001meeting monday november 2nd and it's 6 36 our first order of visits please write for the pleasure i pledge allegiance [Music] okay with that we will have uh our roll call start with uh david are you there i am here yep okay jeff here here yeah yeah ryan here we have kirk here that's not here howard okay but that was the meeting properly notified yes it was okay with that i will go to our first order of business which is uh comments from board members and superintendents you want to start jim well yeah uh we have special guests here john and amy hugh and uh this was supposed to uh happen last day school at recognition retirement banquet because prevented that from happening and kind of been just holding out uh waiting to see if
002we could do this in person but um we can't go to a large scale but we certainly can't uh on a smaller scale for our board member who has retired after 15 years dedicated service so um i guess i would just like to say a few comments about john in his service john i've known you seven plus years and the very first time i interviewed and sat down at the time was jj's for lunch during our break he went to a whole day of interview but uh that was the first time and i can say over that time um whatever you do you do full passion full effort full commitment and uh certainly work most closely with you as a school board member but uh always purposeful um always aligned to vision mission beliefs commitments
003um and then personally you've just always had a well-timed uh communication or words of encouragement and support that uh i'm very grateful for um you're very purposeful with that and it's very appreciated personally and professionally so thank you thank and been a joy to have you here and i guess this is a small token of your hard work over the years i guess to recognize some of the stuff that you've been involved with you've been involved with uh choosing uh two superintendents uh helping us through at least two referenda uh hard to forget the hard work and uh effort that you put in when we had the school fire and you were ramrodding the volunteers girl scout camp uh with that uh never forget that one that one was a huge huge effort the things
004that you've done since then working with the teachers in the wage and benefit committee keeping good relations keeping us in touch with the community and all the efforts that you did for the school so i want to recognize that truly appreciate it and appreciate that you work as a colleague your continued efforts in church you decided to dedicate that correctly and i appreciate your friendship so thanks a lot something even wants a picture so okay we'll break social distance protocols for just less than 15 minutes perfect thank you thank you 15-year letter winner yeah most um you actually asked me if i would say a few words so i'd be disappointed if you didn't share it um it's it's kind of a funny you should ask moment um because the work i'm doing right now
005is we're we're focusing on uh how are we engaging youth in mission and purpose in life and so um one of the teachings that we espouse is hope in action so i've been out doing some research and i do use the internet and i was googling hope in action just that phrase to see there were lots of hits and then i started reading and i came across an article and i'll leave it with you tim it's by a person named mark schmidt i don't know mark from a stick in the grass but mark smith went on to write an article about what is education a definition of discussion is published as infed.org which is a education organization and blog it was interesting in his assessment of education some things that really stuck out to me
006and the one that's uh probably most relevant to tonight is uh education cultivates hopeful environments and relationships for learning and you know there's so many things that we can get caught in schooling which is the widgets but are we really always focused on education which is about the students that are with us in the moment in the present about right now and one thing that i've always admired about saying christ central is that um most often i believe it's the latter that this board has always looked for ways to create hope in action to create moments where the relationship drives the relevance which leads to the rigor and how many discussions have we had over the many many years about let's not get trapped in the schooling let's look at what education really is but
007to do that we need educators and so i just like to continue to foot stomp a little bit on how important it is i believe for this district to invest not only in the physical assets that we need but more importantly in the human resources that we need and that's every teacher that's every para it's every cook so every bus driver that makes a difference to bring that education to real life to meaningful relationship for our students every day a friend of mine from when i marched from biblical court many many years ago in the middle 70s went on to teach and she's an educator in the san diego school district where she teaches esl education or english as a second language and her classrooms are about 95 immigrant population last night on facebook she
008posted that she just had received a letter from one of her students from 20 years ago and at first she thought oh no what happened and even in this compassionate heart of who anna o'neil benati is her first thought was oh no what happened um to turn the corner that he wanted to write a letter to her and let her know that he has now earned his master's degree and that the first person he thought of was the teacher that helped him learn the language in the country that he is now a success within and so if you think about hope in action even in our greatest times we can have that moment of failure and say oh no what happened and think about the worst i would just encourage us that we always think
009about what is the best what's the best for our students what is the best for our community and not just invest in the physical assets we need but more importantly invest in the people that really bring that hope into action every single day so it's been a joy an absolute joy serving 15 years with most of you i admire those that continue the journey of this board and i wish you nothing but the very best as to go forward i would be reluct or remiss if i didn't recognize amy here with me tonight standing by my side every single moment of the journey and it's never a journey of one it's a journey of many and amy was the one that kept the house going on those nights when board meetings started too early and
010went too late um when community came to her and said what's your husband thinking she says i'm wondering the same thing you go asked him and then she found out it was about the board matter and so then it made even more sense to come and see me but amy you stood by my side every moment of this journey so um why don't we share that letter together now you have that too so thank you everyone thank you amy it was a joy are there any other comments from uh and i even started wearing socks again john accused me one meeting that i seemed more interested they said well that's because the things we're talking about at the board meeting aren't the right thing he said well let's change it and that's when we really
011started the strategic stuff in definition okay with that then we will move on to the next item we don't have any other scheduled presentations guests or staff at this time move on to the consent agenda which consists of approval of the monthly bills we have no resignations or retirements we have no cruel contract modifications or appointments at this time in favor of the motion signify by saying aye opposed origin carries uh the next item on the agenda is the key word for school boards discussion of the future district needs and priorities uh we finished up our first uh community meeting tonight i think there were a lot of ideas that we presented there were a lot of ideas presented from our community members involved a lot of this right now the biggest request that we're
