001Good evening. We're going to get started. I call the March 3rd, 2026 special board meeting to order. It is 6:01 p.m. We are in conference room C of the Fischer Administration Building at 12121 West North Avenue. Miss Summers, please call the role. Oh missing I will call the role. Miss Brazinski >> here. >> Mr. Bower >> here. >> Miss back >> here. >> Mr. Morg Roland >> here. >> I'm here. And Mr. >> What do you want to say? >> Here. >> Dr. >> I'm fine. Thanks. >> She won. Now I know it's not very much. >> Okay. >> But thank you. >> Okay. So we are going to start with item number two. Um introduction of the secondary school ad hoc committee facilitator Miss Paige Richards. >> Thank you for being here Miss Richards.
002>> Thank you for having me. >> I'm just going to load the presentation. Absolutely. Take the time. I don't use a PC, so just take me a second to get it. >> Need someone to help me start the presentation. You need to close the QR code. Yep. Hit that X and then just click slideshow. >> Slideshow. >> On the right. >> Hold on one minute. So we have one more screen here that >> absolutely >> Tim going over the table and helping. Thank you so much. Thank you for this chance to present about the work of the Wawaossa School District secondary school ad hoc committee and sorry not my machine I don't know how to >> Yep. I'm doing it. >> Just typing in base. Click it like you mean it. >> Well, the rest
003of the presentation will be smoother than the opening. So, thank you for your patience. >> I would first like to introduce the secondary ad hoc committee. We have um most of the committee is in audience tonight. If they could please wave their hands so that they can be acknowledged by the school board. >> Thank you so much. >> Wow. >> My name is Pa Richards. I was the external facilitator for this process. Um my group my company is build capacity consulting and tonight in our presentation we are going to share a little bit first about process as the external facilitator. You will also hear from elected speakers that represent the committee and in through their presentation they will share the findings that you see letters A through E on the screen for the agenda items
004and we look forward to welcoming questions from all of you as the next steps of the process because we have so many so many members of our committee here. I will facilitate just getting people to the microphone to respond so that we can have a fair organized process and that will include the part from the ad hoc committee tonight. The structure of the committee and its work was really well laid out before the process even started. So, I want to commend the leadership team in Wawastosa's school district for their forwardthinking design. And here's what I mean by that. Before the process even started, they spent time really thinking about how do you get a representative group from a community the size of Wawaossa to really hear from a lot of different voices and a lot
005of different different stakeholders. So they were very intentional in how they thought about representation as people applied to be on this volunteer committee. And it really was effective in getting to hear from a lot of different perspectives. Throughout this process that started last May, that was our first committee meeting. This group of individuals that came together really became a cohesive, collaborative, and well-informed and highly effective committee. They truly were not sitting there just sharing their own thoughts. They were actually co- lababoring together, really thinking hard about the information that was presented, finding out, seeking more information to understand, and really hearing from each other's perspectives. Through that process, they developed a shared understanding around a complex wicked policy challenge surrounding school facilities. And if the term wicked problem is new to you, I encourage you
006to look it up because it very much well describes the process that is this committee has been engaged in. So a wicked problem means it is very complex because so many things are interdependent. So you're constantly thinking about trade-offs. There is no right answer. And each time you get further into the process, you find things that contradict your previous understanding. And so due to that nature, this is very challenging work, which means there isn't a simple solution. And it means that sometimes conversations went beyond the scope of the intended committee, which is normal in a process like this. So when groups are doing cognitively complex work like this that there are many factors that are not apparent at the get-go it makes sense that sometimes the scope gets enlarged and the view becomes even bigger
007and then to support the group to narrow the view. So that was a normal part of this kind of a process. This was a professionally facilitated process and I'm grateful and I believe committee members are grateful that it was facilitated by someone external to the system. I was committed to process not outcome. My job was to support this group of humans to really come together and for them to determine their own outcomes which means that they had autonomy. So again, I I praise was waosa school district for their forward thinking and having an external facilitator for this process so the group could be autonomous so that the group could come up with what the group's decisions were. And it was important that this group had a lot of space to test assumptions to experience and
008honor dissent and engage in rigorous analysis. The work was grounded in a framing essential question. And that framing essential question that I'll share with you in just a little bit provided boundaries and direction. It gave us a place to revisit. In fact, I would bet most members of this committee have that essential question memorized because we looked at it so many times and it became a place that we could also um ground ourselves and take a step back and say this is the part we're focusing on. And it's really hard because a lot of other factors are contributing to the thinking. Just like you as a school board, this committee used norms of collaboration. This is really important because everyone is coming from somewhere else in their very busy lives. So how can we slow
009down, think about how we want to choose to show up so that we can listen to understand each other's perspectives. This is also really important because this committee is making decisions for for children. Kids are affected by these decisions. Kids should get a chance to see adults having uncomfortable conversations in respectful ways. Kids should get to be proud of the adults that represented this group able to have very uncomfortable conversations with a lot of emotions emotions at play and were able to maintain a respectful process. The purpose of this committee was to answer this question. Which secondary school facility model best equipss Wawaossa School District to implement and sustain an efficient and impactful instructional program? You'll see on the slide how efficient and impactful were explained. This committee then had to use these indicators to
010support them to make decisions. Each of these indicators that were the decision-making criteria really become tensions at play with each other. So we started the process by getting into one indicator and then each week adding on another portion which is very hard. It could be the previous week it felt really clear like oh well this is the best model for social emotional development and then you might look at other parts and say well is that still the best model. So it supported the group to really be able to examine these collaboratively while listening to each other's voices. We used many different processes and protocols and meeting structures throughout this and supporting this group of 24 people to learn more about this very wicked problem. And it is my immense pleasure to welcome three speakers on
011behalf of the committee. These speakers were elected by members of the committee to speak on their behalf. So without further ado, let me please welcome them up here. So Will, Mike, and Sharon. Uh well, good evening everyone. Um my name is Michael Hayden and I am the uh representative from East High School. I am also a parent in the district. I have a daughter at Longfellow and Ad Roosevelt. Um, a little bit of background. The 24 members of the secondary ad hoc committee have collectively spent hundreds of hours in structured meetings touring all four secondary TOSA buildings, touring neighborhood uh, neighboring buildings um, from neighboring districts, some near, some far. We've listened to presentations from education experts, city administrators, architects, construction firms, and we've engaged in conversation with our our neighbors, our community, and our
012our committee members as well about what school systems and what models best fit the need of our current and our future students. My fellow committee members have not only been committed to the process that has been established by the Wawaossa School District and Miss Richards, but we've been committed to do the work and to do it right. A part of this process, as Miss Richard has highlighted, um we had discussions and a part of that allowed for additional models to be brought forth and voted on. Initially starting with with seven models provided by the district, members of the committee saw a gap in those options and three models were developed um that we felt would also potentially meet needs. They were presented to the committee and then subsequently voted on. Um in order to go
013deeper into these models, we felt it necessary to narrow the scope of our focus and we voted to eliminate five models um for further analysis, which is kind of how we ended up with the five that we spent the most time. This slide represents our vote totals for each of those 10 models. Again, seven initially provided by the school district and as you can see, several of the models were eliminated from continue analysis. One of the things that we really kicked around was about just doing nothing. And we decided early on that this was quite frankly not going to be an option and not a choice for our group. It was based on the facilities report, the analysis of learning spaces, and our own building tours of Longfellow, of Whitman, of West, and of East.
014We need to, and quite frankly, have to do something, and the longer that we wait, the more expensive it is going to be to fix. We also discussed a model that would only address critical building maintenance, which ultimately we voted to eliminate. This was driven by the sheer cost to complete this deferred maintenance, currently estimated at $165 million, and by our building tours seeing the conditions of classrooms, heating and cooling systems, and flooded basements. The list continues to go on and on. Uh, this option would also not address improvements in accessibility, security, or do anything to improve the actual education spaces. Some examples include our music spaces, theater, science and world language classrooms, culinary art spaces that are bursting at the seams, and visual art. These spaces are small and out ofd at best, and
015at worst, they're unsafe. We did choose to include a couple pictures of recent flooding from both Tossa East Theater and Tossa West Theater. That's 2025 and 2024. These are not the only pictures of flooded spaces and they really emphasize that it is time to go beyond simple maintenance. Our our buildings need um they need attention. The committee believes that if the district is prepared to invest at this scale, that investment should position our secondary schools for the future and not merely preserve them in their current and an adequate state. And I'm now going to turn the microphone over to Mr. Gilbert. >> All right. Thanks, Mike. Uh, yeah, my name is Will Gilbert. Uh, I am on the committee as representative Longfellow Middle School. I also have children at Washington Elementary and East High School.
016>> Yeah. >> All right. Um, so moving forward now, we want to Here's a Did you push the button right there, Will? And there should be a green light that comes up. >> Green light was on. Sure. Oh, it is. >> Yeah, it should work. >> There you go. There we go. Sorry. Green light was on. Just didn't like us. All right. Um, so yeah, moving on from some of the options that we uh that Mike presented that we did not think were uh a good option for the school district. We want to present our recommendation, which is model F. Uh, model F preserves the four existing secondary school buildings. Uh, keeping East and West more or less in their current configuration, but modernizing and renovation all spaces. Uh, keeps Whitman and Longfellow as middle
017schools, finding space for grades seven and eight pursuant to the decision to move sixth grade to the elementary schools in the near future here. Uh, and the the initial estimated cost is $349 million uh, covering lighter innovation, light and heavier innovations across all the buildings. We want to do want to point out and we'll get into more detail later as a very rough estimate at this point. There is a lot of room for movement in these early estimates and this does take care of all that $165 million of deferred maintenance. Uh but also going beyond that setting our schools up for the future and providing uh those modern learning spaces. Uh it has a small projected savings in our operational budget year to year. mostly just the the efficiencies of modern buildings. Uh but it
018stays more or less in in the same ballpark we're looking at currently. And uh last point just that all the pools uh do remain uh in use and in the case of Longfellow are put back into use and repaired. Uh so we're going to go through some of the rationale that uh drove our analysis and really got us to where we are in recommending model F. Um going back to the decision when we went from 10 models down to five. As part of that process, we were asked to not only rank the models but first uh rank uh our priorities in terms of the criteria, what we thought were the most important and to give those heavier weight as we uh as we voted on and narrow down those those options. Uh and when we
019did that uh far and away the two top priorities that our committee all agreed on pretty pretty easily was academics and social emotional development. Um and I think it makes sense that those were the the top two priorities. I obviously at the very core level what are schools for the four academics for educating our students. Uh but very but related to that is social emotional development. Uh excuse me. And I think it makes sense that they went together because like we're not just trying to develop books smart students who can pass a test, but we also want to develop well-rounded, welladjusted young adults. And besides the the value that social emotional development has on its own, it is tied to academic success. If kids are are struggling with their social emotional health, they're going to
020struggle do well academically. So we want to make sure that we are focused on that social emotional development. Making sure children are applying skills to to understand and manage their emotions, you know, setting positive goals, showing empathy for others, maintaining positive relationships, uh making responsible decisions, all those important skills that they're going to need as they progress beyond our schools. uh and model F uh as part of the process as Mike said we heard from some experts uh from the school district and uh when we heard uh the presentation about social development model F was uh the preferred choice to best serve those needs right it maintains those school environments where students feel known supported and connected the moderate size schools which are defined um as 600 to,200 students so we're well within that moderate
021size school even with a little bit of projected enrollment decrease in the future. We're very well in that moderate size school range. Uh it has increased levels of belonging, engagement, lower rates of bullying, higher attendance. Uh there's just so many uh benefits to to these moderate size schools that can really help social emotional development, social emotional health of our students. Uh and then next before we get to the academics, we wanted to present on one of our other rationale here, which is the extracurricular and co-curricular activities. And I wanted to talk about it here because I think it it really ties into this emotional development um because participation in these in these programs I mean it can really help kids develop a sense of purpose and belonging connection to that school community. Uh it's one
022of those things you're they're out there on the soccer team in the orchestra whatever it is they're representing the community across the state across the nation in some cases with the school emblem on their chest. It makes them feel connected to that school and they can really uh kind of build build those connections uh to the community, to the school, to the teachers. Um see here. Yeah. And besides the uh the benefit to the social emotional development, uh these programs have value on their own and there's been numerous studies showing the long-term benefits students who participate in athletics in in music, in theater, whatever it might be, right? This how they learn teamwork, leadership, uh sportsmanship, winning, losing, how to set goals, how to overcome adversity. uh there's a lot of value beyond beyond the
023the playing of the sport or the playing of the instrument that kids can get out of these programs. Uh so we want to make sure that we're providing the greatest access to these programs and model achieves that both by one we're maintaining both the east and west schools. Uh right there's two football teams, there's two orchestras, there's two theater programs and just more kids who can participate and also we're maintaining the full footprint of facilities, the fields, the gyms, the recck spaces uh in order to host these activities. And then not only do these programs have great value to our students and to our community, uh, but like these programs are successful. They're they're achieving great things, representing our community in in a great way, making making all of us proud. We're not in a
024spot where we can't pull teams together. We don't have participation. We don't have numbers. Like, we have programs that are thriving. uh seeing great participation from kids, great community support from the parents, getting state national level recognition, but the quality of our facilities does not match the enthusiasm that our community has for these programs and the things that they're achieving. So, we should be investing in and continuing to support these programs. And we just wanted to highlight some of the successes that we've had recently across um and a number of these programs. I mean, obviously last year, uh, West boys, East girls, both winning state championships in basketball. These girls might be even better this year. Undefeated season, top 25 national rankings. You have other programs like the West dance team has been winning uh,
