day. So it's like half and half I don't control what happens that day. So I can, I cannot be. Would July 11th work? Yes, it's just a flying in my mind. July 11th work? That's Tuesday. Is it July 11th right now? We're talking about Tuesday, July 11th. Right. Got it. Well, I thought, okay. So, and again, I typically have missed the July meeting because that is usually when my family is out west, family gathering. It sounds like, so Kathy, you are not sure it's possible you're coming back in the town. It's 6 o'clock, right? Right. Okay, so I might rush in and my... My flight lands at 4 p.m. I could be late. Yeah, so I mean, I will try to make it.
151It's just a schedule. So it's, yes, it's fine if I miss it, but I know we don't have... Schedule for 6.30 a.m. or later. Suppose we could start our summer meetings usually are shorter. We could change the time to 7 Yeah, I mean it is what it is and we'll make it we'll have Christy reach out to everybody to make sure that the July date does work and just confirm that so why don't we just approve it as presented and then we'll make adjustments to July based upon some of the unknown right now. Yep. Sounds good Jean I move approval of the meeting schedule Board of Education meeting schedule as presented Thank you second any further discussion. Oh shears not in here All those in favor of the motion please say aye. Aye. Any opposed?
152I'm abstaining. Why? That carries on voice vote. We know why. Okay and that brings us to our last agenda action item. Jean, recent gifts to the district. I'm happy to present a sincere thanks. to donors of gifts to the district in january of 2023 including the dixon pto johnson control stans bootery park loyalty incorporated samanchi family angela and david sidebottom lucas and crystal manganaro ludus.com bergharx the fang family lakeside international bsn sports the kumar family bc booster club pepsico annette prinslow MSOE, Milwaukee Electric Tool Corp, On Time Sports, LLC, Joy Global Surface Mining Incorporated, Komatsu, Fusion Developments, LLC, the Compton Jacobson Family Fund, Johnson Controls, Arvin Neeraja, Volunteer Time, Johnson Controls Matching, John Kong Tso, and the Brookfield Youth Junior Spartan Cheer. Thanks to all donors for contributing to continued excellence in the school district
153of Elmbrook and with that I'd recommend approval of gifts to the district item 6d I second the motion Thank you. We have a motion and a second any further discussion all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye Any opposed that carries on voice vote. Thank you. Our first discussion item of the evening is the employee handbook review Pam is making her way to the table. Good evening. The employee handbook is reviewed annually to ensure compliance with changes to policy, procedures, law, and to support staff retention. Feedback is solicited through an annual employee staff survey and through participation with discussion with roundtable employees. Not all items recommended by staff are considered due to budgetary or operational concerns. The changes being recommended to the 2023-24 school year are reflective of changes in expectation, new
154benefits, and clarification language to ensure understanding. The information was presented to the personnel committee on April 4th and was unanimously approved for full board consideration. I'll be reviewing the topics as detailed in the proposed changes attachment. School calendar school closings This new language provides clarification that school closing days are teacher work days We know that just because there's a school closing and students may or may not be learning remotely asynchronously We know that our educators are still hard at work with planning and preparation and assessments and this just puts it into a writing in the handbook that it's recognized that those are professional work days The fitness for duty language was reviewed by our attorney this year when we had the need for an employee to receive a fitness for duty exam. The edits simplify
155the language and removes the obligation of a district expense. Overtime pay, this is just simply language aligned to our current practice. For our custodial staff, overtime is paid in holiday weeks for all hours over 40 paid. And overtime is also paid for snow removal hours. we introduced a new payroll period schedule for our teachers for next year rather than a 22 or 26 payroll we were going to have a 24 payroll calendar for teachers With regard to time off, there was a request from our support staff who are 12 months who are eligible for vacation in recognition of longevity and to support work-life balance to accelerate the vacation allocation with a shorter years of service requirement to advance to three, four, and five weeks of vacation. Currently, our support staff, when they use vacation, must
156take it in a two-hour increment, and then they can take 15-minute increments beyond that. That hadn't been written into the handbook, but that is the current practice. Teachers requested a modification to the once-in-a-lifetime request language. Right now, you can request up to five days off of work, but teachers only have three discretionary days in any given year at the most, and so two of those days would be without pay. This new language allows them to plan ahead and to bank two discretionary days in a current school year for future use. Those days would only be used in the application of a once-in-a-lifetime request, but it would provide for the opportunity to have five paid days and not have a payroll deduction. Our family and medical leave policy is administered on a calendar year basis, so
157that just provides clarification of our current practice. We are adding new extracurricular charts and appendix C which I'll address at the end the liquidated damages proposal simplifies the administration of collection to only have two time periods $1,000 for resignations between June 16th and prior to August 1st and then $3,000 for August 1st and thereafter We maintain a tutoring list as a courtesy to our parents certainly tutoring is strictly voluntary and tutors do not make educational decisions so this is just some additional language with the ability for us to remove tutors from the tutoring list if we felt that there was any disruption between their services and our educational practices in limited circumstances some of our teachers can earn comp days our counselors and our TLS staff TLS staff earn comp days by participation at summer
158continuous improvement events. We are increasing that from two days to three days, which is aligned to our current schedule of the SAIL Academy. And then we have additional extra pay rates that are being revised. The first section is summer school. These rates were previously approved in November, but we're putting them into next year's handbook as updates. Under the miscellaneous hourly rates, we have benchmark against area districts in terms of payments for participation in athletic events. These rates have not increased in many years. Likewise, the teacher curriculum rate, which is being increased aligned to the summer school teacher rate, has remained at $23.31 for many years and now will be $28. The extracurricular student supervisor rate of $26 is not a change. It's just simply being added to the handbook. teacher stipends this reflects actual stipends
