Board of Education Regular Meeting - October 6, 2025

001The first thing we'll do is we by recognizing that Central High School occupies the land of the Ho-Chunk people, please take a moment to celebrate and honor this ancestral Ho-Chunk land and the sacred lands of the indigenous people. Will the secretary please call the roll? Mr. Alberts? Here. Mr. Bigneski? Here. Ms. Fuchs? Here. Dr. Garcia? Here. Mr. Jackson? Here. Mr. Manka? Here. Mr. Neumeister is excused tonight. Dr. Sprague? Here. Ms. Sucla? On her way. Is on her way. Okay, a quorum of the board is here, and so we'll stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. So the first thing on the agenda would be the approval of the board minutes from approval of the agenda as presented and passed out. I need a motion. The motion has been made and seconded. Do we need a roll

002call vote on this? No. All those in favor, indicate by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, same sign. Deb is now walking in, so we'll listen to public speakers. Do we have a public speaker tonight? No. No one is registered to speak tonight. No public speaker. So Deb will take. Laura Steiger, all board secretary. Jim Bagneski, board member, vice president. So we said the pledge of allegiance. Except the agenda Yes, we are very lucky to have Miss Heather Skiles here today, our elementary nutrition manager at Southern Bluffs, State Road, and Hinchin, to present on our summer food service programs. Take it away. Hi, everybody. My name is Heather Skiles. During the school year, I am at Southern Bluffs, Hinchin, and State Road. Those are my three buildings. During the summer, I am at Spence Elementary, and I

003also send out meals to Hinchin and Hamilton. So throughout the year, I have... about a total of five buildings. I'm here today to talk to you about our summer food service program and what we provide to the community from June until August. So I'm going to quickly go through the slideshow. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. The Summer Food Service Program is a federally funded, state-administered program that reimburses program operators who serve free, healthy meals and snacks to children and teens in low-income areas during the summer months when children do not have access to school meals. We are able to provide free meals to children 18 and under in our community at no cost to our families. This past summer, we had a total of 11 sites open July, plus we

004vended pre-packed meals to the YMCA to hand out to their sites in public parks. That's not very common knowledge. Longfellow and Logan Middle provided sack lunches to the YMCA. They vend from our program. Our summer program served from 11 sites and fed 12,668 breakfasts, 24,264 lunches for the 2025 summer. We follow strict nutritional guidelines and regulations from the state and federal government. Every day, our dedicated school nutrition staff came in to feed the wonderful kids in our community. Three of our sites had YMCA on site all day, two offered meals to BGC, and two sites prepared 36,135 meals that the YMCA purchased from us to hand out to the community at their sites. Total meals provided by our kitchens alone in the summer of 2025 was 60,399. That's a lot of food. We do more

005than just meals. We build relationships with our community. You can see me in the garden. During summer school, I will actually step out of the kitchen and I will work with my teachers and I will do garden lessons. I like to have our kids know where our food comes from. This is in partnership with Grow. They allow me into their space and we do taste tests and then I actually serve it on the line that day. for lunch. Hamilton is also there. Shannon and Brett on the other side, that is one of our sites that is for Boys and Girls Club. They feed from my, I can only speak from my site because I can't remember everybody else's, but from Spence, shipping out to both Hinchin and Hamilton, just from Spence alone, it's about 450

006to 500 meals every day. Our staff at Logan Middle, I have a picture here of them. Longfellow, the staff there this summer, also provides meals for the YMCA during the summer. They do bag meals. So the YMCA vends meals from us. We make all of the meals and bag them at our sites, and then they purchase meals from us so they can hand them out and they claim them. Like I said, it's not very common knowledge. It's not really out, you know, when they go out and talk about their summer feeding program. But those meals are made for the Y by our staff. We offer breakfast and lunch every day for our community kids. Families bring kids after practice, swimming lessons, camps, and summer school. We always offer a hot and cold option for children

007to choose from. So you can see a couple of different options here. What you're not seeing is usually there is like a yogurt or an Easy Jammer option. especially for those that would prefer a cold meal during the summer. This one's my favorite. So we do have families that visit us daily. Who you see here are the Bensons. They are not actually enrolled in our school district. They are homeschooled. The little boy on the end, almost eating the chicken nugget, that is Leo, he and his family have been coming to have lunch with me at Spence since he was a baby. They have four children. Stella. is a little bit older, she was about two at the time that I started working in our school district and doing summer feeding. They come in every day.

008I know about their birthdays, I know where they're going for the weekend, that their senior daughter is doing volleyball right now in Rochester. And it's so much more than just, like, we reach out to the entire community. They do not have to be enrolled in our district to receive these meals. We do, however, get reimbursement for them, and that helps our program greatly. School Nutrition is committed to feeding hungry bellies both during the school year and summer. If you are in any of our buildings, please stop down to the kitchens and introduce yourselves. The work that we do matters in feeding our children of the community. I know Dr. Engel comes in and serves with me pretty regularly at Southern Bluffs, and it's a lot of fun. You get to know the kids. You get

009to know the kids and who they actually are versus sitting in a classroom and trying to get them to focus. It's their time to solely just be themselves. And the relationships that we have, usually we're the first ones to see them in the morning, and they'll tell us. everything that happened the night before or earlier that morning. So if you guys are out and about, please, please stop out. Come and say hi. If you want to serve, reach out to me. I would gladly love to have anybody come serve and see what we do. That's all I have. Do you guys have any questions? Does the reimbursement you receive cover the costs of running the program on a per-child basis? Yes. So for every meal we receive, we obviously have a reimbursement rate. I can

010get those numbers to you if you would like. I do have them in my email. I just can't seem to get it on my phone right now. But, yes, in order to operate our summer program, we have to be able to pay for it. It cannot come from another fund other than our school nutrition fund, correct? Yep. Adam? So I can only vouch for my school that I met in the summer because Spence is so close to the swimming pool. We get a lot of kids that come in after swim practice or before swim lessons and practice at Erickson and all of that. I know for sure I have four that come every day. And then I have a family that spends time up here during the summer. Her husband actually is a professor at

011Notre Dame University, and they bring their eight children up for the summer to spend time with their family, and they come after some lessons. So I know they are also homeschooled. Yes. Yes. Is there some follow-up on how much waste, and does that go to compost, or what are we doing with it? So because... We have to follow strict regulations when it comes to our program. They have to have specific items on their tray both for summer and school year. We've tried composting. But at the elementary level, you try telling a kindergartner that he can't put salad with ranch in the compost, and it ruins the whole thing anyways. Many of our buildings do have share tables, though. So, yes, we do see waste, but we do also try to eliminate that waste by having

012share tables within our buildings as well. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. A share table is... table that we have in our cafeterias specifically at the elementary level I think I don't know if they still do it in middle school or high school or not but they can put prepackaged items if they aren't going to eat them they can do milk yogurt prepackaged items so like cupped fruit whole fruit Easy jammers, cheese sticks, all of that, they can put it on this table specifically and another child can come and grab it. We monitor it so we make sure that it is safe to consume, that their milk is not open, that there's not a bite out of an apple. But it did, when we started that shortly, well, we did it before 2020 and then we

013had to restart it obviously after COVID. We saw a drop, a significant drop in what was being thrown away. Do we know how many individual students are served over the course of a summer? We've got the total meals, but I wondered. Like for our district solely? Yeah. We do not track that. Okay. So it's not like school year. You know, if you come into our kitchens during the school year, we actually run them through a point of sale where they have their lunch numbers or whatever that they enter. During the school year, I use chips to count because we don't need to. We don't need to keep track. It's free. We don't need to keep track of charging a child's account. How many would you estimate are at Spence on a daily basis? During summer?

014This past summer was different from previous summers because we had summer school there June and July. We were the only site that had summer school June and July. I fed, I was there by myself just at Spence. It was about $150. About 100 breakfasts on average a day and anywhere between 150 and 210 a day for lunch. And for the Y, how many meals were you making daily? The Y that was there, on-site are you talking? No, just like at the production kitchens. The production kitchens? How many were you vending daily, do you think? 200, 400, 1,000? Combined, between Logan, Middle, and Longfellow, I would bet anywhere between 800. and 9, 9.50. It varied, it fluctuated, depending, like they would contact us to let us know what they needed for the week. And you also

015provide after school for Boys and Girls Club? So Boys and Girls Club would come to our sites. So we had Terry Erickson went to Logan Senior for breakfast and lunch, and then the Matthew Center would actually go to Hamilton. During the school year, they do provide after school snacks. As I say, if you guys have any follow-up questions or think of anything after, please feel free to reach out. And definitely go and serve, especially during school breakfast week or school lunch week. It is so much fun. We're a lot of fun. Between serving, there's time to sit down with kids and help them open their stuff and chat with them about their day. It is some of the best time in a school is the lunchroom. And thanks to all of the great work that

016our... School lunch folks do in our nutrition department. They run a great operation, and I've really appreciated Working with Heather. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Consent agenda is a mechanism used by the board to deal with routine business that must come before the body are there any items that members want to remove from the superintendent's consent agenda Hearing none. We look for a motion a second to approve the items on the superintendent's consent agenda as approved I move to accept the consent agenda second Motion and a second. Any further discussion? All those in favor of the motion, signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed, motion carries. We move on to the approval of the board consent agenda. The board consent agenda is a mechanism used by the board to deal with routine business that

017must come before the body. Are there any items that members would like to remove from the board consent agenda? And then we have the policy that was approved at the last meeting for the second meeting. I'll make a motion to approve the items on the board consent agenda as presented. I'll second. Motion and a second to approve the board consent agenda. Any further discussion? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed? Motion carries. Are we then, oh, this says board action, but this says information. We were hoping to move to information first with our presenter from Bray Architects so that they could get back on the road and head home. Okay. So I would invite up Nathan Dirks from Bray Architects. He's been the person helping us through this process. He has

018been great to work with, and we're going to have our groundbreaking on Wednesday for the State Road Edition. It's at 1 o'clock, so if you're able to make it, we would love to have you here. But we also wanted to give an update on the progress. of the Hogan site building as well. And Nathan's here to give us a walkthrough virtually of that space. Other updates as far as construction goes, here at the district office, we have a slight delay in the air handler arriving and so we'll be moving in probably by the end of October into this space and then... we'll be able to move over at that time so that will be nice to finally accomplish but it's been a good process so far any questions on the district office update at all

