Regular Board Meeting 4/28/2026

001Um, we have two we have some candidates that are seeking us. Just from having spoken to their references and I as this coach can agree on that. And then the addition of bringing in youth apprentices and partnering up with Wilmont to bring in high school kids who are eager, who are in their induction to teaching program, who want to jump in our amazing profession and continue it. What better place to learn and grow than here? So, a lot of great discussion, a lot of great work by the board, so I appreciate and respect everything you guys discussed provision for increasing salaries and supporting our teachers. I'd just like to recognize too your work and the work of Mr. Wilmont putting that together. It really helped things. I enjoyed it. Yeah, I think so. This format

002made it easy to digest, right? Thank you. Any further discussion? I'll entertain a motion to approve the salary increases. I'm Line 7A. I would like to make a motion to approve the 2026-2027 salary increases as discussed. I'll second that. Motion by Mike Gentile, seconded by Joe Curtis. All approve? I. Any nays? Uh Approve contracts for teachers and administrative assistants. That's just again yearly requirement just to make sure we can we put that on there just as a we wanted to make sure that we had approval from the board on the administrative contracts and also the assurances for our employees. Obviously, there's state statute and timeline for those. We want to get those out as soon as possible and to make sure our staff has time to sign them. Uh, we've already reached out to them,

003which is standard practice, uh, to get a just a email uh email indicating their willingness to return, which everybody does. It's pretty normalized here, so we just have to give give the district and school the ability to move forward and issue contracts and assurances for the next two agenda items. Will B&E be approved in the same motion? >> Yeah, this time. I'll make a motion to approve contracts for teachers and administrative assistants, as well as approve assurances for all employees. Thank you. Motion by Joel Hurst, seconded by Luke Hamilton. All approved? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Motion carried. All right, so uh the E-rate bids. Uh yeah, we were up E-rate. Thank you to Mr. Hurst, who let me know uh I think week three um when we first had our onboarding meeting and uh

004that conversation got went well. We uh uh our our uh our Bruce, our um our free consultant, he manages the process, contracts with another vendor who then manages the E-rate. Just so anybody knows what E-rate is, as you pay for your internet and cable and phone, if you have that, there's other fees attached to it. That goes into that's federal support for schools to expand and ensure that all schools have quality access to internet and Wi-Fi. In a nutshell, that's it. Uh what we're very fortunate in the past, our previous E-rate rate was 40% reimbursement from the state. It is now 50% reimbursement from the state. So, what we pay as we increase the amount the I think we I believe we went from 500 meg to at at least one or two gig of

005internet speed and bandwidth coming in here, um we get reimbursed and those bills are processed at 50% moving forward. Um you I I shared with you the approval process and the evaluation. As you can see, Bruce does a very thorough job. That then goes to someone else. Bruce Bruce evaluates it based on the E-rate table and calculations, and then we Compunet was the was the bid that as you go through that, I will do my best to answer all your questions about the specific items in there. Um and uh if you have any and then in addition, uh some of that E-rate dollars will go towards the the uh Compunet contract for managing it. And that's a part of part of E-rate that's called MIMs, and that's that's the portion where you can pay your

006MSP or a contractor to manage your internet. So, um I I will say this, um and and I I I've grown to really get to know and appreciate Bruce. Um I know his introduction to the staff was in our school was a kind of unusual and abrupt because what leading exact leader from uh Johnson Controls or no Johnson Controls, yeah. No, um Northwestern Northwestern Mutual, there you go. I'm sorry. Um wants to volunteer to help a school out, but he's very passionate about not getting paid to help schools out. And he's a good man who cares about us and I appreciate the fact that he is not afraid to confront Compunet and ask them a lot of questions and hold them accountable on behalf of our school district. And he wants no thank yous, and

007if you see him, his mother just passed away. So, uh she was battling dementia. Okay. So, any comments, questions? I I found a couple of points that Bruce called out in the documentation that I wonder if we need answered before we can uh vote on it. One was that uh Comp-U-Net requires a 5-year agreement, I believe, but U-Rate is only going to do annual. Mhm. So, I don't know how and Comp-U-Net has a contract clause that says it's contingent on U-Rate funding, I think. Um Bruce mentioned that we should probably get that >> Bruce and I had that conversation. Yeah, yeah, we did have that conversation. Um and I I think I can I would strongly recommend this board approves it as a 1-year contract. Okay. Oh, instead of the 5-year Yeah, correct. >> Oh,

008okay. Yeah, that was cuz it says it's contingent upon board approval. Yeah, I didn't know if it had to be a 5-year agreement. >> no, I think that's a a smart move because I think on behalf of the district, when you look at our IT services, I think knowing we're contracting with a provider, that should be a regular discussion, if I This is not a any negative negative assessment of Comp-U-Net, but I think we should be doing our due diligence on behalf of our school, staff, district, and and uh taxpayers to make sure that we are getting the best deal, service, and highest ROI. Great. Uh the other point he called out was on the new um devices that we're purchasing, and he said that they actually have the device and it's sale of 8/2025,

009so he just recommended that we confirm that we can get the devices and that they can still get them supported, so and I I guess we really need to confirm that Comp-U-Net. Yeah, it did seem silly to think that they would offer something that they can't get. Yeah, I I I agree. But I thought it was an interesting point. >> Yeah. It kind of echoes the point that he does push back on Yeah. Amber. I think she prefers not meetings. And then they get Which I find is just beyond it. One thing I is that's who I am. It's super entertaining. So, if anyone else ever needs an entertainer to bump it up, then feel free to connect me to them. So. But, those are the only concerns. I thought that the assessment was great.

010It seems Yeah, it seems like a company. That's all. Thank you. Any other comments or discussion? So, how do you want to move forward? I think I would approve I would approve the uh cabinet of All those are one year or one year only. And if we have to we'll do I'll just we'll inform them that we can approve it every year from there on out. I make a motion to approve the hearing bid with the amendment item three. Uh either that or I had to change the from five years to one. Motion by Joe Harris, second? I'll second that. All right. So, motion by Joe Harris, seconded by Vicki Galliard. All approved? Aye. Aye. Aye. Any noes? Any abstains? Okay. On to public comments. Do we have any public comments? All right. School board

011training. Welcome, Ryan. All right, thanks. I'll stand this way if you guys Whatever's comfortable for you. So, first of all, good evening. Uh familiar faces, but for the new board member, my name is Ryan Hayden and the school district's legal counsel. Nice to meet you. Uh welcome aboard. Hopefully, you find this week very fulfilling. Um I'm here tonight because first of all, thank you. I think this is a good testament to your uh commitment. I just say that not every board is wanting and willing to learn. So, I would just commend you guys for even having this presentation in the first place. Really, my purpose here tonight is to be a resource for you guys. So, while I am presenting, certainly, if there's things you guys have questions about, whether I'm hitting on it or

012not, I'm certainly happy to address those questions. So, feel feel to just shoot your hand up, chime in whenever you see fit. Um with that, I do have a lot before us, but I plan to drive over some of them pretty cursory, so um don't be intimidated by the fact that there'll be a lot of slides, and I'll just kind of keep moving along here as as we go. 73 to be exact? >> Yes, exactly. So, if you want, I can quit, too, if that's easier for you. It's up to you. So, I won't get tired. Okay, perfect. So, the agenda tonight, as why we have 73 slides, is because we got three different topics that I think are really core and relevant to you guys. Some of them are more so less so, but

013they're all they're all critical at various points. So, first we're going to talk about board governance, really what is the role of the board, the authority, and also at the end of the day, why are you here versus administration? I find that having that core understanding on both levels is really helpful for everyone as you guys work through your day-to-day duties. Then I'll get into the open meetings law, everyone's favorite, but again, important just to have some basic understandings there, the do's, the don'ts. And then lastly, we'll cover public records law and things you guys should understand as office holders and the things that you have to comply with and all that fun stuff. So, uh with that, if you want to just advance this here, Chris, we'll get to uh board governance. So, first

014and foremost, just understanding the structure of a school district is important as you sit on a board. So, the authority, when you guys look, if you ever have interest to figure out where is it that we as a board derive authority to do or not do things, it's really often going to come from chapter 120 of the Wisconsin statutes. So, that's the spot where, for example, if you're dealing with expulsions, it's 120.13, um and various other types of issues. When we talk about teacher and administrator contracts, like you guys were just referencing, that's going to be chapter 118. Um and so, it's really going to be 115 through 121, but I would argue 118 and 120 are the key ones you guys should generally be aware of and reading if and when uh it interests

015you. Now, a key thing to understand is that you guys are a body, and so that means that in a couple different ways, you act in in a corporate fashion, and also you act as a as a body, not individuals. So in that sense, you can sue and be sued. And so don't ever be surprised if at some point the district will be sued, it would be the board that would be mentioned or named, it would be you individually as a board member. It doesn't mean you personally have to pay out of your coffers. It just means you're serving as an official capacity on behalf of the corporate entity. Now because of that, you guys as a board are limited by statute. So some governmental entities like cities for example have really really broad powers

016where it's set up that they have you know what are called police authorities and they can essentially do anything that's in the safety and welfare of of the citizens. You're the opposite of that. You are a creature that's basically created and it's only if you have authority within a statute that you can do something. If you don't, you're limited and you can't do it. Obviously as you guys know, you govern the district. However, importantly and I'll harp on this repeatedly tonight so I apologize, but it's the board as a whole that governs the district. It's not any one of you individuals at any given point and that's whether you're the president, vice president, clerk, treasurer, or the member at large. Each of you have distinct functions and roles as we'll talk about, but it's really

017critical that you understand that at no point in time can any one of you bind the district or act on behalf of the district. Doesn't mean you can't talk or speak on issues as we'll go through, but it's that's the that's a key limitation. You want to go to the next slide, Chris? So here, that being said, understand that your powers are ultimately very broad. So one of the statutory grants is that you can do all things reasonable to promote education. And so there is the ability to generally speaking do a number of things that you may not otherwise do. With that being said, there's 38 separate grants. I'm not going to go through them for obvious reasons, but just understand that there's a lot of things that are called out whether it be creating

018hunting and school forest districts, purchasing the sale property, a lot of things you may not anticipate. And so if there ever are discussions or issues that you guys want to look into, understand it very well may be the case that it's contemplated already in the law. Additionally, as statute sets forth, you guys as the board have to ultimately develop curriculum, course requirements, instructions. That's something that you have a core responsibility over. So, it's not to say that administration is going to play a large role in that, but statutorily that's one of the key functions that you guys play and that's you should serve an important function with that. Next slide, please. And so, just getting into what are some of your actual duties here? So, again, just kind of giving you some flavor for the

