October 8, 2025 FPS School Board Meeting

001CHRIS JERRAM, Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the Franklin Board of Education meeting for Wednesday, October 8, 2025. The meeting has been properly posted. Can we get a roll call, please? Yes, Mrs. Yank? Here. Mrs. Sapersky? Here. Mr. Sprague? Here. Dr. Kahn? Here. Mrs. Larson? Here. And I'm here. Great. And Mrs. Witkowski is excused. Thank you. And can we stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, please? 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. All right, thank you. All right, I'm looking for a motion to approve the agenda. So moved. Second. All right, motion was made by Mrs. Sapersky, seconded by Mrs. Yank. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Thank you. Forest Park

002Middle School presentation. Mrs. Larson. Yes. I had the opportunity to meet with Mrs. Taylor, our newly married principal. And what a trooper she is. Her wedding was right before the, like, on Saturday and school began on Saturday. Monday. So she's either a glutton for punishment or a real trooper. But I had the opportunity to meet with her. I had the opportunity to visit the cafeteria where I saw all the kids engaged in the activities that you're going to be talking about tonight. So it just put a big smile on my face. It was fantastic. I'm looking forward to my grandchildren getting to go to the middle school. So it's my pleasure to introduce Mrs. Taylor and her group and they're going to talk about engagement at the middle school. A couple things just to wrap

003up. All right. Hi, everyone. I'm Jenna Taylor. I'm going to let our student services team introduce themselves and their role. I'm Ellen Montanaro. I'm one of the school counselors. I've got seventh grade this year. Bernadette Van Lith, another school counselor, and I work with sixth grade this year. And I'm Mindy Greco, and I'm one of the other counselors, and I work with eighth grade this year. All right. Good to go. So our board presentation this year is around our yonder pouch practice and how that partners with the work we're doing as a building around social emotional learning. In particular, self-management is a really big focus for the middle school this year. So we're going to talk a little bit about how we arrived at this point and some of our data that supports the directions

004we took with our yonder practice. And then really about how self-management has been the anchor of our work this year in helping middle schoolers. gain those skills in management to be able to have conversations with their peers, interact appropriately with others, and have skills to be able to manage themselves throughout the school day. So just some data. So what you have that I passed out are the Yonder pouches. They're the cell phone pouches we use with students. There is one magnet there. that you guys can pass around if you just want to kind of see how they work. We get all students in and out in four minutes or less every day using this practice. But we know a part of the practice really also has to be not just a practice for cell phones,

005but what we're doing with kids on the learning side of things. So just in September, compared to last year, if we're looking at data on log entries alone, we had five bully reports last year in the month of September, zero this month in 25-26. 32 social media-related conflicts in the month of September last year. Zero reported social media conflicts this year. Improper tech use, we had 25 improper uses of Chromebooks or phones last September. This month, we had six. So what does that all mean and why do we want to celebrate that? First of all, that's a huge celebration for our school because the more time we can focus on how to use proper technology, then we have more time back for kids to be social and interact in positive ways with one another. So

006it's really important because our engagement goal is around students caring about each other's feelings. The first graph right below that box is our overall score for... um, excuse me, average score for students in the fall, which was a 3.44 for students, um, in my school care about each other's feelings. That's a really big deal for middle school. It's a huge focus to get kids to really put their attention towards others in a positive way and get them to care about others. The other thing that's a huge celebration for our school is our overall net promoter score in the fall was a 51.62. For net promoter, you're looking for a score over 50 to be good or excellent in your community. Students' overall score, 6th, 7th, and 8th, was a 51.62. which are really huge celebrations.

007Today we did a root cause with our staff at our grade level meetings around why are we seeing so much success, and a lot of teachers pointed to the culture and environment in our building. It's very different. One, because of the yonder practice, but also because of the work that our counselors are doing to build skills with kids so that they can have conversations and manage themselves. The other goal areas we're working on as a staff is regularly celebrating success. And then our third engagement goal with families is I understand what my child should know and be able to do. This work that we're doing really is around parents asking and wanting resources for at home to help with technology. Now that we have a practice at school, the questions have been, what can I

008do at home? What are the supports that we can try in our home environment? So being able to communicate that is a part of our engagement goal. So we're hitting it. students, staff, and family, and it all links to self-management. All right, I'll jump in. So from a student services perspective, when we were introduced to the Yonder practice, we were honestly very excited because we saw it as such an opportunity to tie in just everything that we... do and focus on with kids to this practice. Can I have you go to the next slide, actually? Thank you. You guys are probably familiar with this. DPI puts forth five big competencies that they want kids to be learning in that social-emotional sphere. Just like we want kids to learn math and reading and writing and critical

009thinking, we also want them to learn self-awareness, self-management, relationship skills, social skills, and responsible decision-making. There is such a... natural and strong correlation between self-management skills and our yonder practice because so much of what kids do to self-regulate is with their phones and with technology. And you see that, you know, if a kid comes into the lunchroom and they're... Feeling real anxious about where to sit. What are they going to do? They're going to go on their phone and kind of hide behind their phone. Or what do I do if I'm fighting with a friend? Well, I'm going to go on my phone. Or what do I do if I'm feeling really down and I, rather than talk to someone, I'm going to listen to music on my phone. So there was such a strong

010connection between the way kids were using their technology and the skill of self-management that we just saw it as a real opportunity to lean in. Self-management is all those things you think about with managing yourself. my emotion management, my impulse control, goal setting, planning. All of those things are things that we want to teach kids at a universal level. And self-management, just like any other skill we're teaching kids in schools, we want them to have a really strong... universal tier one introduction to those skills. So we think about what are we doing at a tier one level for self-management. And we also have tier two, just like, you know, you'd have a small group for math to maybe focus in on a concept. You know, we have small groups for self-management. Just like you might

011have a reading intervention and work one-on-one with a kid and that skill, we have those one-on-one tier three interventions for self-management. But because this is a school-wide practice, we felt really strongly that we need strong tier one universal skill building. So we have things like our advisory lessons through Second Step. We've got our zones of regulation. We are teaching our teachers how to teach self-management for their kids. So everything's kind of at universal level. But we were most excited, I think, to implement something during lunch because lunch is where we saw most things happen with phones, right? That's when kids got so excited they took the phone out and then they just disappeared. So knowing that phones were going to be going away and we wouldn't have them at lunch, we started to build, you

012know, what skills do we want to teach them and how are we going to do that? And we've seen some really incredible things. So I'll let Bernadette take the next one. Okay, so here we just have some pictures of some different lunch activities that are happening. Kids getting outside at recess, providing a lot of different recess equipment to get them out there and active and playing. Games have become very popular. You'll see in just a second we kind of have daily themes. It was kind of going to be like one of our Friday things, but it became so popular that they kind of make their way out every day and kids will ask for them if they're not there. So those are just some pictures highlighting. And you can go to the next slide. So

013based on everything you've heard kind of so far, like us seeing the opportunity to be able to use lunch as a time to help students. interact and figure out how to talk to each other again and engage in different type of activities that they weren't used to before when they had their phones. We came up with some different daily themes for lunch. So Mind Monday really encourages students to work together and use their brains and do some thinking. So it's a variety of different things like rebus puzzles or picture find, picture hunt, spot the difference types of things. Tool Tuesday is when we can kind of highlight one of those self-regulation tools that they could add to their tool belt. So every Tuesday there's one put up there and it explains to the students how

014to do it and also importantly why it works or how it helps so they can also understand. Our Wildcat Wednesdays are really about building community in our school and kind of having and promoting a positive culture. So we highlight different things like gratitude or kindness types of challenges, like today was do a favor for someone and pick up some trash in the lunchroom. It also coincides with our blue shirt days when we have the first Wednesday of the month as blue shirt days where we are highlighting and promoting kindness in our school. We highlight that at lunch then on Blue Shirt Wednesdays. Talk Together Thursday really just gives them the opportunity to interact with one another and talk to each other again. So we provide a lot of different type of discussion prompts, pictures, questions,

