001Good evening. My name is Lyn Worley. I call the June 23rd, 2025 schoolboard meeting to order. It is 6:02 p.m. We are in conference room C of the Fiser Administration building at 12121 West North Avenue. I will call the role. Um, this is a here um or not here depending on how you're feeling tonight. Um, Miss Bzinski here, Mr. Bower here, Miss Bach here, Mr. Morris here, Miss Himer Roland here. I'm here. Mr. Wadi here. Okay, we will move to public comments. cheat sheet here. So, as we move into public comment, I will read I'll see 0167.3 public comment at board meetings. 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
002values all comments and will respectfully consider this input in decision making. The board will take public comment on both non-aggenda items and agenda items at each regular board meeting and may take public comment during special board meetings. 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 for 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 school board at email address by 10:00 a.m. on the day of the meeting of the board of the board meeting will be added to the online meeting documents to become part of public
003record. Email public comments must include the name of the person submitting the comment. All public comment shall be directed to the presiding officer. No person may address or question board members individually or direct statements, comments, or questions to staff or other meeting participants. Board members are obligated to call 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 is not on the current meeting agenda, board members may not respond other than to thank and acknowledge the 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.
004Directed to anyone other than the board presiding officer obscene or disorderly. 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 the 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 disorderly conduct so interferes with the orderly conduct of the meeting as to warrant such action. F. Wait these rules of the approval of the board when necessary for the protection of privacy or the administration of the board's business. Recording, filming, or photo photographing board meetings is permitted. The person operating the equipment should contact the superintendent prior to the board meeting to review the possible placement of the
005equipment 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 equipment, or positioning of operators is made that would distract either the board or 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 the recorded schoolboard meetings are available for viewing on the district's website. Executive sessions and inservices for the board members are not recorded. Okay. Thank you. We'll move to our time for public comment. Um, do I have a volunteer to keep the 30 minute? I can. Okay. So, um, just
006check online. I don't see anyone in the room. I see one hand raised online. Jamie, you can go ahead and invite the person online to speak. And Walsh, you have the microphone, but you're muted. Ann Walsh, you can you hear me now? Yep. Okay. Thank you so much. Sorry about that. My name is Annie Marino and I'm the parent of a McKinley student. I've written and spoken several times to express my concerns about the leadership staff situation at McKinley and its impact on educator retention, student success, morale, and school culture and climate. Over the past year, I've observed and read of declining morale and psychological safety, teacher resignations, and a breakdown in trust under Mr. Martin. Despite repeated warnings and data from staff surveys, reports, and public meetings, the district has not taken sufficient action
007as a result. Thus far, two of McKinley's excellent educators, Katie Pettit and Jenny Lee, are not returning in the fall because of Mr. Martin. Katie accepted a position in another district, and Jenny retired early, both citing serious concerns about Mr. Martin's unprofessional behavior and actions. Katie left after 18 years in the district. As a room parent in Katie's classroom, I saw firsthand her professionalism, warmth, and dedication to every child. My child and his classmates adored her. Her June 13th email to the board detailed Mr. Martin's dishonesty and unprofessional conduct. Jenny Lee, a 23-year McKinley teacher, described in her June 18th email to the board how Mr. Martin's behavior is manipulative and retaliatory and how it has irreparably damaged staff relationships. I volunteered in her art room many times and saw her create a joyful inclusive
008space where students thrived. When I joined McKinley, I believed Mr. Martin would be a strong long-term leader. That belief began to erode at the very first parent meeting of the year, a curriculum meeting where his presentation was disorganized and blameoriented, an early sign of the challenges that would follow. The district's current plan to continue investing teachers time and taxpayer money into repairing relationships under the same leadership is not acceptable. These efforts have gone on for months and there is no evidence of improved relationships, morale, or school culture. At a minimum, I urge the district to immediately appoint a respected interim principal to stabilize the school, release the McKinley spring staff survey results, hold a listening session with McKinley families, and provide continual updates to the community. This is not about attacking Mr. Martin's character. I've
009had positive interactions with him as a parent, and I'm sure the same is true for others. But the issue is not how he treats parents. It's how he leads staff and the data and lived experiences of our educators tell a very different story from the experiences of parents. As such, a leadership transition at McKinley is necessary and urgent. Thank you. Thank you. Um, we have another hand raised. Yes, Jamie, you may go ahead with the online. There's no comment in the room at this time. Okay, Sue Allen, you have the microphone. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yes. Uh, I'm Sue Ellen. I have a um student who just finished SK at Washington. And tonight I'm speaking to express my full support for the recently approved bell-to-bell ban on personal communication devices in all Watsa
010schools. The research is clear. Unrestricted mobile phone use in school harm students academic performance, mental health, and social development. I'm so pleased to live in a community that school district is actively updating policies that create a school environment where students can thrive academically, emotionally, and socially. Numerous studies confirm that personal devices, smartphones, and watches are designed to exploit the still developing adolescent brain. The prefrontal cortex responsible for impulse control and decision-m does not fully mature until the mid20s, leaving students especially vulnerable to the addictive nature of smartphones, social media, and gaming apps due to their intermittent rewards and dopamine feedback loops that keep users hooked. A real and true addiction, creating chronic distraction and impairing attention at school. As a result of the beltto-bell ban in the 20 the 2025 2026 school year promises to
011bring significant benefits to students academic performance, social development and overall well-being. Effective implementation of this PCD plan requires careful planning and clear communication. The success of the policy now hinges not only on its adoption but just as importantly the robustness of its implementation. There will be additional pressure on the support staff who enforce it and students and their families as they adapt to comply with the new rules. The initial few months may be quite difficult for everyone, but thankfully the district brought together a committee of administrators, students, and parents to plan for this implementation. I'm pleased to have assisted on the committee to work through these contingencies that must be considered in day-to-day operations, including considerations for students with IEPs and 504 plans. And I'm pleased to hear about an upcoming district event for families