019the purposes of the school board. Um so, specifically, it's the care for, possession and management the actual affairs of the district. And again, very broad as you can see there. And that may include visiting examining schools in district, etc. Evaluating effectiveness, all those good things. Now, what I would argue is that while yes, you can examine the school, I would not necessarily suggest that any one of you come in and do, for example, personal reviews. Really, what I think this is contemplate You'd be surprised what I've seen myself. What I would recommend is you view this as more of a we're going to work with administration to get the information we need to examine, to advise, to look at how our staff is doing things. And it may be that there's, you know, joint exercises

020you guys as the agent there. But, the point of the statutory provision is that at the end of the day, while the administrator serves as the day-to-day operator of the district, the buck stops with you guys if you feel the effectiveness of teachers, the way that the overall curriculum is going isn't working out, that's that's your function. Next slide, please. Obviously, keeping the school board and our excuse Excuse me, building and grounds and good repair is going to be one of your key functions. So, obviously, as you guys talk about a number of things even tonight here with your IT, it's again one of the reasons that you're dealing with that it falls right within your wheelhouse. So, anytime you're dealing with an issue of significance in that regard, often times, unless you've given a

021pre-really broad grant of authority to the administrator or otherwise, these things come back to you and you as board need to generally address them, deal with them, etc. Um additionally, insurance, all the other fun things, that's why it comes before you as well. It's you guys that have the statutory duty to actually deal with these things. And so while again administration brings the information to you, the reason you have to vote on it is by statute. It's it's a requirement. So on the next slide here, we have some other important duties again just to kind of hit them. Soliciting health care bids is actually a statutory duty. Again, your school hours, you'll know every year again you you've been here long enough, you do the calendar every year, you set all of that. Um these

022are all things again that you're really really set forth responsibility responsible for excuse me here in my statute. Now the top one is an important one as well. This is generally going to be your annual meeting. Again, if you've been here for a number of years, you've been through the levy setting it. That's what that's in reference to. It's typically again your ability, your authority to set the levy limit within uh certain reasonable parameters, but to determine how much funding is going to come from the local community and what that's going to look like. Heading into the next here, this is where it gets kind of into the more specifics here for each of you. And again, just some of the really important points that I see just practically working with boards over the years.

023Number one here again is what I've already hit but just reinforcing it. By policy, you guys as a board and this is really important. You said not necessarily you as a whole but the prior boards that this policy is one you're going to adopt and follow and that's true for all the things we're going to cover tonight. Now to that point before I get into this, what I would say is to me that suggests certainly follow it, but also if you disagree with the policy, the understanding as a board you can always change the policy. So if there are things tonight I go through or that you you run into as a board member or as a collective that you think don't make sense, that can be changed. Understand you definitely can do that. But

024for now tonight what I'm referencing is the policies you guys as a whole previously have said, yep, we like those, we're going to follow those, we think they make sense. With that in mind collectively and I would agree with this one, prior boards have said and you continue to agree that individual board members do not have actual authority unless provided by the law. So, you guys, again, it makes sense to do this, have not given individual board members the authority to do any particular thing on behalf of the district. I think that's important because sometimes you will have in smaller districts or even bigger ones, uh people who've been there for a long time, they have particular political powers, sways, etc. And if they get into a particular role, they have authorities, all of a

025sudden they're not really acting on the behalf of the electorate or the collective, they're kind of taking their own personal vendetta, agenda, whatever you want to call it, and running with it. It can be extremely toxic, so I think this one is very important and it makes a lot of sense as to why it exists. Likewise, you guys have said under policy that the board president is basically your spokesperson. So, if the board as a whole, and again, this is the concept is going to speak as a body, it's the board president that you by policy said is going to do that. Now, your policy also explicitly says that individual board members, of course, you're you are citizens, can make statements, but you have to be clear and state you're not speaking on behalf of

026the board. So, you're not limited in speaking out, you just have to make it clear that you're speaking in your own personal capacity and that it's not a board decision or statement that's being issued. Now, in that respect, understand the board president also, of course, speaks when the board votes and authorizes it. So, it's not to say that the board president just automatically can go out and make statements on behalf of the board. Again, this is all based on collective action. Uh next slide, please. So, who are the school board officials? You guys know this, but just to cover it, by statute, and again, this is why you voted tonight, you have to have four different positions, president, vice president, treasurer, and clerk. Some larger boards, of which you are not, they do establish other

027random positions, which are voluntary, but you have to have these offices, and therefore, again, that's why you have, despite having a five-person board, four different offices. So, we'll run through here next the various powers that you guys actually have, and And these are by statute. Basically, the one takeaway, I won't read all these, is just understand that each of these positions have unique, distinct powers. And I'll be honest, they're a lot less significant than you probably would imagine. Uh and again, the reason for this is because by statute, the legislature said to you guys that, "Hey, individual folks on the board shouldn't really have all that much authority. It's the board as a whole that has to act." So, really we're talking to the president signing of checks, maybe defending in certain litigation if they

028are spokesperson or to serve in that regard. Um and then again, obviously chairing the board number or the board meetings, excuse me, uh that happen. Those are really at the end of the day the key statutory functions. Beyond that, being president is just, you know, the the list of these things in the title, essentially. This by policy, so getting beyond statute, again, you basically just re you know, kind of regurgitate, which is again good, uh the statutory policies and and various rights. So, understand that this much very much mirrors what the the statute says. And so again, really the key one here from a practicality standpoint being acting as the chairperson of the various meetings. And then of course, ensuring meeting minutes are properly recorded, approved, and signed. Vice president, there are no distinct statutory

029duties, but the reason that this position exists is because at the end of the day, there are obviously going to be moments president can't be here, incapacity, unavailability, vacation, whatever it might be. And therefore, someone needs to be able to step in and then assume the powers and duties of the president. And and thus, there goes the vice president. And so, uh there may also be some other duties as the policy uh at some point could indicate if you guys wanted to assign them, but at the end of the day, really this position is there for the vacancy issue that may ul- ultimately arise. The treasurer, on the other hand, does have some specific duties that are unique to it. And so, for example, you know, this long laundry list here, basically, it's coming back

030to applying for any kind of collection or monetary disbursement. The The clerk or excuse me, the treasurer is going to be overseeing that. There's also the keeping of some basic rudimentary account books that have to be done. Um and again, it's any kind of disbursement under sub three there. And then really at the the last one is presenting at the annual meeting a written statement of all money received and disbursed by the treasurer of that last year. So, not anything over the top, but yet some specific duties. And again, just some very specific obligations here when it comes to when funds are withdrawn, distributed, received, etc. How is it that we are to go about actually putting that money away and recording of those transfers? So, in the policy again, very much mirroring what the

031statute says, which is what we want. Just again stating that you're going to enter into your various books all the money you receive, reimburse, that you're going to also deposit things timely, etc. And then at the annual meeting you're going to give that spiel I just mentioned about the money received and disbursed. So, the clerk, final one here is ultimately probably I in ironic fashion, the one that has maybe the most significant duties under statute because you're the one that has some of the signatory duties on various contracts and orders for the district. And you would also be the person that generally during meetings is going to record various minutes and things of that fashion if if necessary. Um and so this is a a very important position and and particularly at the annual meeting

032and special meeting they serve a unique function of recording the proceedings as well. So, again, important that you have this role. Um and then on the next slide here we'll have the the policy obligations as well as the statutory but then policy. Um and here again, it's just really stating forth that there's a certified statement on this one of the taxes. This is where from the annual meeting the clerk will ultimately take the information back to your locality and work with them. So, again, a lot of legalese here. And same thing here, we can just skip to the next one. So, board functions. What is the board function? This is really the key thing to focus on tonight here and we talked about the roles and that is that you are obviously here you're voted

033in by the public and therefore you're here to involve and be representable to their interests. And so, obviously all of you can come to this with your own unique personal views and experiences, but at the end of the day it's important I find when you're dealing with conflict and dealing with tough decisions to just remember that you're here on behalf of the larger public and that you're here to ultimately at the end of the day work together to have a more effective educational environment. That being said, you're also here to hold staff accountable and make sure that they implement policy. So, as I just read to you guys, you have your own policies that govern you. You also have a whole litany of policies that you've approved over the years that that govern staff. And

034so, it's very important that in the future to the extent you find out about deviations from policy that you guys ensure that that doesn't happen, that you correct that type of stuff and that you're making sure everybody is on board with that. Chris obviously plays a very large role in that, too. Um but at the end of the day we want to make sure that the policies you guys implement, that you're saying as a whole are important district, that people are actually following them. Uh failure to do that can really put you guys in a bad spot as a district because if you're not following your own policies, if and when a lawsuit comes, for obvious reasons, it becomes very easy for the person to make that look quite bad and to point to the

035fact that you're deviating from, you know, accepted practices, etc. So, that one is particularly important and I just wanted to highlight that that if you again you become aware of those issues, you really focus on it. The last point is important and that really is just that your role is to enact policy. You are not here and I think you guys know this, but to be doing the day-to-day minutia of checking in with staff and that's where I know we were joking earlier, but I have seen folks legitimately come in and sit up from board to board in classrooms, observe teachers, do these kind of crazy things. Um they think that for better or worse my role is to manage the district, they have all this authority and while they are correct in a very

036certain way, they're incorrect in another way. Um and I would argue that if your goal is to actually do the things that we just discussed of forwarding good educational practices and policies, working outside of the realm of policy really is counterintuitive to that ultimate goal. Yes. So, we're not talking about showing up and being present at events and we're talking about inserting ourselves into the day-to-day operations. Correct. Yep. So, and and I'll give you some more examples that might be more realistic cuz that one's a little bit outlandish. But, you know, so, for example, board members that would say, "Hey, I want to come sit down on this particular staff meeting." And there are certainly, to be clear, instances and examples where the board as a whole might decide, "Yeah, we need someone there for

037that." But, I'm talking about a person who on their own without a board decision and discussion just decides, "You know what? I'm kind I got Tuesday off. I'm just going to go into district offices and kind of see what Chris is up to and mosey around and poke around in the school and say hey to the teachers and talk to the students cuz I just want to get a feel for what's going on." That, believe it or not, is a much more common phenomenon than you realize. And again, while there's a certain place for feedbacking in a very limited fashion of, "Hey, I want to just check out for an hour what's going on." Um, the reality is that that kind of behavior is generally much more indicative of other larger problems. So, that's the

038kind of stuff that when I talk about kind of getting involved in the day-to-day minutia, I'd recommend not getting, you know, involved with essentially, if that makes sense. So, that being said, kind of now on the other side of the coin, what's the authority of the superintendent? So, obviously, you guys and the superintendent, you know, you guys are tied at the hip in terms of a working relationship. So, it's really important that you have a common understanding of what the role of Chris is versus what you guys do. And so, from that standpoint, really just to simplify it, you know, under the statutes, but also contract, Chris's role, whether it be Chris or any other district administrator, is to come in and have the general supervision and management of both your professional staff and then