012looking for right now from them involves the collection of data a lot of that data we have so we need to get that put together for the next meeting and go from there we have other comments the only one that i would ask is if we want to just ask them one more time maybe prior to the meeting to think if there's anything because everything kind of steered around those five ideas so everything was kind of centered around that we didn't really get anything that was outside of it so just a reminder to them that that wasn't the end-all be-all of the list um and sometimes that kind of like your first meeting that's what you get and maybe the next it'll be organic it'll happen on its own but maybe i'm intentional asking for
013some of those prior that they could i was thinking of a data library and i want to do business deals with a library and we can start putting things in like the population populations study some of those things just go to a shared folder that people can see and i would say that we should distill those down um to a one page on some of that stuff like the um if we know a top line number for getting 110 if we don't want to share we can put everything in the library but the population study should basically say one page we're expecting external yeah i think we want to summarize a lot of things because it's hard enough when you've dealt with it to deal with it you know when it's new to you you
014don't know what page to go to so you don't go to any and then the other thing that i would say is that we should make sure that the five bullet point list is not that's a list of of jumping off point some of them might not make people's lists other things might and then there should probably be a prioritization mentally at least for people that end up want versus need component so people are thinking of those things as you know it'd be great to have but if i would get picked it'd be this one right now so it's like a rainbow yeah or absolutely we have to have it there's no question about it in my mind and you you might completely disagree with that but everyone should have their say that what's a
015want what's a need specifically what's a need another ground rule we didn't really talk about is is to make this recommendation we're going to have to reach a consensus some consensus might not be i agree i can live with we should have some conversation at some point as we start deliberating what what consensus do we have any other comments with regards to the discussion earlier it's glad to see the number of persons yeah and i'd like to just thank everyone that participated and hope that they are able to come back to the through the whole process okay i think we've got our uh [Music] [Laughter] and i'm hoping that joe will with that we'll move on to the next item on the agenda which is the consideration of approval of revisions to the 2020 2021
016school calendar you know the practice and those student fridays we just thought we should probably update the calendar with three quarters of the year left yet and make it accurate put it out there for publication and pam does a great job on this visual um but you know there are a few little things not just as simple as every friday off so just wanted to draw to your attention you know like for instance january the first week in january we come back we extended that instead of that christmas break to the fourth come back on the 5th because we do need to be in school on january 8th as the second friday student count date we have two counts per year third friday in september 2nd january um yes it's possible it's we incredibly thought
017this would be the best idea to come to school that friday we still have a four day week and then from there it's pretty straight forward um we might move the 18th of january and we do understand us martin luther king jr day we typically take it off um but we just in our mind you know our discussion we came up with it's better to be consistent with fridays for families and daycare plans like that so that's why we moved that one monday off to a friday other than that it's pretty straightforward um keeping the professional development days the reds and the pinks in there on those fridays and obviously we're encouraging a lot of that collaboration time that is moved to fridays and we're encouraging for instance appointments medical appointments or whatever else is
018necessary to staff to take that on fridays as well as one advantage to that any questions on how critical is actually sitting in a seat on that january 8th and my guess is the habit will be hard to break to get kids to come to school just gonna do a great job of communicating it now just because they're not there that day doesn't mean that they can't get counted there are you know other things people show up before and after you gotta show up before and after if you happen to miss that friday um we might want to we want the bulk of our students we might want to create some sort of event that makes it really cool well we believe that our rigor and relevance he would give that back to you actually
019i think we need to communicate constantly about that you know right away and all the way through and second i know we've only had one um non-student friday but can you speak to the how when this last week or you know what what the feedback is what the feelings are yeah it went exactly you know as we had hoped and intended for uh with this from staff's perspective and haven't heard any negative feedback not one from staff or parents or anybody so yeah it was just one but it was splendidly for the staff getting the work done they're very appreciative um shout outs and stuff to thank the board very much for that friday on the first friday off so yeah so with one in the books it feels like the right call exactly it's
020obviously one piece of data and then um yeah you know one question has been asked on you know what what are the metrics for returning to a five day week you know um so you know we do have those and those include our uh staff absence rate right because that's one of the driving things is just a shortage of staff insults you know for instance we've you know got three specialists close context elementary out so you know lindsay was the keyboarding teacher majority of the day and shelly was the art teacher you know i mean olson full-time in the library so you know it's they're all hands on deck but that's again not sustainable that's the biggest we knew that from beginning the biggest you know potential barrier is staff being out so we can
021still have students learn from home quite well but if staff are out then it changes things so we did you know have to do that with eighth grade for instance because they had over a third of our students not as close contacts and five teachers out um tell you how it was where was i going and that was off and now it's not correct third monday in january i have a couple comments on this big picture i think there is this says worse this has to be we're staying with the schedule friday's no kids day no matter what when we switch the whole schedule to say that or we don't know what's happening or maybe things get better maybe they get worse but this to me when you like change the whole calendar like this
022now we're saying this is what we're doing before i felt like it was just this is what we were doing right now so i think there's just that part of it to me seems premature or maybe sends the wrong message i feel strongly about having martin luther king junior day off if that's what we always did i think that that's important particularly in the political environment so that's just a personal thing and then also just changing those days around i suspect people plan vacations to have things scheduled to do things in january and february and we didn't change spring break at all but other than that you know that people would have planned things for them and now that they're not like that that's less of a concern for me but that's them just raising