012that's in preparation for the new school year to help them prepare in practical ways. Thank you to Luke Pinion for his dedication to championing the policy leading the book study last year to engage community members and thank you to all of the board members for your consideration for and approval of this bell-to-bell PCD ban. Thank you. There are no more hands raised. Thank you. We also have no other comments in the room, so we will close the public comment tonight. Thank you for those who have participated tonight. So, we're going to um move to item three, the superintendence update. Thank you, Madam President, board members. Um I wanted to provide the community with an update on where we are as a school district because it's just uh really important for everyone to know that we've
013made a lot of progress uh this school year. Um, but I want to ground our work and Tim is Thank you, Tim, for navigating things. We'll go to the beginning of the presentation. Thank you, sir. We can go to the next slide. I want to just ground us in our Our mission statement grounds everything that we do. We're not path of participants in the education of children. We should be active advocates. Uh we're committed to providing equitable access to rigorous academics, meaningful co-curriculars, and uh social emotional supports that empower every student. I want to be very clear, every student um to thrive, not just to survive uh but to to thrive as passionate, productive, creative citizens. This mission includes every single student. Not just students who have social capital, just not certain students who have
014families who are going to say certain things, but we have to make sure that all means all in our school system. That's what this mission statement means. Um, and it's really critical that we live that mission statement, Tim. So, what's our call to action when it comes to our mission statement? We need to have a school system that is designed with equity at the center of everything that we do. That we are talking about all students, not a certain number of students, but all students. That our policies, the investments that we make, um that our programs are all filtered through the lens of of equity and targeting resources to the kids who who need it the most. That we have integrated academic and non-academic supports for all students. We need to create environments uh where
015academic success is supported by emotionally safe, enriched, and meaningful instructional engagement. Dur during the course of next school year, you're going to hear from Dr. Marble and her team uh around a concept instructionally that we use uh in in our business called discourse. that if there's discourse between the student and the teacher, then we believe that students are going to grow and they learn. Academically, things have changed from when I was in school um when you were in school where the teacher was the expert and they stood in front of the classroom and they they spoke and they told the students what to learn and then the students learned it. And so we're really striving towards having a school system where discourse is at the key. And then measure measurement should be holistic. And what
016I mean by that and what our mission means is that it's just not about academic proficiency. That we also want to make sure that students feel safe at their schools, that they feel that they belong, that there's creativity, that there's civic readiness, that they are prepared for post-secary success. And it's just not our students, it's also our families of the students. So when families of our students feel that they're not part of a school community, when they're not part of everything that is all about that school community, it's incumbent on all of us to make sure that we bring uh all of our families along and all of our students along that we have a school system that is truly focused on the big tent. So if we can transition to the next slide. So
017then what's our vision? And again, this is all to ground us on what the work we're what work we're trying to do here. Our vision is very clear. There's four components to our vision. That we want to ensure that there is an exceptional student experience for every child. That we eradicate inequity, that we eliminate disproportionality, and that we exceeded proficiency for all in in all measurable areas. Our vision challenges us to ensure that every student has an exceptional experience free from inequity and disproportionality. That we're just not aiming for adequacy. We aim for proficiency for every student. That equity and inclusion are not just add-ons, but we look at these things as the foundation for our vision. that we should never be satisfied with the predictability of a student's uh ability to prosper in school
018based on their zip code, how they identify themselves racially, from an ethnic standpoint or from a gender perspective. And unfortunately, our vision is not being fully fulfilled in our school system. That those components are still used and can be used to predict a student's success or failure in our school system. So what is the call to action? If we can go to the next slide. Our call to action with our vision is very clear. It's a moral imperative. It's it's not a slogan. That our equity decisions drive what we do. That at the the district level and at the board level, we are focused on systemwide accountability and investment in every learner. And so let me stop here for a second and say thank you to the board. I want to say thank you to
019the board because you made an investment for the last few years in utilizing our fund balance to ensure that there was were investments being made in teacher compensation and curriculum and and and other areas where we saw the need for support. It was not something that I took lightly when I came to the board and asked to use our fund balance. And I know the board didn't take it lightly when you invested those funds, but you use the terminology investment. I know in our community people will say, well, there was a we went over budget. We didn't go over budget. We knew that the board was going to use fund balance. You knew that all along and you made that investment. And I want to say thank you. I want to say thank you to
020the community again because in November of 2024, the community made an investment in our schools. They didn't pass one referendum. They passed two. They passed an operational referendum of $64.4 million. And then they went on to invest in our facilities. And they went on to make that investment in facilities because our community said it's not right that one school may be a brand new school and then there's another school that the same children in the community attends and they don't have the same facilities. They don't have the same access to certain uh learning areas. And so I'm I'm thankful and pleased that that investment was made. During the course of my numerous communications and and conversations throughout our community leading up to the November referendum, there was a vision that this investment would help all
021students. And I don't want us to lose sight of our mission and our vision because often in a school system the size of all Tulsa, we can get lost in these things. We can have mission creep. We can have mission drift where we're pulled from other areas and we're not focused on our mission and our vision. So I want to just make sure that we reject before I move on to the next slide that we reject an illusion of isolated success. You've heard me talk about the concept of we cannot have islands of of excellence. We've had islands of excellence in Wulosa where there's pockets of success in our school system. The goal that the board has charged me with is to make sure that our entire school system is successful. Not just a pocket
022of children but all of our children. And that so that's the call of action that you've given me and the community has continued to invest in Tim. So I want to talk a little bit about the progress that's been observed in our school system. I'm proud and I'm I'm kind of getting out in front of Miss Elazoski. We have at this point in time on June 23rd 90 a 92% teacher retention rate. 92%. Not one school has a retention rate under 84%. Not one. Not one school. Over the last three years, we've invested and increased teacher compensation by 26%. I would dare anyone to go out and talk to any other school district in the Milwaukee metropolitan area and see if that level of investments been placed in teachers. We actually led a process where
