Board of Education Regular Meeting - June 2, 2025

001order the Board of Education meeting for June 20th or June 2nd on 2025. We recognize the Hogan Administrative Center 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 all indigenous peoples. Will the Secretary please call the roll? Mr. Alvarez. Excused. Mr. Bigneski. Here. Ms. Fuchs. Here. Dr. Garcia. Here. Mr. Jackson. Here. Mr. Manka. Excused for the first half hour, so he'll be joining us later. Mr. Neumeister. Oh, there he is. Hi, Adam. Oh, very good. Mr. Neumeister. Here. Dr. Sprague. Here. Ms. Sukla. Here. Here. The Quorum of the Board of Education is present, so the regularly scheduled meeting of June 2, 2025 is called to order. We will now have the Pledge of Allegiance. Please stand and face the American

002flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. And to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Tonight's agenda has been previously distributed to the board. I would entertain at this time a motion with a second to approve the agenda as submitted, unless there is a motion to amend. Mr. Bagneski has made a motion. Do we have a second? Seconded by Ms. Fuchs. All those in favor of the motion, signify by saying aye. We'll do a roll call vote. Roll call, thank you. Mr. Bagneski? Here. No, aye. Aye. Ms. Flux? Dr. Garcia? Aye. Mr. Jackson? Aye. Mr. Manka? Mr. Manka, can you hear us? Can you try again? Aye. Can you hear me? That's better. You said aye? Thank you. Mr.

003Neumeister? Aye. Dr. Sprague? Aye. Ms. Zucla? Aye. Motion passes. We have no registered public speakers for this evening. So we will move on to school showcase. We have two presentations this evening, and I'll turn it over to you, Dr. Engel. co-directors Brian Rankus and Adam Carty, and in partnership with the La Crosse Public Education Foundation grant that helped kick things off. So they're here to play a little music and tell us a little bit about the program, and I'll invite the co-directors up if you want to say anything in advance or afterwards. Your pleasure. All right, we'll hear a little first. I'm Brian Rankus, Adam Carty, and we are... So the La Crosse Confluence, as Dr. Engel said, started a few years ago, 2022. We wrote a grant. We started a thing called, the grant

004title was like La Crosse Horn Band Project. We didn't know what it was going to be. There was a vision and an idea. which actually really came to fruition more than we could have guessed. But this is kind of where we started, and we're really thankful to the LPEF for the grant to get us started with this. This is the original crew. Many of them are still here, but some of them have graduated. You might see Cassidy Burrell up there over on the right, and she's been a fantastic member of the group too. So that was when we were kind of trying to figure things out. We played a couple shows at Logan High School and at Central High School in the morning. We played... a show at Capella, you can see on the left.

005And then the word kind of got out and people started talking and I don't think they were expecting what they heard. And then I remember trying to talk to staff members and say, you're going to want to check this out. Like this isn't, you're not, I'm a band teacher and he's a choir teacher, but this isn't like a band concert or a choir concert. It's like a concert concert. You know, it's like. Cool. Schools aren't doing things like this many places, so we're so excited. The picture on the right is later on that summer we were asked to play at a special Moontoons on the north side at Lager Stadium, and so that's a really awesome thing, and the kids were super stoked about that. So why don't you talk a little bit about that.

006bit about the other things we did. Yeah, so we also, part of the process of, oh, by the way, we were sure to wear matching uniforms today. This is the result of when you wear teachers close to school and then switch to your compliment shirt and wear the same thing. But one of the big challenges was picking tunes because there's so much great music. And so the process we landed on. It's basically a student submission process. So we allow them to submit anything they want, and especially that first year, they really did submit anything they wanted. And then we sort of filtered through the submissions and presented them with a list that they then voted on. So it was basically a list of music spanning from different decades, different genres, and it also was sort

007of a benefit, Mr. Enkis and I being different ages and having different music tastes ourselves, we kind of span a nice variety of music and were able to... I'd like to think get a good variety that is pleasing to many different types of people. So that music process and that voting process is sort of a student selection, and it is an ongoing thing because as we find here and there, there are tunes that work better than others, and some we have to swap out, and personnel we have to swap out at times too. But it is sort of a learning process. But at the end of the day, it's probably the most realistic. simulation of being in a rock band that we can provide at this level and I'm pretty proud of the product itself

008so yeah here's a couple more shots here we're really intentional about you know the name confluence is It's a coming together, and one of our strong intentions was to bring these two schools and these two groups of kids together and to form a new thing. And that they have done. And a lot of new friendships have formed because of this group. There they are again. This was the next year. Our sign-up, if you compare our sign-up to the first year, okay, we don't know what's going on. And then the next year, it looks like that, and we've got all these professional pictures, and Nick was great with taking a lot of shots of us, and we also had some other professional pictures taken. This is last year's band. They're having lots of fun there. Cassidy's

009still there over on the bottom right. You can see her there. This is just a couple of weeks ago. The kids played up at Leo and Leona's for a big all-ages show up there. It was very loud, but it was very good. And it was a lot of fun. So yeah, there's 20. That's Moontunes last year. It's a great shot to see all those thousands of people there. There's like 25 people in this band. So what they do is they rotate in. So not everybody has to learn 30 songs, but everybody is learning a number of songs. And yeah, here's a quick. I do have permission to play this because I put it there. You might ask you to sign in. All right, this is just a little, this is a really cheesy video, but

010it's about a minute and a half, and it's a video that we put together to advertise a show that we were doing last year. So this is not for this year. There's sound. Let's see if we get anything later on. Okay, well, I promise you that the band sounds great. Well, I guess we'll leave it right there then. Yeah, so we have a lot of shows going on over the summer. That's kind of the main time for this. They're playing at Moontunes in just a few weeks here on June 19th. Artspire on June 14th. playing at the Holman Band Shell this Sunday from 5 to 7. So that's a good one to come to. I don't know what else we got going on. Those are the most recent ones coming up. Yeah, and what's funny

011is we do get e-mails and phone calls and stuff from people that would like the band to play. And we have to actually fend them off a little bit because we can't, it's hard to get 25 people together ever, right? But to get these guys, young high school students together when they've got busy lives and things like that. But I know they have a passion for this. I know they do. So I don't know if anybody has questions for us or for the kids. Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. We practice. It's worked out really well for us to practice at Logan. in the theater there. Everybody's there, generally, and the tunes mix everybody up. So it's not like Logan kids play this song and Central kids play this song. It's a complete mix. And

012every tune is a different mix of people, so they have to be on their toes. It's also convenient because we both teach in that building, too, so equipment-wise, if we ever have to set up or tear down, it's a lot easier that way. But you practice three days a week after school, 5.30 to 7.30? It's actually twice a week from 6 to 8.30, so about five hours a week total. And we jam, yeah. It's a good time. I guess one other thing I wanted to mention is this all started with an LPEF grant. And the first year especially, we're completely... working on grants and borrowed equipment from either the band department or the choir department. And through these three years, we've been able to put on performances and charge a fee and able to sort

013of self-fundraise to the point where we're getting to the point where we're having our own equipment and we're no longer reliant on other programs for their equipment. So I just kind of wanted to say thank you, and that investment that you made three years ago is now paid off, and we are a little more standing on our own feet three years later. Yeah. Two things that's going to be hard to follow you guys at the beginning of any meeting from here on out because definitely one of my top ever, so thank you for that. I was one of the proud major sponsors of the Moontoons Northside, and I need to tell you something. Two things we learned from that. Our stage was too small because you guys were tight in there. But you all rocked

014it, man. I'm telling you, I think that was the highlight of the evening for everyone. And, you know, you outshine the main band, which is, you know, not easy to do. And I got to tell you, it was so impressive watching those kids and how well they treated each other even when they weren't on stage. You could see them in back there and talking and having fun. You should be very proud of yourself, all you kids, because you're doing something wonderful. And I look forward to see where you land, you know, next Led Zeppelin or something like that. I can't wait to see it. So thank you all. I had a couple questions, and mostly for the kids. I did want to say, if this kind of opportunity had been available when I was coming

015up through Central, Oh my goodness, that would have been absolutely astonishing. I had to do the normal thing of form a band with my buddies in the garage and get kicked from house to house to house for years. So really awesome that you have that dedicated practice space. I'm curious from some of the band members what have been some of the lessons you've taken as music students in a different kind of ensemble setting. I presume some of you are also in choir and marching band and things. And how are you finding it? Come on up. like this is a really different experience than being in a choral setting or on like the stage for a band concert I feel like in this we have to form our own individuality and come out of our shells

016more and just be who we are as an individual and I feel like it helps so many people just come out of their shells and show who they truly are and the talent that is kind of just hidden when you don't have an ensemble like this is just incredible and like the talent all across this group is out of this world for a high school group so I just think we just come out of our shells so much more in a group like this that's great you are a great speaker and I'm curious from from any and all of them oh come on up add to it add to it Way to go on those falsetto harmonies, by the way. Oh, thank you. No, I think it's just so, like... It's completely different than like

017a banner because like if you're I mean you're in a choir You're standing there and people are sitting down That's another thing is like people receive it a lot differently because I because when I'm you know Singing or like encouraging people I encourage people like stand up dance like let's have a good time It's a lot because like a lot of people like to sit, you know A lot of people like to just sit there and clap but I think Man, the energy that you can bring to a group like this is so, like, it's insane. And then also, like, people, like, I mean, if you're not, like, really, like, corally involved or, like, you can just be involved in this and it's just a completely different ballgame. And you can just. I don't know.

