12-5-2022 School Board Meeting

001really sick a woman yeah exactly so you're like okay foreign it is seven o'clock we'll call this meeting to order Dr mitsik has this meeting been posted yes it has and we will roll call will show that all five board members are present and we'll start with the Pledge of Allegiance foreign I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with Liberty justice for all right um looks like we've got a crowd here tonight we have some commendations that I'm going to be happy to introduce a few groups tonight we'll start with the Greendale High School Marching Band which is comprised of 173 students the title showed writing on the wall featured music from the hit Broadway show Hamilton

002it took they took first place at the state championships at uw-whitewater winning the championship for the 17th consecutive season the group was also the highest scoring band across all divisions and brought home awards for best visual music and percussion the marching band also competed this fall in shows in Wheeling Illinois Oak Creek and Milton Wisconsin and hosted our annual marching band Invitational in October featuring 12 bands from across from Wisconsin and Illinois in November the marching band competed at the bands of America grand national championships in India Indianapolis alongside 99 bands from around the country finishing with the 54th highest score of all groups regardless of division the band concluded its season by marching an 8 degree wind chills in the televised Magnificent Mile Holiday Lights Festival parade on Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago this

003Festival Parade has been a favorite performance of the bands for years and the group is preparing for a return to the National stage when Marching In the 97th annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in 2023. the band is represented this evening by drum Majors Lillian Doss Amy joswick Eliana kiltz and Anita Walker alongside band director Liz Parsons band director Tom riefenberg is the PA announcer for all varsity basketball games so he is currently down in the gym announcing tonight's boys basketball game so a special thank you to miss Parsons for being present tonight and congratulations to all of our band students then we'll ask that you come forward we have a certificate for you we have two certificates okay and then angle yourselves no we're good okay I'll take three more [Applause] do you I don't

004know if you guys have anything you want to say about your experience this year but it's pretty um it was a really good year um it was a hard show and the kids really took it and ran with it lots of improvements this year and um Eliana couldn't be here tonight but these three along with Eliana really did an amazing job representing the band so it was a really good year I just wanted to add to I mean it's one thing to become number one it's a lot harder to stay at the top so congratulations nice job everyone [Applause] all right next is our palms group and in recognition of the Greendale Palms winning the title of 2022 Midwest Grand Champion small Varsity the team faced some very tough competition at the prestigious event held

005in Chicago area not only did they win four team categories in the small Varsity division they also won first place overall and the coveted title of the best in the midwest additionally the team's hip-hop routine placed second senior Captain Savannah kloppenbach and Ashley Turtle won second place senior kick line and in the solo contest Savannah was a semi-finalist in the Palm Division and sophomore Addie Benning was a semi-finalist in the dance division as a result of their accomplishments they once again will perform in Disney World as part of the All-Star Talent tour in February congratulations to our pumps let's give them a hand s the less tall people are going to come into the front please ready one one two congratulations um we just really appreciate uh the recognition and support that the district gives

006us um we're rare in that um we get so much support compared to our competitors and we are viewed as a sport we appreciate it so very much it's a very talented hard-working dedicated group of young women so I'm really really proud of them and look forward to the rest of our season thank you awesome congratulations and you definitely are a sport when I've watched you perform I could never imagine in my wildest dreams doing some of the things you ladies do so congratulations okay next on our agenda thank you for all the families that came tonight too next on our agenda is our Communications from Dr mitsik do you have any Communications this evening I do congratulations to Greendale Varsity Cheer and the high school band on their bids to UCA Nationals in February

0072023 Varsity Cheer received two invitations to participate one for their traditional routine and another for its Game Day live routine the cheer team and band are partnering for the game day live routine a 40-member band group will join the cheerleaders on the floor for this competition the school board Academy is set for Thursday December 15th from 6 30 to 8 PM in the district office if you are interested in attending please RSVP to sue Patterson at 414-423-2702 so she can prepare materials for all participants Winter concert weeks are here our students are showcasing their learning in music classes and concerts over the next two weeks we are excited to welcome our families to the concerts at Greendale high school and Greendale Middle School please check out the district website for dates times and locations winter

008break first Greendale school students and staff runs Thursday December 22nd through Monday January 2nd School resumes on Tuesday January 3rd 2023. an anonymous donation of 400 was received at the Park and Recreation Department and a donation of three thousand dollars was received for the Greendale High School robotics team this generation generous donation was received from Carolee Butler we are grateful for the ongoing support of our community and thank you and that concludes my communications I'd like to invite the students to provide some Communications and an update on what's going on at the schools there we go all right uh so the student Equity team is preparing for uh Martin Luther King Martin Luther King Day of Service on January 16th from four to six at the Marcus performing arts center and the members of the

009student Equity team are planning how to include our high school students in this day of service by holding some events at the school then student council is beginning to like create Locker decks to put up for our schools for all our members and we're hoping that this promotes like belonging in our community and show that our members are valued among the student body excellent thank you both um for that update and we are going to go on to Citizen comments next from visitors I'm just got a little script I'll be sharing uh welcome to all those who will be speaking this evening we would like to remind you that the board meetings are for the purpose of carrying on the business of the district they are official business meetings held in public through school board

010policy 186 the board allows citizens to make comments by scheduling two opportunities on the agenda to receive citizen comments in accordance with the intent of open meetings law Please be aware that although the Board of Education welcomes comments from the public it cannot discuss or debate items brought up during public comments in order to hear from all citizens who wish to speak and to ensure that the official business of the district is addressed board policy sets a time limit for citizen Commons we will be adhering to that board policy and its time limits at tonight's meeting persons wishing to address the board are asked to come to the podium and state their name and address for the record comments are limited to only one time individuals who will be speaking will be limited to three

011minutes citizens comments are limited to a period not to exceed 30 minutes thank you so has anyone wish to speak tonight good evening good evening my name is Matt Godley and I'm speaking on behalf as vice president of page people advocating for Greendale equity would you mind also your address for the record oh 5331 Mill Bank Road thank you on tonight's agenda is a discussion of The District's Public Policy priorities intended to create and I quote the foundation for conversations with our local politicians as well as key points to share during legislative hearings that occur on these issues during the next two years while these proposed priorities clearly outline important goals for our schools page is surprised that none of them seem to address equity and inclusion given the difficulties Greendale has had and continues

012to have in these areas and given recent efforts that the schools have made to address those difficulties in faculty and administrative hiring as well as curriculum it is disappointing that they're not your that these efforts are not reflected in your proposed policy priorities the work that you have done and further work that Paige and others continue to call upon you to do to improve the experience of all all students are endangered by current trends particularly in the state legislature indeed after the recent redistricting master of Greendale is now represented in the State Assembly by the author of a 2021 Bill seeking to ban from curriculum such topics and terms as social emotional learning anti-racism culturally responsive teaching intersectionality restorative justice racial Justice and unconscious bias now I say that greendale's representative wrote this bill but

013of course it was in all likelihood written by Alec or some other such National Think Tank churning out pre-written bills to State and local politicians across the country undermining local government control in favor of a broader agenda to his great credit this school board has on numerous occasions voted for measures intended to ensure that all in our schools feel welcomed and included measures such as the 2021 bill will undermine or even reverse that and similar bills are almost certainly being drafted for future legislative sessions making our representative aware that one of the most successful school districts in his area opposes such crude and externally sourced measures might be enough to convince him that his effort is mistaken if this board wants truly to Once truly wants green Delta become to be a district that welcomes

