Board of Education Operations Work Group and Special Meeting 11/11/19

001For folks in the room, we're just going to wait about five minutes to get started. We've got a couple of folks running late. This is like a second home. Okay, folks, I think we can go ahead and get started, and Ali and Savion will be joining us shortly. I'm going to call the meeting to order. Thank you to La Follette for hosting us and to the staff at the district. This is a great sound system for one of our school meetings, so it's a big step forward in terms of our being able to be out in the community. We only have one public speaker tonight, so Bob Schrafer. I want to make sure that we're addressing as we look at some of the renovations and that is the school safety. and that make sure that

002we keep our students safe. And some of the elements of that that have been expressed is making sure that the doors are, that the access to the school is limited, that we know when doors are being opened, and perhaps making use of video surveillance at those entrances and exits so that we know what's going on. and that we can keep our students safe, especially during the time that the school is in session, that when you have athletic activities and things like that, that some of those doors may need to have better access. And to have that in some way or another so that we know who's in the building and whatever safety efforts that we have to take into consideration. to keep that in there. And again, those are the thoughts that I have that

003I want to share with you in terms of the renovation aspects that are going to be going with this. Make sure that safety is a priority. Thank you. That concludes our public appearances tonight. The next item on the agenda is approval of the minutes dated April 15th, 2019. Do I have a motion to approve those minutes? So moved. Second. Rebecca, your advisory vote. How do I do this? Just say aye or nay. Aye. Or abstain. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? That passes 5-0. So we have two items on the operations workgroup agenda for this evening. The first is an update on our referendum planning, as well as some of the community input sessions that the administration has been hosting over the fall. And then the second item is our very first discussion for the

004budget for 2020-21. So Chad, do you want to join us? And whoever from the team is going to speak to the referendum? So both of these presentations are pretty short, and we're in a little bit of an awkward setup today, so if we could just hold our comments and questions until the end, and we'll pause in between referendum and budget and have a discussion. Well, thank you for having us tonight. I've got Andrew and Kelly with me as per usual. are going to do our best to get through a decent amount of content. We've been busy for the last couple months and have a lot to share. So our goals for tonight, we hope to give you a progress update on what we've been up to for the last couple months as far as community

005input and feedback. Quite a bit to share there. I've got a how we think if we did get to referendum and we did end up passing a referendum, what we believe would be the best way to actually pull these projects off. And then we're going to wrap up with a quick reminder and review of the timeline to 2020. It feels like we have a quarter click happening there. Any idea? There are also copies if anyone wants physical copies. You don't want to miss the good stuff at the bottom. Yeah, that's right. So we just wanted to do a few quick reminder slides. It's been a little bit since we've been in front of the board on essentially what we've been out in the community getting feedback on and talking about. So two big pieces. One

006is the facilities ask that we've broken down into really just three pieces of work. One, a million-dollar reinvestment at each of our four high school sites. Second, a possible consolidation of Capitol High School, potentially moving it to the Hoyt Building. And a third possible Southside Elementary School. This has been a slide that Kelly, Andrew, and I are becoming all too familiar with in terms of all of the input sessions we've been part of. The second piece that we've also been going around and asking for feedback on is the possibility of an operating referendum with permission to exceed that tax limit that will run out this coming year. And we've been certainly taking feedback on the possibility of an $8 million lift for two years and then a $10 million lift those following two years as

007well. We've been talking through the taxpayers' both $100,000 impact and the impact on an average home of just under $300,000. I didn't want to spend too much time reviewing it because you guys have seen these slides a ton. I want to make sure we have time for Andrew to talk us through what we've heard from the community so far. Thanks, Jen. Yeah, I am excited on some great work that's been happening. Great in that it's good quality and also great in that it's been a lot. It's been a great deal of it. It has been a really great combined effort. So the board signed off, for example, on our input plan in August and we've been busy implementing that with very few changes. We've made great progress, still a lot to do, but we've made

008great progress on that plan. Also the research and program evaluation office handling a lot of the logistics and capturing of input sessions. I'd also like to introduce Oriana Eversol, who's in the audience behind us. It's her team and her personally that's pushed a lot of these sessions forward and captured a lot of this evidence. Also, we've had some of our referendum leaders in its sessions offering their perspectives and their expertise. We've had communications offering assistance with the execution and videotaping and recording as needed. providing access for language supports, as well as a lot of support from within the walls of MMSD, but then also out in the community. So lots and lots of players have been added so far. So this is the, kind of the halftime report, if you want to keep it informal.

009So this is like literally about halfway through all of our input sessions, and we wanted to pause, let you know what we've been finding so far. Good to know. I mean, we'll walk through this, but we're not seeing at this point any major red flags that would cause you to shift course. It's a good idea to just pause once in a while and make sure you head in the right direction. So there's a lot that still needs to be learned, and we can highlight some of that. But really, we're encouraged by what we're seeing, and the rest of my time talking to you is just to let you know, kind of a refresher on what we had planned, what we've done so far, what we've learned, and then what's next. So back in August, the

010board signed off on our input plan, and the spirit of this was to build awareness out in the community of our current thinking around the referendums, both the operating and the facilities referendum, collect feedback from the community, and the purpose of that then is to help inform board decisions to make sure that what we're doing is aligned to the community's priorities and values. So what we've gone out, seeking then input on the four comprehensive high school renovations, the... Potential for an elementary school in the Rimrock Road area, moving Capitol High to a more central location, as well as then the operating referendum. If you need a copy of the plan, it is attached to the report today, and it's really largely unchanged. I think we've expanded some of our timelines to allow for those sessions

011to happen in December. Generally, though, the plan is as you'd seen it earlier. So for our current status, we've really kept pace with... We extended some timelines, as I described. We've engaged in a few different strategies, a few different methods of collecting input. So we've got targeted sessions that are really intended to seek out interest at a particular geographic or... Open sessions, kind of the all-call, anyone who would like to come can, so those are hosted at our four conventional high schools. And then more informal informational sessions, so still taking the word out to folks that are out in the community, letting them know what our thinking is. And so far, as of the 8th, when we kind of closed the gate to do the analysis for you today, we've gotten 11 targeted community input

012sessions, four open community input sessions, and 16 informational sessions, as well as a bunch of one-on-ones, too. folks who have a tap into the community, people of expertise. We've been hanging them up as individuals as well. So our emphasis has really been around authentic input. So if all we did were open sessions, you would get a pretty good idea of a general trend, but we're also engaging then in targeted sessions that are helping to reduce barriers for people's participation. So we've been offering language supports for both Spanish and Hmong. We've been offering food, transportation, child care to really take some of those barriers down and make sure that we're hearing from folks and then elevating those voices so we hear overall trends but then also highlights. I do want to call out then also the

013Equity by Design team. So, Ned Miller's team has helped us a lot with planning, design, delivery, and execution of those sessions in a really positive way. So our prelim analysis, kind of the halftime report, again, not seeing any major red flags, but we've covered a lot of territory to get to that point. So you can have an idea here of the types of sessions. So, for example, our targeted sessions hosted at Nuestro Mundo or with ALICE staff, that kind of thing. We've kept a tally of participants as well as the sessions. So, so far, hearing from almost 375 individuals as well as 132 feedback forms. So there's a bit more information detail in the report too about where we've been so far. And generally the findings, we're finding largely positive support for both referendums. There

014is a satisfaction with the way that we're going about this, the openness, the amount of communication that we engaged in, so it's encouraging. But given the size and the financial impact of these two referenda together, we really do hear from folks that we want to provide the highest level of transparency in terms of what we're doing, how we're doing it, how we're spending the money. It's a very high level of accountability we're also hearing from the community about. On the operating referendum, we have relatively limited feedback or comparatively little. So especially comparatively, if you think of our facilities referendums, very, very large and not surprising. It's very easy to see that a building needs renovation. It's very easy to see that it's been in delay since we've made a major investment. It's also very tangible,

015tactile. You walk into the place and you're kind of operating. On the other hand, it is really about... More abstract concepts such as workforce retention, benefits, salary, classroom ratios, those kinds of things. So a bit more work to do around the operating side. And we believe that our survey is going to help with that understanding. I do want to flag, since we're on the survey, that we're not offering any survey halftime report because that has really just started in earnest. So we'll have a full report on survey input in the January 2020 sit-down. The possibility for a new elementary in the Rimrock Road area is very exciting. So we're hearing a lot of strong support for, yes, some sort of school down there. They're recognizing accessibility issues, proximity issues, and it's a real critical need

016that folks in that immediate community as well as outside are aligning to. The concerns that have been raised so far have been one around segregation, though I would like to flag that our current proposal is to take the entire attendance area for Alice if it is an Alice school and then have that in the Remaroc location, or if it is a Nuestro Mundo school, then again, similar boundaries. So it's a flag that's been raised, but it's one that, if all things are equal, would be the same amount of income distribution. race ethnic distribution of those two schools. But to make a decision around which version of a school ends up in the Remrock area, we've got some more work to do to engage the community around programming. And one of those opportunities is coming up

017this Thursday. For Capitol High, there's quite a bit of support for unifying the two schools. The concerns that have come up are really around, yes, you could probably provide better services for those students at a combined location, but isn't it not quite as central as we would like, and aren't there going to be transportation issues? And then other concerns that have been surfaced so far is around the Hoyt area. So what's the interaction of the school with the park or the school with... For the four conventional high schools, a lot of strong support. Again, it's a very apparent need, so it's very clear perceptions around the need to reinvest in our high schools. A lot of key priorities coming up, largely around sustainability. Title IX considerations, all gender accommodations, those kinds of things. One question

018that we heard from the community was, if you're thinking about $70 million per building, should you think about it differently? Which is kind of implying, aren't there greater needs at some schools than others? And shouldn't it be a more needs-based approach? I would say that $70 million per school, based on all of the documentation we've gotten so far, is not a not needs-based approach. So there might be some... More communication and how 70 million each came about. So then for next steps, still looking at schedule and have scheduled 26 different sessions. We still have our survey. That came out as a soft launch last month in October, a formal launch then in early November, and that will go for almost a full month exactly, ending in December 5 with those results being summarized for the

019January meeting. So what we've got then, a bit more digging around the operating referendum to ensure that folks understand what we're thinking about and where we're headed, the context surrounding the Hoyt building, and then more on the programming of any potential school in the Rimrock Road area. I'll turn it back over to Chad. Kate, do we want to pause for questions there before? So the next, so there's sort of two pieces within this, just to give everyone context. The first is just an update on the kind of feedback sessions thus far, and then the second is a little bit on more tactically, how do we actually get the work done? So that's a good pausing point. Yeah. let me start off I heard from a few people that there may be some questions on open

020enrollment if there is a new elementary school and that they were confused on how that process would work do we would it work like any others any other open enrollment plan or would it would there be unique differences yeah I would say it would it would function like for the state open enrollment program or for our own internal transfers and our other placement decisions. I would think the only difference would be in the short term you'd want to make sure that your market, the folks living in the neighborhood, have actually taken advantage of the space. So you then have a better idea of whether or not you're opening up your doors to other districts or other corners of MMSD and then not allowing families to have the access that they would need. So we would

021want to be cautious in the first couple of years. just to make sure that we're not exceeding capacity or limiting opportunities for families in the neighborhood ananda did you have so i have a few questions um first of all just a process suggestion um as a board member like i realized today is just kind of a half time check-in but um I've been trying to think through what are the big questions that I as a board member need answered before I can actually vote on a referendum question or two referendum questions. And I think it would actually be really helpful if all of us sat down and wrote out those questions and got them to you fairly soon so that you're able to focus on things that we're thinking about in future presentations just so

022that things go smoothly as we move towards a vote. There's questions that clearly don't need to be answered until after we pass it, like details about construction. But I think there are some big questions about, like, which school is going to go into the new Rimrock School area if we decide to get them. I actually would like to know a lot more about transportation plans for Hoyt before we move forward with that school because I am concerned that we could have a beautiful new high school that Metro doesn't go to. I think it would just be helpful to... get some of those questions answered publicly as we move along and possibly in January just so that things go smoothly. Yeah, thank you. Let's see. I was curious where you were at with the community and

023technical advisory groups for the referendum. Those were mentioned, I think, in the longer piece. And has any movement happened towards forming those groups? I will comment that at... Based on board feedback, we did combine them into one advisory group. However, these two have been driving that process a bit more, so I'll hand it over to Chad first for comments. Yeah, so as you can imagine, the folks that we've been inviting have busy schedules and have taken multiple one-on-one meetings just to make sure we catch people up to speed as we go forward with a formal invite. So we actually were just having a discussion before the meeting started on three other folks who agreed to be part of the committee. So right now we have everybody on board who has agreed to do it. We're

024working on scheduling. We will have the first meeting off the ground by the time we get to you in January, most likely two meetings by the time we see you in January. So things are in really good shape. We're really excited about the group of folks who have agreed to do it. Are these going to be open meetings or not? I know the committee wasn't formed by the board, so I don't know if they have to be. Our vision at this point is this is a committee that's advising us around the feedback that we receive, in particular as it might mean how we prepare for you in January. So what moves we need to take to get ready to answer your questions and to respond to the community feedback. At the kind of point that

025the board may want to start, kind of your own advisory group or some other advisory group gets created. Our vision is that this might get handed over to you or to that May startup. And we've kind of foreshadowed that with the folks that for the first couple of months, it's probably internal work with us to help evaluate what we're hearing, interpret it the way a focus group would. But we do kind of recognize and have acknowledged with them that there may be a second part of this work, which moves into a more public facing group. One thing that I heard at a couple of the bigger meetings at the high schools was is there any role for private fundraising and covering some of the costs of the feedback I got was that fine arts and

026sports might be things that people would actually want to fund if we give them the opportunity and are you guys thinking along those lines at all? Yeah we are. We have a couple conversations in particular going with West and Memorial on-site folks already. I think Kelly actually had a meeting with FMPS maybe even today, that we believe they could be a partner for some of that. We don't necessarily have a pull tab, here's a $10 million project ready to go, but we've started those conversations with several folks already and believe that there's some promise there. Do you think there's a chance that as we prepare an actual dollar amount to go to referendum that we could have a conversation about, like, we think maybe we could commit to raising a million of this through? Private

027donations or something or would we be ready to do that by spring? That's a little bit out of my wheelhouse But I don't know Kelly maybe So the way we've been envisioning it is much similar to the way the East Theatre worked which is that this particular plan really holds on a lot of dominoes, right, for these high school strategies to work together, that this would be kind of the referendum package, and then the fundraising would be in addition to. So at East Theatre, the way this worked is we funded the base work of the theatre and then the community fundraised for the extra pieces to make the theatre that much better. And that's kind of the way we've been envisioning the work because what we can't do is kind of gamble the entire referendum

028process on raising $1 million and keep everything on hold until that money's fundraised. what we've been thinking of what is the base of the facility plan that we need that you all would vote on and you guys get the opportunity to go up or down in that number you know in the january through april timeline if you want then the idea is above and beyond that what would the community fundraise to make it even better okay um just a couple more questions um and these are mostly just because i'm a new board member and i'm a little confused about the tax impact of the um capital referendum. I get the operating referendum, but the capital referendum, we're taking out a 20-year bond, correct? And it's roughly $200 a year for an average household in Madison.