039also your students. And so, when we talk about who's got the reins every single day here making sure that things are going in the right direction, that's your superintendent. They're the ones that to the extent you guys as a board have concerns about, "Hey, why aren't we doing this? Why aren't we checking into that? Why aren't we working with vendors to ask these questions?" It's generally I would recommend that you work through whether it be Chris or other administrative staff that come to these meetings and that you guys understand that they are conduits to bring you the information for decisions to be made. Um that being said, in a lot of instances, it will be the case that you have recommendations brought to you guys for maybe important decisions that by statute you are the

040ones to make. So, examples of that could be teacher terminations, non-renewals. By statute in both instances, you do have to be the body that makes those decisions. But ultimately, as you guys know, it's not going to be the case, especially for non-renewals, where if there are large volume of them for one reason or another, maybe economic issues, you're not going to have the ability to get into the weeds and all of the the prep work and the review. And so, that's where administration comes into play. They do that prep work. They bring it to you with information. You talk about it. You become educated. And when you feel comfortable, you make the decision that you need to make. Um but again, it's really just understanding that it's the authority or excuse me, the superintendent rather

041that does that and brings it to you. That's likewise set out in policy. So again, you guys have recognized this in your own policies. The chief administrative officer is what you call the position. And again, that really just means kind of, you know, your effective CEO doing all the day-to-day things. So again, just really simplifying it, the board is really, if you want to think about it, you're the what and the why of the district. You think about the theory, the bigger picture. You're trying to drive the district in a larger direction. And then you're asking the administrative staff here, your Chris and otherwise, to do the the where, when, and how, kind of the run with it, figure out the details, make it happen type thing. Um that's kind of the the division of

042labor that you should think about when you picture yourself as a board and and what's our role versus where is administration involved. Again, just breaking it down even more for just more examples. So, policies the what, you know, will the district for example contract with whether it be the PD, the SRO, or otherwise. Or for example, will SROs benefit from this overall educational mission of the district? Are we going to take away something positive policy-wise? On the other hand, if you're dealing with this issue from Chris's perspective, it's going to be who's the SRO actually going to be? What school hours for example might they be here? And what specific SROs am I going to ask the police department sheriff's office to bring over for us. So, you can see kind of again through that

043practical example of the larger policy considerations versus the day-to-day minutia and how that breaks down. So, why again following policy matters? I hit on this earlier, but just a few other pieces on it. So, beyond the liability piece, it also frankly is a credibility issue. So, the whole classic, you know, rules for thee but not for me thing. It's It is true, it's an issue, especially if it's open and obvious to anybody here working at the district. Very hard to enforce for the peace staff, students, or otherwise to say, "We're going to hold you accountable through discipline, expulsions, whatever because you didn't follow policy, but ultimately you at the same times of work aren't doing the same." So, that's a big just practical issue to be wary of. And again, if you want to have

044just kind of an effective school environment, in my experience that's that's a really important one to have that credibility with your staff. The liability piece of it all, again making sure that you have a legal defense just get a little further into that. Having policies you follow is critical. At the end of the day, if there ever was a claim from someone that is what's called a Section 1983 claim, so they would try to bring an claim to pierce the immunity that you guys have. What your defense is going to be is to say that essentially no, we're not we don't have a well-established policy to violate someone's constitutional rights. And the way you can point to that is whatever your policy actually is. And so, by sticking to your policy, following it, you're essentially

045without knowing it, you're keeping yourself on the straight and narrow here for when a when a claim ever filed. And then of course, you know, just practically again, you're creating confusion frankly for those who are looking at the policies because if we don't follow what we have in writing, it's very hard then for folks to go, "Well, what's the expectation? What am I really supposed to do here?" And then the last one again practical but important is that it can ultimately undermine your objectives. So, if you do have a sticky expulsion termination discipline issue or whatever it might be, sometimes and frankly it's often those scenarios that happens more regularly, you go to deal with the problem and then you realize, "Whoops, we got an issue because we didn't follow this, that, or the other

046thing and we're going to end up having to bring this person back or we have a problem in another area." So, again, just to not shoot yourself in the foot um proverbially speaking, you want to make sure that you follow policy. This is another one just kind of getting to the question earlier of, you know, when is it that you people are stepping your bounds? And so, this is where you guys as again a board have laid out a desired path to not do that. Board staff communications is a big one and often it's not you guys to be honest that's going to violate this but at least staff that try to hang around Chris that come to you guys with concerns. So, frankly what you need to understand here in this policy is just

047that communications are supposed to go through the chain of command from individual staff members to um ultimately superintendent then through the board. So, this is not something that again while individuals aren't precluded from contacting you, it's just that they need to go through the right steps to get there. It will be chaos and havoc otherwise have individual folks reaching out and kind of trying to forward various agendas. You're also going to get half the story and you're not going to fully understand because again, you're not here day-to-day, they are, Chris is here. Uh it's just the classic game of telephone. So, uh to the extent you get those contacts, my practical recommendation would be say, "Hey, I really appreciate you reaching out. I'm going to direct you over to Chris. He can work with you

048on getting this resolved. If Chris needs to he'll involve the board and get us back in the loop on whatever needs to happen." So, it's not that we're ignoring them, it's just we're putting them back into the right path. So, again, just at the end of the day, just kind of a practical question here of if you have a board member that wants to go to the director of finance or to the business manager here and say, "Hey, I want you to compile this very specific report. I want all these details and I want it just for me so I can review it and then maybe come to a board meeting and have some issues with it." No, you ultimately under your own policy can't make such a request. Again, I'm not saying any of

049you would, but I've seen this in other districts where people monopolize staff members' time because they have a concern or issue and then they go ahead and they ask for staff to pull all kinds of data and issues. And so, it's this extent that you ever have an issue like that, again, it's really incumbent on you guys to bring it forward at a board meeting, have that request made to the staff through the board, not again just individually reaching out and saying, "Hey, I need you to, you know, spend your whole Friday putting together all these various public records that I could otherwise obtain in another fashion." So, why does this all matter? I'd hit on some of this, but frankly, if you don't adhere to a lot of these principles, these all these various

050bad outcomes can can occur. And again, I've seen them happen in real time. Some of them little, some of them big, like time spent on the trivial. That may seem like a a minor deal, but if you have staff, for example, like I just noted, spending hours on gathering of information that really doesn't benefit anything in the long run, you are now spending time not doing other things and other issues fall behind and that that accumulates over time. You also burn folks out, honestly, whether that be administration or staff. So, it's an issue from a retention standpoint. Nobody wants to work with bosses that they feel like are overstepping their bounds, just like you want the administrator to respect his role, vice versa. And so, that's another big point at the end of the day

051is just on the overall effectiveness of the district. It does make a big impact. Additionally, there's a reactivity versus proactivity issue that I see. So, if you don't follow through with this process, you guys are going to be like I said flying by the seat of your pants and all of these issues. You're not going to have the full set of information. By empowering and working through the proper channels, you actually get the information you need. And you're going to be able to act with the proper info that you have. Um and then again, obviously, you don't want folks feeling that they have control of board agendas, whether that be staff or other board members that are kind of rogue. Understand how you guys actually operate in that respect. And if you have people who

052want items on the agenda, respect your process and have it come through generally the president is going to create that board uh agenda. So, again, just kind of a sampling of some concerns or issues that could come about. Just to interrupt real quick, we do have a clear policy on that. On the agenda creation? Correct. Yep. Yep. And if you guys are not aware that policy is is any two board members who agree that they would like an item added to the agenda. That's it. You make that request and it gets added. Yeah, we made that policy last year. Two years ago. Okay, good. Yep. So, that and then normally cuz if you don't have that and it's just the president you get to vote on that thing. And I know that if someone wants

053something and they get the the veto, then you don't get that. So, that's that's good. >> That was the motivation for creating that policy just like that to create to avoid to avoid that issue. Yep. Okay, so that's good to know. So, then you guys have the ability of two board members as as stated. So, I understand that that's how that process can work. Okay. So, again, just kind of working together. At the end of the day, this is some of these again are practical, but frankly, admitting what you don't know is a very important one. I don't sense that that's an issue with this board, but again, it's something just to have in the back of your mind. All of us are coming to this with different life experiences and information. You can all

054play an important role in those various facets, but acting as though you know everything is one of the ways to lock yourself in the district into a really bad spot. Obviously, jumping to conclusions is another big one. Um particularly when it comes to sensitive personnel issues or student issues, you're going to hear a lot of things in the community from people that you work with, you live next to, etc. They're going to be have have been playing the game of telephone. They may have the story right, they may not, but at the end of the day come to the board meeting, hear out from everybody who's here and it's going to be able to provide you information whether that be staff or otherwise, and then make a measured judgment as to what's happening. Similarly, be

055very careful making promises outside the board meeting. So again, you're going to have a lot of folks who know you're on the board, they're going to try to ask you for favors, whatever you want to call it. Yes, you can ultimately bring concerns and interests forward to again the board as a whole, but be very clear with them that you as an individual frankly don't even have the authority to do most of probably what they're going to ask you. And just explain to them as to how this process works. And frankly again, have them come for public comment if it's something where they very very much feel that strongly about it. Ryan, if you have uh concerns that are brought through the community, where on your agenda does that can you voice that? Yeah. Can

056we as a board work and we voice that? So, there's a couple ways to do it. One and I don't recommend this first approach because it's so broad that I think you could walk into other problems in the open meetings that we'll talk about in a second, but certainly I guess in theory you could have a standing agenda item that would say, you know, concerns from the community. I don't love that idea for the reasons I just stated. But you could also indicate so and again, it's a matter of timing, but let's say you get approached on a a Wednesday by someone in the community they got a concern that next Monday or Friday, whatever you have meeting. You could then through you and one of the person make a request for a board agenda

057item to put that on the agenda and just you know, have it basically as a matter of discussion. And at that point really all it is is just saying, okay, I'm going to turn it over to the board president, she's asked for this agenda item because there's a person who expressed some concerns, and then frankly the floor is yours at that point to say, yep, I spoke with so-and-so or you you don't have to identify them and talk about what the concern is. And then maybe it's the case that the board wants to have a discussion. If there's action, that could be the case too, but that's how you set it up so that it's properly before you as a board, and if there needs to be again discussion or action, you're not violating your

058open meetings law. Or maybe an easier way is just to have them come in under public comments, make their comments, and then Yes, the only concern there, and again, uh But, that we can't act on it, but they can talk. >> Exactly. I was going to say, so you can't act on it that night, and generally you can't respond either. So, you can say, "Thank you. We appreciate it." And that may tee up a future board agenda as well. But, yes, that's another avenue. >> And it's coming directly from the person instead of being referred to, dictated, and maybe misunderstood. That's right. And although it's a hypothetical, but they could also publicly refer to me, too. Correct. >> Yeah. You know, that's another strategy. Absolutely. If we put it on an agenda item, couldn't we