019Yes, yeah, so in front of you there's a little groundbreaking celebration flyer. If you can make it on Wednesday at 1 o'clock, let Laura know just so we can plan for you. It'll be about 15 minutes. It'll be pretty quick. Just a few words for myself. I think Jim's going to say a few words on behalf of the board. and then a couple of other staff members. And then we're going to bring over Hinchin Elementary as well. So it'll be Hinchin and State Road coming together for this addition. The intent is to continue to bring us together in our culture and our... in our schools so that should be very exciting for everyone and then they will be starting like the next day so fencing's already up there will be shovels in the ground backhoes

020all the things it will be very exciting for kids at the playground every single day so that will be forthcoming and then august 15th oh thank you october 15th not in the past. We are having a walkthrough of Hogan, the Hogan building. So inviting the community to come walk through for the last time and check it out. You know, we've had any number of neighborhood residents or past attendees of Hogan want to see the building or have stopped in since we've made the announcement that we're moving out of it. to kind of check it out. And so it's an opportunity for you all to come to see Hogan, how it's been changed over time, and celebrate all of the great things it did for our kids over the years. Six. Six to seven. All right,

021with that, I'll turn it over to Nathan. Thank you, everybody, for having me here. All those events that Aaron talked about, they're all really great events, exciting to start school projects. especially living through renovations. The teachers will have a lot of comments, but the end result is always amazing and everyone appreciates the work from the school board and then the district admin team as well. So like Aaron said, just want to share the design of the new school that's going to go out to bid in early November. So just here in about a month, wrapping up engineer coordination and final documentation items. So I'll walk you through the virtual model. We'll get to see the school. I'll map out the path that we're going to walk through. I'm going to skip the exterior just for

022time's sake. We've seen some renderings of that, but this will be a first real look at the interior of the building. So construction will begin in February after winter and getting all the subcontractors from the general contractor who's awarded the project at the end of December. And then project will be complete for the 27-28 school year. Behind me I've brought boards for State Road and so some of these visuals up on the screen will look familiar. We did a very similar process when looking at State Road and the new school. So even though State Road is an addition renovation still being thoughtful about how the whole project goes together. On the screen is the conceptual design for the new school. With the three-story building really diving into the nature that surrounds La Crosse, the bluffs,

023the rivers. So we really wanted to highlight that within this elementary school. And some building facts that we've brought up. Throughout the design process and documentation, we're noting the solar panels that are on the building. We're also noting geothermal wells that are going to be bored into the play field. So a really cool piece that not a lot of people will see. But as we walk through the school, kind of show some areas in the building where we can display these fun facts and you as a school board can be really proud of this building. Two full-size courts for basketball and volleyball, thinking practice after school, not just for the elementary school itself, but for the district as a whole. group learning spaces on each floors and thinking about accessibility we have accessible bathrooms on

024each floor and then also when we talk about our most vulnerable learners special education spaces on each floor so students can then get the education that they're needed without being fully pulled out from their peers Site plan a look here. I'm still showing drop-off areas along 19th and East Ave and then majority of the play field or all of the play field on the south half of that site kind of where my might not be able to see my mouse but Where the you 10 soccer field that's where the current Hogan building is right now Floor plan is a little, probably a little hard to see if there's any areas that you want me to zoom into. We'll be walking through the building and I'll kind of show that path on the next slide and

025then I'll just take any questions before officially walking through. Some of our more recent changes have actually been to the library spaces and so this is still part of the design process when teachers and community members give feedback. No matter where we are in the design process, we do look at it because this building is going to be around for 80 years. So as long as any design considerations don't affect the design time and construction time, we really want to take a close look at that. So recently had librarians within the district raise some concerns about having a two-story library. equity between students and mobility and everything. So reworked the design a little bit just so that we could accommodate all the books on one floor. And so then the lower half could be used

026as a more impromptu reading or additional space to that library. And so depending on how the years go by, there could be stacks on the lower level. There could be stacks on the upper level. But we did hear those concerns, and so we wanted to address that in our design. I would note that Nathan and Bray have been unendingly open to feedback, have consistently met with staff over and over again in order to get the design right. And these floor plans represent a lot of staff feedback, consistently tweaking and changing, and it's been super appreciative of their responsiveness. So this slide shows the path that I'll walk through the building. So it will be a full extensive tour. The only area we won't walk through is the kitchen and the receiving area, but we'll see

027all the education spaces. Starting in the main office, going through the cafeteria gymnasium, so seeing the more public spaces of the building. Walking down our main hallway up into the library. Seeing the second floor of that library and then coming back down and looping through music, first grade, kindergarten, 4K, viewing the courtyard, which will have play equipment in it, and it can also double as an outdoor classroom on those warm weather days, looking at rubberized surface in there with then asphalt around the edge for trikes and other mobility. Use and then we'll continue up into the upper floors see the upper grades looking at large group instruction rooms and then Kind of peeking our head out onto the learning deck in the building which we're including as an alternate on here with this unique of

028a site and views out towards the bluffs, it would be a real shame not to give the kids an opportunity to experience the outdoors in a kind of classroom setting. So any questions before I begin the virtual tour? Are you going to show us some of those? I'll talk through them. Some of them are more... features in this building to help enhance education, enhance the uniqueness of this building, whereas State Road, a lot of those were renovations, kind of renovating the existing building as that wasn't something that was identified in the referendum as a priority. Orient ourselves. We are at the corner of Winnebago and East Ave. Looking at our main entrance with a large canopy inviting students staff members community members guiding them towards this main entrance the building will have doors on all

029sides except for Market Street, so Identifying that main entrance is a real important piece that we heard of throughout our design discussions So as we walk into the main entrance Glass looking out to see who's approaching the building and then also some small seating areas for students within the cafeteria to see When parents are approaching from pickup and duty so within the vestibule There's a transaction window right here for any of those quick drop-offs if parents just dropping off shoes or need to pick something up opportunity to have that here also having to scan in being out in the vestibule to kind of keep the traffic down in the main office also provided a small seating area here so again on those first day of school last day of school when there's a lot of

030parents and teachers all in one space another additional seating area out here so walking into the main office having some reception areas here also calling out the school building name, bringing in some of those exterior materials, bringing the warmth in of the stone throughout La Crosse area. For the public viewing, the name is yet to be decided. Yes. So a small seating area here. And then also something to note, there will be a lockdown button within this main office. So there's a series of doors throughout the school to really help compartmentalize. if there was an intruder or some other event going on, really to kind of separate where someone would be able to go. A lot of your schools, and I'm sure all of your schools, have the buzz-in system here, so that's going to

031be incorporated in that piece. Kind of walking out into the cafeteria, this is going to be the main space. For community events, it's going to be lunch period, it's going to be breakfast period, so large windows looking out onto that playground, letting in a lot of natural light. Still thinking about our solar gains, so incorporating a horizontal element there to help shade some of that really strong southern light. And then also incorporating some window shades, so when presentations are going on, there's not going to be a large glare on that screen. So starting to see some of those fun elements of an elementary school, bright colors, but then also keeping them close to nature. Our forest, our yellow is our bluffs. Here into our gymnasium, lots of different windows and viewing opportunities for parents on

032the weekends, for kids kind of seeing different activities going on in here. So seeing those two gymnasium courts here with the different colors in each corner. picturing Phi Ed, everyone line up in the yellow corner, everyone go to the blue corner. So a really fun way to experience the building as a kid, just kind of simply planning out where these different colors and features are going to go within the building. Going back out down our main hallway. And this is where we start to see some of those display elements of where student artwork information about the building can be. We've divided this out. You'll see as we're walking through, there's going to be our river floor, our forest floor, and our bluff floor. And so each display case could then be utilized by each one

033of those floors, each one of those grades, or it could be used as a full building. some different elements that are here looking at a terrazzo floor with then posh concrete being one of our alternates and so that's just a way that we've kind of incorporated a little depending on where the construction market is gives us a little leeway there but still looking at this overall kind of flowing path design, trying to keep it as subtle as possible so as when you're walking down the hallway you might not notice it but you're gonna feel some sort of design element being within the hallway. So now leading into one of our lobby areas where students would either come in for the day or be dismissed out. Early on in the design process we talked about our

034wayfinding and using a blue entrance, a yellow entrance, so this is the lobby space of the blue entrance. So very good at wayfinding. Even though it is a rather large building, the idea is to help kids and staff kind of orient themselves when they are in this building. So as we come into the library, this is part of our redesign that we've... recently did and so before there was a kind of an equal amount of stacks on this lower half and then the upper half and so now showing this space as Kind of spillover of that library depending on principal or teachers librarian of that year there could be stacks down here So this could be our 4k kindergarten first grade space it also doubles as a flex learning room for title and then also

035picturing a more formal space smaller space for PTO meetings if cafeteria or gymnasium is being used so different idea of having flexibility within the building to house multiple events at one time. These walls we'll see a couple of them throughout they were in the display cases so those are slat walls with them different color so I'm sure you've seen it where display cases are left empty with construction paper behind them. Well, this is our way of making sure that even if this was left blank without shelves or displaying anything, it would still be visually pleasing. Just enough. Like I'm tempted. Yeah, and we've added a little bit of a slope to it to help deter that. So as we go up into the library space, really getting an idea of this two-story volume, letting in

036a lot of natural light here, which is something that many of the libraries are kind of in the central hub. So this is still in the central of the building, but bringing in a lot of that natural light. Main reception area up here. And then secondary. area here using furniture. So everything you're seeing in white is furniture. So not, it's part of the referendum, but not part of our part of the project. So this is to help. Something we heard from the librarians is kids not running up and down the stairs when they're supposed to be reading. And so by kind of having two desks right here in this space will help deter kids from doing that. Architecture can only do so much. Yep. So you kind of see it out this door right here.