029Is that cumulative like the operating referendum is, or is it just like your taxes go up $200 one year and then they just stay that amount up? Right. So the 20-year bond, so you pay it down over time. And the $200 is kind of looking at the next four years, which is when you would make the majority of your payments because you want to pay it off early to keep interest rates low. So over time, it absolutely decreases. And by the time you hit your 20, it's completely off the books. We've been saying on average $200 a year. It's kind of looking at the next four years. And would there be charges beyond that? Or is that really the bulk of it is happening in the next four years? The cost to taxpayers. theoretically the

030large bulk is over the next four years the board has not had the discussion on financing packages yet which is why we're not at a total ton of detail on finances on these slides we're looking for feedback on general numbers on average how does $200 you know a year feel that's our feedback question when we get into the kind of next phase of work which is that February March timeline decisions on the financing structure. That will include how much do you want to pay off on the front end, which means property taxes are higher on the front end, versus pushing it off into the future, which you can do. You just pay higher interest rates. So those are detailed conversations that we've not been in that granular level of work because first we need to

031know are you at the $315 million. When I know you're at $315 million, we can start talking about different financing plans that affect specific dollar amounts. Those decisions then lead into the information part of this process once you've decided on the total dollar amount. Thanks, that's really helpful, and I'm done. I greatly appreciate your work and leadership on this. I am curious in terms of the operating referendum, how, I guess, oriented people are to what the operating referendum that we currently have is doing, and how that informs people's enthusiasm about supporting the next operating referendum. I think one of the challenges that we have is that there's essentially seven projects on this potential referendum discussion. And so as we're in the feedback phase, trying to talk about what is... kind of seven different items. And

032granted, they're packaged into two questions, but they're seven different items. And the timeline that you get to hold people's attention to actually get feedback, right? So we have about 20 minutes in any given presentation to cover seven topics. So I think it's been kind of a challenge to talk about everything from the past and everything from the future, and that's part of what we've all been kind of reflecting on and talking about. particular topics to talk about when they're going to referendum so I think this is a little bit what we're what we're challenging with so no we have not had a ton of conversation about you know what the last you know 22 million dollars that is in our base now kind of would have gone to do we anticipate kind of orientating folks

033to how we've used this funding before and how we plan to use it continue to use it in the future and so that folks have kind of this clear narrative of the necessity of these referendums and is that awareness something we can tap into in communicating with the community right now which I think you're saying is yes but Yeah, we have these constraints to that, right, like airtime in general. So part of the intention of the feedback phase is to capture, like, what are the questions, what are the talking points for the future? And so I think these are exactly the type of things that are probably coming up, and Andrew's kind of feed will be continuing to analyze and will likely be part of the kind of January through March phase of work, but

034that, you know, already starting to filter in. Do we have a specific approach to connecting the dots for folks between the two? Between facilities and operating? No, between the current operating and the upcoming operating. Yeah, so our general talking points, and for those who have been at some of the sessions, I make connections between the 2016 operating referendum and the future referendum, kind of why we needed the past one, high level, you know, what we did with it, and then moving forward what we need and why for it. So I'm absolutely trying to make those connections. We just have limited kind of talking points at this point, and so we're trying to remain focused to things that will help us get feedback. Thank you very much. So, you know, I've been to a few of

035these community engagement sessions, and you guys have done a fabulous job. I'm just so impressed at all the work and vision in taking this into our community. I want to make sure that we are reaching as many people as we can. And I'm just concerned that we're not getting as much engagement, right, people coming. to the schools, for instance. And I think for me, once it hits the board, that we get sort of where are the gaps? Like who are we hearing from, who are we not? So that we can strategize amongst the board on really being creative on who we reach out to. I think when we want to do community engagement, we follow best practice and we go through the movements, but oftentimes it's just really hard to get people to come to

036a meeting. In reality, people are just overworked. They have a lot of things going on, and so the people that we are really trying to engage are not able to come. And so I think that would be helpful for us at the end of here, before we get it to us, if you can... Make some recommendations to us of where you know where the gaps are I think that would be helpful and if you see of any anything right now I think that would be helpful too right so that we can start thinking about you to engage So, thank you for all of this I the only thing that I want to make sure that this is on record and I'm struggling a little bit with the screen so close to me, but on the

037slide, which I think is slide 12, that talks about some concerns about the Hoyt Park and the neighborhoods. It, to me, I know that it's not something that you made up. We've been receiving that. I just wanted to make a public comment on record that that is not something that I will tolerate personally, racialized language to talk about our children, our students, and our families. Two things. One, on getting more people involved. I think one of the first steps, I like the new video, the new sound system for individuals who have hearing issues. I think that's huge, and I really appreciate that. And the other thing that I was going to say is, on what we use the 2016 referendum for. I think it would just be an easier way to do it, because obviously

038you can't do it on the new one yet, but at least people could see what. was originally used for. So absolutely, I can start working on that for you. I just want to be a little clear that we get new money from the revenue limit or from the feds and we have referendum authority. There's no board action that's taken regarding... which money goes where. So we certainly care about what new investments we've made since 2016, but tying one thing to the referendum versus any other new dollar is what's pretty hard to do. Yeah, no, just what we've done in the past, not tying it to the new. Hi. I was wondering, you mentioned a survey. What are you doing to make that accessible to students? Are you emailing it to students? Are you having them

039fill it out in classes? What's the plan with that? With coverage out to families and staff, we can take a look at students. I sent it out to student senate. I know I sent that one. Some copies have gone out, but we'll talk about that one. Okay, so you'll have to bear with me. I'm going to try to keep this. This is going to be a fairly technical discussion, but I'm going to try to keep it in layman's terms the best I can. We are to the point in this process where I believe we have the momentum that it's more likely than not something, facilities, ends up on a 2020 referendum ballot, and I want to make sure that we're all on the same page. on the way, at least we believe, would be the

040best way to carry out these projects if they were to happen. And bear with me and certainly ask questions along the way. So if we were to pass a large referendum in 2020, potentially at six different sites at this point, in my mind some non-negotiables that would have to come along for the ride after that referendum passed is the fact that the projects would have to end up on budget. If we passed a $315 million referendum, you guys wouldn't want to see me coming back to you saying, I'm $10 million short, help me out. These would have to be on time. We would have to deliver these in the way that we've promised all along with even right now in terms of the feedback we're taking. And they'd also have to deliver in terms of

041the scope and quality of the projects that we're promising. So we couldn't be short on them and say, we ran out of money, we're not doing Hoyt. We ran out of money, nope, this part of the La Folle project had to be left behind. So those are some non-negotiables I think we can all agree on. There are certain ways to carry out large school construction projects. The board's probably most familiar with, because this is how we've done them for the last hundred years, the premise of design it, send it out to bid, and then build it. So I think that the best way to explain this is even on a small scale. We just redid the cafeteria at Shank Whitehorse, and you all approved that project for $400,000 and change. And that was a hard

042bid project where we designed a very detailed bid specification. We took a competitive bid, three contractors bid on it, we awarded it to the low bidder, and we built it. There were some hiccups that came along for the ride, very small ones, but we were able to handle them. That's design, bid, build, which we've done all along for school construction. A second possible way, which is actually many of the neighboring districts are utilizing this methodology to build some of their large school construction projects, is the idea of design-build with a single construction manager. And this is a process where kind of at this point, pre-referendum, you may already name your builder. You could name a large builder that would come on to the facilities design and capital team and work with you on a budget,

043and they would self-perform much of the work. Many of the large players in the area are building high school projects like that right now. We'll get into a little more detail there in a second. And the last one we'll do tonight is the idea of hiring a construction manager, and they would act as a constructor. So to go into a little bit of detail, which I just mentioned kind of that scenario of the Whitehorse cafeteria. We're very familiar with the process of design it, bid it, and build it. You get to award the contract and say, yep, thumbs up, it's on budget, and we have funding for it. There are some pros to that. We've been doing it all along. This is the way the board and the district's done business forever. There's the potential

044of cost savings. If you make a very, very detailed and tight plan set, there's very little wiggle room for a contractor, and you kind of know what you're paying for. And it's a cleaner process with fewer people involved. There can be some cons, especially on large-scale construction projects. It can come into play where you may only have an owner and an architect that can really push on a contractor to stay on schedule. The biggest one I'm here to talk to you tonight is this idea of budget. Large-scale construction projects, the Whitehorse Cafeteria. We run into... The flooring, there's a steam tunnel under the flooring that we have to make an accommodation for, and the contractor tells us it's a $10,000 change order. We value engineer and bring the project back on budget, things that none

045of you ever hear about, that it's doable on small-scale construction projects. Change orders can be a big deal when you're dealing with $70 million projects at a site. and sometimes can run out of control. I'm also concerned about the prospect of having multiple general contractors running all of these projects. If we awarded five or six general contractors overseeing five or six different sites, there's concerns I have there. The main thing I'm concerned about is budget and schedule. Another method, which is actually more Dane County schools are taking on, is the idea of a design-build process. That's where a team of designers, a single contractor, they're awarded the entire project up front before the referendum. If it passes, it's going to be awarded to this contractor, and they are allowed to self-perform work. So some of

046the big local contractors, they can do the masonry work. They can do a lot of the construction work, and they're allowed to do the work, and in theory, have an open books in terms of how much that costs. So there is a turnkey aspect to that process that is appealing to many school boards and many business directors. In my mind, there are cons to that process, one being there are lots of ways for that contractor to hide costs through the projects. And with $300 million of work, I believe that's possible. And there's also the perception, if I were here tonight, to tell you, I've got a general contractor for you, and you guys sign him up. $300 million of work if this were to pass. I think that may be a little hard to stomach

047on the front end that we went through an RFP process, not even RFB process, and have already handed the work out to a contractor pre-referendum. So I'm here tonight to talk about a third possibility involving a construction manager that would oversee and lead these construction projects from beginning to end. They'd be responsible for keeping schedules, monitoring finances, coordinating the bidding process, and making certain that everyone's on task every single day. Construction managers can self-perform work. but I'm actually here tonight to talk to you about having a construction manager on our team that would not be allowed to perform any of their own work. So there are pros to this process. One being, as early as this January, we could sign a construction manager onto the team that would begin to detail our budget and work

048with our design team to make sure that what we are starting to shop around with the public is doable in terms of the budget we've got. And we would actually sign a guaranteed maximum price that this contractor would inherit. much of the risk if the project went over budget every time the design team the owner and the construction manager got together and change scope we'd all agree that yep we're still on budget and we'd have a construction manager that would agree that if the thing goes over budget they pay for it So we would not inherit any of the risk of having a really high-risk bid day where you open up the envelope and you're like, oops, we're $10 million over. What are we going to do now? They would be huge in terms of

049pre-construction cost estimating. So right now our design team, and they're good at it, but they're not as good as construction managers. They're the ones helping us with... designing these and giving some cost estimating. If we brought a construction manager onto our team before the referendum, we're bringing a contractor that actually has experience building these projects that can really help us make sure that we're on budget pre-referendum. They will give us... very valuable feedback in terms of the constructability of all of these projects and may help us through the entire design phase make these projects more efficient in their design. And they're going to be huge in terms of coordinating and scheduling at all these projects. So, you know, take La Follette High School, for example. We have very little new square footage we are recommending

050as part of these projects, and a lot of the construction is going to be necessary during the school year, which will take incredible coordination and scheduling when you have 1,600 students and 200 staff members show up here every day, and we're going to have an active construction site, and a construction manager can be huge in terms of helping coordinate that. There are some cons to this process. One, we will inherit some pre-referendum fees. We won't know what those are until we receive the RFP back. And there are, in theory, some added management fees during construction. But in my mind, I actually think much of the management fees you can make up for with an actual constructor on your team before you send these projects out to bid. And then I want to take questions. I

051want you guys to pick this apart a little bit for me and see if you've got questions. So here's what we're proposing, and there's an ad in the paper to do so right now. We're proposing we release an RFP for a construction manager that would have the following qualifications. One, intense experience in a K-12 environment doing construction projects of this size, and this is a sizable ask. Two, through the RFP, they will agree to a set percentage of the cost of construction fees to carry out this work. So we are paying for essentially two things. Kind of white-collar expertise. We're paying for folks that know how to build schools. We're also paying for something called general requirements or general conditions. A construction manager will need job trailers. barriers during construction, fencing outside, temporary heat, temporary

052electricity, all of that is baked into a percentage fee that they are going to respond to RFP on. They will have to agree to a guaranteed max price, so we know these things will not go over budget. We won't have any surprises for the school board. This is a big one. They are going to agree to open access to sealed bids. So if I can play this out for you, if we take the La Follette project and we design $70 million in work, the construction manager will have some contingency built into that design in their budget, and we will put together an entire bid package for La Follette High School. Let's pretend it's still $70 million. On bid day, they will open up all of the bid packages for all of the subcontractors that will

053carry out all the work. So you'll have a bid package that will have the electrical contractors all bid on the projects. We'll have an open bid process just like you are all familiar with, and we'll get a line for electrical. There'll be a bid package for mechanical, electrical, and plumbing. Boom. Line four, mechanical, engineering, and plumbing. And so forth, that they'll put together a total package that will be on budget, or they will have to pay the difference. We will not allow them to carry out any self-performed work. So many of these folks have masonry or other parts of general construction, carpentry, that at this point we'd like an open bidding process and not just hand the work over to a single contractor. And they'll agree to a preset amount of fees to carry on.

054And then we're going to take some questions. So, yeah, one more slide, and then we're good to go, Nikki. So I'm hoping by the time we get to January, we've really rounded out a facility. And we've got all the right players at the table because these are high stakes with high dollar figure projects. So you've got our MMSD core planning team. Kelly already has a financial advisor on board. We've got a realtor on board that all of you have met. Andrew worked closely with Vandewall on projections and municipality coordination. We have a legal consult that actually helped us write the RFP. We've got architects and designers on board, and I'm here tonight to recommend that we bring a construction manager on board pre-referendum and then post-referendum once we build these projects. Timeline is as follows.