025statewide competitions. Uh, obviously we have great theater programs at both schools. You know, the West uh, theater program probably gets a little more of the press. They've won lots of awards at the Jerry's which is the the statewide um high school theater awards show. Uh their more recent production of Dear Evan Hansen got invited to the international thespian festival upcoming this year. And not to forget the the East Theater program also nominated for awards for outstanding musical outstanding orchestra. Um and then we have moving on to uh some of our music education. Mr. Hayden here. Uh this is the seventh consecutive year that Watos was recognized as a best community for music education. It's something that I see people value. Uh I have firsthand experience with my seventh grader. I see both the sixth and
026seventh grade orchestras at Longfellow are so huge get to be split into two. There is such great enthusiasm for these programs. Um the last one here uh a lot of people might not even know about is that the we the people program um as part of the American public policy special emphasis and east of post to Tulsa west uh participate this in this kind of a congress they learned how government works and they've both won state championships in recent years and this year at the national competition there are two representatives for Wisconsin and they are TOSA west and east like this is an amazing thing that our students are Uh and then the last point on the extracurricular and co-curricular activities here is that our school buildings and these spaces support not only uh our
027school programs but also a wide range of programming for uh all ages. I mean I've experienced this firsthand. I just finished my seventh year coaching some level of youth basketball in the community and there simply is not enough gym space, field space, whatever it is. you talk to any coach, anyone involved in scheduling, it is such a challenge to get space to host these programs, to support these programs. And while that may not be the main priority of our model going forward in this committee, we at very least should not be making the problem worse. It is it is a a real issue finding enough space for all these programs. And we just wanted to highlight all all these organizations that that utilize our our programs. Obviously, you have the rec department. They got programming
028from toddlers to senior citizens. You have a wide variety of uh athletics with junior raid junior raiders and junior Trojans, all the different baseball and softball programs. Tulsa kickers, the Blazers. We rent space at our pools and fields. So, Marquette and DSHA, which brings in uh more money for the rec department, scouts use our spaces. Girls on the run. This is not at all an inclusive list. We just want to point out all these programs that are a benefit to the community that really depend on those having those spaces available. So there is a a benefit beyond just the schools themselves. All right. Um next we wanted to talk about um academic growth and how that factor into our decision because right at the most basic level that is the the goal of schools is
029academic growth, academic achievement. Um, and this is a spot where we feel like we don't need to reinvent the wheel here where there's always room for improvement, but academics have been and continue to be an overall strength of school district. But as we can see in the analysis of learning spaces and from our own building tours, the educational spaces that we're putting our teachers and students in are simply not up to par and they're only going to continue to fall further behind and get worse with with inaction. um has been shown that modern learning environments will foster stronger educational outcomes. U model F by maintaining all of our footprint and renovating those spaces lets us offer the high demand specialty classes at both schools. Um and again back to uh keeping moderniz schools that allows
030for more personalized instruction, better uh relationships with teachers uh and maintaining our full footprint um allows for maximum flexibility in the future. We don't know what education is going to look like in 20 years from now. We don't know what enrollment is going to look like in the future, but we don't want to uh shoehorn ourselves into a a situation that we can't get out of 20 years in the future because we weren't thinking in the long term. And the last point here is that some people may argue that we don't need to go this far because really the teachers are what matters the most. A good teacher is more important than a good classroom. And that's probably true. Uh, but it is really a credit to the amazing teachers we have across the district
031that they've been able to achieve what they have with the subpart facilities we're putting them in. And good facilities are important because they allow good teachers to be effective. We need to set teachers up for success. We need to set students up for success and let teachers worry about teaching and not about overcoming the obstacles of their terribly outdated facilities. All right, the next uh as like my last uh point here uh I want to talk about allocating funds responsibly, how that factor into our decision. Right, all of these plans are a significant investment. Uh no matter what we do, there's $165 million in deferred maintenance that has to be addressed as a hole that we're in that we have to spend that just to get back to zero. No improvements, no modernizations. That's the
032baseline. Um, but that does not fix all the problems with the schools, not even close to it. We need to renovate and modernize these schools. And so you could you could spend $165 million now, say that's more palatable, but you're going to be coming back in 5 years and 10 years, and you're going to be spending $250 million, whatever it might be. These things only get more expensive to address all these other issues. It's the more fiscally responsible choice is to go big. now. Um, all right. The $165 million is not commission accomplished. Walk away. We're set for the future. It is it it is very much a a patch on a caping wound and we need to think bigger than that. Um, also retaining all of the district- owned properties we believe sets up
033school district the best for long-term success. Right. The value of these properties in hand is so much greater than the the drop in the bucket that we you would get as a one-time influx from a sale, right? If you sell a building, you're never getting that land back. You want any flexibility, any any options to anything in the future. Land is at a premium. Those that is the most valuable asset school district owns. And it is be terribly short-sighted to sell any of the properties um excuse me any of those properties for a very small influx which is not going to fix any of our issues. Um and then the last point we want to talk about here I kind of mentioned earlier right model F is not a final plan. This is still very
034early, but we believe that model F offers the greatest flexibility as we go forward with the um final design and final plans for these school buildings uh to to find some cost savings against that initially estimated $3499 million. Um when those initial estimates were put together, essentially the architecture team took uh square footage of each building said, "All right, this is an addition. it cost this much per square foot and if it's a renovation they were assuming 70% heavy renovation to 30% light renovation across the board and they had per square foot prices they applied to those and we believe that avoiding by avoiding additions and by avoiding major reconfigurations or things like having to gut and renovate third floor of east uh there is room in F to I think in a lot of
035spots dial back and do more of the light renovations less of the heavier renovations buying some savings while still accomplishing the overarching goals of Model F. Uh now, it's far too early to have the level of detail to try to put a number on that or level scope, but there definitely is room for adjustments to savings there. >> So, as Mr. Gil Gilbert was highlighting, really our school buildings, they're used by the entire community. And we had an example that was included in our summary summary report for you. According to the TOSA rec department, one of the largest groups that's been impacted by the closure of the Longfellow pool is that of our 65 plus community. They've seen significant reduction or cancellation of their warm water aquatics classes. Uh this closure has also uh impacted
036synchronized swimming classes and parent toddler swimming classes. And the biggest reason is that the water temperature in our other pools is frankly too cold. Longfellow when it was operational had the ability to get to approximately 83 degrees which is what you would need for that slower exercise type classes. Um the other buildings as I mentioned they're just they're too cold. Um, the Longfellow pool additionally has served as a critical backup space when there are scheduling or capacity issues or when there was a mechanical issue at another one of the pools, which I'm told by a lot of swimmers does happen and they need to shift swim practices and swim lessons um around. Longfellow served as that critical piece where they were able to shuffle and still hold practices and and lessons throughout. This communitywide impact
037is far greater than than a singular pool. It is a a space where um people come to learn of all ages. They come to learn to swim and to be safe. And especially with Wisconsin having over 15,000 lakes and 84 like thousand miles of rivers and streams. Water safety is critical not just for our school age students, but for everyone that's in Wawaossa. and being able to um renovate, restore um a a pool that has been out of commission can bring back a lot of those classes through the rec department, but also it can bring more people into our into our school programs. And again, just highlighting this point, especially with Model F, that our buildings are used beyond by just our students. They're community hubs. They're places for basketball and volleyball and swimming leagues
038and soccer teams. All these spaces are looking for physical locations to practice which as Mr. Gilbert highlighted in his seven years coaching basketball. There's not enough space and being able to maintain our building footprint and rejuvenate them helps keep those spaces and we should really be doing that. Not looking at ways to reduce the number of um facilities. Good evening. I'm Sharon Mufeld and the committee asked me to represent them as a community member without school age children. Uh just a bit about me, I moved to Wawaossa in 1992 from the Twin Cities and I'm the proud mom and alumni parent of two adult daughters graduating with honors from the district in 2014 and 2016. Um so firstly I'd like to thank both uh Mike and Will for doing the heavy lifting of our presentation
039so far and it's a lot of detailed information uh for you. Um so thank you both of you. Um you know one of the key recommendations of model F is to create modern learning spaces and um and to create those spaces in all four secondary schools. and why should the community invest in this manner? The um administration has laid out their report in the analysis of learning spaces issued in April of 2025 and it provides a comprehensive study of the current learning spaces at each of the schools in in great detail and I'm sure you have have looked at that report so far. The um the other thing I'd like to encourage you to do is to visit all of the secondary schools with this lens in mind. When I did that, it really opened
040up my eyes to what is possible for the future. And um and you will also find, as our team did, that our learning spaces are just simply inadequate. And it is time for an investment. By investing in these modern spaces, the district will provide the highest quality learning environment which is proven to foster stronger education outcomes. The data does show that and you've received all of that data. And so in the next few slides, um, I want to share with you some op some observations of some of the modern learning spaces after visiting several schools in the Fox Valley and the Milwaukee areas. This is the fun part because you can imagine what is what is possible. So, thank you, John. Let me do that. The first um the first area I'd like to highlight
041here is science and um thank you Dr. and uh Nickel High School is our first example and I'm going to talk you through these pictures so I'm hopeful that I can convey what is important in these pictures. The um Nickel is a renovated high school that was built in 1952. You can see to the very left um in the first picture that they have um they have functions that we don't currently have in our um in our science rooms. So to explain to try to explain uh this uh classroom environment, these are large square foot classrooms. They have natural light and they have multiple entrances and exits. And if you can see the wall between the blue and the gray color, that's a huge double door entrance to that space. The other thing um is
042that the safety equipment is updated and readily available. The eyewash stations which you can see along the blue wall. There are uh fire extinguishers, safety chef, safety showers. Um there's first aid kits and evacuation plans on the gray wall. And let's talk about the tables next. It's a a little hard to see um from the scale of these photographs. Um there are more photographs of the space. Um but I didn't want to put every photograph in there. Uh the tables are designed to accommodate large and small work groups and they enhance collaboration among the students and with the teacher. The layout allows students to actively engage with the materials, equipment and experiments and the sinks are included in the lab tables versus our current layouts where experiment areas and sinks are at the wall around
043the perimeter of the classroom. Many of you probably been in in the classroom. In picture two, that first table that you see with the higher and the lower level with the sink, that's where the teacher is. So, the teacher is actually in the center of the room and um and really allowing full visibility to all of the students and all of the teams um and allows quicker access access and more efficient instruction. And then we'll see in the third picture is a modern fume hood and adjacent to that area is a safe, secure and locked storage of supplies and chemicals needed for the experiments. So the in addition to this um I wanted to share that there are storage closets organized and shared between classrooms that are strategically placed so that one classroom does not
044disrupt another when setting or cleaning up. And that was an important component of their design. And I also want to point out that the rooms had impeccable housekeeping. Just unbelievable. there was everything was in its place. Everything was locked when it should be locked. It really was impressive. Um and so just as my earlier reference, the analysis of learning report uh these sorts of designs are noted in page 58 to 60. The next example is a modern uh will be modern learning spaces in music and we toured uh Nenina High School and Forest Park Middle School. These are both new construction. These spaces are designed for students to experience a wide range of music offerings and prepare them for performances. Uh what I'd like to show in uh these photos is they have large square
045footage, flexible in nature with um with stand in this photo. There are performance rooms, practice rooms, ensemble rooms that are adjacent to these spaces. And also um what you can see is a picture of lockable storage instruments for instruments so that classes are not disrupted and students can easily access their instruments during before or after a school day. So the picture that you see down a hallway with the beige colored lockers, that is an entire hallway just dedicated to the storage of music instruments. And there are more lockers. This is just a portion of them. What you see in the picture to the right is an entire room at the middle school actually with um with those lockers that you can see what's in the lockers. they have, you know, sort of a a cage
046for the instruments, but they're still lockable. And then they can um, you know, they can work off that table. >> And now I'd like to invite Mike to talk about the application day. >> And thank you very much. So the application and music and performing arts are marquee programs in Wawaossa. And to put it bluntly, we are out of space. Um, we have more students in our classrooms for our secondary music programs than probably should be there. And there's a space issue where students don't have the ability uh or the flexibility to move around comfortably and to play their instrument in the correct posture and the playing form that they need. Beyond that, especially in the case of our band programs at East and West High School, the spaces because of the sheer number of
047students and their instruments, they are exceeding what is classified as um beyond uh a safe auditory environment, regularly exceeding 100 plus dB every single day. And if you spend extended time in there, that will cause hearing damage, not only for the students or that are musicians, but also for our teachers. We need rooms that are big enough to hold them, that have ceilings that are high enough. But more importantly, we need them to be properly acoustically designed so that they can diffuse and reflect sound properly, so that it's safe for our students to be in that space for 50 minutes every single day making music. As some of the other pictures highlight, we need places to put our instruments. They're everywhere that students are not. They're in impromptu lockers with that have to have layers
048of rust on them. If you've been into the band room at Tossa East, um we need spaces where students aren't having to worry about getting nicked by a nail or a huge wood splinter or metal shaving just cuz they want to put their instrument away. Or we need a space or multiple spaces where our students who are coming back from volleyball practice can pick up their instrument and go home and practice. Tossa uh East and West and Longfellow and Whitman. Our students are involved in so many things and that is the great benefit about having a smaller school is you can do all of these programs, but we have some barriers in the way and we just want to eliminate them and make it to where it's safe for kids to be in the room
049and they have a place where they can put their stuff. They can keep it protected and that it's also doesn't look like that it's going to fall down on them. And then finally, we need spaces that are temperature controlled and humidity controlled so that we're as a district are not spending tens upon tens of thousands of dollars every year on instrument repairs that frankly can be prevented by having a whole room humidifier. And that alone is going to bring the cost down. It's going to keep our school-owned instruments safe. It's going to keep our student instruments safe that their families invest a lot of money in. And so that way when they do have a repair, and I can say that repairs happen. Instruments break. Even the most well-cared instrument, it's going to break. But