059invite a community member to be part of the discussion on that agenda item? Yeah, as long as you agendize it correctly. So, it's really the trap is this the public comment piece, and making sure that you don't have them come up here, say something, and then you guys start engaging with them. That's the biggest no-no. >> From a public comment standpoint. Correct. >> But, if it was an agenda item, then you could have them talk. Call them as part of the agenda. I don't know if that would be totally 100%. Yep, 100%. So, that's another option as well. Okay. Yep. And I would say the only thing is being careful with that again because if you make one exception for that, then you open the door. So, not to say you can't do that, but

060it's kind of like public comment that no good deed goes unpunished, I guess is what I would say. Okay, so another big thing here is that, and again, not suggesting you guys would do this, but these are things I've seen, you know, really avoid at any point in time pitting staff amongst one another with respect to whatever you guys may view as your political issues. So, obviously being on a board, it's you know, politics are a little bit different than our traditional understanding of the term, but when we talk about your local, you know, concerns, issues, whatever that might be, yes, you have them, and you're fully entitled to it. I would just strongly advise you guys to not ultimately involve staff in those issues. again, it may be that they approach you about things

061they know you're passionate about cuz they watch the board meetings. I would just again caution you to say, "Well, again, I appreciate you coming forward with this, but it's really probably best that you not get involved with this particular issue as a staff member. I will handle it on my own as board member." Again, because basically at the end of the day, whether again you they realize it, it's putting everybody in a in a bad spot if things particularly go south. Again, same with administration, shouldn't assume staff are taking side. Especially if they receive an answer from you guys that they feel that you're not taking Excuse me, I can't talk. They don't feel that we're in the side that they wanted or in alignment with the interest that they wanted. And so, just really

062basically from Chris's standpoint, understanding that and he knows this, you guys are going to make decisions that he's not going to like and vice versa. Okay, so just kind of a takeaway here and we'll transition to the next section. So, really again, understand that you guys only have the powers under statute. Additionally, you as a board have many policies you set, you've decided as yourselves you want to follow them, so understand and you should therefore follow them. And also, you can change them. So, if at any point, as was mentioned you did a few years ago, something's not workable, you're running into issues, there are workarounds. And then lastly, just understand that you and administration again are here to work on the same team. You have different roles, they serve in the day-to-day operations, you

063guys are here on the policy end. Okay. Getting into the next section here. So, really just kind of some quick hitters on the front end. The thing to understand as a board, if nothing else, is really from a policy standpoint here is why is the open meetings law exist? This should guide hopefully decisions that you guys make on all matters under public under the open meetings law. And basically, as you see here in statute, any case that you ever read on this issue is going to start by citing that essentially here in Wisconsin, we're what's called a blue sky state, and we favor heavily transparency. So, the presumption of public governance is that it be open for all people to see. That's where we start here in Wisconsin, and it's only if there are liberal

064arts narrow exceptions that that would be applied otherwise. And so, as you can see, there's liberal construction by courts of this statute. So, again, anytime you have a question in your mind of should we go into closed, are we in a meeting, you should be thinking of in favor of the law saying that it's it's the openness for the public to see it. So, this is the important part as kind of we get into the technicalities here. So, when we talk about the application of this law, it applies to government bodies. And that means not just you as a board, but it also really, really important it means committees. And that means committees that you guys, you know, very clearly have as a board, but also committees that you might create as a board that

065would be staff run. So, I don't know that you have any of these, but a few years back there was a case up in Appleton. Basically, the board appointed a staff run committee, but it was board created to review various books and literature, etc. And the long and short of it is that there was a lawsuit because someone said, "I want to attend those meetings, and I want various minutes and information from those meetings. You're not putting agendas up." All the things that come with those meetings. And the district said, "Well, we're not an open meetings entity. It's not a board. It's not a board committee. It's a staff committee. There is not a single elected official on it. And so, we don't have to comply with it." The long and short is the court

066said, "No, that's wrong. When you read the statute, it is anything that is considered to be a board created committee, body, etc." So, just understand that if you guys ever were to address the idea of a task force or anything like that, I'm you can certainly do it, but you need to know the implications of it. It will be subject to the open meetings law. And so, if it's a very sensitive issue, for example, I know some schools that have safety task force, that's generally going to be an issue that you may not want to have a board created body to do that type of thing. You can address it by asking Chris, "Hey, maybe you would look into creating some kind of thing. You could figure out what that would look like. And therefore,

067you get around the issue and you have the same effect, but you're then not opening the door to the open meetings law. So, again, just understand some of the ways in which you guys deal with these issues are are going to matter as to the the back end implications. Now, when we talk about the bodies that it applies to, um the next thing you have to think about is, again, not only how was it created, but at the end of the day, what's the purpose of the body? Is it advisory or is it actually being created to have some kind of power? Um if it's ultimately advisory, excuse me, then it may be that there are some additional limitations versus actual bodies that have authority, etc. Now, here, all of your bodies are generally going

068to be some that have some authority, and thus you're going to have to comply with all aspects of the open meetings law. Uh next slide, please. Okay, so here again is kind of where the rubber starts hitting the road. So, when we talk about what's a meeting, this is where you have to start thinking about are we in the realm of the open meetings law. So, there's what's called the Showers test here in Wisconsin, and basically there's two purposes to the test. The first is the uh whether or not a meeting has happened, and that looks to the purpose, but then it also looks to the number of people involved. So, the first purpose first thing we look at, excuse me, is the purpose. And so, if the purpose was to exercise the responsibilities, authority,

069or duties that were delegated in the body, you are uh automatically then being viewed as having the purpose met. And then the second part is the number, and this is where you have to be particularly careful. If one half or more of the members of the body, and again, this includes committees, it includes uh the board, are present in any particular area at the same time, it is a presumption by law that you are engaged in a purpose to engage in governmental business. So, that first part of the requirement automatically kicks in when one half or more of you are in a single room. So, that's why, as you might have ever experienced, especially getting to then the board for a while, you go to, you know, a community event, maybe a local sporting outing,

070or whatever it might be, or a theater event at the local, you know, PAC, you might post an agenda saying that the whole board is going to be there, but there's no intention to discuss any kind of governmental business. The reason for that is because you're trying to avoid a lawsuit that ultimately, you know, be on a technicality that "Hey, I thought the board was there, and maybe they were talking about business, and they were convening a side plan, etc., without us knowing." Likewise, if you guys are friends outside of this and you all hang out, again, at least enough of you in a number to constitute a quorum, or what's called a negative quorum, which we'll talk about in a moment, you have to be wary of this potentially as well, because if you

071go to a bar, you're at a restaurant, you're all together at your house doing whatever, there's been cases out there where people file lawsuits over people watching Packer games together as as a board. Um, there was They weren't doing anything, but the challenge you have there is because the presumption exists, you are now having to prove a negative when and if you have that client come forward. You have to show I wasn't doing board business, which obviously could be pretty difficult. Ryan, with with having one, two, three three board members here with children in the district, um, and then two other active board members, sometimes it's by chance that there's a there's at least three here. Yeah. Very frequently. Yeah, Christmas play, I'd say that is very frequently. Yeah. Yes, very frequently. Yeah, pretty much

072every school event. Yeah, is there I mean, is there a blanket statement we can give and then keep it posted all the time, which I think I believe we do now, or is it better practice to just at every event possible say there could be a quorum? So, I mean, I think if you want to be hyper technical, you could do the constant technical posting that's out there all the time. I also think I could see a the DA or the AG taking a position to say if you just have a constant posting it kind of loses its effect at some point because then you're just like you read it, you move on. So, I guess what I would tend to think is actually the more defensible approach is to say if you guys show

073up for child pick up just by chance that's I think very defensible. If you're at a school event, you knew you were going to be doing that I think it's foreseeable that's where I would probably for every school event just post something and say there might be a quorum might call the bad key notice essentially. I mean you look at actually allowed on the agenda. Does it have to be 24-hour notice? Uh yes, yeah. And so that's where it practically back to your original question if just keeping a standing notice is better you could do that. Well, I think it could be the the do our best but at least we have this as Yeah, as the backup. backup at least it's showing good faith and intentionality. >> Yeah. behind adhering to the law. Exactly.

074>> And again we're only leaving it at one off constantly. >> That's correct but just Well, I I mean if we're talking about protecting us as far as I'm concerned as I disagree. If we're showing good faith and intentionality well, folks are driving a mad. There's posters that go up for each event so on the bottom of that poster can it be that it could be a quorum of four members in attendance and that's all that would be necessary but no business would be done. Exactly. That's right. >> And then we'd be covering it so if we could just add that language to our posters maybe that might cover it. But that doesn't go into the Yeah, so the only thing is No, it still would have to go to the it would still have

075to go to >> Your media outlet. the media. >> Yeah, cuz you got to do your typical event the requirements so you have to do at least So, at the end of the day you probably just still post it practically with your agenda so it wouldn't save you any any heartache. Okay. Okay. So, yeah that being said obviously high technicality as your lawyer I'm not going to tell you not to comply with it but I will tell you that it's a low likelihood of an issue to come up but it's an issue that's out there. Um so anyway the takeaway here at the end of the day is just understand you guys are good together. This is something that could be Right. Well, can we go back to that for a what what would you

076suggest that the highest risk there is vindictive individual looking to seek out damaging the district? That or and and it could be the same thing too or combination of these interests. I would say that's the scenario that I've seen it play out the most or frankly where there is truly a highly controversial issue in the district and they and someone truly believes that their board is just nefariously behind their back like making decisions that are not being done in an open and transparent public like they're supposed to. So again, that could be the same thing where someone's mad at you and thus makes these assumptions, but those are the two instances where I've seen this come up and people genuinely have a concern over the fact that they believe it's the open government being evaded.