055Release an RFP this November. Do interviews, answer questions, do building tours in the month of December, and award through the consent process a contract for a construction manager as early as January, potentially at the regular board meeting. One question, one comment. The question is, how did we put an ad out for a construction manager before the board has decided whether or not we're going to hire a construction manager? Yeah, so we do that all the time. I put ads in the paper all the time. bids to you once we've awarded them. So I'm certainly here tonight to take feedback on that, but we would not award anything until the board's signed off on it. So we've been working on the RFP for a while, and if the board at any time decided that they were

056uncomfortable with this method, we wouldn't do it. At this point, it's just an ad in the paper. My second question, sorry, I have one more. To further that comment, I'm not comfortable, but I don't speak for the board. I just speak for me. But the second issue, and my question is, is that the first, even the construction manager I could get behind, is the giving everything up front that I think we keep hearing about transparency on every survey there is. I'm afraid if we do that and award the contract ahead of time like that, for example, of the school district not being transparent. I worry about that. That's my only concern. And that's why I wanted to differentiate between a design-build firm, which would be awarding the entire contract. You're building all of these projects

057on your own as a single construction entity. There's a difference from what I'm recommending. I'm just recommending a management firm. that would take this on and then we would have all the projects competitively bid. So we'd follow school board policy 5000 to a T. Local, union would still have a foot in the door, and all of these would be open bid. So we'd lay out these subcontractors that would be doing all the work. There's a chance a different electrical company does all five projects. There's a chance different masons do. five or six different projects around town. So we would not be awarding it to one contractor. That's to be clear about that. We'd be awarding a portion, a very small portion of the project to a construction manager, which would help us manage it. So

058first, thank you for making this extremely accessible. I feel like I just learned a ton in this last, I don't know, five minutes that you... Appreciate that. So I have one technical question and then a couple of more specifics to some of the things you mentioned. You mentioned the open bid process. Who makes a decision of who wins the bid? And is it ours to follow in the lowest bidder? It doesn't always necessarily have to fall to the lowest bidder. So we, School Board Policy 5000 says that we, I think 95% of the time, award to the lowest bidder. If we've had, if we, number one, don't believe the low bidder can carry out the work, we can deny them. Two, if we believe there's an error in the bid, so they just misread the

059bid spec altogether and they're a million dollars off, there are times you can throw the bid out as well. But 95% of the time it would go to the lowest bidder as long as they're qualified to do the work. And the group that selects the core team? It would be, yep. But then we still write it up as a consent memo and send it to the school board. So you guys would probably see, you know, April of 2022, a consent memo that would go through if we stayed at $70 million to award the following work to the following subcontractors for a specific site. So I'll say this. I'm the person that will always be excited for anything different than we have done in 100 years because we know the results that we have. So the

060couple of other additional questions that I had. is how is this process could potentially increase the contracts to go to people of color owned business owned by people of color or women also known as minority owned business and or also potentially expand our way to infuse sustainability, like environmental sustainability components that we have sort of talked about prior or before. Okay, so that's a two-parter. One, the RFP that we sent out does actually give preferential points to historically kind of underutilized businesses or minority-owned businesses. And then the same is true of the hard bid process that we would... If we have the right, if there's a historically underutilized business that bids on any of the sub work to actually use them, even if they cost a little bit more, we have the right to do

061that. And then I actually think the construction manager will be vital in us building energy efficiencies into these projects. So by bringing not only, you know, we're bringing someone who is most likely building K-12 sites somewhere in southern Wisconsin onto our team. during the design process. So there's K-12 construction happening all the way around the border of Dane County. Odds are one of those folks is involved in those projects and would be adding expertise to our team. So last was you had asked us to look at the previous slide around RFB. I saw your first bullet having experience with K-12, agreeing with that, but to me what is more important is that they have experience actually creating buildings that actually reflect the community, that they're accessible, that they inspire people to be in, that they

062inspire the community to be part of it and then to own it. I think to me that's more important than... the amount of experience that they have. And I know we have said, you heard from me this before, but also how do we bring art to the buildings that we have? I think that's also important to me. So thank you again. Thank you. So my question really was what Ananda had asked, was small business owners and minority-owned businesses. and how we're going to write that into the bid so that we are proactive in getting those smaller businesses and women and minority-owned businesses on board to do this work. Noted, and we will. And then I think the experience with the K-12 construction may eliminate that, right? That may cause, I mean, I think that... not

063only for the construction manager, right? I think that that just sort of triggers something that, you know, in the past we may not have. It may be somebody who has experience working for a smaller construction company or a woman minority owned. So I think that will cause some barriers. So if we can just reword that a little bit. I think Ananda had some really good language. put into that and No, I I'm really in support of this this is not something I was thinking about So I'm glad you're putting it forth to us. I think this is something that Would help the team in a good addition to the team that you have thank you. Oh, you know what? I did have a cost question. Did you talk about cost? Yeah, we won't know until

064we get the RFP back. We're guessing, I'm guessing somewhere under 2% of the overall cost of construction. And like I said, I actually think you can make up a lot of that 2% team early. There are many factors for them to have kind of a pulse on the bidding environment in Dane County and in southern Wisconsin that will help us in terms of even the timing of releasing bid packages. you name it, buying construction material in bulk. There are just tons of things. Even when you're designing projects, there will be like, we just built a hospital and did this in a bathroom. Why are you guys designing it like this? Do it like this. It's cheaper and better. So there, yeah, there will be a percentage of the cost of construction. We won't know until

065we get the RFP back. We're in the neighborhood of 2% or lower. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, thank you so much. This is a really good idea and I share similar concerns and comments and desires as Ananda and Gloria do about having minority-owned businesses. I'm wondering if we can take it a step further to stipulate that these jobs will pay a living wage or that we give opportunities to folks who have had interaction with the... criminal justice system, but the types of folks that we want to hire to perform the work as well. Noted. Thank you. So I just had a couple questions. First of all, we do business in Madison. So I think it's a necessity to bring them on before the referendum, mainly for their value in terms of cost estimating. That architects do

066a lot of work on a square foot basis in terms of what they're seeing in the industry. But a construction manager, they're building it every day and would be able to tell us. Hey, you guys are only at $64 million at La Follette. You could add $8 million in scope or a wool. You've overpromised a little bit, and you might need to dial it back. So for us to bring someone on early, what I'm guessing is going to be a pretty low cost. Most of these folks are just as interested as we are in having the referendum pass and would be on the design team to make sure we're getting it right and probably do it at a pretty low rate. They're really interested in capitalizing on the construction fees afterwards, not necessarily the hourly

067rate they charge us ahead of time. So just to get kind of technical about payment, I'm assuming this will get paid out of the referendum. It would. Pre-referendum work would come out of the general fund? How would that get paid? Yeah, so we've got money set aside for design fees out of my local budget. Kelly also has professional service fees set aside in the budget to start the year. So it would be paid there. And then I want to agree with everything that's been said about trying to hire minority-owned businesses and women-owned businesses, small businesses, living wages. One thing that I would like to capture if we move away from language about K-12 experience is that I think there is a safety piece with understanding how to manage large numbers under construction. So if we

068took out the language about K-12, I would still want to make sure that safety in children is an integral part of whoever we hire, that they have experience managing children safely in a building that is being worked on, and there could be toxic fumes. There could be all kinds of dangers. Next to a hospital, I can't think of a spot that is while folks are in it. So without a doubt. So I'm thank you first of all for all of the work that you're doing on this I'm very supportive of bringing someone on Early to support the work and to make sure that we're doing our due diligence ahead of time Just a couple of questions on how it will work and why we landed on this option Versus some version of option two Would

069this person subcontract out to all of the subsequent bids? Like is this actually our one point of contact for have a guaranteed max price? Correct. Yeah. So they act essentially as a general contractor, but you're not allowing them to do any of the work. And we've had some projects, ABC Construction, I believe they did Spring Harbor. and they do very little of their own work, but that's rare. They subcontract everything, and then they just oversee the project. We're demanding that as part of this. So we would not allow any of them to do any of their own work, mainly because it's my belief, and I've talked to lots of folks who have done this already, that there are ways to tuck costs away when you do your own work. Trust us, we're giving you a

070good deal on the masonry. And even if you asked for... Nope, we need an open bid on the masonry work, but you guys can bid on it. Lots of times the masons in the area will not bid against the big boys who are self-performing their own work, knowing that they're not interested in you guys doing it because you low bid us on the La Follette job. So we're essentially having them act as a general contractor, just like Daniel's Construction would or Findorf is at East High School right now, but you can't do any of your own work. Everything's subcontracted. ...districts that you mentioned that had used kind of option two, have any of them used this model or other districts that you're aware of? This is a common model at some of the university jobs.

071It is not as common in some of the outlying areas where I think the comfort of a turnkey approach, they're willing to inherit some of the extra costs. related to just signing off on it. And I didn't think this board, I'm not in favor of that approach because I don't think you get quite the value and the scope and the bang for your buck out of the projects if you just turn it over to a CM that just does the work. And I didn't feel like our board would be terribly comfortable with me coming in January and telling you one contractor gets... all $315 million before we pass the referendum. I guess I'm wondering, right, just because if we're hiring a construction manager that's going to charge a management fee there, and they have to

072absorb all of the risk for a very large project as a part of that management fee, I expect the management fee to be higher than if we were hiring someone under option two where they can earn a return from doing work, as you've said. hide money in masonry or whatever. Correct. And so I just wonder if there's some hybrid where you could say you could self do the work up to $50 million or up to some, and if that would kind of cause us to have a smaller management fee. I don't know. It's just a question of if anyone's done that. I wouldn't be comfortable giving the entire job to someone at this point, but up to a certain amount, would that let us pay less for oversight and let them earn more as a

073result of actually doing work? I don't know. It's certainly possible. Here's what I think we want to avoid and why I'm recommending the third option. We want a construction manager that is on our team. Once they've signed on for that base fee with a guaranteed max price, they're working for us, meaning they're going to get the most out of what's happening on our design team, and they're going to get the most out of what's happening with the subcontractors that are working for them. If you allow them to self-perform some of the work, that's where you kind of are allowing the fox in the henhouse a little bit. That, uh-oh, the architects forgot this on this masonry wall. We're going to need a little extra money. That's not happening when you have a construction manager that's

074been reviewing the plan set ahead of time and will make sure, number one, the design team gets it right, and two, if a contractor's trying to change order you to death, they're going to push back on it as well because they only have so much contingency to work on when these projects are budgeted. I hear you. I think maybe you've... I would love to hear maybe when you come back with completed RFPs, what would a standard management fee be for those university projects, given that this model maybe isn't something that some of the other school districts have seen? Certainly. Just because given that we're bringing someone on a little bit late, we already have a number in mind, realistically. There's a fair amount of risk for somebody to bid on this project having not seen

075anything under the covers at this point. I would be curious to calibrate what that fee is at that point in time. Done. We can do that. Thank you. Ali and then Nikki. I appreciate having all three options and being able to examine them thoughtfully. I think the third option allows for us to have kind of the greatest risk management. And I think that that, you know... provides a certain level of insurance for folks who are investing in our community and are investing in our schools and want to know that the expertise is at the table. I greatly appreciate kind of the ability to recognize our capacity and what is beyond the scope of our capacity as a district and then to expand and extend our capacity and I think that's what you all are trying

076to do. And so I appreciate that greatly. One of the things you said earlier in response to a question is that we're a little late to the game in doing this. And I do want to just say in terms of comparison of our practices to surrounding districts, just that we're way bigger. you know and and I think we're the second largest district in the state and so I think sometimes when we talk about ourselves in comparison to others I think we have to be realistic about the scale of our district and the number of young people and schools that will actually be impacted by what we're doing and the fact that that looks a little bit different than you know building a new school in some prairie versus renovating for schools and building a new

077school So I think the scale of the project requires greater investment and sincere long-term planning. If this person were at the table right now, how would we be utilizing that person's management? And what does playing catch-up look like two and a half years before we get started? Yeah, I don't know if the person will ever be at the table. As you stated, we are different. So the 35-plus meetings Kelly and I have been at in the last month and a half, I haven't brought... the team of architects to present to one of them. And I kind of feel like you guys expect me to know these projects as well as the architects. Kelly has not brought this person up to this point. Yeah, they certainly may have been valuable for some more detailed cost estimating,

078but I think we're close. But as we get through the design process where I think they're going to be really valuable is on both ends of this. We wouldn't want a surprise on bid date. Open up the envelopes. Uh-oh, we're at $78 million. The architects told us we'd be close at 71. We don't want that. We also don't want the other end of it. Open it up on bid day. and we open up a bid package for $64 million, and we get ahead another $6 million of amazing work done to this place that we under-designed it. So having a construction manager on board starting now, and these are still schematics, and can start to give us feedback to refine these projects will be really valuable. I think the timing's right for us. So ultimately, when

079you say starting now, we're looking at bringing this person on. If we send it to you in January, they'd be nearly a year pre-referendum. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. And then we do have a whole other two meetings. I love that you guys are interested in this. I appreciate everything on having small business, living wage, all of that. I think that's excellent minority-owned business. Can we also please include universal design? because no offense, but there are parts of East High School that are completely and utterly inaccessible. Yes, that goes without saying, but you better believe it. All right, so just wanted that in there. Ananda briefly and then Savion briefly. All right. I was just going to expand on what Nikki just said. And as you're moving the RFP, looking for evidences of... agencies

080or contractors that have experience building buildings with more bathrooms for girls or gender-neutral bathrooms or that have created creative learning accessibility for folks with limited mobility and so on. And to my point around the experience with K-12, I think it is important to have that. What I was commenting was that because it was your first bullet, I wanted to tell you that to me is the light and now there are comments. Noted. Thank you. Real quick, would this person, once they get them on the job, would they be meeting with individual schools to start the scaffolding of projects to minimize students and learning, or the disruption to students and learning? Yeah. There probably will be very little of that before November of 2020, but if we were to pass a referendum November of 2020, we

081have a full year of instructional design that will take place at the site, where it would be construction manager, my team, and a team of architects meeting with the principals, the staff, and the students to design these projects fully. And that will be a really valuable year for us. But, yeah, the construction manager will be in charge of saying. At La Follette High School, we're going to potentially build the field house addition first to free up some space in the middle of the building. We're going to build the pit first, free up some space in the middle of the building, and then they'll help us coordinate the schedule. And that will actually save us some money because if you mess the schedule up on bid day, contractors will charge you extra saying... You're crazy. We

082can't build that in one summer. The only way we're going to build that in one summer is charge you double because we've got to bring double the people here. You need to build it over two summers. A construction manager will tell us that pre-bid so we get more value out of the projects. All right, thank you. Do you want to summarize? We'll summarize. We'll close you out. You guys have seen this a million times. You're going to see us again in January. Then you'll see some back and forth with us during January to that springtime. We are hoping we get to board vote somewhere in the spring. It's currently on the calendar. We've got a March 25th date that we're hoping that happens. It doesn't necessarily have to, but we're hoping we get there in

083that amount of time. That'll give us essentially summer and the fall. We've got the package put together. You have all voted on the language. The community has all the information they need to make an informed vote November of 2020. Thank You Chad and Kelly and Andrew you guys have been doing a lot of after-hours work to speak with people so and I know you're gonna keep it up but thank you thank you okay we're gonna switch gears and start the budget discussion for next academic year so Kelly Lisa and Deirdre to join me And then just in terms of, I think it's actually a pretty short discussion, really, with the objective around getting some feedback on process for this year and how we want to, as this board, run the decision-making process, particularly since it's

084a little bit of a complex budget year for us. So I think if we can hold questions until the end, and then I'm going to actually round Robin. It's hard to facilitate this way, and so maybe just ask for feedback in a row. All right. And so Deirdre is available here for questions if they come up regarding some of the strategy as well. And I think Faith's still working on the PowerPoint. I'm going to give her a minute. All right. So, Jane, before I start, did you have any opening comments? Okay, good. We're here kind of kicking off the 2021 budget cycle. Typically November and December are like pre-budget time periods for discussion for the boards. We talk about strategy. We talk about big rocks. If there's policies the board wants to change ahead of

085the 2021 school year, kind of those would be the kind of items we take on. early in the year and then we typically launch in January. What I'm going to present to you tonight is a revised timeline, something different than we've tried in the past. I've tried to listen to kind of your feedback, bounce some of that feedback off of Jane and some of our other team members to come up with. what I think might work for this particular year. And then, of course, we'll look at the key budget components. And as Kate said, I'm really hoping to hear from you today on what your, like, first big rock is in this budget. Because really then a lot of the other pieces start to move around that. So I'm hoping that we can get that

086type of very specific feedback from you tonight. So this kind of re-envisioned timeline is sitting up here in front of you. Essentially tonight is what I normally present in January. So in January, I normally come forward with the revenue projections, our assumptions. We kind of confirm some strategy conversations that may have loosely come up in November and December. I'm hoping tonight, our January meeting is tonight. That then gives us time to do a lot of the work over the course of December and January while everyone is also very busy in the superintendent search and the referendum work. thinking that we would come back to you then in February based on the big rocks you guys are giving us today, based on maybe data requests that might come through that we'll put out and ask for

087in the weekly update so that we can get to work. And then we come back to you in February essentially with a well-rounded budget, meaning we've thought through all those moving pieces together. We rework that in March when we get some health care kind of finalized and your feedback. We rework it in April based on the ongoing feedback and continue to stick to the April time of releasing a draft budget to the public. So it looks a little bit different, but what I'm hoping is that it's more holistic. I'm starting to kind of get feedback from what I'm hearing from you all that this approach of, let's talk about revenue this month, let's talk about salary this month, let's talk about staffing this month. Kind of doesn't, maybe isn't working from a whole picture perspective.