023teachers were able to give us their feedback on where they wanted to see improvements. So, in terms of workforce climate, we've listened to our staff. We've actually asked them to get involved with our district leaders to come up with action plans on where they have identified where the issues are and how we can do it together. I'm really proud of the work that we've done in the area of human resources, pupil, and family supports. We have led the process of developing something called student support teams or SSTs. So, if you're a parent in our district, you'll hear principles and teachers talk about SSTs. Student support teams or SSTs are are teams where teachers and leaders in a school gather to talk about the success of students or what needs those students need have to make
024sure that they're successful to fulfill our mission, our vision in our vision statement. I'm proud of our culturally responsive training that we provide to pro provided to teachers and we do it not by bringing in a consultant. We actually train teachers who have identified themselves as being DEIA advocates at their school and then teachers teach their colleagues around culturally responsive learning environment uh training. So I'm really proud of it and I'm I'm sad Mr. opinion isn't here to receive um accolades here, but the reduction he's on. Oh, he's online. Good. But the reduction in classroom disruptions and disciplinary incidents have been significant. The prior two school years, we had 71 administrative hearings. An administrative hearing is when a student has conducted um behavioral infractions that are so serious that they have to come and see
025Mr. Pinion at the district level. So for the 22 23 and 23 24 school year, we had 71 of those hearings. This past year, we had 39. So I think it's a reduction of nearly 45%. Do we want that number to even be lower? We do, but we believe that that's a direct investment in having mental health specialists and having our deans of students and having social emotional uh specialists at our schools. Again, thanking the board and the community for the investment in the area of finance and operations. The board the board asked two years ago to make sure that we had a long range facility plan in place. Some of you who were on the board at that time, you remember vividly. You said, "Where's our long-range facilities plan?" We we have it and
026it drives everything that we do now. We also have a financial plan rooted in sound forecasting and proactive strategic leadership. We didn't have that in the past and I'm really proud of the work that we put in place. The mechanisms also that we put in place to have oversight so the board can monitor even closely even more closely uh where we are financially has been very impressive and so I want to thank the board for your your governance leadership there in in the area of academics. We launched the discovery lab. I remember a year ago people asked the question, is there how can you get off the ground in one year a STEM for all curriculum? Well, last board meeting you saw that presentation. Our our division of academic performance deserves a great deal of
027credit for launching our discovery lab. But I think what's even more impressive is that over the course of the last three or really two and a half years, our division of academic performance has looked at each of the four core academic areas and have gone through the the actual curriculum revision for those four areas. I want to pause and tell you how significant that is for a division of academic performance to take on English, science, social studies, and math in a two and a half year period. I am not aware of it. I I I have I have not seen that level of of urgency and and and accelerated work. And so I think our division of academic performance, we're moving as quickly quickly as we can. We understand the urgency, but that urgency started
028in this boardroom where the board said, "We want you to go out and do audits. We want you to kind of figure out what's happening in all of our academic areas. Get expert direction on what we should do and then go and fix it." And we've done that work. And then finally, we've developed a professional learning for for all educators that is job embedded. I'm really excited and and over the summer, we'll give you an update. We received a $50,000 uh gift from a donor. $50,000 um to provide training for our teachers so they can do their training, their statemandated statemandated training through Act 20. Um and the district matched the $50,000. So teachers are not obligated to come in over the summer. They can do it online and do it on their own. We're
029saving professional learning time. As a result, uh I'm thankful that we were able to secure that donation of $50,000. But I'm also more um pleased that we're able to allow our teachers to control their own professional learning time to make sure that they are prepared uh for the mandates, the unfunded mandate around 20. Tell me if we can go to the next slide. So what's next? At the district level, you've charged me as a superintendent to look at the system and to make sure that the entire system is working properly. So there's three major areas that you've charged me that you look at. First is replenish the district uh fund balance. I want to give Miss Himeran all the credit on this one. um over a year ago, she said, "You have to replenish the
030fund balance." And she has been consistent and and unwavering in that space. I'm pleased to say that we are now in a position to replenish the fund balance. You've done your due diligence. You've helped us. You've invested through our fund balance. And now through uh the support of the the referendum and through our prudent um use of resources, we're able to re re uh replenish our fund balance. So, thank you for that direction and we'll continue to move in that de that that uh that pathway. We are ready to launch and implement the 2025 2028 strategic plan. For people who are wondering where are we going as a school district, we are driven by our mission, our vision, and our strategic plan. And so, um I think you've all marked your your calendars for August
0314th, I believe the date is. It's the first Monday in August where we will start diving more into that strategic plan. And so if you have ideas to make sure that our strategic plan in terms of the work we do, the high level work we do is driven by that mission and vision statements that I shared with you earlier, please start jotting down those ideas and bring them to that that meeting. And then finally, the facilitation of the work around our secondary school ad hoc committee is transformational. It is super transformational in terms of where we're going to go. I would be remiss if I didn't pause for a second and just bring our community and center our community on what happened in this boardroom on October 28th. October 28th when people asked the question
032again, what what has the district done? Where where are you moving? It was on October 28th. There were significant significant decisions that were made by this board that came after months if not years of deliberation on where we want to go as a school district. We changed boundary lines on October 28th. We made the decision to move sixth grade into our elementary schools. We made the decision to to look at our enrollment policy around open enrollment. We made a decision around what we wanted to offer in terms of STEM instruction for all students. I think sometimes in the course of all the different things that come before us, we lose sight of how significant those decisions were on on October 28th. It is rare for a school district and a school board to be that
033strategic in its uh work. I'm I'm pleased to have had a small part in that role. Um, but I'm more proud to work for a board that had the foresight of asking us to set all of these things up so that you can make the governance decisions on what pathway you wanted our school district to go. Not just for the next year, not just for the the episodic issue of the day, but where we want our school district to be in the next 5, 10, 20 years. Tim, so how can you stay engaged as a community member, as a stakeholder? The first step, monitor your school's growth plan. Every school has a growth plan. And if you are not intimately connected with your school's growth plan, if you're not asking the hard question of how