159that are offered and the actual amounts that are paid and then finally I mentioned we are adding extracurricular club tiers to the handbook all middle school and high school clubs were analyzed for advisor time commitment and student participation and we created at the middle level four tiers and at the high school level seven tiers This creates a system by which clubs can be evaluated for compensation parity and also ensures alignment between the schools at each level. Thank you. Thank you, Pam. Are there any questions for Pam? Linda? I should have thought of this at the personnel meeting, but I didn't. With the discretionary days, is there language in there that says that they can't carry it over so five is the max? There is language you if you don't use your discretionary days. They carry
160over as sick leave days Okay, and that's in the handbook. Yes, that's current I want to make sure that people wouldn't think that they could get three additional discretionaries and then build up to 10 or 12 right? Yeah, there's a there's that language so that then they turn into The sick leave days which they get a maximum somewhere of 60. Okay. All right. Thank you other questions Okay, that'll be back next month as an action item. Yes. Thank you. Thank you Pam our second discussion item of the evening is the exciting riveting property and casual casualty insurance renewal See you brought his coffee to stay awake I had a presentation that I need to find Kristi to see where she... Her mouse is... I have the mouse, it's just not on. No, those are just
161the two premium summaries. I actually have a presentation. Okay. Are you okay if we amend the order of the agenda and take discussion item C ahead of B? Yes, go ahead. Jen you can't leave this one's you okay, so this is the first reading of the 5000 policy series taking this agenda item out of order And Jen will walk us through What basically looks like reconfirmation is just adding in two forms that were missing We added this specific form for that I think we discussed it again, but really the major change that was adding the form Are there any questions for Jen on either policy 51-41.1 or its practice statement? All right. Hearing none, that will be back next month in the consent agenda as an action item. Now back to discussion item B, property
162and casualty insurance. Still don't have the smoke machine, so you can just start now. Some are running out of, like, agenda items. Okay. While they're looking at that, let me give my president's report. Last few weeks have had the opportunity to, actually just last week, had the opportunity with Senator Rob Hutton, and honor and celebrate Andy Farley at Brookfield East. It was a great experience, students in the room, a lot of teachers from East, and I noticed that in attendance were administrators from all of our buildings. And it got me thinking. how grateful I am for the supportive climate and the culture that exists in the school district of Elmbrook. I also thought to myself that any of our building principals and administrators could be future recipients of Principal of the Year and I can
163recall one in elementary school that already was. Just makes me so grateful and And it's wonderful to be a part of a system that has so many great people working in it. And so thank you to our wonderful administrators. And again, congratulations to Andy Farley for his award as Principal of the Year. Second thought in the last few weeks is that this community is awesome! Exclamation mark. 19,000 plus votes in the recent school board election show a level of engagement and interest not seen certainly in my time on the board, but I would venture to guess the last decade or more in our community. It's a big thank you. Goes out to Jen Roscoff and Jen Sun for their service. We'll be talking more about that in a moment. And I also want to extend
164a welcome to Sean and Preetha as they, after the election certification, as they will... be our newest board members and again just so grateful for all the engagement we've had feedback comfortable at times but certainly appreciated and helpful and so that concludes my report oh we did it what I say Sean Sam Sam and Preetha I hope I don't keep making that mistake I'll get your name you give me one more huh okay sorry Sam Back to are you ready? Yes. Okay discussion item B the casualty insurance renewal Thank you. This is an annual item that we discuss every year when it first introduced Paul Lesla He's with our and our insurance. He's our broker and we'll be able to answer very detailed questions if you have those But I will go over this high
165level not to get too deep into it but the line is of coverage that fall under property casualty or a property crime general liability educators legal liability auto workers comp environmental pollution and cyber security the timeline is a little off based on our committee board discussion board action The negotiations with a property and casualty really happened closer to the end of the fiscal year So what we do is we we talk about it at F&O like we did last month and give you an idea of what an estimate might be For what we see for the next year, but R&R really works with our carriers to negotiate those rates and some lines like cyber they won't even give us an indication until 30 days out because they want to see what claims that we we
166have in place so what we try to do is along the way as things change update the board and F&O committee but just to let the board know it's sort of out of line with sort of how things work with the renewal Like I said we did go to F&O last month we'll be here tonight to talk about it and then action either in May or June depending upon when we get final information There's a couple of things that impact our rates obviously claims and loss experience what's happening in the marketplace and our insurance program structure and what I mean by that is you know if we have a lot of lines with one carrier that might impact our rates in a positive way So those are some of the things that we look at.
167From a property insurance perspective, some of the challenges here that we're working through with Liberty, our current carrier, is that our total insurable values are low. in comparison to the actual value of all of our buildings and that really plays into the overall premium because it's our value times the rate which gives us our premium so we've been trying to slowly increase that over time but their proposal is a little bit higher than we'd like to see at this point in time. They're also proposing a change in deductible, which is higher. So at this point, we're really recommending that we go to market to get some quotes because we're just not comfortable with where we are with Liberty. To give you the detail on the current indication from Liberty right now, they're looking for a
16820% increase in our total insurable value. This is all of our buildings, and we agree that it's likely low we do have total replacement coverage so if we lose a building we would be able to to replace that with a total cost but if we lost all buildings at the same time our insurable value is $475 million so that we likely have a higher value than that so that is a concern for us but 20% seems high the rate seems competitive at 4% increase we're still competitive with the rate but the overall annual increase would be a 25% right now and with a higher deductible we're looking at recommending going to market for that line Some of the other coverages are more reasonable, 3% for crime liability and educators' liability. Our auto went up higher.