050if it's breaking all the time, that's time that a student might not have that instrument in their hands. And then they have they do not have access to the learning that their other peers are going to be having. All those things in these updated learning spaces, especially for music, are critical. As I mentioned before, music is a marquee program in Wawaossa. people move to Wawaossa for the music program, for the performing arts program, they come back to Wawaossa and they stay in Wawaossa and it's and it's time to invest that our facilities mirror the high quality things that are happening. Thank you. >> Thank you, Mike. And to reference the analysis of learning spaces report, um some of these other details are included in pages 50 to 53. On to design elements. Uh we also
051visited Manasha High School. Manasha is a renovated high school built in 1937 and this renovation emphasized historic preservation. The um the this is exciting actually. Uh the very first picture to the left was taken in a common space in the center of a learning wing of several classrooms. It's a two-story section of the school. And where you see that kind of orange circle to the skylight, that's where the skylight actually provides uh several skylights will provide natural light to the entire wing. Also uh in the picture on the very bottom there are variable height tables and you can see that throughout the common space and that actually um that area is designed for classroom breakouts and also it allows um all types of students the opportunity to collaborate in this space. To the very right,
052the entrance of the stairwell is incorporates decorative floor tiles in the renovated design from a demolished part of the building. And this is one of the ways Manasha preserves some historic features requested u by their school community. So, um you have to kind of envision yourself in the space and I'm not sure if you'll um also be able to tour some alternate schools as part of this other schools as part of this process. Um, but it certainly was exciting to see what is possible. And again, although our secondary buildings are aged, their building structure is solid. So, we can design for our learner and provide a better student experience for them and a more efficient teaching and learning environment. At the same time, these spaces can be designed for future learning flexibility and again allows
053teachers to be more effective. Um again there are many more examples and ideas of what is possible in modernizing schools and um I I really do invite you to engage the secondary ad hoc committee members in this next phase to really tap into our wealth and knowledge and the experiences we have obtain during this process. >> Thank you. >> All right. Thanks Sharon. Uh so as we wrap up uh our portion of the presentation here, there just a few considerations um things that have come up in discussions within this committee that we want to make sure that we uh communicate to the board here as you go forward, take this information and try to try to come up with the plans for the next steps here. Um and the first one is quite simply this
054is kind of the the textbook example of don't let perfect be the enemy of good. This is a complicated problem. There is not one perfect solution. There are pluses and minuses to all of them. You can poke holes in any any any possible solution, but there are good uh workable solutions and we believe model F is the best of those options. Um but simply doing nothing is not an option. We have to do something. The cost both financially and to our children's education is just going to continue to grow the longer we uh fail to act. Uh the next point is on operational costs. Uh that is one of the data points that we were provided for all these models how the may or may not impact the operational costs. As we got more detail
055from the district and dove into those numbers with them, it became very clear that some of the models offered minor savings. Some actually slightly increased your annual operating costs, but none of them had um enough of an impact to to solve that issue. the whatever the um future solution to annual operating issues is going to be, it will not come from the facilities model. It is not as simple as we close the school that fixes our budget issues. Let's move on. And uh we just want to make clear that we consider that it's a data point that we looked at but the facilities model is not going to solve that issue. Um okay, next and I've touched on this a little bit already. Uh model F is not a final design. There is still a
056ton of room to change details, level of renovations, and really prioritize where we invest our funds to try to get the best bang for our buck and what we think we value as a community, where should where we should be spending that money. Um, and then related to that, um, when we toured Nicola, their superintendent uh was talking about some successes they had had there, and he he really liked um how their renovation had turned out. And one of the points he made that he felt was most important to the success was that they solicited teacher input and they took it seriously as they were designing those spaces. They asked teachers, "How do we make the space work for you?" Right? Architects can do a great job coming up with a theoretical uh design, but
057they don't understand the day-to-day operations of a teacher. So I encourage um the board and the district to do that as we go forward is to really engage teachers and make sure that these spaces work for them that we're setting them up for success. Uh and then the last consideration is that model does align with preferred alternative from the community survey. Right? We um this the committee was put together to be a cross-section of the community. We all talk to our our different pools of people within the community. So we were hoping we were we were bringing in different perspectives and being representative of the community. So to us it it it feels good at the end that our conclusion lined up with uh the preferred alternatives from the community survey because beyond this committee
058and our opinions and the work that we've done, you're going to need the community to be behind whatever the plan for the schools is. So we we are very happy I think as a committee that our our findings and the community what they value uh seem to be in alignment in this case. In in conclusion, there is no one perfect solution to the problem. And I'd like to emphasize that while our committee reached an overall consensus on recommending model F, individual members preferred other models. I would hold transparency, including myself. But during the course of this work, I was impressed with and appreciated the professionalism and commitment of each and every committee meeting. We had uh committee member in our meetings. We had tough conversations and respectful spirited debate and to ensure transparency of our
059process and that all voices were considered and heard. These alternate options and concerns are captured in our final committee report under the sections considerations, dissenting opinions and notes and strong support of other models. And on behalf of the committee, I would like to thank the school board members for your service and for inviting us to present this evening. This now concludes our presentation and we welcome your questions. >> Thank you. So, first I want to stop and just ask the board to thank everyone in the room um who's participated in this. Um we can even clap for them if we want to. I don't know. It was a wonderful presentation. Um we we heard loud and clear the the dedication. Um you're I don't know how you want to run the answering part, but I
060have some ideas about the questioning part. So, I'll I'll share with you what I'm thinking and then you can decide how you want to, you know, respond, be responsive. Um, but we want to really highlight and thank the dedication um that you in serving. Um, you we've had uh general updates, been able to watch the progress um on the website and I don't think there's any member of the board isn't impressed with um with what you have done. Um I I also want to say that questions. I just want to set a couple of of of of sort of guidance. One is that I hope that that your your group and the community is not going to try to, you know, track every question each board member asks and try to figure out what that
061means all the way through this process about what we may be thinking. We may be asking questions that actually don't represent um our particular perspective. We may not have much perspective at all right now because we've been honing that ability to not be decisive um on this all year and now we're in this big shift towards um you know taking on on this work together. So to give us some leeway um asking to have everyone not to assume that because somebody asked a question that then they sit in a particular space. Give the give board members the same space that that um the ad hoc committee has had from both the board and the community um as we move forward. As far as specific questions, and thank you if you're willing to do that. Um,
062as far as specific questions away, I'd like to do this. Sometimes we, you know, go board member to board member, but I'd like to go topic to topic if that's all right. Um, that we'll have someone start us off with a topic and then if any other board members before leaving that topic um, have additional follow-up questions that relate to that. And we do know this is a complex system, so we may be circling back around. Um but uh I think that will be the most efficient use of um the time of the experts in the room um who are all the members of the secondary ad hoc committee. So I hope that pleases board members. Is that >> a good way to proceed? Okay. So thank you and thanks. I know you've been speaking
063for a while but um I suspect there are some some questions and maybe we'll just put them out there and then you can decide um how you want to go forward. So, uh, is there a board member that would like to start us off? Okay, Jason, please. Um I'll start start with a topic that uh you guys kind of opened up with which was you started with a broad um selection of models and um then then you narrowed it down and um explicitly you talked about it in this presentation and u if you have anything else to elaborate on as to why model E was was thrown out very very early on in the process along with several other models. And um what your rationale is just definitively for the board to know um why
064just that deferred maintenance alone is was was very quickly out of the question for you. >> Absolutely. >> That's why I said there's another microphone here. So of additional people Hi, I'm Katherine Hudson. I have children at Washington. So, I was representing Washington on the committee. Um, but I'm also a TOSSA East graduate. And I will say I came into the committee really skeptical about this because I in my mind was like, I went to Tossa East, it was fine, I got a great education, it didn't matter. And then we started to tour the buildings and I was kind of horrified actually as an educator and as a parent. Um I will say like one of the moments for me was when we were in the um the science classrooms at Tossa East. We were
065in a biology classroom. That was actually the classroom that I took biology in in high school. And it literally looks exactly the same as when I was in high school. And I know for a fact that the expectations of our students are very different than when I was in high school. Um it just I'm thinking about the things that our students were able to are able to engage in and are not able to engage in in those spaces right now. We are not preparing them for post-secary learning opportunities like that they can't engage in hands-on learning experiences safely um is unacceptable I think and I don't think it should be acceptable to anyone in our community. Um and so I think that as we continue to look at these spaces and just even the safety
066issues that we were seeing in the buildings um were very concerning. So I think that and the deferred maintenance would not have addressed any of that. It wouldn't have addressed ADA compliance um like any accessibility and accessibility I want to remind people goes beyond um physical accessibility in spaces. Um, as the parent of a child with special needs who has autism, there are lots of spaces in these buildings that my child would not be able to access learning in because of his disability. And I know there are many other children in our district that are in that same position. And while maybe that wasn't something that as a community we were considering or as a society we were considering in terms of inclusion many decades ago, we know better and we should do better um
067for our students and our community. And so for me as a committee as a committee member and I think for many other committee members that was the reason that the deferred maintenance option option just like was not going to cut it for us. Hi, my name is Andrea Hoffman. I'm a parent of a first grader at Roosevelt Elementary. Um, I just wanted to speak to the nature of the question around the idea that uh, model E was thrown out quite early on and just address the level of discussion that we did have about all of the models that were presented early on. Um, it was at the end of September that we did do that vote to go from 10 models down to five. At that point, we had heard presentations from a number of
068different educational experts as well as been able to consult with the district provided uh construction and architecture resources around the quality of the facilities. We had access to the analysis of learning spaces. We had done tours of all of our facilities as well as all of the summer tours at the additional facilities outside of the area. So, while it may seem compared to where we are in the calendar now, that those models were eliminated quote unquote quite early on, we were quite deep in our analysis and understanding of what we felt was going to be an appropriate solution for the district and and what our recommendation was going to be by removing five of those models in order to get deeper into the five that we felt were a better fit for the community. My
069name is Martin McLemore. I don't have children currently in the district, but I have young children that will be someday. Um, I just briefly want to touch on the deferred maintenance not uh why I and I think other members found it not be a palatable solution. Um we're all of the the options represent a significant investment uh in the hundreds of millions of dollars uh in the in in even just the deferred maintenance several hundred you know 100 million plus. Um and really looking at what that gets you for that kind of investment versus what yes a larger investment but not such an astronomically larger investment gets you. Um it really became clear that the return on investment was so much greater by spending or you know looking at spending more money than just covering
070the deferred maintenance cost was >> Liz Shickles and parent of an incoming Longfellow student next year. Um, all of the models that were presented to us and that we came up with and all of the ones that could yet be dreamed up are technically on the table. Our task was to make a recommendation which we did in the best way we could. You'll see further in our report that um even the way that we voted um it it was not full consensus. Not everyone agreed that Model F was the answer. It was the most compelling answer that we could form some semblance of majority of agreement upon. And the presentation you heard tonight was to highlight the reasons why that is a very feasible model to consider. I invite you and future parents of students
071and future board members to consider the future. I think 165 million is what has already happened. It might catch us up to today. The original number was 150 million and that was 10 months ago. So to be at 165 gives you a sense of where things are going. And we must look forward. We must think about the current elementary students, what they will need in 10 years. We have to take our best guess, but our best guess must include what is better than the crumbling facilities that they are learning in today. Okay, just to keep us moving, I know there's other topics that have come up. I want to make sure board members have a chance to engage you um on those. Board members, do you have anything else on this first question? I feel
072like we've gotten pretty complete um responses and thank you. Thank you for all that and being willing um willing to share. Um, and also I guess I didn't get a chance to really say I think we all probably appreciate the way your report um was very thorough and represented all those complexities and and the diversity of thinking that was going on. Yes. >> Thank you, Dr. Worley. And I just wanted to to highlight I know it's been said before but uh in front of in front of everyone that um the last speaker said it very well that that the task of the ad hoc committee was not to come give us here's what you should do. It was to say here's all here's a lot of options. here's what we think makes the most sense
073and this board is not going to make any decisions and this board is going to start the process of community engagement of taking it over and I and I hope that we can also um continue to rely upon some of the expertise of you all in the room and are able to draw upon that uh this board, the next board, however long it takes to get uh to a decision point and um I would I would love to see continued collaboration. >> So I also have a couple questions about process um going forward, but why don't we just continue right now with specific questions about the Thank you for that um for Jason. Um why don't we continue with specific questions about the models that people have? Is there anyone else who has um questions
074about the models that have been put forward? Yes, Miss >> Nichols. Um a lot of what you talked about was um ensuring that we didn't remove um any of the like sports or music or theater facilities. At any time did the ad hoc committee consider um rearranging how we have our students in the buildings and using uh maybe one of the buildings um just explicitly for kind of like the community more community focused um more extracurricular focused um reasons. >> Hi, my name is Martha Hendrick. I am a parent of three kids. Um, two are at Tossy East and one is at Longfellow. Um, yes, absolutely. I believe it was H. H was my favorite. Handrich works. Um, and no matter how much I loved that concept, um, it was so cost ineffective. Um, I
075think we would be asking people to pay triple what we would do with any reasonably priced um, package and and reasonably priced feels odd when we're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars. Um and and I wanted to talk about that for a moment because um I do believe that part of our committee's concern was protecting the historical aspects of Wawaossa. um on both sides, west, east. Um there are um different elements that are important to our community. And in trying to preserve that, we were trying to come up with um some ways in which we could repurpose facilities, in which we could do different things. And um and it just proved to be um co cost prohibitive. Sir Morris is yours. Nick can on the same topic from cost inside your analysis. Did anybody