015would you rather this or that, just to give them some things to talk about. And then Fun Friday, like I mentioned before, you know, games was going to be a large part of that. We also did some trivia. And coming up this Friday, we have some colored pencils and things that we're going to bring out with some bookmarks for kids to kind of color in and then be able to keep. So just a wide variety of things to get them, you know, interacting and stay engaged and learn some things along the way. So we thought it could be really fun if you sampled a little bit of what a week might look like. So we have some challenges for you. and I have some other props and things we'll need at certain points. But one

016of our, actually our first Mind Monday was to have them work together with someone near them, and we provide some reminders, again, about what working together should look like and sound like. But also they needed to work together with someone near them. category we gave them first was animals and come up with an animal that starts with each letter of the alphabet. So for example, A, aardvark, B, bear, so on and so forth. So we'll give you a little time to also engage with someone near you. This was completely my idea. And this family said, are we really going to make them do this? I said, yes, they will love to do this and engage. We brought prizes for encouragement, just like sometimes we need to with the students. They do love when that comes

017out. So please, take some time. Thank you. Necco wafer. Oh, good one. Okay, thank you we appreciate you You may not have gotten as far but We did have some students come and have a hard time when they got to like Y, X. So then it became really interesting. We have like a microphone in the lunchroom. So some kids were able to come up with it and they use like Y for yellow to start with like a description of, you know. So it's just really cool to have everybody then kind of engage together when we get stuck on some of the tough letters. So next slide. Okay, then for Tool Tuesday, as you can see up there when I described earlier, it explains what it is, but also why you should probably try it and

018why it might help you and work for you. So Ms. Taylor passed out the infinity breathing or like the figure eight breathing that. This one shouldn't take quite as long, but you can go ahead and do a little practice and tracing of that, but just really helping the students know and understand how breathing could be a really simple technique you can do anywhere and really easily starting in the middle. And then as you trace on one side, the good deep breath in, kind of pause in the middle. And then as you trace the other circle, it's the deep breath out just to make sure you're getting a good deep breath in and also out. Okay, so Wildcat Wednesday, we got into the... pumpkin spice latte mood, I guess. And for Wednesday in October, for our

019blue shirt, we also did some thanks-a-latte. So you also have one there that you are welcome to fill out and pass along to a peer, a family member. You can send them over to the school if you want us to deliver it to anyone at school. But we did ask students, again, to thank someone. And they could either deliver it to the person themselves, give it to us, and we could deliver it. And some of them also did get posted. But just, again, about our community and how we can support and do positive things. Okay, this is some more participation, if you're willing, even though she gave you all a prize already. Some talk together Thursdays. Again, we have some tips about, you know, having conversations. But can you talk and maybe caption or tell

020a story about these? Or another one that you might even do is, can you relate to any of those pictures for some reason right now in your life? That might be easier. So if you want to humor us a little bit, we do also accept any volunteers who would like to share. Create a caption. Well, the person on the left looks like my children every time I ask them to do something at home. Yeah, I can see that. That's good. I'm sure the dog on the right is how you look to them. Very good. Thank you. I was going to say the person on the left is me because we just had our seventh grandchild born and I'm the babysitter. Oh. And that's seven under the age of four. Yeah. So that's the way I

021look sometimes. Great. Thank you. The dog looks like my kids when they watch K-pop Demon Hunters. And then fun Friday, we have some trivia that we put up there. So if anybody would like to answer any trivia questions, you are more than welcome to shout something out. This was a fun one to do with the kids because they were really eager to participate. Okay, I can tell you in sixth grade, the one that they could not answer, they were able to, again, as a whole class, answer all of them except for history. Who is known as the father of medicine and is famous for an oath that doctors still follow today? That stumped them. One, two, three. Who has an answer? Hippocrates. Yeah, great. Thank you so much. We're really putting you on the spot.

022And I just want to talk about a few things that I have personally seen at lunch since we have been technology free. As the eighth grade counselor, it was the biggest challenge for them, I would say, because they've had technology at lunch for the last two years. And so prior to school starting, I had a mom call me, and she was really worried because her son did use his phone to self-regulate. And she admitted sometimes he would sneak it in the bathroom and be texting her and being like, I need to be picked up, and I'm really stressed out. So we had come up with a plan. I'm like, can he always email me? If he lets his teacher know, he'll definitely come to my office, make the phone call, I'll give him the privacy.

023And then she also said how he hides behind his phone at lunch. Like, he's not always great with friends, and she was worried about what would happen. I am so excited to say, first of all, he has not had to come down at all. And she called me and she said he told me he has had a couple situations where he was able to self-regulate by himself and stay in class. And then I was able to tell her he was one of the biggest participants. They have Connect Four tournaments every day, or they play Uno, or they go and play Four Square. So it has been really heartwarming to see that. I had another mom tell me that her daughter said, don't you tell my friends. I can't admit this. It's not cool. She's like,

024but I like the Yonder pouches. She's like, it's really nice to actually be talking and I feel a lot less stressed out. So that was really heartwarming to hear. And then a last one was someone I was kind of worried about because I saw that he did use his phone to kind of fit in. And he is the biggest participator in any of the trivia questions. His whole friend group will come up to me if I don't have the answers up and they're whispering to me and asking. And if they don't do that, they go out and play tag. think there's any rules to it. It's kind of an odd game of tag, but they're having fun and they're laughing. So that is what I personally have seen, and there's a lot of stories like

025that. And then we have some testimonials from the kids themselves. What is your favorite thing about not having phones and screens at lunch and recess? Being able to interact with other classmates and individuals and having a large variety of games and activities to choose from. Can you tell me what's your favorite thing about not having phones and screens out at lunch and recesses? I think it's pretty awesome that we can communicate with our friends and peers from other schools and our classmates. And we have a lot of varieties of games to play. Can you tell us what your favorite thing about lunch is? I think my favorite thing about lunch is hanging with friends and playing games with them instead of always on their phone and not seeing them actually try to look at something.

026Can you let us know what your favorite thing about not having phones and screens at lunch is? Probably talking to my friends. If people were on their phones and they were asking something, they would be like... Not listening. And if a staff tells the rest of the table that you have to do this, they won't probably listen to it or be prepared. You can skip to the end. I got the sad face. That's okay. You can just keep going. Yeah. Yeah. That's... Hold on. What is your favorite thing about being phone free at lunch? So that's what we have tonight for our board presentation. We're really proud of our students. It's been a very different environment in the middle school so far this year in a very positive way. So I welcome anyone who wants

027to come over for lunch or outside at recess to come hang out with us and talk to our kids. It's been really great to be a part of, and we're looking to continue with our success with SEL and our yonder practice. Any questions or comments? Mary, please. So this is. Not pertaining to this, but I just have to tell you. So I was at a Doors Open event a couple of weeks ago and ran into an art teacher, Mr. Korb, and I did email Mrs. Taylor about this. But I'd never met him before, but I just happened to eavesdrop and heard him say he was a teacher. So, of course, I'm immediately listening because he's led me some teachers. And he said, Forest Park. And I'm like, okay, now I've got to talk to him.