169We added one more vehicle. That's likely a reason for the larger increase there. From a workers' comp perspective, the rates are set by the state of Wisconsin, so we don't have a lot of impact at all on the rate itself, but the premiums are determined by total payroll that you have, so we have to estimate our payroll for the next year, and what's called the experience modification. That's really our losses over a three-year period. So that is something that we do have some control over, and we really try to have an impact on. Average is one. Our goal is to be under that. and we also are offered a dividend at 15 so getting into the details on that we're estimating a four percent increase in total payroll our mod did go down so that's
170positive uh negative 16 percent that would result in a significant decrease in premium as well and our dividend would remain the same What our approach has been with the experience mod is we have a safety committee. It meets regularly. We do have a strong return to work program that we incorporate a lot of light duty. We will accommodate transportation needs if needed as well. We've also had a lot of discussions with our teachers and our coaches about avoiding some activities that have a higher risk in terms of injury one being athletic competitions between teachers and students I know it's been fun for in the past some grade levels to have you know basketball competition against teachers but that has led to a lot of highly expensive injuries so we encourage other forms of of engagement
171from that standpoint and then also from our coaching standpoint we really emphasize to demonstrate and not participate because that's another high area so those things have really led to some success in that area for us we do have environmental pollution coverage this is the second year of a three-year term this would be most commonly any asbestos or mold if we uncovered that in normal operations and the premium is flat from this year to next We do have cybersecurity insurance. Like I said, they won't even offer us an estimate until 30 days out. This is just from an R&R perspective what they feel could happen at a 25%, but we'll continue to obviously take a look at that, look at some other creative ways to get coverage and provide more information at the next board meeting.
172So I just have a summary document here showing you overall all of our premiums it's an overall reduction of 3% obviously because of the workers comp mainly we're hoping to get this number much lower the next time we do meet but this is where we are today so next steps would be to market the property and get final quotes and then come back to you in May or June for final approval Thank You Kristen Scott had to step out for just a moment are there any questions With some of the pool renovation that we did the last couple years there's been some Environmental issues have been uncovered there. Do we have to engage the environmental policy for that? No, that's something that is covered and because we're causing it by the Improvement itself. It's not
173uncovering it as of you know, we had we dropped something on the floor and asbestos came out and Infected, you know other areas that that's a different circumstance that this would not be a coverage for Other question just not really question but a comment just the cyber security coverage the value of that I think was demonstrated this past year and I just think it's important for us as a board to reflect on that that we did have an incident that was able to be addressed very quickly and with mitigation measures that were able to engage right away Any other questions Kathy? How long do we have liberty for a property? Forever? Four years, okay. And then do they say why 20%? Because they believe that's about 90% of what our actual value is. They base
174it on what would the cost of per square foot of replacement be. And so they just take all of our square foot, multiply it by what, 300? So we have a very detailed report called the Statement of Values. And what that does is that takes each one of your buildings. and it does an evaluation on each one of those. Like what Kristen is saying is we take, we do a calculation, we have different metrics we look at, but for the buildings, and that's the biggest thing because we have, what, 16 buildings? They take the building, divide it by the square footage, it gives you a cost per square foot to reconstruct it. And the cost to reconstruct has gone up, as we all know, inflation. And I would say construction is even more than what
175inflation has been. We're seeing 10% to 15% each year over the last two years, and our increases haven't kept up. But basically, we look at each one of the buildings and say, okay, what should the value be? And so Liberty came in, did that evaluation with their internal metrics. Yeah, they used different insurance evaluations. And one of the things I wanted to say there, too, is that Liberty... is also offering this year to the Elmbrook School District to do a no-charge appraisal on all the buildings. And I'd like to take them up on that and see where they come out. Sometimes that's a double-edged sword because they might come up with higher values. But I think it'll be a good estimation. And we're going to market anyway, so that'll just be one of the indicators.