088So my thoughts are, if I get your feedback tonight, we can, this is Lisa and Deirdre, we're kind of the budget team. We literally meet every Thursday morning for multiple hours at a time to pull this all together, that we can present to you a whole scale budget. Maybe not the budget book with the fancy colors, but all the big rocks for your feedback, and we'll continue to work that. So that's the theory. So the approach itself remains the same. Of which we spend focusing on certain items might shift to more to tonight and then all together kind of in February. So tonight we'll focus on your feedback that'll lead us to the goals and the guiding principles. We'll do revenue assumptions and projected enrollment tonight. Your feedback then will help us determine some of

089the compensation, staffing plans, some of the equity projects, and health care strategies. And then we'll bring that all together baked in February. So this picture is literally meant to be a picture explaining kind of what our budget strategy is going to have to be for this year. So if the board decides to put an operating referendum on the ballot, the idea is that we're actually going to have to create two budgets together as a team. We're going to have to create a budget that assumes the budget's going to pass because it's a different revenue assumption and there'll be different investments that you all might want to make tied to that potential passing referendum. And we need to build a budget because we need to be ready for both situations for next school year. So we

090work that budget together. Through April, we release two draft budgets to the public. We get public feedback April and May like we always do. And then the board ultimately votes on those two budgets in June. We implement in June based on the non-passing budget. We would need to. in case we should not kind of pass in November. We get to October. You continue to pass two budgets and two levies, a passing and a non-passing. And then the election happens in November, and we implement based on whichever one passes, literally in a few days, because we'll have to turn the levy around pretty quickly. So part of the kind of strategic thinking around these two budgets then could potentially be what are some of the things that are kind of easy to reverse in November, right?

091So you might put something in a non-passage. What can we move kind of that quickly on an implementation? Those are just some of the things that we're starting to think about. So first we do our revenue. We'll do that today. And then we have each of the key components of our budget listed in the lighter blue boxes right there. Those five key items are what I refer to as the main rocks in our budget. 90% of our budget is accounted for in those five blocks. That's the reason I focus in those particular areas to keep us kind of moving ahead with the budget. So to dive into revenue real quick. So if... The board does put a question on the ballot, and if that's $8 million. I'm not making any assumption that that's what the

092board would decide right now, but that's kind of where we're at, and so that's what I've put into this slide. Our revenue limit is already determined by the state. It's $179 per pupil. So make an assumption, 1,000 student mark. We would generate $4.8 million for either budget scenario. Our actual enrollment report will be released in a couple weeks. We're looking at probably about 50 students, so still really pretty stable, down for next year, and then we'll look at some of the other programs that might pull students out of the district in account. But sticking with 27,000 students is about the right level for now. Chris, we've had multiple conversations about how to use the special ed categorical aid. So in this particular budget, We will see an increase in our reimbursement from the state and

093special ed categorical aid. We've, yes, first time in a long time, right, Nikki? So we have, for this purpose, built this in to revenue. What it is, it's a reimbursable number. It's not quite the same as new revenue and the way other things are, but what we don't necessarily want to do is overcut on the does not pass budget. So for now, we're going to stick with that $3 million of money that we think we'll get in in December of 2021. So it's a big estimate because we won't find out until the school year is even over. We'll re-up this estimate this January based on what we see this December numbers looking at. And if necessary, we'll update that number in March and April. But for now, that's where we think we're comfortable working around.

094And then, as I mentioned, the revenue limit. So you could be looking at almost $16 million of new money for a passing budget, but only about $7.8 million for the does-not-pass revenue budget. So how to budget for that becomes the information kind of we need to start to pull from you all tonight. There's lots of options. We're just looking for information on which rocks kind of go first. So steps, if we fund fully step handbook, you'd be looking at a cost of $5.3 million. The board would have the choice to freeze steps, but that would be conversations that would obviously happen with the union via the handbook conversation. You could fully fund steps. You could freeze steps. We have some recommendations not to go half steps because of the complications around implementing that. So it's

095kind of a binary, freeze or full. Base wage percentage, right now estimates are at about 1.8%. So for this purpose of this slide, we've built in 2% as a possible base wage. So that would be $4.5 million if you went all in on base wage. You could, like we've done in the past, do zero on base wage in certain budgets for now, make different decisions in November in a passing budget. You could go 0.5. Or if you went all in now, you obviously on the does not pass budget, you would be going negative. So then you would be looking at other levers, but to kind of go the other direction so we can identify resources to repurpose. Staffing models always come up for consideration at a kind of even enrollment number. It wouldn't be enrollment

096necessarily that would be driving staffing decisions. Employee healthcare benefits. This is your conversations about plan design and or employee percentage contributions for the healthcare. And Deirdre can answer more questions on that in a minute. Strategic equity projects. These are your investments in expanding the behavior of health in schools, right? Continuing to invest in the early college STEM Academy at Madison College. I put 1.7 million in here, kind of plus, as a way to say those are about, it's about the number for the commitments we've made in our year-on-year ramp-up and expansion of some of the strategic equity projects we've been in there already. Now, it is important to note that we have kind of self-funded through repurposing about $2 million of strategic equity projects for multiple years now in a row, so that it is

097possible that it could probably self-fund by repurposing from within, either from previous priority projects that maybe weren't getting the outcomes we were looking for, or from other investments at central office. That's the way we've been working. And then we have $1.5 million of required allowances about each year. That's our adjustments for open enrollment, 2X charters, kind of just contracts that go up every year. We always push that as far as that's kind of a placeholder for now. So these are kind of the big rocks and the magnitude that you start to think about around what goes up and what goes down. Obviously to create two balanced budget approaches and we have some key strategies that move those around staffing, healthcare, compensation, re-looking at past strategic priority actions for repurposing and making critical decisions around new

098investments that the board needs to make. All strategies and levers. We will need to kind of maintain focus for this year as much as we possibly can while working together. And that's primarily because passing one budget in one year is hard, but passing two budgets in one year is going to be extra hard. So we're going to have to work together as a team. We won't have the capacity to review everything in the school district. I'm hoping we can be focusing on the big rocks because in order to get to a $10 million reduction for that non-passing budget, we're not going to be able to look at $20,000 increments to get there, right? We're going to need $100,000 increments. Still won't even necessarily just get us there. Those big rocks. And with 87% of our

099budget built into kind of people, salaries, and health care, that's going to have to be the rocks. We just won't be able to do it all. And then I've already mentioned kind of the other strategy about thinking around what if we're in November, what are the things that we can kind of restore and a potential passing budget? It's just another strategy that's on our minds as we're planning. So that's what I have kind of for tonight, looking for feedback on the timeline and potentially some of your feedback on the key rock that would go first. So let's start on this side, and we'll just kind of everyone go down the line. I'm going to start with Nikki. Okay. I'd like to focus on we say every. year that COLA and our teachers are the most

100important and then we have to struggle to do it. And I'm glad we're starting earlier. So that would be my first priority, steps and lanes. My third would be employee benefits. Those are my top three. That's me on the timeline. I think it's ambitious, but I think it's doable. Here's my one issue. I understand you can't look at everything, but there are going to be certain things sometimes that we could also help you on the research if you need it. I mean, I know at least I'm speaking for myself here. I would be glad to help on some of that if need be because I know you guys are working quite a bit. So if it needs to be done, I would be glad to do it. Yeah, so I have a couple pretty specific

101questions. We have discussed already this year kind of classroom sizes and the outcomes promoted through classroom sizes. And I do understand the desire to kind of have it all, right? To kind of have the smallest possible class size to pay teachers the most. And I also understand kind of the mathematical impossibility of that within one of our two options. And so I think being able to give us information in terms of our current class sizes and staff structure is really relevant. I think where we're piloting and being innovative, and I think ultimately when we're having kind of a large-scale conversation, y'all, my big question is, is how are we going to use $440 million differently enough next year to... change the achievement gap, right? How are we going to invest differently enough to produce really

102different outcomes? And so I think those are kind of the large rocks that inform. my consideration. I do think we often talk about classroom size and staff structure for more of kind of a sentimental place and it'd be really great to have just hard numbers in terms of where are our smallest classes, where are our largest classes, what do the results look like, what change do we see as necessary consistently and are smaller classrooms producing. the results that we want. Because when I think of the smallest classroom in the district, I think of the Dane County Juvenile Detention Center. And I don't think anybody's arguing that just because that class is small, it's producing grand results. And so I think having a more in-depth understanding would be incredibly helpful. Sure. I'll go next. So I

103think I'm glad we are starting early. I think it's so important. It's going to give us some time. So I agree with the timeline. You know, I think for the past few years, the budget time is always frustrating, right, because we want to do so much with limited resources. But I think the most frustration part for me is not... Right, in our work. And we always leave that towards the end. And with the achievement gap, as Ali said, all the challenges that we are experiencing with our students of color, I really want us to lead with equity and infuse equity in the entire process, in our decision making. We have been talking about the achievement gap for years. And, you know, we have improved a little bit. But I think we have to. Our budget

104needs to say that, right? I am proud that this board was able to provide raises for our teachers for the past few years. But I think it is time to invest in our students and figure out what works. And what is working now, what do we have to change to be very intentional in this. So I want to see some equity process that you envision with this budget. And I want the board to really make ourselves accountable and not just say we're all about equity. And then when it comes to budgets, it doesn't show. And I think I'm confident right now in the makeup of the board, we should be able to pass a budget that focuses on racial equity. And so I really encourage us to, in every decision that we make on this

105budget, that it is about the students, the students that we are failing, the students who are struggling, and that should be on the forefront of our decision in this budget. So, I know, Kelly, you have the same vision, and I think that Deidre, with the racial equity work that you've been doing, I think that you guys would be able to come up with some recommendations of how we proceed around that work. Thank you. This is going to be a really good first budget to be a part of. Thank you for the work that you've done this far. You know, for me, just to echo Ali and Gloria's to craft a $450 million or some odd budget that can educate 27,000 students and achieve better and different results than what this district has historically achieved. Going

106into this year, for more areas of participatory budget process, particularly with our black and brown students. So some of those big programmatic rocks, can we have processes where they can give direct feedback to evaluate those programs and whether they're serving the intended purpose. And then going forward with the budgets, you know, I would be looking for items that not just can be easily restored in November, but, you know, what projects can we leverage partnerships with that we have in the community for the relationships with our students. And then looking for, you know, between these two budgets, getting an outlook that provides, you know, the best sense of consistency and stability for staff. Kind of my big four, I think, four or three rocks. priorities. So in terms of our approach and our timeline, I'm a

107little bit concerned that our approach remains the same despite the fact that we're creating two budgets and one has to cut eight million dollars. I think the approach that is outlined here is basically taking the extra revenue we have and figuring out how we're going to divide it up or use it without looking at the revenue or the money we're already spending and deciding if that money is being spent effectively and if we differently we're looking at you know if a small, very small part of the budget is the part of the budget that can be flexible, as opposed to asking, is what we're doing now with the rest of our budget effective, and are there pieces of that budget maybe we shouldn't do anymore because it's not serving our kids the best we possibly

108can. So I think we need to include ways of working. as one of our strategies and I think that actually needs to come in our timeline before we get into compensation because I think we owe it to our staff to start with an examination of how we work before we start getting into things that can affect their stability like cuts to their giving them pay increases I think that's really important I think we owe it to our staff to start with ways of working first I think we also owe it to our kids because if we're investing money in things that aren't actually getting results let's invest it differently and do everything with the limited money we have to try to achieve equity and close gaps. With that said, I would put staffing and staff

109stability as a top priority. I would like to see equity charts for this semester. We're being told that everything's good in terms of staffing and class size, but then when I go out and visit schools, I'm not hearing the same, particularly in terms of special education staffing. I'm hearing concerns from teachers that we don't have the SCA staffing that we need to meet all of their students' needs. I want to know about that now before we dive into a budget where we might actually be making more cuts to staffing because we have to make hard decisions. But for me, making sure that we have... The best teachers and the support staffing in place to meet the needs of our kids is a top priority as well as we need to take care of our employees

110so we can keep those excellent teachers in our district. So first, thank you so much, Kelly. I'm like so excited for this meeting. Because this is the second time tonight that we are hearing this, like, refresher of doing something different. And the way I understood your call was a little bit different than my colleague. I actually understood you saying, like, before we do anything. Give me what you're thinking. What are our parameters? So I'm basing on that understanding So one of the things that I have been saying since May was how crappy we started out by really talking about staff compensation and equity projects as they were in competition with each other. And that felt extremely challenging and where we had to make significant cuts on mental health resources and innovative things that are extremely

111supportive for either staff or for our students. it really brings a sort of zero-sum kind of deficit thinking. So I really appreciate, you know, to kind of ground in a conversation. So here's some things that I'm thinking. I trust you and your team. and your expertise to really bring us some innovative and creative ways to look at how we are scaffolding the budget, both priorities and within the priorities how to do the thinking. I am curious. to know districts across the country that are doing school financing in innovative ways. I think that will be something that I'm interested to look at. I think that we need to potentially make some really bold decisions around things that are happening in our school districts that potentially are good things, but not the most equitable thing to happen.