023that issue well i guess my concern on the calendar we're proposing 21 fewer days of construction [Music] have we have we adjusted our curriculum such that we can account for that and teach keeps the things that they need to know you know it may not necessarily seem like a big deal but we have a lot of the testing that's coming up the big test to me would be the seniors a ct test then you understand the content that is in that test their past if we don't have time to present that to them and that they can grasp those concepts we get penalized for that for fourth student because it's kind of like for that but he doesn't have the opportunity to work but since those also feed into our state report card [Music] see
024that we need probably make some adjustments but we need to make adjustments also in not only what we're teaching but how we're teaching it so we can get the same concepts taught when we started september 1st there's a calendar here is a plan we're going five days a week until june 4th you know then we made a course correction now we're going to 40s and there was no necessarily expiration time on that so that's just like now we're just moving forward this plan unless things change knowing full well they can but we just thought it the whole reason behind this is just to communicate ahead of time so families can make you know decisions based on it you know it's about 10 weeks before the first schedule change plan for that um yeah that's you
025know that's why it's a proposal discussed and embedded um so yeah the staff are assuming that this is going to continue for the rest of the year and you know our planning accordingly not just started beginning stages but they know they got to get through their essential standards by the end of the year and is face to face better for instruction yes does this mean they're getting 28 less days of learning no they're not getting necessarily direct instruction but they're still working and learning on their own homework knowing they're missing 20 percent of direct instruction for the rest of the year so yeah that that's all known um and they're working accordingly can i say with 100 certainly that every student and every teacher is going to get through every essential standard i i don't
026think i can i can't i don't want to crystal ball but they know what the ground rules are and what the time frame is and what they have to cover and extending professional trust to get that done but yeah we're in the beginning stages of this new plan um i we had the same discussion about martin luther king junior day but keeping that or changing it we do know that yeah students are in school on the friday the 8th we have to communicate communicate communicate remind remind her line and my thought on that day they're was up why not just go five days that one week you know when i get a monday off oh another friday they're gonna give them martin luther kingdom you know but or even you know like everybody's giving up
027a little bit maybe that friday maybe you go four or five days that week i don't know just yeah or take that monday and make it the monday rather than the monday after actually after a long holiday with my children i do think there's a political issue here about particularly the current political environment that it's not necessarily the right statement on that particular day right that's like you know well then let's just not have christmas either and let's not have you know let's just switch all things wrong so here you're proposing you know coming to school in fourth and uh not on the 18th that can be a special improvement day ordeal well whatever you have for the fourth make that holiday so what's the is there any great advantage to announcing the whole year
028or could we just say hey look we're committed to do this through christmas break and we'll announce in december what the plan is for january and february but yeah i personally i think it's a plan for the best and expect the worst or expected worst plan for the best i mean i think we have to internally be prepared to have every friday off but if the world gets better probably it's a hard appointed 20 days of facetime you know and i personally expect we're going to be off fridays for the whole year but is there any need to accomplish or you know what this meeting jeff that's kind of my thought as well is you know maybe we announced that this is the way it's going to go in the end of the year 2020.
029um you know and then we play it by ear when we come back from christmas break i think you have to announce at least a couple of months in advance because you can't you just can't have that uncertainty yeah if i was a betting person i would hedge my bets on us going to school less because of the again yeah the month the weekly meeting today um averaging 60 new positive cases sacred county per day you know we had a spike of 82 over weekend and when we started school is four so it's not it's trending all the wrong direction and it's but that's what i wanted to appropriate to try to predict the rest of the year i mean you said when you announced this it's like hey we don't know how long we
030don't know if we stay me either but you could still kind of have the two calendars that you reference depending on which one you would do and i think this is it would be good to get this out in front of people but this is what it this is what it looks like this is from now until january or on this calendar right and then we can go to the other one if things go better but but hoping it's not a i mean i i would go i would i would publish it for the whole year martin luther king day that's a separate question i would publish it for the rest of the year simply because there is unlimited uncertainty right now make something certain the things that change it are circumstances but this is
031the way it is until a vaccine or a tremendous outbreak or us whatever the circumstance is but i think more certainty that we can plan for put out there and there are going to be potential triggers that change this but i would put it this is our expected 20 20 1 20 21 calendar i think we can get this calendar that's a huge win yeah because i don't think we're going to hit this calendar personally well this room's full of optimism i'm just looking at crafts i mean that's not like optimistic it's just looking at numbers um for it so um you know like eau claire is the fourth hottest spot in the country right i mean it's i it's see us changing before february so i don't know i think that's i think that
032that's our plan right again and it's probably changing how many weeks are we today seven so maybe it's just the communication of the cow maybe that's that kind of brings two claws that's what it is okay and we have this uh proposal for us do we need to prove it and see what happens revise i think we can prove it with the amendment of changing the fourth to a day on and the 18th to a day off right that's the that was kind of the consensus of martin luther king correct so five days the week back after christmas that was a full holiday break so that's the best week to go five days of the year probably so that would be my abortion second you're saying go five days the week back so fourth through
033the eighth all days on 18th and that friday as the day's off okay and what happened with the february 18th thing was that just taken off because that was like an extra day or what happened just like going it was yeah we potentially built in a longer break because there were no um other days in february usually that's kind of a long stretch the going to 40 weeks we just roll that right into friday so we have a motion scott second jeff to approve the modifications as discussed for the school calendar any further discussion all those in favor of the motion signify by saying hi all right oppose motion carries okay with that then we move on to the core items uh first is consideration of approval of a new pay scale for the nine-month
034health assistant position yeah so with the opening our uh lead school nurse position um when you know maybe demolition accepted that position um well first of all we posted as a complete school nurse and another school nurse and um did not work out uh we're able to get a person for that um so then we signed a post as a health assistant and we had um three interviews and uh anyway uh first person declined second person um accepted but uh we had to do some negotiations which included uh got us to this and with that if we negotiated that person out of respect to the other person in the same position i'm going to raise both of them um to that level um in light of our current situation i think it's money well spent