034is my child progressing on my school's growth plan, then we're missing something. And I think often we make the leap to the boardroom, to the board, to Dr. Marble and the the chief of academic um performance, but the the work really starts at the school level. So, make sure you're connected with your your school principle in the the school growth plan. Follow the progress we're making on our strategic plan. And then finally, reflect on our mission. Are we living the mission statement? Are you as a stakeholder in the community living the mission statement? Are we living this both as an institution and as a community of people who work together to make sure that the children are progressing? So the next slide please. So becoming stronger and more focused and I want to be very
035clear on this. We remain rooted in our mission to serve as advocates for equity and excellence in every area of student development. But a mission alone is not enough. We must be honest about who we are now and how we can improve. Like the students we serve, we are growing as an institution. We're not growing. We are learning as an institution. We carry our imperfections with purpose. We are not damaged contrary to the belief of some. We are becoming as a school system. And so I want to make sure that the people who believe in the work that we're doing that the progress progress that we're making that the narrative of we're a broken system that things are imperfect is just like the students we serve. We're learning we're growing and we want to hear
036where we can continue to improve as a system. I want to move on to the next slide. So what does the state expect of educators? What we wanted to share with you is that there are six standards that educators are expected to meet if you teach in the state of Wisconsin. And you can see those those six standards are there. There's been a narrative that I've heard that there's new things happening in the Waltosa school system that there's these new initiatives that have been that that are coming down uh the pike in Waltosa. They're not new. These are all expectations that the state has had on educators for years now. Maybe in Wall Tulsa we were not holding teachers to these standards. I don't know. But the charge that we have been given as a
037leadership team is that you want us to make sure that every child has an exceptional educational experience. The way we can ensure that is if every educator is living the state expectations for an educator. So if we can go to the next slide. So what we've done is we've distilled down what are the three things we're asking our educator to do in Walts. We want our educators to collaborate with one another and that means having those student support teams and using the pace uh Wednesdays effectively. We want to make sure that all the teachers are creating inclusive welcoming classrooms. And we want to make sure that every teacher from a pedagogical standpoint is strong in understanding the content that they're teaching and that they're knowledgeable around the content that they're teaching. That means you have
038to know the curriculum. And as we talked about earlier, in the last two and a half years, we've updated the core curriculum on a very fast pace because it was a dated curriculum. So often when I'm in the community, people will say, "We're not achieving where we used to achieve. we're not what we used to be. Well, part of the reason why we're not what we used to be is because when Dr. Merw and I uh arrived in our positions, we found that the curriculum was dated. Um it it's difficult to have high academic achievement if you have dated curriculum. So, our district professional uh learning support uh systems have been developed to assist educators to be their very best selves in the areas of collaboration, inclusion, and providing standardsbased instruction for all students. So,
039when we do this work well, Tim, we can go to the next slide. When we do this work, well, we'll show the video. This is what happens for kids. It's a celebration of hard work, of significant growth, of challenges met, and memories made. Little do you know that these on days will turn into memories, lessons, and little pieces of who you're going to become. You will continue this new chapter. Do school with care and intention. There's so much to be proud of. We showed up for each other in ways big and small. Quiet word before a test. A hand when someone needed help. Cheer from the crowd even when we didn't know the score. It's truly a blessing to have grown up in a school district of our schools are connected. It only makes this
040moment that much sweeter here experience. story each other from something we celebrate today and that's each other continuing education to a workforce take these lessons with us across the globe [Music] experiences So 2020ulations everyone. You did it. We did it. Here's to the future. May take us. So I'll conclude with this. In the Waltosa school district, we're united in our focus. every student, every student our priority. That's our focus when we do our jobs well. And that's all of us. And we we took the clips of our student speakers and they were all amazing, but we took the one clip and if I I don't know you if you remember this one where the one speaker uh said, "Whether we liked each other or not, we have to acknowledge the successes that we all had
041together." I hope as a school community we can model what that student speaker shar shared that whether we like each other or not there are good things happening in Waltosa children are progressing they're having a good experience can they be better we all believe in continuous improvement and we want to know how we can improve but when we do our jobs well we fulfill the promise of public education and I think we're we've been doing good work and we are excited about where we're going to go next So, uh, with that, Madam President, board members, I, uh, conclude my superintendent update. Thank you. Board members, anything to thank you for putting that together? Always a good idea to review our mission, vision, and strategic plan. So, on that set of goals, um, we will move
042to item number four, the consent agenda. And um I'm going to start by asking are there any items on the consent agenda which board members would like to remove for separate discussion and action? This could also include if you have a question but don't want to remove the item. Oh I would like to ask a follow-up question on CCL transactions. Yes, you have. And then we'll go to Mr. White. Great. Um so June 16th was contract day for teachers, right? Um and you said in this presentation that across the board we're above 90% 92% overall overall and the lowest is 84% 84%. Is this unusual in any way, shape or form in the broad scope of u flux of a group this large? I'll I'll defer to Zoazi. I already stole her thunder a little
043bit here, so I'll back up. Um I would say no. Um uh what we've seen over the last um five plus years is that um there is much greater volatility in uh educator retention in school districts across the state, across the country. Um and what we're seeing right now is is very comparable um to um uh to not just previous years in one with Tossa but to other organizations. Sure. And have you seen that volatility in your tenure here at TOSA? In Tossa? Yes. Uh when I I believe was my first year in the organization. So that would have been um the the start of the 2022 23 school year. I believe our retention rate was was right around 86%. Uh there was another year it was around 85% and then we've um we've increased
044the past two years. Thank you. I have no further questions. Mr. W, you had your hand up. Um yes, I uh saw same document Mr. hour was talking about that we are um doing administrator uh contract renewals, two-year renewals, and it's really just a question um in general for any administrative contracts that are multi-year. What what's the general process and due diligence the district adheres to? Um and if if there needs to be a change, uh what what does that look like from an HR perspective? and and how how we handle that as a board. Yes, that's that's a great question. So, the first step in in providing a principal or an administrator with due process is that if there's a performance concern, you place the individual on either a plan of improvement or professional