076or was there any conversation around that this isn't a onetime cost? You talk about the maintenance, it's 160 plus million to get us current as we just heard a few moments ago and that regardless of whatever if it's F or anything else, it's hundreds of millions more to get us to that kind of immediate next level. If we say get us to 2030 2035 as a community I think and I don't know if this conversation got beyond that of this is an investment for really the next decade or so I don't know what that looks like but we know the future of learning changes so rapidly with all the technology so everything we do for $350 million regardless of what that is 10 years from now whatever we do in our science lab or our
077math labs or uh theater arts whatever it could be is going to be substantially more. So we're going to be in this position at some point in the future to look at this of how do we go forward of that. I'm just curious on any of the dialogue if we talked about beyond this first step. How does this take us to the next steps after this? >> Hi, I'm uh is this working? I'm Dana Federm. I am a parent uh uh of a Washington child. I also teach at Longfellow and Feast High School. Um, we talked a lot about that in the as part of the committee's work. We talked a lot about how the ongoing maintenance just uh in general of all the buildings is going to continue to cost the district money and
078how we don't have a sufficient amount of funding coming from other resources to continue that. And so inevitably we will be continuing to ask the community to help us pay for the the ongoing maintenance and possibly um uh modernization that will come over the next decade, 2, three, four. That's partially why we uh settled on F being sort of a very a neutral um starting point. Let's get our buildings to a place where we know at least for the next 10 years our students will be comfortable, safe, and our teachers will have uh facilities that are not just workable but enjoyable. Um, and then as we as we continue as we start off with that plan, we're hopefully we're hoping that the district in collaboration with the community and the board will start to develop
079more of a a long range facilities plan that will put some of these um things into question and and forwardinking planning into question and start shoving money away as we can to plan for those changes. I don't know that science labs will change astronomically in the next 10 years. I don't know that music or athletic facilities will change astronomically in the next 10 to 20 years. But they do need a significant amount of change now as they haven't been changed in 20 to 30 years at this point. So I think that our hope is that we will come up with a plan after reaching a higher level here and that and continue to work toward those maintenance type strategies moving forward. >> So can I follow up with that? So could you talk a little
080bit then? Am I understanding that um the group is seeing this more as an interim plan um not actually a longer term solution to the um to the the facilities responsibilities that we would that we would have. So, um, tell us a little bit more about how this kind of following up how this is different from making a decision to have fewer buildings now, um, in planning for likely demographic, um, downturn in the future or even school being delivered in in a different way, maybe not as many students in the buildings as as many times. >> Um, that's a great question. I think it is sort of a slippery slope. We can go into so many different whatifs. Um, and and that was part of a lot of our conversations and we had to kind
081of put a stop on that at some point because you continue to go down those pathways of whatifs and it doesn't come back to our essential question which is basically what do what do we need now and what is going to be helpful now um to make our students the most successful that they can be. And what kind of planning can we put in place now to allow for future improvements to be made and in a more I don't want to speak completely on behalf of the whole committee, but what kind of improvements can be made now that can set us up for more of those successes in the future, whereas prior decisions that have or haven't been made um kind of put us in this position in the first place. And we're talking since
082the 1980s, right? and put us in this position in the first place where we haven't um we haven't done enough over the span of short periods of time. Um and we're kind of dug in deeper into a hole at this point. Um I'm going to let Seth take >> Yeah, maybe there's others that want to speak. >> He had awesome points on this. Whatever. >> Absolutely. Because we need to we need to understand this because I think some of us were thinking bigger change longer term um in terms of what we need to do at this point. My name is Seth Flanders, parent of two children in the district. You may remember me from the last board meeting saying the best time to plant trees 20 years ago, the second best time is now. There
083was a very healthy tension and discussion during our deliberations of what is our planning period? Are we planning for the next 5 years, 10 years, 30 years? And I think what we are asking this board and subsequent boards to do is to make a generational decision but any decision that you make is going to take 10 years to unfold and that things will change during that period of time. So as we are recommending model F, what it both does is set us up for a generational decision that students will 30 years from now come together to do things as a group in a singular place and not be dispersed across many places and that taking that 10 years to make the decision. Things are changing really rapidly right now. If you looked back at the
08480s or the 90s, taking 10 years to make a decision, you'd have the same decision to make in 10 years. And right now, it's hard to see over the horizon. 10 years from now, things could be radically different. And that's where we are with reasonable confidence making the recommendation for model F, but also with the understanding that that's going to take time to play out. And depending on the sequencing we use and the way we design this in, in five years, something could change. And we believe that Model F offers us the flexibility to pivot if that's a necessary activity to do. But in summary though, we believe the model F is the best generational decision for the next 30ish plus years of TOSA students to be able to learn efficiently, effectively and to become
085good citizens. Think of it this way. You have an amazing plumber who can figure out that your water heater is about to break in the next two weeks. You're not going to wait 13 days to go to the store just in case they're going to come out with a new model of water heater. that's super cool and amazing. That's going to do a bazillion things that you didn't know that you needed today. We have to have a solution today for the issues that our buildings and our children and our teachers are facing today. Do nothing is not an option. So, we have to do something. And this isn't an interim. This is what we believe is putting our best foot forward because we don't know. and it does allow us to still do what is
086meaningful and purposeful today. So, I think it's important to distinguish that this isn't an interim plan, but it's also setting ourselves up for the unknown. And that's an important distinction to make. Anyone else have something to follow up on that or we good on that one? you wanna go ahead >> too if you want to >> I do have a I think it's related at least um so when will presenting he mentioned that uh our demographics are changing and they are decreasing slightly or our student base uh is decreasing slightly. Um this seems to be in conflict um with a study that I saw from 2023 where our demographers at the time suggested that our student population in Tosa was going to stay the same uh roughly. Um so with that understanding, how did the
087committee integrate that information? Uh what well what was the information first and then how do they integrate that information in the decision to recommend that we keep all four B buildings open >> it was my name is Brennon I'm award resident Um you hit on quite a sticking point overall for the committee. >> Um when we looked at demographics, the capacity of the schools were designed in 1960ish and the baby boom generation which I'm a pardon. So the capacity at the time in other words all four secondary schools is exceeds what's currently there or what is projected to be there. So we had we ended up with model F of there was a large discussion on all the different models. If you read the report there are some dissenting opinions one of which I am.
088Um, so I guess to answer your question, that was a real demographics and the capacity of the schools was a real consideration. I think some members have talked about model F giving us more flexibility as numbers change up or down. I don't know that there was a consensus around this issue from my perspective, but uh with all of the other complexities that we were presented with with this question, we came we ended up with model F. Uh it may or may not address the demographics going forward, but it's been said many times we as a committee are sure uh I that we need to do something and then gen deferred maintenance option isn't enough. So, model F with the four district or the secondary schools being improved uh was the ultimately the best decision that
089the committee came up with. That was I guess I'll leave it there. My understanding of the different demographic studies that were shown was that the 2023 or was it 24 that you referenced um included current open enrollment. The decision of the board last year to say wait a minute let's hold back on open enrollment. Then the the company did a reprojection which showed things decreasing slightly and now that you've opened up open enrollment again I don't know what they would say. So, as open enrollment goes up and down, we showed that that stays pretty steady in the demographics over the years because open enrollment is the flex. Um, if we choose to eliminate open enrollment, that puts it back to just TOSA residents which are decreasing slowly. However, there's lots of new construction. What difference
090does that make? Big unknown. As as Dr. means informed us the yield of student to apartment ratio is really rather small but maybe that changes with some of the new construction. We really can't tell which is another reason of saying flexibility was a key consideration for us. The other part was that, you know, we said, well, with decreasing populations, sixth grade moving back to elementary, leaving just seventh and eths, as Will said, we looked very hard at saying, should we combine to a 7 to 12 model in the same building, even having them separated and we decided with a lot of angst and a lot of feedback that maybe this is right, maybe this isn't, that the socio go emotional factors of putting 7 through 12 together didn't outweigh the cost of keeping them apart.
091So that's that was part of our consideration and we spent probably a good two hours of various meetings discussing demographics and how they would impact. >> That was impressive. You managed to answer a couple other questions all in one answer. Um but we may want to dig a little deeper. We could stay with the demographics for a moment. Um, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I was >> Vivian Dunlinger and I have two children at Eisenhower. Um, I also just wanted to point because I feel like we're kind of going that direction too that when we think about X amount of students for one building 30 40 years ago ago is very different than that many students for a modern learning space and the amount of square footage that you would need to accomplish that. So I
092think to not to fixate too much on the numbers and focus more on what's needed for that group of students too. Um, uh, I think that it's also important to recognize that, um, the decisions, uh, prior that have been made about moving the sixth grade down, if that's happening, when that's happening, is going to throw a wrench into some of these demographic numbers as well. And if that decision were to ever be reversed or changed um after the fact that of it happening, these four buildings allow the flexibility for those sixth graders to be moved back up into the middle school if necessary and or for um elementary buildings to uh eventually graduate from our um our programming if necessary as many districts in our um state have have chosen to do as of late.
093So I think again model F provides a lot of flexibility around the demographic question and how many students are going to be flux fluxing in and out of the district um as the decades pass. >> Yeah. Yeah, I mean I would just say to to those points that were made, um my expectation is that open enrollment will flex a little bit over the next few years, but 20 29 2930 um we'll probably see much less use of open enrollment from then on because of the movement of sixth grade to the elementary schools. Um, so I think it a lot of it depends upon what the time frame is that we're planning for, which sounds like that's still um up for discussion as well. So I appreciate you um pushing out those complexities. Um, did anyone
094else have on this one? Otherwise, we might move to the 712. Um >> if we're talking about the potential that um especially at the middle school level, some of those buildings won't be pulled if we move our sixth grade students. Um then that obviously trickles up to the um high schools. Why are we considering renovating the third floor of East? I I don't know the numbers. >> This one doesn't >> for I'm sorry for F. Model F has the third floor of East being renovated, right? >> Yes. >> Noation for F. There are conflicting graphics that I >> Oh, okay. Because I thought they >> then I guess so we're not renovating the third floor east for model F. >> There are conflicting graphics. If you stay if you stay on the district website on
095there was >> clear, >> but the app that you're talking about does not include. >> Yeah, there were some early graphics that were conflicting and that came up uh at points during our discussion. Uh we did get updated graphics then from the construction architecture team that clarified some of that. Um so I don't know what you're looking at, but we also had some of the same confusions. Uh but to be clear, Model F would not renovate third floor. >> I don't have that question. >> Thanks for asking about that. Yes, >> I just have a >> Oh, just to follow up on that, can you talk a little bit about why that is why that is in there as not being remodeled at all? mostly because we wouldn't need the space um if we're keeping
096just 9 through 12 at East as it currently is. Um and our student population projected to stay about the same or slightly decrease depending on uh what happens in the future. We would not need the third floors and the third floor is a significant investment. Um, now you look at some of the 712 models and you need that space, then it comes into play. But for model F, uh, you just don't need the space and it's not worth the cost to to get that space. You basically it's you you have to cut it down to nothing to start over. It's not something you can just update. >> Yeah. Right. Thanks for explaining to Jason. >> Uh, sorry. I just wanted to acknowledge where that information came from, Heidi. So yes, in this graphic that is
097in our report, this I we're now seeing as an outdated graphic. We were provided updated information in a format like this. Um so I'd like to be able to update this graphic in the report before it's posted to the website for public consumption. >> Thank you. You good idea. >> Thank you. Um, so my question regarding Model F, I I'm looking at Model F compared to Model I. And the material differences between those two from from my glance at it is um, basically Fiser would close and then the pool space at the middle schools would not be renovated. And throughout that um both the monosuri and the district what whatever is being housed here would essentially move over into the other buildings. It would it would free up a building at the end of the
098process which based on the estimates still doesn't really give us any more year-over-year operating. I want to clarify that that these estimates are I know they're not going to be exact, but um for for the public would having an open building or um closing Fisher in that model I result in something like that. All right. So, I talked a little bit about model. I I was the one who wrote that initially. Um, and I so I had some more detailed discussions with the production architecture team about it as we came up with the estimates for it. Um, and essentially, well, I guess when you're talking about the the year-to-year operating costs, um, as we go into the numbers of those, it the only models that offered signific significant and really not that significant, but noticeable,
099um, operating costs were ones that allowed cutting staff. So, to say that with 712 model, you're buying schools, maybe you lose a few assistant principles or whatever it might be. Uh, none of the savings from closing a building. uh were significant enough to make a a real impact on that year-to-year operating cost. Uh you'd have a one-time influx from you're selling a property. Uh but that's, you know, onetime thing. It doesn't affect the budget that much year to year. Um the operating cost is so much more heavy on uh the staffing than it is on the buildings itself. Um, and was there more question about the cost initially of buy or you more just concerned about the >> Um, yes. Uh, so we've heard about Walkershaw closing buildings and and having massive savings and um
100we we're we're a different community and I want I'm I'm just looking for more clarification on if we do close a building or two, would that actually save us money significantly enough to make a dent in the $20 million deficit per year operating? Um from all the numbers we were given uh uh that we got from the district about how the operating cost would be affected by the models. No uh I think I think the largest one was maybe 1.5 million in savings for uh I think A1 the 712 model and that was the largest uh so of any of the operation savings. >> Thank you for answering my questions. Hi, Katie Weamer. I have uh kids at Lincoln, Longfellow, and East. Um just wanted to add to Will's comment on model I. Um it
101wasn't the model I and F or E are very similar. Um sorry, battlef and metal I are very similar but um we felt as a committee that it would be outside our scope to recommend the closure of Fiser and to recommend moving Montasauri to Longfellow and those were the big differences between uh those two models and so if you as a board decide that is what makes sense you know that's within your discretion and authority Um but that model didn't get um support I think because of the concern about it being outside the scope of our um committees task >> or Thank you. for for any of the models that would involved removing buildings. Did you guys uh were you only considering selling the property or did you also consider um leasing uh to private