018It's a lot more freeing, too, because the directors, like, they're there at rehearsal. But, I mean, it's our rehearsal. It's our band at the end of the day, pretty much. And so, I mean, they're incredible. And so it's like, it's just, it's so cool to, like, kind of be a lot more free in what you're doing. So, thank you. That's great. And I'm wondering then from all of you, what has been maybe one of the most surprising things you've learned about your own taste in music, maybe learning songs that were not perhaps of your generation or the kind of thing you would ever expect to pick up and play? Not to toot my own horn. But I actually consider myself to be somebody who has quite a broad music taste that spans across many genres

019and decades. But I found myself discovering, you know, music from artists that I love that I had never even heard before. Which is just like the beautiful thing about being in a group like this is that like, even though like... Like, you might think that you know, you really don't until you're exposed to, you know, new music, which has been just an incredible opportunity. I feel like my tastes have gone a little bit older. I listen to older music now. I kind of was, when I joined this, I was sort of into, like, more, like, modern indie, and now I've gotten to more, Don't you dare say classic rock and talk about Weezer or something. No, I don't like Weezer. No, I don't listen to jazz music, so I don't really know. That's awesome. I'm

020really glad to hear that. And hopefully we have, I've been fortunate to see you guys play a couple times in a few different settings with different combinations. And I think we have a competition for the new hardest working band in show business for any Chicago fans there. so much for your performance. Thank you so much for being such a great asset to our community. We'll see you at the next meeting. Before you feel too old, Amy, the song they did was when I was their age. That was when it was released. Some of them do. They just try out, so if they want to get in it. Thank you so much. Words are hard. Makes them all the way. Next up, we have a showcase of our community cultural liaison. We are so fortunate to

021have Laura Abelara and Tony Yang here to present. Thank you, Board of Education and leaders. Laura and I are so... so anxious to be here tonight to talk to you guys because we haven't been here for a while. So we want to thank for the opportunity to share with you what Laura and I do in our district to work with students and family. And so I wanted to quickly talk to you a little bit about the fact that I am a product of the La Crosse School District. My family and I, we came here after the Vietnam War. And so my family came straight from the refugee camp to La Crosse. And I went to Logan High School. And so after four years, yes. So after four years, I decided to come back to the

022school district of La Crosse because I wanted to give back to the community and the schools that have been giving me so much. all of my brothers, siblings, gone through the school district of La Crosse, all of my four children gone through the school district of La Crosse. And so I have to tell you, I love my job and I love what I do because I truly believe in the powers of education. And so my colleague Laura is going to share with you a little bit about the overview of our project and talk a little bit about herself. Thank you, Tony. And Tony has been working with the school district much longer than I have, so I'm coming up on my first year in July. So super excited to still be new and still learning,

023but really grateful to have Tony as a mentor and colleague because I can't tell you how impactful that's been for me to be able to learn from Tony given his extensive experience in the school district. Just a teeny bit about me. I am also the product of public education, although not in the school district of La Crosse, although my mom went to Central. I was the product of a very well-resourced... suburb of Chicago and I want other students to be able to have that experience because it so shaped my love of learning. I was a student advocate in high school, in college, in grad school and now I get to do advocacy as part of my role professionally which I think is incredibly cool and important and for students to be able to see that

024that is something they can take into their careers with them. I also had a I would say uniquely helpful experience in teaching at UWL in the race, gender, sexuality studies department. And so I got to see what students were coming in with in terms of cultural knowledge and understanding and to be able to see what the strengths were and what the gaps were in what they were getting in K-12 and then to be able to use that day to day in my role is very, very helpful. So we just wanted to share a little bit about what it is that we do. since Tony said it may have been a while since our department has presented to you all. So if you want to click to the next slide, thank you so much. And you'll

025see some photos throughout of some of our programs and events and student groups and things like that. But our work kind of falls into four buckets is the way that I explain it to families and to students and to other staff members. But these are the four things that we... And so building and sustaining relationships to increase engagement. And so that could be with cultural agencies. And just to give a couple examples, Ho-Chunk Youth and Learning, Black, Hoper Stores, Geshea, Seven Rivers LGBT, Central Latino, the UWL Office of Multicultural Student Services in terms of their pre-college preparation and programming. Also supporting cross-cultural collaboration and conflict navigation. could be in the schools as well with student groups, students facing conflict. We like to partner a lot with the restorative justice folks and be able to kind

026of add the layer of cultural conflict navigation into that process and be able to support students through that in their cross-cultural understanding. And then we also provide programming and advocacy. So we support cultural club advisors. That could be GSAs, Mung Clubs, Black Student Unity, Circle Keepers. We have a new Latin American club at Logan High School that has been awesome and extremely well attended. They have 25 regular members, which is a fantastic number for cultural groups in our school district. Very proud of them. And then we also do district-wide support. So provide culturally responsive learning opportunities for staff, for buildings, for students as well. And that could look like toolkits and resource collection for inclusive classrooms, culturally responsive curricular tools, experiential learning opportunities, which is one of the highlights that we'll be sharing today. And

027then we support policy. And then any efforts to recruit and retain a demographically representative staff is another thing that we support with as well. And then in terms of schools and staff, like we had mentioned, learning opportunities. Local agency connections and culturally responsive curricular support. So Tony might speak a little bit to how he's supported curriculum for social studies and bringing in Hmong education at different levels, fourth, eighth, and 10th. Yeah. And so just trying to support and make that easier for teachers and be able to collect and find resources given our unique vantage point in our roles. And then community cultural partnerships. So just facilitating community involvement, partnering with regional cultural initiatives and large-scale programs and events. One of the examples that we'll talk about is Indigenous Peoples Day and some of the educational

028programming that has been built into that, and hopefully we will continue to grow across the K-12 spectrum. And then building and maintaining our local partnerships with cultural agencies. And sometimes that's maintaining them, sometimes... that's rebuilding or sometimes it's repairing if those relationships have struggled or had challenges and so those are some of the highlights we wanted to share the bottom photo is a picture from this was missing and murdered indigenous women and relatives day and some eighth graders came they used public transportation which I love so they all got a lesson in public transportation with their teachers and then they came and learned about the significance of that day and participated in a 5K. And then the top photo is Mr. Yang and one of our guests that you will hear from soon trying sugar

029cane. It was sugar cane? Yeah. In preparation for the Hmong Education Project, wanting to bring in things that were relevant from our own community into that experiential learning opportunity for students. Anything you want to add to that? Okay. Okay, so you can advance the slide. Okay, so we just wanted to highlight a couple things that we thought would be helpful for you all to know. So we've updated our website to include a lot of cultural events that are happening, maintain a calendar. We're going to try to add more and more resources to that so that teachers and staff can pull from mini lessons that associate with cultural events that happen throughout the school year or during the summer. And then also wanted to link directly to a lot of our cultural agencies who have incredible

030programs. I think a lot of... Our work has to do with awareness because our cultural agencies provide so much support and so much programming. So just making sure that all of our students and families have that information is huge. One thing that was particularly impactful this year is for Hmong American Day celebration. It was the second annual one, I believe, was this year. I had sent that out to people and I saw several colleagues who came up to me and were like, I didn't know that this was going on and I'm having a great time. So that is... the win that I wanted from just making sure that people get to experience all the beautiful cultural experiences that our community has, which is pretty extensive in my opinion. And so I wanted to highlight Indigenous

031Peoples Day and that partnership in particular. And so Tony and I each brought one of our regular collaborators, partners. people that we have built relationships with. And so I wanted to introduce my colleague Sadie Kuhl, Assistant Director of College Pathways at UWL. We sit on the Indigenous Peoples Day Planning Committee together. We have built a youth track into that program and we will continue to hopefully build that out right now. eighth graders that come and I'm hoping to expand that to an elementary school component at some point. But so Sadie has worked a lot on that with me and building and repairing relationships with the Ho-Chunk Youth and Learning Center and getting to know students that we share and getting to be kind of a wraparound support for a lot of the students we care

032about. So would love to ask Sadie to just say a couple words about our. partnership. Awesome, gladly. Like I said, I'm Sadie Kuhl. I work over at UWL in the Office of Multicultural Student Services. And so I oversee a lot of pre-college programs that bring students onto campus. I run a school year mentoring and tutoring program that partner up students one-on-one with current college students. teacher candidates for the school of ed and then during the summer time i run some different summer camps and so uh priority placement for these programs go to kids who receive free and reduced lunch which in our district is over 50 percent and so that is a large number of students and all my programs are free which is phenomenal we work with a couple different grant sources to be

033able to provide these experiences. And then further, I really work to work with community partners that have existing relationships with students and families that need these programs at the right time in their K-12 career. And so I quickly am able to work with these two and say, hey, I've got four spots open in my mentoring and tutoring. Do you guys have any students that you're kind of thinking that would benefit greatly from this program? And they're like, yes, we do. And so being able to partner with these two have been like a keystone on being able to build these relationships with these families. Because they're not necessarily going to trust, in some of these cases, a white lady from a very institution that has historically done a little bit of harm. in some cases, a

034lot of harm, right? And so through that, we're able to build these relationships, and it's been super cool. I've brought just a brochure of our summer programming that everyone can kind of look at just to kind of see the types of experiences we're able to provide these students when they come to campus. It's been a really strong partnership over the last year, and really looking forward to, yeah, the next couple years. Thank you, Sadie. So I wanted to talk a little bit about some of the things I've been involved with the school district of La Crosse over the years. I must say that I've been very fortunate to work in a district that cares so much about students and families. And over the years, I've been part of the second grade unit, multicultural unit. And

035particularly with regard to the mung farming unit that we did with the second grader, I'm so proud of that and so proud to be part of that. And then I have been with Wendy Matheson with the Hmong Education Project that was designed for all of the fourth graders in our district over the years to really teach them about the Hmong history, Hmong culture, and the Hmong people journey from Laos to America. And so that has been a huge learning experience for me. And since Wendy retired three years ago, I had the opportunity to overtake that project, and it's been really, really helpful for me. So the other thing that I wanted to touch on is the fact that thanks to the support of Board of Education, people like yourself, and leaders in our district for

036supporting the Biliteracy Seal Program in our district, particularly among students, and also I had the opportunity to work three years ago. to get the Hmong language as a foreign language at the high school started. And so, again, we could not do it without the support of leaders like you and leaders in our school district. So I've been very also proud of that. Other than some of these things that I've been heavily involved with, I also have been heavily been kind of support the health. Health Science Academy because every year they will have students that will come on to the Hmong Cultural Center and I will go there and I do presentations regarding Hmong traditional beliefs and things like that which I'm looking forward to every year. The other thing that I want to talk about

037is we don't have anything particularly at the middle school and high school but last year I was able to work with Stacey Iverson and Jean Helderson on developing a home game unit for the middle school. And so we, that project is not completed, but it's halfway there, and I'm very excited about getting it done this coming summer and in the fall. And the other thing that I've been doing is really supporting the high school social study. and our staff in the district when it comes to when they do a unit on the Vietnam War, I invite Hmong speakers, Hmong Lao veterans to the classroom to talk to them about their experience and what did they do to help the United States. And so I've been supporting our district in many capacity. And so the one

038thing that I like to... highlight to you is the fact that we were very fortunate this year to have the governor visited the Hmong Education Project this year and we had it for the last 15 years and so we were very fortunate to have him visit us and we got some state recognitions and I think that our district should be proud of that. When the governor visited the project and after that he went to the most 50 years in America celebration in Madison and he actually highlighted our programs and that he was very impressed with the project and the fact that we were able to pull it off and sustain it for the last 15 years. And he did mention to the crowd that this should be a model for all of the schools in