035but it does need formal approval to create a health assistant pay difference from the parent two position it previously was and then if you prove that we have a couple of folks for recommendations okay so everybody understands uh what we're asking looking to adjust pay scales so what's the exchange little table like step zero step one yeah so 19 yeah that's a brand new rate um for step zero i think is it 1787 while parking it previously okay and then this person with their experience would get to 20. so we're re-categorizing it and changing the rate based on the new category there was no rate there was just a new category as health assistance [Music] you know we've talked before um when we discussed with the district office about you know the 10 cent an
036hour raise that was almost kind of a slap in the face and i'm i'm wondering why we've got that here when we go from step nine to step ten because that's how every category is currently set up obviously with the new proposal that would change but that was just to mirror every other position with step zero one two to nine ten plus okay that would get changed in the new compensation correct system this would be consistent with everybody else right now okay so this is consistent to set it up the same as everybody else has right now but the move system coming out would tweak it correct okay thank you okay with that we have a motion on the floor any further discussion okay hearing none all those in favor of the law should signify
037by saying aye aye opposed motion carries okay the next item is consideration of approval of the resignation of vicki hussein kalapa as a level two paraprofessional and hiring ricky and jessica to take as the nine month health assistants soon there's a motion do i have a second they have a motion scott second dean to approve the resignation of vicki and the hiring of vicki and jessica as our new nine-month health assistants any further discussion okay all those in favor signify by saying i i opposed quotient parents next item is consideration of approval of e-rate service contract agreement with cesa 11. so for years we've had e-rate as part of our shared services agreement where we checked that whole box we have a number of services that um we get through cease-11 they're just changing their
038practice because the e-rate work starts now in the past they wait till march we signed a contract and assumed but it just makes sense that they should have us commit sign the contract before they start doing the work so they're just changing their practice to that approval separating it out now thus the change and thus bring it to you for your consideration second brian to approve the uh e rate service contract agreement with cso 11. here's a question from the top of it i'm sorry to be a lawyer this agreement entered into july 1 2021 should that be it is so they're actually starting to do their work now that is correct okay are there any other further questions okay those in favor of the motion signify by saying aye aye opposed motion carries uh
039the next item is consideration of approval of the second reading of foreign policy 411.2 for the education of homeless children and youth okay that do we have any further discussions i know we went through the first reading our last meeting in the 19th this is the one i believe there were no changes on the [Music] 411.2 education homeless children and youth and further discussion all those in favor of watching signify by saying i i opposed washington carries uh next item is consideration of approval of the second reading of board policy port 12.1 full time student ill exchange is the first sentence call it the student rather than he she to be consistent with numbers 136. okay any other questions or concerns otherwise i'll entertain a motion to approve word policy 412.1 removed second there's a
040motion david second jeff to approve uh support policy for 12.1 full-time students any further discussion okay all those in favor of the motion signify by saying aye aye opposed motion carriers next item is consideration of approval of the second reading of board policy 411 equal educational opportunities this policy we just deleted um over a half a page of things that spoke specifically about transgender uh redundant transgender policy and took out the name of the coordinator so that you can second dean approved board policy 411 equal educational opportunities any further discussion all those in favor of the motion signify by saying aye we've gone to the next item just consideration the first reading of board policy 345.52 academic lawyers yearly award export policies mr soderbergh is on call to answer any questions next four first readings
041and pam where applicable include the current policies welcome to comparison okay i guess the first question that i had was the logic between raising the gpa qualification from a 3.33 to a 3.67 so we're going from a b plus an a minus average to qualify for the players now thank you howard the the logic behind that was that while we want to honor students for their academic achievement we believe that the 3.33 is a low bar and that being displayed by 60 just over 60 percent of students hitting that minimum mark and above and then since we've switched to standards base we see an increase in the percentage of students earning a's that's up by 10 percent and so while we still want to honor students for their academic achievement it feels like a very
042low bar at 3.33 okay i guess the other question and i think this has probably been addressed in previous policies that the students earn these awards will automatically be awarded them they do not have to apply correct nothing changes in that regard okay they remember when we originally put this policy in uh way back when uh the student actually had to apply for that award and we had students that didn't apply even though they earned it and were disgruntled when they found out that they qualified even for the four-year award but because they didn't apply they didn't get it so i want to make sure that we've directed that portion of the policy someone hearing this right like we won't it's not exclusive enough that's why you're changing it right we it's becoming it's becoming
043a an essentially a relevant award because of the low bar we're seeing performance in terms of letter grades go up as i mentioned previously when you have well over half your cl your student body achieving that it becomes less of a an honored award if you will are there other questions on the uh from the board with regards to this are there any changes that need to be made to this policy or is everybody okay with it well no i just don't understand why i have i mean i'm just saying then make the grading harder don't change the award if you pluses would be plus average that's good that's honorable in my opinion can you speak to that i didn't hear the i didn't hear the question what's the great inflation why don't we make
044grading harder well you as thomas guffey as you set a rigorous standard of achievement and then you measure them based on that quite honestly i i think a 3.33 is too low even without the the uh switch to standards-based grading um and that that's my experience that's what i think um and yes it's gonna it's gonna shrink the number of kids getting that award but uh it's not it's not uh in my opinion it's not earning a b plus is not challenging enough for that award and the award is a pin and a letter yeah they get it they get a letter at the end of the year and ones again do you see kids being motivated to graduating or having honors or high honors well the those are two separate things um i don't