102business or or something else something where long-term leases where it could be an income generating uh building? >> Sure. So I will just answer this briefly and maybe someone else wants to chime in with their thoughts. But when we were making the decisions um it was based on again the questions before us about educational experience um and we were also told that you know at the time that we are making our recommendation. We do not know what would happen to those sites and there's no guarantee for example if we were to close um Whitman that it would necessarily become a uh sports complex like or if Longfellow were to close would that become fields or would that become apartments? And so, um, we did not include, um, and consider, you know, uh, income that could
103be received because it was too, um, you know, too many unknowns and variables. Um, is there the potential? Absolutely. Um, but I and I'll let other I don't want to speak for the whole committee, but I don't believe that that um played a significant role in making our recommendations. >> Thank you. I'll take this question. Um, and this is a great question. Our committee did uh hash this out. Um, any the proposals? Um, let me start by saying the proposals that included selling that actually had wording that included selling property or closing uh, schools uh, were ranked the lowest. And um one other thing to consider and that our committee considered and the administration had shared with us that likely if we reconfigured at either the elementary level or the secondary school level, we would
104possibly create dangerous crossings which would then um which would then lead us into busing students districtwide, which is one of the things that Walkshaw already does. So they wouldn't have they already do that. Most school districts already do that. Wawaossa is unique in that way. And the cost for busing would be over $2 million annually. >> So you said over $2 million annually. >> Over $2 million annually is the quote that we were given. And it may be more expensive or less dep less expensive depending on how the district would be reconfigured. But those were the considerations that we had um in in our discussions. >> Before you step away, did you have any discussion around that? Considering that already the district may probably should be busing a portion of our students. Was that part
105of the conversation at all? That's been requested by some >> the committee the committee is saying no. Yeah. Just that wasn't widely understood. I will share that we do understand that um that we do have busing for students with special needs and other specialty programs built in um to our costing but not a district-wide busing like u most of every other school district has. We are unique. And >> so you didn't have it on on your I'm just clarifying. You didn't have it on your table that there have been discussions in other ways about busing being needed in this district particularly on the west side. >> Go ahead. >> No, but correct. If you reconfigured >> I mean without even reconfiguration even currently. >> No, no, there were no discussions on science. Thank you for
106clarifying that question. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for that extra context. the building. >> That's interesting to hear that I'm more rearen I have a two kids at west. Um the only model that that was taken into that the cost of the busing was taken into account was. So if that cost was taken out of the equation, then there are a bunch of operational to go with model B and it would potentially change the community survey and our committee's decision. >> I know might be speaking for myself, but >> sorry, >> we we want to hear all the pieces. We we are you know we we >> that's the only model I mean >> if that was taken out D would be a different model that was presented to us. If that cost of
107busing wasn't in there, it would not be as expensive as >> it looks. >> As it was. >> Yeah. Thank you. >> Okay. Thank you for that clarification. >> Yeah, we have another hand first, Katherine Hudson, I believe, and then we'll go to you. We >> that was not the only reason model D was not >> the social emo we ranked social emotional learning as our top priority and closely ranked academics as our second and as we said there were huge concerns with model D in terms of social emotional learning for kids and their accessibility to extracurricular activities. um it falls outside of the range of what was presented to us as like a midsize school and what would be best for kids. You're right. >> What she just mentioned that model D and model
108A1 both would require middle school and high schools to be under the same roof and that was social emotionally. That was a major concern for the committee. Um the architects had said that they had a plan to keep the two separate. In other words, they could be one campus but two schools, a middle school or a high school. Um, but overall, there were significant amount of the members that felt that that wasn't good enough. And that's why I think um I was in favor of A1. I'll say that outright. Um, others were in favor of D, but that was a major concern socially emotionally to have mix of high school and middle school on one campus. >> D wouldn't have that mix. A one would >> no D is two buildings D is two buildings
10978 one building and N just to clarify 9 through 12 in the other >> yes so the A1 and was the one and then the other in terms of the savings A1 offered would be the 1.5 and then it was mentioned D the savings were chewed up because of the busing so that was the >> okay it wasn't this yeah because you wouldn't still wouldn't need the Third floor on D. Okay. >> Operating savings. That's the difference in the operating savings. >> The operating savings are less. Yeah. Because the busing isn't there. >> Okay. Talk a little. Yeah. Sarah, go ahead. >> No, I was just trying to get a clarification on that one statement about model D. Okay. But I'm seeing it now that estimated 517,000 increase in annual staffing, transportation or energy. So
110that's why that's the one model where the cost would actually there'd be increases in costs each year because of that. Okay. Plus, on what we're looking at, it says in the report, it says that's a not renovated model. >> That say that again, L. >> It says that this says model D in the report says that's a not renovated. >> So, and not not modernized. >> Third floor. Okay. Third floor. All right. Perfect. Last question, Dr. Wley. >> Yes. Was there ever any conversation around and and I Not being from originally here, it's it's just profound to me that any school for as long as it has has had an unused vacant section of a school, an entire third floor at East. Um but when we talk about again not for moving or getting rid
111of Fiser but was there any conversation about actually doing the work and utilizing that third floor for other things we talk about moving the administration there moving maybe not put monitoring the third floor but reconfiguring things to use that space and to you know I feel like there's a operational cost whether it's heating cooling Mr. and I'm sure you can speak to these things of just continue with unused vacant space that has a value that I feel like it's if it's there it should be occupied and used. >> Yeah, I can talk just a little bit not in terms about the um the cost. I've been up on the third floor a lot. It's where the orchestra graveyard is. Uh if I have instruments that are beyond repair um they go up to the original
112orchestra room. It's where I store cases. And if you have been up to the third floor at East as much as I have, it would take a significant financial investment to turn that into where it's at bare minimum a safe space for anyone to be in. Um let alone reconfigure so that um it is accessible for people to walk through. You'd have to spend significant financial capital to relocate everything that's currently inside of classrooms at the third floor. You would have to, I'm ass sure I'm I'm guessing, do a lot of asbestous abatement. You'd have to reconfigure where the heating and cooling systems go for the lower two floors because in some cases they go down a hallway or fill an entire classroom and all of those while you can do anything with with enough
113money, um it would take significant financial investment to um to do so. and and and so my I I I guess as I've been there many times, I'm uh I I I love the third floor because it is beautiful. um and to restore it would be unbelievable and unbelievably expensive. And I think just to come back that the cost would be so high to relocate um any program in there. And I'm not sure if that cost is um is worth it, but I will turn it over to committee members that may have more specific financial insights >> yet. If you want to be creative, you have so much opportunity to do that. And if you if you actually have fewer students in a school overall, you have the chance to build bigger classrooms which honestly
114accommodate larger teenagers than existed 80 years ago and bring in better electricity which is a huge need in all of the classrooms. And if we really want to invest in in-person learning experiences, which is I think the reason that our schools are so successful today, it is the teachers. It is the the care that they put into this. And so to do nothing, to do the bare minimum sends a message not only to families, not only to people looking to move here, but to the teachers that you have today that you wish to continue to retain who might not have said anything on any of the surveys so far, but are definitely experiencing these spaces on a daily basis. I will also say any child who has read Harry Potter would like to go to
115class on the third floor of East. I invite you all to take every opportunity you can to tour the spaces to see the good and the bad and think of it like the opportunity that we have, especially if we hang on to these buildings. The community cares a lot about these buildings, especially the architectural touches. is that was one of the reasons that we enjoyed seeing the Manasha High School so much was their community had exactly the same feeling. Don't touch the Koopa. Oh, it has to look exactly like this. Oh, save that wall with the, you know, freeze in the concrete. And they did. They found a way to do it because they thought creatively while answering the needs of the teachers and the students. >> You haven't had the opportunity to tour the
116third floor at East. I really would invite you to do that. It is, as other committee members have said, phenomenal. And the other part that goes with that is that I would like you to look around and say, where is the district storage warehouse? It's the third floor at east. So, there's an opportunity, and I would encourage the district to have a garage sale and clear out a bunch of that junk because we could use that much more effectively. However, that's probably its best and highest use right now is as the storage facility for the district. It's perfectly suited for it. It's easily accessible and we've got that space that we can use for it rather than building a warehouse. >> One more point. Uh so the thought you had about it how do we
117use this excess space was part of um my thinking in coming up with model I initially was in theory we might have some excess space at Whitman and Longfellow is there a way that we could use that and that was kind of the idea maybe you could close Fisher and move those programs and the idea was those spaces are much uh easier to repurpose they're already being used they're already they need attention but they're are already being used by students right now the the investment needed to repurpose is less. Um, so yeah, I mean long term that maybe there is a way we could turn the third floor of East into something cool, something useful for the district. But yeah, the the initial investment is so much greater for that compared to the what might
118be available at the middle schools if we go down to just at the current buildings. >> I think just one other follow I think >> and then I want to go on to a different topic before we run out of time here and >> Dr. Dr. means pointed this out, but that exact conversation there about the third floor is how we got into this where we are now. If we're maintenance, if we talked about the third floor 35, 40 years ago, we might have had this beautiful place. Everybody says this amazing space that we don't want to be having this conversation 15 years from now, 20 years from now about other vacant spaces that right. That's where a lot of these questions are coming from. I'd like to hear a little bit about um as
119you may or may not know I'm a very strong proponent of social emotional um and that environment. However, we as a board also get a lot of requests and concerns about um the academic offerings and thinking about um what so like I've had students in my family who take German and we now are teaching three years of German all in one classroom um because we don't have the level of enrollment and we have some classes that we don't teach every semester every year and we have parents who want more layers of different of the same classes but at pacing at different speeds for students who learn differently and often our response is well we don't have the enrollment um in order to make those kinds of opportunities possible um so talk me through talk us
120through a little bit uh the discussions you had around that and why not go to a combined I understand it's a bigger school, but we also talked about the potential shrinking. Why not go to a combined um either a a way of using the 7 through 12 as to to make those adaptations because our students come in with different needs or to uh a single high school as a way to um make uh more academic opportunities. So we talk about like for example we want to add more types of de dual enrollment classes more high school um opportunities to get college credit while you're at while they're there but we are faced with um not having student enough students to enroll in them at one time even now let alone in a decade. I know
121it was a long question but I wanted to give you the context but that's fine. >> I can see from your faces you've been waiting. >> Uh hello uh I'm Pablo Brass. I have one son at Whitman. I have another son at Underwood and I have a daughter who will be in 4K at Underwood next year. Um, so just kind of getting to your point, I guess little background. I taught science, I taught teched, now I'm in higher education. Um, huge proponent of any course that gives someone a postsecary opportunity. Um, you know, from a science standpoint, especially now being in an engineering school, yeah, I want to get any kid possible into some course now that's going to give them college credit that saves them money later on. And being an automotive teacher, you
122know, back when I was in high school, I want to give these kids any opportunity to leave the door making money. I mean, I I got youth apprentices out the door and they still check up on them, still talk to them. Um, so I mean that's been that has been my my big concern throughout this whole process. Ask anyone on this committee. Um, I'm kind of the the outspoken one when it comes to Model D. Um, I don't I think it's it's absurd um that we would have a district that would arguably have a high school that's around 2,000 students. that number correct, 1,600 students. Uh, and we're calling that a mega school. Um, that's kind of the the term that was coined in our committee. Um, to me, I think it was just a
123scare tactic. Uh, to me, 1,600 students isn't that large. 2,000 students isn't that large. Um, we were given social emot social emotional uh documents showing that yeah, the more opinions, the more viewpoints you're exposed to, as long as you're given a space, a safe environment to be exposed to those situations, you become a more well-rounded individual. So, how do we not just ensure that those spaces are given at a large high school in Watossa? So, we can give AP physics. We can give a a fully funded and rounded uh woods program. Bring in an auto program. I'm I'm itching here. I I still >> My high school had a auto program, so I I totally know what you're talking about. >> Just saying, Tossa. Um, you know, I I was one of three teachers in
124the state of Wisconsin teaching auto body repair. Like, the these are these are things that are are not around anymore. Uh but they're coming back. Uh and just going, you know, back onto the AP thing, dual credit, UWM, MATC, Marquette, all like I'm very well-versed in how those courses become dual credit courses. And so to think that we have all these students in Maossa that could benefiting one large high school, uh to me, I think it's a misstep. Um, I don't feel that strongly about middle school. I'm I'm fine with keeping two smaller middle schools. Not, you know, that that was something I did bring up, but like uh we talked about with other models, then we start talking about costs and it becomes really prohibitive. Um, so that's that's that's my takeaway. I know
125there's going to be someone behind me, maybe a few people saying that the social emotional benefits do not outweigh the academic benefits. Um, but I'm one of those people that think uh a school is here first and foremost to be an academic institution. So, >> thank you for sharing your thoughts. Anyone else want to share on this? >> I don't want to counteract anything just said because I think he's right in a lot of ways. I would say that the counterargument within the committee was the importance of the east west uh identity. So the model D would take away there would be one high school, one middle school. Right now we have feeder elementary going to a feeder uh middle school that ends up at a high school. So that east west divide not maybe
126that's not the right word but that identity of east high school west high school was major uh point brought up within the committee >> and that was seen as a positive rather than >> felt the committee felt that that was the community valued that identity. Yes. Um speaking to the 7 to2 model we overall we did discuss the equity of options for both academic athletics co-curricular the 7 to12 model and I speak about this in my personal statement at the end of the report I think we get a lot of inequality when we're looking at what would need to be done to east compared to what would need to be done to west in order to turn those buildings into 7 to 12 educational facilities. In so far as the square footage, the age of
127the building at East, you know, the discussions that we had with the construction and architectural professionals, that building creates a lot of challenges to set up say for model A1 or H where we have 7 to 12, but the seventh and eighth graders are in very separate facilities, their own cafeteria, their own gymnasium. West has a lot more square footage. they have a lot more land they can do an addition. East does not have that same kind of opportunity without cannibalizing its own uh athletic fields and parking lots in a very condensed uh area on the east side. Um so while you know broadly I was in you know in favor of of other things about A1 and H um and again I rate I don't want to be speaking too far out of turn