014all it should make defending and extending its efforts towards diversity equity and inclusion a top policy priority thank you thank you for your comments and I guess we will be discussing the public policy priority so I appreciate your input good evening uh Brian Bach 6008 Clover Lane I just want to come up and address two points the first I would like to after reviewing and announcing all the comments from Dr Mystic previously uh commend our teachers in this school district that all the hard work that they've done over the past year it's really impressive to see the changes and I'd like to give a shout out to College Park a five-star School in our own District obviously we have a lot of schools achieving great but that's pretty awesome the second one I'd like to

015speak out for is a positive change I know there's a discussion about the replacing the stop it at with stand up and stand out after some review and personal reflection just kind of looking through it and having discussions with my own kids I would like you guys to really address and take a look at that as a supportive parent just on the idea that the change in the way that things are reported it seems a lot less punitive in the language and how the app operates or how the children and can kind of write and Report information versus the stop it which feels like it's your tattletailing is kind of how it comes off and so I feel like that that would give it a better and a safer environment for our kids so I'd

016strongly advocate for you guys to consider and look at that forward thank you thank you hey anybody else wish to speak tonight one to action item one which is the approval of our regular meeting minutes from November 21st so if there's not any discussion I'll look for a motion I move approval of the regular board meeting minutes of November 21st 2022. we have a motion and a second to approve approve regular meeting minutes of November 21st any further discussion seeing none will take a roll call yes yes yes yes yes and I'm yes motion carries our next item on here is the approval of the safety plan we heard from Mr Lotus at our last meeting and Dr mitsik I don't know if there's anything else you want to add uh tonight's action approves it

017and it will be signed by the clerk and submitted to the state if you have any questions Mr Lotus did stay to be able to respond to those questions for you um and the speak up speak out is something that was mentioned in the safety report last time the safety plan says that we will have an anonymous reporting system and he shared that we are considering a transition but that is not which tool we use is not voted on in the safety plan but we are certainly taking that into consideration okay thank you for that update so any questions or further discussion regarding the safety plan appreciate Mr Lotus being here tonight too any further okay seeing none then I'll look for a motion to approve the safety plan I move approval of the safety

018plan out as outlined an agenda item to also again we have a motion in a second to prove the safety plan as it's listed in item number two any further discussion if not we'll take a roll call yes yes yes yes yes and I'm yes motion carries next on our agenda is the update on the Esser funds and number four so um I think Mr Mitchell maybe will be the person yes she'll address it so we provide an update in your report our three rounds of Esser so to break that down a little bit that first round of essers fully expended and we had reported on that previously that that was utilized and that that deadline has passed the next round of stimulus funding is sr2 and there's a requirement there that that be expended

019by the end of September in 2023 we've expended 56 percent to date we continue to use that for supporting additional nursing staff that we have in our buildings personal protective equipment and the largest portion of that remaining funding will be dedicated towards our continued upgrade of HVAC equipment in the district so you know with the sr3 funding we invested in the UN events at Highland View as we've continued in our facility prioritization work we've identified provide additional priority areas for HVAC and have teams that are working on bidding that work out for summer of 2023 so that we can use those funds within the timeline that we have available we're going to make sure that that's strategic around the areas that are in highest need for investment because those are one-time funds that we've got

020available so we've spent about 56 percent so that remaining funding there's about 470 000 we would anticipate spending by the end of summer and meeting that timeline the third source of funding is sr3 so I mentioned one of the large expenditures there in univent investment of the 2.4 million that's available there we've split funding as well with our instructional support Specialists and so that's intended to bring our overall investment of all the Esser funding into basically a 50 50 balance of remediation and protecting our users of our facilities and then investment in that recovery and so those educational Investments and the instructional support Specialists and Miss Olson has provided updates to the board of how those Investments are supporting our infrastructure so we can get our students caught up and continue to push an academic

021rigor for all of our students across the district So currently we've spent 1.6 million of the 2.4 million available so we have about 800 000 remaining we have until September of 2024 to fully expend those funds we anticipate the the majority of those dollars will also be fully expended by the end of summer 2023. so with that I'd be happy to answer any questions that you have about how we're utilizing These funds to meet the needs of our students and school community great thank you for this update so any discussion about the Esser funds where we're at with that just a couple of comments um thank you Mr Mitchell for for this update I think these periodic updates on the Esther funding shows a great opportunity to be transparent with the community to allow everyone

022to know how we are spending the funding and I think you know even though it's spelled out in in the funding I think we've done a nice job of really focusing on some some safety issues with HVAC but also balancing that with some Innovation and some student learning making sure that that's that we're being Innovative and that we continue to um make sure that we close the gap or address any issues any learning loss issues so I think that's been important coupled with that you know you talk about the instructional support specialists um I think we've seen some very good results with the team there so so kudos to the team and and Maggie thank you I think you know over the next year as we start looking forward um I would be in support

023of finding ways to fund those positions so that you know we can build that into the budget right now they're being funded and supplemented by the Esser funds which has been great for us I think we've seen the results that we need to find a way to fund them going forward so from my perspective I think that would be an important priority for the future budgets all right good point how many instructional or Sports Specialists do we have as far as we have five instructional support Specialists one at each elementary school and then two at the middle school one focused on reading language arts and one focused on math any other questions or comments on that I'd like to Echo what Mr corpito said in his comments I I think we have been very Innovative

024with the funding and truly have utilized the Monies to to the needs that Greendale students and staff have so I want to thank you for the well thought out I mean there was public input at one point suggestions I think we even helped fund with the robotics team at one point but clearly the this balance between our facilities and our students is very important so I want to commend you on that and all the work with those support staff and I would Echo again what was said that you know if we can find a way to continue that support I think the learning expectations are going to continue after the funding runs out so if we can do that that would be excellent okay anything else all right we will move on to the next

025item which is number five our review of our public priorities uh Dr mitzik if you want to start off with that yes in the packet there is a one-page document that includes a number of public policy priorities some are continuations of areas that continue to be a need and have not been addressed in previous um legislative cycles and there are a couple of new ones that have been updated you heard citizen comment this evening that there may be a gap in what is included in the public policy priorities and certainly this is part of a discussion tonight we are not taking action we are reviewing reflecting refining and bringing that back on January 9th the the most significant ones that are included here is the increase in per pupil Revenue limits for school districts that

026mirror the rate of inflation as we are talking about cost of living and increases for staff of which 80 percent of our funds are allocated because we are a service business that keeping up with the rate of inflation without subsequent opportunities to increase revenue for those services are difficult and so it's recommended that we ask the state legislature to increase Revenue limits in alignment with the cost of inflation and the other area that is in here that is aligned with one of the goal the Strategic priorities was to develop a funding source that supports public-private Partnerships to serve and support families who may not be choosing who may be choosing homeschooling and so at this point homeschool families are seeking resources and looking for resources we have established a partnership with the field Workshop around

027opportunities for students to engage in our schools it's part of the priority around Innovation to remain a district of destination so that we can continue to serve all of our families even those that are choosing homeschooling so this would be an opportunity to consider that the other area you see that there's some strikethrough in Talent Development and management really what we are looking at is addressing deeper teacher pipeline issues and whatever we have to do to do that we had specific strategies in the previous public policy priorities but we don't think it's necessary to outline any specific strategies really we are looking to adjust the shortage of teachers and the teacher Pipeline and whatever legislation can help with that would be what we would be asking for if there are discussion points things that you