077The other scenario yeah, is often a spurned ex-elected official, citizen, whatever it might be. Just to be clear, you said that if the three of us show up to pick up our kids randomly, that would Clearly violate the open meeting act every single time. Right, but if it was a scheduled event So yeah, correct. And the reason I'm saying I don't think that that's practical is because well again, while I could say you have to do that to be hyper technical with the law, I would say that every time you guys show up to pick up your kids, there is in my view a default built-in argument that you are not You could make the argument very easily that there is just no reason as to why we're here to avoid the open government business

078chance, right? It's a chance gathering. The fact that I came here at 3:55 and you know, someone else is 3:56, it could have been completely opposite any given day. My wife could have come, you know, and therefore a board member wouldn't be there. The point is is that you I think have very clear arguments in those scenarios to say I had to pick my kid up, it was going to happen. The fact that we all were here in the hallway at the same time, there's no way we planned it and frankly, you're also going to have a lot of witnesses probably be able to say they never talked to each other once. If they did, it was "Hey, how you doing?" You know, that that It it It says here on the shower says it

079has satisfied two requirements. So where I'm going with this is that the first one is the purpose to engage in government business. Yeah, and so the problem is that there's a there's a presumption that you were doing that when you're in there with Yeah, and and that was the previous slide that did say that. I I just But but to your point and that's where I'm saying I think you have the argument is that I think you could possibly tell the DA the AG that we're not there to engage in government business. I'm there to pick up my kid. But I'm where I have a much larger concern is where you're found huddling in the corner at a school event where you're at a football game sitting in the the stands together for the entire

080game, you know, something like that where it's a lot more question and a lot more time to defend. Oh, sure. Yeah, we posted All of the all of the Saturday games we had were Brian and myself and maybe Reginald were on the board of directors cuz we told the administration on the board for years. Yeah, we posted every weekend to make sure that parents knew The high probability that all three of us were going to be in the same facility where business wasn't taking place because of our dual roles in both boards, we would be at the games. Yeah, we posted them when we did all three of us doing the same thing as you. Same, we posted through there. Handing out candy, trunk or treat, and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. And frankly,

081I think the more you do that, the more it also provides a defense for the chance ones we're talking about to say, "We're doing everything we can to do good faith compliance. We're not going to go over every single thing." This one. Yeah, exactly. That's so. Um one thing that's important to note is that and again and just to kind of cover All right, you can go to the next slide, Chris. No, you're good. You're good. Um but one thing that's important to note here that just to kind of show you the breadth of this is that and again, I don't know that it will come up, but if you guys were for example to go to let's say a a village board meeting here in town, and the village board was dealing with something

082that by chance as as a matter of authority you guys would have coming back your way. And I know realize there's probably very few things that this may satisfy, but where you run into this bad key issue and actually where that came up is that it was a case where board members from a school district or a village, and I don't recall which, but they went to the other locality's board meeting, and they sat there as observers. And basically, they didn't realize or think that there was any issue with that. The long and short of it is that a court ultimately said, "Well, sorry for you guys, whether you realize it or not, you actually had the authority at some point to deal with that issue later on. So, the fact that you're sitting in

083the audience gathering information about it, that was of relevance to your constituents. They should know that you're there because ultimately, who knows what you might talk about, etc." So, just throwing that out there again just to indicate the breadth of this, and if you were to go to, whether it's a county meeting or a village meeting, there is potentially, again, probably not likely, but the the probability or the the issue, rather, of noticing it up and saying, "Hey, we're there. We're gathering information." So, just have that on your radar. The other thing that's really important to understand is that when we talk about the numbers, it's an important thing to always kind of have in the back of your head is to what is in fact the right or wrong number. And when I talk

084about that, that comes back again to this issue of the quorum and also what's called a negative quorum. The reason that matters is because, again, of the whole bad key issue of are there enough people present to create a problem? Technically, if you have a negative quorum, it could also be the same issue where you can create what's called a negative walking quorum. And a quorum is obviously when you have enough people to take action on something. A negative quorum is when you have enough action to defeat something. And so, there are certain actions where, for example, if you need a supermajority to pass it, having enough people to not be in favor of it, you can automatically therefore block it. That's called negative quorum. You have to be particularly careful there because especially in

085the talking discussions outside of board meetings, if you have enough people in a negative quorum create what's either called a tacit or explicit agreement to not do something, i.e., say, "Hey, we're not going to vote to do whatever. We're going to block it and you have that discussion outside of a board meeting. Should someone find out about that and file a complaint, you have a violation of the open meetings law. The other similar issue, which is more likely, is what's called a walking quorum and that's the same exact concept but just with regards to the quorum. So, same example but where you would have for what's more common, you know, maybe a point person, maybe the board president or whoever and they would call each individual board member and they think, "Oh, I'm being sly

086cuz I'm just going to ask each person, hey, if you know, we brought this issue up at board meeting, how would you vote?" And everybody has a little pre-discussion and then you come to the board meeting and the issue comes up and sure enough everybody votes that way. That's a classic walking quorum. That's a complete violation of the open meetings law. The theory being, of course, that you basically had the meeting outside of the meeting and so the public wants to and needs to see that deliberation, that discussion. So, those are the other two things that I think are going to be on the next slides here that we'll probably be able to breeze through but are the big, frankly, issues in the open meetings law. >> If I if Oh, go ahead, Jordan. I

087have a question. Yeah. Obviously, a negative quorum here would be somebody who got elected but down to four, right? So, the negative quorum would be two. Mhm. Okay, so let's say two of us attend the same place of worship every Sunday. And there is a vacant seat on the board. Would we have to technically post that we're both going to be in the same place of worship every single Sunday? So, the only reason you would have to do that in that particular instance, and this is where unfortunately you and or the the district would have to give some thought to future agenda items, would be if you know for a fact there's an issue coming up where it's a supermajority. Uh and so therefore, if you could actually block every single instance, uh that's where

088you have to be concerned. So, no, I don't believe that in that instance you would fall into many many examples where there'd be a supermajority threshold for issues. It would still be a common majority. Uh now, where you might run into a problem is, well, what happens when there's a tie? Um and so I I have to look into that piece of it all. That might be work that's a little more ground ball. If I were to step down from the board, now there's only four of us. Yeah. Technically, once a week we're meeting outside of the board meeting. There's two of us in the same building in the room. Yeah, so that's where I mean frankly to be cautious there then yes, maybe ultimately given the size of the board you would if if

089that's how you're going to do it put up a notice to that effect. Again, it comes back to are you going to be in the same room for how long? All those considerations. Based on your example, I probably would tend to put up a notice. What I'd also say is that although you can't always control it it's one reason as a board to try to work quickly to fill that vacancy. For what it's worth. Again, you can't always do that as fast as you like, but the less time you have four board members the better for that. Right. For negative quorum, let's say you have you know, the new president, vice president uh is it is it acceptable for me to meet with both together or would you recommend just meeting with them them separate?

090No, you see you can meet with them together um if you have five board members. Again, it it's really only if you know for a fact that on a future agenda like okay, we've got this issue, super majority's coming up. You have to be concerned about it. Otherwise, it it shouldn't cross your radar. Yeah, so you can go right right through these next couple slides. We're going to cover what we just hit on of the walking quorum and the negative walking quorum. Yep. Perfect. Right here. And so the last thing on the other side which you don't have to go back for, but that just to understand is that having an agenda item created, so we talked earlier about hey, two members asking for an item in the agenda. That is explicitly recognized as not

091being a walking quorum. You're not talking about a substantive issue. You're asking merely to put something on an agenda that will then be discussed. So just to be clear, do not hesitate about reaching out and asking for agenda items like we talked about. That's completely acceptable. So ultimately here just getting to some of the technological advances, this is where again you have to be cautious about frankly how it is you're communicating. To be as basically just kind of direct about it and be and avoid being in the weeds as much as possible. What all this is going to get to is that if you are having telephone conversations, if you are having text messages, if you are having email discussions, and all these things are happening with enough people in a manner that either constitutes

092walking quorum or an actual quorum, that's where again you walk into all kinds of big issues from an open meetings perspective. I would tend to tell you that it's going to be email that will often be the the bigger problem. Uh and again, that's where you have the uh the email that's sent out and you say, "Well, don't reply all." And of course, then now you have this big debate that ensues on the email. So, my advice to all of you is that while there are certainly instances to send an email out, um the reality of it is is that it really isn't going to be that debate or discussion. Hold that till that meeting that comes up for when that discussion happens, because the last thing you're going to want is a public records

093request. And now it's very, very obvious as to what happened in the open meeting. What about communications with Chris or with the other issues? You just all those people I don't know if just hitting reply versus reply all, so that just again, caution more than anything? Yes, if it's any substantive response other than, you know, received or something, absolutely I would recommend you just individually copy Chris, and then Chris can basically what he can do is take the collective response message, whatever it may be, and then you circle it back to the whole board and you say, "All right, I've heard from everybody and I just wanted to let you know that this is what I'm going to ultimately end up moving forward with and or this is the consensus, whatever it might be." Um

094and yeah, that's totally appropriate. So, that's the way to deal with those types of things. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. You bet. Um so, the only thing otherwise just to note beyond what I referenced here is that if you guys do get into the realm and you obviously had to deal with during COVID of doing virtual meetings, telephonic meetings, the other big thing just when we talk about those types of technologies to be wary of is that the whole concept of a meeting is to be accessible to the public. And so, if you have a virtual meeting where for some reason all of you weren't here or you had a telephonic meeting, um prime example for telephone would be that back in the day they would say you should have the conference phone set up on

095the desk and basically have a room just like this where everybody from the public can gather, and you may be having everyone else call in, but at least that way there's a public open space that you've made available for everybody to have the same access to. Again, virtual back in COVID, it was the same thing. You'd put out a link, might put it on your agenda, allows everybody in the community to see the same space, be in the same space, etc. So, just to the extent you guys find yourself ever using those technologies in the future for one reason or another, know that it has to be set up in that particular way. Okay, so you can blast through a few of these here. Email I hit on, so again, just be very, very careful

096with those. The long and short of it is that that is absolutely a meeting if you have enough communications in short periods of time. Quick war story here is the combination of the public records on the open meetings law. Do not or I guess backing up so be careful rather as to if you're picking up your phone and texting in the meetings. The reasons I say that is that it is going to be assumed, especially if you have members of the media here, that you are texting one another. Um what happened here in this story is I would argue kind of a war story and absurd, uh and I don't really feel bad for the members cuz they kind of brought it themselves, but it was definitely embarrassing. Uh essentially we had a City of

097Madison Council meeting where they were well known to be just in-fighting with one another. Uh there's one faction that is on one side, another faction that was in another. Sure enough in the meeting, there's member of the press out there and they see people picking up phones left and right. They assume, I think they're texting each other. So, they make a public records request to all the council members for their text messages. And sure enough, what you see here on the right side of your screen is what they get. So, you know, for example, one of the older persons is caught saying, "Yeah, this meeting's so peaceful if Bridget's not speaking to me." And another person goes on to say, you know, "I can't always carry it on my shoulders. I've really done nothing but

098help." And you know, you have really no difference the silence and the idea of the difference to silence makes. So, the point being is that not only was this embarrassing, they got dinged for an open meetings violation. The DA basically took the position, which I think was correct, to say you're having a meeting inside of the meeting. People who are there are supposed to hear what you're saying. I mean, in theory, you probably shouldn't be saying these things to each other in public, but if you want to say them, then you should say them openly. And so, again, the point being, you know, be very careful with instant messaging, text messaging, all the other things during the meeting. Um whether you realize it or not, you're having a meeting inside of a meeting, and it

099it creates all kinds of problems. Speaking of war stories, I know in 1980, somebody opined about a telephone, which I appreciate. This is a really probably weird question. What if What if three board members reply to a social media post? Yeah, so I would say that it's going to depend on the nature of the reply. Now, if you start engaging with each other, That doesn't happen here. I've seen that in my previous district. And and when you brought up that story from 1980, it just made me think of you know, at that time, that was the appropriate discussion around uh that technology. >> Yeah. And here we sit now, there's a Facebook post with the three people There's a quorum of the majority. I just thumbed up the I don't know. No, I mean, I