045see kids being honored by their academic yearly awards um i think they they at their senior awards night they enjoy getting the four-year letter winner award which is i would too uh that's that's a great thing um we have you know i think there's uh there's a difference between that and then the honoring students at graduation uh which is the next which is the next policy uh when they get their cords and their medals that's the that's the big one but in in general terms i don't see them being motivated by that by the getting an the award letter pardon the yearly is just an academic letter right yeah it's just it's just an academic letter it's as spelled out under the awards they get a letter and then they get a lamp of knowledge
046another and then another lamp of knowledge okay do we have any other questions concerns things that we need to address with this policy what do others what do other schools do in it's all over the board do you want that data well i just did it it's a few years ago now but i remember it was a few plus when i was in school right and we only had 30 of the students were able to achieve that something like that um i'm having a hard time hearing i don't know if you're talking to me or not looking for something that i mean from what i remember we had a b plus is what it took to get an academic letter and about 30 one of the classes 30 of the class would achieve that b
047plus or above um that's it i don't know and we're at 60 maybe 70 now we're depending on the we're depending on the class we're at we're at uh 60 to 70 percent of the kids are getting a would get that but i can get i can certainly get more more data on that more specific data if you'd like i can ask other schools what they're doing um if you're saying 60 to 70 you're saying that's one class once one semester or one year is sixty to seventy percent we've yeah sixty percent they have to do it so two semesters back to back to be a three three or better in the previous model uh or in the current model i should say and we're seeing 60 or more get that for the year and
048then how many in your estimation have been or maybe bring it next meeting get the four-year dozen out of 120 or 20 out of 120 get the four-year letter winners i can i'll get that um i can tell you that 50 58 of the class of 2019 um where academic honors at graduation 58 um it's not a small number and i can get the details on that on the four-year academic letter winners and most of most of the reasons for changing is alignment with standards-based assessment creating an assessment is that i would i would say that's probably a stretch i was simply referring to spg is we saw a 10 increase in a's a 5 increase in b's kids are being we're raising that bar they're moving in that direction um i i don't feel
049good about you know having that award being given out to 60 of the kids from the standpoint of it loses it loses some of its cachet if you will some of its value um the we certainly could i could certainly make the opposite argument to leave it at 3.33 and let them all have that and that i get that but i'm i'm simply stating that the standards based aside based on the current percentage and then and when you throw in that we're driving kids up higher that's a lot of kids if everybody in your in your on the in your neighborhoods getting a popsicle it doesn't seem that special and i that may be a terrible analogy but i just i think we need to add some rigor to that award if it's truly an
050academic achievement award a b-plus in my opinion does not earn that end of the year award but we certainly can leave it the way it is he and i are very different students maybe that's just something and again you don't need unanimous approval i mean i'm just giving you my good okay are the changes that we didn't want to make to this or do you want to leave it as it is you can change it get more data leave it for now and we'll change it if we want to change it find a bigger question on it it doesn't even anything to do with this i mean if we have that much of a migration to a b plus and above you would assume you would see act scores a very strong correlation with a
051significant improvement of act scores relative to that um so that mine's a broader question when i when i look at that like it doesn't seem to correlate in my mind um but i agree that obviously if that's what we're doing people are getting that award well there's research out there that that does not tie directly the performance and academic letter grades in a high school to their act performance much of a ct is about for example is about test taking procedures it's about how understanding how to do that yes we can help kids improve but um the the challenge the challenge is you've got you've got students that take the act and for example science is really not an assessment of science knowledge is assessment of your ability to read a chart or a graph
052which is a part of science it's a part of math it's a part of social studies and so on but that there isn't a direct correlation between those two i do believe that as we refine and do better with standards that we should see improvement there but there hasn't been a proven direct correlation between the two yet that i've read and do we wish to have this stand as an approval of the first reading of this policy and we will collect the data bring it back to the next yeah seventy percent of people shouldn't achieve your highest every year like this doesn't make sense but i okay okay then we will move on to the next policy which is the first reading of court policy 353 345.53 academic honors system graduation this one is about
053the actual honors at graduation so now you're looking at not the yearly honor of a academic uh letter but now you're looking at their cumulative gpa and so we're looking at this is tied to bracketing kids in terms of highest honors and high honors a gold court award as opposed to silver cord so in the class of 2020 the way it was structured at 3.33 cumulative 47 of our graduates were considered honor grads in 2019 58 were considered undergrads and in 2018 42 were considered honored grads and that's fine but i'm just saying that when you have that percentage you you gotta wonder about the the rigor of the qualifications to be an honor grad the reason i propose we start with the class of 2024 is because anyone else should be moving the goal
054posts and we don't want to do that to kids um and so if we were to make the change i would propose to be with the the current freshman class the other part of that is to eliminate the valedictorian salutatorian designations we would still determine um we could still use our class rank process for determining who would get the higher education academic excellence scholarship but we would not have a designated valedictorian salutatorian the reason there is because it's been documented how valedictorian creates um it it pushes kids towards trying to maintain their 4.0 be a valedictorian maybe take less rigor uh not take ap classes because of the risk um we've we've um we know they're students that that was their aim and they they just found high school to be miserable um and and
055so it's a better it really having a valedictorian really goes against what we're trying to get kids to focus on which is they're understanding what they're trying to learn taking risks and exploring maybe i'm maybe i'm a marginal ap bio kid but i'm going to take it to challenge myself rather than worrying about if i'm a valedictorian or not um and that's really the that's really the philosophy behind eliminating the valedictorian salutatorian her do you have the numbers about the grads that would have qualified as a comparison of the ones who did qualify in 18 and 19. no i can get that so you want the numbers of kids that if we were to go to this what those numbers would look like for those for 2020 2019 2018 yeah i don't know if we
056have to go digging for it i just thought maybe you would run across it already i'm okay with with this change without having that data because it does seem just based on the numbers that you gave that again it's not as prestigious as it deserves to be so is there a current policy on this because i didn't see that on the agenda you know there's not it's in the handbook right kurt it's not a foreign policy yeah i believe it was a handbook a thing not a not a board policy have you seen any adverse effects with competition you know valedictorian salutatorian versus maybe this or this promote or potential cooperation rather than competition have you witnessed any of that yeah that that's a great that's a great way to put it in because we