112I also think I appreciate some of the comments earlier around the attachment of class sizes and vast outcomes. We have had decades of... smaller class sizes, and I'm yet to be convinced that that is always the best. It makes sense to a certain extent, but it has not proven to be always the same thing. I'm also curious about how different class sizes based on... What is English class size? Because the differences between the English and math class sizes and the FIAD or elective class sizes, how they are different, the eighth grade class sizes with the middle school class sizes versus the high school class sizes. So I think that having more of an expensive conversation around those in ways to address. I'm also curious to hear from schools. particularly schools or targeted number of schools,

113like what are their thoughts around this? What staff are thinking around this? I also, and this is in my other role, I get to see budgets from different schools across the state, and there is an assumption that the more we invest, the better results we're going to get. while that is now the case. And so what are the things that how we should be doing our investment? A frame that I wanted to lead is like what is the investment? Not so much about the dollar amount, but the level of investment, the type of investments that went to our schools and the districts and the entire district. My last point, And I'm ready to talk more specifics. I think we all have been giving philosophical aspects. But I'll give you one specific. Our security staff team

114is the most diverse team in our school district and the least paying folks. I'm disappointed that we haven't elevated that. That's something that I would like to... and also our special educator assistants and how they tend to be a lot of people of color, a lot of women, and would like to see some sort of comprehensive approach to their salaries as well. I'm going to jump in. I have maybe three points. The first is really pragmatic just in terms of kind of the big rocks question, Kelly. Two comments. The first is I personally, having watched this play out over the last couple of years, I feel like we need to start with the big numbers on the page. It's just really hard to get flexible after we go past wages, given that it is the

115significant majority of where we spend our dollars and the new dollars that we would expect to spend next year. So I'd like to start there and kind of lock in that. We kind of tried to do that this last year in terms of you presenting us with the assumptions that you were building the budget around. But I think over both of the last process has been a little bit unwieldy and a little bit frustrating probably for all parties. I am curious if there would be appetite on the board to actually vote on the wage decisions preliminarily in the... in the February timeframe. So last year, the way that this process worked was we gave kind of guidance in maybe the philosophical, as you just put it, way that we are right now to Kelly, and

116she continued to build a budget around a certain base wage assumption and a certain steps and changed later in the process, which... makes it very complex for our administrative staff as well as for our school teams to kind of build a budget, build workbooks, build all of the big assumptions because we've left the big choice until last. And so I guess I'd like to force us to pull that choice up front. Because if you look at the numbers on this page, $10 million of the $15.8 million-ish is wages of new dollars. And so I'm curious if there would be an appetite to actually vote on the guidance, not on a budget, but on the guidance around what our... collective board guidance is on steps and lanes and base wages earlier in the process than in

117June. I would... the big rocks. The second comment for me is I would really like our kind of Plan A and Plan B budgets to be closer together, meaning I would really encourage us to try to build an operating referendum that is smaller than $8 million in the first year. And I think that would make this first budget a little bit easier for us if our Plan A and Plan B budgets were closer together. I also think it's a good challenge for us to continue to bear in mind that we have two referendums that we are putting forward and that the ask for the city to invest in our schools is a big one. believes in our schools and will invest in our schools but I want to also be very responsible with the way

118that we're doing that so for me I would love to aim for more like a five million dollar first year number I just think it would make this extra straightforward and I think we could get there if we are willing to really think hard and be innovative around how we want to how we want to navigate that so that's kind of the maybe pragmatic guidance. I heard a couple of things that I'm really encouraged by and I just wanted to maybe... and support them. I would love to do some sort of evaluation of what is actually working and what isn't working in the schools. We've had the ability to do a number of strategic equity projects over the last four years, and I certainly would be very interested to see an evaluation of how those

119projects are succeeding and understand what's working the best for our students and what is. maybe working less well for our students so that we could potentially repurpose some of that or double down on the projects that are really working. our staffing models and talking about how class size is relevant for outcomes and how it may not be relevant for outcomes and then the last comment I would make just in terms of our role as a team I think this is a really special different things going on that are all somewhat transformative for the district we have the ability to set up a new superintendent for success with a really strong budget We have a city that is growing and has the ability to fuel a really strong budget. And we as a group, I think,

120can do all of that if we stay together. It's really easy for all of us to have different ideas on how to get at the best possible budget. At some point in the next nine to 12 months, every one of us is going to have to say no to something that we want and make some hard choices to invest in what's best for our kids. And my ask, I guess, of this group would just be to stay together as a group. I think we can make a lot of progress. We have a lot of money to work with here. And it's not perfect. There's no perfect answers in education, unfortunately. But I just might ask that this group would be to be open. I think just stay together as a team. I think we can

121make a really a lot of progress and some really strong choices as we proceed through the year. So that's just maybe from my side. I have another question to actually TSN to. Kelly, do you want more specifics, though, on the last question? I'm not entirely sure I got the one rock from everyone. So if there's an opportunity to go back to get one rock, and a rock literally meaning one of the five items up there. How about let's do that. Everyone gets to say one thing. It has to be one of the rows on that page. And that's perfectly fine. Teacher compensation is the most important. As an individual, an elected individual, I speak as an individual. I'm all for teamwork, but I have to go on those individuals who elected me and put me

122on the spot. When you say one rock, do you mean what is the area that we're most fixed or what is the area in which we're the most interested in shift or most open to shift? The area you would put your money in first. So steps is $5.3 million if we fully fund steps. If we're fully funding steps first, $5.3 million goes in. Everything else moves around it. Okay. I'm going to be completely transparent. There's a series of areas on here that you know I can't vote on, right? So they can't. Good point. Yeah. So I recuse myself from three of those areas. And that being said, what I am left to speak to and quite passionate about is strategic equity projects. Thanks. I'm going to suggest we speak to base wage first. And, yeah,

123I think I've spoken to why. So, I mean, I agree. I mean, I think we speak to base wage to get it out of the way, but that's not my priority. I mean, my priority is the strategic equity projects, really evaluating what's working and expanding on that if need be, and really be innovative around equity. our budget and so that is I think we we do discuss moving through a racial equity analysis throughout this budget is my priority yeah I'm gonna go with strategic equity projects and you know fully committing this budget to racial equity I'm gonna stick with staffing but keeping it through a racial equity lens and I want to point out that this round Robin is omitting our student rep so So I think the base wage is important because it's the

124base wage in Staps and Lanes is the largest buckets that you have there, but not to just rubber stamp them. I like to actually look at as, you know, and leverage ways that we can do things more efficient, in particular to the Staps and Lanes. And then the other priority would be the strategic equity projects. Thank you for putting that out, Chris. Do you want to speak? I'm not entirely sure what steps and lanes is, so I don't think I can really speak to that. It's basically an increase for staff. So the base wage is the cost of living increase, and steps and lanes are opportunities as staff are moving in terms of longevity or increasing their education that they get additional compensation. Okay. Yeah, I'm not sure what my rock in this situation would

125be. In my experience, it is really important that teachers have good morale and feel like they're represented by the district and part of the community. So I think that's not something that should be overlooked or something that could be considered to be cut out without any impacts. But I also agree that strategic equity projects are important and they need to have time devoted to them. to make sure that they're being done effectively. So my second question for this group was just in terms of the difference between these two budgets, are there any areas that we wanted to give guidance to the administrative team at this point to explore for the Plan B budget, if you will, that may be different than what we've already spoken to? Yeah, so I mean we just kind of spoke

126to how we want to work through this from a process perspective and which are the big pieces we want to work through first. Are there any other areas that we would want to explore as levers to pull in the Plan B budget and that may be different than what we've already spoken to if the operating referendum did not pass? So Chris, do you want to? None of these levers are going to have the same impact as something like A. But I think we should look at one-to-one technology in K-3. I question whether we really need to make that investment for our youngest children. Do they actually need their own screens at that age? It's not going to save a ton of money, but it's, I think, something we need to look at. This has been...

127I think we should look at mixed-age classes in elementary schools as a way to stabilize staffing and stabilize class size numbers. However, it has to be done as a teaching approach. It can't just be done as a cost-saving approach. Like, we commit to all our K-1 classrooms in this school are mixed grades so that teachers can plan accordingly. I would like to see us sit down with staff, maybe, you know, really elevate staff voice in this process, but making sure that the professional development we're doing is the most effective professional development we can possibly do. Make sure that we invest a fair amount of what our staff want and what they think is going to be the most effective, especially to achieve our equity goals. Those are just three. I can probably think of more.

128So, I mean, I think along those lines, I mean, I think we're going to have to be very creative, right? I mean, I think, and I think in the creativity and also moving towards the racial equity piece of what I've been speaking to all night, because I really want us to focus on this, is really get our black student unions, our Latino student unions impacted every day in our schools. and getting their voice in this. Our black teachers, our bilingual resource teachers, right, having voice. I think we have to be laser focused on either process here, right, in either column. We're just going to have to be more laser focused in the other column. You know, one area that we often, don't look for inefficiencies is actual where the inequities lie, right? And so the

129amount of rates and suspensions and out-of-school, in-school suspensions, the cost per day for our schools when that student is back. I know the RTI Center did the math. It's something absurd of like $30 per day per student. You think about the time is the amount of students that we send for suspensions. I think about the over-identifications of students of color, how that also digging into our special education resources and the amount of the ways in which we do discipline for our students overall those are things that are coming to mind but I I would be honest like I think have access to all the data For Madison, I think that we can point at a couple places in our schools that funding is the investment is washing out any way in which we're investing and

130I'm not trying to demonize any particular school or particular staff but I think that is an inefficient in our system and we have to really be bold and look at like this grade level in this particular school they're struggling or this team is struggling or you know this set of staff are really not aligned with our equity strategy. I think that is viewing those things as equity strategies I think are important. Yeah, something I think is really important that we maintain a level of investment in is our 4K programming and maintaining investment, if not more, in early childhood education in terms of the impact that it can have on students, not just at that grade, but down the line as well. We just received the matrix of the alternative programs. I know that they are

131one of the smaller buckets areas, but they might be an area of cost savings as well. And really being honest about how if we don't invest in our students up front and how we end up paying later with cost recovery and alternative programs. One other way of working we could look at that could potentially help us address staffing would be to be really thoughtful about if we could take staff out of Doyle and put them into schools so they could help us with student support in addition to whatever administrative tasks they're doing. I hear over and over again from schools that we just don't have enough adults in this building, and they also say frequently we would love if people from Doyle would come visit us more often and be in our schools more often.

132Okay, I think, Kelly, can you summarize what you just heard from us in terms of just in question one and two, I think, I just want to make sure that we've got some summary that works for us here. Well, I think we have some interest in taking a deeper look at putting kind of base wage first, at least the discussion first. I don't know that I, you know, so I think that's something we'll have to talk about. I think there's clearly some interest in looking at our class sizes, and we'll get you that data analysis, you know. We usually do that around this time of year. So we can look at that as well. And then obviously I've heard strategic equity projects. So potentially my main takeaway, to be honest, is that I didn't hear

133health care. which tells me that it is a rock that we can start to move yes when it you think that was third in your list yeah it was like third and so I think that's a rock that that we know we can start looking at and start moving that's a key piece of information for us so we'll start to balance those kind of the various pieces of input as it relates to the strategic equity projects of the past. We've been kind of working and thinking about what that looks like through our equity tool in particular. We're coming up with a vision of what it might be to go all the way back, frankly, to 14-15, and what are the investments that the board has made through the priority projects, name change then to equity

134projects over the years, where the money has gone, what's the investment we've made. it working some have already stopped you know and money was repurposed years ago but of those that are continuing ongoing is that still want what the board wants to do or is that something that we want to be thinking about for repurposing potentially for a greater equity use so that's on our mind and I'm hearing kind of some some general support around that I think as well as it relates to kind of the reduction strategies, mixed age classes, Lisa can say more now or later, but I think we've had a lot of conversations about the potential of mixed age, so I would say that that is on our radar for possible reduction strategies. On professional development, it's mostly Title IV, which

135doesn't quite help us with the rocks up there, but there's always ways that we're constantly thinking about making things more efficient just to make more Title IV dollars available. Getting more voice from students, BSU, staff of color, that's something that we have in our ongoing work as well, so I appreciate the support there. So, I mean, there's always ways of working to continue looking at. I hear some maybe support around looking into our behavior education plan investments. There is quite a bit of funding tied into that. So I think that's like a takeaway that I start as far as looking at maybe a repurposing type of discussion or highest value maybe dollar use. Deirdre, Lisa, what else did I miss? I think that's right. I mean, I think as I'm sitting and listening, I think

136the staff compensation is still incredibly important. So wanting to be very thoughtful about how we move forward there. you know, really how are we finding this balance around staffing, right? So we always talk about strategic allocation of resources. Conversation, and I heard it coming up, connected to results. It's really wanting to make sure that we have the people in the right place doing the right work. And so being very thoughtful about what that looks like. So those are two. I know we said black and white students. Can we also include the disabled voice in there? That's the only thing I wanted to say. I heard. quite a bit actually about class size as well and multi-age and I'm actually meeting with a group of principals tomorrow to do a little bit of reflection and hearing

137of their voices about that I know that at least on the elementary side many elementary principals would rather go above the class size policy than need to go with an uneven multi-age strategy and that their priority is keeping strong teams together. We'll also be looking tomorrow in our budget meeting not just on levers around staffing, AGR status, which actually can fund either small class sizes or coaching, a coaching model. So either one of those strategies is acceptable under that funding from the state. And then also we want to look at Title I. and see how we're funding our Title I schools, what has been our process, how far down do we go. And we know that we want to align more tightly our Title I status schools with our smaller class size funding, should that

138be the direction that we're going. It's probably time to take a look at where those... Title one contracts are excuse me the AGR contracts are held because some of those schools are no longer in the same rank order of poverty as they were before so I did hear a lot about equity and putting the resources in the hands of schools and kids that need it the most so we will have to pair class size with AGR with title and those might be some big rocks that we move Okay, I'm gonna suggest that we close this kind of input and I think Maybe you guys have some collective work to put all of those pieces together and feedback to us in our next workgroup Here's the kind of process and the big rocks and the each

139of these different levers one last thing and then we have one more meeting after this. Because I don't know where those two things and I just want to clarify one of the points around disproportionality like understand better where the 15% special education money is invested in for our staff and the second one and I don't know where that is in the bucket is we have a contract with the Madison Police Department and That feels like contrary to our sentiment around investing our in our children Okay. All right. Do I have a motion to adjourn so moved? I All the opposed. All right, we are adjourned with that meeting Gloria the next All right, I'm gonna call the meeting to order A special Board of Education meeting and first items on the agenda is we got

140a few minutes that we have to approve. So can I get a motion to approve minutes dated September 4th, 2019? So moved. Second. All in favor? Aye. I'm sorry, your advisor, I'm sorry. Aye. Okay. Thank you. Motion passes. Second is motion to approve minutes dated September 5th, 2019. So moved. Can I get a second? Second. Your advisory wrote, Rebecca? Aye. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Motion passes. Motion to approve minutes dated September 9th, 2019. Can I get a motion? So moved. Second. Okay. Rebecca, your advisory wrote? Aye. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Okay. Motion passes. Alright, so this is the biggest item on the agenda is the Superintendent Search Community Feedback Report. We do have, is BWP in the house yet? Okay, gotcha. Okay, I just was like, the green room. Colin

141has a green room? Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, we do. We do? Does that mean cake? It's awesome. So this is a very exciting. Caterers. Caterers. okay I'll wait I have lost control of the board we are we have we've already started the meeting so we're just waiting for you all to get settled Okay, welcome Dr. Kastner and Dr. Hill. Thank you for all your work the last weeks or so and your community engagement and getting input from our community on the superintendent search. Appreciate that. Before we start, I do have a question. Will this be available electronically? No, the long one. The two little ones are media outlets, and the long one is the room. You just have to push the button. Sorry, folks. There's a lot going on here at this table. So to

142answer your question, both the PowerPoint. That's sort of the cliff notes of the report as well as the full report. What I'd like to do after tonight, if there are any corrections or anything that needs to be made, so we'll send you the PowerPoint tomorrow electronically, which can then be placed on the website. But for the purposes of... I guess some other people, we have a couple of extra copies. You do have a couple. So the actual report as well, will you have it available for us electronically tomorrow? Yes. Along with the PowerPoint? Yes, both the PowerPoint and the actual page report. Okay. We already had a reporter call us on our way in. Yeah, I kind of figured we've been getting those questions too. And we suggested it after. Okay. Great. Okay, well, thank

143you. Well, again, we appreciate the opportunity to work with you. serve with you. We had a great time with our community engagement activities. The community was... outgoing and with good ideas and we wanted to assure them that we heard them and that we had indicated that we would present to you all that we heard, the good, the bad, and the ugly, because we believe that that's an important aspect of having new leadership begin to know what they're coming into, what some of the expectations are, and a little bit of the history which you will be able to glean based on the comments. So we didn't do any comments that, as a matter of fact, we didn't have any that had inappropriate language. We only had one that we had to redact the name, and all

144of those are pluses. Respond to one of the concerns with regards to multiple entries relative to the survey. And several of the community members raised that as a question. And so the way we defined it is, first of all, the survey is a snapshot. And so consequently, multiple answers don't really do anything. And if we were to limit it in terms of limiting it to an IP address, then that would disenfranchise people who were using public computers. For example, someone that went to the library. Because they all have the same IP address, it would then only accept one survey. What we find is that if... there's a series that have like the same thing when you have more than four or five, then again, we don't really, you know, take that into consideration and exclude

145it, but we also don't think it's a matter that will skew the entire survey. So I think that people were very serious about the survey, had some concerns about the validity and reliability of the survey, and we just want to assure them that, again, this is a snapshot. It's not designed to be a dissertation. or doctoral report relative to the statistics that come out of it. It is the quantitative component of the community engagement process. So we're going to go through the PowerPoint, as I said, which is the cliff notes of the... actual report but I'll also be referring back to the report in terms of where the information can be found and finally what we would hope at the conclusion of our report and presentation and question from the board that you will approve

146the report and therefore really component which is essentially those characteristics and skill sets for the next superintendent so that we can continue our search in terms of trying to find people that meet those qualifications if there are things major things in the report that you have some concerns about we will address them now and hopefully then you'll be able to approve the report with any additions or corrections that are included Okay. I had a board member question me once about reliability and validity. My response was that if I have 300 people that have done the survey, and then I wait two weeks later and I have 700 people who have done the survey, I rarely see a variance of larger than 1%. The snapshot you need is really, it just works it out that way.