037The elevator is right here. So that will ease bringing books up and down. Even though this is a two-story library, with that elevator being really close, that's why we felt comfortable presenting this idea. You probably mentioned the special education spaces are right along the elevator corridor as well. So that for kids with mobility challenges. Those services will be right there, right off that elevator. So these are interior offices here, so they don't have windows. So providing the maximum amount of light within the library, having windows here, they'll be able to share some of that light. The idea is these offices are... Those staff members are going to be out where the kids are and not in their office all day, but still providing them their own personal space for those more private phone calls. And

038so these couple doors here, these are to the special education suite. So being centrally located to that elevator. Also keeping all of our art, music, library on this main corridor so kids with mobility issues aren't having to hop around the building to go to all these specials. So continuing down the hall on the first floor, very similar upper floors. You're going to see groups of bathrooms here. tricky fountains right across and then the individual staff bathroom here. So same spot on each floor keeping it again close to that elevator to our main spine. So starting to look at our interior design this is our river floor. So bringing in those blue elements, having a gateway of sorts, not having a set of doors here so that visibility isn't ruined when kids are going to the

039bathroom or coming to and from class, but a real clear distinction of if your classroom isn't down this hallway, you're not supposed to be here. On the first floor, we're looking at another display case with slat walls, the ability to put up shelves, and other artwork. These are next to the music rooms. And so within these individual music rooms, there is also a divider wall, similar to some of the other buildings within the district. Acoustically sound divider wall with these big, large panels. The idea is... Smaller groups of kids kindergarten 4k could have Practice in here for their whole ensemble not taking up space away from the gym could also be housed as an all staff area for Professional development during the summer if there's other activities going on in the cafeteria or the gymnasium

040One of the things we thought about a lot in the design was flexibility. We don't know what the future will bring, and so to have as many flexible spaces as possible was important, and this was an example of that. We debated at length about whether or not to have this divider wall, but the ability to be able to put... Maybe 60, 70 people in one space was a real advantage long term, depending on what may come. And there's other spaces in here that look divided up, but based on where the walls will ultimately be placed, could be blown out to full classrooms if that needed to be a solution in the future. I don't see a ton of storage in those. Like built-in cabins. Well, there it is. Don't worry. There's a lot. Knowing music

041teachers and art teachers. That is a good question. There's also a dedicated room. It's a flexible orchestra practice room. And so those have the larger cabinets for storing the dedicated orchestra equipment. There's some storage right there on your right. There you go. We're anticipating science, FOSS kits, and those sorts of things that our teachers use that are large and bulky, not having those stacked up to the ceiling in their classrooms, but in a dedicated space that's locked but accessible. So this is our first grade kindergarten hallway, linking then to our 4K. We'll see here that the flooring is a little bit different. This is to help with the wet boots, kids, bodily fluids, spills. This is naturally the floor that that's going to happen on. So we've gone with a more, it's the... Water wicking

042flooring so the water will sit on top if it's spilled But it's still comfortable to sit on like this. Yeah a little bit. Yeah Along these corridors, we've included tackable and marker spaces for teachers to write daily messages, pin up announcements, and then also some fun, playful, tackable surface to provide spaces for teachers to hang up student artwork throughout the corridor. But then again, if there's no artwork displayed up here, still drawing in those themed floors, river, forest, and bluff. So tables, you'll see a couple out in these spaces, and so those are for if a student needs to be pulled out for a quick little lesson, if a kid needs a minute to themselves, instead of sitting on the ground in the hallway or going down the main office, the ability to do it

043here, and then still have teachers having views out to that child. Small group work, kids break up and do other things. They like the wood. The natural. materials or material look was important in trying to produce something that fit into our landscape, into our city. So one of the unique features within these kindergarten rooms, 4K rooms, are these window seats here. And then with some plantings right here so the kids have a chance to experience nature right there. Also providing kind of a wall outside so people aren't going to be walking straight up to these windows here. providing some additional cubby space below. 90% of the time this may become where the teacher puts their desk, but that one classroom that doesn't, it's going to be a really cool experience for the kids to sit

044there during reading time or other opportunities at a younger age. Within these kindergarten classrooms, there is a shared storage room back here connecting two classrooms. And then in addition to that storage room, there is counter space with then a sink for the kids. So this is a unique space here. So these are our open work spaces with on the floors part of the reason for Not having a door here is to help with supervision. It also helps with such tight spaces in our clearances If someone was in a wheelchair just being able to access this smaller room and still have it being functional so paras special ed assistants Looking at teachers, if you need to make a quick copy here, having this space on each floor instead of having to perfectly time it with your

045lunch, run down to the main office, print there. It can also be used to store paper, binders, other items for the full floor or for your grade. Keeping that education space in your classroom instead of just having amounts of storage. So on this end of the hallway is our 4k cubbies with our 4k classrooms and then looking out onto the courtyard here primarily will be used by the 4k so having that really nice entrance right there even though that is a hallway for first grade and kindergarten they can go throughout the other way so 4k really has their kind of own separate space. So looking at a poured rubber surface in the middle with playground equipment and then concrete asphalt pavement around the edge for trikes walking around. Which part of the floor is lava?

046Yeah, exactly. I think it's the green. We have many scoot bikes right now in our school district, and our 4K and kindergarten kids love them, and we're able to get kids riding bikes pretty well by 6 feet. Where would the pickup for here be if I was coming to pick up my child? So there's two, especially on this younger side, there's a door back here to be able to pick up. That was one concern that we heard pretty early on. That will be on 19th Street towards Market Street. That was one piece we heard is as kids are kind of filing down these stairs, they can get congested. So creating a separate entrance and exit for first grade and kindergarten. And then coming out here through these doors, another exit out here for pickup here.

047This direction is down towards the cafeteria. And then the hallway connecting to the library here, looking on to that courtyard. So as we go upstairs, this is our east staircase. And there's no elevator on the east side? No. So one of the other pieces we heard during our staff meetings is this side of the building being very far away from a bathroom and also a group room. So we've included two kind of personal bathrooms here and then a small group instruction room to mirror what's on the other side of the building. We did not include that on the first floor because kindergarten and 4K have their own bathrooms. So looking down these hallways, they look very similar. having these open spaces here directing people towards classrooms and other activity spaces and this is going to

048be a really cool location being on the second floor so Kind of our first look at these large group instruction rooms looking at eight to twelve kids in here Also the ability to fully open this up So you could get even more kids kind of in a group learning environment here and then this one just so happens to be connected to the rooftop And so this is included as one of our alternates. And the reason that these alternates, this is a really good one. We've added the structure for it. So it's just the pedestal system for this rooftop. And so it's a series of kind of cones with then concrete pavers on top. So the roof itself is still underneath. And so then by doing that, you can actually get a seamless threshold here and

049not worry about water getting into. So next time you guys are on a rooftop, just take a peek through the pavers and you'll kind of see what I'm talking about. It's a really neat system. They keep them close together due to uplift of wind and everything. So it's a really cool experience to be able to have this in your building and also looking out towards Granddad Bluff and the other bluffs within the area. We've kept the planters along this edge here to keep kids far away from the edge so there's no risk of anyone falling over the edge or things getting thrown off the edge, more likely. So this is, I believe it's 10 feet from the edge, so quite a good distance. We're imagining science experiments done outside because there will be a water

050source there. We're thinking journaling and getting outdoors any season. Our building's not very big, all things considered, from one end to the other. It's shorter than all of our other buildings. But having access to the outdoors right there on the second floor is a really neat opportunity. So very similar to the first floor, there's a work area here, keeping windows for visibility, having our cubbies, marker board, tack boards along the sides. Then there's an additional large group room here as well can be opened up for more of those spaces. So the idea is each grade level then kind of has their own so if one's using one you can use the other but special ed other pull outs might be happening in these spaces so instead of going back to an office somewhere the learning

051can actually happen right here quickly be able to change kids in and out of a classroom so that we're cutting down on our walk times which is a biggest concern we have is if all my stuffs on a cart and I'm walking to and from where the kids are well this space now becomes that office for the day So up here on the second floor we have our art spaces. Again, another display case here for student artwork. And then on each one of these gateways there's a marker board here, magnetic, for posting up information, writing little notes to kids. Don't forget to pack your lunch. We have field trip tomorrow. So really cool opportunities to have the building kind of work as a whole. So look at our art room. I will say this flooring

052is not quite right. It's not this intense. It's a little more subtle with flakes of green to reflect what the floor is. So a bank of sinks here and then shared storage between the art rooms with the kiln room back here. On each floor there is a small group. room here as well as Same as on the other side. So again an opportunity If a teacher needs to make a quick phone call that can pop in here students can Be in here with a teacher or another staff member again kind of creating smaller spaces for those Take the place of chairs and hallways Down this way is the access the main access to the library So still having the access on the first floor for community members kind of the first time you go to

053the school and Then this being the main access for students. This is our large Staircase that spans all three floors here bringing in different colored panels in here to kind of progress with the overall design of the building. But then keeping these perforated panels so that kids aren't able to hide on the stairs, keeping it as open as possible. Then up here on our bluff floor, with being the upper floor, we have the ability to pop the ceiling up a little bit more so it feels, it is more spacious. Special education, library down this way. Then very similar to the second floor with cubbies on either sides. There's one less set of classrooms up here due to how curriculum works within the district lots of natural light up here and then again at the end

054of this hallway really good views out towards those bluffs, which Really really happy that that was something we discovered throughout the design process. It would have been a really a pretty big mistake to not have windows out towards those bluffs and if the corner was just classrooms. So I'm really happy that the admin team trusted us throughout this process and worked really well having teacher feedback, admin feedback, community feedback. So this building's really, really progressed. So how does that section sit relative to the outdoor deck? So the outdoor deck is then down here. That concludes the virtual tour. Are there any additional questions? Any spaces we would like to revisit? Daily question. I just want to say that this is unbelievably awesome. I'm so jealous of these elementary schoolers. Y'all don't understand. If I had

055this in high school, I'd lose my mind. So I just want, like, this is the color schemes and the way things blend together and the focus on, like, our environment and where we kind of are in our unique space being lacrosse is, I love that, and I think it's really well executed. Thank you. Yes. And again, the windows, there's anti-glare windows. Are those windows so that you... Yeah, a little bit. They're also... They're really well thermally broken So even on the cafeteria when we have a lot of heat gain coming from that south side You're not it's not going to be single pane like these windows. So they are a little more thermally enhanced in that way Nathan and his team was also able to incorporate the feedback we got from community members when we

056showed early designs And you know we had somebody who had written on a post-it start over and when they came back To see the updated design they were so excited and thought it was great So we've been able to mitigate concerns that we heard from neighbors and anyone else Without starting over I do love this windows out on the bluff so it makes me think of visiting my sister in Colorado Springs and their elementary school's cafeteria looks out on Pikes Peak and you're just like, okay. But just thinking about, yeah, having that sense of place and space inside your school is really cool. Even though it's three stories, it's unique to be able to then see out. So even though we're not as close to the bluffs as we could be, it is going to

057feel like it's right there from those windows. So yeah, it's going to be a really cool experience. The neighborhood has so many mature trees, and it's just very beautiful to be around, too. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you, Nathan. Safe drive. Thank you. Our other information item is proposed budget enrollment update. We're past the third Friday count now, and much thanks to our... gosh, IT team and Betsy Klinghoffer in particular, who helps put together our enrollment report. And Patty has provided in the attachment some numbers that will go into our budget book, and I will turn it over to her. Okay, so the third Friday was September 19th. And the numbers, it takes a while to gather them from the schools and the open enrollment in and out. And they were due