057have we've had i've had at least three private conversations with kids that have just felt driven to try to get the valedictorian and quite honestly a lot of it stems from home being pushed at home um i know of a kid who wanted to do some tech ed classes that said he just couldn't because the expectation was that he had to take the ap courses and be a valedictorian and do everything perfect um it doesn't create a very good uh a very healthy situation it can cause division between kids i know in the graduating class of 2019 because i'm i'm closest to that group because i have a son in that that there was angst because there was uh there were students that weren't taking the most difficult classes just so they could keep that
058valedictorian run going and i just i think that's counterintuitive to what we're trying to to teach them um just in in general terms um and there there are there have been studies that are far beyond sec about the impacts this is uh we're kind of late to the game on this in terms of moving away from a valedictorian yeah well i know there has been a push uh glenn webb was pushing for this uh quite a while back which is i think where the policies in the hands of come about he was pushing forward to the kumari system versus the valedictorians woulda tori we haven't taken any formal package with um howard you bring up a point about the laude system i did if the board said you know what we want to keep the
059three three three um then i think we would i still would want to get rid of alectronic solution i don't think it's what's best for kids but we could add just we could go to a third level and just call it honors and they would get a white cord um but i i still think increasing that rigor of that award is would be uh would be a good thing maybe i'm like brian i can't remember back to my high school you just try and forget and so i just want to unders so i understand conceptually the academic letters yearly award that we were talking about once given based upon what your grade point is for that year correct i'm talking about the academic honor system which is graduation your cumulative grade point over four years
060correct me those are two separate awards correct i feel very fine with this proposal in a way that i didn't feel fine with last proposal because they're completely different so i'm just i can okay are you thinking are you thinking that the yearly academic award could be as it is now 33 to 4.0 but do the honors system at graduation differently is that what i'm hearing that's i would be okay with that i mean and and kind of what what you're saying is if you're arguing that we shouldn't have these we shouldn't have the valedictorian because we shouldn't be focusing on the numbers etc and then three breaths ago the argument was we need to make this harder we need to make it so that it's more like the exclusive et cetera so that's hard
061for me to swear yeah and i i understand i understand and i appreciate that the valedictorian salutatorian it it it puts it it forces kids to be in direct competition with each other um and it's we're talking about maybe five to six kids in a class that are they're competing with each other and they have been since they were little likely um it that that's uh creates a more of a negative feel when you open it up to an honors and you rate even if you raise the rigor now it's if it's if i get it and tim and howard all get honors that's great we're all celebrating together and so we it comes it becomes more of a congenial relationship and if it's the valedictorian pseudotron creates that tension that between kids because they're
062competing against each other and i'm all for competition but so raising the rigor but encouraging cooperation to help more people get there if that makes sense that's really what we're looking for and i think it's okay to raise the rigor and say yeah it's a it's a higher bar to get to than we're used to i think the challenge of sticking with a 3-3-3 at an academic award for a year is if they do that 3-3-3 each of their four years they get a four-year academic letter winner award but then at graduation they're gonna be wait a minute i didn't get honors so that's where those two kind of to pair up i think otherwise you're gonna get i'm gonna get lots of questions about what do you mean i'm a four-year academic letter with
063a 3-3-3 but now at graduation i don't get honored as an honor grad that's just kind of it's a little disjointed i think that's why i tried to match the two up well i don't have any problem going with the academic honors system as for the graduation recognition you know we've had several meetings over the years with students coming in wanting us to go to a weighted grade system because they felt that the value of an ap course or an advanced science course or mathematics course should rate more than if a student gets an idiot in a shop class or home economics or family consumer and so on and so forth and to us over the years we've decided that we're not going to buy that argument because then you're placing these students that take
064those classes that they kind of had a second class and we figured if they could earn a grade an a in a trend class that should be of the same value and they've worked as hard to get that a as somebody else's taking advanced physics so i agree and i think where that becomes a prop where that becomes a problem with the and why schools want to wait it is because of the valedictorian designation if it's if if i if i'm standing next to a kid who took all ap classes and he's gotten honors at graduation and i took every shop class i could take and i'm really great at it and i'm standing next to him as an honor student we both win and that's really what we're angling for okay and i would
065fail every shop class so to the extent that we're talking about shopkin the easy one here let's just take that one sorry okay so at this point that everybody's okay with this uh policy as written yeah yeah okay so this will uh come back the next meeting we'll consider this as a reading of policy three forty five more cycle three created the next policy is regarding early graduation policy 345.61 credits here so one semester early the cur is it maybe how is it possible to graduate six semesters what classes can i take over this summer or have you ever had they'd have to they'd have to double up we we left that in there as written because um if there's a rare chance that might happen if they're taking early college credits if they're doing
066an online course if they took doubled up on english english is usually the one that keeps kids around because they need four years of it um but it's possible it's not likely i haven't seen it in my five years i don't expect to see it but that's how it was written originally so we just left it there so kurt i graduated well i left high school at christmas started college but i didn't get my high school diploma until in may with my class so was that would that be early graduation or just yeah well right if you if you're going to be full-time at the college yes you would you what they would want is your transcript and then you'd get your diploma at graduation i did not have a diploma but i certainly had
067a transfer but is that an early graduation at the time it would have been but you had to apply now i mean now now right and really it's just a it's just a way to to walk through with the student and the parents to make sure we're all on the same page and they understand what what this means and they have a plan and and so on we've had this happen a few times um since i've been here and it's just been really smooth great conversation and and they're off doing their thing and we'll come back for graduation we had more trouble at the college because they said well have you considered tech ed my dad was a tech instructor and i you know went to college without a high school but they're not going