176So they're saying it's the 20% increase is a 90% of our actual VAT so they were using their established calculator not necessarily physically come out and redo the entire assessment That's correct Okay and then do we have a set depreciation that was set into calculation for our buildings because that's what we're talking about asset depreciation annually That's more of an accounting thing Yeah that's on our financial statements Okay do we have a set for buildings or is it just I'd have to pull the document. No, but we do have. Okay. Yeah, we don't depreciate. We just keep appreciating because we look at the cost to reconstruct. We replace it with something new, and that's the insurance. Okay. Replacement cost. Okay, and then Chubb, is that the only vendor? I know cybersecurity is really hard to
177find. Are they the only? Company no, they were the only one though that offered last year. I believe yeah. Yeah, so there's We can go to the outside market, you know, there's different carriers that are uncomfortable with layering the insurance So our first layer is with our liability carrier. They use Beasley and that gives you the first million dollars of protection We've tried to get that another second layer on top of that and Chubb last year was a really the only one that was interested in doing that We'll go back to all the different carriers. I mean, there's carriers moving in and out of the marketplace quite frequently. But there's still another five to ten carriers that will still do public school districts. And as we know, public school districts is one of the least
178popular for carriers to go after for various reasons. We will for sure have that first million-dollar layer with CIC. There's a possibility that CIC will be offering a second layer, and I like that a lot because you have one carrier then that's doing the full two million. So if we can get them to do that, that's going to be definitely our best option from a premium standpoint and from a coverage standpoint. Thank you. And then what's the timeline for property? July 1st. July 1st. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, and all of this is July 1st. Great questions, Jensen. One quick question I didn't ask from after no meeting that the driver the vehicle you say 38 one more I wonder that related well the cost is related to the A list of drivers which means like
179the driver list is a fixed or is open for all staff in a school district We have to submit a fixed list of drivers to the carrier Okay, so no one else can drive the vehicle if they're not on the list Right if they're not on the list there they cannot we have a process to add them to the list They have to do a physical and several other things So those coaches and who need a drive in are on the list right? Right. Okay other questions I don't have a question but I just wanted to highlight a discussion we had at F&L which really just highlighted while we are experiencing as many of us experience in our own insurance policies a lot of increase in our property piece that is as Christian said offset
180with the workers comp and that is in large part I think due to a lot of the work of your team to try to reduce those costs and create a better safety profile for safety profile and profile for our employees returning to work so just wanted to give kudos that our team continues to find ways to be financially responsible and continue to to reduce costs even in the phase when we would have expected this number to go up significantly and we have that offset this year so i appreciate the work that was done in that regard we needed it this year I'll just add to that this year's going really good. So I sent an email to Chris. No, I'm good with that. I'm good with that. Why did you say that? I'm saying that
181because I want everyone to know we need to just finish strong here. Talk about safety. That's all I ask. I'm surprised they're continuing with us. We're talking about cybersecurity. Oh, workers' company. Spreadsheet. So we're still waiting on those numbers? Is that just to clarify? They won't give us an indication or a quote until 30 days out because they want to see sort of where we are. Just because of the volatility of that marketplace. Yeah other questions Okay, this will be back as you said an action item in May or June depending on when the quotes are Yeah, since we're going to market we might need some more time because the May board meeting is May 9th So that's that's coming up pretty quickly. So we might need Okay, and I think everything else will be
182wrapped up except for the property I know it will but you probably want to see it all at once, right? Yeah. Well, thank you for being here That concludes our discussion items for the evening and brings us to our informational items discussion by exception only is there anything that board members would like to discuss Linda yeah, I'd like to report out on the results of the election Item a spring election results Linda. Yes, we met at 4 0 8 and we confirmed The at-large seat and the area one area three and at large seats there were no registered write-ins and there was only one provisional ballot and this these numbers reflect the provisional ballot is Factored in there Scott Wheeler was for area one with twelve thousand four hundred and four votes pre-thought area three
183had 9,847 votes and Greg Eberhardt had 9,800 votes. The candidates for the at-large seat, Sam Hughes had 9,804 votes and David Irwin had 9,682 votes. these elections were confirmed by the canvas people and that was myself Kathy Lim and Christine VanderBloom Thank You Linda I was there and good work any other discussions by exception items okay hearing none that moves us on to our next agenda item which is the recognition of first Jen Roscoff in her service on the board Jean Thank you tonight I have the Distinct privilege to honor Jen Roscoff for her board service. A few short years ago, I had the opportunity to mentor her. She proved to be a quick study. In the last three years, she has done some amazing work. As Mayor Panto noted, she should be commended for
184the public spiritedness with which she ably serves. We heard several times about her committee service. If you flip to the next slide, please. I won't go through all of that again but I would like to acknowledge that in her tenure of three years on the board she served ably on all four committees and as liaison to the Ellenbrook Parent Network and Leadership Council for 2020 through 2023 I'd like to enumerate the accomplishments that came forward from the Teaching and Learning Committee both with her as a member and under her leadership They're quite extensive this past three years. The K12 ELA curriculum and resource, which came tonight. The CTE curriculum, world languages, social studies, art, AP seminar research, current issues. The 4K curriculum, data science and intelligence, secondary math, K12 digital citizenship, and business and society
185in the launch program. I also want to recognize their leadership in moving 200 plus TLC policies through that committee over the last couple of years 200 policies were reviewed and or revised or created and some of them quite challenging if you think back to the library policy for example of course there's a huge team of highly capable district leaders and staff that support this work, do this work, and bring it forward through committee. I would say that through Jen's leadership this all happened and we are all better off for it. And finally, the Sherrilyn Wilson Center contract. something else that Jen contributed significantly to the effort to analyze and renew that contract we now have a contract for the next five years with a potential for another five-year renewal so in sum in a very
186short period of time Jen came in got up to speed and served the school district of Elmbrook its students family and staff in an incredible manner and for that We are very grateful. Thank you, Jen. We should give her a round of applause. I'm going to open it up to board member comments in just a second, but we do have a plaque here congratulating Jen on her three years of service. It's something you can keep and be very proud of. I just want to say, Jen, I know we debated and we disagreed, and you are always willing to explain, and I could tell you that I've commented. You definitely... I think put in your time and you, I know you put in your time to learn and do things. So that to me, I just
187want to take this opportunity to tell you that you definitely are an invested board member and you know, whatever happened, you know, serving on the board is not an easy job regardless of, you know, disagree or agree. And the immense accountability and the responsibility I know you had and I saw the time that you spent. digging and so to me that was very that's something to learn from so thank you for that and thank you for your time on the board Jen I want to also thank you for your service I do think that the passion that you have for our curriculum is well as straight on this slide but I also want to reflect on the discussions that you and I have had since we both came onto the board together you one month