039the state. And so we should be proud of that. And so besides that, I have a colleague that I'd like to introduce it to you. She and I has been working on numerous initiatives while she was a teacher with the school district of Rivercross. And so, Wendy, would you like to come up? Thank you so much. I'm going to go back in time. I'm, first of all, so impressed with the programming that Laura and Tony are doing. And I'm honored, really, this evening to speak about Tony Yang's work because we have worked together so many years. I have come to realize that the impact of Tony Yang's work has been realized to me through some tough lessons that I have learned early in this work. And I want to share that because through those lessons,

040we learned the importance of having this liaison program. Back in 1992. I was working on an arts integration project with this community. It was a collaboration between the School District of La Crosse, the Pumphouse Regional Center for the Arts, and the Hmong Mutual Assistance Association. A colleague and I worked with students from La Crosse Central, Logan, and Aquinas High Schools to write and produce a play about the Hmong journey from Laos to La Crosse, as well as their transition into our community. The play was called The Crossing of Traditions. It was performed at the Pump House for three weekends, giving community members the opportunity to learn both about Hmong history and culture of our newly settled refugees, but also to engage in conversations with them in post-play discussions. Every play was sold out. We had

041people on the waiting list wanting to come. The Rotary in town said that they would donate thousands of dollars for us to take this to other communities in our region and throughout the state. And the students were simply elated. So Jerry Kimber, who was then the acting arts administrator, and I, we attended the board of directors meeting at the HMAA to meet with them and to tell them about these possibilities. It became clear that even though we had built trusting relationships with Hmong high school students, that we had not earned that same amount of trust. with Hmong leaders and Hmong parents. We had held Hmong parenting groups, we had had translators, we had had sessions in which we had been working with them throughout this project. But we learned that we had, in some ways,

042fell short. Jerry and I listened. We learned what we had not seen, and we stepped back. It was not the time to continue this particular project. The Pump House continued organizing programs for Hmong elders, and it was later, in 1996, that the school district hired Tony Yang as a district liaison. It was a couple years later that I ran into one of the writers and one of the actors in our Crossing of Traditions play. And he was so excited about talking about the play, but he apologized for the fact that some parents were not as supportive in continuing this project. He said, oh, but you need to know that's changed. And I said, what happened? He said, well, it's Tony Yang. It's Tony Yang, he said. When the school district hired Mr. Yang as a

043liaison, Hmong people had someone they knew and trusted to answer their questions, to seek advice. to explain how our school system works. And Tony Yang became the bridge. I cannot express too highly how important this position was. Then and now, Tony continues to be that bridge. He opens doors for us both ways. With all of us, he opens doors. He helps us to meet each other, to listen, to exchange, and in doing so, we have today developed trusting relationships. And it is through those relationships that a foundation has been created here in this school district where we have been able to build a collective understanding for educational programming. Tony's presence has been key to the success of these programs, particularly the Hmong Education Project, and now all of these that are continuing to flourish. So

044I just want to say two things on behalf, really, of the Hmong Education Project team. I would like to express my gratitude to the School District of La Crosse for the wisdom in initiating the Cultural Liaison Program. It was almost three decades ago. And it's hard to put into words the richness of the collaborative process when it works. But it's working. And it's because of this action. And second of all, I want to thank you for hiring Tony Yang. Because he came to our doorstep with just a wealth of life experiences. And he continues to enrich our district through his insight and through his remarkable leadership. Applause to both Tony and to Laura and to Stacy and to Shelly. Because they have been supporters of this work beginning to end. Thank you. Thank you, Wendy.

045Also, Tony won't brag about himself, but he got the Hometown Hero Award as well, which is another thing I wanted to share because I'm so proud of him. Just really grateful to get to work and learn from you. We just wanted to, that's the commendation photo to the upper left. And then the bottom is when the governor visited the project on a Thursday of our programming this year. So super exciting. And then you can advance to the last slide. I know you all have. pretty packed agenda. Just some other photos that we have taken throughout the school year. There's Tony again, Hmong Education Project. Some photos of things that we've done with students. Some of the welcome back, back to school things that we like to be present for when students are coming back in

046the fall. And then part of the educational zine that we had created for Indigenous Peoples Day is in the bottom left and we'll hopefully continue to build that out and utilize that aspect of. educational programming every year and hopefully more and more activities for students to do. And I think we just wanted to close by thanking you all and just being really grateful that we have this space to be able to share with the school board. We have a very large district, and so just really grateful that you all work very hard to represent our district, our students, our families, and our extremely impactful cultural community agencies that also support our students and families. and that you value this ongoing collaborative partnership. So we'd love to continue to hear from you, or if you have

047questions moving forward or would like updates, we're happy to provide those and to be a continued partner for you all. Thank you. If I could, first off, thank you. That was wonderful. Just a couple of statements, if I may. I think as being a student in the early 80s, a high school student, what we were very good at is not understanding. And not understanding that your parents, your grandparents were heroes and what they've done for the United States. And it was eye-opening for me many years later to tour and sit through a lengthy process at the Hmong Cultural Center. and realize the living hell you actually went through. Excuse me for saying that word. Many three years, if not more, in the rainforest, hiding. And I am so thankful that we've gotten better with all

048that and we understand more and we need not to lose sight of that, what you all gave up and what you stand for. I, personally, and I'm sure everyone else do, is thank you for all you do and continue to do. And let's continue to teach people exactly what your culture stands for. So thank you. Thank you so much. I think I remember things from back at Hamilton Elementary School. Yes, Jim. I may have hired you. The biggest thing at Tony Huff back then is it was so frustrating meeting with parents and talking about an issue with their child. Unfortunately, I'm sure a lot of people were in that position, but I understood very little. So Tony was called on quite often to come in and explain, and he was absolutely excellent at translating between

049the two cultures. So thank you. Thank you, Chip. Thank you both for the work that you do. It's so important. And I think everything we've seen tonight, like, points to the importance of art and culture and relationships and how foundational that is to education and to just living as a human being in the world that you want to be in. And so funding positions that support these programs. And, Laura, you said something earlier about there's, like, a richness of opportunity here, but it's hard to know. what things are happening. And I teach Firekeeper's Daughter in my YA Lit class, which touches on the murdered and missing indigenous women and relatives movement. And I had students come back into class and say, there was a 5K, did you see? Or they saw on Main Street the

050red shirts. And it's just such high impact for them to read about something that's in a literature class and then connect it with like. culture and people in the community and I just applaud you both for all the work you do to help students make those connections. It's incredible. Thank you. We could not have done the work without leaders like you guys, so thank you. that is so richly deserved. Really appreciate the presentation and getting to put some images and see the recognition and the recognitions coming from the groups of people who are really being impacted by the work that you're doing. I think that's the best kind of recognition. So thank you for that and I look forward to seeing your continued work. But with that, I'm curious about... What do you see as

051maybe some of the limitations that you're working under in your positions right now? What's like a wish list item that you're like, if only we could? I think I have a lot of ideas, but I'm just going to throw out there that I've been telling leaders in the school district that for many, many years, I need another Tony with an I, meaning I need another female myself. And so I think there... There is a lot that that that that we have done in this district, but I think that moving forward I think looking at different ways to meet the needs of different students. Particularly, for example, Lola deal primarily with our African American and Latinx students, and I deal primarily with our Asian students, but again, within that role, for example, I am limited to

052certain things I can do, particularly when it comes to challenging situations with some of our female students that we might be dealing with. And so I've been utilizing a lot of our social workers, a lot of our counselors, and a lot of our teachers to help me make that happen. But I think one of the things is that, yeah, we wish we have 10 of me, but I think my wish is not really a weakness of the district, but I think that going forward to make sure we have another female to help me and another male person to help Laura, that would be great. Thanks. I think I would just from the short time that I've been here, I would love to see a lot more student voice brought into every single process. I think

053we have such brilliant students in this district and I've gotten to experience them like not not even for a whole year yet, but I just. the opportunities I think for cross-cultural collaboration at a large scale, combining programs with bringing schools together. And that was a really cool, I didn't know they were gonna perform a song and it's cool to hear that it's central and it's Logan together. Cause I think that is a huge benefit is bringing students. From all across the district into programming together because they have so much to learn from each other And then they thrive in these ways like in particular like in a lot of the arts Programming, but I think there's a lot of like beautiful creation and healing to be had cross-culturally in this community, so I'd love to

054see a lot of You know multicultural programming A long time ago, when I was a director at the Family Resource Center, now it's a parenting place, but we had Zanmua join our staff. And we sometimes forget about the gender roles in different cultures, and we need to understand the differences and why they're so important, and that is part of respecting those cultures. So I sincerely hear what you have to say about that. That's a really strong point. Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you both for representing the district so well. Thank you for the work you do on behalf of students. Thank you so much. And thank you for representing our community. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right. We will then move on to the superintendent's consent agenda. The consent agenda is a

055mechanism used by the board to deal with routine business that must come before the body. Are there any items that the members would like to remove from the superintendent's consent agenda? I'll make a motion to approve the items on the superintendent's consent agenda as presented. Second. Okay, we have a motion by Dr. Sprague, seconded by Mr. Neumeister, to approve the items on the superintendent's consent agenda, and we will do a roll call vote. Next item is the board consent agenda. The board consent agenda is a mechanism used by the board to deal with routine business that must come before the body. Are there any items members want to remove from the board consent agenda? I'll make a motion to approve the items on the board consent agenda as presented. We have a motion by Dr.

056Sprague, seconded by Mr. Bagneski to approve the items on the board consent agenda, and we will have a roll call vote. Dr. Garcia? Aye. Mr. Jackson? Aye. Mr. Manka? Aye. Mr. Neumeister? Aye. Dr. Sprague? Aye. Ms. Zucla? Aye. We'll then move on to the items reserved for board action. The first one being Operational Expectation Monitoring Report OE12 Facilities. Last meeting, we approved the performance on that. Now we are looking at any changes to that, and there are some attached. And I will turn it over to Dr. Engel. Yes, so in the report, they're highlighted in yellow. The first is not our position to make the change, but we're recommending the board consider a policy change in item number five. It currently reads as a double positive, which is a little bit funny to say, but

057it says ensure that the board shall make the final selection when naming buildings, facilities, and real property. Typically in these circumstances, we say the superintendent may not. indicating that it is the board's authority to do so and so our recommendation would simply to move that from a double positive to a single negative the superintendent may not make the final selection when naming buildings facilities and real property groups it in with those other important things and makes it a little easier to read in our opinion but that would be for the board to consider specifically i don't know if you want to talk about that first yeah any questions comments on this That's a good change. So it doesn't say that the board will do it. Is that implied because of the way our policies are?