045growth plan. That professional growth plan is rooted in standards just like we shared those educator standards for teachers. There are standards for administrators. You identify where the gaps are um in those standards. Typically, you want to pick no more than two standards to focus on. If there's a significant concern, you may have more than two standards identified. Um and I I like to use an acronym that stands for NEAt. Um and the the NEAT acronym stands for you give that administrator notice. You share with them the expectations that you have for them. You share with them the assistance that you're going to provide and you give them a timeline. So you just don't give them the plan either a plan the plan of improvement or growth plan but you give that that neat component of
046things of put them on notice that things are not well. You share your expectations. You share the assistance that you're going to provide and then then you give timelines. If there isn't ample growth um observed in a certain time period, I will ask for a close session with the board and recommend work actions that can range from salary freezes to all the way up to termination. So there isn't a guarantee that someone's going to stay if they receive these contracts. the the the step that I take as the supervisor of those administrators is that I have to fulfill due diligence because if you don't we actually create more exposure for the system. If we unilaterally just terminate a person or you you do something that's adverse to their work employment without documenting things, we actually
047create more exposure where they can come after the district and then sue the district. And so, um, from my years of working in HR, from Miss Zelazoski's years of working in in human resources, we understand that we have to fulfill our due diligence. And it and I I understand it takes time and is not as immediate um as some would like, but that is the process that we follow for any administrator um that has either a um an area or areas of growth or improvement that they need to attend to. Okay. Thank you. Is there is there any reason why we picked two years as opposed to three or Yes. So I would uh thank you for your explanation, Dr. Means. I would highlight that that while um state statute governs teacher contracts as well
048as administrator contracts, there are a number of differences that the statute specify based on the type of contract. Teacher contracts may be no longer than one year. Administrator contracts may be no longer than two years. Two-year administrator contracts are the standard um across school districts in the state of Wisconsin. And the timeline for making decisions related to renewal, non-renewal, and then issue contracts is also on a different timeline. Uh teacher contracts are due to be returned to the district by June 15th annually. administrator contracts. The time frame is July 1 to June 30th, typically on a two-year cycle. And the time frame for making decisions about non-renewal, there's a preliminary notice required um by January 31st and a final prelim or a final non-renewal notice that's required by February 1st of the year prior to
049the renewal. Um so again, while they're both dictated by statute, there are some dis discrepancies in terms of the dates and the terms of the contracts. Thank you for the clarification. This has been super helpful on a very important topic and one that um we might not all have had all that content before. So, thanks for the questions and for the explanations. Um anything else on the consent agenda that people had specific questions about um with the um sorry with the payments going to reading specialist license and special ed licenses. Is that to help that educator pay whatever fees that they have to pay to keep that license or to get that license? Uh not necessarily. Um uh those payments are built into appendix B of our teacher salary schedule and they are incentives. Um
050the the payments that we provide this time of year are retention incentives. So they're eligible to staff members uh who are returning next year who've maintained those licenses. I and and again because they're paid annually, I don't necessarily think they're intended to help with the cost of that certification, but to reward individuals who've achieved that because um they offer uh uh greater expertise. My only other question is um how would you say the state of hiring teachers is right now? If we have an opening in our district, say at the elementary level, are you getting um more or less applications than you typically have? What is just kind of the climate of that? Uh yeah, so I um uh we recently had I believe it was uh a fourth grade opening at Underwood. Um we
051had almost 60 applicants for that. That has seen a resurgence uh based on prior years. Um a a number of the um adjustments that we've made over the past several years are to initiate our hiring processes and our staffing processes in the district earlier in the school year than later. And that has resulted in stronger and larger candidate pools including including this fourth grade. I would say that that's probably one of the largest candidate pools we would get. As you get more specificity um um you know they're they're going to be smaller candidate pools. We did not have 57 applicants for a handling consumer education position. Great. Thank you. Welcome. Anything else? All right. Is there anything that um anyone wants to move remove from the consent agenda? Okay. Hearing none. Sarah, would you read
052our Sure. It is recommended that the school board approved sense agenda and I so move. May I have a second? Second. I will call the role. Uh, this is a yes or no. Miss Brazinski, yes. Mr. Bower, yes. Miss Bach, yes. Mr. Morris, yes. Miss Himer, yes. Dr. Worley is a yes. Mr. Wy, yes. And the motion carries. Move forward through couple pages to number five. Strategic goal number six operations monthly financial report. Mr. Ecker, you're on. Thank you for all our preparation for this as well. Well, we'll see if I prepped well enough because I sent my um PowerPoint to Julia late. Well, I mean, what you sent us ahead of time was always help. Do we I I wasn't sure if we had it available or not. Okay. I just sent it to
053Tossa Media about 15 minutes ago. So I would possibly share screen and you see mail. Is it mailed there? Uh why don't I stop sharing first? Orange. Yes. rest of the board and community had uh the video presentation flipped on the agenda. I'm just point actual hard point that was used for Okay, let me see if I can get this part hidden. All right, so we're looking at main financials. Um, we're really in the home stretch now here of the of the year, right? We actually only have about a week left uh in the fiscal year. So, we're reviewing through 11 months of uh financials at this point. Uh that's what I just um related here. And I I can assure you that the at this point the predictive data is really statistically significant. So
054there's a lot of certainty at this point uh with where we're going to end the year. Um again, we always begin with just looking at what our revenues and expenses are to date. The thing I want to point out here that I also did on the video is you can see even though we just have a month left in the year, there's still significant expenses and revenues that happen the very last month. And in fact, often it's the last two weeks of the year. Um we don't get our final state aid payments until uh they go uh June 15th, so it would have been last week. Um and then we don't actually even receive the money. They just tell us here's how much to book and we'll send you the money later. Uh most of
055our payroll, all of our summer payroll is not booked until probably this week Holly will run all the summer payrolls. So that's five additional payrolls that happened all the last, you know, week of the school year. So um you know, as far as when we're we're making those um projections, we know about the projections. we can make. We know how to make them, but it'd be unreasonable to think, oh, we're 11 months of the way through the school year, so we must be say 90% of the way through revenues and expenses. It just doesn't work that way at any school district. So, um I kind of put things out of order because I I you know, they always say don't bury the headline. Um I today uh I I think the headline is I'm predicting