188ahead of me revolving around data your attention to data you're pushing back on studies data and just ensuring that the proper questions are being asked I also wonder if you might consider a side career in the data science launch strand as a mentor but I do think that that has made us all better as a board it's made me as better as a board member but I do think that that attention to data has been terrific one of the proudest moments that I had as a board member is being able to come to our middle school play to see the recognition that you got this year and To see the beaming smile of your daughter as you were recognized And I do think that that your commitment to the arts is really worthy of recognition
189as well So I really do appreciate your passion for that as well and I also appreciate your willingness as well as consistent messaging of being positive about this district, positive about our educators, and positive about what goes on at Elmbrook. Thank you. I think I knew you even before board. You were heavily engaged with all the kind of community activities, I would say, contribution even before the board. Two meetings, I think teaching and learning, I was serving for one year. and I can tell how much work there, how much heavy. So I respect so much what you have done and the details you provided. I respect so much. And also, we worked together in the F&O committee, and you were always kind of well-prepared and asked those questions in advance, and so much valuable. That
190definitely I think you you have done a lot and deserve all the respects and people may say about you and I wonder you know what are you gonna do next and She's going to Disneyland Jen Roscoff the first time I think I worked with you is on our redistricting committee So I was on the board at the time and you were not and she was a numbers person So when she said I'm running for the board, I thought this is great We had Glenn Allgaier, who's somewhat of a numbers person, too. But you brought that strength and that perspective. And it's been wonderful and a pleasure to work with you on these committees. And certainly your experience as, I think, one of the most valuable things, your experience as a mother. To your kids living
191the Elmbrook experience and bringing your questions, concerns, celebrations to the board, that perspective has just been outstanding. Again, thank you, and I just echo everything that's been said, and it's been wonderful serving with you. Do you have any parting words? Did you think I wouldn't? Okay. All right. I'm going to try to keep this quick, but it won't be. Despite... previous efforts I will try to keep my comments succinct and brief in 2019 my decision to run for the board was motivated by my desire to provide an escalated service to the school district having served our children schools and district and summer volunteers roles I sought to serve our community at the next level impacting decisions for the greater good of our children schools staff and community I appreciate the confidence of our community stakeholders
192in electing me in a very unique time in the spring of 2020. In all honesty, I did not anticipate the level or impact of decisions I would need to make. From opening our schools... in a pandemic to keeping our schools open to 4k to guiding principles to major curriculum changes and improvements okay i didn't participate the curriculum one but that was the only one i anticipated to major policy changes and facilities library and strategy to be honest i am not sure that i anticipated many of these changes or questions or decisions but took on the role to be an advocate for our students family staff and community When I ran I was the only parent besides Scott with students actively engaged in the school district and for me that was a major advantage from asking
193questions with the specific experience to having relationships with staff to connecting with families and being present with experience in the district had a very positive experience in my decision making and sharing his experience with administration and fellow board members and my accessibility to parents students and staff I would like to express my appreciation for the many many emails personal conversations phone calls texts from students parents families community members administrators former bird members and community leadership who have informed my perspective helped me to make informed decisions help guide my analytical approach to decision making I will admit that my response could be improved and I will ask your forgiveness but I have read every email I have weighed every perspective my decisions were based on improving the situation for our students for the individual student for
194our staff with an eye for fiscal conservatism and I believed and do believe that these will serve our community and continue to serve our community to be one of the top districts in the state and in the country I would like to take a moment to thank several people I will start with my original campaign committee of Kevin Lauren Nathan Megan My husband and kids The last three are the reason I ran and why I celebrate the success of our Elmburg education Our oldest is studying at the Copenhagen business school this semester and living her best life while getting a great education before returning to UW-Madison to graduate in 2023. Go Badgers! Nathan graduates this year and it has been a pleasure to watch him succeed in athletics as well as academics and the many
195opportunities he has had access to you. So thank you to Brookfield Central, Breckerts, Marker and staff and the LAUNCH program. We're grateful. Megan will grow up from from WHMS this year watch out for field central her experience and opportunities have exceeded our expectations from theater during covid to music to leadership and host experiences initiated this year at the middle school thank you to that team we are grateful our district is amazing and it yet it is not perfect thankfully because this board and our new board would be bored if it was our district is strong and yet continuously improving because and because our because our world is continuously changing we have to grow and adapt and our district would not succeed or exceed without this adaptation so i'd like to continue my thanks to our
196district leadership for helping us to grow on continue and continuing to adapt to help our students succeed in life college and career so Mark Hanson Kristin Sobocinski Tonya Frederick Chris Thompson Kristy Westphal Kristy Schmid and so many others please forgive me for any omits they are my fault alone Emily Greiber Lisa Rettler Rick Domach Liz Mullaney Jill McDonald Pam Casey Amy McVean Amy Farley Dan Scott Eric Hagan Aaron Koka I thank you for your patience I thank you for my education and I thank you for helping me make better decisions for our community I would also like to thank those who have forged the path before me former board members who have taken up the work and continue to contribute To our community, you know who you are and you know the time advice guidance
197modeling and path you have provided to me I'm grateful and hope you know my contributions have been strengthened and improved by your support I'd like to thank Jean Lambert my mentor. I'm grateful And I'm grateful to my fellow board members. My understanding of issues and decision-making is improved by each of you As a member of this community and with three children in our district, it has been my honor to hear many of the comments and concerns from parents, teachers, and students. I want to thank you for the privilege of serving you if there have been times when I've made mistakes I ask your forgiveness they were never made with impure motive but only in the best interests of our students and community I've tried to act with respect honesty and fidelity to this office of
198an elected board member you've had many significant decisions over the last year and I treated each one with care concern and analysis maybe a spreadsheet or seven and a goal of understanding what is the best interest of our community thank you for the opportunity call mark hansen we met a long time ago and the impact that you've had on our district is bigger than just three years as a board member and i want to say thank you publicly for all that you've done i remember the first time you got a spreadsheet in front of us on an enrollment projection when we had a surge of unexpected enrollments and we needed to figure that out fast and you helped stabilize an entire system because we were growing at a pace that we weren't keeping up with.