100think you you have a very real problem potentially, especially again, if they're engaging with one another. And And you know, maybe they're having snipes across the board, and they're not really directly talking to one another, but to the extent that there was an arguable debate between the people, I would say it's a meeting, and I would say you got a real issue on your hands. I mean, that's not like I heart something. No, yeah, thumbs up, or totally yeah, totally different from that. Yeah. You think emoji then? Huge emoji then. And so, to that point, I mean, if you guys have strong opinions on something, I guess what I would ultimately say is you certainly can and should advocate for those, but I would say have your own page and put that position on that

101page rather than having that cross debate in that word that word occurred. Um again, we have to make reasonable efforts for anyone who wants to be here for it to be open. That does for better or worse include photography and filming. So, if you have people, which you does not appear you do, but if you have people who are regularly going to be here and filming photography, the reality is is that unless it's frankly disrupting the the meeting, you have to allow it. Um now, obviously closed session, that's that's different. So, that's not going to be required. Another one here where um just noting who can actually close a meeting. And again, the public generally does not have the right to open or close a meeting. It's the board as a whole that sets that

102issue. One unique exception is 1B of the uh open meetings law, which does allow technically an employee to open a meeting if it's a person of a teacher or administrator being terminated. Basically, it's a due process piece where the theory being if they want their day in court or the public, they can have that day in court. The thing really here to note is just at the end of the day, there's 13 different exceptions. I'm not going to run through all of them, but what you should just understand is that the most common ones are going to deal with deal with personnel, deal with students, and um maybe bargaining contract type issues where you're talking about negotiating with outside parties and not wanting to disclose really important details. Every now and then some legal advice

103may come about, but it's important there to understand you have to be either threatened to sued or actually under suit for me to come in and give you legal advice specifically under that exception. Again, there's other ways for that to happen with personnel, students, etc., but just note that those are the common issues. The other thing I would note here is that again, as I started out, I'll end on this topic, which is that the law here is very favorable to openness. So, you are to only really use uh closed sessions sparingly and only when necessary. And even in that respect, the theory should be that when you talk about a topic, if you can talk about some of it in open and some of it in closed, the law would favor you taking that

104approach in the These are the reasons that are listed. Again, I won't go through all of them. Should you always cite statute when you Yes. At least on your agenda. Now, there's kind of back and forth about, you know, they'll hear in meetings people actually read the whole thing and kicking the motion. There's different schools of thoughts on whether you just refer to the statute itself there, but on your agenda, absolutely, and you should always be referring to the actual statutes. The other big thing on your agendas as well, is to note that you want to make sure that the agenda reads in a way with closed session in particular, that it's obvious to the public what we're talking about in a certain respect. Obviously, you have to be guarded guarded with closed session because

105it's being closed for a reason, but a common example with staff might be talking about specific personnel issues. That would be what you would note as the kind of comment for why you're going into closed. It is not sufficient enough to just cite, "I'm going into closed under 1C or 1B of statute." You have to give a very short narrative as to specifically this is the reason why we're going into closed. Okay, so at the end of the day, the other really important thing to understand is when you're in closed, you're in closed. Again, I don't sense you guys have an issue with this, but it does come up often enough it's worth hitting. At the end of the day, just understand there's a really important reason as to why you utilize closed session. It's

106usually because you're talking about reputational issues, you're talking about confidentiality issues with students. There's There's again a rationale behind it. Often as well, it could be rumor, it could be any land or it might be pre-investigation. If you were to then go out to the public and spew these things, if they get out, the reality of a defamation lawsuit is is very real. And unfortunately, when I referenced earlier that when you get sued in your individual capacity, often it's not a personal issue, defamation is one of those exceptions. So, you should be very careful when it comes to closed session to treat it as seriously as it needs to be treated. As my coworker says, if you need a friend to talk to, get a dog. Otherwise, closed sessions should stay should stay closed session."

107So, um that's pretty much my take on that. So, with public records here, we'll transition and I'll kind of hit these high points for you. I know this is going a little long, but this is an important one. Um public records, whether you know it or not, you are in fact all office holders and thus have responsibility over your own records. So, it's important to understand therefore what you need to do with records. What I would say is that it's going to be easiest more often than not if you ever get a request to work with both Chris and or the district to help you with IT pieces of it, production. Um but, you do by statute have responsibility to make disclosure decisions and to work through the process. So, with that being said, very

108much like the open meetings law, here we are a blue sky state. As you can see, I won't read it to you, but really all this says is that only in the exceptional cases can we deny access to a record. That should be your presumption every time you get a records request, and then you work backwards from there to figure out if there are exceptions that exist. The only three reasons by which you can withhold information, and this is critical, is first by statute. So, if a statute says you cannot turn something over, there are very limited issues issuances of that. So, FERPA is an obvious example. Otherwise, in chapter 19, there there's about a list of 13 of them. Again, very sparing, not as many as you might otherwise think. The next source is

109what's called common law or case law. So, if a court has come out and said, "Yep, in this particular area, you do not release or you have the ability to not release that," that's another example where you may not have to turn it over. An example there is personally identifiable info of victims or witnesses who are involved in sexual harassment investigations in the workplace. The last one is public policy balancing test. This one is a little bit wonky and confusing because it's what's really at end of day called a discretionary decision. There's nothing in this concept that ever says you have to withhold or redact something. This is where the law tries to give you guys some leeway to say, "If you think that the public interest in reviewing this information is actually outweighed in

110this one narrow instance because whatever's here is so damaging or harmful, that actually the public wouldn't want to see it, you can make a discretionary argument to say, 'I'm not turning this piece of information over for these various reasons.'" That one you want to be careful with because when you make that decision, it is truly you going out on a limb to a certain degree and saying, "I believe that this is so important that I'm going to make my own argument and kind of so excite to various sources of the law to bolster that that essential consensus. So, an option, but one to be wary of. The next thing that is important for your purposes, just understand the definition of a record. It's extremely broad. Uh at the end of the day, the easiest way

111to think about it is if you have anything in your possession relating to district district business, it's a record. And that is regardless of location. That includes on your personal accounts and your personal devices, etc. Uh and so, at the end of the day, the reality of it is that where you keep these records, how you engage in district business is very important and I'll cover that in a little while. But, the reality is that again, when we talk about what's a record, basically most everything is going to fall under that and it relates back to district business. One of the few exceptions, and I don't want to oversell this, so be very careful with it, is there are things called drafts and notes. So, it might be an every now and then that you

112have the ability to claim what I have in my possession is a draft or it's a note. That's one of the two things that are not considered a record. Just very quickly, a draft is essentially, for example, something where the board as a whole or maybe one of you would come up with a preliminary document. You review it, you share it within this cohort, it goes nowhere else outside of here, and you decide for some reason as a board, we're never going to review it and act on it. If you just kind of looked at it, decided it, throw it out the window, and we all move on. That is a draft because you never actually use it for its commission purpose. And it was kept within a very small group of people, the people

113that it was commissioned for. That's a very important set of rules if you're going to use what's called a draft. Simply throwing draft watermarks on documents does not get the job done. Notes, similar concept where a very strict requirements. This one's even more strict where basically there's two requirements here. The first is that if you create a note, you truly cannot share it with anyone, not even me. It has to be kept to you and you only. And ultimately, the second requirement is that it has to be created for solely refreshing your recollection later about that matter. Compare that to the purpose of creating a document to memorialize an official action. So, common example I give to give you some practical application is is an investigation report versus notes you take during investigation. It is

114very common for me to work with clients where you have the person who does an investigation, they take their own notes during the process. There's a lot of sensitive information in there, maybe some personal insights that they wouldn't want in the report. It's very rough in nature. They will keep those notes and later then look at them as they draft the final report solely to say, "You know, what did that person say when I talked to them?" etc., etc. They will then never share those notes with anybody else and keep them in their own file. They also though have that formal report that everybody can review and see. That is the way in which you can keep notes notes as long as you treat them appropriately and understand the role and the purpose of that.

115So, to the extent you guys as board members, for example, would sit here this evening and take personal notes, as long as you were to keep them for yourself and never share them, that's a classic example of what I'm talking about. >> You say not even share with legal counsel? Correct. Yep. Yep. So, getting into the requests themselves, couple of misnomers just to dispel, they don't have to be in writing. So, if you have someone who comes up to you in the public and they ask you verbally for something, you do have a duty to treat that as a records request and to act on it. So, don't take the bait in thinking that if somebody asks you for something, you have no obligation to deal with it. Another big one that comes up that's

116a misnomer is that the person does not, unless their identity is necessary to get them the records back to them. Which it often is not. They don't have a duty to tell them to tell us who they are. Uh as you probably may have experienced the you know the reality of getting anonymous requests is just growing, it's very high. And so you know it would not be uncommon for you guys to get a completely anonymized email where someone's asking for a set of records. You have a duty to treat it like any other request. Um I would say every now and then we get questions from clients about IT concerns and I would say that yes every now and then there might be a legitimate one. But unless you can actually articulate and identify that,

117you have to view the request as legitimate and valid. So this is your version of FOIA? That's exactly right, yeah. That's exactly right, yeah. This is the state version of FOIA, yeah. So are you able to charge them for? Yep, and then exactly, yep. And then and then I believe I'm getting to that and if I don't I'll hit it now just to make sure I do. So yes, when we talk about requests here there's the concept of fees and what I'm here to tell you is that you should absolutely every single time charge fees for anything you can. I'm not saying that because you want to be greedy, what I'm saying that is because you have to spend real time and resources fulfilling these records requests. Your staff will have to fulfill real time

118and resources putting these requests together. We're talking hours and hours of time sometimes. And so in instances for example there's a concept called location costs. And so in those instances let's say someone asks for hey I want every single disciplinary document ever issued to someone. Well to find that we're going to have to go through every single personnel file and some people may have discipline, some people may not. So it's not even to say that I can go through you know every single file in this position and I'm going to find it. You literally are going to have to look through every single record that's in a personnel file. In that particular case that's called location time because you have to look through all that stuff to figure out do we even have anything responsive

119to the request? You can charge for every single minute of that time as long as it exceeds $50 or more staff time, which it almost always will. And you can charge for the actual cost of the way it's phrased is the lowest paid, most qualified employee. And sometimes that's going to be Chris, sometimes it's going to be, you know, an executive assistant. It may just depend on the the issues at hand and where the information is stored. Um but it's not uncommon that I work with districts that don't have IT folks, in your case an outside IT vendor, who charges a very high hourly rate. They say, "Well, for me to even do this email search, we're talking 3 hours and I charge 100 bucks an hour." So, in that case I would recommend and

120clients often do charge uh the person asking for the request and say, "Yes, we're happy to proceed, but understand that" and this is the next important piece, "you have to give us what's called prepayment of these fees. And if you give us that money, then we will proceed with looking for it." And that's the other big thing. Um you don't have to do this, but I recommend it that you don't proceed with the request until you get the money. Um you can do it and then ask for money on the back end, but obviously every now and then, especially if it's a large fee, the person will ghost you and now you've done all the work and you didn't get all the money. So, there's no limit to the amount No, no limit. Does that