056right now that we're going to end slightly better than budget and and ever so slightly and I'm going to talk a little bit more about that on the next few slides but you can see that uh right now as of say Thursday u or Wednesday whatever day we had finance committee uh presented this we're about $54,000 to the good of budget. Okay. So, I do want to reiterate, we're still spending out of fund balance. I that's clear to everybody, but we'll be spending about $54,000 less than what we had budgeted. So, you know, how does this compare to last year that one of the things that um one of my priorities for the board was I I don't want the board or community to be surprised, right? So, that's something I've talked about I I
057think hopefully every month or in parts of every month. And um to to me a surprise is like what happened last year. So what I've started doing I think it was around December January was showing you what the projections would have looked like had the software I use now been used last year. Um you can see had had it been used last year through May we would have been predicting about an $8 million um uh uh unfavorable variance. Right. And that's about where the district ended. a rough ballpark. Um, this year we're projecting $54,000. Okay. So, um, I am going to put into context what that $54,000 means in a second because I I think there's some importance there, but again, just reiterating that the goal here is that people not be surprised. So, here's
058the here's the context. Um, so, and I asked my daughter if I could share this story. She's she's actually on a road trip with her mom right now. They're like going out west doing I think they're probably in the Badlands or something right now. And she asked me for $100 for food and souvenirs, right? They're gone for a week. So I said, "All right, I'll give you the $100, but that's her budget." And uh to put into context for you, I said we're going to I thought we're going to end about $50,000 to the good. $100,000 in our budget is equivalent to 10 cents in her $100 budget. So, if she comes back and she said, "Hey, Dad, I spent $99.90." I would be like ecstatic, right? Um, I'd probably also be okay if she
059said, "I had to borrow 5 cents from mom, but that 5 cents in our budget is $50,000." And I I give that as context because the chance of us ending up exactly $54,055 to the good I mean the Vegas odds would be that's not going to happen, right? There's an infinite number of possibilities outside that. And I'll give you a real life example that happened last week. We got a bill from the city last week for a special assessment for sidewalks. Uh about $30,000. That wasn't something that we could anticipate. So, um, that eats into that 54,000. I also believe we're going to get an unexpected revenue at some point, probably in the next week or so, that will probably balance that out. Um, so again, I don't think we'll end up exactly 54,000, but
060I don't think you'll be surprised, and I think that's in the right ballpark. I just wanted to provide this for some context. Um, again, I'm going to run show through these pretty quickly because we do this every month and I think we already talked about the most important part of of where we are. Uh, you can see that based on all of our dashboards and um, uh, graphs that we're basically what I just went through is showing you kind of the high level of where we're going to end the year. Uh, again, you know, we've been oops uh, tracking purchase services all year long. uh we know that um we're going to have that overage there, but we're going to come in better on on the revenue side in some ways. So, I'm still pretty
061I'm very confident in that roughly $50,000 to the good. I think I'll just um end this by saying that this this has been a very challenging year um uh financially for I haven't experienced anything like it. I imagine our board hasn't and our administrators I I don't think have before either. I It's very unique, right? We in August we had well in August we discovered what had happened last year. We also had to make some immediate cuts to the budget to get where we were. Um we made adjustments to uh substitute uh teachers. Um we really tightened our belt at the school level, at the department level. Um I think we're landing the plane in a really good place, but it's it has been incredibly hard work for everybody. And um frankly I don't I
062don't um my goal is that this is not the case next year. Uh one of the big things we did this year that I talked about at our preliminary budget was closing those budget gaps so that we won't have those sort of emergencies during the year that we have to adjust to. Now that doesn't mean that we're going to have all the money for everything that everybody wants to do, right? That that is impossible in any school district. Um, but we aren't going to have we're going to have even fewer surprises and we're going to have those budget gaps closed so everyone knows what they're buying and what they're getting at this point. Uh, that concludes the report. Thank you. Questions? Yeah. Mr. Yes, please. Thank you. Um, thank you Scott and your team uh
063for everything that you guys have been doing. Um, reports like this have been coming monthly for how long now to the board? Uh, ballpark. We started in I'm going to guess September. I'd have to go back and look at the exact Yeah. month, but it would have been early fall. And when did you start recording them and putting them on YouTube for everyone to see? Again, we'd have to go back and look, but I don't need fall. Great. Um, coming out of this, we had a a fiscal audit or a financial audit, a third party audit last year. What is that timeline for this fiscal year? Yep. So, uh, well, the audit start actually the audit already started. So, the, um, so let me back up. School districts are required to have an independent auditor
064audit their books. Um, in some states it's a state employee that does that. So like the the equivalent of DPI in some states hires auditors that come in. Uh, in Wisconsin it is audit firms that specialize in public accounting. So there's only a certain number of those that actually do public accounting. Um, and and we went out to bid this year to get a new one. Uh, our our prior one is not doing schools anymore. Um so the preliminary audit begins in June. Uh they'll be in district. Um it's usually the better part of a week in August. Uh where they are pulling invoices, going through our financial system, um asking a lot of questions. Then it's um a lots of kind of a lot of work with my team between August and November back
065and forth before they present the actual report to the board in December. Um they do give a written report to the state. Um I believe that's around November 15th. That's so they complete that and then shortly after that they present to the board. So that'll be the same timeline this year. Um who pays for that audit? Uh the district. The board does. Excuse me. So, how do we know that they are neutral if they are a third party paid by us? How are they how do we know that they are not just feeding us information? Um, well, the audit is state required. So, they would lose their license and their ability to work for for the state. I mean, that's a significant portion of their funding um if they were to not be able to
066audit public school districts anymore. Um but that's not the only third party group that you're working with financially with in terms of the finances. Can you talk a little bit more about CISA? So we also um engaged with CISA 5 last fall. So see um again for audience that may not know in Wisconsin uh CISAs are cooperative educational service agencies. uh we belong to CISA 1 based on our region but different CISA CISAs are entrepreneurial by nature and different CISAs have kind of picked up uh areas that they um are experts in or provide outside services for CISA 5 out of Portage is sort of the go-to CISA uh when someone needs assistance with um on the business side so we contracted with them um they have been monitoring our reports on a monthly basis
067as um they gave a report to the board I believe it was in January um and we have contracted with them for next year also um I I say contracted but we're paying them by the hour so it's uh you know the board isn't approving a large contract and the cost of that was I say under $5,000 this year something like that and you'll be asking for that to continue into the next correct yep Um, I have more questions about the 2024 referenda and how that's being applied because you addressed that in the committee meeting uh this past week. Um, I am willing to defer those if I don't want to bore anyone. Ask what we want to ask. Can I ask a question before you go about this audit um that is done annually?