199So thank you for that work. And then you took on Elmbrook Parent Network and Leadership Council and helped leaders be leaders. And that legacy is large. So thank you for all that work. Thank you for the impact you've had on our kids, on our community, and all the colleagues that you've touched. Well done. Thank you. We will be celebrating Jen with some brownies. We got brownies after? And Jen. But let's move on to our next agenda item, which is Jen's son honoring him. Behind me on the screen are the board officer positions that Jen's son has had. You'll see that he has been treasurer and clerk. And one of the things... What happens on the board is we look at board officers. There's four. They're voted on by fellow board members. And Glenn Allgaier for
200years and years had been our treasurer. And then he lost in the primary a year ago. And who would be the next treasurer? And Jen Sun was doing a great job as clerk. And one of the things that's so great about Jen's son and his service on the board is just doing whatever he needs. So we ask board members, you know, what committees would you like to be on? And we've been lucky the last two or three years, I think, to be able to give everyone their first choice. But Jen's son has been one of those where he gets his first choice and then like his third or fourth choice. And he just says, it's fine with me. Just put me where you need me. I'm good to go. And when I talked to him.
201Last year about potentially hey, what do you think about running for treasurer? He's like that's where I'm needed if I could step into F&O I'll do it he'd been on the F&O committee and You'll notice here on his committees served assignment. He's been on all four committees. It's I don't know I mean do we collect something for being on the I've only been on two and so as I look at that list and think about the variety of experiences you've had your Fingerprints are on this board the last six years for sure And then the liaison roles, Jen's son certainly has been one of our most popular, gifted and talented parental advisory organization liaisons. It's a tough group. It's a motivated group. It's a very concerned group. He has dealt with those parents' concerns, talking
202to them, working with them, and it's just been wonderful. And then he's had a variety of also relationships with our city representatives with the city of Brookfield and the village of Elm Grove. And again, you heard Mayor Ponto tonight give him some recognition for that. So I remember when Jen's son got elected six years ago, and I thought, this is a great man. And one of the things that makes Jen great in my mind is the fact that he really has the ability to, in the middle of a discussion, sometimes they're emotional discussions, and sometimes it's an issue where... Sometimes I don't know how to vote. Maybe it's something I'm not passionate about or I'm not really sure. This way sounds good, that way sounds good. What way do we want to do it? Jens
203Son has this ability to back out and see the 30,000 foot view and just ask a question that will cause me to back up and just get that big picture view. And he'll say, and it's happened on more than one occasion, many occasions in closed session as we're talking about something, and it might be unclear what action we should take, and he'll ask that question. And you saw it again here tonight when we were talking about amending the meeting minutes. It was a small thing, but I was wondering which way I would vote on that issue. I was undecided. And after Jensen's comments where he just backed up and said, just really matter-of-factly, he's able to look at something objectively. thoughtfully and then make a really great decision and ask great questions. It's a skill.
204As taking over for Glenn Allgaier and the F&O committee years and years treasurer and leading that committee those are big shoes to fill and he stepped right in. We have had a variety of things come through that committee this year and again continuing the process of millions and millions of dollars of improvements to our schools without going to referendum and I say thank you. Again for taking that kind of unspoken objective of the board and making it a reality It's a lot I mean we've got teaching and learning on one side and we've got F&O on the other and you sat through those meetings and it's numbers and it's a lot of spreadsheets and it's a lot of preparation and you've done a great job there and one of my Best memories of Jen's son
205is when he came on the board and it was your first year I believe in your daughter was valedictorian as board members you have the opportunity to present the diploma as they cross the stage and so here's Jen's son as a new it was either first or second year first year on the board and he has the opportunity to greet his daughter after her valedictorian speech crossing that stage and I just saw in his eyes as a father the love and pride in his daughter and her accomplishments and I was really impressed with that. And I know you have a great relationship with her because I don't remember if it was a ticket or an auto accident, but she called you and said, hey, can we keep this secret from mom? Is this being recorded
206right now? I think you already said that in another meeting. But I thought, wow, there's just a level of trust there and that great relationship you had with your kids. And I thought, I need to be, I would like to be a father like that. And as I looked at my young kids in the way that I wanted to be with them when they were in high school. And so again, thank you for being personally for me a great example. And we honor your six years of service. And we've got a plaque, so we've got to line up over here and take a picture. Let's give Jen a round of applause. I'm like Jennifer. I've never been on a committee with her. But I've been on committee. Just CLE. Oh CLE went first year you
207were quiet then I don't remember that CLE well in CLE I don't I'm sorry I don't recall that but Jen said I remember your first year we were on F&O together and this is something a lot of people don't know but before this building was built One of the things that Jensen insisted on at F&O was that we look at every single property that was available and up for sale. And, you know, it wasn't a popular thing to do because that costs money when you go around in time to go around to find every single property that was available. You know assess it and we did a really thorough thing, you know, is there parking? What what condition is it in how much? Would we have to invest in HVAC and all that that was
208a very very thorough decision That we took at F&O and it was because Jen's son insisted we have to look at everything to make sure that we're making the right decision and the one that is most financially stable, so we can thank him that not just because we have this building here it's because it was the best option and it was thoroughly thoroughly examined before that was even decided so i really enjoyed being on the committees with you and i agree with what scott said you always come up with something from a different lens or a different view when you know, especially in the committee meeting so I thank you for your service and their friendship too and another thing that I want to thank you for is that When they had the China lights