028And he unsolicited, I didn't ask him, he's like, administration, so supportive, so wonderful. These yonder pouches, such a transformative thing. The office staff, I mean, he was just going on and on about just how... thrilled he is to be back in the district i think he was at robinwood and then went somewhere else for a number of years and now he's back he said apparently his mom and an aunt i think were long-term educators in the district as well but he was just glowing with his comments and his feedback and i just had to give you guys a shout out because again unsolicited he he was was so appreciative of everything uh at the middle school thank you I gave it with no directions. Did you figure it out, Anne? No, I can't get my

029phone. And my phone actually isn't in there, but no, it won't. I don't know if they need a demonstration. I'll give you. I can't get a phone. Oh, there she goes. Get them in and out for a minute. Green means. Green is good. Green means good. Put it down on the magnet, and then if you just push it. Oh, well, look at that. So we get kids out in formats or less every day. I guess the real bulk of our work is around self-management because this isn't a solution to the problem. And clearly with our data, we're doing a really good job with that. Awesome. I'll take your yonder pouches. Thank you. Unless your phones are in them. Thanks, John. Anybody else have any questions, comments? No, thank you, everyone. Appreciate it. Mrs. Larson, do

030you want to get a picture with your group? Yes. Don't get me out of the way. She's kidding. There's no question. It's your school. Some pretty impressive data. All right, we'll move on to item five, WASB Honor Roll Recognition. And Mr. Thompson, and while he's coming up here, I'll just add that Mr. Mataszewski came to me. when we were at Ascension last for our breakfast for Saber Business Alliance last year and said how can we how can we work together and he had a he had something he wanted to work together with and administration got to it quickly and That's the type of that's the type of partnership. We're really proud of and we really want is our community to be together and to work together to to provide positive opportunities for students, so Mr..

031Thompson has some has some people to recognize, but thank you for everybody for being here Yeah, thank you So what I've kind of noticed with this young generation is they're very I guess, choosy in the experiences that they want to do. And I think it really is a testament to the entire district and all the ACP work. And they kind of come into me and they're like, I want to do this experience because I've researched it and I want to be able to kind of do something that speaks to going through a nursing assistant, becoming a CNA or whatever it is. They're kind of making these choices in a manner that's like showing a real high level of thought behind it. So that just speaks to everybody's work, and I think it's really working really

032well. And I think we have several organizations today that kind of embody that kind of relationship that Mike kind of talked about and kind of building the community. I guess the first one that I'll kind of recognize is we have Shannon here from the Franklin Fire Department. And I think it was January 2024, Brad Pulaski, Lieutenant, kind of came to me and wanted to kind of start an intern program with the fire department. And we were able to have three students. kind of go through that this past year, had great experiences, and it was great to kind of work alongside him because it wasn't just like... We turned over the kids he would kind of you know proactively kind of reach out and we reached out to some other local cities that kind of had

033programs and kind of gave some resources and kind of came up with a program that kind of you know was more than just them kind of just their shadowing and they got a lot of great experiences from it and overall it was really a great opportunity for students who have kind of an interest and I think that we're seeing young people have an interest in like public service, which is really good. And I think that kind of speaks to the next organization. The Health Department had a couple of students there as well. I know they kind of partnered and we have Megan, Lauren. And Ellen here tonight from the health department. And they were able, two students, to kind of work alongside them, learn a little bit about public health, kind of how an organization

034such as Volition kind of operates. And I think that sometimes the students don't necessarily see what they're going to get that day from it. But I know that later on, they'll definitely reflect and realize kind of what they got from those experiences. Because they're getting to work alongside adults. And they're getting to kind of just see all those kind of things. And they don't know how much they're learning in a day. but they really kind of are. And I've kind of seen that firsthand in what I do all the time, is the confidence level in young people really changes when they have these experiential learning opportunities. And it's just really amazing to kind of see all the work that everyone's doing kind of come together and support the young people on their journeys. So I

035guess the last organization that we have here, we have one that's not here, and I can kind of just real speak quickly to what they've kind of done, is Ascension. And we have Jonathan and Amy here from Ascension, and they've been absolutely phenomenal to work with. I mean, we've tried so many different things, and I'm somebody that's always trying something new. For our nursing assistants last fall, I kind of went to Jonathan and said, hey, how can we make this a better service for our families? Because it's a lot. The requirements, there's a lot to go through and a lot that you have to do. So we were able to set up an orientation evening at Ascension where students could come and get the TB test there, walk across the street to the facility, and

036then we had, like, some tours and other things kind of set up. And then we kind of had the college come. our partner from WCTC, and we did orientation that evening as well. So all that happened within a couple hour window, and families left feeling that they had a lot of things kind of checked off because we all are very busy. And it's something that I can just imagine that like the list of the email coming out is just a lot for everybody, and just trying to make that as easy as possible and provide a service for them. And we're very thankful to Ascension for... providing that. And you know, there's been numerous job fairs they come to anytime I reach out. I think I just looked at our data and they have the most

037CNAs of any organization that we have as well. So overall, it's been just a great partnership to kind of see grow and... look forward to trying new things and kind of seeing where it kind of goes into the future. There was one organization that was not able to make it, CR Industries, kind of a small kind of organization that Rich Ballinger kind of worked with us and... It's always challenging to find places that'll take students for welding and engineering. And they were able to take a student for both this past year as youth apprentices. And being a local small business kind of located over by the airport, they were able to have students do a lot of different things and see a lot of things that maybe they wouldn't get to see if they're at

038working somewhere large, manufactured organization. So that's kind of been great to kind of see. Hopefully they'll be able to get some more youth apprentices in the future. It's just, you know, sometimes smaller business and as someone leaves it's the turnover battle sometimes a little bit but that was a great partnership that I wanted to recognize and I certainly will get over there to kind of provide him a certificate in person and kind of get some photos and we'll get that kind of shared with everyone too so I get this I guess at this time we'll have everyone kind of come up we'll take some photos and unless there's any kind of questions for anyone myself or anyone thank you everyone yeah thank you no it's very beneficial for our first time so people know Two

039of them are actually going to college now to pursue this career. And our third one is now a senior. They're actually undergoing shoulder surgery, but they're chomping at the bit to get back here second semester. So it's been very positive for us, and hopefully we'll have far, far, far more masks at Franklin for us. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. We're so proud to hear that one. All right. Thank you. Yay, public health. Yes, thank you. We'll also express our thanks for having the students with us. It's been wonderful. We've been honored to work with them through Volition of Income, so now seeing them infuse their skills and strengthening the public health workforce. has been nice and civic connection and community connection has been built through it as well so yay the win-win

040so thank you all um and i think there was just one approved last night there was yeah great thanks andy see you later We'll move on to community comment. Participants under this agenda item must be residents of Franklin Public School District or parents, guardians of Franklin Public School District students must state for the record their full name and address and must limit their statements to three minutes with a maximum of 15 minutes for any and all comment. If the community comment is related to an agenda item, the board may respond to that comment either at the end of the community comment session or during the discussion of that agenda item. The board may not discuss a comment or question that does not relate to an agenda item. Board policy administrative rules 8300. I have one

041person that signed up ahead of time, but I know there might be others that wish to go, so we'll ask if they want to participate after that. But first, Joey Marchand, please. Joey Marchand, 8164 South Legend Drive. My daughter Lillian attends the 18-21 program. As many of you may recall, I sat before this board two years ago to address a serious safety issue involving my daughter Lily and her school transportation through Rightway. It pains me deeply to be here again raising similar concerns, concerns that I feel remain unresolved and that continue to put my daughter's safety at risk. Most recently, there have been multiple troubling incidents. The bus has driven past Lily at her designated pickup location without stopping or returning. As a result, I had to find a way to get her to her

042program. On several occasions, she has been dropped off at home without an adult present at the drop-off site despite explicit instructions to both her teacher and Heidi Engel that this should never happen. And then there's the black unmarked van which has been picking up and dropping off students without prior communication to parents, teachers, or district transportation staff. How am I supposed to feel safe or confident when these basic safety measures aren't being met? I recognize that Rightway as a transportation contractor plays a role in these failures. But as a project manager myself, when a subcontractor falls short, the responsibility ultimately lies with me. It's my duty to ensure that expectations are clear, communication is strong, and standards are met. Likewise, the safety of these students is not just Rightway's responsibility, it is this school district's