147That gives me comfort. It gives me comfort even if someone did 10 surveys. So, again, we're not trying to do sophisticated research, but I will tell you it does serve the purpose that we want. I'm going to start out with the very first part, and then we're going to turn it over to Deb, and we're going to get into the qualities and characteristics. Now, in your report and what I will be doing, you will find in the section, appendix what, Deb? Appendix C. you will see all of the slide information in the appendix. So if you wanted to follow and you went back to appendix C, you will see that page 41. So if you want to look at 41, our purpose here is just to give the highlights of the top three. First off...

148When you invite us into the community, I think it's a trust factor that a school board, you're opening up your community and you're asking people to share whatever they want to share, unfettered. I think that's a positive transparency. I think it works well. I think people did have voices heard. If you look here to do what we're supposed to do, find perceived strengths and challenges. identify qualities and characteristics of your next superintendent, but we also build an understanding of the process. And as Deb is fond of saying, all the people that we met, over 200 of them, we made them ambassadors so that they can go share the message with other people that they knew. And you remember, we did the same thing with the student groups. And so we tried to broadcast this, and

149as a result... When you look at this, when we were here on the 29th and 30th, we had over 35 meetings in two days. We met with all these different people. But in the report itself is all the groups that you invited. If someone chose not to show up, which was very few, you need to know that you had an outreach that you as a board and you worked with Barb, you did the outreach. And then who shows up, it would go from there. And sometimes it's not the number because we had some great conversations with five or six people. So as you notice, in having all those meetings, in addition to the two community forums that I think were reasonably well attended, we talked to over 208 people and they participated in conversations and

150we have 1,481 on the survey. This is robust. Normally we might have over 150. Normally surveys reach about 1,000. So the outreach and the work that your school system did to get all the messages out, it would show that this was successful. Now, so here's, we're going to first talk about the three strengths of Madison and your school district. So if you have over 1,400 people. Actually, almost 1,500. If you're at the 50% thing, if you have 50%, you're talking 750 people. That's substantial. And you're going to notice when you look at that that there's some other categories that didn't rise as high, but we asked for the top three. So when we look at the three strengths of the system, and again, when you go back, and you will, when you go back and

151look at the data, you might want to see, well, are there some other things there that come close or not? But there wasn't anything that all of a sudden caused us to add a fourth. So excellent teachers and staff. We actually had the students gave us that, too. Location of the district, the university and universities were a big deal. the fact that it is a destination for people, and a supportive community. So you're looking at everything approaching almost 50%. So again, though, as you look at question one, you will see that, and Deb's going to talk about it, there was also, we did have an open write-in with 45 characters. and you're going to see that information too. That was the only one we had. And those write-ins, they had certain themes, but frankly, they

152went all over the place because people had that opportunity. Three important skills needed for the next superintendent, collaborative leadership skills. So you're not talking about, you aren't talking about a top-down manager. You're talking about communication skills. Cultural competency. And you know you live that. But here was neat, one thing neat. The students put communication at 70%. So the students, there were 370 students. They put communication at 70%. I think that's significant. And if anything, maybe if you ever get a chance to talk to some of your students in this process, I think you might enjoy that conversation. Three top characteristics for the next superintendent needs to exhibit. Integrity. Now, that's not unusual. Commitment to the community. And what we're hearing, they want someone to stay here. They don't want someone to come in, go out.

153They want them to stay here. And good judgment. So when you look at that, you pretty much want someone that we vet candidates that has that type of reputation. When we go into... experience desired it was a five-step Likert scale and I concentrated on extremely important or very important and I just added the two together look at the very first one experience with culturally responsive practices in a diverse multicultural community if that stands out at 75% We would not be able, in good judges, to bring in candidates that didn't have this type of experience. There might be some superintendents of the year in more homogeneous communities, but in order to understand the community, they have to have experiences here. It's not unusual. They want someone that has their boots on the ground and has been

154a classroom teacher, which surprised me. Because you don't always see this, and this also happened with the students. Almost 68% on strategic planning. You don't normally see that, but it shows maybe your community gets your strategic plan and they want to see someone not just look at the strategic plan, they're interested in implementation. And we've heard that. Three important issues facing your school system in the next five years. Academic growth. When we talk about academic growth, it's complex. It's almost to the point extending the top and raising the ceiling. Could more of the advanced learners even go higher? Because there's a pocket, and we met with that group. And at the same time, we have achievement gaps. And these achievement gaps, whatever they be, with special needs children, children of race, black or brown, The

155whole idea of academic growth, which is the whole purpose of a school system, instruction, the fact that that shows up there, then there needs to be some follow-up discussion, and you'll see that from the remarks. Personnel issues. We've found that many of the personnel issues were the attracting and retaining of staff, which all staff, because you have some people leaving, but of color. that the whole market out there, the whole idea that you should be growing each year and increasing your percentage to more reflect the diversity of your students. That came up often. And I guess the number three, because it was reiterated in another question, increasing the diversity of the workforce. When you look at this quantitative data, it's one part of something. Now the question is, Now that we look at these engagement

156meetings, we have these responses of 224 people, comments we've heard multiple times. What are the prominent responses? I'm going to turn it over to Deb now, and she's going to tell you what's in your report that makes the numbers richer based upon what your community has said. Thank you. So one of the important... Everyone was asked the same set of questions. And essentially, everyone had the same amount of time to ask the set of questions. Kevin has shared with you the quantitative data, the volume data, and when you have an opportunity to read through the 30-some pages of this data, what you will find is it reflects what Kevin just presented in the quantitative data. And so, again, that's a good indicator that the community is closer in their thinking of what the strengths are,

157what the challenges are, and what they would like to see as a new superintendent than they think they are. And one of the things that I noted, that school systems, for some reason, when we do these kinds of activities, they don't cross-pollinate the groups. They take the principals and they make them a group. They take certain organizations and they make them a group. They do the teachers, they make them a group. They do the students and they make them a group. And I contend that if they cross-pollinated those groups, that there would be better communication and better understanding because people are closer than they think they are, but they only talk in their own little group. And that was reflected in a lot of comments from the focus group people who talked about silos. indicated

158that they felt that the district operates in silos and again from my perspective yes that was demonstrated in how this was orchestrated and how people expect to be able to participate so in the document itself you'll take that out if you haven't already done so beyond the top three we identified those that seem to have the greatest number of repetitions relative to the conversations So you can start on page seven. And page seven is the beginning of over 30 pages. And the very first one is board members. So what did the board members say, which is anonymous, but then you'll see that we recorded the data for each of the different groups. And you're going to see some repetition, but you're also going to see some common interest and passion of some of these groups.

159The other element of that is we continue to indicate that this would be anonymous. So in order to ensure that, because some groups were small where you had two or three people, we took whoever came. So that you'll find when you see the qualitative responses that... I grouped some groups together just for the purpose of mixing it up. And again, people will be able to recognize their language, their vocabulary, because we did take notes, although it is not from a stenographic stand, but we did take the highlights out of each discussion. So you'll see some pairings and some mixings of which groups' responses are recorded, as well as the number of people that group represents. And again, that gives us an opportunity to determine how many people presented in this process. So, excellent teachers and

160administrators. That was a big one. That was pretty much across the board. The diversity was another one that was a big one. So the ones that we've listed here are the ones that appeared about 80% of the time in the comments. And I do a little analysis, a frequency distribution kind of analysis that, you know, words that are similar to this, how many times was it repeated? So here are a list of, again, of some of the strengths. This commitment to social justice, great students, and I have to say amen to that because talking with the students was great fun. The resources. One of the things that came up relative to resources is equitable distribution of the resources. Yeah, we may have them, but how are they distributed? A positive reputation. Other than the people

161who, there were several people who sent their comments separately and didn't participate in the survey of the focus group, but those were the only comments that I found where people didn't like. the city didn't like didn't think anything good was going on but the important part is that they felt safe enough to send that information. And so we want to make sure that they know that was presented and that was heard. A couple of them, nothing. There are no strengths. So again, it's important for them to recognize that that's their opinion, but they're going to find that a whole lot of other people had a whole lot of other strengths, a whole lot of other challenges than they listed. And maybe they'll tag along and say, oh yeah, maybe that's right. And that was just

162fine. Again, this was open-ended and people were allowed to say what they needed to say as long as they were respectful. The other point for if the community is saying positive things and they're thinking about being applicants, this would back them. And so it's also a type of thing that HR could be using when you're talking about recruiting people. The care about the community. That was another big one across the board. The kids were very emphatic about that. And educational opportunities, there was, and again, that's an important distinction to make. Challenges, and again, the data presented was organized by virtue of the questions. So after you've seen the strengths listed by the groups that are indicated, then we look at the challenges. And as typical, the challenges seem to outstripe the strengths. So that's not

163unusual. So when you see long lists of challenges and only two or three strengths, that's pretty much the way it rolls out. The whole notion of implementation of your social skills, the curriculum not being focused enough, too many initiatives, teachers were feeling burned out or not supported. And again, that was an interesting thing that came from the kids. Climate, cultural, and morale. Morale and trust were two big things that came out of the conversation. We talked a little bit about equitable allocation, school safety and discipline. And it was interesting because there was this sort of break between school safety and what that meant and discipline and what that meant. And there was a lot of questions about the discipline policies and whether they are being equitably administered and whether they're punitive. And again, someone needs

164to really take a look at that. So from that, we've developed this leadership profile. And this is what we are asking you, again, to approve the entire report. But this will enable us to do the same lens at the applicants and the candidates that will be presented so that some person doesn't have in their mind what they're looking for and somebody else has something different. If we all focus on the characteristics that came out of this engagement process, then when we go out and headhunt the applicants, When we interview the applicants, the expectation is that we will develop our interview questions based on your profile, that the board, when we present candidates to you, will be presenting it based on our observations relative to the profile. When you create your interview questions, that should be

165done based on the profile. When you're interviewing the candidates, it should be done based on the profile. So what happens is that, again, we share the entire document with all the applicants. But we especially asked them to look at the characteristics and skill sets to see if there's a match. Because there are some people out there that think they can do this job. And then when they get an opportunity to actually see what you want them to come into the job with, they're thinking, eh, maybe. So here are just a few. And again, you'll find them listed in the actual report. Visionary, and again, one that was across the board. Experience in working with diverse student and community populations. What was fascinating about this was they talked about racial equity, but it was racial equity

166across the board, cultural equity, and the social justice restorative practices. You need to know that across the country, These are the things that have risen to the top in terms of issues and concerns for many, many, many communities. So you are not alone, and everyone is wrestling with how to address these issues. Most recently, Rochester and New York, almost the very same issues. stated maybe a little bit differently, but the whole idea of how you're bringing the best out of all the students. So what she's saying, this is what we're seeing in a lot of other communities that have some diversity, even if they're suburban, urban, but they're all dealing with these type of issues. And I can compare it to my home district that has 8,000 students. This is a mirror of what they're

167saying. To Madison, with your 27,000 students, this is what you're saying. to DeKalb County in Georgia with 107,000 students, this is what they're saying. And so across the board, regardless of size, because the populations of school are changing and our focus is changing on what we need to be about in schools, you're not alone in trying to look at these issues. DeKalb is 107,000. As an educator, not only an educator, but someone that's coming in that's been in the trenches with a teaching experience and some administrative experience, particularly someone that has at least a thumbprint somewhere with regards to special needs, multilingualism, and early childhood populations. Understanding a commitment to high levels of academic achievement for all students, especially those of color. The achievement gap has been around for more years than I care to

168think about or talk about. And we have not hit on the key to that yet. We keep working on it. We keep working at it. And it's been interesting in my international travels to look at other countries and how they've addressed their achievement gap and realized that the United States is still in the 20s in terms of, and that we're really going to have to do some things differently. Part of that will include how we assess kids. in terms of looking at really addressing the academic achievement gap. Kevin said the kids thought that that was the top of the heap. Why are people not listening to us? That came out loud, clear, and strongly. We have a lot to say. We know what we need. No one is listening to us. I think Kevin asked

169one of the students, have you ever seen the superintendent? No. So they were really interested in having a superintendent who was going to be visible to them, who was going to listen to them, maybe make some changes, but even if you just listened, for them that was an important aspect. Student-centered. It's always interesting to me when we talk about our leadership and we don't talk about kids, that's what it's supposed to be about. So putting students at the center of decisions and discussions oftentimes changes the conversation. We talked about the diverse population experience in district finance and budgeting. Again. I want to make a point here. I was very impressed when we talked with your union leadership. It wasn't just about the teachers. It was about the students. That type of relationship doesn't occur every

170place. So a lot of things go beyond the best interests of students to the convenience of adults. I didn't hear that. And I thought, whatever's going on there. I thought that was a good reflection of your community. And I'm not making this up, but I just thought that was positive as opposed when you have everybody maybe not, it's more acrimony than agreement. That's all. You want someone who is racially conscious. And again, this notion of demonstrating. We already talked about the small pool that you're going to have of someone who has had experience in working with school systems this size and larger. And when you add to that the variable of having work specific experiences with social justice and restorative practices, that narrows the pool even more. So again, it's going to be important. That

171means you're out there and as I indicated, lots of districts are looking for the same people. And so consequently, the competition is much higher at this particular point. And then I love these personal qualities. In addition to wanting somebody who can walk on water, part the Red Sea, and juggle the sun and the moon simultaneously, you want somebody that's dedicated and sincere and student-focused. Organized, fair, and ethical. These are all values and personal qualities that you want your superintendent not only to have, but to exhibit. Skills, collaboration was a big one. Knowing the history of MMSD because, of course, you are unique and you have some historical pieces that need to come into play in terms of issues. A team builder, again, who can go against the norm. So what we heard is that they're