209and things of that sort Jen son gave everybody tickets so everyone got to see and they were complimentary and I want to know that your inner spirit there was very well appreciated by my nieces of my family, too So you go above, you know, the whole community thing. And I appreciate that. Good luck. Kathy? Well. You're a great seat mate as a new board member and your feedback in between and before and after meeting, especially my first six months. Your feedback and your encouragement and just giving feedback of, that was a good question, I never thought of that. And giving me feedback of appreciation of new perspective. And so you're a very kind person, you're very kind and you're very gracious. And I know your ability to step back and kind of reconsider, that is
210I think learning moment for all of us, especially things that we're passionate for. But I appreciate you being my seat mate, my first year. completed my first year and your little encouragement here and there and confirmation affirmation of things that is very much appreciated more than you realize so thank you for serving for six years and i know it's a not an easy task so thank you for your service we're sure jim we've only had the pleasure of serving together on fno but i would comment that fno is finance in operations your perspective when it comes to operations is something I've always appreciated and as Scott's already said your ability to look from a higher viewpoint to really understand what processes are at play what we should be looking at is something that I've always
211appreciated about your service here on the board that big picture look I think is something that's been of tremendous benefit to us here on the board but what I'm gonna miss is the excitement that you would show when the students on my left would go over things or when students would come to the podium accomplishments and the questions that you would ask and the sheer joy that you would express at what they had done and I think that's something that should be saluted and it's just a role model for me as a board member to always cheer success the way that you have I think it's wonderful I'd also be remiss if I didn't comment that I think that You've done an important service for our community the last six years and really trailblazing a
212path to show that Every family should feel included in this district and should feel included at the leadership level as well Please don't underestimate the contribution that you've made to the community to do that And I think our board reflects that even right now Thank you I'll be brief and just echo and repeat all the comments that have been made. But Jinson, we only had the opportunity to serve on FNO this year and your leadership has been strong. I think you have a committee that asks a lot of questions and I may contribute a lot of those and then you'll come through and just summarize it and add another either set of questions or just sort of summarize really the crux of that issue and I have such an appreciation for you to be able
213to sift through the many questions and discussions we have. highlight the ones that haven't been addressed and I always find I would wish I had asked that question and to be able to kind of summarize here's really the decision that and two sides what we need to look at and so I really appreciate your perspective your ability to kind of pull things together and give us that sort of here's why and how I'm making that decision and so I really have learned from that and appreciate that and I need to continue to get better at that this governing from a higher level and really looking at these issues that level is something that I sincerely respect I will continue to learn from and very much appreciate you'll be missed on this board significantly so thank
214you for your service Thank you Jensen for your service these last six years I too have appreciated your view of the higher level and the succinct questions that you ask that take us right to the heart of things. We will miss you and your service to this board and I appreciate having known you and worked with you and to be able to call you a friend and colleague. Jensen, do you want to go before or after Mark? Wow, way more than I thought. I'm humble. A lot to see. I have to say, it's close to 9.30. I don't want to take too much time. I don't have a formal speech like you have, so you set a bar in there. Six years seems like quick. Time flies. No wonder, six years. I remember when I
215run for this position, and people questioned me about my motivation. simple because my kids did so well and I feel like I have some value to contribute. I think that's and of course, you know, no matter who or which school district you always have room to improve and you know academic in operation everything I think I feel like You know, I was doing science and I was trying to chemistry physics and math and computer science and business, you know administration But I think the education is my passion. So I thought I could contribute from my perspective, from my experience, my background. So through six years, honestly, I learned more than I give, I ought to say, from fellow board member, from community member, from what I do, what I learn. As every one of you
216know, you will have a lot of prep work to do for the meeting. That's a learning process. And I think I feel like I went through another graduate school through this kind of board service, which truly I value that. It's not just a contribute, I gain a lot. So I remember first year or two or three or four, Mark mentioned that I use excuse, I'm new board member. So, because I feel a little embarrassed because I did ask a lot of questions. I think for a reason. Some of those questions, if I didn't know, I'm assuming fellow community members, they don't know either. So I thought when I asked those questions, even though I know the answer from the committee, I still ask because that's how get other people maybe educated versus... Talk about the
217transparency or Robert Stamm, kind of like a name used to be something people, often people question about it. So I think he was actually so sorry if I took too much time, air time, because seven more board members each take three questions, think about 21 questions on how much time I'm gonna take, right? So I feel like I was kind of. my privilege to kind of answer so many questions. Now I try to be quiet and but I still ask if there's questions that I have to, I want to ask. So really I feel like it's an opportunity for me to learn and contribute as well. But I feel like people, I enjoy, I want to come to this meeting every time. I think it's not the subject and also people because you know that
218right when you go to work you want to say who is your next to you no you're next to me so I want to come to this meeting because I feel like you know though we have differences and And we have to agree with disagree and because everyone's background is different, viewpoint is different. But end of the day, I felt like, okay, you know what? What is the best for our students? So not my ego, my way or my decision is I represent for people. I kind of wait and say, hey, half and half, it was a pandemic, time as example, mask or not mask. I'm not saying I just go one way and say, you know what? We should cover for both sides, for both hours, and see how we're going to do on
219that. So I truly appreciate fellow board members, everyone. I don't want to go to each of you because I know you want to go to home. But I especially thank Christy, and I mentioned many times, you're amazing. I would say you are almost perfect. I don't know, I couldn't find anything I could say you could improve. I don't know, I couldn't. I thought, you know, what, I felt, so often I talk to people and say, you know, this is how I want to have. I remember, you know, Allison, when she was in the board by me, I asked her to correct my pronunciation. I say, if you correct one, I give you a hug or something like that. Because I welcome any, any criticize or anything and feedback. And I felt like people are the