028would like to revise within these things that you would like to add I open the floor for discussion okay so we've got the public priority public priority policies in front of us or public policy priorities in front of us so are there any questions or comments so I just wanted to summarize then these are the priorities that we would go forward with legislatively um and and just kind of a statement if adopted as a public if it when approved by the board they become items that any board member can speak to on behalf of the board rather than as an individual um because you have discussed in public and taken action to support these areas um at in many times you would not be a speaking on behalf of the board your policy says that

029the president might speak on behalf of the board depending on what the circumstances are and so by approving this this would give you the ability to speak as a member of the board not as an individual Citizen and so that's the reason that you would approve this and one one example of that is they have the joint finance committee meets every biennium you have opportunities around the state to go and speak um and this would be one opportunity we've actually provided our elected officials with our actual public policy priorities in the past where we've hand delivered them and have members also speak so that would be one example we also have a day at the Capitol coming up in March where it will be a great opportunity to meet with our elected officials and to

030share these public policy priorities and can you also recap just for the sake of anyone listening in because we've we've we've spent a lot of time talking about these prior to this right some of them we have had on here in previous years and some of them are new and so you're asking us to just discussion if there are things on this list that the board says you know what we don't want to pursue that or advocate for that and it should come off the list you know it says this but I'd like to refine it to address this or this is missing and we should address it one of the areas that the citizen comment said was missing was specific or on Equity there was discussion in previous years around advocating for local control

031and that curricular issues should be left up to local control so that would be a space that you could consider or if you wanted to look at additional measures that would be something that we could include and are these grouped in a certain they're grouped into four categories at this time one is fine Financial one is transparency and accountability one is talent development and management and one is health and wellness but not for any other reason other than they fall under those summary I mean these are not legislative areas or no these are not legislative areas but they do help organize the ideas and what we're looking to advocate for I think that this has been um a good opportunity to kind of provide guidelines and provide some input to our conversations with the state

032whether it be our legislators or where exactly but it provides that framework to say this is what we as a board not individuals but we as a board would like to see from the state yes I have a question it says it's one of the under health and wellness it says support Early Learning and Development by allowing districts to count fully for your kindergarten what do you mean by that currently in state funding um children in 4k in the state funding formula count for 0.6 of the funding regardless of half day or full day so as long as they're in school up to a half day you can count the 0.6 if they are in school all day you can still only count the 0.6 so they're not recognizing in the funding formula that all

033day 4K requires All Day 4k funding and so the recommendation is is that when allocating resources when calculating the revenue limit that 4K children could be counted as full day if they are in school all day and right now we've had discussions in the last pre-pandemic we had discussions about should we extend our half Day 4k to allow for a full day 4K option and from a financial perspective we would be almost doubling costs and yet we would not be able to adjust revenue and so the cost it's cost prohibitive for us to be able to extend a full day yeah and I do think an all-day 4K is kind of important I feel um the 5K I think when kids are going into 5K it would probably be a smoother transition than what what's

034happening now I agree that I think that's a good point um and and if if we could get us to that full day that would open that conversation more for us as a district to see about extending that 4K um the report that we delivered in May of 2020 I can't remember what year it was I believe in May of 2020 we delivered a report that indicated that um while 4K all day would be may be beneficial academically from a funding perspective we did not have the resources available to increase to that level because the cost would increase but the revenue would not do we know if there's a demand for 4K a full day long okay I can review that report but yes at the time of the report there was an interest in

035expanding to all-day 4K and there are a number of districts that had moved from Half Day 4k to all-day 4K and in those situations um they had a choice in the first few years and within two years 100 of the students were choosing full day so yeah well from my like my personal perspective we always had our kids go to St else because it was an all-day 4K um two of my three are like very young so they have like July and August birthdays so for them it was really helpful to um like know what to just to be able to to stick it out for a full day um so then the transition to 5K was easier there's an indication that at least um there's an indication through our wraparound care for 4K the

036demand for an all-day program and so right now families that use the wraparound care are paying for that half day of child care and they're in the same space and in the same building as the 4K and so that that indicates a demand for a number of families that would choose an all-day program as opposed to a part Day program and wraparound care and what you're hearing from Tasha is similar to stories that we hear from other families and sometimes we lose families to open enrollment or to private schools because they choose an all-day 4K program in another setting and stay there for their Elementary School years if I wrap around your timeout Bridges yes care for kids is the 4K version just for my clarification the public policy um priority it's it really speaks

037to it doesn't speak to whether or not we should pursue that what it does is say we should eliminate any Financial disincentive correct so that we as a district can make the determination we as a community can decide whether or not that's something we want to pursue but right now when we Advocate to the state our our advocacy is aligned with the state disincentivizes districts from going to an all-day because of the financial burden we'd like them to remove that so that we as a district can determine whether or not it's something viable for us or something needed and wanted for the community that's an excellent way to say that yes anything else um are we done with that discussion um we're still on the public policy sure I was I would ask my fellow

038board members to consider um adding uh the following um public policy um priority promote Equity PBIS and restorative practice curriculum decisions um to be made at local levels get that Mary sure promote equity PBIS and restorative practice curriculum decisions to be made at local levels do you have a one of the categories that you see that going under I think it's going to have to be in its own category wouldn't you say Dr medzik it could be it could also be under transparency and accountability because it is saying that you as a board would like to be accountable and have transparency at the local level sure that sounds good so is this inclusive of like social emotional learning curriculum we could add that as well yeah we could add that PBIS SEL that's a good

039suggestion I think anything that promotes local decisions I'd be supportive of again it's we're not advocating one thing or the other we're just saying this area of curriculum we would like to be in control of that and we don't want to have the state I always said I don't need Madison to tell me what to do here in Greenfield I'd agree with that right with the talent development and management I didn't know um and that and this is speaking to our citizen comment as well tonight but we have taken efforts in Greendale to try to diversify our staff and so I was just wondering if the wording in there could include some sort of language to you know so we're talking about teacher pipeline issues to reflect the demographics of our our student body or

040yeah student student body student body yeah that's it so could you share what you're thinking in terms of what that would look like support initiatives to address teacher pipeline issues and reflective of the demographics in our student body does that is that a good summary Kathy I think that that sounds good I just know we've done quite a bit of work in that area to the credit of Julie grotaforce and her work I I don't think it's something that we should diminish and you know let them know at the state level that this is something that we focus on I'm sorry I just typed it in the actual document posted I will take that out and then after the discussion today um Dr mitsik then these would be published and we would all be these

041would be brought back for you to take action and approve that these public policy priorities can be used for conversations on behalf of the board okay clarify that anything else that anyone has okay we will take those back and make some adjustments and bring them back to you for approval at the January 9th meeting excellent thank you all right moving on we are on to the policies um and I know two of our board members uh board Clerk crepito and vice president Grogan have been part of working with Neola we were given a link you could have gone one or of two ways to check out the policies in our bylaws um which is what we're looking at for tonight we're not set to take action on these yet but now would be a good