172looking for someone who is not necessarily going to be conventional and think outside the box. And my question is always, why does it have to be a box? Because you're narrowing yourself even more if you've got to think outside of something. Why can't you be coming in with other things that wouldn't necessarily fit in a box? Holding people accountable. You want to go back? I want to tell you what I said to each of the groups. There's 18,000 school systems in this country. 2% are larger than 20,000. So all of a sudden, you're dealing with 360 systems. When you're talking about the complexity of this size and learning how to work in delegation is just as important about being a leader. And so when you are going to be looking at that, that will separate

173some of the candidates because there's a tremendous amount of complexity. When you're in these type of communities that have wraparound services, have the significant language areas, you have homeless, you have all of this. So that's why I'm saying that it's a smaller pool of systems, whether they're an area superintendent in Fairfax County that has 30,000 kids in their area. So when you look at some of these larger systems, you have some of the highest level leaders. that are into this in regard to the size factor. And then when you have even a principal that's the principal of the year, they aren't going to have some of these types of complexities. So I want you just to be mindful. If someone doesn't have that size factor, they've got to have something else that separates them as

174we're looking at the candidates. And that's what we've found as we've been working with some of the systems your size. And that's what we hope that the pool is going to reflect. So the next steps in the search process, we will be approving the leadership profile, hopefully. He said ASAP, I said tonight. Recruitment, the application deadline is November 24th. We have about 18 or 19 applications that have already been submitted. We have about, I want to say, a half dozen people who are in the pipeline that we are either going after or people are calling us about. So we exercise cool, but it will be winnowing it down and narrowing it down to someone that can handle the complexities of this district. I had two phone calls on the way here today. talking about they

175thought great candidates because they know that this is a good place and they also know people that are pretty strong. So this starts heating up now. So I just want to say a word about recruitment and assessment because we had this conversation before. The confidentiality is critical mass. We will lose good candidates if we're banding about their names. First of all, it jeopardizes their current position. the candidates are coming from. Sign confidentiality. Yeah, we'll talk about that in a minute. So the other components... You need to schedule interviews. We have dates for our presentation and the date schedule for your first round of interviews, but we don't have dates for your finalists, your semi-finalists, for your day in the district, and that's going to be like the next major thing. And it's also, again, another

176one of those harder things because you have to find two to three consecutive days when everybody's available because this is a night you can call in. type of activity. This is one that you're going to all have to be present. And then you have to have a window of time for those candidates. You have to do a face-to-face conversation or whether you want to do an electronic conversation because if you have candidates coming from all over the country and again, snow here before Halloween. On Halloween. and on Halloween, may cause some challenges. And I'm always concerned about candidates having equal opportunities to come before the board so one of the things that I always suggested for that first round of candidates to do it electronically because then everybody is on the same wavelength and and

177being presented in the same manner for your second round of candidates and interviews you would do that face to face and hopefully the weather will have will be it's we'll have spring in January I just like to end with this slide No split votes. This is where the board has got to come together. Candidates will not bring their families on split votes. If you have a board election, all of a sudden it swings two people. This is too big of a decision. And if it takes a little bit longer, if anything, we hope it's a difficult choice. But the whole idea here, and I have seen this happen, boards will come together if we do our job of getting you a good pool. And we're pretty confident that we'll be able to do this because

178this is a destined machine that there isn't room for improvement here. But there's more resources available here that leadership can take advantage of, and it's pretty ripe for it. I mean, there's a lot of setting the table that's been here. A lot of these issues are now out in public. Now the question is how they bring together, as you've seen, there's 13 bullets on the leadership profile. The question is, would there be any of them you'd want to take away? And frankly, if you look at all the data, 13 is 13. It just happened that way. So now we're open. I just want to go through a couple of other things in the actual report. Again, the report is 83 pages, the actual comments. The page number 5. lists the appendices and breaks it out.

179You can find the results for the survey, the completed results for the students. One of the other things I want to mention is that there was a wonderful effort to include the survey in other languages. We had three responses in other languages, which is we indicate that before we go about the business of trying to have those, but you want to make sure that that's available in case anyone needs to use them. In the actual document, there were 16, I want to say there were 16 individuals who chose to write their comments on the survey form that we used for the focus groups. Those are separate and apart from those comments that were a part of the survey. So you have a plethora of information from the community. And again, we do encourage... So you

180have an additional plethora of information. Don't take any of the comments personally. We didn't. We just listened and informed the community that we would be sharing with you what they shared with us. And, again, we'll make sure that you have the clean copy and the electronic copies tomorrow so that they can go on the website. And anybody that has any additional questions, feel free to e-mail Dr. Kastner or me. both from the standpoint of the board and the community but I think that that notion of transparency and when they see their actual language in there that that will give them more confidence in this process and now we're open for questions that's right yes thank you thank you very informative and thanks for all your work out in community let's start let's follow the same

181process let's go ahead and start with Ananda at the end there So my biggest question, and we received a little bit of feedback from the survey, is the literacy and fluency around speaking around anti-racism and racial equity. I noticed that you spoke extremely... well to those points and also from a little bit of what you know demonstrated today also having sort of a knowledge of historical knowledge of the issues that we are facing as a district and our commitment and interest to finding individuals that are responding to that specifically So my question to you, Deborah, specifically is that what are you, how are you, what mechanism are you going to ensure us that you're measuring the candidates in regards to their own literacy and fluency around culturally responsible and racial justice? I will, okay. Yes,

182I'll pause here. Well, as I said, one of the things that happens now... is once the profile is approved, then we craft our interview questions around those. And so one of the questions would be, tell us how you've worked with other cultural groups. Give us some examples of experiences that you've had with different languages. So it'll be that kind of questioning, but we'll also be looking at the application. One of the questions on the application says, do you speak any other languages other than English? And so, again, we go right to the heart of the matter. And from my perspective, you do not have to speak the language in order to understand language differences. And I'm going to take an opportunity here to give a commercial break. Having traveled internationally with ASCD, one of the

183things that just was exciting to me is that every other country respects ASCD. appreciates bilingual education except good ol' USA. Here we're still debating whether bilingualism it's almost seen like you know a badge of of not a badge of honor as it should be. Thank you a deficit rather than that's something to be celebrated and to be proud of and so consequently having a conversation with the candidates about their perspective about that so you don't have to speak another language the district that I was superintendent in a third of the population was Korean And I didn't speak Korean, but I engaged myself with that community to find out what some of their issues and what some of their concerns were. And so, again, it's that notion of what have you done to extend yourself, particularly

184from a cultural and language perspective. And then another way, we would be asking for evidence. We would want this to be data-based. And we'd go further than them just saying, well, I get this. Well, show me where you have shown where you've been involved in it or your system is involved with it. Is this the very first year? Have you been doing it for several years? So we have to probe deeper, as you will, if you choose to interview any of these people. It can't just be a paper understanding where you know the definition. It's have you walked some of the walk. So I'll just say one last thing and then move. So I appreciate the sort of multilingual perspective. I think I was speaking directly to sort of anti-racist work and, you know, encompassing

185but not limiting to language. I noticed that, like, on your slide, you had it, and I understood that you, like, the depth that you were talking. I think that, to me, is really important to that. And given, I appreciate your last comment around evidence, understanding that most districts are not explicit. So they might not have experience, but to me what is important is that they're actually articulating their own racial journey and have a racial narrative that they can speak to and are bringing those things to the front on prompt. So before they are prompt to anything, that they're actually speaking to those issues both personally and the work that they have been doing. And actually one of the questions that we've used in some interviews have been define equity and define equality from their perspective

186because I think one of the things that's happening as we're having these conversations again across multiple districts is we haven't developed any clarity on that and people have their own thing going on in terms of what that means and sometimes that's what causes the discord. So I was in one of the sessions and took lots of notes and I'm just noticing that a lot of Dix, which is probably on purpose, but it's much softer than some of the language I actually heard in the session. Instead of saying, we want... some experience doing this thing that people are saying we want proven results doing this thing. So instead of saying some experience in closing gaps, we want people who have proven results in closing gaps and they can show us data and the data is meaningful.

187So I'm just wondering how we get from these softer qualities to the actual very firm statements we were hearing in those sessions. Have you gotten a chance to read all of these yet? Because I think you... Yeah, call me tomorrow after you've read some of those because there are some that are more passionate in the language that they use based on that. But you almost have to go through the whole thing in order to see where those are. And I'm just speaking specifically to the softer language and the desired qualities versus the much more forceful language we heard from people at the sessions. The interviews might be the place where we bridge that gap, but I just want to make sure. I want to make an observation. Many other states do a lot more testing.

188Wisconsin doesn't seem to be doing a lot of testing and this testing which means there's high stakes to whether you graduate or not and also the fact that they disaggregated by subgroups there are a lot of people I'm thinking of a candidate from Chicago that when you look at the fact that they've raised and reduced a gap and they have proven results, some of this evidence is more prevalent than other places, but in Wisconsin, it's not part of how it's organized. And so sometimes you're going to see some candidates that are going to be a little more hard in the sense of actually explicit data that would show things. You know, it's one thing just saying you increase the graduation rate. But what evidence do you have of the graduation rate is based on a

189certain competency of passing Algebra II, writing tests, and things like that? Many states differ. And when I was looking at trying to find this out, I learned that more about Wisconsin. But that doesn't mean that a local school system can't develop their own type of... expectations that they would for their graduates. And again, I think you're going to find a combination of some of the soft language because that's what people were saying. Phraseology, and I know that a couple of, well, at least one community member questioned, again, how we were going to emphasize the passion, anxiety about it. And part of it comes from our telling you. what we heard and how we heard it, as well as some of the language that was used. So as I said, as you read through some of

190the various groups, because it's going to depend on how the group was orchestrated, but I think you'll find some language. Just a couple things we might want to add, possibly. Under personal qualities, I remember hearing that people were interested in having someone who's a risk taker, someone who's not afraid to take risks. Yeah, there are probably, we could probably add another 75 different words. And so what we intentionally did was try to, again, at about an 80% level, take those words that we heard that frequently. And that's what you see. And so you're going to have a whole spread of things that could be included, which is why we're giving you all of the comments, as opposed to those that kept recurring over and over and over and over and over again at about that

191level. And then I just want to... I've add maybe, but I'm not sure. And again, let's talk about the report in and of itself. It's what we heard. It's the language that we heard that we're sharing with the board. So when you start to take out or to add to, then it's not really reflective of our report as much as it's reflective of what the board, you know, how the board feels. And this would be information coming from the information, right? Right. It's not. You know, so I just want to be clear. It is information that we are reading in the packet based on what you've heard from the community. So I totally respect the fact that, you know, we maybe not take out, but we can add some leadership qualities that we feel maybe

192were missed, but in the information. Okay. Here you are. You're just receiving this. Yes. You don't know what's all there. Right. And I know that Deb wants to get this going. Yes. But even if we have concept approval and the board finds a way within the next few days of using that, if you see some other data that drives an additional comment, you should have that flexibility. But if you give concept approval. and then knowing that you might make a few additional comments, then we can get moving. Right, exactly. Yeah, definitely. And the board will have an opportunity to add any of the comments into the questions, into the final questions that we may have. So, Nikki, we're not here with you yet. Savion, we'll come back to you. Okay, Kate. Thank you for this

193this is we're sorry whack it's really interesting and thank you very much for disaggregating students It's really really interesting to see the ways that students are aligned and support kind of the entire community and also a few of the areas where they might have a slightly different really really interesting for us I I have One question and then one just very logistical thing I wanted to call out. I'd love to hear you. You got to meet a bunch of folks from our community. You got to speak to each of us one-on-one. You've seen a lot of the raw data from kind of a bigger data set. I'd love to hear you speak to how you're going to articulate our strengths. We know we're in a competitive pool. We want to get the best candidates. And

194I'd love to hear kind of how you are going to differentiate us. in the market in order to cultivate the best pool for us based on everything you've heard and learned. Many places that have some of the diversity and even some of the degrees of poverty don't come close to $19,000 per student. They're down to $12,000 per student, and think about that, what it does in the classroom. The fact that you have the university base, the fact that you have a reputation. So some of the things that are just natural are going to separate them. It seems that the challenges are here, but I don't think the hill is as high to climb. And we're not talking about a 90-90 system. When you have 90% free and reduced lunch, you have 90% diversity. There's a

195lot more things to overcome, and then they don't necessarily have some of the resources. So that makes your community a little more unique than others. And so, and people do their homework. And so the story, you tell it, I don't think you do a good job necessarily telling your story. And I don't mean this to be, I don't mean this to be disrespectful to anybody. But we actually heard that. You have a story to tell, but you also have issues out there that you're talking about that some other people aren't. Here, wait, can I? Thank you for that. The logistical one, I just wanted to comment. We had picked some dates in December that we all held for interviews. I noticed those dates were not on your timeline. So if we should release the dates,

196can you let, I mean, maybe just to double check on the logistical. We do have the dates. In the calendar. We have the dates, and if we go back. In the online calendar has the dates. Okay. And we actually share that. We've got here the board conducts first round of interviews in January. Oh, I see what you're saying. So maybe you can just get back to us with either one works, but I would like to make sure that we're holding the right. Well, you know what we could do is we could make and put in the placeholder interview dates that we have. I think it was. If that's what you guys are still planning on and think we can work towards, then that's great. No, you've given us dates. You gave us. Great. Okay, and

197on that, please clarify. Just clarifying the last comment regarding our story. I didn't understand what the point was. You mentioned that we have a story, we heard, we're not telling the story well, and there's a punchline somewhere, and I don't think I understood what that was. This is what we heard from some of the people. Oh, I still don't understand. What do you mean by that, that you didn't feel like we tell our story? Well, I'll tell you what. $19,000 per student, which is the fact that you are in the upper groups of the whole United States as far as cost per pupil. That's different than areas that are dealing with significant poverty. Now, it means that you have potential resources, more so than some other places. The fact in your early childhood program, I

198think, is pretty significant. The fact that you have your partnerships, not just with the university. We were just here for a couple days, but I'm just saying we're hearing things that kind of is the type of things that I'm going to be sharing with candidates that should get them pretty interested of seeing the potential that they have going in, as opposed to worrying about whether a school system can pay their bills. That's what I mean. In addition to that, again, some of the programmatic things that you have going on are really exciting. I mean, again, back to universal travels where I talked about language not being important here in the United States. You guys are kind of beyond that because you have these dual language programs and people are talking about the quality of them

199and wanting more. And again, to me, that's addressing one of those global issues. Somebody's going to come in and be excited about that because you have other places that... You know, still arguing over whether we should do French and Spanish and whether we should wait until sixth grade. And so I think that those are some of the pieces when you have someone sophisticated. That's a story you need to tell. It was interesting to me that there are things that you're doing in the district that people within your district don't know that you're doing. And it goes back to that communication piece. And if you're not telling the story within, I don't know how you get around to telling the story without. Ananda, when we talked to the dean of the ed school. the fact that

200they have 70 kids of color coming out of the school for potential educators, UVA has about eight. That's the story. And whether they come here or not is one thing, but the fact that you are getting such a large pool, that can help solve a problem, and you just want to try to keep them home. I think kind of foreshadowing what the process looks like moving forward, I guess, you know, how do we... synthesized version of this information to the greatest possible extent in terms of representing the community's voice and then I think you know the the question is is where we are a large district we're a large and diverse community and I see that as an asset of our district and and that being said the participation in surveys although robust doesn't fully