058Because it says before the board shall make that final selection, the renaming doesn't reference the board. That's correct. So the superintendent and administration could not name buildings then. And so some other entity would have to. The only one left is the board. And so the way our policies read, it leaves it to the board to make those decisions. Because the policy language is about what the superintendent will do and will not do as opposed to what the board will do and not do. And so then it ensures that if that happens, it's the school board's authority, not the superintendent's. You didn't necessarily have any control of us doing that in the first place. So the negative makes more sense just to clearly state that this is not something that you do. Nothing is different from

059the way it's been since we adopted policy governance. It's all been consistent throughout time. It just... In my mind, in our mind, cleans up that language just a little so it's clearer. So when we take action on this this evening, policies change by two actions. So we'll have to have a separate action to change policy as well as to change the indicators. Is that correct? That's what we would recommend. If we have a workshop for most of that. Yeah, so I just want to be, as long as there's consensus with the board, I just want to be clear on the changes we're approving tonight would not include this policy at this time. That would be for a subsequent meeting. Thank you. Go ahead. Yeah, and then so into the indicators themselves, OE 12.1, indicator two,

060we just wanted to clarify items as capital projects. In indicator three, we indicate that just for coherence and logical order, we would switch indicators two and three, so just flip-flop them. They kind of build on each other over time. And so that makes sense to us. OE 12.2, in the definition of terms, we just added that require board approval on the capital decisions item. Indicator one in 12.2, a relatively substantial change. Joe and I were talking about this one The design alternatives for all system replacements. It wasn't specific enough. It was kind of like all system replacements, like everything. What does that encompass? Is it like we change out a fan? We have to look at different types of fans? What does this involve? And so we thought a way to kind of narrow in

061and really get after what the board's thinking about, what we think the board would want to know about is the board receives a descriptive analysis of the decision process and chosen solution. for capital improvements that require board approval. So as an example of what that might look like, certainly as we're building a new building here, we'll be looking at different HVAC systems. So thinking about geothermal, thinking about solar power, anything that exceeds that $100,000 in cost, the board would be involved and understand how we thought about it, what the alternatives might have been, and why we chose what we did. Just a quick edit. We need the definite article before description descriptive. Excuse me. See you a descriptive Thank you So we think that will relate more closely to what the board is looking for

062in the policy language project lifecycle costs as capital decisions are made and then indicator to historically read the board receives an update on the current system lifecycle assessments annually we've never really been sure what that meant you know we kind of put stuff in there that we thought got close and we think that indicator one really covers what the board is looking for when we're doing new stuff we're gonna do a deep analysis of what's going on However, related to kind of like current system lifecycle assessments, we do have a climate action plan, and it lays out lots of efficiency and kind of updates to our buildings that we want to see over time, and we think that that would be a good substitute for what that indicates. And so receiving an update on the

063climate action plan annually, we think... will both fit into kind of our larger goals and be a better a good replacement for what that kind of said pause on those two because they're substantial changes any comments or questions Yeah, I really appreciate this change. I think you're right that this is the kinds of questions we've been asking I'm thinking of a couple of recent board meetings where when we've been getting capital updates our questions have been can you can you actually talk to us about in X Y&Z could you have come with this information and that points to it directly in a way that the highly technical old language Was just that I was very technical to the point of like jargon II so I I agree With the intent of that change, I think,

064and the language is clear. I appreciate having the climate action plan included in this. I think that's an important thing that the community is committed to also. And I always took some of those systems things to be part of what Joe builds into the budget proposal every year that says when we anticipate having to replace something, you know, on a different building. So that just makes sense to me. I don't mind that the climate action plan is this. I don't mind this indicator. I'm not sure this is the right indicator for this item. I think the climate action plan might fit better under 12.1. Could very well. We were also trying to shoehorn in the climate action plan into the right spot as well. A facility plan, that's certainly the climate action plan. We thought

065it fit here potentially, though, because it's about. Life cycle costs it's about lowering costs to the school district as an element of course you know making sure that our planet is habitable and suitable for humans for all of time, but Also that we are thinking about how to find that return on investment lower energy costs a lot of the the things that are involved in our climate action plan relates that and some of them you wouldn't even think about things like composting is something we're having a conversation with the city about. It's hard to compost in the city right now as a large organization. How do we make that an opportunity? And that will lower our trash costs over time if we need smaller dumpster and fewer pickups. So there's lots of different ways that

066these fit into this particular area. Could easily fit into OE1. It just seems like life cycle is an important piece of capital decision making and the climate action plan is an important piece. I don't see climate action plan as a sub under the project lifecycle, which I think involves other features. I don't want to dilute the importance of the climate action plan putting it under here. That was my concern. Sure. We're just excited to include it somewhere. I'd prefer to see it under 12.1. I think it fits there better. There's consensus around the table. We'll happily move it. I kind of do like it here just because I think if the point of the update is to... to be able to talk about costs in the terms of the climate action plan. Like, what are

067the trade-offs? What are we gaining? What are we hoping to see savings from? So that made sense to me for that reason, but I don't know if I have strong feelings about it. I guess the way I'm reading Indicator 1, especially the rewrite, is it's almost focused on new or large capital projects versus kind of maintenance and lifecycle. Those are two different subjects. Me so I probably want us to continue to see two different indicators because one's about longevity of equipment and just general good practice of maintenance Or ones about what decisions are we making around? design alternatives to making sure we're getting the most bang for the buck and we're meeting and you know being good fiscal responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars for our projects, so I think to me Climate action I think

068should be a separate indicator somewhere, but I I would probably want to continue to keep some type of an indicator, I think giving you potentially more direction on what we would like to see from documentation might be helpful. Because to your point, like, how do you do that? I think to Dr. Garcia's point, some of it comes up in the updates. Hey, this is what we're seeing next year. This is what our capital improvement budget looks like. We can see that. You can see that we're redoing this air handler. This chiller is going to get this upgrade. All of that shows us that the plan is there. So I think that's the hard part, to your point, is what kind of... In what format? Yeah, what do you bring that makes sense for everybody to

069look at and say, okay, this makes sense. I know that, Joe, if you'd come up, you can probably expound on this a little bit more. I know that we have a listing of all of our equipment, and it's kind of like estimated lifespan and probably some sort of assessment on its current condition. I don't know where that lives or what that looks like. information in a more timely manner because really felt like at times we weren't doing that or at least I felt that way the reason it's where it's at and it can go anywhere we just want to make sure we do it is because if you look at the goals the facility goals as it relates to a lot of that we're trying to accomplish are listed in that climate action plan and

070so we thought it fit into the life cycle goals as we relate that that's the only reason it was there and so we are trying to figure out where the best place to place it and that's why we put it there but as long as we're reporting that And the goal would be, again, to give you more information in a timely manner because it just felt like we weren't really addressing it. And then, Joe, in terms of the current status of equipment and where it's at in its life cycle, do we have some way that we keep track of that? We do. Like I explained last time, we have 44 air handlers, right? Or 48, I can't remember the number I exactly gave you. So we have a listing of all of our equipment. And

071so we have that. It's part of our preventive maintenance. So we know exactly what we have and where they are in the cycle. I think if you just had, I can just see like a really sweet color-coded spreadsheet. I can envision it as well. Stating here's all these tabs. That'd be cool. I like colors. Colors are great. but two just like hey and maybe it's just a real quick snapshot of here's the maintenance that we do annually yeah like hey here's your sops for your building engineers here's what they're at you're asking them to do on an annual basis might be good ways for us to just know that yeah stuff that's important to you and we know what it is it's just getting the documentation we say this is going to last 10 years

072it's now on year 20. yeah we're very good at that right the school building engineers are great and then we'll put it on the five-year plan mr bagneski I just like this number of times you put on focus on energy rebates and so on. So it showed a focus on we're looking at very conscious of taking advantage of those things. And to get those rebates, we have to do all those calculations, right? So it plays right into that. I think based on this initial conversation, I think Joe and I will take 12.2 back and just kind of think about some of the things that we have. Your idea about. some sort of status. And I think the indicator as it was previous, as it's currently written, didn't lead us down that path, but I think

073there is that spreadsheet with the tabs and the color coding that speaks to me as well that would be hard to get a quick snapshot of like, oh, things are kind of doing well, or oh, this is stuff that's coming off the books pretty quickly here. And so maybe the board is amenable, we'd table this for next month, or the next time we meet. But I'll just get to the rest of our little edits here then. Indicator 3 and 12.4. Initially, it just indicated 100% of misuse of facilities are addressed, which is fine. But we looked at indicator four and five, and we felt they were somewhat redundant and connected, and we thought in an effort to have less stuff, we would just simply say facility use was monitored, and all events were conducted safely

074and appropriately in accordance with the policy, and 100% of misuse of facilities are addressed. We'll provide similar evidence that we have in the past, but have less to look at. And that was the extent of our recommendations, and so at this point we'd be seeking to just table it for next time we meet. Do I have a motion to table it? I'll make a motion to table. Okay. Do I have a motion and a second to table this item for a subsequent meeting whenever you have it ready so the timeline works best for you in the next month or two? Point of order. Sorry. I've always wanted to say that. If we table the whole motion, does that affect the approval of the larger policy change? The policy would... Do we just need to specify

075it? Like we'll table the approval of the recommended changes to the indicators? Technically, I think we were approving the monitoring report anyway, so that was just a recommendation for policy language that would come forward as a separate item. But thank you for making it. I think it's clearing it up, and it's making it a lot easier to read and understand. So I appreciate the effort put into it. Not just do better. No, I'm kidding. Thank you. We have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? We'll do a roll call vote. Mr. Vygoneski? This is to table it. To table it. Aye. Aye. Mr. Jackson? Aye. Mr. Mankoff? Aye. Mr. Neumeister? Aye. Dr. Sprague? Aye. Ms. Soukla? Aye. Good discussion. We will then go on to our next action item, which is OE2, Emergency Superintendent

076Succession. Very straightforward policy we identify who would take charge if I was unavailable Dr. Everson has her Superintendent license and is our secondary schools person She deals with as much of the crazy stuff in our school as anyone and is usually the first person I'm talking to when stuff happens So there's no better person than her to take the reins if I'm unavailable Mr. Wenthe, our Director of Human Resources, also has a superintendent license and has a district perspective, so that's another good person to choose. And Ms. Sprang is only third because she insists. She is well-equipped to make decisions in our school district, but most of them are related to instructional things and connecting to secondary issues, and so for that reason, we've chosen that order. Does the director of elementary education have that

077credential? Ms. Shirell does not have her superintendent license, and that's not necessary to fill in and make decisions under circumstances, but it does alleviate some concerns if somebody has a superintendent license. And we work very collaboratively. There's no district problem that we don't talk about on a district level. Any comments or questions? A motion to... compliance with this policy in regards to the monitoring report for oe I'll make I'll move that the board finds in regard to the monitoring report for policy oe to emergency superintendent succession and with respect to the provisions of policy BSR 5 superintendent accountability the Board of Education concludes that the superintendent and district are in compliance I'll second. Okay. We have a motion by Dr. Sprague, seconded by Dr. Garcia. Any discussion? Mr. Bagneski? Aye. Ms. Fuchs? Aye. Dr. Garcia?