220same way. Not necessarily in an active way, I feel like it's a positive way. So I try to think what you could do better. I couldn't think anything. So you're amazing. You're professional, patient, kind, and accurate in everything. I don't know how much I can name it. And also, one of my challenges, often I forgot to press this button when I talk. Aaron and Eric in there always. Give me special attention say he turned this one off for me. So I just but you know That's little tiny things help me a lot. You know, I come to this meeting. I have no worry because of people support support us so And also and it's readers. I know over the years I Managed people I hire people I provide a feedback, you know those I Went
221through some crisis saying my staff or whoever I think that happened That's real life and I'd be admit you know what people make mistake And I think point is how we're gonna learn from this mistake Or how we're gonna learn from this failure or something like that, so there's no such things. I need a diff defend for myself. I just say, hey, let's figure out what happened and how we're going to do better, how we're going to avoid that happen again, again, again. So I respect those administrators and over the last few years, the pandemic, tech glitches and all those, that can happen. But what's important to me is, hey, how are we going to avoid that happen again? What we learned from this. So again, that's a learning for me, too. So I respect
222those administrators and Chris Thompson and Christine, you know, F&O. The reason why I feel like it's not easy, I would say comfortable because of those administrators. Christine did everything. Tanya, the academic side, and Mark Hanson, you know, everything. And so once you're in the place, we have no worry about it. operations, anything happen, you message out and make people say aware of those and here and there. So keep us aware all the time and very, very helpful, because that gives us peace of mind that you're taken care of and we trust you. You are able to take care of it. So for those committees, I mean, teaching and learning, of course, you're leaning on that with your passion on that too. Sally, work with. Linda, we often have differences in there too. But again, like
223you said, I'm kind of a little high level, maybe a little higher than a lot of things I thought like 50-50, and then you know what? As long as it's not going to have a huge impact, I mean, I want to work with Ventriloquia. I'm a team player, just like a give and take or end of the day consent, use your word, consent on something. Because there's no way. everything is going to fit what I want. I want this much, but the reality is this. So that's what I learned from this committee because my own business, I'm a decision maker. I do this. Now I work with a team, seven members. How are we going to work together to create something for our schools? And I often talk to you, too, and I know that
224because we have what they call a quorum, you know, We have some kind of sensitivity that when we talk to a committee member, we need to be careful not to talk too much or oops or something like that. So that's for purpose. It's not something we don't want to talk to each other, but I think it's by law we shouldn't talk things like that. So, Scott, I remember when you were the president, I gave you feedback. I don't want to say what feedback I gave to you, but I took it. Now I feel like that's something, you're open, I mean again, just mark and ask yourself too. I remember tonight when we see a celebration, right, of four areas, as a school representative, we're talking about, I remember when we talk about the students come
225here. update for last month everything they talk about a sports in here and here say how much time you spend at school eight hours or something yeah eight hours how much time is spent on the academic side well eight hours I say there's nothing in there why And then you make that happen, right? The academic 4A, right? Academic arts and activity and athletics. So make that happen. So I see you're open for those suggestion, recommendation. I'm so happy because that's how I call the teamwork. As a board member, of course, we are responsible for things that we need to do, but we wanna also support the teamwork. we're working with. I mean community member here, I mean tonight, I mean just like that since pandemic I think more people here actually I was excited because
226I see people care about what we do here, what we're meeting about, what we're talking about. I think that's something very exciting to me too. It's not a not bad thing because people come here and talk means they care about it. Last year, you know when they say well not last year maybe December the time when we have to decide to say continue or not I feel like You know, my kids went out from the school as they did so well because of school district and I'm feel like little detached so I feel like You know other community member because in broke schools. There are so many talent parents and community members. They're definitely qualified as evidence here to great people gonna join the team so I feel like it's a very good finish with
227qualified talents to join the board member and join the board and I'm very confident about our schools I think we do well though we have room to improve but I think we will do well thank you everyone fellow board members, community members, staff, and students, and everyone. Of course, my family, and that's kind of Chinese way, usually don't talk about too much about a family appreciation or something. I said that today. Thank you. Thank you. Final word, Mark? Sure. Remember the first time we met when you were contemplating running for the board and your questions that you first asked me were all focused on kids and you never lost that theme your entire time. So thank you for being so focused on what's best for kids. And thank you for helping us be better every
228single time. The questions you asked that have been referenced by a number of board members helped us be better. So thank you for that. It's been great to get to know you and wish you the best on the next chapter. Thank you. Let's give another round of applause for Jan and Jen. Thank you. Mark, superintendent report. Thanks. The topics that are in the superintendent report have been covered at a couple different points already tonight, but I do want to direct your attention to the success that our students had with the Herb Kohl Foundation Awards. We also referenced the Speed Skater Championships, and then also we have a Principal of the Year from Mr. Farley, so congratulations to all of those folks. I do want to also thank the Brookfield Elementary team, Emily Greiber, McKenna Ellis,
229Lisa Rettler, and Tanya Frederick. for hosting another legislative visit today to see our literacy program, which is catching the attention of a number of different public policy makers. Representative Cindy Duco, who is Western Waukesha County, and Representative Joel Kitchens, who is Door County-ish, he chairs the Assembly Education Committee. They spent three hours at Brook El today watching the work that we're doing in literacy. So thank you to everybody that helped make that happen. Informing public policy is part of our role, and we're bending the curve around early literacy. So thank you to that team. That concludes my report. Thank you. Any questions for Mark? We have a motion to adjourn. Yes, I'll move to you, Jen. Second. Okay, motion and a second. All those in favor of adjourning, please say aye. Aye.