043responsibility. These are our students, this is our district, and these are our families. I would like to offer a few suggestions to the board on this matter. Implementing a GPS tracking for all vehicles transporting students, like the other tracking that is available on regular whiteway buses. This would help ensure that an adult is always present at drop-off. Using clearly marked school buses, not unmarked vans. Students and families deserve to know who is transporting them. and providing consistent drivers for students in the 18 to 21 program. Many of these students rely on routine and predictability. Familiar faces are not just a comfort, they are a safety measure. Mahatma Gandhi once said that the true measure of a society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members. And I would offer that the same

044measure, that the true measure of this school board is how it chooses to protect and support its most vulnerable students. I urge you to take meaningful steps to ensure that these safety concerns are being addressed, not just for my daughter, but for every child entrusted in your care. Thank you. Thank you. All right, are there others that wish to comment? All right, thank you. I will move on. I'm looking for a motion to approve the consent agenda. So moved. Second. Motion was made by Mrs. Larson, seconded by Dr. Kahn. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Thank you. School board calendar, the key communicators meeting is next Wednesday, October 15th at Forest Park Middle School at 5. And there is a regular Board of Education meeting Wednesday, October 22nd, 2025 at the ECC at 6,

045and also November 12th at the ECC at 6, and a Board Policy Committee meeting Monday, November 3rd, 2025 at the ECC at 2 p.m. will move on to district administrator update dr. Bennett please all right thank you and good evening I know Forest Park middle school team took off but thank you for them for being here to present tonight I can echo a lot of what they said just visiting the cafeteria during the time that students have lunch without the cell phones present so we appreciate the work they've done not only to put phones away and use that yonder pouch but more importantly what they could share about engagement tonight and what the students are saying about how that's working. So it's a shout out to all of the staff and all of the students

046and families. It takes a whole group to support that effort. I'm seeing a lot of success with that at the high school also. They don't use the yonder pouch. They have a little bit different bell-to-bell rules as they get a little bit older, but excited to see what that looks like year over year. Thank you to Mr. Thompson for being here this evening, for our City of Franklin Fire Department Health Department. It's always great to recognize our partners that are continuing to build all of our outreach programs for our students. We hear throughout the year during board meetings how those numbers are increasing and what that looks like, and I think these recognitions really show people that are willing and want to engage with our students. It's not an easy task. There's a lot of

047paperwork and things, but they have been doing that, and we're very grateful for that. Last night, Girls Golf stamped their ticket to state, so it was exciting to see some photos coming out for those student athletes and the coaches, so congratulations to them. Obviously, a lot of successful sports and activities going on right now. It's just the most recent one that was kind of fun to shout out. Thank you to the Ed Foundation. They ran the Glow Run a couple Saturdays ago, raised over $10,000. It's exciting because it all comes back to classrooms or to teacher scholarships or to student scholarships. upon graduation so a great opportunity there for everybody to participate we had a lot of participation across schools countrydale having the largest percentage of staff and students so they had a fun activity

048at their assembly last week with sliming of one of their teachers Right. One thing I've been able to successfully avoid in all my years of being a principal. But I shouldn't have said that out loud. All right. And congratulations to Forte Theater. This weekend they open South Pacific. That'll run from this Saturday through the following Sunday at the Saber Center. First of many productions for their sixth season. So we're excited to see that kick off and hopefully many buy tickets and take in the show. Thank you. Thank you. We will move on to board liaison reports. Anybody have board liaison report or school and community engagement reports? I'm sorry. That's okay. Go ahead, Andy. I had my first meeting with Mrs. Nickel at Countrydale today. As I told her, she's the principal that I know

049the least and the school that I know the least about, and I so enjoyed my conversation with her. We didn't even get a chance to leave the office, so I will be going back for a tour. She was just... so enthusiastic about her pride and her staff and the work they're doing on behalf of students so it sounds like they've got a really good team going there a really good for lack of a better word vibe and i'm excited to see how the year plays out for her and all of country Mary, please. I met yesterday with Mr. Gomez, and despite him being a Cubs fan, we had a lovely conversation. I'm not going to steal any of his thunder. Suffice to say, what he's going to present is going to be incredible. The work

050he's done in the 11 months he's been here is just fantastic. Obviously, the Cirque building is going to be open soon, but he's done streamlining of staff, increased activities for a bunch of different age groups, has expanded in particular the middle school offerings, sixth to eighth grade, has done cross-training with staff. Like I said, he'll go and tell you more about what he's done, but it's really a testament to how we hire. just fabulous fabulous people um because i'm just looking so forward to seeing what he does uh in the coming years thank you mary please some of us attended the wsb meeting it was really good talk about truancy and how to look at from a bird's eye view rather than the number itself of number 10 and some of the discussions were very

051good at the round table and how some of the districts are implementing which we have already done as a district, I think, but how they are cooperating with the community at large to address the level of truancy and what challenges and obstacles as such. So it was very interesting seminar to attend as such. Thank you. Anybody else? Can I give another shout out? I wanted to say a number of us participated in a number of homecoming activities, and I'd say overall the week and the weekend went off very well, and that's a testament to the work of, especially at the high school level, Mr. Smith and Mr. Volo and their team for really celebrating school spirit and allowing the kids to have fun within reasonable guardrails. Thank you. And it didn't rain on the parade.

052Thanks for holding yourself back All right anyone else? All right, we will we'll move on to school board recognition week. Dr. Bennett, please All right, so it's a fun week to take an opportunity to thank all of our board members at the table, and Ms. Wachowski, that couldn't be with us tonight. This is the week that Wisconsin Celebrates our school boards through the Wisconsin Association for School Boards. I'd like to just thank our group for the dedication, as they just shared. They're in buildings and at events, often just celebrating the great things in our community, making sure we're living behind those core values of equity, personal growth. innovation stewardship and well-being and we've talked a lot just in my four years about better place to learn we're a better place to work we're part of

053a better community that takes a really strong board so thank you for everything you've done on behalf of the entire district and at this table collectively and with ms wachowski who's not with us we have 63 years of experience and debbie leads that with over 22 years linda bringing 17. A number of members, Angie Mock-Sood at 4+, Anne at 5+, Mike at 6+, and Mary almost finishing out her first term moving in at 3. So it's exciting to have that consistency. I think it's good for a community to see and appreciate how you lead. So thank you. And there's a small token of appreciation at your seats. That was very nice. We'll provide a visual. I think you also add that at the WASB recognition dinner, three board members were recognized for accumulating enough points

054in continuing education. Mary achieved level one. Angie achieved level two and Ann achieved level three, so congratulations. And I did collect Angie's award. She couldn't be there. So thank you, everyone, for all you do. We really appreciate it. Community Recreation and Department Report. Mr. Gomez, please. All right. Good evening. Are we on? Yep. Thank you. Well, first I want to say thank you for everything you guys do at the school board as well. I feel very welcomed. With the school board as well every event that I've been to out in Franklin so far I see many of you guys there you guys have acknowledged my presence very quickly always coming up to me speaking to me so I do appreciate that That I'm being seen so it makes me feel welcomed. So thank you for

055everything you guys do I Won't be as entertaining as Forest Park. So I do apologize And I think Mary summed up my report, so any questions? No. Maybe you will be as entertaining. All right, bud. Again, thank you for having me here tonight. Again, just to provide you some context, I'm not there yet for a year. That would be next month. I came last November, about five months into the budget cycle of 2024-25. I didn't really take over the department solely until about mid-January. That's when the outgoing director left into his retirement. I do want to say it was very valuable though, very strategic. So thank you to the school district of me being able to work side by side with the outgoing director for about two and a half months. So that really allowed

056me to really get settled in, put my feet on the ground, ask a lot of questions, find out a lot about department history, about trends in his 30 years, got to really spend time with staff. in group settings and one-on-one to really learn about the department and allow the things that we have coming up here moving forward with obviously the circ and the referendum that was passed so we know that with those two big heavy liftings that our department has a lot coming up. Obviously with the referendum, we have facilities that we oversee and book. So that's a lot of work coming up. And then of course of the CERT building. So within the two and a half months that I was able to spend with the outgoing director, we kind of got to work