128in my personal statement but the construction concerns over the severe accommodations that would need to be made at east which is not equitable to what would need to be done at west in order to accommodate the 7 to12 model is was I think heavily discussed um you know earlier in the process. Just before you leave, the discussion of using Longfellow on the east side rather than that come up in notes a few times as 7 to 12. >> Model H. Um, >> you know the letters better than I do. I just need the notes. uh model H which is the 7 to12 model references using the Longfellow site uh to to build uh functionally a new 7 to12 high school um did not get a lot of traction uh for discussion in the committee because
129of the overall price tag that was shown. And we just felt it was going to with the limited amount of detail that was in the kind of visuals and presented in the survey, we felt that the you know community was not going to respond well to that high of a number without the layer of detail that we'd be able to provide at this point. >> Okay. Thank you. >> I think H also included keeping east. um for the athletic for the pool, the athletic spaces, and the performing arts space. So that's what also made model H more expensive. Um so that didn't that affected whether or not the the concept of using Longfellow as a 7 to12 model was viable. Correct. Um, the other thing I wanted to just bring up, Pablo did a great
130job expressing kind of some of our reasons behind why we supported the one high school, one middle school idea. I It's been talked. Um, go get your tickets for Hello Dolly. That's a big concern. It's the other arts programs also to go to to have two smaller high schools. There is concern whether or not you have enough kids to mount the same caliber of show that you have currently. Um, so it's all the art programs. Do they are there enough kids to support all of those different those different uh extracurricular offerings? And I understand some of the argument that, you know, one high school then you you reduce the number of leads in the spring show and you reduce the number of quarterbacks. But I feel there are other ways to potentially give opportunities to
131kids within that same environment. I get very concerned. I have a very high performing senior and he's gone through a lot of trying to find classes this year. It's it's been tricky. Um he's got study halls for the first time ever. So, you know, I'm seeing in real time the lack of course offerings and what it means to kids who are trying to get in more selective schools. So, it's a real concern of mine that a smaller school would >> necessitate a reduced level of program offerings. And I think it is currently impacting our smaller high school more maybe than our larger high school. So, so, so some people may be more aware of that than others that that's a a challenge. as part of our discussions which we again sort of decided that um
132this part of the discussion was beyond the scope of our committee. Um we also had numerous conversations around how some of these um these course offering situations can also be resolved by adjusting and modifying the school day schedule and the school year calendar. Um, so just keep that in mind as you're starting to have these conversations with each other that this was another very complex um, item that contributed to the wicked problem that we have. Um, course offerings are dependent on how many students are able to enroll um, how many students are enrolled in programming in general or enrolled in the school district. But some of those problems can also be solved by modifying and adjusting course schedules um staffing, modifying and adjusting um year-long schedules as well as um uh I lost my train
133of thought. Sorry. Yeah, that's the point that I'm trying to make. Um and I think if it comes back to me, I might try to bring it back up again, but that's what I'll leave I'll leave it with. Just want to clarify um something that was said earlier about Model I. Model I was more expensive. I believe around a hundred million more. Um and that does not include any updates at East. And so yes, the facilities would still be at East. You would still have the gym and the theater and the pool at East. Oh, H. >> Oh, H. I'm sorry. H, sorry. Sorry. Sorry. So, yes, H was 100 million more expensive. Um, the students are at Longfellow 7 through 12, but East says open but not updated with the estimate. So, 100 million
134more. And if you want an updated theater or gym, you would still need more money. And so, uh, that also, um, was a reason why we just viewed it as cost prohibitive. >> Thank you. I hadn't noticed that. >> Um, Mega High School. I guess concerns that I have and I have heard from people on the committee as well as my neighbors do have to do with the fact that you're going from one theater program or two theater programs to one, two sports teams for certain sports to one. Um, maybe like high demand. I remember when we toured Middleton, the superintendent there said, "Yes, kids do have limited opportunities to participate in extracurriculars." She also said that it does limit kids access to high demand classes and AP courses. So, while I do agree that
135there might be more options um in one high school, there also are limitations as well for student access. Um, another major concern is busing itself is a concern because I came from living and teaching in a district where we had busing and kids were outside waiting in the dark and not getting home until super late. And I know right now that has been an issue this year with the athletic fields not being accessible at Hart Park. I've heard from parents how their kids are having to travel to West for track practice and football practice and it really is impacting them and their ability to get their studies done and to have a job. Um and so that travel time it seems short but during high traffic times it takes a long time to get from
136the far east side to the far west side of Tossa. Um and so I think that that is a huge concern. And so like busing sounds great, but there are a lot of issues that also come with busing um that I think need to be considered. Um again with the 712, I was a really strong strongly in favor of 712 really honestly up until the end. Um I wasn't as concerned with the social emotional impact as I know some people are and those are valid reasons for 712. I thought that the there could be opportunities for students to, you know, we have students walking from Longfellow down to East right now to take classes that would eliminate that that travel time for them. Um or students who maybe were in high school that still needed
137to loop down and get some extra learning. It would be more accessible for them. Um a major concern though was losing all of the green space on the east side. Um bu bumping that out. um as was said but also there was no guarantee as to what would happen with Longfellow. So like in that model it specifically states that Whitman would become athletic fields but for Longfollow all it says is closed and it's really scary for the east side because that is a that's all of our green space that we're losing then all of our athletic fields all of our community space because Longfellow encompasses so much green space. We would basically only be left with Heart Park um on the east side. So there was a an inequity with that as well. And for
138me that was a huge factor. Thank you. >> I think we're going to move close to wrapping up soon just because everybody you know needs to have a life outside of our meeting room. Um board members other details that you need process at this time? >> I no more details but I just want to make sure very clear for the public and anybody listening that something that was said earlier that I think it it's it's worth talking about is this comparison of the things that we need when we talk about athletics, theater, the arts that we owe it to our teachers, the faculty and our educators to give them that space and things that are there for them so that they're not feeling less than when they're looking at their peers. We're doing everything we
139can to bring and give everything to both the students and the educators who are the most important ones really in my I joined this board because those are the only ones that really matter. Yes, us parents and the community matter too, but we're doing all these things to make sure we have better outcomes for all those futures, those young futures that become older futures and people that become part of our community. And I kept coming back to me in my mind of if we get this right and this is our starting point to prepare for that next decade or those next three decades, it would be no different than everyone was saying, "I've got the best doctor, but he works out the trunk of his car." Nobody would accept that. I think our community has
140to understand that we don't want to put that on our educators or our students to have that expectation that to regardless if you're on the east side or the west side that you're operating this field of we're giving you something good but it's okay in the the package that it's in. We should bring all those things up to standard and find ways to be creative. I like the committee member that from the committee that said think bigger. Think of these ways that this isn't the final stop. This is an iteration of where we're going with this. find those creative ways to to move the levers to get to those things that give them the capacity to have great spaces, great opportunities, great places to learn and and keep it the type of community and the
141type of space that everybody's proud of and it's not one side versus the other. >> Great. Okay. I want to ask a couple process questions while we have you all here. And I don't know if other board members have process questions. Um, one of mine is how do you suggest or see further engagement beyond tonight of the board with this committee? I'm not going to overcommit anybody else uh in this room to say that you should ask or require everybody on the committee to continue uh with weekly Tuesday meetings in perpetuity. >> Um meetings and we have sometimes >> um but uh you know I myself would love to be further involved in these conversations. This has been a very deep immersive learning opportunity. Again, as the mother of just a first grader, I'm very
142new to the the the district overall. Um, this wicked problem that we have dealt with and hearing from the community via the survey and from going to PTA meetings and talking to our neighbors. It's it's very complex. You guys have a very sort of tough set of discussions and and decisions ahead of you. But I do think this committee represents a very good swath of the community. You have a very tough job to kind of just receive a title wave of of comments and open public meetings and Facebook posts and everything else that probably comes your way. I do think this committee works very well together as has been noted and I do think that we are like a well represented sample across the community members who don't have students, different levels of of um
143students throughout the district. uh and I I do know that many of us would be happy to participate in whatever level feels appropriate for >> you feel like you all are flexible enough to continue to pivot should we >> I won't other directions well you yourself >> yes >> just just curious okay um I yeah if anyone else wants to speak and I have one other process question >> yes making a quick comment I mean I echo everything Andrea just said. Um, but again being the outlier uh in most of our conversations. Um, after we spent so much time together and working together, there's not like a single person on this committee that I was like, "Wow, they're coming after me for my ideas." Um, or like we disagree and we cannot come to any
144common ground. Um, so I guess I I would be more than happy to work with anyone here alongside, you know, all of you to to kind of help come up with a decision and I hope they would still want to work with me. >> Great. Thank you. >> Um, I just want to also encourage the board to reach out to staff um, especially teaching staff because they will be heavily impacted as a staff member myself. Um, but I think the voice of staff has been relatively quiet throughout our entire committee's process. There were only two members of staff on the committee, which is fine. Uh, it was it was good to be a part of the committee and I think that it was a good sample. Three, sorry. So, sorry. Yes. Three two teachers, one
145other um staff member and administrator. Um uh I think though that our voice was relatively quiet and I think it's really important to engage staff, teachers, administrators, um specialized staff as well in conversations around what the board is thinking and what direction you think you might be moving because it it that is a group of people that will be very heavily impacted by any decision that is made. >> Yes. And in presenting our plan for further engagement, we definitely had staff as one of the, you know, invites for that, but maybe the kinds of open sessions we have in mind aren't the kind that staff would come to. That's what I'm not would maybe take some more followup. Um, so I saw your hand. I was going to ask about community engagement as my next
146question. Did you want to follow up on >> committee engagement? >> Yeah, after that. >> Yes. So my other question um this comes out of it's not just my question it comes out of discussions with um you know thinking through the process piece um what are your recommendations for engaging effectively engaging the community and when I say community I mean everyone I think of community as staff students I want to hear students voice on this not just the student I have dinner with but you know all the students um that that want to have a voice um people who live in the community and have or don't have um you know kids or are you know maybe here for you know a shorter period of time because of their age but you know are still
147part of this process or those who you know are relatively new. What are effective ways of engaging? For now, we know we're having three sessions. one of those um to be an virtual session to serve the needs of people who are um are we we find possibly could do hybrid but we know it's complicated and every time we try to do hybrid and I can say this also as a person who teaches hybrid courses the people who are online tend to get much less attention than the people in the room so we have talked about a virtual focus session and then a couple of inerson that's as far as we've gotten um you know for the next few months. We'd love to hear your guidance on that. >> I think that um it it should
148be noted uh based on the response level um of the most recent community survey that those are not necessarily the most effective way to engage the community. I think it was something like 7% of the adult population um actually filled out that survey and handed it in. That's not enough in my opinion. Um >> or is it so far just talking about in person? >> Um right. Yes. So I think going forward considering something more than just a um mail-in or electronic survey to engage the community and in person is probably going to be >> person plus virtual >> very effective and I would say also frequency um not having enough opportunities for people to come and engage is probably part of the problem too. um and not knowing when or how or how much
149they should be involved. Just getting the word out, the marketing, all of the discussions that you're having like really really openly and frequently is also going to be really helpful. And engaging PTAs probably would be a great way to do that. PTAs at the individual school buildings because they know how to get the word out. So, doubt I'm saying anything that you haven't already thought of, but meeting people where they are is often the best way to hear from them. Um, so while the Fiser building offers some nice amenities, um, I would encourage you to have them these listening sessions or whatever you want to call them in other places. If you're looking for students, have them at the schools. Um whether that means having times where and I know teachers are going to say
150probably not appreciate me saying this but give them time away from the classroom if that's what it takes. If you really want to hear from people you have to go where they are. If you want to hear from senior citizens go to the senior citizen center. Um I mean it's really fundamental. I I also don't know what the board's capacity is to have sessions at different times of days on the weekends things like that. there are people that are um you know just not capable of because of work schedules or family commitments or whatever to take time on a school night to come and talk about these things. Um and so I would just encourage you to think as broadly as possible about different places, times, locations to to have these sessions. >> Yes. And
151well taken. Um we have had it's funny I think it's a great suggestion. Um I think the timing is one we haven't engaged as much. We have taken our sessions out into other schools and we've met some challenges. One is that we can't hold them in schools that don't have accessible spaces including accessible bathrooms. So we've run into that. Um and we um and we don't have a text set up to very easily to record or broadcast except in this room which is why we often end up here. So we face some of the same challenges at the very buildings you visited um face but uh in terms of our work. The board historically did meet in um a number of different buildings, but as we've become more high-tech um in what we offer, that
152has become much more challenging and would be a a big financial investment. That's not to say we can't try. And we did have our engagement sessions in the fall um in two of our schools in East and in West. Um and we kind of managed to rig up um some of the technology we needed but didn't 100% meet the needs of um of people who need particular supports in order to participate in the meeting. So well taken. definitely something that we continue to be concerned about and will um take into consideration as we um arrange these meetings. My son presently attends a a MPS school. We chose to move to WavaSa in part because of the schools. Um, so we're we've been residents for six years, but because I was not already on the email
153list, I didn't know I was elected to this committee. I did not receive the community survey in paper or via email because I wasn't on the right list. So, please do your due diligence to understand. You know, we talk about data. So you need some data about the people you need to talk to and that necessarily includes people like me and Martin and Ed who don't yet have a personal daily vested stake in the schools necessarily but who will need to vote on a referendum when that time comes because this money comes from nowhere else. The money we're talking about and unless you get further creative which I invite you to do. We talked about that as well. That was one of the ways that we felt hamstrung was these are the buildings we have.