068to get their diploma until they may when their class walks they wouldn't get their diploma until the grant until graduation when everyone else did but they would we would certainly release their transcript to the college all right yes what early graduation then so in that in that case will they still be eligible under wiaa no you would not they would not they'd be here they are no longer our student as opposed to students that are taking college courses through uw river falls or you know any number of witc any number of things we have a student that goes to um welding academy in the morning and comes in the afternoon here he's still our student he still is going to play baseball in the spring that's not an early grad okay that's the rare student
069that really focuses solely on academics little on the social part of it going on i want to get done with this let me start my college career and if there are no other concerns of this then this will stand to prove this first reading will bring back okay the next one is consideration of policy 345.6 high school graduation requirements i guess uh of questions here uh hurt we have been involved i think over over the years wondering if we need to increase credit required credits such as science and math once we have four years of english required we do not require the same of uh science and mathematics howard i'm not sure if you and i have spoken about this before but um that's something i've thought for a long time about um why aren't
070we requiring four years of math and science and it same conversation i had in merrell i think that's a big discussion that that we would need to have it would likely take away from well a couple things we're finding that kids are getting to their required credits for graduation at the beginning of their senior year with the exception of many of them most of them need a a fourth credit or a fourth year of english but most of our students and i could get the specific data i remember a couple years ago jeff fern said that 90 of our kids by credit could graduate the start of their senior year with the exception of that one english class hanging out there um so i'm not sure it would require us to increase our our credit
071requirements but it certainly would add other challenges um you know either you'd increase the number of people taking science and math courses for sure which would be a an added challenge but in philanthropy i don't disagree with you yeah and if we had you know we're requiring eight and a half credits for elective additional electric credits two of those have put those back in the math and science they'd still have to have six and a half credits there right correct the chat the challenge is those those eight and have credits are tied to people and their what they're teaching and what they're passionate about it also it it opens up challenges to the to the students who uh make it through three years of math but really come to school for those other things the
072kids that build the bus the kids that wanna would rather do choir and band rather than take a fourth year of math there's some challenges there as well um you know trying to serve the needs of all kids certainly there are advantages from a purely academic standpoint to have students take a fourth year of math and a fourth year science but the drawback is they would not be taking the elective that they they would want and that includes you know it might take away from from a student who really wants to learn engines um or whatever so that's that's a challenge can i take an extra science or math class as an elective does that come from sure so you leave it up to the student to take that extra year if you hate math
073you hate your fourth semester your fourth year of math more than your third well so yeah if you hate math your fourth year you're not going to apply much of what you're getting into this time you get your fourth year of math going forward if you hate god because my something like do you really need trick i know i'm like ptsd talking about all those person okay first reading good yeah i've got some other questions on it uh the other question that i had was the statement in here says minimum passing grade required for a warning credit each course constitutes a minimum recommendation of the instructional staff with regard to the student's academic performance and eligibility for graduation i guess when i look at that to me it seems like they're not really you know
074they have to get a minimum grade to pass it but then they are kind of at the mercy of whether the instructor recommends them for graduation or not and wondering if it shouldn't have something more objective than something subjective than nature yeah it certainly does it um yeah it sounds uh kind of like it could be fairly arbitrary and that's not how it would work but but i'm not sure it's even necessary in there yeah just delete it right i just don't get what the what the point of that statement even is i didn't pick up on it when i first read through it yeah to me it's saying that the teacher doesn't have discretion the minimum passing grade constitutes your the recommendation so the teacher doesn't get to say i know they passed but
075i'm not recommending them well because that that that's never changed it's still a d is still a minimum passing grade now we've got this is where the standards based and and uh traditional letter grades bang heads but we're obviously trying to for example in math you have to have a 2.5 on every standard and so that's already they're up into the c's and b's we're trying to push every kid there a kid could still fail a class but um really the minimum still in theory is the d but it's um we're really doing everything we can to not let that happen and that's not to say that well i will say it when i was in school if i got a d i just owned it it wasn't there wasn't this extra effort being put
076into retakes and re-teach and make sure and guaranteed viable curriculum it was here's what i'm going to tell you you perform it and if it's good enough you'll pass but i i like i i i think it was scott that read it that way now that you say it that way it make it takes away the a teacher being given an arbitrary while i know you i know you know enough to move on you hit the minimum but i'm not going to pass you i think when you read it that way it it sounds like that with what they were intending well does an item be the first time to take care of that i mean all credits must be earned by completing the course with a minimum passing grade while the student was enrolled
077in a high school grade yeah it's a good point it's already i don't know yeah unless there's some language somewhere and it might be in a different a different spot that requires a teacher to give a recommendation for passing and it might be old language but this would this will get rid of personality based or vindictiveness or anything like that that would just mean that if you passed it doesn't matter what the teacher thinks of you i think i think that's a fair point to me i think we could remove that completely from it you know tim makes a good point about that first first paragraph right under b um this seems like really old language to me the other thing the other thing i wanted you to be aware of is that the graduation
078requirement starting with the class of 2025 for personal financial literacy we started that two years ago so that really could be we could take that right out of there unless it's just there for uh as a placeholder but we've been doing personal finance for everybody for two years i think having it spelled out as one of the required classes i think is important so is that what you want to recommend get ready to ask for it i i think i don't think it's necessary because we're doing it now that already graduates this year with the graduating class of 2021 have it all of them oh yeah there last year okay then we are are we striking the minimum passing grade requirement uh paragraph after that then if we cover that in item d yeah i