201reflect the district so how do we get at kind of those components that are maybe aren't reflected in the gathering of this information and also how do we represent kind of fair aspects of this work that maybe the average person isn't necessarily aware of, right? So I think it's interesting that licensure doesn't come up throughout this document, right? This requirement. that the person be licensed, be able to be a superintendent, right, isn't something, isn't feedback that you hear over and over again from people because... It's not necessarily something that comes to the forefront of your mind when you think about kind of the nature of the position. So how do we use this information and then fill in the gaps in understanding and also the gaps in representation? A number of possibilities. And again, it

202may be something that you want to begin to explore even prior to getting a new superintendent, just getting it organized or determining that that's one of the first. tasks that you would like for them to do and organize. Concrete example, in a previous district, as a matter of fact, my home district, that came up as a question. And so the board came up with a leadership team. of representing those kinds of communities and asked them to come together and to create some ideas about how we could do a better outreach relative to this. And they came up with like 15 different things to do in order to get people to take the survey, one of which was they created a flyer, and that flyer went up in the grocery stores and in the churches and

203in the child community centers. We'd never had anyone do that before. And I can tell you a personal experience. On a Sunday morning, my pastor got up and announced as a part of the bulletin, the school district is looking for a new superintendent. How many of you have taken the survey? And, you know, we had about three hands go up. And mine wasn't one of them because I hadn't been announced in order for this to work. In order for us to be able to support the new superintendent, you need to engage in this process. So by next Sunday, I want to see a lot more hands go up in terms of the survey. Another organization administered the survey as a part of their activity. My point is that it took people who are concerned about

204those populations getting together and brainstorming ways to engage those populations that may be above and beyond. Someone talked about canvassing. you know, their neighborhood. And so those kinds of things were essentially set up. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. But the point was to make a concerted effort to figure out what to do in order to do that. Again, a concrete example, when I was superintendent and tried to engage some of the Korean families, what I discovered was I needed to go out. I needed to be invited to their house. And they invited their neighbors to personalize contact with the superintendent rather than having a big meeting and expecting for them to attend. And so, again, we often want to have somebody else solve the problem for us. rather than realizing that maybe the solutions

205are internal. So one of the things that we've done is, again, create this ambassadorial ship. So now you have a whole group of people out there, at least 208, who we've talked to, who we named as ambassadors, and providing them with some other mechanisms or ways or asking them to come back together and to brainstorm because they were concerned about marginalized groups. and they were concerned about getting more communication out and they were concerned about identifying this person as their superintendent as well. So again, that the part of the problem is if you notice there was a lot of conversation or you will notice when you read this there was a lot of conversation and concern. just as you've expressed it, and now that it's on the table, let's figure out how to deal with

206it. Yeah, I by no means mean to suggest that this isn't a really gallant effort in terms of representation, because I think you've done as thorough a job as one could expect. I think the reality is there's always folks who can't access reasons, and so how do we... you know, utilize our own ability to interact with those communities as a board I think is relevant. The other thing is I think when you have gathered this kind of information before, have you seen boards utilize community input throughout the decision-making process? First of all, it's getting the word out. And again, it's the sharing. And it's whether you now, the board has now provided you with this information. If you want to do follow-up activities relative to this process, then that's something that within the board and

207within the administration, you can organize and have people be able to come and respond in terms of the document in and of itself. I think that what happens is we try to make one process solve. the problem that we've been having all along as opposed to highlighting and emphasizing that particular problem and like I said finding out that there's some commonality about that particular issue and then bringing to the table those people who have that as a concern and using this document to say you know did you take the survey and if not let's talk about why what could we have done to have encouraged you to do it one of the things again getting back to my Korean population my board said well how are you engaged and I said I'm gonna ask them

208I'm going to ask them what to do in order to get you engaged. And it took me going out into their realm, into their Korean school. I started off with about 10 parents that showed up. The next time they wanted to know if they could meet again, I had about 20 show up. And then after that, it was much more engaging because they realized that I was interested and that I was listening to them. And then they were bringing their friends in. And what was noted or noticeable for me is that they were concerned because there was a language. They felt that there was a language barrier. And they weren't as comfortable having English. And so we brought in interpreters and said, that's okay. And so, again, it's... There is no box. So it's going

209beyond that in order to follow up on now that you have something in black and white and print and saying now how can we go out and have some more conversation and more dialogue about this and start being solution oriented. In terms of utilization is that this is a means to exceed expectations and to do more and to promote kind of an ongoing outreach and channel of communication between us and the community throughout this process while having, you know, some salient points to reflect on. I think this report is a conversation starter. And before it was even here, it might not have been at least to the point of getting debated whether they agree or disagree. So now going through a process and then people can validate or they can prioritize certain things, those are

210good conversations. And that's why the whole idea that this is public record, there might be some people, and we've shared with them, if you think you have exceptions and we didn't get it right, you should be talking to the board. Thank you. One, I'd like to apologize for missing my session. I was sick all week, so I did not get a chance to meet with you. Therefore, this has already been addressed in earlier meetings. I'm just asking for a little attitude. I agree with you guys that we don't sell ourselves as well in the district. Like any district, we sometimes show the good over the bad, and I think that's human. My question is, how do we increase transparency as a district in this process? I think your day in the city is transparency. Not

211everybody does that. I mean, they'll make a, and you have the latitude to do that. In some states, you don't have the latitude. Within 10 seconds, whoever those people are, everybody is going to find out if they're for real or not. So that extra step that you're doing is a check and balance on you as a board. And again, I saw it happen in Rochester and I saw it happen in Columbus and it was positive because we had a good pool. So you want to make sure that when you're getting down to who those finalists are, you're just not putting in the numbers. If there's only two, then just put two out there. But we definitely think you're going to have more than one and I think that would be part of that. Additionally, one

212other thing I was pleased to see that people said knowledge of special ed was important and I thank you for including a not often included group and also on video and making sure that the survey was as transparent and disability friendly as possible. Yeah, thank you for... gathering all this information first of all. Something that raised a little bit of a red flag for me was when you said that students wanted to be listened to even if that didn't mean the district taking action based on what they heard. In my experience as a student listening to teachers, listening to teachers in my input session, I don't think that's true. I think that it's important that our district listens to people as a first step, but beyond that I think it is really important. that our

213district takes what they hear and actually implements that. And I'm just wondering, in your interview process, will you be asking people what experience they have in listening to people and actually implementing what they've heard? Okay, there's an aside to that, and part of it is the grown-up world, that sometimes there are things that sound good on the surface, and they sound like they should be easy to do, but there are all kinds of variables that may stop that. And let me give you a concrete example relative to students. If you look in, we had some students that liked block scheduling and some students that didn't. So, and it really came out to be almost about 50-50. So the question becomes, do you do block scheduling or not? And again, it depends on the nature, how

214that's structured, how that's going to impact relative to... staffing. I mean there are other variables that go into what block scheduling looks like. So sometimes students have fantastic ideas that do need to be listened to and can be implemented. And other times students come in and they, you know, you have one group that wants to do this and one group that wants to do that and then you have to try to figure out how to navigate that. So the intent was not to say that students shouldn't be listened to. but there's a reality point in terms of what can and cannot be implemented. The things that I always love to hear about students is we don't get a whole lot of we don't like the lunch program, you know, kind of mundane kinds of responses

215from students. They are very serious. We need to have more teachers of color. That's something that everybody across the board said the same thing. That's something that should be implemented. and the students had a part of voice in that. So it's not that they, you can't do everything everybody wants you to do, consideration, and look at those things that are practical to do, but sometimes it sparks. you know, the information in terms of looking at, listening to, and yeah, does that sound like a good idea or can we do that or maybe not? I think, Rebecca, that we can add that as part of our board question if we want when we get to that point. I think that's a valid question. Thank you. you did you have anything else no I'm just Rebecca did

216you have anything else oh I would just point out like that makes total sense to me I just want to avoid um our district kind of has a history of listening to people and then doing nothing about what they've heard so that makes total sense to me that came out in the survey yes Ali Yeah, so we're saying students really frequently, and I wanted to specify the age range of students we're talking about. We're a district of 27,000 children, and I would imagine when we're saying students, what we mean is high school-aged young people for the most part. Middle school and high school. Middle school and high school. So there's a whole segment about the majority of our schools are elementary schools. The vast, vast majority of our schools are elementary school. There's a whole

217entire group of young people who it would legitimately be somewhat developmentally inappropriate in this to the fullest extent. I think there is a need to acknowledge when we talk about students, we're talking about kids four years old to 18 or 21. Well, thank you. I really identified with Dr. Hill's comment about we could write about 70 more words and ultimately we want someone to part the Red Sea. Ultimately, you know, during this process, I think all of us are going to be looking for the intangibles to a good leader. And ultimately, the person stepping into this role will be a citywide leader who will be interacting with other entities of local governments to ultimately improve outcomes, families of color in the city, but also maintain the level of... performance that we've seen for some of

218our other students. So I think with telling good stories and telling stories about ourselves, you know, some things that I think are really important that we add to the leadership profile are able to rally a group of people around a few set of priorities that we think should really be focused on, being able to take responsibility for things that arise to your desk. That kind of goes in. But, you know, take responsibility and accountability and being able to build consensus. And that's a really unique person that we're going to be looking for. And as we develop interview questions, I'll find some good Madison-specific questions that can give a sense. where we've been and where we want to go because where we're going is very different from where we've been as a city. I know that

219some of you are relatively new on the board. As you find the person you're interested in you're going to be talking about what are the most important things that you want that person to be working on in the first year. That's a discussion between a board and a new superintendent. And you'll determine the priorities based upon maybe even bringing to the table. So that direction, partnership of that direction, kind of reaches a new level as you get a new person coming in. That's why this process is pretty proactive and positive because it's that whole idea of the marriage here of trying to figure out now if we have to prioritize, we can't do ten things, what are the most important three things? Yeah, I think with some of the Madison-specific questions, it's not only asking

220what they've done before, but giving them scenarios and predicaments of where we're at now. Yes. You know, we just had an international news story, and I want to know how they would respond to that. Well, interestingly enough, one of the suggestions that we have for your second round interview is to have your applicant, your candidate. do a presentation for the board. And you can determine what you want that to be. It can be something that they've already presented. It can be a scenario that you create and you ask them how they would respond to it. You give them a heads up. You give them ahead of time. And again... You don't want to make that the focal point of your second round interview, but you want to make it at least a piece where you

221can then follow up with questions. So I tell candidates, you know, 10, 15 minute presentation so that they don't suck up all of your time presenting, and then an opportunity for a Q&A relative to that presentation. But you want to get to some of the other questions that you've designed that are more a deeper dive into some of the things you may. find out or wonder about from the candidate from the first round so that would definitely speak to being able to have them do those kinds of presentations Chris, did you have a follow-up question, and then we'll close out? I just wanted to clarify process from this point forward. It sounds like we do have some work to do, not just in terms of actually doing the candidate interviews, but figuring out what that

222process is going to look like and what kind of questions we're going to ask. And I just wanted a clarification about how that was going to happen. Yeah, so that's how I was going to close out. So we just got this tonight. The board has an opportunity to review it. Okay, this will be on the agenda. I'm not sure if it will be on Monday's agenda because I think we got a full agenda. But we may add it on to the agenda for Monday. And so we will take steps of process, but it is going to be an opportunity for the board to bring. based on what you've learned from the packet of information bring to the board on what your recommendations are what you want to add I did hear that maybe I think

223from Ali's questions about and sort of my interest in identifying any gaps of people we still need to connect with We are a very diverse board. I think that we have the ability to reach certain groups. So I think by looking at this information, I think I was surprised to see, for example, teachers who conducted the survey was really low. And I'm just curious why that was and if we have to do more engagement with teachers. But I think... to us for our review. We can come back on Monday to give our feedback and provide some direction of where we need to go. Now, what do you want from us tonight? Do you need something specific from us tonight? I'll ask the question kind of retroactively. We will be back on December 4th to present

224the slate of candidates. And that's what we've told all the groups. So if we're going to fool around with that date, we need to let people know. Because, again, in this interest of transparency, we've said that after the closing and after we had our chance to bless you. to review them, then we will come back on December 4th. Okay. According to the calendar, and again, this is the calendar that's on the website, your first round of interviews will occur December 10th, 11th, and 16th. And then on the 17th, you will... And then so from that point, you're going to need to, one of the things you're asking is that you're going to need to set the dates for your visit to the city the day in the district, as well as your second round interview

225coincides with the day in the district, the end of the day. And that, again, has got to be scheduled as something that everybody can do. Tonight, and, you know, Kevin's giving you some leeway, but I want to hear what you think about in concept. You can continue to add to the piece, but this is our report. you and you can continue to massage it and work with it but we want to come back to the community and say this is what we saw this is what we heard unfettered by the board's discussion and the board's consideration and you may add some things to it but that this report in and of itself should be accepted definitely so we just accept it and it'll be no no we have just a second I'm not saying that

226we're gonna do that you guys calm down So tonight you're asking us to accept it. To accept the report. To accept the report. And this report will be available. If I could add to that, remember that if we have a deadline on, we need to start working with the people that we think are our top candidates. And if you could make any additions by Monday at the latest, that would be very helpful. And we will share. with candidates with the additions you made. But if we have concept approval, we can start tomorrow. And then if it's the board's will. But by Monday, if we had to give you a hope, we would have it wrapped up. Great. Kate? Maybe to very directly respond. For me, this report captures our district in a, I think, given

227the complexity, diversity, multitude of very strong opinions that we have, I think this captures our district very well and is certainly something that I would feel comfortable using. as a working concept as you called it Kevin to kind of help to have candidates understand who we are absolutely you know we I'm sure could make it finer point etc as we keep going and maybe we will but in terms of just moving the process along and Starting to help the candidates understand who we are as Madison. I feel I feel comfortable using it. So I think you've done a masterful job and Therefore I cannot vote on it tonight for the sake of I would like to read everything that you give me to give it the fair consideration you put a lot of work in

228it i deserve i think i should put the same amount of effort into reading your results therefore that is why i'm choosing not to at this time okay um we are we are just accepting the report we are not voting to approve um uh the report we are accepting the report i just want to make that clear i'm just saying i can't accept right now um I just have one suggestion on the slide deck that if you actually meant to say equity on a slide deck, that to be reflected, whereas it was written equality and then you said equity. So if you actually meant to say equity to be changed? I think that the wording was what whoever said that said, and I changed it to equity in my presentation. Okay, okay. And I would

229propose that we accept and give three more days. I'd like to make a motion to accept, given that we haven't read, we're receiving it, we're acknowledging that we're receiving this report. Thank you so much. It seems very comprehensive, and I appreciate also the abbreviated PowerPoint presentation, too, standing, and that we are given until a specific date, which I'm hearing. Friday or Sunday night? Suggestions? I'm looking and I don't know. I don't see. I'm trying to find language here. Sunday, 1159. Sunday, 1159. for any future input for us to finalize the meeting and give you feedback on the report. I second that we received it and accept it. Okay. Rebecca, your advisory vote? Aye. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Nay. Okay. You got that? All right. Motion passes. So we have accepted the report. It

230will be available on the internet, on our website tomorrow morning, along with the PowerPoint. Oh, tomorrow afternoon. And it'll be online, and so will the PowerPoint. Anything else that we need to cover tonight? Good. Okay. Thank you, Gloria. Yep. Motion to adjourn? Second. All in favor? Aye. Rebecca, your advisory vote? Aye. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Passes. Aye. Okay. Sorry. I did that backwards.