154This is the appetite we knew the community would have. And we did 90% of our work before the survey results came back. So we took some educated guesses even in how far we got where when we came down to five models which ones we were voting on and recommending these things were happening at the same time. Um so please accept that in context especially when you uh read through our report. >> Yeah, thank you for including that in the report. Um it was helpful to hear those comments. >> Dr. Worley, uh for these engagement sessions, does the board need to uh have quorum or is it just um >> No, we've never had to have quorum. more meetings that are maybe shorter and and be able to kind of expand that footprint out because I
155feel like that's probably the thing that's that's most limiting is that we're having three engagement sessions, we're having three on those dates and there's not a lot of flexibility. We've already heard there's there's a lot of people that would probably really appreciate having having multiple options to choose from. So I I do like that suggestion and I want to reiterate that and just ask the question of like what are the logistics involved if one or two board members wanted to have a listening session or had some free time uh available to take some input answered questions. I mean if board members if if it's one then you're basically just doing your work as a board member if you're listening to committee members. Once we get to two, then we should post it and we should
156organize and we should make people as um uh point out we should make people really aware that these opportunities are happening. Um >> so we have not we're not required to have quorum but we also have to think about as you know our process as a group in terms of how we then collect what happens at um engagement sessions and and make that available to everyone um who all you know everyone who also wasn't there. So that that's some thinking through as well. Those are good questions, Miss Bzenski. And then you want or do you want to see to >> just your question about process? I'm glad it came up. I think that's a wonderful I'm glad I'm glad the board is considering that. Um, one of the things that I would emphasize, it's in
157our report with that was put together by the staff is the history of the why how we got here. That information wasn't available when we first when we first met last May. Matter of fact, it didn't become available until I'm going to say December or January. But that I think we need to educate the community on how we're in this situation the way we are. But that I don't think that's common knowledge. I know it wasn't for me personally until I was part of this committee. So, uh, I want to emphasize that that as we as we look forward, let's educate the community, excuse me, community, they need to know how we got here and why it's become such a point of emphasis that we act and hopefully soon. And then one other maybe suggestion
158is u in terms of practical ability to get out into community would be the farmers market a booth at the farmers market with one or two members of the board or perhaps this committee might be beneficial. >> Thank you. Um lots of really great uh creative suggestions and I think that without a doubt we know we need to go where people are not expect them um to come to us. We also need to be able as a community to be supportive of making sure that we understand that all this we talk about is resources um and it's going to take staff, communication staff, administrative staff um to help us to do this. I just want to throw that out there. It's not, you know, that we we can do as much connecting and gathering of
159information as our basically our staff budgeted at this point can can manage to handle without putting them on overload. So I think you know the the universe is wide but the um the rails are there because we are limited in what we can invest is that there we have to keep that in mind as well. So, we need to use that time really effectively and efficiently. Miss Bzinski has been waiting patiently. Just >> thinking about future opportunities for us as a as a WASSA school district community to come together to solve the the next wicked problem as it comes up. What are some some lessons learned for the process that you've gone through over the course of the last however many months together that that you've learned maybe as a team or that you hope
160that we've we've learned as as a district about how this worked. That's very interesting question. Um, I would say that one thing that greatly helped us out was having the question framed for us. Here's what you're charged to answer. Here's where you need to go. There were times, as Paige said, we exceeded those boundaries and she tried to bring us back in and oftentimes we resisted her uh and continued to exceed those boundaries and at times that was all right and at times it wasn't. So, you know, it's it's one of those things that as you go through the process, ensuring that the question is clearly defined, scope and boundaries are clearly defined, and having that outside facilitator so that nobody's having any thoughts that there's a st on the scale somewhere, even though they
161will anyway, but that's that's also critical in order to make sure that people in a situation like this can move forward effectively. Um, and I I do think that the district's methodology for trying to draw from the community was good. Um, there were gaps. We really wanted students. We had a student at our first meeting and he looked at it and said, "Wow, that's a heavy and I've got home and he didn't come back." >> Okay. Yeah. So that's something where if we can start to engage those other voices with a lighter touch, that's something that maybe we can work into the future. That being Seth said, he covered a lot of what I wanted to uh comment on. Um I will say, yeah, I agree. I think having the third party facilitator in page
162really helps uh keep us all organized and on task. I think that should be done going forward. Um I think one thing maybe two things that might have improved more kind of on the front end. Um I think we might have been better off sending out a community survey before we even started our work or right at the start of our work and it would not have been as detailed of questions. The survey that went out kind of dug into some of the models that we had gotten down to. But I think it might have been more effective and more helpful for us if you had sent out just a more general survey last summer. Like what do you think about maintaining all four buildings, 712, one high school? Just a more general survey. I
163think we would have appreciated that information up front. And then to uh to Edge's point about some of the history, I think um different people had different understandings of the history of the last 5 years, 10 years, and whatever decades led us to this problem. And it kind of came out in bits and pieces as we got through this process. But I think uh whatever issue you're looking at solving in the future, make sure that history is maybe more clearly packaged and communicated to the people working on that problem up front. I think that does help inform where we go from there. >> That that historical context. >> Thank you for that question. It's a good one. >> I've been on some sort of well to school district committee for five or six years now.
164Um so I've had a lot of experience. The one thing I'd say that has made a huge difference is Paige Richards. um she came in halfway between in the process of the 2075 task force. We were floundering and we got on some sort of uh track and we came up with some result. This process was amazingly more organized, impactful. The level of respect was just high the whole time. I agree with what both Seth and uh oh my gosh, Will have said, but um I think Paige was instrumental in this process. So, thank you for bringing her on board that what Will was saying about thinking about and what Seth was saying about thinking about what you want to do before we even convene a committee. That's really helpful too. That would be very impactful
165also. So, those are some good points. Thank you. >> Thank you. I just think that it's important uh for this particular problem. Um the secondary schools don't exist in a vacuum. It's bigger and we were convened as a committee to talk about the wicked problem as it relates to secondary schools. But we very quickly discovered that it extends beyond what we do with the secondary schools has an impact on what the elementary schools look like. what is done at the elementary school level has an impact on the secondary schools. So it's very important that as you continue these discussions with each other, with us, with additional community members that you're not thinking about the secondary schools as just the 7th through 12th graders. You're thinking about Wawaossa schools as a whole. And how are we
166creating an enriching experience for our students from when they enter at JK till when they leave us at perhaps age 21. Quickly, I agree with what some of the points that have been made here, but honestly, in terms of lessons learned, um the committee went through an analysis or paralysis with analysis, right? Because because it is a wicked problem. >> Yeah. And end result honestly I feel we need the or we need leadership at a higher level to make a decision because there are no clear answers. So we as a committee can kick around a lot of ideas but we're not the ones making the decision. We need bold leadership at the higher level to take the reigns and make a decision. >> Okay. Thank you. I think one thing I wish we would have
167come to a consensus on earlier was the level of financial detail that we were able to get into in the pricing of these models. There's just an endless amount of financial questions that you can ask when you're talking about closing buildings, reconfiguring buildings to hold double the amount of students, busing students. Uh, I appreciate the construction professionals who are here and who were made available to us and they they did their level best to take the levels of detail that we were trying to work with and get down to numbers. I I think, you know, as you could see from, you know, the models that we narrowed it down to, most of them cost about the same amount of money. And I don't know that that's really the most helpful tool at this point for
168the community to judge which of these is appropriate for Wawaossa. I think and I hate to paraphrase somebody else's individual statement. So I'll let Liz follow up if she wants to. Having answered the having answered a philosophical question first around which of these educational models is right for Rawatossa before trying to apply the financial lens to it because there's just again an endless amount of financial variables that could factor into well how do you make East a 7 to12 building? You could do it cheap, you could do it expensive. I think we found out I think a little later than it was helpful to me what those estimates were balanced in the 7030 heavy to light renovations and what the definitions around those were again not coming from a construction background that was a little
169bit of a learning curve so I think an earlier kind of understanding and agreement of like what is the right level of financial detail for us to be seeking in this process and where is the line for us to stop. We're not trying to get into uh you know exactly what the science classrooms need to look like. While we saw many great examples, that's beyond the purview of the kind of financial decisions that we needed to be discussing. So I think that's one thing that I would have kind of pulled earlier in the calendar for us. >> Okay. Thank you for paraphrasing me very well. Um, yes, the philosophical question of what would a 712 school look like, but also what would a 712 school mean? What does that really mean? We don't know. And
170we did get to tour some schools and maybe hear anecdotally from select leadership, but there's a lot of content in the analysis of learning spaces and the um the work that Dr. Marble presented to us that we didn't have enough time to get into. And that's unfortunate because there are really deep questions in there about what is best for young learners. And I think in the community survey, you saw responses that indicate that people are very interested in community-based schools. They like the walkable elementary schools, understandably. So 7, 8, 9, 10, those kids in those grades also need walkable schools. They can't all drive to school legally and there's not enough parking on either side of town for such a thing. They can't be really involved in their school community if they don't live near
171their school. Their parents are hauling across town. My my son's school pulls kids from Calonia and Shorewood and parents are pulling their hair out trying to make it work. They have multiple kids at multiple schools and their kids can't be in in the clubs. they can't take uh theater if they can't be in the shows. And it just that's one of the one of the reasons that I supported Model F even if it didn't seem like a paramount ideal solution was at least you retain that that aspect of community-based schooling um that we know is really important to social emotional learning as well as to the constituents of Watossa. Thank you. >> I'm Lindsay Schiller. I am the Monasuri parent. I have two kids at uh the Monasuri school here. And I just wanted to
172reiterate and kind of probably conclude the the meeting by just saying just talking about next steps and involvement and that what everyone has even just brought up in the last 10 minutes. What I think a lot of people would be open to would be, you know, talking through some of these the thought processes that we've gone through and the decisions that were made and all the different iterations of what we've thought through over the last 10 months. And a lot of us, I'm sure, would be willing to sit down with you because it's more than an hour and a half's worth of information to report back. And as you're considering all of the all of the options and the option that we um recommended, you know, I'm sure you're going to have a lot more
173questions. And all of us are the experts in this now. And I'm sure if you open it up to anyone that was on the committee, they would be willing, you know, people could raise their hands and and volunteer to meet with you for a couple more sessions to just kind of get all those questions once you wrap your arms your brain around our report and things like that. And especially with Monasuri in in mind, you know, involving me or our leader um at Monasuri or other Monasuri parents or other Monasuri experts to understand, you know, what if we were to move to a different building, what would that look like? What would we need? How would that function? And just all those kind of details. if you do go back to any of the the
174two options that talk about moving monastery to another building, just kind of understanding what that would what would that mean for the programming and the spaces and and therefore the the costs and things like that. So, I just kind of wanted to put that out there that um there's there's more steps to come and a lot of information that a lot of us would be happy to talk through. >> Thank you. And can you remind us the ages or grades or years of students that are attending the Monasuri program, please? >> Monator is um kindergarten through 8th grade. Okay. >> All right. Thank you. >> Okay. Anyone else? Last call. Someone who didn't get to speak at all because we didn't ask a question that fit in what you wanted to say. Okay. Well, this
175is really group effort and um Miss Richard, thank you so much for uh it's clear it's clear just from how you were bringing people to the microphone that you had a good sense of almost everyone's perspective in the group and have been listening um really carefully. Um I appreciate that as a professional facilitator myself. It's great to to see your work in um in action. We do um have an upcoming board meeting where the board is going to spend some time um after we've had a chance to continue to digest in our own heads um talking about process um and and how we want to proceed. So that is not decided exactly at this point um but we have very full um we have very full brains. We did um leave uh some time this
176evening um for public comment because we feel like that's a part important part of our board process. Um the public comment is going to be um questions only to the board, not to the committee. Um, and you are more than welcome to stay, but I also know that you may not be used to the kind of time frames that we use for our meetings, even though you've been meeting like almost every week. Maybe you are used to it. Um, there, please do not be shy if there's something that is is calling you away. Um, we usually limit our public comment to 30 minutes. Um, and it depends on what people how many people want to speak. Um, how long that lasts, but do not feel shy about um, packing up your things and leaving the
177room if that's something that is best for you. Um, again, we're going to make sure that we're committed to this public comment being comment that comes towards the board. Um, it's not public comment towards the work of your or of your group. Okay. >> All right. So, board members, we ready to move on? Um, and then I think that we might also take a short break before our next steps discussion because we're having a long night too. >> Thank you all so much. >> Yeah, thank you. For those of you who do need to leave, again, we I don't know if we can express our thanks deeply enough um for the work that you've done and the commitment you showed tonight to to educating us about what you've been doing. Okay. So, um just make
178sure I have the public comment policy. Um we will be taking public comment that comes towards the board. Um and it will be first in the room and then online. Uh public comment at board meetings. We have a policy that I read each time just because we never know when somebody's new and they haven't had a chance to review this policy. Members of the board value the input of students, parents, staff members, and community members. The board's regularly scheduled meetings provide an opportunity for opinions and concerns to be expressed publicly. The board values all comments and will respectfully consider this input in decision-making. The board will take public comment at both non-aggenda on non-aggenda items and agenda items at each regular board meeting and may take public comment during special board meetings, which is what
179we're doing tonight. The public comment period will occur near the beginning of the meeting and shall not exceed 30 minutes in length unless extended by the presiding officer or a vote of the board. Individuals must limit their comments to three minutes. Participants must be recognized by the presiding officer and will be requested to preface their comments by an announcement of their name. Public comments submitted to the schoolboard email address by 10:00 a.m. on the day of the meeting of the board will be added to the online meeting documents to become part of public record. Email public comments must include the name of the person or person submitting the comment. All public comments shall be directed to the presiding officer. No person may address or question board members individually or direct statements, comments, or questions to
180staff or other meeting participants. Board members are obligated to follow the Wisconsin open meeting law, which requires advanced notification to the community of the board's intent to discuss and/or take action on an item. If a public comment concerns an item that was not on the current meeting agenda, board members may not respond other than to thank and acknowledge that speaker for their input. The presiding officer may A limit the number of times a speaker may comment on the same topic. B. Interrupt, warn, or terminate a public comment when the statement is too lengthy directed to anyone other than the board presiding officer obscene or disorderly. C. Request any individual to leave the meeting when that person engages in conduct which is disorderly. D. Request the assistance of law enforcement officers and or security officials in