079think so okay okay are there any other changes that we need to make to this if you're interested i do have the other gpa or the other credit requirements from the other uh middle border schools and we are at the low end okay it doesn't surprise me i'm not sure it's germaine to this conversation but i do have that information if you want it at some point kurt that might be nice if you could at least just send that out to the board in an email please just so we've got it for reference sure thank you you bet okay is there anything else that we need to address in this policy i don't believe so okay but that then is we will uh with the modifications of standard proof as a first reading we'll bring
080this back for final consideration okay the next item on the agenda is consideration approval to eliminate board policy 400.100 definition of a full-time student this is the existing policy where we replace the command replacement or 12.1 first to approve the removal or elimination of policy 400 100. thank further discussion okay hearing none all those in favor of the motion signify by saying aye aye opposed motion carries uh next item on the agenda reminder thanks kurt yes thank you kurt thank you next item the agenda's other business we have a reminder to submit the thank yous and recognitions of nominees on our google docs spreadsheet so got that also uh there was a reminder of convention registration uh if you're interested in going it will be virtual [Music] uh january through that friday so anybody that
081is interested in attending that virtually please let pam know so she can get you registered for that there is a discount if we get uh more than four registrations with that also question on that yeah or if you're not able to make all three days are you still able to attend you just go to and you jump into the ones you can do there's keynote speakers and breakout well it's like most conventions you get to what you can attend yeah i just have a couple meetings up here i don't think i can i just want to make sure so with it virtual i wonder if you're right if you're registered if you have access to the replay of it say there's two that you want to do at the same time or was that did
082it say that they stayed in the meeting i okay uh then there's one other thing that we need to address and that's delegate assembly we need a person to attend that i did it last time it is like bad news i am not volunteering i don't need to join you i'm busy that year it's an opportunity if you want to find out the guts of the wisconsin association of school boards they have a whole committee that evaluates them and says yes or no just a positive recommendation and then at the delegate assembly they come up one by one somebody advocates and the ones that are controversial are the ones that take something away from one district and give it to another otherwise it's i mean i'm planning on but for the most part my experience
083in that i've been to probably 10 or 15 of these things over the years which is it's not my favorite uh activity down there it's one of those things that everybody needs to experience at least once you know my experiences said the ones that are most controversial and the ones that sailed through ones that should sail through without any problems and the ones that become the most controversial and they can some of the most controversial ones full 5-10 minutes it's done they hour 45 minutes they'll amend it and they vote on the amendments and then they make commandments and amendments and then they get a vote on those and it's all strict robert's rules award parliamentarian that runs those and in the end that's the times that the amendments have all been voted down and
084then you're back to the original policy that nobody was happy with and then it ends up either passing or failing everybody's tired and then there's an opportunity if you can get a vote of two-thirds of the delegate assembly at the end of it policies that were rejected by the policy council or committee bring it back to the floor for reconsideration do we have to have a delegate yes yeah they do do they have to go but so it's an opportunity that if you haven't experienced it you should no longer focus i'm guilty of one fact that i went to the one when i got into the reconsiderations of some of these policies after 15 minutes 20 minutes of arguing after i'd already been there for four hours that i'd had enough got up and and
085the board got upset because it was probably about a third or forty percent of the rest of them followed being hard i was on the wholesale audience for the american bar association so i have satchels i know how people are they're full days and you run out screaming no they're not full ladies because it's clean we won't have the we won't have the it's kind of a tradition that i started i just want to bring one up that i'm hearing from a number of parents i've just heard kind of with this the fridays off and all of this stuff that this perception out there of people going out quite a bit and it's being on social media and stuff like that and seeing teachers and everybody out a lot like i getting more and more
086pressure out of cars and things like that i'm getting more and more pressure from people just like the perception and an idea that it can't be regulated no you're not talking about on fridays during work hours no no just talking about like well so friday evening right doing a whole bunch of bar hopping and stuff like that and the last one that was brought up to me but it's just this thing like if you're doing it i get you're doing your things on your own time but we're literally looking at bringing something forward we were just meeting about earlier tonight and that's it's not going to help the cause at all and i don't know how you know it's going to make you aware of it and i don't know what you do about it
087exactly but that if that continues with friday's off and everything and right and we just put the calendar out there for like i don't know that could make it a really i put a lot of headwind into a referendum yeah and if you want to be compensated at 110 percent of what everyone else does be 110 of what everyone else is sorry i just i'm starting to hear that much yeah conversation right i don't know i'm not friends with most like them but i just hear a lot with kids in school and everything now so it's i don't know just something to keep in mind like about the message anything is there anything else we need to cover one more quick one i um howard knew this already and a couple people jeff did but
088i made it official today i signed my i'm not running for next term papers today so it'll be 18 years at the end of this one you just started why that would be 18 years ago he wanted to get a letter you don't get a letter too yeah it's funny because we've changed the standards on that now it's higher you know frankly the biggest the biggest dream over the last couple years has been i don't go on social media i don't have a facebook account but i do know what's out there and i know that everything you do is wrong to too big of a percentage of people so someone else can take a swipe at it well it's been fun it's been very rewarding and kind of draining and yeah you came yeah that
089was the easy part getting us from the front page to the back page was a lot easier than facebook era i don't have a twitter account i do but i don't i've never been on it i don't have a facebook account i don't read any of that stuff i don't talk to people about it i don't take phone calls and it's still draining so i can't imagine my advice to anyone that does get engaged with people a lot on it is disengage push them to the right person him for the teacher or the principal or whoever and don't take their monkey yeah that was saying that one of my old bosses had an open door policy like you came in with a monkey on your back we were going to leave is there anything else
090we need to cover okay then we'll go over important upcoming dates i want you to not have you read all of them to us second okay we have a motion right there okay all right i'm just hoping you