058to DPI last Friday. So I was able to put these numbers together for you today. So you can go to the first slide, Dan. So this is the enrollment. These are the students in the seats. And as you can see that we have still declining enrollment. and we are down 147 students in the seats. My early estimate was 122, but as you'll see a little bit later, it's right on track with the population studies that we've done for declining enrollment. Any questions on that page? Next one. So this one, you can take a closer look at it. in the weeks to come, but this is the history by school. So the in and outs by schools, then also the history of changes along the way. At all levels, we have lost students for this coming

059year compared to the last year. Off-site preschool, is that the child care? Yep, those are child care partnerships. Yeah, and I think that is as reflective of our declining birth rates. If you go back to 2011, 144. We're half that now in 2025. That said, they came in lower than we anticipated regardless, and so we're not sure what that is about. Enrollment in child care continues to be strong, generally speaking. But for whatever reason it's not in 4k this year right and that's only the off-site preschool so they could be attending our schools instead And I would say our 4k was lower than anticipated regardless overall overall. Yeah, let me see I have those numbers somewhere here last year in 4k we had 319 this year we have 279 so it's about 40 down from

060last year in 4k overall that said the projections we had were pretty close to what we anticipated so our models are anticipating these declining birth rates fewer births in our area and it's showing up in 4k as anticipated the next slide just shows the open enrollment history in and out, so we do have more going out. So this means our resident students attending other school districts, 315 coming in from other districts. A difference there. And then our open enrollment history, next slide, is third Friday, but this breaks it down by district. So in where they're coming from to attend La Crosse, and out going from La Crosse residents going elsewhere. I would point out that the virtual school is pretty similar to the last few years. putting in that virtual school was helpful for us

061actually they did not go to other school at the high school level this year we saw an increase of 29 students in our virtual academy. And so that's a kudos to Ms. Everson back there, Dr. Everson and all the work that her and her team has done for advertising and getting the word out. And I think I'm particularly proud of our virtual option because it is a... Quality educational option we care about our kids. We provide a high quality education. We follow up on them We ensure they succeed and get across the graduation finish line. I Can't say that about every virtual Academy and I think dr. Everson this DPI had said ours is one of the ones they talk about as a model if I'm not mistaken those of us who attended the graduation

062I was impressed with the variety of students that participate single moms that need to do that, kids that are struggling financially that need to do it, but then kids that just want to get out in the field and start getting some experience so they're ready when they go into the next level of education. It really surprised me. It was such a variety of types of students that participate in this. So, yeah, kudos to that program. Don't want to derail this, but it's a great program. That's great. I would also point out the open enrollment rates that have changed with the state biannual budget on the bottom there. So 10,102 will follow regular ed students and 14,000 for special ed students. Next one, this is where... Dr. Engel was talking about the difference between the years

063and the class numbers per grade. The largest class this year is our 11th grade. The smallest is kindergarten. So there's another indication of declining birth rates. And if you look at 9, 10, 11, 12, they're all over 400. And after that, the average is somewhere around 385, 390, just kind of an indication of what's to come. As those 9, 10, 11, 12 classes graduate, we're probably going to maintain the enrollment at those other levels. So we'll see an exodus of 60, 80, 40, 30 kids over the next few years just from that larger classes exiting out. So the in and out transfers, are the outbound transfers proportional to the classes? Are we seeing more families choosing other districts that are in the elementary schools? Or where are they kind of landing in the, I don't

064need an answer right now. I'm just trending. It's curious. I want to understand the trending. Do you have that information? Yeah, it's pretty consistent for our open enrollments. In for those that are coming in we are high at the high school level so So 9 10 11 12, it's 30 32 47 and 54 So we have a lot coming in at the high school level our high schools are attractive The program we offer Cooley region virtual Academy of course is holding their own there at the lower levels middle school through high school. It's about 10 to 20 kids per grade level that we're bringing in. On the outside, it is consistently around 30, I would say, as an average across the elementary schools and high schools and middle schools with a low of 20 and

065a high of 45. There isn't really a pattern in there. It's just kind of variable as it goes from year to year. And then I was looking at the differences between last year and this year, just trying to see if there were any patterns there as well. And with open enrollment in and out, it's just a few ads at each grade level. There isn't like a spot where it's popping hot or people are leaving or something. It just seems to be kind of consistent throughout it. Do we have geographic information as to where some of those families are? families on County B choosing West Salem because it's closer to them or it's a 50-50 split or is it Northside families choosing out Alaska or is there any geographic information that that you've tracked as well?

066I know we've done some of that hot spotting. Mm-hmm, yep, open enrollment out is generally kind of north of the middle of our school district, so it's kind of closer to Onalaska and West Salem. And Onalaska is the primary place kids go, I think it was 213 this last year. 97 in West Salem, and so you're exactly right, it's on the periphery of our school district, close enough to drive the other direction. And our boundary also goes out to St. Joseph's Ridge. And so there's kids out there that will walk across the street and hop on a bus that goes to West Salem as well. Literally house by house could be West Salem or La Crosse. And so for a lot of families out there, you know, they're choosing to stay with the kids they

067played t-ball with in the summer as opposed to, you know, making the trek down the bluff into La Crosse. I just see that as a troubling trend. The Onalaska, Salem, those two are, that's driving our negative number right now. You see the year-over-year gains. Yeah, totally. So then the next is the chart according to projections and where we are right now. So we are pretty much in line with what was predicted. And then the other, the next one is also the same, gives you some idea that the projections are going down and probably leveling off. So we usually do these enrollment projections about every five years, so we'll probably do another one. But we did do the, was it the JD Roth that was very similar to the UW extension? So that's the next. Two

068slides forward Dan Thank you. So this is always what we compare to the projections that were different baselines or trends and Compare them to what is the actual so with the negative 147 overall very close to the Negative 139 the other two projections are much higher than our actual Can you look at that slide right before that? Mm-hmm. There's no numbers on the side. There's no Y axis. Oh. What is this? It looks bad, but I have no idea. Is that like two students and five more years? That's the number of disciplinary issues in the district. No, I must have just copied and pasted and missed that role. But that will be in your budget book, but I can also send you that. So there must be like a cutoff, like this doesn't start at

069zero. This must start at. I think it's got to start at the... No, it starts up at 6... Right, right. And goes down to the 5564. Yeah. Yeah, and I've got... So we did our Applied Population Lab study in February of 2024, and then we did the MD ROFers in August of 2024, and I have both of those here if anyone wants to look at them. Those have the projections and updates, all their methodology. super detailed, neighborhood by neighborhood. So very interesting data for folks that want to dive into the weeds on that. And you said this just a little bit ago, I think that the models have kind of been borne out. The numbers, not exactly so much, but the trend and the amounts of the reductions. So that for your budgeting purposes, the

070models have remained reliable. Yes, absolutely, yep. We were predicting minus 139 on this baseline prediction from the Applied Population Lab, and it came in at minus 147. MD Roffers had predicted minus 139. We're at minus 147. It's right in the ballpark. It's very, yeah. So that is reassuring in some ways, but the trend continues to be down, and so it just means that we have to plan for that as we move forward. is why a consolidation like we're undergoing to bring our schools together in fewer spaces is so important. Allows us to continue to maintain the high quality education, but reap the benefits of efficiency for our schools and our students. Any questions on the enrollment? On the slide where you have it by school building? Mm-hmm. So I noticed for, I was just looking

071at Poly, so they went down two kids in middle school and they're up two kids in high school. Is that because there's a cap on how many students can go there or was just a coincidence that they netted out the same between middle and high school? I think there's a limit of how many can be at that school. I don't think they've reached maximum right now. Not max yet. But yes, there is a limit to the number of students there. The building's not. huge, you know, and so we have to be careful about how many students are there. And sometimes we'll get a ton of applicants in sixth grade, and that's when kids want to start, but we can only have so large a sixth grade because we can only have so many kids if

072everyone decides to stay. So there's some limiting factors in that process as well. But it's an awesome school. Yes, it is. It's beautiful. Any other questions? Okay, and so I did also update the enrollment to staffing and really actually the staffing turned out to be very close to what we had estimated for staffing and budgeted. So we just updated it to compare. Is this the budgeted number of positions or the actual number of positions as of the 19th of September? It is both. Because if you went back and looked at the FTE that was budgeted compared to what the prediction was at the last meeting, and then you look at what has actually happened, we were very, very close as far as actual to budget. And it includes positions that aren't filled yet. If you

073look at the detail also for the staffing, you're going to notice that it's mostly in special ed area that we have added staff. Do we get an increase, do we get no increased special ed funding or like a microscopic increase? We will get an increase, but it will be based on this year's special ed costs, and that will be supposed to be increased to what, I think. 42% this next year and 45 in the following. Okay. It's not some sufficient, it's some certain, so it's distributed based on the number of requests. And so the actual realized percentage that I've heard, somewhere probably between 35 and 40%, hopefully closer to the 40%, that's the last number I heard. So we will definitely see an increase in reimbursement. It won't be maybe as much as anticipated, but

074will certainly benefit the school district. So the aid we get this year is really based on that 30% of last year's expenses. Okay, so you'll see these updated pages, and I'll make sure that other page has numbers on the side, so thank you for bringing that to my attention. All right, and we are still waiting for the October 15th information that we'll provide to you by the 20th, that meeting. Questions? Sorry, Patty, before you leave, I want to make sure anybody has any other questions. Yeah, go ahead. I have two. I don't know how it directly relates to this, but it does, kind of. Are we tracking how many teachers we've got on overloads right now? Like how many core curriculum teachers are on an overload? Yeah, we can get that information. We absolutely track

075that. We have fewer this year than last year. In a couple of cases, we converted multiple overloads into a full-time FTE. And in other cases, because of declining enrollment and declining needs, we were able to eliminate a few overloads and have teachers go back to regular teaching schedules. So it kind of depended on the area. So like family consumer science was one where we consistently had overloads, a lot of interest in those programs. And so we were able to create another. full FTE out of that. In other places, like I think science, we were able to reduce some overloads in the core area. Thank you. Any other questions? Do we know what we lose of like private? For enrollment? Yeah. Or game? Because that's the only thing I don't know. Exchange? Is it very few?