042time to share your thoughts on any of these policies so I don't know if there's anything specific you wanted to touch on first Dr mizik so the the policy committee did spend approximately nine hours going through this so I understand that we should we probably don't want to spend any time this board meeting going through each and every policy so I would suggest that those policies as you've read through if there are some items within policies that you wish to discuss and address we can certainly do that but what we'll be doing is discussing the bylaws tonight we'll bring those back to the board on January 9th if there is further discussion at that point we can continue discussing the bylaws otherwise we can give a tentative approval and if you'll recall we won't be

043the reason it will be tentative approval is because we will approve all of them for a transition on July 1st so that all of the policy switch simultaneously the purpose of this policy review is really to make a transition into a new system not to make sweeping changes to the spirit the direction the intent of the policies so there were a couple of policies in this where there were some decision points that are slightly different than what we've had in past policy that you may want to discuss but the policy committee really attempted to remain intact the intention and the spirit of our existing policies rather than making broad changes to them so if there are specific policies you want to discuss we can come back and take a look at those now I'd like

044to just remind people that we as a board decided to go with Neola we're sort of late adopters to Neola and one of the advantages to this program or to this you know um platform yeah platform is a better word thank you um is that all of these policies are vetted by State Statute and backed by educational law so uh they're updated more frequently they'll be easier to use by board members parents residents they're easier to search and if you know in most cases we did adopt the Neola language uh because of that because it was vetted by State Statute and educational lawyers had reviewed the exact language in very few cases did we end up adopting our current language that you know we've been using up until this point in time so hey so

045what are some thoughts on this that we had quite a few to go through as Dr mizik said we're not going to try to change every single thing tonight but there might be some things that you have questions about or thoughts on no I had just uh asked Dr mizik earlier about the medical advisor and I think we're still working on that yes we um earlier this year I had asked for recommendations for who to recruit and a lot of the recommendations we had nurse practitioners and Physicians assistants we did see clarification on that and it is required to be a medical doctor so our emergency medical plans this year have been collaboratively reviewed with the health department under the advice the guidance of the Health Department's medical advisor and we now have two medical

046doctors that we're talking with and will bring forward a medical advisor recommendation next month I I think I'd like to highlight too that in reviewing these policies we ended up saving the district some money with the meeting notice um policy I don't know if you want to review yes that is helpful so for a number of years we had been um the wasb had been lobbying for um not being required to submit notice in and condensed minutes to newspapers and there was some pushback there that we've been paying to submit those to the newspaper and what we learned with Neola is because we no longer have a quote-unquote local newspaper it is no longer required and so we can provide that notice simply on our website and public posting we no longer need to pay

047for inclusion in the newspaper so that was new learning as we were reviewing this policy and it's not required by policy and is not required by law excellent and it still does indicate the fact that we're posting and and it should absolutely be publicly available what was happening though is that there was a an expense to the board to pay the newspaper to print it when we have many ways and many vehicles to provide that information directly to our our families and community one question I had as I looked through all these policies and having served on the policy committee before we used to have it more personalized to our district and would say Greendale School District or Greendale school board and I'm finding in these policies like for instance and under Authority number 121

048I I feel that it would be best for us to still keep that at you know so that we're not just referring to any District but that we actually specify I don't know if there was any discussion about that there was and uh the language that Neola um uses you know in for example they used administrator instead of superintendent and so we uh we do we are having them we preferred the word superintendent versus administrator District administrator um but as far as board I mean it's the Greendale you're going into the Greendale school boards um policies and so it was a redundant I think to say Greendale school board over and over again um it was just you know in an effort to be um more efficient from a language standpoint they just refer to

049it as the board any thoughts on that doctor there are a couple of spots where um things of that nature come up and the first one which is zero zero zero zero is listed as definitions and so it allows for brevity in the policy because we Define it in other spaces for example she mentioned the superintendent anytime we say superintendent what we mean by that is the administrative head of the school district is referred to as superintendent but has the authority of the district administrator by law in policy capitalization of the term superintendent May imply delegation of responsibilities as appropriate to staff members so rather than saying District administrator or designee by definition when you say superintendent it could be a designee same thing with the board whenever we say the board it refers to

050the Greendale Board of Education so it is not necessary to repeat it in numerous policies as it is provided what it means in the definitions I think I'll go ahead Joe to have a consistency so that we're not referring it to one time as the school district of Greendale versus you know the school board of Greenville versus Greenville School District provide you know a clarification and consistency so that this is what we mean um when we refer to this term and and I did find in our past or well current policies still that there was a lot of uh confusion with that because there are times we would use different verbiage and we were trying to straighten that out I know so um so yeah and I see in here most often it says this

051District this District it's not saying You Know A District well remember it's a in in the legal world you you know that's what they first they would Define what they mean by these terms and then they use those same terms over and over again and so that's why we're moving more to legal language in these policies again that have been vetted by State Statute and can be defended in a court of law if they were challenged um I wanted to highlight or remind my fellow board members when they're reviewing these that anything that's highlighted in green was previous language that we had in our policies that are still in place until July 1st and then the pink uh were Suggestions by Neola and anything in just black and white was the actual Neola language so

052and in most cases we did adopt the Neola language again because it's been vetted by State Statute and can be defended in a court of law so anything Mary just clarify you're seeing that in the draft version yes yes at the pdf version correct thank you for clarifying yes just the board members are viewing the draft version so all the green is in our current language yes so I had a question that is important to know what what Joe just said what the board is able to review the drafts using the system that's behind the scenes in order to make sure that the public has access to the drafts it is printed it is a spooled PDF on the website and so they are not seeing the green and red in that draft that's out

053there publicly so so from an internal perspective you can see the the revisions and the track changes that would be available to people um at some point but they are seeing the the finalized language so they can't see what the changes the track changes that you are seeing highlight two and encourage my fellow board members to note that uh special meetings when we were viewing the special meetings policy that the law says upon the written request of any board member to the clerk or in the clerk's absence the school board president the clerk sets the date and the time of the special meeting and I only bring that up because that did come up during the 21-22 school year mm-hmm that is a that is a change because it it was originally the date and

054time we're in question and there was a lack of clarity in the policy so the fact that it it identifies what the clerk will do with the request is um valuable that is a good point in looking at I know this is current language and looking at [Music] 142.5 vacancies uh no I apologize um hold on I had it pulled up here actually 166. I know it's current in our policy and we're not necessarily trying to change our policy but I just happen to read in there um that we are we have a two-day calendar before agendas are sent out and um I I don't know if that was it sounds like that was always the case but I was wondering you know if other districts or if we can consider three for that just

055because if it's three days it would be on a weekday that we're getting it still obviously having the weekend to prepare for it but this is policy and nothing precludes you from delivering it early but policy would um require that we not deliver it late and you are assuming that the board meeting will always be on Monday that's true if it was on a Wednesday you would probably not want it on the Sunday before so um that this gives us the flexibility that it would be no later than two days before but it could certainly be sooner okay and that's a good point Dr mincy because our consultant with um Neola really stressed that is that we need to be we need to be aware that we don't want to be out of policy on

056day one you know so the policy um make sure that it's written to ensure that we're consistently in compliance um but like Dr um said there's nothing to preclude us from our normal practice to be um better than that or or things like that but sure I wanted to make sure that we aren't out of compliance oh that makes sense and that's a good point we don't always have Monday meetings um anything else what are some other things that you might have noted I I'd like to just remind people that the school board is accountable to the public and only the public can remove or not re-elect a board member so we're each responsible to our constituents and the electorate and that came up um that was another you know policy that in terms of