121have to be part of our policy that we have to charge up front and if the fees aren't cuz otherwise it's is it not that you're not fulfilling the open records request? I I think I can answer that. >> Okay, go ahead. Um I can articulate review the policy. Our policy does have that fees included. >> Okay. But what Ryan just articulated is exactly how I can only speak for myself, how we behave moving forward. Okay. Yeah, there's always that request for pre-pay. We copy that has has their location costs. We look at redaction costs and have the process. And then that is submitted on the front end with the request for dollars reimbursement. What's the guideline to be factored for a citizen or a media? Yep, so uh ultimately at the end of the

122day, there's no strict requirement. Of course, the DOJ, what they say is that 10 days is the for a normal routine one, but they they don't set that that's actually a standard. So, it's always case-by-case, basically. And frankly, that can always come back to a number of things where, for example, if the first if that person is a serial requester, their DOJ has said in certain instances that it's reasonable to put their request on the back, you know, burner while you deal with other people's requests. So, >> Or timeline to just respond to them initially? Yeah, so not required, but my practical recommendation what I say is just send them an email or letter, whatever it is, right away just to say got your request, working on it, and that'll keep them at bay so

123they know you're not ignoring them. Yeah. Yep. Can I back up just a a bit to the point that you made about uh treating verbal requests the same as written requests? I I would imagine that there could be some discrepancy and well, no, I asked you for emails and video. I don't remember. Yep, you asked me for that. How does that get worked out? So, and that's the same way with actually this issue here, and so that's a great question in terms of timing. What I recommend is that some instances your best way of dealing with some requests is that you are going to be left with having to make a judgment call. And in your example, it's not that you're making a judgment call, but the way I deal with the judgment call is

124the same way I deal with that, and that is to put in the letter back to them, "Hey, or in this instance, probably to avoid wasting time in your response of hey, I got your request, say hey, so-and-so, I just want to let you know I'm confirming I talked to you today at the grocery store, and during that discussion you asked me for X, Y, and Z. If I missed anything, please let me know." That way you've you've locked them in, essentially, and if you did miss something, it's not on you. They've got an opportunity to tell you, "Oh, you missed something, and I actually would like this other item." Translate the verbal request into a >> Exactly. Just memorialize it, put it in writing, and say I'll we'll be following up with you, but

125it's, you know, it's out there. And that way you avoid that miscommunication. And also, to the question as asked, you avoid the "Well, I asked you about it 3 weeks ago." No, it was last week that I saw you, you know, it really hasn't been that long. So, kind of putting a a marker down in that respect, as well. Can we given the verbal request, can we still direct them to go through the administration for that same request, or do we have to act on it? So, you you sign you can't, but I'd be careful about telling them they have to go through Chris. How I would do it instead is to say, "I'm going to refer this to our district administrator." So, you would just do it yourself. So, you can absolutely do that,

126but I would just say, "Listen, this is something where we're going to have to involve IT, various resources, so I'm going to have our district administrator Chris work with you on this." If I need to be involved, I will, but absolutely, that's totally fine. And that that's a great point as well. Sometimes, just for what it's worth, you'll get requests for things that are on your website. As into as as tempting as it may be to just send them the link and say, "Here it is." You actually do have to download the copy of whatever they're asking for and give it to them. So, that's just another kind of classic example of the line of what you said is just be careful there. Again, likelihood of an issue being raised, low, but if you have

127someone who's spiteful or, you know, wants to create a problem, that's a classic way in which that's going to develop and one. The other big thing here is specificity. So, this is a common way in which you guys are going to have basically some tools at your disposal. Understand that by law, someone has to ask for a request to be considered reasonable as to scope and time. So, if someone's asking, for example, for something that has no time limitation to it and it's extremely broad as to subject matter, there's very likely the ability to, at a minimum, ask them to clarify and narrow the scope of it. You may even be able to just say, "We're not going to go ahead and request or to deal with this request whatsoever." Definitely be careful in that

128regard because the breadth of what is acceptable is larger than you might think, but what I often recommend is that, again, if you think there's a possibility for that, have Chris work with the requestor on that issue. And the the ideal approach, at the end of the day, from my perspective, is to take a kind of one-two step with them and say, "We think your request is overly broad. You could definitely narrow it. Here's how. Give us some search parameters, you know, tell us maybe some of the locations you want to find. On the other hand, you don't have to do that and if you don't, here's this retainment request that we'd like you to then pay us and then we'll go ahead and get it filled. Nine times out of 10, they say, "Yeah,

129I'd really rather not pay that exorbitant amount. I'll work with you and and narrow the request and you get ready to go." So, practically speaking, that's how I would deal with these issues. Timing is just asked again, big one. So, there is no specific timeline set, but generally as I said again, they typically would say about 10 business days is what you're looking for. Um so, again, that being said, what you'll find in a lot of the requests you get is people like to throw at you, "Hey, as you probably know, DOJ said this." And again, as I said, it's just a a guideline. So, don't don't take the over uh rate saber-rattling for anything more than what it is. Um likewise, as to the fees issue, you may very well get a request particularly

130from the media saying, "I'm doing this in the greater public interest and can't you just waive the fees?" Again, I would say no to that because at the end of the day, you start making exceptions in one realm, where do you draw that line? Um and again, what I'd also just say from practical experience is that the media is probably one of your more often requesters and thus the more likely generator of cost for you guys. So, um practically speaking, you're just going to be shooting yourselves in the foot there. If you deny a request, this is critical. You have to deny it in writing, okay? So, even if it's a verbal request, we cannot give a a verbal denial, nor would you want to for all the reasons that you alluded to because you

131don't want that deniability of, "Well, you I said this, but you said that." The other really important thing though is that the denial has to be specific and sufficient and you get one kick at the cat here. Meaning that again, if you to give that denial letter, often if you read one that I put together or other employers have put together, you'll fall asleep halfway through. It's everything in the kitchen sink in it. You do that for a reason because if you have to go to court, you're basically reserving every possible argument that you would want to make before a judge. It's not in the letter, you don't get to bring it up in court. It's it's waived. So, for your purposes, understand that if you're denying a request, it should have a lot of

132thought put into it even if it feels way over the top because on the off chance someone makes an issue of it, you want to be able to have that that argument in court. Now, as far as denying the request, some other thoughts here is that if there are no responsive records, so there's just nothing that the person asked for, you don't technically have to respond. Now, what I would say to the question earlier just practically, I would tell them, "Listen, we don't have anything." Reason for that is because even though you don't have to respond, what you're going to get in reality is someone coming back and being all pissed off that, "Well, why didn't you respond to me? You're you're ignoring me." and it just takes care of the issue immediately if you

133say, "Listen, we looked into it. We didn't find anything. I'm sorry." Example of that. Yep. Uh within the last 2 weeks, Ryan and I worked on a situation in November. I have his language, I use it. Everything he's talking about we adhere to. This This example, uh we recently had a request to share all of the examples of us celebrating, supporting Ramadan. So, there were there's no record that was there. You know, that was an example of there's there's no nothing No responsive records exist. Yeah, and sometimes again, that's helpful >> you a bad example. It's just No, that's exactly it. Yeah, and and and again, it's helpful often just to tell them that because otherwise, they're going to be left sitting there thinking, wondering, and not knowing. The other big piece here on redaction

134is that when you deny a request, the law as I mentioned beginning is very specific and you have to give as much as possible. So, when you redact, if you redact, only redact what you have to, leave everything else. Common example would be you have a social security number you take out, that's what's on the document. You don't black out the whole page, you just take out the social security number, everything else remains. Um that's very important because even for example, on attorney-client privileged emails, the courts have come down and said that generally, yeah, you black out the body of the email, maybe the subject matter if it identifies the discussion, but the two in the from the date the time that's not privileged to turn it over. Uh is useful. I mean, one could

135argue, but technically it's part of the record the court say you turn over. And lastly on this very importantly cuz this is one I've seen people get dinged dinged for repeatedly. Anytime you make a denial that last bullet point that language needs to be in your response. If you do not have it that's per se violation of the law and you will if someone challenges it automatically have attorney's fees awarded to the other side. So, very big technicality, but a huge one nonetheless. You have to let the person know that they can challenge your your partial or full denial of their request. If you say there are no records responsive, that's not a denial. You don't have to include that language just to be clear. And same with just for clarity too if a prepayment

136or you're asking for clarification, I always put in there to be clear that I'm not denying your request. Therefore, you know, understand we just want you to pay us or clarify. So, that's again just a key thing there. I mentioned earlier part of the records is closable disclose it. Um additionally, the other piece of it is is that if there's confidential information and we think that we have to turn it over just because it's burdensome, that's not a basis to not turn something over nor is just simply saying it's confidential. I think I made that clear already, but you have to splice site specific reasons specific laws uh and give reasons behind those laws as to when you redact things. The big thing here as well is that when we talk about redaction time you

137you cannot charge for redaction time. So, you can charge for location costs, you can charge for reproduction time, um and you can charge for computing costs, but if it's actually just just redaction and you have to be careful as to it's for charging for that time um in terms of costs there. And so, um again just understanding that when we break out the various pieces of a request, understanding where are we at, what steps to be taken that's going to help structure your your pre-payment letter. The other big thing there, and you don't need to go back now, you're good, is just to know you don't have to create a record. And again, this is a big one I've seen a lot of schools get. Often times, and probably Chris more than you guys would

138get it, but you'll get this like outside request from some unknown third party that's asking for every, you know, vendor contract you've ever entered into with this, that, and the next detail, and you look at it and you think, I don't think we even have a single record that would have every piece of that information in it. That's so oddly specific. And often that's the case that you don't. You don't have to create that record, and that's the response a lot of districts will give is to say, "Thank you, but we have no such record, and we're not going to create one." Um so, just don't fall into that trap. If someone comes to you and is asking for a very detailed set of information, it's truly only if you have a record or set

139of records that would provide that that you have that you have to respond to that information. The other one here, just very quickly, just so you know about it, is the duty to notice. So, very limited reasons in which you notify someone, but for your purposes, you should just know that as elected officials, um and Chris falls in this category, too, as a technically a local public office holder, that all of you guys are entitled to what's called an augmentation notice if and when a records request goes or comes into the district for a record of which you are the subject. Now, that's just a big fancy way to say you get a right for five business days to review the record and put something in writing if you think supplementation is warranted. The reason

140that's relevant is because by law, then anytime the district would release that record, they have to give that supplementation out to the requester as well. Basically, it's your way of saying, you know, I think this is incorrect, it's incomplete, there's context missing, whatever it might be. And you get that chance. Um and so, just understand that if you get a notice, it's not because you did anything wrong, it's not because you did anything one way or the other, it's just because of your position, and the district has to fulfill that. So, whether you choose to put something in writing is totally up to you. You don't have to, but it's just something that you have to be made aware of if there is that type of request. And the only other thing worth noting that