068When those reports come out, are they public? Are they available to the public? And if so, how? Yep. They're actually all on our website. So, as soon as we get them, we post them a PDF to our website. Um, so, and if anyone can't find them, let me know and I'll make sure they're easily available, but I'm pretty sure you go right to the business office or it might be called finance on our website. The last probably four to five years are there. Okay. Thank you. If anyone can't and doesn't have access to internet too, we also have them in our office so easily available. Oh, nice. Thanks. Anything else on the actual report? And then we'll come back. Next set of questions. Do you know how much um came out of our fund balance
069this year? How much I'm anticipating will come out? Yeah. Let me can I let me reference my notes here? Okay. Sure. So the the um actually can you share that? I can. No, no, I think you're not. I think you're I know. Yeah, I'll I will. Thank you. Yeah. That's gonna have to be blown up, I think. Here we go. So, I'm gonna try and kind of maybe run through also the permutations of where we were with fund balance because that's probably a little bit background, too. Um, and correct me if I get any of these numbers wrong. I think I think I have the number. Okay. Uh when I got here, um the preliminary budget had been approved by the board was something like a $9.3 million deficit. Um after going through the budget
070and alerting the board and Dr. Means, um I thought we were going to actually be somewhere maybe closer to $13 million deficit. 13.6. Thank you. All right. Good. So my my numbers are clear on this one. Um we went that was around August. So then we the board said, you know, that's not going to be tolerable. Um we we um administratively worked to get that back down to the 9.3 I believe. Um then we kept the board uh you know and I had said at that point that is the the extremely tight like we we tightened our belt everywhere that we thought was possible. Um but after working getting through about half the year with salaries and benefits, subs, legal fees, things that we talked about each month, uh the board approved a budget increase
071so that um we would be at about and that's this number right here about a $10.9 million fund balance expenditure. Today I'm projecting it'll be about well still roughly 10.9 but $54,000 less than that. Yeah. So, I asked that question um because we got a lot of feedback, rightfully so, last summer um with the surprise in June through August. And so I just want to really I know you don't like when I do this but give you and your team and Sarah and her team and all of um the people here at district office who really took this seriously and listened to the board listened to the community and they said yeah first of all it's not acceptable that there wasn't the right oversight happening in this building and that changed like we've heard we
072have CISA 5 um auditing our books every month we have a public website um that you created the clear gov website that the public has access to 24 hours a day. Um we are recording our finance committee meetings. We allow public comments at our finance committee meetings. You record your presentation and those go on to board docs. Um the presentations that you give during the regular board meetings. Um and then we just heard about the annual audits that take place. I think it's important because um the narrative is we allow mistakes to happen and we don't do things to correct those mistakes. Um I admitted last summer we made a mistake. I feel very confident sitting here uh 10 months later. Um and I'm very proud of the work of the board and I'm very
073proud of the work that you've um brought and the leadership that you've brought to our district. So thank you so much. Thank you. Mr. I mean I just your your analysis is absolutely correct. There's one other oversight piece that we put in play that the board demanded and that on a triannual basis Mr. Eker and Missazoski does make a presentation to the PTA area council to provide uh parent leaders uh at the school level an update on where we're tracking as well. That's another element that the board demanded that we put to begin. So I have one question. Um if we could hear because I know that there's also some the the term purchase services sounds almost like something that you know is extra and things that we you know want to have that we
074might not need. So I think it would be really helpful given that that's a category where we've struggled this year and not just this year but I think we've seen more and more of that to talk about briefly um either you or Dr. Means the the kinds of things in purchase services that are necessary to the running of the district. um as well as ideas that may be going besides maybe matching up making sure we're really doing good budgeting, appropriate budgeting, but also a sense of what are the ways that we can address this going forward. I I can take that. Um so the the state requires us to put expenses into certain buckets. Um the two largest are salaries and benefits. Then there's purchase services. I'll come back to that. There's supplies and materials.
075There's non-c capital objects. Think of those as large equipment purchases. And then there's um what they call in uh debt service and insurance and judgments. Insurance is not employee health insurance. That is school district property insurance, things like that. So the third largest bucket is purchase services. Purchase services is essentially um I can't use the words to describe what it is. So, I'll give you some examples. It's um often times it would be like well, it's our subs, it's legal fees. It is when you're buying the service of a person, but you're not employing that person. So, if we hire an electrician, you know, to come in um pull wires, an HVAC person, um uh for us, a a pretty significant portion is our cleaning services. That is a outsourced company. So, you know, they're
076not our employee, they're they're another company. Um, food service, even though that's a separate fund, uh, they're all classified as purchase services because we're buying essentially buying the people but not employing them. Other things including their utilities. No. So, the district a few I would say I want to say 15 some odd years ago outsourced both our custodial services and also food service. So what we all we did is we transferred the costs that would normally be in salary and benefits to purchase services. Our there's a former board member who was also a licensed attorney who would say well maybe you should just bring your legal uh fees in house and then it would be on your salary and benefit side of the house versus it being a purchase service. Um, but we've had that
077conversation of the the the complexity of having legal services because there's uh expertise in special education law versus generally when you have in-house counsel for a school district, it's mainly labor law. Um, and and so there's a lot of different um complexity to to law. Um and um when you look at the complexity of our school system in terms of the legal fees, a lot of it has come from open records request um that has actually so it's really it's interesting that there has been um attention to our purchase services around legal in particular that attention um is is I would like to say it's a self-fulfilling prophecy in some ways because as people and and We we don't want to deny we can't deny the public's interest in doing open records requests. That that's
078their right. But a the best practice in school uh process in school u operations is that you just don't hand over those records. You should have someone redact them. And so when we have those open records then then the cost comes into an attorney. Um us paying the hourly rate of an attorney redacting every every document. And in some cases those open records are hundreds of pages of uh redaction that that goes along with it. So but yes uh Mr. Ecker is absolutely correct. Substitute teachers, custodial services, food services, legal fees are the four major areas of purchase services and ways that we can get ahead of this going forward. Is is it mainly that you're looking at past history and adjusting? So, yeah. Um, well, there there's there's two ways, right? So, annually or