057enforcing there's no no none of us that can censure or reprimand another elected official and then I and this will be no surprise to the policy committee because I brought this up pretty extensively in our committee but under policy zero one seven five point one the board conferences conventions and workshops uh the Neola language is actually much broader than our current policy so if you if you have a chance it's it's zero one seven five point one school board conferences conventions and workshops so what's in white and what's black and white is the Neola language and it's much broader than our current language which is very specific so I just would urge my fellow board members to make sure that they read and review and reflect on that one because this is if there is

058going to be any changes or amendments to policies this would be the time now I know we do we lose all of the previous um revision dates and all of that that's usually at the end of our policies we always had when things have been actually revised it will not be active because it's a new policy so it will not be on the current ones but there is not but the previous policies will be archived and available to know when we looked at that policy previous to this Neola review well that's another Plus for Neola because every time there is a policy change Neola keeps a record of it so if there's a legal challenge that comes up like if someone comes back to the school district and says I was bullied in fifth grade

059Neola can go back to that exact school year and let us know as a board what what the bullying policy was at that moment in time five years ago ten years ago so that's the other you know super advantage to going with Nola their record keeping is meticulous how long do they keep the records for from the data once you're paying the bill you can never they're never yeah that's a good point um so going back to your 175.1 um would that take um I mean I would like to maybe have discussion on maybe we are too specific there and 175.1 yeah what is that what I thought that's what yeah 175.1 um and and is it necessary to have that specific language in there I mean as I said earlier um for the majority

060of the policies we adopted the Neola language for the reasons I've stated over and over tonight it's vetted by State Statute it's backed by educational law um what are you pointing at this and so ours argue on 175.1 yeah I'm okay asking yeah so though what's two everything in green so everything in green um you don't have colors oh you're looking at the PDF okay so so there's a portion A and B and um it just talks about um attending different meetings workshops and conventions and we're very specific to that and I did I did actually do some looking with some other districts and reached out to some other school boards and if we do seem to be very like um very linear in that or I I don't know I um I don't know

061if that's a discussion we want to talk about now or if that's something that we would ask in our next meeting well there will be a second reading um if you log into the board docs that's where you can see the actual draft because I'm I'm comfortable with what's written there um I think we adopted this or the board um I wasn't on the board at the time but I think it was originally adopted um after the board was sending all five board members to San Diego and other things like that and I think there was some criticism from the community in that that was probably not the best use of finances so I I think by eliminating the number of board members that were going and we don't say that you it's limited altogether

062but we're saying if you want more than two we as a board need to vote on it in public open public meeting so I'm comfortable with how it's outlined there yeah I'm comfortable with that I just feel I mean some of some of these workshops or conventions I think it's good to just send one as you know the person and then they can bring back the information and share it with the rest of the board I don't necessarily think that all of the board members need to attend the same Workshop okay I mean we're not voting on it tonight this is the first reading but it's good to discuss it um again I would just emphasize that any time we keep our own language previous language we would have to pay our own District our

063district attorney if it was challenged whereas the Neola language has been vetted by State Statute and is backed by their educational lawyers that we is paid for by our membership so that's why I'm more apt to go with the Neola language than any of our old language um if I can just go back to 175 the association memberships to I think um our language before just specified nsba is that correct and now we're looking at another National so it looks like they're making it more generic that was a specific discussion of the policy committee that wasb and SBA were too specific um that it were really referring to any organization that the board would be members of so this opens up essentially the policy before was so restrictive that you couldn't become a member of

064another organization it had to be the one listed in policy so to say regional state or national organizations that support school boards gives you the flexibility to select which members which organizations you want to participate in okay so and then I'd also encourage my fellow board members to review 167.7 use of personal communication devices if you if you actually log into the board docs you'll see that the Neola at the committee struck some of the naola language what happens with Neola is they make suggestions on some of their policies that you can adopt or not adopt there is some flexibility with some of the policies so just make sure that in this age of digital communication that you review the use of personal communication devices policy before we vote so they crossed out their is

065that a Neola that's well that was the committee committee recommended so those were choices those are you know they give there are times when they give you a choice and there's some flexibility and the committee decided to the pink to be crossed out but as Kim was saying this is you know if if if as a board we would want to change that language that was this is what the committee did obviously the full board has the power to add or amend any of that yeah I think the concern with this one specifically was um I I I'll speak for myself I was particularly concerned that as as we are part of as we are board members sitting in an open meeting that we should not be texting other board members we should not be

066texting community members we shouldn't be having a separate conversation with with people during a board meeting yeah and I brought up um that you know five or six years ago school board members weren't even allowed to have a laptop at the table so we do have to keep in mind that we are all living in a digital age and I wasn't referring to devices I was just saying we shouldn't be having separate Communications that we're not having in a public forum sure I guess I was less less focused on the devices it more focused on having the actions having alternative conversation sure so it is something to definitely read and review before we vote because um it you know obviously all of these policies affect board members and board actions so um and then of

067course there's a whole slew of other policies coming up after these that we'll be reading and reviewing as well administrative policies professional staff policies support staff policies student policies Financial policies and so on I did like um and I don't know if that was a catch or what but in policy 122 where you Incorporated of school functions because I think that's very important that anything that is part students or staff are partaking in that has to do with our schools functions is really important to include so I thought that was a good Edition anything else I know this is a lot to look at we have a lot more we will be looking at this is just the beginning so yeah so there's a second reading and and then at that time we would do

068the second reading if there's not a substantial change to one of the policies we'll do a tentative approval um of the book of bylaws okay anything else for the conflict of interest one I know we're having a teacher shortage in substitute teacher shortage it's hard to find good help with coaching the youth if that continues or worsens do we I'd hate to get locked into not being able to have board member be able to help out in schools and that was a good point and I don't know if Julie grota Force we discussed a little bit you might want to explain I think there's State statutes that actually surround that yes I believe that's true that state statute limits employment of school board members okay however there is kind of a caveat that volunteer coaches

069can serve on school board members so this came out a couple years ago from some of the smaller rural districts where their employment status became was a volunteer so a board member could volunteer to coach or be a club advisor on a volunteer basis by volunteer you mean not get paid right right but I'm saying that's like if you want to come and help out with like the Freshman baseball team or right you can help out yeah you can't be on the payroll right would that carry over to substitute if if a individual wanted to help out because of the shortage could they do that or not you could not get paid not no they couldn't vote could they volunteer to would you accept volunteer substitutes yes I mean I think it's a conversation that

070we would need to have just in terms of the district expectations around a volunteer and what their level of responsibility would be in charge of a classroom sure I mean I'm assuming you still have to have the credentials that would be required to do that okay good oh which are first for substitute teachers just a college degree correct what credentials do you need for to be correct and dpia certified training oh okay and license training okay and background check oh background checks sure yeah okay all right well I think yeah that's I was gonna I have some notes on conflict of interest since Rob since uh board member koblasco brought it up see if I can find him because that does come up more often um than you would expect so all right so it's

071something you could bring up better yeah I can bring it up okay time sure okay all right I think we've discussed that pretty in depth and um again here I'm sorry I found it oh okay okay just that I just have a note here to for my fellow board members to definitely read the Neola language carefully on conflict of interest um and even if you don't take any money actually I have a note here that says even if you don't take any money um you can't you can't part you know you can't do two jobs at once because uh a substitute is an incapability clause you can be a volunteer coach but if you ex you know that there's also a criminal statute attached to this conflict of interest um so maybe we should just