057together and highlight some immediate needs that... we thought needed to be addressed before we entered the CERT building. Um, and then there were some lower priorities where we felt, or I felt that we could push down, um, until we were able to kind of just reset that foundation and to set us up for success moving forward with all of the growth that is coming along and coming our way in our department. Um, so again, a couple of those immediate things that, uh, we had on our radar was restructuring our staff. We recognized that there was a gap in our middle school offerings. We didn't really offer anything for that age group. A lot of it stopped at fifth grade, and then we were cruising on to the adult programs. So we found that there was

058a big lack of that, of the offerings. Another hot item when I came in was under the umbrella of customer service, and with that was our registration, our current registration system. called my wreck It was a little bumpy, but we'll talk about that a little later. And then, again, providing professional development. I heard staff loud and clear they did not do much of that, and the things that they did do pretty much did not pertain to what they were doing in the field. So we put an emphasis on that. And then, again, that word inclusive, what does that mean? People kind of throw that out very loosely, but I'm a person that if we're going to say that we're going to be a then we want to make sure that we have programming for all

059groups and populations in our community. So that would be a focus point as well. So with that said. I won't talk too much about department history. I think we've all been here, as Annalise said, with the last 62 years of experience here. So I think we get the history behind our department. Again, I was here a few months ago, so I won't drag you, again, through the whole restructure of our staff. But to complete that, we were able to hire another full-time recreation coordinator. This will be their second month with us. That person will be taking over all of our youth sports camps, clinics, and any of those miscellaneous youth programs. Prior to having that position, that was being split by two people, so really not giving that full-time attention that we needed. So this

060person is going to be able to provide that attention. be out there on the weekends when leagues and games are taking place and really get the pulse of our community and the feedback that we're probably missing for not being out there. So we feel really good. We think we set the foundation, realigned some positions, got some workload, redistributed it, and staff was involved 100%. I gave them two options. they were able to choose which option they felt was best, and that's the one we went with. So I did include Steph in every step of that process, and we walked away all feeling good. So that was a big one. Again, that other big one is that middle school age group. Almost kind of what the middle school said today, right? If we don't have programming,

061I'm going to tell you right now, everybody does not play in a feeder program. Everybody does not do sports. So, again, if we don't have programs for kids, they're probably at home on those screens that we were just talking about. Or in the summertime when their parents are at work, they're probably, you know, with nothing to do. That's when they start exploring in that age. So all of a sudden now they're vaping because the parents aren't home or all that good stuff. So I heard loud and clear. We got a lot of phone calls my first few months about why we don't expand summer camp, summer camp. We want the middle school. I talked to a lot of people in the Franklin community from parents, parents that also served as public health employees. So parents

062that were doctors, firefighters, police officers I heard from that have children here. They did not understand why we were not opening up to that. age group so staff came to me and also was telling me their concerns and that was a no-brainer to me i come from a place where we served that population especially during our summer kids camp program so that was an easy one we looked at our budget we looked at our staffing and we thought we were able to go ahead and put that middle school age group in so We did do that this past year. So that kids camp program, again, very intentional of what we were doing. Another program, we were able to partnership with Oak Creek. We got together between Oak Creek, South Milwaukee, St. Francis. We talked about

063not just the middle school age group, but we talked about girls and how that participation level in that gender we see is very low in sports or recreation. So we were able to team up with them to provide two summer school programs. One was called Grace and Grit, and that was yoga for just girls. And then we had a cooking class that was called Snack Attack, and again, that was targeted for the middle school and for the young ladies as well. We filled up our 10 seats probably within the first two days that we put the posting out. And again... We can talk about it later, but in kids camp, we did see a 15% increase by adding that middle school age group. So we are very pleased with that as well. Another big one

064that I want to talk about real quick is girls flag football. That's the fastest growing recreation club sport in our country right now. Our high school does have a flag football team as a club sport. So we were able to work with over 20 different community ed and rec departments in the state of Wisconsin and then we split ourselves into two regions. So there's 10 of us in our region. There is Oak Creek, Greendale, Greenfield, St. Francis, Cudahy, Nicolet, and West Allis, West Milwaukee. So we were able to hold all girls football camp in August to just test the waters to see what kind of turnout we would get. We got over 35 girls that attended from second grade through fifth grade. Myself and the director from Oak Creek facilitated that, so that was really

065nice and really cool. We got to spend our Saturday with... girls playing football. Also, I reached out to the high school, so we partnered with the high school girls flag club team, and they were present at the camp wearing their jerseys and kind of mentoring to our little young ones of, hey, this is a sport. This is a cool trend. Let's get involved. So that was really cool, really nice. So we got a good turnout. So this year, we started a league. And we put our registration out, and we were able to grab two teams. So we got a team in second and third and a fourth and fifth grade team. And we play against the other nine teams on Sundays at West Allis, West Milwaukee. So very cool, very cool. Again, that's intentional because

066we want to hit that middle school age. So hopefully that fourth and fifth next year. would be our middle school team. So again, working across there. And then again, if you just see the other programs, those are opportunities that came with us. So we just kind of jumped on them as new programs for the year. So yeah, so that's that. And kind of how we're piecing out that middle school age group and making sure that they have something to do. And we're not giving them the message that they're too old to participate in recreation. Again, the other immediate need was, again, based on that customer service, our MIREC registration was not user-friendly. It was very clunky. Our finance department probably could have thrown that program out the window. They were spending a lot of manual

067time putting the pieces together when they would reconcile each month. It was just our gateway, our credit card system was in a separate. house from our registration system. So they were continuously had to put the pieces together and it was a lot of man hours to figure that out. And again, it wasn't user friendly as well behind the scenes for parents to register. So again, after four months of reviewing about 12 different vendors, we narrowed our list down to about three or four and we just dug our heels in and gave them a list of what we really needed. had everybody involved from our finance department. We had the head of buildings and grounds involved because of the scheduling that we do and the rec team. So we really asked everybody, all stakeholders, how they

068felt about the program. And A-Rucks came on top. They're a vendor that specializes in community education and recreation departments. So they don't do anything municipality. It's all... REC departments that are embedded into the school district so they really understand what our challenges are. So that's been six months. We're still learning the system, to be honest with you. I think the community feedback has been very good. Finance department, we haven't heard from them, so it must be going really good. But yeah, we're very pleased. The childcare is really awesome. Parents are able to sign their kids in and out virtual by an iPad now when they come and check in their kids. We can see it on the phone. I can be anywhere and I can pull that app up and I can tell you who's

069in attendance and who's leaving at what time and what our population is at the school. So it's really nice. And again. Registrating for courses, very super easy. Not sure if anybody's had the experience to sign up for classes, but that's really easy. So again, I think that was a really good win. Set us up again for success heading into that CERC building. Another thing I thought we lacked was marketing. I think we kind of got stale of just that's what we do with the guide and postcards. So I've launched our new monthly department newsletter that comes out every month to kind of... highlighting programs activities talking about what's new in the rec department so that goes out to all FPS users as well as Everybody that's registered through our registration system. We'll get that as

070well So that was really good. And then again branding efforts. We've been invited to a couple community engagements and my first time around I was like, hey guys do we got the cloth that has our logo on it and do we have some swag? And they looked at me like I was crazy. I was like, what do you mean? We're going to this community engagement event. What do we bring with us? So they're kind of cracking up. So we do have a cloth now and we do have swag and we are ready to hit the trunk or treat. coming up in Franklin, so we will be there. So we are better prepared in making sure that we are branding ourselves and making sure we're known. Again, I'd like to share a quick one here. Again,

071being inclusive, kind of had a really cool opportunity come my way this summer. A case manager from the Down Syndrome Association of Wisconsin reached out to me. He had a young man that was looking for summer employment. They just graduated from the UW-Whitewater. And he was struggling because he really wanted to find a job or an internship in a recreation field. And so I kind of got to sit down with this young man and talk to him a little bit. And he kind of just told me that he was working at a local grocery store and had that job for over the years. He felt like they were not giving him an opportunity because of his disability that he wanted to do more than push carts and do all that good stuff. So we had