076They don't allow us to have access to that information. There's 1,300, 1,400 kids at Aquinas. The bulk of them come from the lacrosse area. There's kids at the Lutheran schools in town and the Providence Academy. We have a couple kids at Cholita. High-end estimates, if everyone was a lacrosse resident, you'd be talking probably 1,800, 1,900 kids. They're not all lacrosse residents, though. 1,400, it's all speculation at this point. We can track the number of kids that are on vouchers that come from our schools, but they don't let us know who they are. So we have some information, but not a ton. What have their enrollment trends been? Is there a way we can even get that? We have that because they have to submit their data for WIAA athletic participation. So we do have access

077to some information there. So what historically was happening, you know, in the 1950s. Public schools and private schools were about even in La Crosse in terms of enrollment. Aquinas was about the same size as the school district was, public schools. And then over time, the private schools dropped dramatically faster than our public schools did. And so in the 90s, you saw, or early 80s and 90s, you saw private school dropping faster than our high schools and our public schools were. And then when vouchers came in in the early 2000s, public schools continued to see a decline, but the private schools stabilized and remained flat. And so while we decline, our private schools have been able to bolster their numbers through the use of vouchers. And what you'd see at Aquinas and at Luther is that

078over time, the percentage of students on vouchers has grown each year. And they're able to... Build a base of students through vouchers as a result Luther has a much higher percentage of students attending than Aquinas does on vouchers I think last I'd looked Aquinas was like 15 16 percent. I didn't look at the updated numbers for this year yet So it's still a relatively small number all things considered, you know 150 kids probably three 200 220 kids But it does impact our schools and those are students that Likely would otherwise be attending our public schools. They also have to do an enrollment report to DPI I got something today that said that it's due from all of our private schools by October 15th and none of them so far have submitted anything so they kind

079of tell the public schools to reach out to the private schools and let them know that they have a deadline to meet so and the caps are coming off of vouchers I think after next Year, and so there will be no more limits on voucher school enrollment up till this point it was limited by a percentage of the number of students in your public schools and so that when the caps come off it could potentially dramatically increase Those are those vouchers are a direct tax on our local taxpayers It's not a small amount at this point. What was the last? It was over two million. Over two million dollars, I think 2.3 million dollars including special education that we tax locally on our taxpayers to pay for kids to go to private schools. But am

080I hearing this correct that with the vouchers, at the end of the day there's more families kind of inching up to choose to not go to our school, to go elsewhere to school. Is that correct? That's concern if that's what I'm understanding that's a could like why is that happening and what? Why aren't we competitive? What can we do to become more competitive? Yeah, I don't know what the exact ratio is of lacrosse students going to private schools. The hypothesis would be maybe there's a few more, especially proportionally. And so that is a good question. What's the rationale behind the choice there? What do they see in a different school system? I mean, I think I'm trying to sort of generally... The enrollment at a particular private school is kids from a variety of communities,

081but you can make some general assumptions how much. And as those numbers increase or go down, I think that tells us something. And so our decline in enrollment is that birth rate certainly contributes. Is that the only contributing factor? Are there other factors that we could have some impact on and reverse the trend? Think is a question that isn't on my mind. I see a few heads nodding. So absolutely Yeah, I mean the volume of declining enrollment. We've had like 2,500 kids over 20 years that is more than the entire enrollment of you know Aquinas so it couldn't all be that But some proportion is probably a choice in there for some reason That's a point well made, Deb. And it's also worth noting that we know a significant number of students going on vouchers

082were already enrolled at the private schools. Yes. I have no actual statistics to back this up. But from a student perspective, a lot of the time when you hear students going to other schools, it's because of athletics. They tend to have stronger programs and more races. resources they can devote to them or that they're like facilities like in general are seen as like wealthier they have more they're seen as having more money at those schools so they have access to like more things and then additionally I know in the past I can't tell you how many years Holman has seen an increase in the amount of people that are moving into that area and so they're going to Again, because of the taxpayer dollars, they're gonna have more money for that. Just generally more people

083are leaving La Crosse. There's not a whole lot of room to expand La Crosse. I can tell you right now that Holmen is about to see about 300 more units of housing and development built, which is, I'm interested to see how that'll impact enrollment here as more and more people leave. I think that's been an ongoing trend, just 300 more to a trend, Onalaska and Holman middle schools both passed huge expensive referenda to upgrade their facilities and they're beautiful in those buildings. And Holman and Onalaska have declining enrollment as well. Birth rates dominate all trends in population movement. I think when they did the facilities advisory committee, what was it? It was the population of La Crosse County has changed less than a percent over the past 20 years. So we're just changing. I think

084to Deb's point, I think I would like to at some point ever request to have a workshop about how to go on the offensive, about how to, we do great things, better than some of our competitive districts, better than private schools. But to your point, there's lots of reasons why families choose to make that choice, whether that's a perception or a reality. up for debate, right? But that's the perception is what wins. And I think we've got to figure out how to change the perception by making some things maybe reality. Make that request at some point. Good suggestion. Thank you. Any other comments? Questions? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We'll then move on to matters reserved for board action, starting with operational expectation monitoring report OE11. We reviewed the... performance of this one at

085our last meeting this is our opportunity to look at staff's recommendations for changing for changes in the indicators so I'm presenting this one tonight we are making lots of recommendations So this thing is all marked up in yellow. So I'll walk you through it. It starts on page two with the policies themselves. As a reminder, listed on this document, eight and nine were historically in our results policies, and we moved them to OE 11. And we thought in terms of like the order of things and how it kind of makes sense to access the levels of our policy. putting them at eight and nine instead of going back up to number two, just a minor wording change that we thought made more sense in reading the policy, aligning our curriculum and instruction with our district

086academic standards. We felt kind of met our intent on that better from a administrative perspective. And then it covers number three as well. It integrates naturally into number two. These are our policies. These aren't the indicators, correct? Correct. They're our recommendations. So just throwing them out there now because it feeds into some other suggestions later on. And then our recommendation would be to consider eliminating three because it works so well with number two. And then the last suggestion we would make as far as the policy is in number three. Instead of using quantitative and qualitative measures and methods, we thought about the language that we use in public education and how we assess our students and we thought formative and summative assessments would be a better description. And formative are kind of the ongoing assessments

087during a unit or during the class to provide feedback to students. quizzes, labs, those sorts of things. And then summative assessments are kind of the end of unit tests, the final things that we do to tell kids how they did in sum. All right, so that's just suggestions that we have for policy language for the board to consider, and then I'll get into indicators. 11.1 on page three. It's previously said to 100% of content program areas scheduled on the curriculum review cycle on an appropriate evaluation pace, we thought are reviewed on a regular basis, made a little more sense from a wording choice. 11.2 suggested moving, I think it was previously, Is that an 11 point? Updating indicator one to say the school district standards are based on state and or nationally recognized models. And

088then indicator two, district approved standards are reflected in the curriculum for all subject areas. Can I stop you, please, for a second? So in the suggestion for the policy language on 11.2, you... have removed the word base and went to align, but then it shows up in the new indicator. And functionally, there's not a huge difference there, but for the sake of consistency. Yes, I would change that to align then. Thank you. Question out of process. Until we approve these changes in these policies, you've made recommendations on indicators, and we're going to approve those indicators. But we have, I feel like we're. Are we putting the cart in front of the horse? Like, should we just say, should we take action about changing the policy or discussing the policy and decide what we want to

089change, and then what we agree to, then you follow up with the indicators? Would that, that would take a few meetings. Would that delay you too much? It just seems like there's a lot of work going into these, and if we as a board make any changes to them, your work is for nothing. I don't want to waste your time. We have totally sensible recommendations. We know the board will take them at face value. But yes, you're right. First policy, then monitoring indicators. We had done this work all at once, though, and thought we could present it now. And we can table the monitoring indicators pending any board policy change for sure. What's the pleasure of the board? This is a good time for the conversation to go through the recommendations and see that one

090little wording change. Like if there are elements that we're happy with or unhappy with. And in the meantime, the existing policies, in fact. Am I misunderstanding? Yeah, that's correct. But I think to Ms. Sucla's process point, we would change the policy first and then align the monitoring indicators. I also think it's reasonable to have a holistic discussion and, you know, kind of work through it all and then see what we want to do. What happened was when you went through to revise indicators, you realized, and maybe you didn't do it this way, but what has happened is that policy language now needs to match the indicators. So if you're going to align standards and curriculum as your indicator, then you need your policy to say that too. It's a chicken and egg thing. It makes

091sense to look at them together, but I can understand from a process point where we might vote on them separately. We might vote on the policies first and then vote on the standards. Absolutely. Thank you for noting the based piece in 11.2. Yeah, so 11.2, indicator two, the district-approved standards are reflected in the curriculum for all subject areas. We thought that made more sense as the district-approved standards every year as opposed to going back to state or national standards. It would be based on what the district has approved. Our recommendation was to remove 11.3. Of course, it would hold until a change has been made to the policy. 11 point... That's a way of streamlining the indicators, too, which is something we've been asking you to do so that you don't have four indicators for

092the same thing. We felt it was redundant, and we were using the same information for both. Right, right. The current 11.4... This is where we made suggestions around formative and summative assessment. We threw in definitions there for formative and summative assessments. And then in the indicators, using similar language then as we move throughout, schools use district and state summative assessments to track student progress towards achieving proficiency on standards. So that's kind of like during the school year, helping give feedback to students, feedback for our teaching. Mr. Manko. Yes, my question is, under this guidance and policies here, are formulas being graded or are they still just there for students to do as practice? They should be typically noted in a grade book, right? So in a formative assessment. So if I'm giving two quizzes in

093a lab, they're not the final test, I would be giving feedback to students and noting that in my grade book. And they currently are now, by all accounts. And then summative assessments would be like the end of unit test or the final project or whatever it might be. And that would be noted as well. Right now we use average grading at the high school and trend grading at the middle schools. the average of all of those grades, your two quizzes, your lab, your project, would all be given equal weight, just like they have historically in some cases. Not always the case, depending if using points or percentages, but every teacher has a little bit of discretion in there too to use their professional judgment to make the best call for what a student's learning is.