072get some more clarification on this is the only two question yeah and the substitute and you obviously you can't be an employee and an employer so as a school board member you're considered an employer of the district so then you can't go and also become an employee but but let's um let's maybe uh we can get we can do the vacation from the Neola person because that's a good one to review yeah and it says coach or supervisor so I would assume that a substitute would fall under supervisory but maybe not I don't know okay um but we'll move on then and bring any other questions you have to our next meeting uh when we are set to discuss and vote on it all right number seven part of our work session tonight is looking

073at the academic benchmarking report from 2021-22 and the data so Dr mitsik I'll let you take that one away there is much to celebrate and I am just going to turn it over to miss Olson to share the good news yes I'm very excited to be here this afternoon no this evening um to talk about academic Benchmark we will be looking at um how our students performed on state assessments we'll also be talking about some different benchmarking districts and how students in Greendale perform compared to other districts and will also be discussing Trends and positive Trends and some things that we also need to work on so um we are I want to start us with the fact that there's going to be a lot of numbers that we're going to be looking at but

074every number has a face and every Stu every number is a student so even if we have one student who's not being successful that's a child and a parent who loves them so I just want to ground Us in that because I think that's really important so one of the things that I say all the time is all means all and that's all of the faces that are in our schools um every single one of our children and how important that is and I know all of our families love all of their students and they are their biggest cheerleaders and I know as a board you also are huge cheerleaders of the children and we are so lucky to have the Educators that cheer on our children as well and when we're looking at this

075data today I want us to honor that each point is one of these faces we are held accountable to several different entities around this data um the office of civil rights will federal standpoint the Department of Public Instruction from the state Wisconsin we're talking a lot about the legislator and the laws that hold us accountable um so these this is what our district has held from a data standpoint and so we're looking at attendance we're looking at forward scores which is a summative end of the year exam that looks at how our kids are doing on the standards and that test is taken third rule eighth grade and in 10th grade social studies and then we have the Act and the ACT Aspire which are high school exams and then we also have our Dynamic

076learning Maps which are exams to um examine how our students are doing who are on alternative curriculum so these might be students who have more significant disabilities and are not their instruction is not aligned to the Wisconsin academic standards but are to the alternative academic standards also were held accountable to graduation rates disproportionality which means that we have certain groups of demographic groups that may or may not be outperforming each other we need to make sure that all means all and that we are doing due diligence around Reading Readiness and sharing that all of our kids have access to reading the foundational skills and we're giving our students Universal screeners to ensure that um we're catching kids and saying oops we're noticing that you're struggling and reading we're going to give you support that we

077that you deserve so that's something else that we're held accountable and we're also held accountable for discipline data and making sure that we're um being just and fair with that so as a district this is the different data points that were held accountable for um one of my favorite quotes is from Maya Angelou and she says do the best you can until you know better then we know better do better so I think data is such a beautiful place to acknowledge some of the celebrations um but also where we have work to do um I always you can find me stay often I if our data doesn't look good let's address it and let's own it and how we can move forward and once we know about it then we can plan and then we

078can work together to make it better for all those beautiful faces that we saw in the beginning of this slideshow but I am really sad I forgot my pom-poms um because I wanted to cheer for sure yes thank you Rachel I appreciate that yeah I should have I should have set that up a little better but um I actually literally made um six different videos where I had noisemakers pom-poms and music for all the different um schools to celebrate all the hard work they have done um one of the we are a district that has exceeded expectations so we have we are a four-star District um we also have College Park which um a public comment was also acknowledged for being a five-star school and it has an achievement score that is in the top

0791.9 of all elementary schools in this state um we also have every single student in our demographic groups in Greendale in the English language arts grew at a greater rate than their state peers and that is awesome we also had all of our fourth and fifth graders in Greendale schools perform higher than they did in pre-pandemic levels in English language arts and our eighth grade students are performing higher than pre-pandemic levels in both English language arts and math so that is a let's give it up we just have to go thank you it is lots to celebrate so here is our report card that um for the 2122 school year and it's funny to share it now because we're in the middle of the 22-23 so we are looking back at last year all of

080this is last year's Dad I just want to name that so one of um one of the things that I want to point out is that there are different priority weights that we're going to be sharing today there is achievement which counts 31.3 for our score and growth that counts 18.7 there is a Formula depending on social economic status on how much of that percentage goes to achievement or growth that department of education has decided on and then we also look at Target group outcomes which is 25 and I'll go into detail of what that means and then on track to graduate something to celebrate is that we have gone up since last year from 73.6 to 75.2 which is also an improvement so that is something else to celebrate with achievement we are um

081we're at a 73.6 and this is look achievement is looking at all those different assessments that I spoke about forward aspire act and the dynamic learning maps all of our students are accessed on those at the end of the year to see how they've done on the standards and how they have mastered those we as a district have this um are in the top 87.9 percent of districts in the state and this is something that we also should be celebrating as well when we're looking at this this um for achievement it is a three year number so what I mean by that is English language arts it's not just last year's data that it looks at it looks at the last past three years so we next it's hard to make a big movement in

082achievement because you're looking at three years of data so we all know that 2021 was a hard year for our kiddos so that data is going to stay with us for three years and then our goal is to bounce back and I'll be talking about that later in the presentation about how we are bouncing back um and growing more that is not typical and I'll also share that is that we are beating the odds compared to our contemporaries and the state and Nation a lot of people haven't been bouncing back so that is the amazing work of our Educators and those beautiful faces in the beginning of this presentation this is Adventure probably the year-to-year progress what we're looking at and we grew 9.5 points from last year that means that our kids and all

083demographic groups are growing um from last year's assessment to this year's assessment that is going to pay dividends and this is all because of our teachers working diligently with and our staff working diligently with every student [Music] so there is this very complicated equation which I've been trying for the past I don't know five years six years Kim and I always joke that we're trying to figure it out um we're trying to predict report card scores you can attempt to do this formula and no one no curriculum director I've ever met has been able to achieve the same calculation that is on the report card because of the level of complexity of the formula it's very complicated and I've tried close but we did get close um but what this says is to simplify what

084the formula is is that it looks at students across the state and how they have grown from different demographic groups and what we're looking at here is we're looking at our friends in 20 20 21 school year and white means that they are not growing as at the same rate as other students in that demographic group across the state so if we look at all students in math in 2021 3 is the number of we are growing at the same rate average as students across the state and then when we look at 2122 our kids are growing at a higher and all of our kids are growing at a higher rate than the rest of the state so what we really want to see is we want to see lots of blue every single one

085in math has grown we do have one area that we still need to work on and it's our for African-American students in 2021 they were at a 2.5 which means they were growing 0.5 less than peers from the state and we we're closing that Gap now and it's we were closing it by 0.4 so this year we're at 2.9 and I am sure with the work that we are doing that they are going to be growing more than their peers in the state so that's any questions about this this can get a little complex what we're looking at this is specific to Greenvale and it's specific to different um demographic groups you can look at um economically disadvantaged versus not disadvantaged English language owners kids who are who are proficient on the assessment last year