079even more, well, probably monthly, we're looking at are we spending are we getting the best bang for our buck? So, that's number one. So, I'll give you an example. Um, Kevin Lefountain. Uh, so school districts can I call it they they can buy gas at the point. So, what that means is you can prepay for your natural gas while well while it's cheaper. So right now he's going through a process of essentially buying our heat right now at a cheaper price. So that's one way of you know analyzing things all the time. Um the other way is exactly what you're getting at is what I discovered really that you know roughly a year ago is yeah a budget had been built but subs is the best example. Um, if historically, and I'm just making up
080numbers at this point, but if historically you spend $2 million on substitute teachers and then you discover a budget that says 1.5 million, it it seems unlikely you're only going to spend one.5 million unless you know things have been put in place to reduce the usage. So, the main thing we did this year outside of kind of the example I gave with Kevin was where were those gaps and right sizing the budget to what we're actually spending. And when I talked um at the preliminary budget about closing those gaps and how some of the referendum money was used to maintain what we have and and and that is closing those gaps, those are the things I was talking about. Thank you, Mr. Bower. Go ahead. Excellent. Uh continuing on with the referenda uh questions um
081on the operational side uh two of the promises that were made uh or two of the purposes that we were asking for 16.1 million per year um was to increase teacher staff pay um and then also to fund curricular progress to continue to fund the curricular cycle. um is that being done and how is that being done um with the 2526 budget? So teacher pay um we've budgeted at roughly 2.6 million uh that's compensation uh total compensation um the the I'll say promise or uh I can't think of a better word commitment uh was $2 million um and we've budgeted what what comes out to 4.32% total compensation of about $2.6 million. um academically or or the curriculum. Um we have committed to spending $4 million over the course of the referendum and we haven't
082budgeted. So we're we have we're not budgeting that $1 million each year. Um because some of it is timing, some of it is commitment to rebuilding fund balance um first. So there was only a small increase to that department this year, but the commitment is still $4 million over the course of the run. I think this is where the division of academic performance deserves a lot of credit. What they've done is they've looked internally and they made some sacrifices with their existing budget to ensure that we had the money to move forward with the discovery lab for all of our children. So they made cuts in other areas of their budget. they're doing they're not going to do certain things to ensure we do discovery lab without the referendum dollars. Um Dr. Marble and her
083team recognizes that the math adoption is going to be a large curricular adoption. And so we're trying to preserve though that $4 million for the the math and social studies adoption. If you remember a few years ago the board uh continued to ask Dr. Marw and I of well can we wait to adopt ELA until the state of Wisconsin the legislature provides the promised money that they were going to give all the school districts for adoption of ELA. If the board had not gone into fund balance if the board had not made the investment we would still be waiting on that investment. Uh and and so while this past year was a tough year for our teachers because we adopted ELA for the first year, next year will be easier. Um and that's because the
084board made the decision that we couldn't wait any longer. Um that when you and that's why again when you adopt a core four uh subject areas in a two and a half year span, you have to reserve as much money as you can. So the strategy that Dr. Marble, Mr. Eker and I have created is that we're going to lean Mr. Bower on the referendum dollars mainly for math and social studies. There's a lot of uh um ancillary materials that social studies will require and so that dollar amount will accumulate quickly and so when you combine a K12 math adoption with social studies we anticipate that's going to be significant. So that that's where the money is going. Dr. Marble, did I miss anything there? ma'am. Okay. Thank you. And I'm sorry if I misspoke
085uh on the amount. I think I said 2 million for curricular project. So it's not um flipping over to uh the capital side, the build building side. Um we have borrowed a quarter of the total $60 million to start the process. Uh how is that going? How can people find out more about the progress? Like where where are we at in that chain of events? Um on our website you can still go to the referendum page and there's monthly updates there now on the progress. So Kevin Lefountain is again running that project um along with uh VJS the construction manager and P the architects are giving us a monthly status update so you see that every month. Um, I will also tell you that I'm working on a uh an addition to the web page
086that will allow people to see pro um progress on the projects too. So, the only project that has really started to to this point is roofing and that's because um to save some money, Kevin is overseeing or actually acting as sort of the general contractor on the roofing. and the the um next set of projects is what he's referring to as bid package one. There's going to be three phases uh of the of of projects being done. Um so VJS Kevin and P are preparing the specs for the first phase of projects that's going out to bid probably in the next couple weeks um to ensure the you know best and lowest cost and then those projects will begin in earnest uh in the fall. Um, you just said best and lowest cost, which reminds
087me of um are we using unionized labor, the prevailing wage of what's going on? How does that play into this entire referendum arc? So, there's state statute on um on types of labor we can use. So, we're following state statute um with prevailing wage. Uh thank you. I think that's it for my list of questions for this time around. Anyone else? I would just um add that Kevin Lefountain is giving monthly referendum update during the finance committee meetings. So you can watch those recordings um to hear from him and he's doing a great job checks as well. All right, hearing no other questions, we will close um this uh piece of the agenda and we will move into um the inservice discussion. We'll move to the German of this meeting. Um I just want to
088mention that an inservice is as was said when we were doing public comment. I was reading the guidance on the meeting. An inservice is not recorded. people are welcome to observe in the room. Um the goal that we have tonight with this inservice is to um set our pace and cadence and our structure for how we're going to do self-ealuation of the board as well as superintendent evaluation. There are not action items or evaluation steps uh being taken tonight. There's not going to be decisions. um there are several things that we have to come because we do only our work in person. These are things that we have to um do some conversation about. So people are welcome to come on over to the building and observe um us doing this work. Um but this
089part as as we adjourn this part of the meeting, we will be um finishing the recorded and transmitted um Zoom meeting as well. Okay. So we will move to item number six adjourn into inservice bill. It is recommended that school board adjurnn into an inservice to discuss the board self-evaluation process and the superintendent evaluation process and I so move. May I have a second? Second, Mr. Bower. Thank you. The time is 7:22. Um, and I believe that I need a roll call. Um, so I'm going to do this. This is a yes or a no for adjournment into inservice. Miss Bzinski, yes. Mr. Bower, yes. Miss Bach, yes. Mr. Morris, yes. Miss Roland, yes. Dr. Worley is yes. Mr. Mr. Wy, yes. The motion passes.