094Mr. Sprague, did you have any? I had a question on the suggestion to the policy language again. the change from assess to determine each student's continuous improvement, I'm actually getting hung up on the continuous improvement. It's reading to me as though the policy is requiring that all students, in order to be in compliance, all students are demonstrating continuous improvement, which of course is aspirational, but is not necessarily going to be realistic. Maybe I'm interpreting the policy too strictly and somebody else wants to offer me a different reading of it. Our reading was the measure piece. So the verb for us was effectively measure. We're determining continuous improvement, so we want to make sure that we know what that is. So are they making progress to get better? Is it flat? Is it less? It's not

095saying it has to be better, but we're determining how they're doing in that process. So for us, as we read it, it was the measure piece. And so we were thinking about the different ways we measure, formatively, summatively, et cetera. I think, and I agree, I think that's what the policy should aim at, is we want you to measure this. Mr. Bagnaski-DeShins? Well, my point on that would be you would hope that from the first assessment to the second, you would see some improvement. Well, yeah, my point was that students will occasionally not, and if we have a policy that requires all students to show, right, continuous improvement, we're setting ourselves up for something we can't possibly meet. That's why I said it's aspirational, I agree. So the first indicator there in 11.4 gets to

096the summative assessments towards achieving proficiency. That's the end-of-year standards. And then indicator two is the formative assessments to identify who needs additional support. And these include things like universal screening and progress monitoring. Our recommendation here is to eliminate indicator two. There aren't federal assessments that track student progress, so well-intentioned at the time, but they don't actually exist in practice, so eliminating that. And then indicator four, maintaining data systems. Those are embedded in schools at this point. We didn't think it necessary to call out which one we used. It would just be to say, oh, we use Educlimber this year. Google sheets or something so in an attempt to reduce Volume of indicators that was a low-hanging piece of fruit We would need a system to monitor these things if we were doing number one into

097in the OE five eleven point five Just eliminating some unnecessary language. There's no federal test participation rate any longer that's mandated. And then we actually added an indicator here, OE5, 11.5 is about developed talents and interests in their specialized areas. And we thought this would be a great opportunity to demonstrate our high performance learning. program that we have. We didn't have someplace else in our policies that captured this, and we've often had a workshop on this, but this would be a great way to demonstrate the great job we do in our school district with that. OE 11.6 recommended eliminating indicator one as written, and instead stating special education designs, learning experiences that match student needs, and accommodate students' different learning approaches. Every IEP by law is in the least restrictive environment, and so it would

098be almost impossible to give the board a realistic assessment of that because by nature of the process, it ends up being the least restricted environment based on that team's decision. And so having something a little more nuanced that talked about matching their needs to their learning approaches matches the language a little bit better. Can I pause you there again? Is it important, though, to have an indicator that addresses legal compliance, statutory compliance? Every year it's been a letter stating that we're in compliance. It hasn't been particularly useful, I think. you're relying on our special education staff to say we're doing it. And so we were looking for a way to have something a little bit more meaningful for school board members that we could maybe pull examples and anecdotes from that demonstrate our commitment to

099that specially designed experience as opposed to kind of obligatorily saying we meet the expectation because we had all of these meetings that... The accountability system, you know, everything is screened by DPI for accountability, and there's, like, dates that have to be met and meetings done on time. And if we're not, then we have to have make-up meetings and compensatory services. Like, the whole thing is regulated so greatly that we were thinking more about what's meaningful for the school board to see if we're doing a good job at it as opposed to if we're meeting things that are tracked in other places. That was our philosophy on it. I think that makes sense. Indicator two, just some minor wording changes and the same thing with indicator three. And then in the interest of kind of reducing

100things, removing indicator four. In particular, we felt this was covered later on when we get into school action plans at school, school improvement plans. OE, it'll end below here in 11. So, OE 11.7, a lot of changes here. One of the things that we did here is we looked at what social justice and culturally responsive mean in an educational context. It's a little bit different than in the world at large, and we were thinking about what are the educational definitions. And so we went to Teaching for Justice, which is a great website that guides a lot of our... work in this area in our schools and we use that as a framework. And so specifically principles of social justice and education, our equity, access, diversity, participation, and human rights and aligned our indicators to these

101elements. And specifically looking at the standards for teaching about justice in schools from there. So indicator one, resources are distributed equitably and fairly, so each student has the specific resources and support they need to succeed. Indicator two, all students have... That's my question. Oh, absolutely. So a great example of this is our AGR report. So we demonstrate that we differentiate staffing based on qualification for AGR. Another one is title support. We differentiate staffing based on need socioeconomic status. Another opportunity would be unique types of resources in schools where there are unique needs. We have community schools, workers at Northside and Hamilton. Our community impact work that benefits the Huber and Hinchin neighborhoods. There's all sorts of things that we could demonstrate that we are resourcing equitably and fairly so that each student gets what they

102need. All of special education, frankly, is a... equitable program that's fair to students in the end. Various ways that we lower the barrier to access programs to cover costs for students so they don't have to pay field trip fees. The lists go on and on and on and on here. You would be upset if we provided everything. Indicator two, you just go through your enrollment in different clubs and activities and take a percentage of how many students in the different groups would be. So it would be easier, I think. It could take a lot of time, but it could be done. Absolutely. We already have a report that tracks equal access to curricular and extracurricular activities. Indicator three, diversity is recognized, valued, and celebrated across the wide range of backgrounds and experiences of all of

103our students. Indicator four, students have an opportunity to provide voice and influence in decisions that affect them within the school. And indicator five, all students are treated with dignity and ensured fair treatment within their fundamental rights as students and human. And so for some of these things, you know, voice and influence, we have student senates, we have student councils at elementary levels, we have all sorts of opportunities for students to be involved. students here at our board table tonight. With indicator five, our code of rights and responsibilities would be underpinning this and our engagement with students around what that looks like would be a large part of the evidence we might provide for that. So these are some big changes and we eliminated the other things and so I will pause for a moment to

104get feedback on your feelings around some of those indicators there. Like I said, we tried to align this to what's in our educational realm as opposed to kind of more broadly. I was really hoping Emerson would be here today because as far as I'm aware, Logan, as it stands, does not have a student senate. Am I understanding that correct? Would the only way to express the voice then be a position like this, or are there other ways that I'm just missing? There are many other ways as well. That would certainly not be the only way. It would get down to the classroom level as well and other ways that teachers solicit voice. There hasn't been a longstanding tradition of a student senate at Logan High, but I have been working with the principal and just

105asking, what are your thoughts on how you would like to approach this? What matches the culture in this building and how would you do it here? It's going to look different in every building based on how they've established things. And then in OE 11.5, indicator four, how specific, like for their specialized area of interest, what would you consider a specialized area of interest? Are you saying that high performance learners can really get into a niche topic and develop that? Or is it more, oh, they like reading, and so we're going to give them reading-based topics or things like that? Yeah, it would be a range of things. It could be high-performance learning. You know, we have kind of more formalized math support programs, but there are students that might be interested in engineering at an

106elementary level and our librarians and others that support that will find opportunities for them to flourish. At the high school level, it could look like academies or AP opportunities or the ability to go off to college directly and take credit courses there. Any number of opportunities for kids to explore their areas of interest. Perfect. Thank you. I would just comment on all the big changes here in 11.7, which will be six. I think I appreciate the upshot of the indicators and how they match the goal of demonstrating equitable distribution of resources. That's the fundamental thing there. And I think what you've written here is reaching to that. I still worry indicator one is overly broad. But I think I'm also okay with making a change like that getting a monitoring report in the next round

107and figuring out Again, letting the process work and and are there things that we want to see are there areas that we're hearing about that are not represented That that would be my only concern with it. Otherwise, I I'm pretty satisfied with what you've written here Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what rises to the fore for folks. Is it about staffing? Is it about? dollars is it about Facility condition is it about after-school opportunities resources could be anything And it may become a thing. Yeah, absolutely an indicator to I think that's also going to be a tricky one for you because how are we talking about equal access, right? There's no pool at Central. There's barely a pool at Logan. We do a lot of work, though, to make those programs. And it's part

108of our policy that we offer that at both schools. Exactly. So offering it is one thing. Creating realistic access and equity is a different thing. And is this indicator talking about the offer, or is it talking about getting people where they need and want to be? And that would be my concern there. Yeah, and we would be looking at both. Both our ability to lower barriers such that access is reasonably equal for all individuals, but we also look at actual enrollment. We do it. for our charter schools looking at proportional enrollment and we're not where we want to be. There is probably a similar story for AP, for academies, and that is something that we always track and we'll be able to report on too is our commitment to equal access yielding proportional representation in

109our programs. That would be the goal, but we know that. Folks from different backgrounds and experiences have different interests and opportunities and some of them are beyond our control to adjust But our goal is to lower those barriers to the greatest extent possible Yeah, I'm just I'm imagining like what my potential challenge to you would be on the evidence if for example if we saw You know like like 90% of the show choir students were coming from Logan all of a sudden like what and are we tracking? any reasons that people are giving from the central side not to be participating in show choir, right? And that gets pretty weedy for you guys to track, though. It'd be something to investigate, a good question. Well, right, right. I mean, I can see it as valuable

110evidence. I worry about the workload and monitoring and then... That is already present in our systems. You know, in our co-curriculars in particular are not so extensive that we couldn't... Grab that information and in that case you're only talking things that are joint programs you know an example that where there's a long-standing issue that we continue to work on is our ACE construction Academy has historically been operated out of central and has historically been almost solely attended by central students even though it is a joint program across the district They do a different set of projects that are also engaging for students at Logan, but as a result fewer have been actively interested in attending the ACE Construction Academy. We have a couple of students right now that are attending that and we're continuing to

111build that pathway. So it's by looking at that information and tracking it, we're clear about what our opportunities are and then we're pursuing strategies to fix it. Dr. Garcia, you had a question. I just wanted to say that I appreciate how these indicators I think support our broader policy or I think it might even be one of our mega results about sort of creating a district where all students can belong and feel like they belong. All of these indicators seem to be about distributing resources and providing access to opportunities and identifying student opportunities for success that would support that I think. So I feel like this is in line with our broader district policies. and hopes as educators. Thanks for this work. Thank you. I'll move on to OE 11.8. Yes. Fourth comment. The ones

112that we brought in. Yep, they'll be right up next year. They were in the beginning, right? So 11.8, indicator one, all programs will annually identify instructional priorities is what we added for ongoing program improvement to add a purpose to that. Indicator two, district tracks and evaluates student progress on key interventions for continuing effectiveness, trying to be more clear in the language and relate better to the policy measure itself. And then suggested eliminating indicator four because it's captured in a policy element further down here that we'll get to in a bit for brevity. OE 11.8, it was 14 prior. This one's the new one. And so while we had the policy language, which we took directly from what we had put together, we threw in some definition of terms. The policy has been approved, yes. The

113indicator then, here we tried to use, once again, K-12 educational language. for the indicator and align that with teaching for justice standards. Opportunities are available throughout the curriculum for students to recognize that people's multiple identities interact and create unique and complex individuals as well as to recognize traits the various cultures around them and understand how they negotiate their own identity in multiple spaces. And so this takes two different teaching standards and teaching for justice and combines them. to create a little more K-12 friendly language for the policy element there. OE 11, the next one, OE 11.9 is similar. So took the language that Dr. Sprague crafted that the school board has approved. We added definitions of terms straight from our prior results policy. And then indicator one reads, opportunities are available throughout the curriculum for