181the removal of a disorderly person when that person's conduct interferes with the orderly progress of the meeting. E. Call for a recess or an adjournment to another time when the disorderly conduct so interferes with the orderly conduct of the meeting as to warrant such action. F. Wave these rules with the approval of the board when necessary for the protection of privacy or the administration of the board's business. Recording, filming, or photographing board meetings is permitted. The person operating the equipment should contact the superintendent prior to the board meeting to review possible placement of the equipment and must agree to abide by the following conditions. A no obstructions are created between the board and the audience. B. No interviews are conducted in the meeting room while the board is in session. C. No commentary, adjustment of
182equipment or positioning of operators is made that would distract either the board or the members of the audience or otherwise disrupt the meeting while the board is in session. The board encourages all residents to be well informed about school affairs. Therefore, regular board meetings are livereamed and recorded and the recorded schoolboard meetings are available for viewing online on the district's website. Executive sessions and inservice inservices for board members are not recorded. So that's the policy. Um we will now move into public comment time. We have a board member who will be letting public comment people know when um 3 minutes is up and a board member who's tracking um also our 30 minute um time frame. So if there's any public comment in the room, could you please um approach the microphone? Okay, I'm seeing
183no public comment in the room. So I will switch to online. If anybody is online is planning would like to give a public comment, please raise your hand at this time. I know how computers are so give enough time for someone to get themselves to that hand raising option. Okay, I'm seeing no public comment online either. So, thank you um board members and thank you everyone for giving us this opportunity to take public comment. Um five minute stretch break before we proceed or do we feel like we just have this short? >> Short. Okay, we'll keep it short. Perfect. So, on to number six or discussion on next steps. The schoolboard members and the district administration will discuss next steps in the process for the board and the greater community. And Dr. means you have
184had very little opportunities tonight as well. So I want to make sure that you are well invited into this conversation. We've heard a lot of advice board members. We obviously need a longer processing time coming up. >> What else there information that you're feeling in need of or is there a process for for requesting information? Dr. Means that would that would be most effective for the district at this point so we're not overwhelming. >> Dr. Worley, you mentioned um the board is overwhelmed. Um you have received a lot of information, but I don't know if you're that overwhelmed because I know >> No, I'm not saying we're overwhelmed. I don't want to overwhelm the district with requests. Oh, well, I wanted to just state that I know all board members were going off to that
185website uh throughout this process and you've been keeping up to date. So, I just wanted to say thank you because this this is this was a hard process for you as a board uh because you were really interested and to not be um fully engaged was hard. Um and so I want to thank you for staying so so engaged. Um, I think one thing that may be helpful, um, is there was a I think the the list of questions that the ad hoc committee asked has not been made available to the full board. I think there's a s series of over 60 questions that the group asked over the nine or 10 months. Um, we can get that to you. So, Dr. Worley, I think that >> that would be really helpful. I do not
186remember seeing that on the website here. So, um, we can get that to you. Dr. Marggo and I have had some initial conversations on what your process should look like. Um, and I think I I really appreciate it that you gave the ad hoc committee a round of applause. They deserved it. Um, and I I think just starting with the same introductory process that they went through of just seeing the schools, but not seeing them the way that you you're in the schools. You're you're all in the schools constantly, but I think seeing the the the boiler room at East is really important. Um, or to see where the flooding happens annually at Whitman will be really important. Um, and I think those are the things that we were able to share um, with the
187ad hoc committee to just help ground you. Um, what I didn't float out and I I know we have more time agenda on Monday. Um, but the one thing that I didn't put on put on the table for you to consider is do you want to see other renovated schools? Um, is that premature? At what point do you want to see them? I mean you you heard this evening in the presentation of people saying so once we saw our schools then we were able to see the justosition of of what other schools look like and I think you all through your travels with your children and and so forth you you see other schools um but that's something that we can also put in place but I would really defer to the board and and
188really look forward to the conversation I would defer to you in terms of what the the public engagement process looks like because um as as it was mentioned this evening this is is not a gener I think this is a multi-generational discussion you're having uh it was mentioned earlier that this is a 20 to 30 year gap it's not this is a 40 to 50 year gap when you look at some of our facilities and when they were last touched um and so I was really pleased to here. Some of the ad hoc committee members mentioned tonight that we put together um that historical piece. That was something that we did in conjunction with uh the construction and architectural team because as we were listening to the ad hoc committee, we thought, boy, we're we're
189giving them bits and pieces of the history. Um and so we're we're proud of that document because it was it was one of those documents that we we stepped back and said, "Boy, yes, this would have been really helpful." um to the ad hoc committee, but frankly uh selfishly I said this would have been helpful for me in my role if someone would have said so here's what you're buying here's here's what you're >> this is what you're coming into um so this is such a big conversation that you will note that there isn't any right way to do it. Um, but what we all collectively know about Wala Tulsa, I love where you're you're steering us. Um, and where Miss Himeran is steering us. Um, that it's going to take a lot of engagement
190and education. Um, and that, um, I know you've asked us to be very definitive. The board has been definitive. Um there's no plan to go to referendum in 2026, but one of the major reasons why there isn't a major plan to go to referendum is because there's a lot of educating we have to do. And I don't use the word educating in a projorative way. I say educating in um a way of engaging people. I like the term that was used earlier this evening, meeting people where they are. Um, so I wanna I want to be uh mindful of your time as board members. Um, but we just again to summarize and thank you for the opportunity. We think that the first initial stage is for us to start scheduling the tours of the schools
191right away. Uh, I think the tour that Dr. Marble, Mr. Lefountain, uh, when he was with us, uh, Mr. opinion and I were able to give to the ad hoc committee was a good grounding. Um I think we've learned a lot over this process. Um and I think that the those 60 plus questions that the ad hoc committee asked along with the historical document may be some good grounding information as well. >> And so far I have um three questions for us to build on um maybe at the next meeting. One is what does the board need to know? A second is what types of engagement do we think needs to happen? And a third area or bucket would be what does the community need to learn? And when I talk again I say community,
192I mean everybody in the community, whether they work for the district or live in the district um you know or maybe are thinking about moving to the district and live on our borders and and also use our facilities. Some people come those are great question come just to to recreate. Um if you have other other sort of buckets that you think we can add them now, we can add them on Monday. Um as you think >> I think one bucket in there said is having an expectation for the community of what's the timeline look look like for those >> what is the timeline? >> I said so that way it's there's not just an expectation like oh they're going to rush into it they're going to do this in two weeks. >> The timelines there's
193a decision-m timeline and there's the >> correct >> u impact timeline. >> Correct. Mhm. >> Clarifying that for the community. >> Thank you. >> Also included in that bucket, I would think, are the uh the priors that were coming into this, right, that we talked about last week. What's going to happen with sixth grade and what's going to happen with these different elements that I think that this board, this version of the board has spoken clearly about how we would like to use these different elements in the greater plan. But if we can lock down some of these elements that would present a stronger case for here's what we are thinking. So here's what the plan is based off of that >> it own bucket elements that shape the plan >> if >> there's a
194timeline bucket that has multiple pieces. Yeah. And I would include in that survey that already went out >> um and being able to get a little bit more granular look look at >> yes we haven't really gotten a chance to dig that's also on the >> that would be lovely. >> How would you want to so how would you phrase that last >> oh so I have what does the board need to know? What types of engagement need to happen? What does the community all-incclusive need to learn? what is what are are our timelines because we identified at least two so far. >> Um one is the decision timeline and one is the impact timeline. And then the fifth bucket we discussed was elements that shape the plan. So existing um aspects of our district
195that shape the plan which could be everything from the fact that we have you know four secondary buildings to decisions that have been made um recently. >> This is great. just try to get those really spreaded out. Liz, you had >> I think what would be helpful before we start to engage the community though is to educate the board first. So, I don't know if Miss Richards if you have like suggestions on sort of like the core information that the board should have. Um, I think one of the members said that they had like analysis paralysis. I think it would be incredibly helpful for this group of seven to have a a stronger idea. >> So, what does the board need to know? But yeah, but not >> because I know we had initially talked
196about doing some of the engagement sessions like this spring. We may have to like reconsider that in my opinion just because we know that the timeline is longer. We're not going to referendum in 2026. So, we do have a longer um runway to get >> except for the potential things that fall apart. we have a longer runway, but we're also very aware before anyone gets freaked out that that this is also an urgent um >> going into referendum in 2026. So, you know that we won't have the funding >> to do any of these projects. So, um I think utilizing Miss Richards um >> Liz, you're bringing something up and Dr. Marble please re and page if I recall we actually prepared a binder for the ad hoc committee and provided it at the first
197meeting that was >> so maybe you know more now what else needs >> and as I don't know who asked the question on on the board who said so what did you learn I thought whoever >> was that your question sir it was f fantastic I agreed with it all pa pa and I actually debriefed and said yes and the we should have in retrospect maybe sent out the community survey ahead of time instead of us waiting on it. I so their their feedback was great but back to your question there is a there's a foundation that we gave the ad hoc committee and I think that that has been refined over the 10 months and so I'll work with Dr. Marble and our team to to take a look at it and and we
198can even have a binder ready for you by Monday. >> That'd be lovely. >> Maybe some people on the committee have some opinions that they can send as well. >> A well-loved binder. And then just making sure um I think lessons learned from the task force is that um before anything goes like public and we put it online, we need to make sure that we're really certain of the timeline so that doesn't keep shifting. And so we need to just be really tight on the information that we're sharing and be confident in the information that we're sharing um to avoid confusion. And so I think next Monday and our inservice will be a good start, but if the administration can come with your kind of like a better proposal for the plan, I think we
199can expand on that with the board. >> And so just a reminder for community members, inservices are open to the public. They are not recorded. um they're more of a learning meeting for board members, but we certainly welcome um welcome people to sit and learn, you know, sit in the room and and listen to us as well. >> The only other thing I wrote down is I think it'll be helpful if we're meeting people where they are and we have like maybe two or two or three board members. It'd be helpful if we could have some sort of like post survey that the board members complete um similar to like what principles do on their walkthroughs and observations so that we just have a simple like I don't know I use qualrixs at work a
200qualrix form where we can just kind of like briefly give our feedback so it's all going into one place cuz um we're going to get a lot of information so just to have some place that it >> and a structured way of gain information is helpful so that you're not just having like these long lists of notes that have been taken in different ways which the excellent suggestion. >> These are five good areas to dive into on Monday. >> Dr. Means in that the historical documentation there when I think about the education for the community, how helpful it was for them to have that context. Do we have any plan or or is there a way that we can produce those in in bite-sized amounts for the community so they it's it sounds like it's
201a lot to give somebody allin-one and and for them to have a true context of those things but finding a way to deliver that that's not necessarily here go read this long thing this long form piece that we put on the website but even if it's I would say necessarily a blog post or like even a video from yourself or a video from somebody in the community or the staff or some place that walks through people through specific parts of it like through through that kind of chronology of what and how we got here. >> I like you don't need your grading videos yet. >> Yes, I Yeah, >> but it might be a great time to leverage that. Again, the thing >> and Miss Tuttle does such a good job in video storytelling. Um,
202so thank you for that direction. >> Spoiler alone makes a video. It's just it's a good suggestion of how can we put that in bite size. So >> I I'll I'll circle back with her. Okay. >> That would also be an excellent opportunity to loop in much of the expertise that we've already seen in this room. Yes. >> Of specific elements, right? What about the science tables or what about this? But I think that any communications plan would have to be well thought out by multiple people um as we proceed would be helpful. >> Mr. Bower just touched on I think I think it deserves its own question or bucket. We can do all we can prepare the best presentations, videos, and everything in the world, but if they're not getting in front of the
203eyes of the residents, then it doesn't matter. And uh we we've heard from people in the room tonight and neighbors, lots of other people who for one reason, one reason or another, not getting the communications. So we have a fundamental problem of of how how and it's it's what any what any company would look at too. How do I get my information in front of all the eyeballs? And there's got to be a better a better way or even just if we can figure out a continuous improvement cycle of how to how to get it in front of all the eyes. um because we're not we're going to continue to be uh labeled as non-transparent and we're going to continue there's always going to be questions about you know well when when did you talk
204about that and I'd like to be able to point back and say well we here's what we did and it reached 30,000 people uh by our estimates and basically be able to use data driven facts behind how our communications are giving getting out. >> I edited the what does the community need to learn to be what and how does the community need to learn to reflect that a little bit. Okay. >> Um but also the larger picture um of communications. We also have to make sure that we're you know we've had times uh I believe was it the 2075 task force when you spend an awful a lot of time Dr. means um answering uh and then there's the grapevine series and you know it's it's also how much capacity but for sure I think
205we need to do our A+ um job we need to get a four on communications if we can over the next few months um so that people really feel included. >> Yeah. May I I just add this brief commentary that what we're discussing is massive. It is I can't I can't understate it is massive. And that when you and and the ad hoc committee talked about this component of it that when you compare what just the buckets that you've just described >> that is so different from how other school districts engage in this process and I can't emphasize that enough. Now, wallets, we have all learned is very unique. Um, and but most school districts are very binary and how they present these options to their community and then they they roll it out. I
206I I'm I'm grateful to this board that you have said that's not how our neighbors want to engage. That's not how I would want to engage. Um, and so we're collectively, administratively, we're ready, but we just want to, I think you know this, but I want to express it publicly. This will be massive. This, you know, so to get that forward and communications will be um, it's going to take a lot for us to hit all five of those buckets. well will will take a lot of work and it's going to take a lot more time for you as board members to extend yourselves um it sounds which you're in essence you signed up for a sustained 18 to 24month engagement process now we'll get into deeper details on Monday but that's what you've just
207said you said we're going to start we're going to start with learning from ourselves and then we're going to go outward and then we're going to try to bring it back then inward so then you can make a really good decision. >> We're taking the marathon not the 5k approach. >> Yes, you are taking the marathon and and as our marathoner resident uh Dr. Marble on the iron man. >> So we're really looking forward to the opportunity. May I ask one clarifying question? When you talked about the elements, what do you can you define that a little bit more the our priors >> like um the elements of things that we're taking for granted >> like our automatically assumed our flag >> assumptions, right? The assumptions, right? So in any good logical argument, you start
208with your axioms and you kind of work your way through, right? likely to change much. >> It would be the list of things that we are assuming are going to be true >> and we're not are non-negotiables, right? Uh so for example, for me, moving sixth grade down to elementary schools is a non-negotiable. Keeping the elementary school footprint as it exists is a non-negotiable for me in the seat. >> Thank you. Anything else? We need a self. >> We get to come back on Thursday and then Monday Thursday again. Thank you. The schedule. It's not your fault. We agreed to it. Okay. The time is 9:04 p.m. May I have a motion to adjurnn? >> I move to adjurnn. >> Thank you, Mr. B. I have a second. Thank you, Mr. Morris. Um, I'll do
209the call the role. Miss Bzinski, >> yes. >> Mr. Bower, >> yes. >> Miss Bach, >> yes. >> Mr. Morris, >> yes. >> Miss Haml Roland, >> Yes. Mr. Watier, >> yes. >> And the motion carries. Thank you everyone.