072a good conversation. The young man is from Franklin. I think he went to Ben Franklin Elementary, then went to the middle school, and then graduated from our high school. So I was like, we've got to do something for him. I've got to figure something out. He's a Franklin kid. We've got to help our own out. So I was able to... Kind of set him up like an internship. DVR paid his salaries over the summer, so there's no expense to us. So I was able to bring him in about 20 to 25 hours a week. And he came to our kids camp and he was helping out staff there. He got to go to cooking, tennis, baseball. You name it I kind of took him all over but he really fell in love with the kids

073camp program and even though he told me when we met that he did not like kids he found out that I think he really likes kids. So he loved playing games with them. He would help the leaders out. He would join the kickball games. He would teach kids how to play chess and table tennis and so it was really awesome. The young man did an exceptional job like he was really really really good. And so he really earned himself a position. So this fall I was able to offer him a position in our kids club program and he loves every minute of it. And so I think that was a good story of making sure that we bring, you know, every group in and give them their opportunity that they deserve. So that was really

074cool. Another one. I think I'm working with where we worked with grace from the very beginning I think we both had the same idea from our transition program and they run that diverse coffee grounds So I think we kind of connected on the same page really quick when we knew the Cirque was here what they were doing So we did carve out a little space for diverse grounds to join us at the Cirque building So they will serve their coffee five days a week and do everything that they do and I think that's gonna really give those kids life skills of really branching out and serving the public instead of just the staff here at the ECC. So I think that's a real opportunity. I'm really excited that we were able to bring the transition

075program into the CERC. So I think that'd be really cool. And then again, we're... We will continue to work with Student Services. We have met a couple times, so there are other programs in the future that we would like to bring in that, again, maybe some adaptive sports, again, to touch that group that we're not touching right now. So we'll see what happens there, but, again, we will continue our work with Student Services. And then again, real quick, professional development, again, being very intentional. We got signed back up to our Wisconsin Park and Recreation Association. Staff will be attending in February the state conference. They will be able to attend workshops and breakout sessions that are geared towards what they do every single day, rather than it's an enrichment, fitness, recreation sports. So I think

076that would be really good for the staff to really... keep up with trends and be able to network with other professionals in their profession. Also, again, we are making it a point where all of our part-time seasonal staff and instructors are CPR certified first aid and stop the bleed, so we're halfway there. I'll continue to offer those sessions. I'm actually an instructor, so it's easy to get through them. So that's really nice. We've been doing that. And then this year, working with our student services, our kids club staff was finally trained in nonviolent crisis intervention. So that was really cool too and I thought that was a good step forward for having our staff trained at the kids club level. Again, last but not least, just talking about enrollment data again. You've got the report,

077but it looks like we're up kind of up in most areas. Again, that kids camp area we talked about 15% this year. And our youth sports and camps, they're going to get there. Now that we have our dedicated coordinator, I think we'll see that go up. But those are the numbers. As you see, we kind of are still trending on the upward side of things. And then again with facilities, I don't need to, you know, beat a dead horse here. I think we all know that we're pretty landlocked here waiting for that referendum to come, but facility use is still at an all-time high here in Franklin. If you haven't existed for a while, it's going to be very hard to get you some space in our schools. So again, facility use is still high.

078So hopefully we get to work with that referendum and the Cirque building. Last but not least, I'm pretty fired up. I was not planning on visiting the Cirque today, but a meeting called me that way, and we were able to take a tour while we were there. So again, talking about the Cirque, it looks great. We got walls. We got paint. We got windows. We got doors. So it's coming along. I guess I like the move from the high school to here is you get to drive in every morning and figure out what didn't exist from the day before, so that's kind of cool. But yeah, so I'm excited. The building looks really, really good. With that said, our opening date is still like in flux, but I think right now we can say that

079the construction team should be done around November 21st. We can possibly start moving in November 24th, the week of that. I know it's Thanksgiving, so we'll see what Mr. Daniels has to say about that, but that's kind of where we stand. And then working with... Anna Lee's office and our communications office ribbon ceremony will be in the works but that will probably be the first week of December possibly second week of December so yeah so staff is working hard behind scenes we are really cranking it they are They are working hard to find new programs to talk to people like instructors to make sure they're open for programming. We are in the... middle of working with City of Franklin Health Department as well as the Milwaukee County Health Department to make sure we're bringing in

080the right senior programs as well. So again, you've got the report. There's the list, and this list is all new programs. This is not nothing current. So we'll still move programs over, like our fitness programs out of the elementary schools into the CERC, but what you're looking at on this list is all new programs. So none of these currently exist now. And then, yeah, so. That kind of wraps up the report. Again, moving forward, I'm a big data person, so we'll continue to drive on data and pull data out to see where we need to continue to refine our offerings to the community, invest in staff development. But first and foremost, I think the important thing is to make sure that we get that CERC building fully operational. And then again, the next priority I

081have is to really sit down with staff and look at programming as a whole and see where we need to connect the dots or gaps that we have in programming. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I've enjoyed your newsletter, so thank you for putting that out every month. Thank you. Last year we had a conversation about a different approach with Mr. Cromie to determining your annual budget. Not if you know what I'm talking about. Okay. How has that been working for you? Has it impacted things for you? Or is it just kind of a big nothing? You guys want to let Chromie speak to it? Because I don't even know if we're in there yet. From Matt's operational standpoint, nothing changes. It helps us determine what the levy will be from year to year.

082But from operational, we didn't add money to his budget for him to do more things. He still has to go through each of his streams and see what works, what doesn't work. And we'll see that fluctuate for the first couple of years while it right sizes itself. And then we should see a pretty steady. But you've been able to operate? Yeah, correct, yeah. Thank you. I'm just wondering how you get one of those newsletters each month. If you have a Franklin Public School District email, you should get it. LinkedIn or KYIs too. If not, you can shoot me an email. I can make sure that Chad has you looped in. Thank you. Yep, thank you. Anyone else? Questions? Thank you very much. We look forward to the CERC building opening as well. Thank you. Very

083exciting. Appreciate it. Thanks for all the hard work this year. All right, we'll move forward with the preliminary budget review. Mr. Cromie, please. So you have the packet. There's no real formal presentation you're going to see on the board, but you have the packet and breakdown of all of the funds. A couple of things I'll touch on. First of all, our third Friday count is done and complete, and we are down about 150 students across the board. So we're down approximately 20 or so open enrollment students and about 130 resident students. Our 4K projection came in quite a bit lower. And then our change from 4K to 5K, which we typically see year over year, did not manifest itself either. So those would be the two largest changes of that entire 130 resident students. So

084that is a shock. So we did not anticipate that. Second, staffing has been entirely updated. So what that means is we make sure we have all positions accounted for. I call it an audit, but it's not really necessarily an audit because I go through every individual. So an audit picks certain parts of it and checks certain parts. But we go through every individual, make sure we have the right salary and benefits attached to everybody. So while we're doing that throughout the year. It's uber important right now to make sure in October we have it nailed. So we go back through and we go line by line for each individual and make sure we have that. So that's an important piece. And then when our new staff come in, they don't have to select their benefit,

085thinking our teaching staff. They don't have to select their benefits until the end of August anyway. So that's always up in the air until they select those benefits. But we check every individual. October 1st, we received our equalized property valuation. We did a very, very low projection on purpose of 2.5% growth, and the equalized property valuation came back at 9.56%. So significantly higher. And again, we knew it would be higher than 2.5%, but wanted to be conservative in the projection. So those are the three things that have really happened since August. One other piece that's not on here, when all you put all of those things in the same basket and do some configuring, when we talked in August, we had salaries at 3.5%, teachers at 4.16, I think is the aggregate amount, percent-wise. We're