114students to recognize unfairness on the individual level and an injustice at the institutional or systemic level. So taking the policy language, using the K-12 education standards and creating an indicator that tried to match as best we could. I already can list a dozen ways we do it every single day. I think I like that the indicator that it's just asking that the opportunities are present that it's not overly directive and I think that's what most of policy should be so I I'll look forward to seeing you know what it is we're doing in a variety of areas I guess my concern with what the evidence would be are we looking at the same course, the same part of the curriculum every year, or does this allow us to move around and see it year over

115year in different places? I don't know, I mean, having the opportunity present and seeing that reflected in different ways will be, I think, valuable. I know some great teachers who could give presentations on the kinds of lessons that would make this available to their students. Yeah, so, I mean, particularly 11-9. for students to recognize unfairness. Go to a middle school, they will recognize unfairness like in a heartbeat. And the stories are about that, the stories that they've learned for decades, right? And we have a second step curriculum that we use, K-8, that incorporates these themes and learnings into it and is used at least on a weekly basis in our middle schools. almost on a daily basis in our elementary schools, at morning meeting and other places. Morning meeting in and of itself, responsive classroom

116speaks to all of this stuff on a daily basis. So it will be very easy to demonstrate, I believe, that we are meeting the board's expectation in this area in a meaningful way. Moving down to page 11, OE 11.10. indicating an indicator three previously just said proportional enrollment in our charter schools it wasn't a complete sentence and so we just add the district will pursue oe 11.11 we updated these two indicators based on a good discussion with our IT supervisor Jeremy Schoonover The two verbs in the policy were adequately monitor and control, student access to and utilization. So monitor and control were the two words that we pulled out and we identified. indicators that would meet those expectations. So suggesting indicator one, the district's technology infrastructure effectively monitors, prevents, and mitigates access to prohibited content

117as required by law. And indicator two, the district demonstrates a proactive and responsive process for managing and addressing inappropriate access attempts and behaviors. So monitor and control. and we have easy reports we can generate and compliance documents that would indicate we've met those things. And those are the changes that we're recommending. Obviously, as Ms. Soukla pointed out, we would need a policy change first before we change the monitoring indicators. I know it's a lot, but we felt like this was a good time. We felt like we've learned some stuff over the last five years and that these indicators better reflected the policy and the board's intent when it was all said and done. policy items number eight and nine although they're highlighted have already been approved by this body so I just want to be

118clear so the changes are really in items two three three that was for any comments I'm I'm struggling with the changes to number three and I didn't love number three to begin with the new number three this is very confusing the terms formative and summative are defined later on by the indicators. Quantitative and qualitative were, I'm struggling with those terms because our policies are really our tool, like this is a layman's term, like this isn't like the educator's edu-speak. And I don't know that everybody in the world that would read this, especially. if they had concerns about the grading system, would look at number three and say, yeah, if they do that, that's going to be awesome. Could we maybe at least change formative and summative to be like regular human speak instead of edu-speak?

119It could just be methods. So effectively measure each student's progress towards achieving or exceeding the standards using a variety of methods to determine each student's continuous. Or a variety of assessments. Variety of assessments. Yeah, that would be good too. I think the point of qualitative and quantitative in the first place was just mixed methods. Yeah. I just, that language just feels. Yeah, they're terms of art, definitely. So not everyone will. Although every middle and high school student can tell you what they mean. No, no, I mean it's a change. It's a change in how we talk to students about it. So you're right that not every person in the public would know. And page five does define them. Page five does define them, but I still think the language in here should be something that

120the public could read and have an idea of what our policy is and what we're expecting. Part of our job we as a board are somewhere between the public and administration and trying to find something that kind of fits for everyone I think the the goal of differentiating qualitative and quantitative or Formative and summative is just that we won did well the question is do we want the policy to indicate that we want? ongoing ongoing assessments that are used for the purpose of providing providing feedback on performance towards the final assessment that's that's the definition of formative right what you said exactly and i would say personally i think although i think the issues have been addressed i still would like it to include language that it's assessment results are something that the students and

121the parents can understand where the students stand Yeah, and I think our goal was to improve on quantitative and qualitative but I appreciate your point in that the this level of policy language should be accessible to the average person in the Indicators is where we get into like the specific ways. We're gonna do the things and so a variety of assessments, you know, it says like hey We're not gonna do it one way or do it multiple ways And then in our indicators, we go on to define, well, we're using formative assessments, and we can have a weeds detail about that. And we're using summative assessments. We have a weeds detail about that. So I'm appreciative of that. And if I had been as smart as that statement earlier, I would have just eliminated qualitative

122and quantitative and put assessments in instead and not complicated it. I'd be comfortable with that. Maybe just having the assessment there, some form of assessment. I mean, I imagine some of the spirit of the original was to prevent the idea that you would have one final exam for six weeks of grades and that that would be your grade for the quarter or the six weeks, right? If you have formative and summative, then you've got to have little grades along the way. Formatives are all the little grades along the way. So I can imagine that was the spirit of the thing, and I don't know if it... I don't know at the policy level if it's necessary to do that. I don't know that doing it all along or having one at the end of six

123weeks. I'm not an expert in this area, so it's not for me to decide that. For me to decide is that we're measuring it in a way that measures the student's progress and that's understandable to the student and the parents. I would go with just the word assessments, a variety of assessments. I do too. Yeah. Is that? Can, Erin, are you drafting that out? Yep, I got it right here. Because it's also true that the language formative and summative will probably change. Is that what it was 20 years ago? And it probably won't be that in 10 years. It'll be something else. Not the summative. It'll be called something else. Is there discussion on other changes to this policy? I don't want to. It might be best if at our next meeting we have a

124clean copy of her first reading. Is that okay? Absolutely. And then once we get the second reading approved, we could add that to the October 27th. And so then the first meeting in November, we can approve the indicators if that's okay. Absolutely. So we will not act on this one at this time. Make sure you change item number three under the main heading in OE11 instructional program because it uses the formative and summative language as well. On page one. Yes, thank you. Okay, we will move on then to the OE7 asset protection. Point of order. Yes. Do we need a vote to delay that? Or do we just? Do we have consensus or do we want to have a vote? It's a table, something you don't need to vote. It just kind of dies for

125lack of a motion. Right, okay. Just one. Good point. OE7 asset protection. So you say. It's pretty much black and white. So we're looking at our asset protection for the prior year, July 1st, 2024, through June 30th, 2025. So the first few, 7.1 through 7.4, are all insurance coverage policies. But I would like to point out, especially after Mr. Schoonhoven, Shooing over. Talked about IT protection. If you look on page 10. the indicator five, the district has purchased and receives the coverage declarations for cyber enhancement endorsement. So this policy covers expenses for losses caused by website publishing liabilities, security breach, and expenses, restoration of electronic data. Hopefully we never have to use it, but we have it. Is there any question then about the policies that we have in place? Well, getting into maybe it's

126an indicator or whatever, but how many buses or cars or vans does the district own and has insurance on? We don't own the buses because we contract with Go Right Way. But, gosh, we must have. Joe would know probably better than I would. Trucks for the custodial staff and about three vans for special education, I believe. Yeah, there aren't many that we own as far as vehicles. I just read that. I didn't realize it just really. Oh, I see. And we do have the RV. that we purchased with the COVID funds. So that's another vehicle. I have a question. How long has violent acts liability been a thing? Oh, gosh. I've been doing this for a long, long time. And it's probably been in place in the early 2000s at least. Point to Columbine. Yeah.

1271996. Yeah. Telling indicator in a broader sense. Mm-hmm. And there's, if you look at 7.3, the crime insurance coverage. I mean, all the different ways that fraud can happen. It can be simple things like somebody obtaining an email of an administrator and sending it to someone who acts on it without checking if it's supposed to be done. So that has happened to a few school districts. very careful with emails. Make sure they're coming from the people they're supposed to be coming from. So if you go to 7.5 this talks about the superintendent may not permit facilities and equipment to be subject to improper use or insufficient maintenance. So this kind of just proves of all the work orders that are put through the system and addressed in a timely manner. That there were no reports

128of improper use of district facilities and fixed assets during the last year And we have an active safety program that investigates accidents and identifies if we need to fix something if somebody got hurt because of something not being taken care of as far as maintenance. We have our snow and ice removal log and our incident investigation log and corrective actions. These are mandatory reports that we have to keep track of. So then the... the capital maintenance and improvement plan document which you have seen before is presented to you every year then it helps with the planning of course for the future so 7.6 the superintendent may not recklessly expose the district the board or staff to legal liability so there was no no record of any lawsuits or improper use of legal counsel But he

129may in a calculated way expose us to liability. Probably, right? Like we can take reasonable risks sometimes, you know, to address our needs. You know, if there's a, yeah, it happens all the time. You know, do we have a snow day or not? I drive the back roads in my Honda Civic. You know, we make a calculated risk assessment. Can we have school? Yeah, there's some risk, but it's calculated. It's thoughtful. It's based on the weather service reports, et cetera. students when they have violated standards and you don't bring them for expulsion. Yeah, we could expel all the kids that get a minor, but we don't. We ensure that they have an opportunity to learn in a safe environment and we put risk mitigation. Yeah, exactly. That's a good question. It made me think a

130little. Indicator 7.7. about the investments. So the superintendent may not invest funds in investments that are not secured or that are not authorized by law. This is also noted by our auditors. They look at our collateral statements and make sure our investments are secure. And we also present to you every summer our depository designations. So that is on there for last year. Any questions so far? Okay, and so 7.8, I believe, oh, second from the last. So the board, this is no real estate was purchased, encumbered, or disposed of without the board approval. So we didn't actually purchase any property this year. However, we did have some considerations. And remember that this is for the last fiscal year, so we did just purchase that small property for the garden, but that will come into next

131year's report as proof. And then the annual financial report, they found no findings of a reference to disposition and acquisition of land and buildings being made incorrectly. So then 7.9, the superintendent may not take any action that damages the district's public image or credibility. So there was no indication that the superintendent did anything careless or reckless. Pretty straightforward, right? On this one. Any questions? We'll be looking for a motion regarding the compliance. Second. I think she made a motion in regard to the monitoring report for policy OE7 asset protection with respect to the provisions of policy BSR5 superintendent accountability in the board of education concludes that the superintendent and the district are in compliance. That was your motion, wasn't it? Thank you. I like how we work together here. We have a motion and a

132second. Any further discussion? All those in favor of the motion signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed, motion carries. We'll then move on to district vision and portrait of a graduate. Based on the school board's feedback and the feedback of administrative and teaching staff, the samples listed are those that kind of rose to the top from... aesthetic point of view, the information people all appreciated. So sample 2A for the district vision and that sample one with the circle for the portrait of a graduate, we're gonna work on the circle and trying to get effective communicator with the communicator thing updated for that circle and work that in there. This one and then the portrait of the graduate is the circle. Not that one. I know that's not the one that you showed right now. It's