078Aye. Mr. Jackson? Aye. Mr. Manka? Aye. Mr. Neumeister? Aye. Dr. Sprague? Aye. Ms. Zucla? Aye. Linkage summaries are our next action item. We have one linkage summary attached with the district-wide parents. I attended part of that meeting, and boy, what a good conversation. We learned a lot. But those of you who were there for the whole meeting might want to provide input on that. It was a really good meeting. I was struck by, and this should be expected, I guess, because they are not employees of the district, so they're going to necessarily have a different perspective on what's going on in the district. The overall positivity towards the staff, the teachers in particular, towards the district, towards the opportunities that the kids are being presented with was palpable for me, and I really appreciated the

079chance to be able to talk with the parents about that. I thought it was interesting. One of the parents talked about the behaviors at their elementary school, and I think that's been a theme that has come through a lot of our linkages with elementary schools. I think it's a huge, huge issue, but it is affecting all students, whether it's the students that have the behaviors or the students that are having to endure while behaviors are going on. And maybe sometime in the future we could do a workshop or something where we talk about... what could this district do to start to address that? It's a huge issue. It's a cultural issue. It's a societal issue. But what could we do? I mean, we keep hearing it's a concern. We should talk about what could we

080do and how do we as a board support the staff, the administration, as well as the staff in these buildings. It's just my thought. I agree with that because we heard it both from staff and parents. It's an obvious issue. And, you know, here lies the million-dollar question. I mean, I wish our budget was, you know, you could have whatever you wanted, but that's not reality. However, I think we need to take a serious look at our opportunities in the grade school levels because that's where they're developed, and I think if we lose them there, we're in trouble. But if I may say also... I was impressed also on how happy the parents were with the teachers and the staff in general. And that is so pleasing to hear when you go to those because

081you don't always hear that. But we seem to hear it a lot more than I think a lot of others do. So kudos to everyone for their hard work. One of the specific comments that a few parents echoed was... And I think it's in here as well about the strength of the PBIS program and everything. I agree. It's worth a conversation. I think I would frame it differently and just say, like, what more can we be doing? Because, of course, we already have significant input into addressing and helping students with behaviors and supporting staff, but it is a theme that we keep hearing, so I think it does bear more discussion. I totally support your comment that there is a lot being done, but what more can we do, I think, is a very fair

082statement. Thank you for... I thought it was worth noting, too, one of the things that they like about our district and also want to see improvement in is just lots of support for arts, for PE that's like everyday health and fitness in addition to organized sports, but like everyday things. And I think about the climbing club, the outdoor adventure club, things like that that are not necessarily organized sports but still kind of support that. And thinking about like... Arts and music and foreign language and PE all those things came up about things They really want that our districts provide and they appreciate and they love to see support improvement once a day once a week They say is just not enough. They'd like to see it more often and I totally understand any other comments

083I just want to say thank you to Laura for the notes on these you do such a beautiful job and you really capture the essence of these Conversations and that's not easy to do when they sometimes go all over the place. So thank you for that for a motion to approve this linkage summary? I'll move to approve. Motion by Dr. Garcia. Second. Second by Mr. Neumeister. Any further discussion? Roll call vote. Mr. Vickneski. Aye. Ms. Fuchs. Aye. Dr. Garcia. Aye. Mr. Jackson. Aye. Mr. Mankoff. Aye. Mr. Neumeister. Aye. Dr. Sprague. Aye. Ms. Sukla. Aye. We'll then go on to our information items, the first one being results monitoring. R3.4 involves citizenship. As a reminder to board members, the OEs we approve when they come each time, but the Rs we kind of save up for

084once a year because there's so many pieces of these Rs of the results policies. So this isn't an approval tonight. This is a presentation. We're very thankful to have Miss Carrie who the mr. Tim sprain here to talk about this policy as a reminder historically it was framed around doing environmental work good stewardship and we Recognized the burden that placed on teachers and gathering that information recording it. It was a lot of effort while good stuff was still going on. And so the board, I think, judiciously made a change to the policy language, and it says demonstrate an understanding, which is more about did you learn it, knowing that the great activity is still going on in our schools, and our three-year test run of that showed that that was certainly the case. And so

085excited to show something a little bit different this time, where we may or may not have a historical comparison, because it's the first year of developing something. It'll be better next year for sure, but excited to show what we have today. And with that, I'll turn it over to Ms. Huth. Still the beginning intro of my presentation, so I'll start somewhere in the middle. So we are here to show that students will demonstrate an understanding of good stewardship towards the environment. Fits well with even Joe's OE, as he shared a little bit ago. So R3.4, we are looking at high school environmental stewardship in our first link. And as we continue to move forward in our standards-based teaching and learning and grading, our essential standards, you will note on this high school environmental stewardship, the

086standard aligns with a test or an exam within the ecology unit. This is the results of, this is the first year for this ecology exam related to the standard listed above. And you can see that... We have 8% advanced, 46% proficient, 46 below proficient, and 7 out of 177 is actually 4%, but it was all rounded up. So we are looking at 54% of our students. advanced or proficient on that ecology exam as well as you will see a comparison below with an AP environmental science. You will see in 23-24 there was more students that took the exam that was because there were two classes. This year we only had one AP environmental science class run. You will see growth in the percentages there and the data. If you go to the next, the middle

087school data, you will see it's our middle school environmental stewardship. Tim will talk, Mr. Sprain will talk more about this. But again, this exam is specifically correlating to the standard. He also has the assessment question listed as well as how students are. Assessed regarding advanced proficient approaching not yet or no evidence and so this year we have our first year of data We look forward to next year's data to show comparison So we have 4% advanced 60% proficient Approaching not yet and no evidence and this is out of 286 students that were assessed for this this exam So there's the data piece, and I also have Mr. Sprain here to talk more about the connections of what's happening within the classrooms. My name is Tim Sprain. I'm the 612 science coordinator, and I'm also a

088seventh grade science teacher. And I will just say that the actions that are happening that we've been doing because of this are measured because kind of what the vision that Dr. Engel had, the idea of aligning our arrows and getting our standards-based system going, we made a huge jump to have 286 students now taking this assessment directly linked. to the standard of following energy through systems. And then also linking it, and to hear your, I'm on the climate committee too, so like that climate action plan that we put together is directly linked to this goal. So we're bringing all those arrows forward. And we already see within a year, our teachers are understanding, especially the middle school teachers, within that system. But more importantly, the kids did a great job. And then we are also

089linking field experiences before each unit. So the kids are getting out kind of like what you were saying, this idea of getting out in the community and what the parents are seeing, K through 12, that kids are, we have in the science program, they're getting out, working with the nature place, roll across, to have these experiences and, I mean. We planted trees, I remember, 20 years ago with Deb's daughter, and then on Friday we planted trees and pulled buckthorn with Jeff's daughter this Friday. And this is happening in all of our schools. And one of the other major things that we're doing, we have what's called the STEAM Science Leaders. It's science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics. And we sent a group of kids. We had this going right before COVID, and it kind of

090fell apart, but we have kids from... the high schools and the middle schools together going to Upham Woods to get trained as STEAM science leaders that come back and become the teachers of their students for this goal. But of course, it's our standards-based program. It's our curriculum. It's focused on a specific Wisconsin standard of science. So thank you, and we've made great progress in this very short period of time. You know, when we first started this a few years ago, you were inundated with what needed to be done, and it had become apparent that we were asking way too much out of you, and it took a lot away. I guess my question is, has it been a lot easier with the new standard, what we asked to have done, than it was a couple

091years ago? I would say it's directly correlating to the work that's being done within the schools. So when we're looking at our standards-based and our essential standards and what we're reporting out on here, it is work that our teachers already have in place or are designing at the time with our standards-based movement. So it's work that's being done. It's authentic. It's the true learning that our students... are leaving school with. It's not the list of activities. It's not something that's being done just to come report to you. So it's the authentic work that's being done within the schools that's helping us share the positive work that our kids are experiencing. Thank you. Jim so is there one or more courses or Which course is emphasizes environmental science? There's no course named environmental science. So is

092it life science? physiology, where is it great question So high school currently we have an AP environmental science class that we have data from we also have data from the ecology class We next year will be working towards pulling a direct correlation out of a unit from a biology class so that we have students both at Logan High and Central High that we are pulling data from. We also want that to be authentic, so we are working on standards-based assessments that are common across both schools. So next year you will have an added piece even of an assessment and some data from a biology. And all of our kids take biology. Our goal when we use a curriculum-based measure that we kind of self-generate, we want it an experience that every student would have. So

093whether it's a 6th, 7th, or 8th grade or a 10th grade biology or a 9th grade English, some common experience so that we can ensure that we're not just hitting a subsection of kids who are really passionate, but this is a universal standard that all kids gain access to. And so this year was a good year. development and I think at the middle school in particular we did a great job I'm excited for what next year will bring to and where is it covered in the middle school Tim So it's a kit that we do. It's called the Samples and Populations. And so it's one of the investigations that they have. But the theme throughout, it actually hits in second grade, in fourth grade, and then in seventh grade. So the standard carries on through

094what we call the FOSS system. So we have a FOSS kit system that we still make it hometown. So like Central and Longfellow and the Southside schools, they'll... They'll go and study Pamel Creek, and then the Northside schools can walk down the Black River and do some work there or into the marsh. But it's part of that samples and populations kit, and it's a full investigative curriculum that we have. Kind of like, remember, when you were science, it was the Carolina kids, back when you were the man for the job in science. He's still the man. The current data for our middle school environmental data is from seventh grade. Thanks. Thank you for so, I think, clearly articulating the importance of quality assessments. And I'm really, if I'm understanding you correctly, and I'm really glad

095to hear the enthusiasm for this assessment, even though we're still early days, I will really look forward to seeing this data. you know, become even more solid over time. I'm curious about with the AP Environmental Science, and Tim, maybe you won't be able to speak to this as much, it seems like a whole class section of difference in terms of the whole numbers. Is that the case here? Yes, it is. There was two classes that ran last year. This year there's only one class. dependent on who the students that sign up and the numbers. When that happens as sometimes does with AP classes in particular is that a course that is still available to students at both Central and Logan? I believe so. It can be. We have the same course guide for our Logan