086able to move that to 3.2% for everybody. And then teachers, I think, goes to 4.19% with a minimum of 3.2% for everybody across the board. So we were able to sneak a little bit more into salaries and benefits. And I know. One of the questions that came up maybe in April was at that particular time and I think it was from you and What do we do if we have some extra money and it's we really try to make sure that we are paying our people so CPI is 2.95% so we were able to go a quarter percent higher so Great news for everybody if we could go higher we'd continue to go higher but Again, we're still 0.25% over, so good news. And then we did, again, account for that change in our professional

087educators to make sure everybody hits that minimum of 3.2. So even though we have our master's jumps, our years of service, and then our band jumps, or median jumps within the bands. everybody now gets a minimum of 3.2%. So that is an adjustment over last year. I don't want to guarantee that that will happen every year. And when we met with our teachers union in August, also made that clear, like we can't guarantee that this will happen year over year. We will strive to, as we said we would. It's exactly what we said we would do. We'll strive to do that, but I don't want to guarantee that like every year this happens because... Can't guarantee every year it's going to happen all those eggs have to be put into the basket You gotta see

088if they all kind of fit together a couple of things that will still change or really I guess it's one change which affects two numbers, but on October 15th, we'll get our general aid certification. So right now, we're still using our July 1st estimate from the state. That will affect our property taxes as those two amounts, general state aid and property taxes, make up our revenue limit authority. So that one adjustment will affect both. But what you see is a final property tax of $40,915,503. You can see the breakout. Of the four components there between general fund, state voucher program, referendum debt service, and community ed rec. I should add, along with that general aid certification on the 15th will come the verification of the state voucher program. Again, that is a straight pass through

089dollar amount. So we're going to get an expense of what the vouchers are, and we get tax levy authority to just add that on to the tax. property tax assessment. So I think I've used the word laundering before, and I have no problem saying we are clearly laundering for the state of Wisconsin to fund private education. So I just want to make sure that that is known, because that is what is happening when we talk about voucher numbers. So that might rise or fall. It has no effect on our operational ability, but it does go to a straight effect to the property tax. But in any case, we're down roughly $1.3 million from last year. We are not, I am not proposing a defeasance this year, so we have defeased each of the last three

090years. And we've done a great job of reducing some long-term debt. That did help us as long as our, as well as our budget moved to that AA1 rating, so I don't want to hit that nail too many times, but we should hit it one more time because that was really important. It'll save about $18 million on our referendum bond in terms of total interest, and that's like a huge. savings when we're talking $18 million. That's over 20 years. We're right at $900,000 a year if we just averaged it out nice and even. So that's a big component. And again, I don't want to promise you that the fees and stuff doesn't come back next year again either. But we've heard that, yep, we've hit it a couple of times. Let's make sure that we're

091aware and responsible or responsive to our citizens. But again, we know we have some debt paying, and if we can pay it down sooner and save some interest, I think that's, in the grand scheme of things, something we should consider as well. All of that puts a mill rate of $7.70 versus the $8.71 I think we were at last year. So a mill rate of $1.01 lower than last year. And I'll be happy to answer any questions that you might have. My question maybe is going to be a shared answer. Is there a theory of the case as to what happened with our 4K, 5K numbers being so off? I mean, what I would say about that, because we looked at it too, right? Like, that's alarming. First, you'll see if you look at any

092of the articles across the state, like enrollment's just down in schools, not just in Wisconsin. Families are smaller. We heard that from Roffers when they came into our study too. So some of it's not surprising because you know families are smaller. So your graduating class size is going to tend to be bigger than your class size coming in just because families are smaller. I'd say the other piece to 4K and kindergarten is... kind of look at the trend over years, and you're making an educated guess because you never really know how many are coming in for 4K. So that came in lower than what it has in the past. Kindergarten is kind of the same. Then you start to get to better predictability as you roll up those numbers and look at where does it

093fluctuate. So I would say it's a lot to do with smaller family sizes and new homes are going in. Not all of them have families or maybe have families yet, so we'll have to see how some of that works out. But some things we've talked about as a team, too, is talking to MD Roffers again, who did our study, to say, is this how you would see it trending? Does something look different? And so that's one thing we've talked about. We've also talked about, is there a way to start engaging with families of students that will be going into 4K to see, is there an interest to maybe explore full-day 4K? Or we've talked to Director Gomez about... supplementing with half day 4k and a program so those are some of the things we've talked

094about if those classes are going to be smaller is that another way to engage maybe bringing more families in so it sounds like you're postulating a case of fewer kids in that age group but then also possibly kids being placed in other programs outside of the public schools, at least for the 4K? It's hard to say if it's outside of public schools. I would say there's always the discussion of half-day or full-day 4K. They even took it on at a state level, didn't go to full-day. So I think every district is always trying to kind of figure out, like, is that an interest of our community? We do have. full day 4k non-public school like out of daycare programs right for what that like those exist like they're not really private school but sometimes it's

095a private school but sometimes daycares will also do a four-year-old program that's full day especially for working parents that just makes sense can i do another follow-up onto that so if we're going to go back to if our numbers were this off for one year, is there a potential that our numbers that we use to make our projections, you know, to sort of think about when do we need to think about redistricting? Do we need to step back and should we wait and see if this is a trend? Probably, I'm answering my own question. We should probably wait and see if this is a trend. But if it proves to be a trend over the next couple of years, we might have to go back and reevaluate the data that Roffers gave us in terms

096of what our population. I don't know what it's going to look like. So first, if we get to that position or when it was projected to get to that position, we would certainly have them coming back in and saying, this is an expert opinion of where we're going to be. We wouldn't do that based on 2024 data that was supplied to them. So what I would say is their projections are based off the data they have at the time and the projections for selling homes and home sales. the time but again the word projection automatically leads to we're using the best information we have at the time to make the best decision we can about moving forward do those always come true no that's a projection right so if we were to go back to

097them today we'd be providing our third friday count and saying this is what we have now you have two additional years of third friday counts what does that tell you right and then We won't go through the whole analysis with them again because we don't need to pay for the whole analysis because we don't need it today for anything to necessarily help us. It's not changing the age of a school. It's not changing the amount of classrooms in general we're using. So we wouldn't do that. But at some point in the future, yep, we'll be back to the drawing board to. Give some experts to take a look at all of our data and say, where would you project us to be? And I do prefer MD Roffers over some of our others because they

098do break it out by area and they really break it out by school zone, which is very helpful if you are talking, ever have to address that redistricting piece. But that is very helpful versus some other groups that just do an aggregate amount, which is great because it tells us how many we can project, but it doesn't tell us where we can project them. So that doesn't help with. That second piece, it doesn't even help with an individual building in determining do we need, are we looking at three sections next year or are we looking at two or do we have to grow to four? So we would preferably, I guess I'm not going to 100% say we would, but I would prefer to move back to that model because it is more helpful looking

099at it by school to think about where are those pockets existing or where are they growing or going down so we have an idea. Thank you. Mary, please. So we'll know pretty quickly if those 120 kids are in some other setting, because in a year or two, they'll... Come to us do we think or is it not doesn't work? It doesn't necessarily mean that the students exists, right? Like in 4k you don't have a full count of Who those potential three-year-olds are turning for that are in a command? So it's not that we knew there were 20 other students that were gonna come and now they went somewhere else In first grade moving and rolling numbers up to second grade if you lost 20 students, you'd probably be more like okay That's interesting. That doesn't

100typically happen 4k is the best educated guess And so watching the trends over multiple years and not getting overly alarmed in one year but being cognizant of it is probably the best plan at this point. Like when MD Roffers is looking to Andy's point, they look at where is their growth also. Not all organizations doing that population piece do that. So we're growing in subdivisions. We're selling houses in Franklin. We can say here's the average size of a family. Here's the average person that's buying a home or family versus renting. and they're making their best educated guesses from that. And so that's what you have to kind of watch is what does that look like. So in Franklin, it's always going to be trickier than a landlocked area where you're predicting within what's all built.