086kids who were not so it really breaks down all the different demographic groups to show how are we serving all kids and this is in math the the purpose of it the the essence of the formula is they take all of the kids in the state and calculate their growth and that creates a trend line so you're familiar with the trend line and then if they are growing faster than the trend line that's the blue and if they're growing slower than the trend line that's the white and how far up or down from that trend line is how far away they are so that's that line there is essentially the growth trend line for those demographic groups in the state and what you're seeing is in all cases except that one area of math our

087kids are growing at a faster rate than their peers in the state so and we're also closing those gaps yes just the clarification so the growth rate change may change from year to year so in 2021 the average student growth in Wisconsin was 3.0 there was higher growth in 2122 where all students in Wisconsin grew at 3.4 no so what it would be that's a great question um so the trend line is always three so if so three is like the hinge point to Kim's point of that trend line that's always going to be three that's why the equation changes so depending on how kids are learning in the state that number that represents three might change but it's still on here three does that make sense so three could be one year three could

088be 32 scale score points and another year three could be 22 scale score points the purpose of setting it setting the trend line and um essentially norming it at three is to say how is the test differ so by taking the whole sample of the entire State and creating that trend line and setting that trend line to equal three that helps you to to regulate and account for the variance in the test from year to year okay so it hinges on the three but what I'm seeing up here is a 3 and 21 in 2021 and 3.4 and 21.2 those are Greendale specific also those are absolutely green dozens thank you so are all of our students are growing at a higher rate than their Statewide peers and we even have more to celebrate when

089we look at Ela if we look at 2021 we had a lot in the white we had a lot of our demographic groups that were not growing they were growing below the rate of their demographic peers and then when you look at 2122 every single group is at a higher rate than their peers Statewide so that is remarkable especially through the pendant that is how you reverse the trend Maggie can you go back yeah sure I'm so excited I could talk about this all day so I'm looking at the 2122 for English language arts and the um I'm just looking it says American Indian or Alaska oh yeah yes um so there there was a change in this in that um they added we had three students who joined us um in 2122 and we

090didn't have the students in 20 20 21 so that's why they're not a equal to equal pair because our demographics do change year to year so even though we have students as you can see all students in 2021 is 14 1 415 and then in 2122 we have 1523 those are the number of students who took the assessment and unless you have 20 students in a demographic group it is not reported to protect student confidentiality so there were only two students in that that demographic group and so their value ad is not um included publicly to protect their anonymity okay another celebration yes excellent yeah quick timing what a Christmas gift yeah so um I think it's also important to celebrate all of our schools and um celebrate how our our schools are doing so

091um Canterbury continues to be a four-star school and went up I'm very close to becoming five stars College Park moved from a four-star school to a five-star School Highland View also increased and continued being a four-star School Greendale Middle School went from a three-star school to a four-star school and Glendale High School continues to be a four-star school so those are the individual schools and there's a lot to celebrate all of our schools are exceeding expectations or significantly exceeding expectations and that is phenomenal for those beautiful faces in the beginning of the presentation and since things are back to normal this year we can expect our exceeding expectations to probably continue to yeah I would yes I 100 believe that that is the case that we will continue to grow because we are building capacity

092with our staff and really focusing on all means all in that belief and then also the instructional strategies that are going to ensure that all of our kids get access to the amazing teachers and education um so now we're going to start looking at our Benchmark districts this um is our um districts that are near us that have um there's districts that historically we have benchmarked against and we do um look at the different free kids receiving free reduced lunch kids who identify as students of color um which is American Indian or Alaskan native Asian black Hispanic and native Hawaiian and two or more races and then also the percent of students identifying this um support so just to ground Us in who are the students in that District I do want to say that

093demographics do not dictate results research size that the best indicator for Student Success is Not the ZIP code they grew up in it is not the color of their skin it is not how many parents they have it isn't if they have free reduced lunch it is the amazing teacher in front of them and I think this Japanese proverb really says that the best better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher and the work and celebration that we saw in the report card is due in all demographic groups is because of the amazing teachers that we have [Music] I'll second that [Music] can I just ask a question so when we look at that Benchmark District I think it's great and really highlights how we're doing are there

094any do you anticipate or do you recommend any changes to the Benchmark districts that we're looking at um are there any districts in other parts of Wisconsin you know I mean like Middletown Cross Plains or Middleton Middleton yeah um Howard Suamico in in Green Bay you know are there other districts that we should be looking at um Whitefish Bay um I think we get I think we have enough here in southeast Wisconsin so I I am a huge data nerd I compare ourselves to every different District in the state privately and I am looking at Whitefish Bay as well because they are a very high performing district and I believe that um our kids and staff are just as wonderful and can perform just as high as any District in the state so I am

095looking at those High performers there is a way to pull that um data of who are the highest performing districts from the report card standpoint and see but I think it's helpful just um to see what from a market value standpoint of the ones that are in our area but we absolutely are always looking at Best Practices not just in Wisconsin but also nationally I mean the the next step the only step up from this remarkable um recovery I guess is what we can call it um would be the significantly exceeding expectations on the DPI report card or Blue Ribbon School status correct I mean that those are the only higher accolades that we could you know shoot for at this point we were pretty high oh absolutely come out of the pandemic and be

096exceeding expectations is remarkable yes and um that gets to this slide which talks about how um our these other districts performed so when we're looking at this in column and that First Column the 2122 district report card that is this current report card that um we've been talking about compared to the year the prior year the 2021 District state report card and as you can tell five went down and that's in the red five of our Benchmark distance go did go down and um they there was not a lot of movement we were the mo we were the second highest growing um on the state report card with a 1.6 versus um versus Oak Creek Franklin that went up two points on the report card the other area that I really want to highlight because

097that is going to be to um vice president grogan's point of where to go next when we're looking at how we're going to do an upcoming report cards we really need to focus on in growth and we grew almost double digits we grew 9.5 in growth compared to all a lot of our contemporary districts falling in growth or only making single digit gains hmm you could ask Rachel I danced when I was looking at this remarkable data [Laughter] Tick Tock video yeah oh please don't do that no and I was literally dancing because it's so exciting for our students and kids um and the teachers and how hard they worked and um again this is not typical Nationwide the news has been we are not having a bounce back and in Greendale we are yeah

098um so I'm going to quickly go through the specific points of this um so this is forward exams and this is for third through eighth and they are assessed in Era um English language arts and math and the here's something that we also can celebrate is that in the elementary schools we are back to on pre-pandemic in our ELO proficiency which is awesome and um you can see a big bounce back in middle school as well from that 21 to 22. we are seeing a bounce back which is really um great and encouraging yeah um this is also a different way to look at this data it's looking at cohorts of kids so in third grade is um is that 20 like the 1617 school year and how they're doing and where they are now

099this is the same grade levels and we're seeing again a huge bounce back in every single grade level for ELA um an Ela for our forward scores you can see that we are outperforming several of our Benchmark districts and we are an Ela review and we are looking at what some of these other districts are doing to ensure that um to make sure that our kids have what they need to master the standards and be proficient on the forward exam and be able to do that grade level work can I ask you to go back to slide seven yeah oh nope there um so we talked a little bit about the learning loss during the pandemic but for some of these cohorts we go back to 1617. can you speak to some of the declines