096High School and our Central High School so the courses are offered it's just a matter of who signs up. I don't want to get too far in the weeds, I guess, but I do have a question about the way the advanced and proficient standards are sort of written here. And Tim, maybe this is more your ballywick here. Where in the proficiency category on the last page, It indicates that students regularly identify concepts slash vocabulary and are able to regularly apply content knowledge in familiar or unfamiliar situations. Can you give a kind of example of that? That feels like something that's difficult to formally assess. But I imagine as a teacher, when you hear a student say, oh, this is what we did down by the river, what are you looking for as a teacher? That's

097exactly what we're looking for is that connection to the. the personal experiences that the kids have had. And when they have multiple concepts, and I just have to give a shout-out to Tony Yang because we developed what's called the EL Science Adventures Program, which is still going on today, to teach our EL kids, not just Hmong students, but all EL students, pre-teach them the science vocabulary and have these experiences, field experiences, hands-on work every summer, 4th grade through 12th grade, so they have the context. to answer these questions. And so that's exactly what it is. They can recall because they have the physical experience. And that's why all these field experiences linked to each course is so important because science is doing. And that's the most important piece to really recall and put it into

098practice. And so that's what this is. It's basically... Are they elaborating when they answer this question and giving us a very specific example? And then can they do it in our city here? Right. So it's not just wrote, like, this is the book answer to this question. Yes. That's fantastic to hear. And we're seeking that. And teachers, we're modeling that and saying, hey, this could be a career for you. This could be something you do to volunteer. We have all this work to be done that's good, fun work. And this is applying all your knowledge and science. Thank you. Best way to learn is of being their experience. I'm glad to hear that you're moving to incorporating this into the biology class because the AP students, as Dr. Engel said, is not representative of the

099full student body. So how much work is there to incorporate this into the biology classes next year? So we've been putting more emphasis on writing quality assessments. So we've had many teachers that have had learning over the course of this year for writing quality assessments as well. So it's really during the district PLC time bringing biology teachers together from both Logan High School and Central High School so that we can write those common formative assessments. We have our essential standards already identified. So using the standards and then to make sure that the The assessments are quality. We will continue to tweak them over time to do better every year. But it's really more about time and making sure that our teachers have that time. Likely it will start in August when we have our back-to-school

100in-service days that they will have district-level PLC time to work on their scope and sequence, so teaching the same units across both schools. We do the same thing for middle schools. equal opportunities for our students whether they be on the north side or the south side but really bringing our staff together to give them opportunity to write the assessment and then having that in place and collecting the data multiple pieces my guess is having taught 10th grade biology a long time ago now um you know they're already teaching this so it's just a matter of identifying where that's happening ensuring that the Rubric and the questions aligned to what we're trying to gather for data that it's easy for teachers It's probably a couple of tweaks probably not a big change and then just making

101sure that we capture that any other questions And there's no action on this but when this will this will come back to us whenever our GC 6e tells us we're supposed to Thank you Tim for being here Our next two items and I'll Turn it over to Dr. Engel and Ms. Spring. We have budget items, review of the Fund 80 and the school finance puzzle and budget overview. Did you do part of the budget overview last time or is this a whole new presentation? Okay, I'm like, this looks really familiar. Keep your mind focused on the budget. English language learners, you're finance language learners now. And so we wanted to just keep introducing you to things that are gonna come up later, but then you'll have those aha moments that you recall seeing this before.

102So with Fund 80, I didn't know if you wanted to introduce anything with that. Yeah, I didn't. I don't want to read through the whole document and have all of that. But just I would read the first sentence or two. The community service fund levy is used to fund programs and services that are not regular education programs. So not something we do naturally. We already teach first grade, so we can't use Fund 80 to teach first grade. But rather serve a broader, more community-oriented purpose outside the regular curriculum and extracurricular programs of public and private school children. And that public and private school children matters as well. Whatever programs we offer through Fund 80 have to be accessible to any resident, any child resident in our school district. And so like our school resource officer

103program, which is funded through Fund 80, they serve the private schools as well. And so they take calls there, they go there actively. It's a partnership that we're able to make then to serve all kids in our community. The same thing with our community cultural family liaisons that just presented. There's an opportunity for private school students to access them also. any number of things. And so those are two key things to remember. It can't be part of our natural obligations that we already do, and it has to serve all kids. And it takes a lot of forms, including after-school programming, building community use, community liaisons. We just talked about community partnership programs, and we have a wide range of those. Community school coordinators at Hamilton and Northside. early childhood community partnerships. Historically, we had the

104Logan Pool operation under there and school resource officers. The levy history is on the bottom of one of those documents, but that's not the budget. And we know that kind of a little more detail sometimes helps folks. And so we wanted to include the budget as well. If we have a fund balance, we don't have to levy as much the following year. Sometimes it gets underspent or something doesn't happen the way we thought it would. And so we don't always need to levy the full cost. But it gets into the detail then there with the specific ways that those programs are used and who is hired for that program. And with that, I'll turn it over to any questions about the program as it is. And we're hopeful to talk about it in the near

105future about where the program may go. And then, of course, in August, we'll talk about what the board's interested in funding for the following year. This community service fund that really allows some flexibility that we don't have in our other funding But it is a levy. It's it's outside of the levy limits in this additional levy So if you look at the difference between the last two years there was a sizable increase that was an additional levy that we brought forward to our taxpayers to do good things, not saying we shouldn't do it, but I want to be really clear that I don't want people to get caught up in, oh, these are all these cool things because there is a cost, and that is directly to our property taxes. So I just want to

106be clear on how cool it is and the flexibility it is and how it's paid for. Any questions, comments? I would like to see what different schools do or what our district could do with Fund 80 and... early childhood education. We talked about maybe some behavioral issues that occur in kindergarten or first grade. And sometimes if we started a student earlier in school, maybe we could alleviate some of those issues. And so I'd like to see us take a look. We were having someone in Kirktown look at something in terms of early childhood, and I'd like to see some report on that and then see what we could do to enhance our education earlier, maybe three-year-old program. I don't know. Different districts are doing different things, but they seem to be attacking kids at an

107earlier and earlier age to make sure that they're... Sometimes you say well the kid fell behind well, why are we letting some kids fall behind? We should be able to help kids in society. Yeah, absolutely We'll have an update this summer on the early childhood Or impact coordinator and let you know where we're at with that program And there are a number of programs that we've investigated that have used fund 80 Some some run full-on daycares through that's not an area where I think we'll get in based on our assessment over the last few years. But there are opportunities around daycare that we could pursue that look different and there's places like, I think it was that. Oshkosh or Appleton has like a first five years program where it's kind of comprehensive, multifaceted play groups,

108people working with daycares. Kind of simulates what Parenting Place does today in some ways. We're fortunate to have so many great organizations within the city that we can often just partner with them to do good work instead of maybe creating it from scratch ourselves. But yeah, we can definitely kind of review what's out there. see what's used with Fund 80, and we'll certainly give an update on what we do with our... There's a difference between child care and just caring for a child and early education. And that's why it's often referred to as early care and education. And I think there's room for... Lots of education happens in early childhood care, but I think that's maybe where we want to draw that line so we can figure out where we... I probably missed some of

109the... the conversations before when I wasn't on the board. So what Jim was talking about, so the assessment, can you give me some background on what we're trying to dig out? I've heard the concerns from teachers on preparedness and major motor skills, minor motor skills, just the ability to focus and sit and be prepared to learn. So what are we exploring or what's Curt exploring as far as the initiative? Yeah, we're trying to get upstream, you know, get to a place before challenges develop for kids. And part of that is kind of assessing what the challenges are in our community and then working with partners to tackle that. And what we have found through our community schools work at Hamilton and Northside, as well as our community impact work in Huber. homes in Shumalin, is

110that we're pretty good as a school district at bringing our partners to the table and organizing our work in a way that listens to the people that are affected, identifies solutions, and rapidly puts them in place. And so we try to do that with early childhood as well. Bring people together, listen to the folks that are experiencing the challenges in early childhood, the parents themselves, and then early childhood teachers, both in daycare settings and in schools, and then... Working with partners like May Amplify, Parenting Place, Daycares, how can we start to address some of those challenges? It's not our expectation to do it all ourselves, but to be the connector, the facilitator, and the coordinator of those efforts. We occupy a unique kind of cross-cutting to be able to accomplish that effectively. And so we

111hired a person this year to help start that work, do that initial assessment, making those connections. This is long. but we're excited for where it's going and we've got a great person in place. And that was the birth to three programming that we had voted on last year. Sorry, real quick. Am I correct in my understanding that the, so I'm looking at the budget levy side by side here. The additional. $200,000 in the budget that is not accounted for by the levy would come out of our fund balance or our general fund? Well, this is a separate tax levy. So when we tax in Fund 80, we tax by the program. So if there's any funds left over at the end of the year, it can only be spent on that program and the following.

112So any one of these could have had some carryover. because we could carry over. So for example, the early childhood community partnership that the board approved last year, we debated on going out for purchase services or for hiring somebody, and we ended up hiring someone, but we didn't hire that person until the, so probably part of that will be purpose. So we got started a little later on that, but just wanted to make sure we were hiring for what we felt that we needed. examples we try and um receive you know so like we allocated 255 000 for sros but the police will actually send us actual costs as opposed to estimated costs and so we're you know allocating enough money to cover it but it will often come in a little so there's an

113offer flat check to it tell us how much you worked and we'll reimburse you for that work that we so when do we find out what that balance is then how and how as we do our right so in First meeting in August, probably, we will bring to you the proposal. Last year, if you'll remember, the board had great discussion on that, on the different items, especially if it's something new. And so at that point, I would be able to know because I'd know by the end of the school year. So you would tell us at that time how much is unspent from the previous year that could be used to offset? Yes. Thank you. So is the current, when I'm looking at the same document that's side by side, I'm up the current budget

114for 24-25. Is that our proposed budget for next year? Is this what we're at right now? This is just to kind of refresh your memory of what it looks like for this year. Yes. Perfect. This is your reference point. In July, we'll bring back the kind of big ideas conversation and some thoughts about the next year. And then in... August will bring the fund balances that we didn't spend out and then an opportunity based on what we hear from the board in July to refine that proposal. Because it is a separate levy, it will affect the mill rate in a different way depending on what the revenue limit calculation is. So we're always very careful to recognize that also, that it wouldn't increase our levy. to the point of really impacting our taxpayers in a

115negative way. Go on with the rest of it then, the rest of the budget. Yes. So the other part is, yes, we did touch on a lot of this last time. This is what is kind of the whole school finance puzzle, and just wanted to bring some things to your attention about... the board's responsibility and the Wisconsin Constitution and how we are to provide nearly uniform as practicable funding for our schools, our education, so that even districts that may be disadvantaged as far as poverty levels, their students will still receive the same level of education. Dan, we're on page three if you want to skip down there. Thank you. Patty's moving on. Yes, I am. So because we always take into consideration, you know, the cost, but we're also focusing on the students and the