101We're predicting within families that tend to stay in their homes in Franklin and new houses going. Are new people coming into those new homes or are people moving from houses that were here, right? You're trying to balance a lot of those pieces. So it's not a clean answer because it's tricky, but I would say the kindergarten 4K are always the numbers that you're just kind of looking at those trends over years. And maybe the trend we'll see is that they're just smaller class sizes because they're smaller families. So I always look when there's a deficit like that, too, or a change, I should say, like what was our graduating class going out and what is maybe like our kindergarten class, not so much 4K and first grade, because if you're seeing a 30 student difference

102in those classes. then that's going to start to just be what you account for the difference to be. The only thing I would add to that in doing enrollments in several districts, in a rural district, it's very predictive because you are the 4K. You are the kindergarten, and options are very minimal. We're in a suburban setting, and I've done it in three suburban settings, and they're all the same. 4K is really hard to predict. because there are tons of options. The growth from 4K to 5K is also hard to predict because, again, there are many options. And then 8th to 9th grade is hard to predict because how many students stay in a parochial or private setting and come to public school versus going to then a parochial or private high school. So I'd say

103those are the three grade bands that are the hardest to predict when you're in a suburban area or very urban suburban area. Kindergarten to first, pretty easy. First to second, pretty easy, all the way up. And then ninth to 10th, up to 11th, 11th, 12th, pretty easy to predict over years. But those bubbles where changes in school, in the actual school happen, are the hardest to predict. So you do your best guess. Sometimes it works. And again, it's a prediction, so you're working off data that you have. And sometimes it holds true and sometimes it doesn't. And sometimes you take a look at different sets of data. So next year we might go, instead of like a three- or four-year projection or a three- or four-year look back, we only might look back at a

104couple of years and say this is the history that's much more relative to this particular situation because we've seen this drop the last couple of years or it just changed the last couple of years versus going back five years where... Three years ago, data is so out of whack with what's actually happening right now. So then we just change that predictive model. But we look at it several different ways before you make a determination of what you think is the best guess that you can make at that time. And even at the state level, you're looking at a three-year rolling. That's how you're figuring out your FTE for that aspect. So try to align with that. It doesn't all drop at once or it doesn't all grow at once either. We also appear to have

105less elementary. There was a drop in teachers at the elementary level. I assume that didn't happen because of... It's really in a direct relation to the amount of students we have. Following the board policy to determine classes. Yep, we still work our same class size, and if we... We have classes we evaluate on the bubble all the time. So if we're supposed to have 25 in a class and we have 50 kids, yeah, we're right on the bubble for two teachers moving into a third. So we watch that all the time. In early, like if we're back in April, yep, we're probably holding a teacher spot in there in case. And sometimes we use it, sometimes we don't, and it depends on the growth. So it's really a direct relation to, yep, we have less

106kids, we're able to use less sections in this building or less sections in this building. And we'll hold those, like Andy kind of said, we'll hold those until the school year starts, basically. So, I mean, one example, PB jumped up. One section right before this not right for but a couple weeks before the school year started So you're really watching those and you're holding those positions and then the school year starts you get to third Friday And now we can pull those numbers out because those bubble groups didn't bump to the next level So that person that was holding in line in the budget Isn't a person that we need to hire or need to have And I said the same with your high school classes when you're looking at those numbers fluctuating. That's purely

107I know Andy puts in the really nice report of what our timeline is for all of that. You see a lot of those things come through board meetings, but then it's really driven off what those students' interests are, right, and carrying the staffing to meet those classroom requirements. Well, I appreciate the way that you're using that data to be nimble in efficiency of the dollars for the district. Less kids, less teachers. It seems simple, but it's appreciated. Anybody else have questions? Mary, please. So this is not technically about our budget, but I went to a Zoom seminar last month about transparency in property taxes. And I guess I could have looked at my property tax bill, but I didn't. Are the property taxes delineated between Franklin Public Schools and voucher schools so that people have

108a clear idea? And is that something that is worth spearheading or discussing? You would have to add an insert into it. It's not. The state does not allow it to be delineated on your property tax bill. So on your property tax bill, you will see a referendum. This is the amount of money we spend on the referendum. This is when it comes due because that is state law. It has to be on there. They have nothing about voucher schools. I will tell you, you could hit that nail all you wanted right now, and with the legislature, there is no way that's ever going in because that legislature is heavily in favor of voucher schools, so they would never put it in. We could put an insert in. We would have to put an insert in

109and ask that to be sent with your property tax bills. Is that ever a thing that we would do, or is it really truly not worth the time and effort and expense? It's something we could do, but I would tell you you could call every state senator a thousand times. and it's not changing. We'd have to have a complete change of the legislator in order to make that work. I think we mean more like the district giving an insert to the city to inform. Correct. Yeah, I mean, we could do that. To inform. It would be simply to inform. It's not going to change policy and have that added to the property tax bill, at least with our legislator. Or legislator. I don't know. Whatever. All right, anyone else? All right, thank you very much.

110Board Policies Program 2000's action item. Mrs. Zipursky, please. Okay, thanks. So our exciting Board Policy Committee met again and had engaging discussion for a couple hours and has brought these policies forward to you. I'm sure you all read them in detail. They're thrilling. And we are just looking for a motion tonight to approve the program. the 2000s these new policies remembering that we are preliminarily approving them now and we will do a final approval of all of our policies in probably february i make a motion to primarily approve the uh 2000 policies as attached All right, the motion was made by Dr. Kahn, seconded by Dr. Beer. Further discussion, Mary, please. I just noticed there are a couple of policies that reference the terminology of American Indians, and I think, I don't know if it's

111possible that you change that language to something, I guess, the vernacular is now more indigenous peoples or something that's a little more reflective of current. current vernacular. Do you have a number, Mary? Are those ones where it's taken right out of state law? If the state uses that term, we may have to... Do you remember which policy number it was? Beginning ones. I can't remember which one it was, but obviously it was... I'd have to look. We could probably take that back to Roger and see if... Richard. Yeah, Richard. Thank you. Sorry about that. Yeah. He's not listening. He's not listening. Yeah, I think that was the answer I had given you previously, Mary, was that some things are state statute that we have to just use that language, but if not, we can certainly

112look at that. We have them back for a committee meeting next Wednesday, so we can ask them then, too, otherwise. Thank you for indulging me. Good catch. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? All right, all in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Thank you. Treasurer's report is available in the Board Docs Library. Future agenda items, spring 2025 early college credit and start college now request approvals, 2526 staffing update, budget approval and tax levy, new courses, 2026 September first start date waiver, district administrator goal setting closed session, Robinwood Elementary School presentation. 26, 27, and 27, 28 school calendar DPI school year exception. It's on there double on accident. Sorry, that shouldn't. I would be the same as E. And we'll probably look to go to action on that on October 22nd. Remembering we have one board

113meeting in November and December. So our goal is to have the calendars approved by December. We do first read in November. taking action on that exemption on October 22nd will be advantageous to give the calendar creation committee the ability to Plan with that exemption in mind And then the one other thing I'll say about calendar that's just going to be interesting is last year we were able to offer some options to staff to kind of vote on to have some voice in calendar. We hope to still have some of those, but in being real transparent with trying to maximize the summer of 27 for construction, there's probably going to be very limited we can really do with the calendar because we're going to have to maximize the minutes we can be in front of students.

114But it will mean a three-month-long summer, which is kind of nice. So that's just a little bit different, and that's also why we're bringing two calendars at once is that the construction will affect some of that timing. So just a little caveat there. Thank you. And lastly, Board Policies, Student 5000s. And I'm looking for a motion to adjourn the meeting. So moved. Second. Motion was made by Mrs. Sapersky, seconded by Dr. Beer. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. We are adjourned at 7.35. Thank you.