141again, if you have these records, you'd want to be wary of it, is that disciplinary records and investigation records of employees have special notice obligations as well. So, if you have those type of records, I'd suspect often Chris would get those requests, but if you do have them, you'd want to make sure before you release them to the public or the district does, that you follow what's called called the Wasnicky notice process. And basically, it's just a matter of giving the person notice. Formally, they get 12 business days to review and possibly challenge for court the release. And if they challenge, the whole thing gets on pause till they resolve it, but if they don't, you then release the records. If we request we as I'll use myself. If I request information, do I have

142to go through an open records request as a board member also? So, it's going to depend frankly on how you guys choose to do that and also to your exact point of what's the context in which the request is. So, I often will view if you truly are are getting the information as a board member, and it's with the understanding that it truly is going to be kept in house here, that you're not going to be going around sharing it, bringing home, all those various things, um then yes, at the end of day, getting that information very directly without being a public records records request, totally fine. On the other hand, where if you are starting to treat those records, even if for your formal board purposes, much more like public records, where you're, you

143know, keeping them, bringing them with you, you know, all that stuff, and they're a little bit more loosey-goosey with the the possession of them, that's where I'd probably be a little more cautious and do the more formalized public records request. But yeah, it it's just really all going to come back to the reasons why you're getting them and how you're going to go ahead about using them. The other thing I would note to that point, too, is that if you ever want to review records, too, there's nothing that stops you guys from coming into the district offices and sitting down and looking at records, either. It's another way just to work around that whole issue without being concerned about the public records law or things of that nature. Um really here, just without getting into

144the minutia, this is all just stuff you want to make sure you follow some technicalities. your specific notice processes, you have to make sure you get noticed personally or via certified mail, etc. Again, as I mentioned earlier, this is really just at this point cutting back to the original point we started with, which is just to say the records law is extremely broad. Here, my main point is that if you guys are using personal devices and accounts for any board business, don't, in the sense that you're opening yourself to then the district in some instances, unfortunately, having to maybe look at those very accounts and devices. Now, to be clear, that's not necessarily true if you have every single communication that you've engaged in on a backup. So, for example, some people have a Gmail

145account that they use, but then every single Gmail they send and receive also goes to their district email. You now have an original record on district servers of every single communication, so that's totally fine, but not everybody does that. And so, if you guys are texting each other, if you're sending emails, Facebook messages, etc., in theory, those are all records, and that matters for two reasons. One, you have retention obligations over them. Technically, if you don't have a change in your schedule, which I assume you don't, for your record retention, it's a 7-year period often by default, and so, I suspect you probably wouldn't be keeping a lot of those things for 7 years, so just understand you do need to. And then likewise, should you get a request for those items, if that's the

146only spot it's located at, you would have to then go find it, provide it to the district for review and/or review it yourself, and possibly disclose that item. So, just understand that this misnomer of, "Hey, it's my personal cell phone or account," does not apply. The reality is you're talking about government business, it's a record, and we may have some disclosure obligations. Again, my biggest concern is that I, you know, I feel for the privacy issues of you guys not wanting people to look at your personal accounts and devices. And again, the easiest way to avoid that is just have everything, even if you use a personal account or device, forward it to an official district server, so you've got that record organized. You CC your board email Exactly. Yep. That's an easy way to

147get around that problem, too. Yep. And that way again, you can just ask Chris, "Hey, someone asked for this email. I know that there's an original on district's district server. Can you search for it and pull it?" So, much, much easier for everybody. Basically, and I won't go through this, these these cases just tell us that although Wisconsin's not dealt with it, we've got three or four different cases across the country where they look at laws very much similar to what we have in the book of record realm, and every single court concludes what I just said, which is that if you're texting, you're sending emails, you're sending messages, it relates to record or businesses uh as usual, it's a it's a public record. So, the point being is that I think very persuasively this

148is where the law would would head. And you can just go through the next two here. So, yeah, so what do we do to the extent you're using personal devices uh and government accounts, uh do it if you can uh to avoid using them. If you are using them and you can't avoid it again, then send those uh various records to another account for backup purposes. And then really just quickly here, social media problem. Um at the end of the day, just understand that if you are going to have a personal page for social media purposes, that you may have to be wary of again public records issues there. Those are potentially public records related to your office. So, if you are then therefore going to next close that page off, you could be creating

149some problems for yourself um on that realm. Also, on the first amendment piece, be very careful on on turning your page off or restricting access, deleting comments. There is developing case law out there that basically says whether you realize it or not, you're creating a public forum on your page, and people have a right and desire to come on that forum and debate the various viewpoints. And if you as a board member say, "You know what? I really don't like that Bob is or John is Sally or whoever is going out there and and dissenting against my particular view, I'm removing him from my page." That is classic viewpoint discrimination, and it's a of the First Amendment. There's a lot of, like I said, cases out there. President Trump, for example, got sued over uh

150Twitter, which actually was a very interesting case in that all he did was mute other people. He didn't even block them, and the court said even that was enough to be a First Amendment violation because they couldn't see uh and regularly engage as everybody else would. So, you have to be careful when we talk about First Amendment issues on on social media. Any questions? So, I threw a lot at you guys. I know you've asked questions on the way, but I would be remiss if I didn't pause for any last-minute questions. All right. Well, thank you guys. I appreciate your patience and sticking with me. Yeah, you bet. Thank you, miss, for throwing it out there. Absolutely. All right. I'm too Oh, sorry. Go on. I'm too 10 reports the district administrator? Yep, just say

151a referendum update. Uh Uh January or June, sorry. June 10th is getting close. So, something to consider as we move forward this space will not be available in June, July, or August, so we'll have to relocate our board meeting there. Uh annual meeting. Uh but just a couple updates. Um we we had a remaining contract price. We We had $537,062 that uh we aligned with the current goal of the uh referendum that because we came in under bid. Um those items would include uh fixing and repairing the uh water leak in the basement, which has been chronic. Uh also updating the heating and cooling down there. There might be some sort of abatement for some asbestos, not major down there, but that'll be done. Um new carpet in this room, new ceiling tiles, some updates

152to the counter and the uh circulation desk. Um in addition, painting the gymnasiums and some of the brick around to update and freshen the look. We're going to also add some additional uh uh keyless door access and digital door access. So, just some of those those are bids came in over slightly over and PSI said that they would take that out of their profit to ensure that we can continue to move forward. Um furniture purchase the furniture price came in under about $25,000 less. $30,000 will be invested into the library. So, we're excited about that. For all classrooms or So, we got to include this one one part here um from one to two. Have they given us a cost sheet yet that shows us How do we How do we have a remaining contract

153The remaining contract price uh the 57362 was over by 9,000 and we're having those costs wage. But the furniture came in 25,000 under. Yeah, so because what PSI did, this is prior to me, they pulled that $450,000 out as a separate item. Although it's all in the first year of the furniture. Okay. Yeah. So, when they look at it cuz we handled that independently. That was not a PSI item. That's a good question. Yep. Yeah. >> And does that the furniture that includes every classroom has will have updated furniture? Except for teacher desks. That was not included in the new cost, but everything else, yeah. Including the library. We expanded um it wasn't originally included was the There were uh the art room wasn't included. Um um and so we somehow just got it missed.

154So, we added that. So, that >> good one. That was added. We expanded the scope I don't want to say scope, but the vision for the um middle school commons area to make sure that's more of a functional space. So, there were some, you know, key elements that we added and I I appreciate Brett Brenner and Jody who did a great job of getting us the best price. So, now what to do with the rest of it? If you know anybody who's looking for used office furniture, let us know. It might be a fire sale. So, um interest on the investment, as you know, that they referendum dollars went into an account in CDs. Year-to-date, uh last year plus this year to date, the interest has been $67,254.56. And then, um just one last note,

155um the district calendar, um the district calendar was is was set up where we got done with school on the 8th and teachers were asked to come back on the 10th. Um in talking with ESI, they would prefer that's not the case because they're coming in pretty aggressively. So, we are working with our staff. Um those 8 hours, I this has happened in other dist- other districts. They've worked a way to flex those 8 hours. So, we are creating a spreadsheet. Teachers will sign up at their additional hours with the goal of getting everybody out of here before the contractors come in and start doing demo and and whatnot. So, I just wanted to be public in case you make sure everybody knows that. They're still fulfilling their necessary contractual requirements. different way to do

156that. So, um that's the referendum update and then, um uh we are obviously going through all renewals. I just wanted to make note that uh we're investigating um some possible changes. We're listening to uh multiple people on our property casualty insurance insurance broker analysis. I gave you a little example on that. So, um um if you have any questions, you can ask me about that. So, just looking to get the best price for our and service for our district. Any other questions or comments for this? So, we'll move on to board celebrations. I'd like to start. I'm going ahead and step back. Um Mrs. Droster, I know you have your performances. Can you tell the board when those will be? So, So, we have um Friday, we'll have one during the school day for for

157the kids, and that will be at about 1:45. And then we'll have our evening performance at 6:00, and then on Saturday, it will be 1:00 and 5:00. Thank you. And then I also know on um Thursday, we have the expo going on. Yep. At 5:00 to 7:00. Yep. Right? Is that right? Okay. And they're showing uh project-based learning. Yep. It's similar to what they had earlier. That was very interesting. >> Great. I agree. Correct. Yep. If you have a chance to come in and see that, it's um it's quite exciting for the students. I I was really taken back when I came the last time when it was during school hours. So, this is it's really fun to to see their excitement and what they're learning out there. And then we have a band performance

158coming up uh in May. Soon in May. I'm not sure the date. >> Monday, the 4th. Monday, the 4th. Okay. So, um those are all the celebrations. I know I'm moving forward instead of backwards, but I like to celebrate ahead too. So, anyone else? I've got three. Uh I want to celebrate Chris Sue. Uh I I love the new format of monthly financials. I don't know Thank you. >> Me, too. >> to hear that. Much easier to to digest and read. And then you wanted to go back. You liked the previous one. So we just uh Uh huh. I have I I think it's well done. Uh I like that. I wanted to recognize uh Dennis Marco for the work that he did on the new rate documentation. Talked about it a little bit, but

159just the you know, that's not easy to put all that information together. It's really helpful. Uh and I was also able to attend uh Deputy Friendly's uh safety poster contest uh at the Broadstock where we were represented uh by two fourth grade students. And I think that bike sign was a lot of fun. To see uh you know, not just Riverview's posters, but all the uh schools in the area. Their uh safety posters that is fun. So want to recognize uh Elliott Wyatt as our our two fourth grade students who That's cool. Any other celebrations? Seeing none, our uh next future meeting will be May 26th. So I'll make a motion to adjourn. I'll second. Motion I think he seconded by Mike. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Adjourned at 8:07. I need something.