116education, and we have to make that blend. So if you want to go to the next one. Dan, the state provides financial assistance in the form of equalization general aid. And I wanted to point out that as of July 1st, you may hear that the equalization aid estimates are out. And the estimates are truly estimates on July 1st because they are based on last year, this current year's expenditures for a district. compared to the other 400-some districts in the state. So it's very, very raw, and especially when we don't have a state budget in place. They say that they are assisting us, but then we have a revenue limit. And so the next slide shows the revenue limit history established in 1993. So it's well over 30 years old, and this is the way that

117public schools have managed finances since 1993. And it was created so that there'd be levy control, so that a district couldn't tax their constituents to the point that they would find it very difficult. So this is a calculation to provide sufficient funds, and if there are not sufficient funds, districts are allowed to go to operational referendum. This district has been in operational referendum since 2006, I believe. So we depend very heavily on that, and there are more and more districts that are having to go to their taxpayers for those additional funds. We just wanted to compare a little bit about... And to clarify, those referendums are operating referendums different than capital referendums. These are referendums to operate a school district and do the work. Right. It'll increase our revenue limit. So the comparison sake for

118business, they're always dealing with profit and balance sheet a little bit different than ours since we are not working as far as a profit. Wanting to tax and receive funds from the state to be sufficient in our spending for our students. We have a question. Patty, I'm sorry. I want to go back to what you just said about the... operational refer, increasing our revenue limit? Am I misunderstanding that they are not temporary authority to exceed the revenue limit, but do not then increase the limit going forward? It could be. So if you have an operating referendum that is recurring, it'll increase your base every year. But we have a non-recurring. And so it's a one time every year for as many years as you go out for the voters to approve to just increase your

119revenue limit for that year. Do you know how many districts do recurring versus non-recurring? Oh, I don't know offhand, but more and more are being approved. Taxpayers would just feel like if you need it now and you've needed it for many, many years prior, then we'll just, you know. have it as recurring so that you don't have to keep coming out to the taxpayers every five, six years. Recurring, it goes on forever. It does go on forever. And districts are passing those. They are. I knew one district years ago that did it by accident and they couldn't get out of it. I'm familiar with that one too. But, yeah, it's very interesting. It's just, I mean, even overall. more and more districts are having to go out for operating referendum regardless if it's recurring or

120non-recurring. So then the school districts, we touched on this a little bit last time about fund accounting. So the general fund, fund 10, and then special ed education fund 27. At the end of the year, your special ed revenue has to... equal the expenditures for the year. And that zeroes it out. But the only way we can do that is without funding from the state or for funds, General Fund has to send those dollars over to cover any expenses not covered by grants. For La Crosse, it's about $10 million or more a year. So if we could get that categorical aid to increase from the state, the less that we have to pay. have to transfer from the general fund. So that would be very helpful. Fund 50, I had mentioned last week or last

121time that that is a separate fund. It's like a business of its own, and it needs to be self-sufficient. If it's not, we have to move dollars from the general fund to Fund 50. So your comment, though, about moving the funding from general fund to Fund 27 for special ed, if we've got Catechor, aid that would provide additional funding, Fund 27. But that doesn't mean we still have more overall because we're still under the revenue limit, which means if we get more state money, we can only have, the pie can only be so big. Right, but it also includes Fund 27. So when you're taking $10 million of that and you're... sending it to Fund 27 in any given year. But if you could get more categorical aid, then that's less that you have to

122move from the general fund. Because the general fund is serving all of our students. Fund 27 is the special education students. So is Fund 27 inside of that revenue limit? The caveat to that is if we ran like a half a million dollar deficit in Fund 50, we would have to use Fund 10 to cover it. And so then that expense is within our revenue limit. And so we're fortunate to have a food service fund that is run very well and has even a little extra each year so it is able to save up for capital purchases and big improvements. A lot of school districts I've been in, we had to pay for those out of Fund 10, impeding the ability to educate all of our students. And so it's really important to have a

123Fund 50, a food service program. that is efficient with its dollars. It's a benefit to all kids. And can we get more than $150 because... Yeah, we have offsets to those. It covers the cost of students that experience. At the end of the day, if we had fewer programs, it comes down to menu choices and efficiency and service and how many employees you have working in there. It's a little business, so it has to just be well run in all measures. Certainly having some consistent revenue sources is helpful. The next slide shows just the Wisconsin uniform financial account requirements is woofer. So we're very highly regulated. We have certain funds. We have certain accounts that we have to be very careful that we're spending in those areas as they are allowed. But these are the

124funds that School District of La Crosse uses, and each fund can be thought of as a separate bucket of funding. So this one I had said before, I like to use it again because we are so far out from the actual budget numbers, but we're always comparing and recalculating and trying to meet our budget for next year. And then each fund has its own budget. Expenses are budgeted in fund and function. And the revenues are... budgeted by fund and source. For example, that source number is very important. It's 210 and those are our property taxes. So that we have to make sure that when our auditors come they'll look and see, you know, are we budgeting as we had levied for each of our municipalities. So the basic funding equation is the revenue limit minus

125how much we get in state aid, general aid. And that will be the remainder goes as our property tax levy. We're on page 11, Dan. I owed Dan big time. One more page. So this is what Ms. Sukla had mentioned the last time. I'm glad she remembered all this, too, that it's a pie. The pie is determined by the revenue limit. And the filling is made up of those two main sources, state aid and local taxes. And so right now, this is pretty much the way we are funded and the different flavors of the pie. So a property-wealthy district is going to get less than state aid, and you're going to have to... Levy more to your local property tax owners. So a lot of the property rich districts up north So they don't get

126any aid it from the state. It's nothing and so that is Impacting all those taxpayers a lot of them are cottage owners So they're not even living there, but they have to support those districts for just the school levy it's like a Monaco might only be three dollars and fifty cents whereas across it might be seven dollars so it's half as much and it's trying to equalize the impact to taxpayers you know across school districts all over the state with different characteristics and so that's what that equalized aid is for to kind of balance things for school districts. So it leads to really weird mill rates, but the dollar amount is often more similar than as a result. Property values are twice as high on a lake in Minocqua than they might be in the

127middle of the city in La Crosse. And so trying to equalize some of those things to make it fairer across the state to pay for public education. Patty, I have a question on the chart on page 12. That split the... Is this our revenue limit, or is this what we actually spent? I'm wondering, does this include the levy that we get for the operating referendum, or is that separate? Yes. So this is the revenue limit. So the operating referendum increases our pie. But depending on how much we get from state aid, that's why we have to go out for a vote for the taxpayers. that increasing of the pie and the state aid being taken off will increase the property taxes for the most part. And that's why when we go out, we always try

128to estimate the impact on our local taxpayers. The capital referendum is on the outside. It is just paying back the debt. That's what we're levy for in a capital referendum. So if you want to go to, okay, the revenue limit factors, page 14. So you're going to have your base revenue. That's the prior year revenue limit. If you had a recurring operating referendum, that base would increase. But if you just have a non-recurring, that base goes back to whatever it was the prior year. So it doesn't increase. The membership is the full-time equivalent resident students and then the allowable annual change per member. So the state budget is going to dictate that. Right now it's at 325, but it has been zero. So membership does not equal the students in the seats. That is the

129students in our district that we are responsible for educating. So even if a student would open and roll out to Onalaska, we count that student as part of our membership. And then later on, we send some money to Onalaska to cover that student. It's based on a three-year rolling average. And then again, it's based on our resident students. So the impact of per-member adjustment, that amount, like I said, is added to the base for the next year. That's why we want to see at least that $325 per member in the next state budget. This is the next one. Page 17 is just some... Some history so last year in the prior year we got the 325 per student however you can see that there's some years that we received zero or and much less than

130that and even Had a negative year where they took away money from school districts the per pupil Categorical aid is outside of the revenue limit and that's based on the three-year average membership also will be determined in the next state budget to see if it is increased or decreased from the 742 as a matter of comparison the revenue limit is like eleven thousand five hundred dollars the per pupil categorically there it's up to seven hundred and forty two dollars it's a smaller pot of money every school gets it equally and so it has a positive effect on wealthy districts tax taxes because it only comes from the state. It doesn't come from local property tax. So as we're debating policy initiatives at the state level, wealthy districts like the categorical aid and poor districts kind

131of like equalized aid, the revenue limit increase. And so these measures have become a balancing act to kind of bring all constituents to the table around public school funding. So the revenue limit calculation, so we take that. three-year membership average times the maximum revenue per member, and that will be the revenue limit before any exemptions. And the revenue limit versus state aid, so what you can spend, the pie, how much you receive in general school aids is part of that filling, and they're two different things. So general aids are purposeful tax relief, and the main general school aid program is equalization aid. So you could imagine a situation where we just have to, they tell us how much we can levy, and we levy it all locally. But the state takes in lots of revenue

132from different places, and so then they send us those tax dollars back to essentially buy down property taxes locally, which is nice. And just something that we'll repeat over and over again on page 20 is that more aid does not mean more to spend. It's just less to tax. And it has to be combined with a revenue limit increase to make resources available. So aid formula assumes the value per member is the best measure of the ability to pay, meaning that your property value in your area. And then the redistribution is the intent for one district to get more, other districts have to get less. So in the state budget, you'll know that they're going to allocate a total dollar amount towards equalization aid. but then they have to break it up through the formula

133through all the districts. So as an example of that, in 2020-21 and 21-22, the state legislature and the governor touted the most spending on public education ever in the state's history. However, they didn't increase the revenue limit. So we couldn't have more money locally, but they gave more money to public education. So it basically bought down property taxes and drove mill rates down. So it was nice for local taxpayers, all this education spending, but it wasn't good for schools because we didn't get any new money. And so when you factor into inflation, we essentially saw a cut to public education through those two years in the middle of the pandemic. And so it's tricky to hear what the state legislators say. Is it more money or is it more revenue limit? Like, do we actually

134get the authority to levy that money or are they just buying down property taxes? And so it's tough for the average citizen to understand this language and nomenclature. And so that's just an example where more money doesn't mean we have money to spend. I feel like you should create some TikToks about that. Go where the people are. Yeah. All right. And then, of course, there is a hold harmless that keeps the aid from falling more than 15% per year for any school district. So just some refreshers about what is referenda. And the referendum grants revenue authority, it has a tax impact, but it doesn't raise taxes by a specific dollar amount. Impact depends on how the funds are used and where you live in the aid formula. one of the two things. So we issue

135debt for a capital referendum or raise additional dollars for operations. So I put the dates that we went out to issue debt for the capital projects in November 2024 and April 2023 for operations. We have a very supportive community. The referendum to issue debt borrowed the specific amount, so that was the 53.5 million. And then, of course, anybody who was making that decision who was on the board knows that the wording is very important, and yet we will not know the actual issuing of debt until we go out there. So this time we've issued debt. We're going to issue it at least in two different ways so that this first... Debt that we issued, the $14.5 million, will go out for 20 years unless we refinance, and the next will go out for another year.