100there that may have been what may have contributed some of the decline other than the the pandemic and the learning loss associated with the pandemic and 2016-17 I can go from 1617 to 17 18. yeah Maggie wasn't here so yeah um some grade levels went up some grade levels went down or some cohorts went up some cohorts went down um like if you look at the red line which is fourth grade they went up and then you look at some of the others the green line it went down um what we saw was um in general you do see a slide when they go from elementary school to middle school that we were looking to address that is a Statewide dip that happens so as we're looking across those years some some typically the grade

101level that goes down is that fifth to sixth whereas the others go up um there were this is Ela and we were making uh we made a curricular change around that year 1718 and so there have been concerns expressed about that curricular change and so we are back in review this year and are addressing um some of those standards so and I think there is um something to be said around what Dr Amanda just said around um really having a focus on adding proficiency with our students and I think we have a very our we have a I think there was some work that we needed to do at middle school and that's one of the reasons we had um to instructional support specialists at those grades because we had that Focus needed to happen

102there too so we can make sure there wasn't a slide thank you well I just had another question too because I um so from 2021 to 2122 for was it the sixth grade and seventh grade it didn't like they're just kind of still going down where the other grades have definitely made do we know what that's from yeah so typically from fifth grade to sixth grade we've seen a decline and and we are working to address that and we are excited um with some of the work that we're doing in Middle School this year that we are pretty confident that we're going to have a bounce back um eighth grade had a bounce back and they were really working um collaboratively on this work and um in sixth and seventh grade we're still um in

103that beginning stages of focusing on standards and really looking at the curriculum in a new way because there are some gaps in the curriculum so we're trying to address that and that's one of the reasons that we're doing the curriculum review to address that that's a great question I think when you look at this slide which is Ela compared to the same slide for math you see a different picture and that has to do with when and how we made changes to curriculum so we had talked about sorry Maggie we had talked about um they we had talked about the the slide that we saw and that was a shift in the standards and the curriculum that was adopted shifted uh the year that the standards changed and so the materials were not standards aligned

104and we made that we made an adoption in the 19-year school year but it was not fully adopted until um the 21 2021 school year and so you see a rebound that happened there because of a substantial shift in curriculum materials and focus on the standards and that's this is the slide that um Dr midgets was speaking to is that we adopted new curriculum in 1920 and due to the pandemic we didn't really Implement and now we're seeing huge jumps in when you say you're addressing it are you also referring to the PLC groups to help them align is that a big part of what you're doing too it is concurrent with what we're doing um our plcs has been really focused on standards work and we also are looking at having a curriculum that

105is aligned to the standards too so I think that has a line assessment so we're not waiting to the end of the year to see how our kids are doing on the standards that we're taking tests throughout the year to say oh they don't have this how can we address it and really focusing on that okay thank you um so looking at math we also um are working on that bounce back in math for elementary and middle school and this is the slide that Dr midgets was speaking to is that we did notice that we needed to do some work with our instructional materials and we did make a shift and a change and we are seeing the benefits of that and then when we're looking at our Benchmark districts um I'm very excited because

106I know that this is going to continue to grow as well and now I'm going to talk about the high schools assessments because their assessments are different middle school and Elementary all take the forward exam so in ela we're looking at this a little differently this is our graduating class for all students from the forward to the ACT proficiency so our current 12th graders are that first class and we had 38.3 percent and we did have a lot to celebrate but this is where that when we're looking at some of the work we need to do and we think about our students this is an area that we need to work on um and I've been I'm really impressed I've met with the math and Ela this is Ela I met with the ELA English

107Department around this and we and they are diligently working on addressing this they're also in curriculum review and saying what can we do to ensure that we're not losing proficiency and that we're gaining so we are looking at this data really grounding it in instructional practices and changing some different um curricular decisions changing some practice and we're also using data at the high school as well in that PLC model as well so they can have those conversations and then um that's and then a math where I just last week was meeting with our math department head and curriculum facilitator having a similar discussion about what we need to do to ensure that all of our kids are having success in high school math and what do we need to do to address that as well

108um and with our redefining ready we have seen incremental drops in this from last year to this year um and Mr Lotus and Mr Pollux and Mr Del Ponte um we are all working together to address these and the one that is going up has been a huge focus and I think we are noticing that this is going to continue to have um to have dividends is that college level coursework prior to graduation and that really speaks to the work of our honors embedded honors and how we are giving access to all students and it making sure that all of our students have access to that so much so that 30.6 percent of students who are taking those embedded honors classes earned the honors designation and that is going to pay dividends to how students

109are doing on the ACT junior year there also was some discussion around making sure that kids understand the importance of the act and that it can still open doors for you through scholarships even though there are some changes to college entry exams that aren't all accepting the ECT we really are wanting to ensure that our kids understand that the ACT can still open a lot of doors through scholarships different programs you want to go into and can be a Difference Maker so making sure that our students understand not um any questions about that before I end now I just wanted to thank you because it's the DPI report card is not easy to interpret so thank you very much for explaining it in great detail and for highlighting all that we need to be celebrating

110and I I just wanted to State again that we'd like to get to significantly exceeds that it would be the goal for us we have been there before on a DPI report card and so I look forward to the 2223 report cards because I think it looks like things are heading in the right direction absolutely and I think it's just really important to ground us again in that all meaning all that this is for all of our kids and all these data points represent all of our kids and it's the work that we're doing to ensure that all of our kids get what they need is really grounded in these instructional non-negotiables around making sure that instruction is lined to grow level standards that assessments are aligned to grade level standards and that teachers are

111reteaching for students who didn't get at that time and ensuring that we're supporting them and that is the work that we're doing to ensure that hope next time when I sit in front of you we're having more pom-poms and I promise I'll actually bring them and we'll be a five-star district for all of our kids because we were five star kids and five star staff and we just need to show that on the report card and I'm going to leave you with this is the confetti in the middle of the celebration that was for Macy's but we'll have it for our uh all of our staff for the hard work that they're doing so thank you thank you for this report um very thorough and I like all the charts and graphs that you included

112to you know so we have a nice visual I know this has been a topic for quite some time now in the district and we do have a lot to celebrate and it's to thanks to all of your work all of the teachers I'm sure they're not out here watching the school board meeting tonight but it really is a success for Greendale and so I just want to thank all of you for for the work you've been doing are there any questions or comments about the the presentation we just had yeah I think from an equity standpoint it certainly shows that every student has the resources the tools and the staff around them that they need to succeed clearly is paying off so I know with you being the director of equity in curriculum yeah

113curriculum thank you uh it's uh it's a Testament to your work thank you thanks yeah and also just that you are able to identify areas in need of some growth I know we talked about our students our African-American students still needing some growth in there and I think that is really important that the district continue to focus on that as well so um and I I I would just for the sake of it was a beautiful quote if you could repeat it's not the ZIP code it's not the because really what we're talking about right now is the most important work of the district what we teach and who's teaching and then the support from home so could you repeat that that quote one more time to remember it's not that I absolutely I absolutely

114could remember it because I say it a lot it doesn't matter our kids zip code it doesn't matter um their demographic group it doesn't matter if they have free reduced lunch what the most important thing for our students is having an amazing teacher in front of them and we have amazing teachers here in Greendale so thank you to all of them all right um I think we're ready to we're at the end of our agenda so I don't know if there's any more comments from citizens tonight if not we are at adjournment we will be scheduled not until January 9th of 2023 at seven o'clock P.M so I wish everybody a happy holidays and uh thank you again for all the work hard work going on thank you [Music] Joe um