133both. They're both. We have a district vision and then we have a portrait of a graduate. I understand that, but go back a slide. Yes, that's correct the of the samples that we shared with folks. This is the one that the majority of people we talked to thought. It wasn't only us. Yeah, it wasn't. So that's why I brought those forward based on the board's feedback and the feedback of the steering committee and the staff that we had look at things. All of them certainly had the same words and general concept, but the things that came forward aesthetically that people liked, those were the things. Well, I thought it was our consensus last week. I mean, nobody said anything, but I said I liked it because they were all horizontally on the same line. It

134wasn't one above the other one. Here, you know, is exceptional staff above whole. I mean, you could take it that way in some ways where these were on a horizontal line and making them all equitable. and there was no conversation after that, so I thought this was our accepted model. And so when I saw that, I... I commented at the time that this, from an accessibility standpoint, is more readable. The long columns of, thin columns of text pose some reading challenges often. I agree with you about the kind of metaphor of equity. But I didn't hear that conversation as far as the staff going one way or the board going one way or the other. So the last information only in discussion. So we didn't know. I just was confused. And frankly, we can have

135lots of versions of this that will probably get used in different ways in different places. This was just a way to collect the information once. And two years, three years from now, it might look a lot different. Essential and Logan might take it and make it their own. This is just a way to represent it today as we move forward. But certainly it could be used in different ways in the future. Do we need a motion to approve or any recommendations to? I get your point, Jim, about them being equal, and I don't know how we could indicate that on here that they're not in any particular order. Do we need to? I mean, I wasn't even thinking about it the way Aaron was just discussing, but the language is what we're determining approval for.

136That's really the important thing. Right, yeah. The design, like you say, can get done in a variety of ways. did the one design in terms of the district vision in the circle we did that all on optics we didn't say well the words are different no no they're the same it just presented differently and that's the same between this one and that one or the other ones the words are all the same Mostly, I personally am looking for approval of the language. The visual representation is just a way to draw attention to it, but it's really what will be enacted on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly basis in our schools. I'll second. So I just want to understand the motion. So approving the documents as presented means they have to be in this format, this

137language. So I want to make sure that our motion matches. What are you looking for, Aaron? I would like to have the language approved. I would like the brilliant, talented, graphical people in our school district to use this information in ways that make sense in the future. Getting this on a piece of paper helped a lot of people visualize it, clarify it, understand it. And so that was important. But that's not the heart of it. The heart of it is the words that are on the paper. And that's what I would be seeking approval for. So I'll move to approve the district vision and portrait of a graduate language of the district vision. I'll still second that. Okay. Thanks. Do you have that, Laura? Yes. Any further discussion on that motion? All those in favor

138of the motion, signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed, motion carries. We'll move on to student representative communications. And we'll start with you. I can't think of a whole lot going on at Central. I told myself that I was going to be able to find the official date for Hoops for Hope because I want to say it's in early to mid-December. I fear that I left it on my kitchen counter. So... We have time. It should be early to mid-December, if I can just speak on that really quickly. It is the advanced marketing class at Central High School goes through and spends the entire semester planning a fundraiser or an event of some sort for the community and the school. The years that it is run, it has been named Hoots for Hope, and it

139becomes a charity tailgate run before a basketball game. Usually one of the larger games, last year it was versus West Salem because it was traveled well. The class sits down, decides what they want to do, what type of events they want to include. They pick the date. They pick what sport it's tied to or what they would like. And then they are able to, as part of the class, you reach out to business sponsors looking for potential in-kind donations, gift cards and the like, or monetary donations to help the event run. It is a very valuable experience, and I would just like to shout out all the students in there and the incredible work that they're doing. Polytechnic was our new use of VR headsets or it has a specific name but I forgot what

140the name was but you know just like a headset and it's for the high school students that I think will be implemented into some of our classroom use. I think, I'm not entirely sure how, but I think, like, in science classes, like, we'll be using them. And I guess we are kind of pioneering in that sort of field since we are one of the only schools in the nation that are, like, kind of using, like, VR, like, alternate reality in, like, our, like... curriculum. I guess it's not really part of the curriculum, but like it's we're training and developing like how we can use it in our learning. So that's one kind of recent development at Polytechnic. Yes, I have. We've done like these, we've done two separate training days where like we are divided

141up by grade and like we use it and our most recent training we used it to build like kind of like make a 3D model of a Lego set that you build with a partner. And yeah, that was a pretty fun activity. And you handed it off to somebody else to try to figure out how to do it using the 3D model. So, yeah. Polly is leading the way there. This use of the Apple Vision Pros, I think is what they're called. Only place in the nation, maybe the world, that has this level of... activity working directly with Apple to make this reality so our students are right on the cutting edge it's pretty amazing. Then I will turn over to Mr. Bagneski for CESA 4 Board of Control meeting. The meeting was cancelled. CESA

142is out of control. Dr. Garcia, La Crosse Public Education Foundation. For myself, coming up this week is the WASBE regional meeting in Onalaska. In two weeks we have our public budget hearing and our regular board meeting, both starting at six o'clock. I'm gonna work with Dr. Engel to make sure that it's a location where there's accessible parking since it's a public budget hearing meeting. Absolutely. It's great that a high school parking lot is being used as much in the evening. It just doesn't always fit with including the public, especially with it being public budget hearing money. That makes sense. Based on the time that it is this evening, we had two big topics for our workshop, and I think we'll probably hit one. It probably won't be the one that Mr. Levine has stayed for.

143And so on the 20th, we'll also have a workshop at the end of that meeting, I think, just in the interest of time. And then the 27th is our budget approval meeting. It'll be a short meeting. We will also approve the second reading of the policy changes. But then we're going to have a workshop on standard-based grading. And I know the students are planning to attend that one. So usually the 27th is a short and sweet meeting. And usually we don't even meet three times in a month. But please put it on your calendar. And it will probably be here for a while because I think we've got a lot of good things to hear about the changes that have been going on on that. And that's all I have. Just a few things for

144me. Just a reminder that October 15th, next Wednesday, is our Hogan walkthrough from 6 to 7. October 2nd was Custodian Appreciation Day. They do an amazing job keeping our buildings clean and safe every single day. appreciate all that they do. This week is Fire Prevention Week. We've got a great partnership with the La Crosse Fire Department who come in and do great demonstrations and activities with our students. October 13th is Indigenous Peoples Day. We are fortunate to be able to partner with that event and ensure kids have access to the incredible resources and opportunities that are located there. And then October 13th through 17th is National School Lunch Week. Let us know what school you're going to serve lunch at. Come on in. Hang out with some kids. It's a ton of fun. If you

145end up at Southern Bluffs, you do have to wear a funny hat. So I've got like a whole closet of them now. So that's all I have. Could you explain or do you know what's going on as far as October 13th, Indigenous Peoples Day? What's the celebration? And each school does something different? It's also Dr. Garcia's birthday, but Indigenous Peoples Day. So there's an event downtown. I think last year it was at the lacrosse center. A ton of booths and different opportunities for kids to learn. Our middle schools, I believe, attend. I think all of them may attend our middle schools, and then other students have opportunities to participate as well. And then within our schools, various activities happen at the classroom level. We'll move on then to the agenda planning for the October 20th

146public budget hearing and Board of Education meeting Do we need to add the oe 11 as a first read? Yes Is that a motion to approve it, adding OE 11 first reading? I will make a motion to approve the October 20th, 2025 public budget hearing and Board of Education agenda with the addition of OE 11 first reading of policy changes and the workshop. Seconded. Thank you. Luckily you get to say the less. We haven't had, I think her name is Mrs. Krieger was it? She came in twice and talked to the district about safety in our schools. And I don't know, we listened to what she had to say, but then it fell off the table. So I don't know whether we should look at that, address that, where do we stand on that? Throwing

147it out there. I'd say from an administrative standpoint, we're always listening as well. And so I've corresponded with Ms. Krieger a couple of times since then discussing a variety of topics. We have a school safety committee that meets on a regular basis and so said that we would bring up weapons detectors there as a topic. We've previously addressed it, shared a memo historically around our decisions about whether to or not to implement those. Anytime there's a community concern, we reassess the situation and see if our historical practice still makes sense or if we need to move in a new direction. And so, you know, it sometimes feels weird for the board just to leave public comment alone, but know that as administration we are listening and where it makes sense we do follow up and

148address those things and often have either conversations immediately afterwards or via email with those folks. And then just one more thing. I don't know if anyone else would be interested, but I'd like to know the number of activities that the school district provides for its students. I have no idea what happens in the middle school. Do we have a robotics club? Do we have a chess club? Do we have a debate club? What clubs, what activities are in the district? I'm not sure of all of them. Absolutely, we'd be easily able to get that to you. It's a report we generate annually. I'm not sure what operational expectation or results policy it's in. It sometimes gets buried amongst all the other data, but I'll pull that out and make sure folks get access to it.

149A couple comments to your question about safety. One is we do have... OE 10 learning environment that says the superintendent shall establish and maintain a learning environment that is physically, socially, and emotionally safe, welcoming, inclusive, respectful, and conducive to effective learning. So safety is in there, and that is something we monitor. I think the other thing about safety that gets a little bit wonky, and I reflect on the work that I did when I worked for the county. discussing all the safety features and all the features on how the jail locks and how you can't get out of jail publicly isn't always a good idea because you're basically telling people things that they shouldn't be thinking about or doing and so as I think about our discussion about safety in our public building I think

150there are some sensitive areas that we want to be we think about as we discuss those or as how we make those public to keep everybody safe That's my thoughts. It's not from you. No, no, I realize I just thought it shouldn't just fall off the table totally. Yeah, so we have a motion a second to approve the Agenda for the 20th any further discussion all those in favor of the motion signify by saying aye aye those opposed on to debriefing and tonight's debriefing is This is probably my third time debriefing over the course of the time I've been on the board. I think that the discussions are improving dramatically. I think there are fewer hesitations about making a comment about this or that, whether you think you're stepping on somebody's toes or not stepping

151on someone's toes. Maybe it's me, maybe it's everybody else, but I think people are feeling more comfortable and I think that's important. We can't just raise an issue and then let it fall off the table. You know, you voted for that. Why was that? I'd like to know. Geez, I never really thought of that at all. So I think discussions are needed on these points and I think they're improving. So that would be my summary. Any other input on debriefing? So then with that, we will adjourn this meeting. We'll take a three-minute bathroom break if anybody needs it, and we will go into a workshop, and we'll discuss how we want to integrate the vision and portrait of a graduate into our policies.