136So we could even go back, depending on what the market looks like when we go out. So and then operating to exceed the revenue limit so this is the kind of a sample of what I meant about the recurring because it's an ongoing increase and that's what you had said Mr. Begmaski about it going on forever but then the operating to exceed the revenue limit is only increasing your revenue for years of that and even though we don't have recurring But our community has been so supportive of our operative, continue to support us since 2000. I mean, it's gone on 20 years. So, I mean, that says a lot about our community support. Very much so. So a note on referenda that one of the state biennial budgets did put some restrictions on referenda. So

137it's a little bit different than it was in years past. limits us to the even years, spring, fall, primary, and general, and then in odd years, only spring, primary, and the general. Which our district had followed prior to that. Our district was very good about not having a special election date. When we did have operating referendum prior to this act, we wanted to have times that people were... And so you're always looking every year, like when is that referendum going to expire, because you probably want to look at what kind of election year it is and go out so that if you had to go out again for some reason, you would be able to do that in a timely manner. So then there's also other revenues outside the revenue limit formula on page 26.

138There's a lot of state and federal grants. We account for fund 11. Many of them are reimbursable grants, so we're spending the dollars first and then getting reimbursed later. The revenues outside of the revenue limit formula, most districts' operational revenue is determined by the state and federal calculations. Other revenue is the small percentage of your overall budget. We have a question. Sorry, Katie. You have all these numbers. Are those like Title I-A, Title III-A, and so on? Those are all different federal and state grants. And what's a Title IV-A-B? Can you give me an example? Title IV. That one is more for instruction, and I think professional development falls under there for our staff. So like the Carl Perkins is a lot to do with the career technical education area. The flow through and the

139preschool, those are fund 27 special ed grants. And the ESSA grant, I need to remove that from there now because it's gone and over with. That was our funding after the pandemic. So the 25-26 budget factors, I did mention some of these last time, too. And the reason I like to put these on the agenda so that you can refer back to them if you have. if you really want to think through it. But it's a new state biennial budget. We still haven't had any updates that they are going to have a decision by the end of this month. And then we don't know anything more about the $325. We know it will be $325, but we don't know if it could be any more. Per pupil categorical aid, it's going to stay at $742.

140Special ed aid is the current the 325 so the limit was 325 in the past and now we get another 325 on top of that. Okay And historically it was pegged to CPI 2% or something. So it functioned essentially similar to what it is now. It was just you know constitutional shenanigans to a certain extent And in terms of like the uncertainty of the budget for next year, I was talking to a representative at City Hall this morning who represents our school district and they didn't, we were both asking, what have you heard? What have you heard? But the Joint Finance Committee has held it very tightly for us to approve our levies. And then the special ed aid, besides that increase in percentage, it can be at a some certain amount or a some

141sufficient, meaning some certain is what it has been that the... You know, government dictates an amount that has to cover everybody in the state, so you may not see 30 to 33%. But if it's some sufficient in the state budget, that means that regardless, it will cover every school district to that percentage. Declining enrollment, we are estimating 118 FTE. We won't know that exact number until the third Friday in September. We're looking at the CPI increase. We're in the middle of negotiations right now. And we continue to look at staffing needs, although I think we pretty well figured out. But more or less, students in a classroom come the third Friday. This also is just showing you the base revenue and the changes that we are working with, but after that net revenue change being

142positive, there's a whole bunch of expenditures that are just naturally going to increase because that's, you know, utilities and those kinds of things. So when we budget, we budget zero-based. And we are just gathering all of those now and getting them into the system so that we can start giving you some kind of estimate as far as more detail on where we think that we will be able to reduce the budget for next year and where we see the increases more on a line-by-line basis. And let's see, these next ones just talk about the detail of what we go through, how this goes out to the teachers and the schools and the departments. And Mr. Sprague was talking about the science kits. Those are all, they come in through the zero-based budget that they need

143to purchase X amount for the next school year. Yeah, one of the things I like about our zero-based budgeting process is that it really starts with our staff. They ask for what they need, and that's our job to fulfill as many of those requests as possible. Our discretionary budget after you take out salaries and benefits and utilities and transportation is very small when it's all said and done. A few million dollars probably when it comes down to it are the things that folks are asking for to run their classrooms. But it starts with our staff. They're asking for what they need, and we're doing our best to accommodate all. So, you know, we just want to emphasize that everything that you have to look at from now until October are really the best estimates we

144can provide to you. So just don't hesitate to ask any questions. We're going to try to keep you informed on any updates. We hope to update you on some state budget impacts in the next few months, how that affects. I appreciate you bringing this to us. It's going to be a lot of the work that we're going to do the next few months, so understanding the framework that that goes in. It's a lot to absorb. I can only speak to what I've done so far intelligently tonight by having been on the board close to 20 years. So if you don't absorb it all tonight, it's expected. That's a lot to deal with. Yeah. And you'll learn from each other, too, in your experiences. All right, keep moving along here. Our next item is Wisconsin Association

145School Board WASBE 2025 Business Honor Roll. There's a deadline for submission is the 8th of August. Since it is the School Board Association, we want to give board members the opportunity to submit any names that they would like to administration. but they wanted to check with us first as board members if we have any you can either say now or you can send an email to dr. Engel and let him know your recommendations but there we will be sending something in as a district by the 8th of August yeah dr. Britta Rotering has helped us identify those folks in the past and we certainly want to it's a it's a school board program though so we want to start with the school board and we can certainly identify you know handful of folks amongst the

146hundreds we work with on a regular basis so if you have any recommendations that am our way announcements dr. Garcia for the lacrosse public education foundation Yeah, the Bowtie Classic registration is up and running. It's set for September 6th, so you can register teams for that as soon as you're ready. And there's also Thursday, June 19th at 4.15 p.m. is the LPEF Social, and you're all invited. And Confluence is going to perform there, so it's going to be a good show at 5.30 at the Moontunes Riverside Park Bandshell. Social is at the Freight House back dock, and then the performance is at the Moontoon's bench hall after. From my announcements, I don't have any other than congratulations to all the graduates and congratulations to the schools. I attended three of the four ceremonies, and it's

147just wonderful to see all these students, all their families, all the support our students get. It's a wonderful event. And our July meeting, just for a heads up, we'll talk more at the next meeting, but our July meeting, there'll be a short business meeting, and then we're going to spend most of our time in a workshop. Reason being is that we usually do workshops at the end of a meeting, and then our brains are fried, and it's not really a good time for us to start workshopping. So we're going to spend a majority of that time doing workshop, looking at some information coming from the visioning group. and I'm on that, we'll be meeting on Thursday, and then spending some time talking about policy, and we're gonna talk about policy a little bit different than

148we have in the past. I wanna talk, and so you can start to think about your homework, what issues have you wanted to work on as a board member, but you felt policy didn't? What was cumbersome or didn't was not I don't want to say a burden because I really like our policy structure But how did we feel policy and what we felt we wanted to work on as a board didn't quite gel and come together And where are those areas specifically where where were those? Bumps in the road and then we want to talk about collectively about how do we address that? Mr. Manka brought up at the organizational meeting the interest in talking about Coherent governance and so I think this is the good way to start that conversation So that's the plan

149for that meeting. I think if we can talk about the areas where individual members felt it hasn't worked, then I think we can come together and perhaps make some tweaks or whatever we need to do to kind of get past the conversation about I'd like coherent governance or I don't like it. Yes, did you have something you want to add? Well, and I'm interested as far as moving forward once we see the vision plan, what does it mean? Where is that directing us? Where are some markers that we can say after three years, yes, we had a vision plan and we made it to this point at this time. Dr. Engel and I have talked, and the committee is doing some really good work, but they're going to bring it to the board, and I

150think we want to spend some time working with it so that we as a board own this. and can bring it forward. And I think there'll be some conversations back with the community about is this the right direction? So there'll be some, it won't be just coming to us for up or down approval. I think there's going to be some work going with that. And I think that that's the way it should be developed. So that's a good thing. That's all I have. Dr. Engel. Last day of school with kids is June 6th, this Friday. It's a very exciting time of year. We're always sad to see the students go. back in the fall though so that's exciting and we'll have summer school this summer so we'll get to see them soon as well but

151it's a good time for rest rejuvenation and for families to educate their kids in their own way for a little bit uh before they come back so that's really about it for me do you have any numbers this summer compared to other summers in terms of enrollment um prospectively i know we've made a few tweaks to how summer school runs this year there are certain things that fill up immediately like almost within seconds. And then there are things that we're kind of calling folks all of June, like, hey, you should really think about this. So no early numbers, but certainly by August, I think we have a report, or September. Mr. Fimwright? Yeah, we still do have a lot of people. It's not a done deal yet, so people are still registering for summer school

152or shifting classes. So there's a lot of communication that's going on right now. But there'll be some better numbers for you, I think. Yep. Thanks. Agenda planning. We have the proposed agenda for the next meeting there before you. We would then, of course, add OE12 that was tabled this evening. So I'd be looking for a motion to approve this agenda with any additions or corrections. I will make a motion. Hang on. Let me get the language. Well, I will make a motion to approve the agenda for the... I don't have the date. June 16th Board of Education meeting with the addendum of the table item from this meeting. Second. Okay, we've got a motion by Dr. Sprague, seconded by Mr. Bagneski. For this, we will need a roll call vote. All right, let's do a

153voice vote. All those in favor of the motion, signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed? Okay, board debriefing, and it is Dr. Garcia's turn. Yeah, good meeting, everybody. I mean, good questions, lots of appreciation and gratitude for the people who work really hard in our district to make it awesome. I was really, I liked what I like best about this meeting, not that they're not all great, but like we had teachers and cultural liaisons and staff and students and community members speaking. And you know when you're a kid and you go to school, you show up and you fight with your friends and you gossip and you... sweat out a test and you have all those issues. And then behind the scenes, you've got the board and the staff and the community liaisons and all

154these decisions, like this huge collaborative community project. And it was just, I was thinking about how many partners we have in this project because of the way this meeting was structured. So you're up next. Did I? I think I made a note of that. Maybe I switched it the wrong direction. I think, did you and Tim switch? I think we might have. I should have stayed on for the night. Perfect, okay. I'm sorry. All right. I'll be in San Diego. With all that, then we stand adjourned.